Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental study of performance and security constraints on wireless key distribution using random phase of multipath radio signal

The paper presents the results of experimental distribution of encryption keys based on random carrier phase of fading radio signal measured in a multipath environment. The random bits extraction scheme was proposed and tested in practice. The proposed scheme is universal and applicable to measurements digitizing of any observable random variable. Experimental study of spatial correlation of multipath signal phase in the case of transverse spatial diversity is carried out. Experimental estimation of the key generation rate and the probability of its passive interception at different distances between the legal user and potential eavesdropper are also performed. It is shown that the parameters of bit extraction procedure significantly affect on the performance and security of the key distribution process.
Mapping the self-association domains of ataxin-1: identification of novel non overlapping motifs

The neurodegenerative disease spinocerebellar ataxia type 1 (SCA1) is caused by aggregation and misfolding of the ataxin-1 protein. While the pathology correlates with mutations that lead to expansion of a polyglutamine tract in the protein, other regions contribute to the aggregation process as also non-expanded ataxin-1 is intrinsically aggregation-prone and forms nuclear foci in cell. Here, we have used a combined approach based on FRET analysis, confocal microscopy and in vitro techniques to map aggregation-prone regions other than polyglutamine and to establish the importance of dimerization in self-association/foci formation. Identification of aggregation-prone regions other than polyglutamine could greatly help the development of SCA1 treatment more specific than that based on targeting the low complexity polyglutamine region.
Nutrition Information , Nutrition Knowledge and Consumers ’ Willingness to Pay for Pasture-Fed Beef : Empirical Evidence from In-Store Experiments

Consumer demand for beef has been changing and a diversification of the attributes is demanded. This trend has provided beef producer incentive to differentiate their products in the beef market. Pasture-fed beef (PFB) is one beef product that is raised so that it has a different taste and visual quality, as well as nutritional aspects such as lower fat and calories, and higher omega-3 and CLA. These differences could have a significant impact on consumers’ demand for PFB and their willingness to pay for it relative to their willingness to pay for conventional feedlot-produced beef. Despite its perceived potential, however, there has been limited marketing research on PFB so that we have little knowledge as to the extent to which the special attributes of PFB motivate consumer purchases and how consumers are influenced by the provision of information about these attributes. This article uses experimental economics techniques to examine the impact of nutritional information and sensory characteristics of PFB on consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP). Our analysis shows that consumers’ awareness of PFB products’ positive impact on human health, environment and animal welfare do not necessarily increase their WTP. Beef products’ palatability attributes play a central role in determining consumers’ preferences and WTP. This study also reveals that nutrition knowledge can significantly influence consumers’ WTP. With respect to the impact of consumers’ socio-demographic characteristics on their WTP for PFB, only consumers’ living status and household size have significant impact on consumers’ WTP, implying that socio-demographic variables play small role in explaining consumers’ food behavior. Our findings could serve as guidelines for PFB producers and marketers to promote the
How Does the Variance of Product Ratings Matter?

This paper examines the informational role of product ratings. We build a theoretical model in which ratings can help consumers figure out how much they would enjoy the product. In our model, a high average rating indicates a high product quality, whereas a high variance of ratings is associated with a niche product, one that some consumers love and others hate. Based on its informational role, a higher variance would correspond to a higher subsequent demand if and only if the average rating is low. We find empirical evidence that is consistent with the theoretical predictions with book data from Amazon.com and BN.com. A higher standard deviation of ratings on Amazon improves a book's relative sales rank when the average rating is lower than 4.1 stars, which is true for 35% of all the books in our sample. This paper was accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing.
Disruption of Learned Timing in P/Q Calcium Channel Mutants

To optimize motor performance, both the amplitude and temporal properties of movements should be modifiable by motor learning. Here we report that the modification of movement timing is highly dependent on signaling through P/Q-type voltage-dependent calcium channels. Two lines of mutant mice heterozygous for P/Q-type voltage-dependent calcium channels exhibited impaired plasticity of eye movement timing, but relatively intact plasticity of movement amplitude during motor learning in the vestibulo-ocular reflex. The results thus demonstrate a distinction between the molecular signaling pathways regulating the timing versus amplitude of movements.
Guillemin Transform and Toeplitz Representations for Operators on Singular Manifolds

An approach to the construction of index formulas for elliptic operators on singular manifolds is suggested on the basis of K-theory of algebras and cyclic cohomology. The equivalence of Toeplitz and pseudodifferential quantizations, well known in the case of smooth closed manifolds, is extended to the case of manifolds with conical singularities. We describe a general construction that permits one, for a given Toeplitz quantization of a C^*-algebra, to obtain a new equivalent Toeplitz quantization provided that a resolution of the projection determining the original quantization is given.
Gamma-ray bursts as the death throes of massive binary stars

We propose that gamma-ray bursts are created in the mergers of double neutron star binaries and black hole neutron star binaries at cosmological distances. Two different processes provide the electromagnetic energy for the bursts: neutrino-antineutrino annihilation into electron-position pairs during the merger, and magnetic flares generated by the Parker instability in a postmerger differentially rotating disk. In both cases, an optically thick fireball of size less than or approximately equal to 100 km is initially created, which expands ultrarelativistically to large radii before radiating. The scenario is only qualitative at this time, but it eliminates many previous objections to the cosmological merger model. The strongest bursts should be found close to, but not at the centers of, galaxies at redshifts of order 0.1, and should be accompanied by bursts of gravitational radiation from the spiraling-in binary which could be detected by LIGO.
Thermal fatigue life and reliability evaluation of die attachment layer of high power LED under thermal cycling conditions

Power conservation is a very important aspect of modern-day technology. With its long life and low energy consumption, the high power light emitting diode (HP LED) has become very popular for lighting purposes. The die attachment layer is an important component of an HP LED package that is susceptible to thermal fatigue failure and therefore affects the reliability of the HP LED itself. This study uses finite element method (FEM) to simulate and analyze the mechanical behavior of an HP LED die attachment layer under thermal cycling conditions. By using the numerical results of FEM as the input for the Coffin-Manson relationship, one can predict the thermal fatigue life of the LED. It is worth noting that past studies are mostly limited to finding a fixed value for the fatigue life of a package, which cannot truly reflect the discrete qualities of real life testing. Furthermore, they cannot provide vital information such as mean time to failure (MTTF) and the failure rate of the HP LED. With this in mind, this study considers uncertainties of both geometric dimensions and material properties of the die attachment layer, regarding them as random variables, which can be simulated by the Monte-Carlo method. The sample data is then applied to the FEM analysis for evaluating fatigue life of the LED package. By using the Anderson-Darling test and probability plot, one can find the probability distribution of the fatigue life as well as information such as MTTF and failure rate of the LED package.
I/O-Efficient Algorithms for Computing Contours on a Terrain

A terrain M is the graph of a bivariate function. We assume that M is represented as a triangulated surface with N vertices. A contour (or isoline) of M is a connected component of a level set of M. Generically, each contour is a closed polygonal curve; at \critical" levels these curves may touch each other or collapse to a point. We present I/Oecient algorithms for the following two problems related to computing contours of M: (i) Given a sequence ‘1 < < ‘s of real numbers, we present an I/O-optimal algorithm that reports all contours of M at heights ‘1;:::;‘s using O(sort(N) + T=B) I/Os, where T is the total number edges in the output contours, B is the \block size," and sort(N) is the number of I/Os needed to sort N elements. The algorithm uses O(N=B) disk blocks. Each contour is generated individually with its composing segments sorted in clockwise or counterclockwise order. Moreover, our algorithm generates information on how the contours are nested.
A reversible image watermarking in Hadamard domain

Reversible Watermarking is a special kind of the blind data hiding techniques which allows recovering both the watermark and the original image. In this article, a new reversible watermarking scheme based on a reversible Hadamard transform is proposed. In the proposed method, after calculating the image's reversible Hadamard transform, the watermark is embedded using prediction error coefficients. The proposed method does not need any location map. This property permits to increase the capacity. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, a comparative experiment with some well-known reversible methods is performed. The obtained results confirm the efficiency of the method.
A digital 70–140-GHz impedance tuner in 130-nm CMOS technology

A novel structure of a digital controllable impedance tuner is proposed, operating from 70 to 140 GHz with special emphasis on easy control. 20 FETs are used for tuning the impedance. No parasitic compensation has to be applied on the FETs. Therefore the same impedance states can be generated in a wide frequency range and the area consumption of the tuner is small. A test chip of the tuner including an on-chip three wire interface is fabricated in a 130-nm CMOS technology. Based on deembedding structures, verification of the FET model is done in the W- and D-band. The tuners S-Parameters are measured on-wafer from 70 to 140 GHz. The tuner offers a quite constant maximum reflection coefficient over a full circle in the Smith chart.
WEB CONTENT MINING TOOLS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Web mining adopts data mining techniques to automatically discover and retrieve information from web documents and services. In this Paper we have discussed the concepts of Web mining. We have mainly focused on one of the categories of Web mining namely Web Content Mining and its various tasks. We propose a six step Web content mining process in our work. Various tools for Web content mining are also discussed and their relative merits and demerits are presented.
Predicting Cognitive State from Eye Movements

In human vision, acuity and color sensitivity are greatest at the center of fixation and fall off rapidly as visual eccentricity increases. Humans exploit the high resolution of central vision by actively moving their eyes three to four times each second. Here we demonstrate that it is possible to classify the task that a person is engaged in from their eye movements using multivariate pattern classification. The results have important theoretical implications for computational and neural models of eye movement control. They also have important practical implications for using passively recorded eye movements to infer the cognitive state of a viewer, information that can be used as input for intelligent human-computer interfaces and related applications.
18.S096: Concentration Inequalities, Scalar and Matrix Versions

These are lecture notes not in final form and will be continuously edited and/or corrected (as I am sure it contains many typos). Please let me know if you find any typo/mistake. Also, I am posting short descriptions of these notes (together with the open problems) on my Blog, see [Ban15a]. Concentration and large deviations inequalities are among the most useful tools when understanding the performance of some algorithms. In a nutshell they control the probability of a random variable being very far from its expectation. The simplest such inequality is Markov's inequality: Theorem 4.1 (Markov's Inequality) Let X ≥ 0 be a non-negative random variable with E[X] < ∞. Then, Prob{X > t} ≤ E[X] t. (1) Proof. Let t > 0. Define a random variable Y t as Y t = 0 if X ≤ t t if X > t concluding the proof. 2 Markov's inequality can be used to obtain many more concentration inequalities. Chebyshev's inequality is a simple inequality that control fluctuations from the mean.
Psychological model for animating crowded pedestrians

This paper proposes a psychological model for simulating pedestrian behaviors in a crowded space. Our decision‐making scheme controls plausible avoidance behavior depending on the positional relations among surrounding persons, on the basis of a two‐stage personal space and a virtual memory structure as proposed in social psychology. Our system determines pedestrian walking speed with the crowd density to imitate the measured data in urban engineering, and automatically generates plausible motions of the individual pedestrian by composing a locomotion graph with motion capture data. Our approach based on psychology and a variety of actual measurements can increase the accuracy of simulation at both the micro and macro levels. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Pancreatic hardness: Correlation of surgeon’s palpation, durometer measurement and preoperative magnetic resonance imaging features

AIM To evaluate the correlation between subjective assessments of pancreatic hardness based on the palpation, objective measurements using a durometer, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings for assessing pancreatic hardness. METHODS Eighty-three patients undergoing pancreatectomies were enrolled. An experienced surgeon subjectively evaluated the pancreatic hardness in the surgical field by palpation. The pancreatic hardness was also objectively evaluated using a durometer. Preoperative MRI findings were evaluated by a radiologist in terms of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values, the relative signal intensity decrease (RSID) of the pancreatic parenchyma, and the diameter of the pancreatic parenchyma and duct. Durometer measurement results, ADC values, RSID, pancreatic duct and parenchyma diameters, and the ratio of the diameters of the duct and parenchyma were compared between pancreases judged to be soft or hard pancreas on the palpation. A correlation analysis was also performed between the durometer and MRI measurements. RESULTS The palpation assessment classified 44 patients as having a soft pancreas and 39 patients as having a hard pancreas. ADC values were significantly lower in the hard pancreas group. The ductal diameter and duct-to-pancreas ratio were significantly higher in the hard pancreas group. For durometer measurements, a correlation analysis showed a positive correlation with the ductal diameter and the duct-to-pancreas ratio and a negative correlation with ADC values. CONCLUSION Hard pancreases showed lower ADC values, a wider pancreatic duct diameter and a higher duct-to-pancreas ratio than soft pancreases. Additionally, the ADC values, diameter of the pancreatic duct and duct-to-pancreas ratio were closely correlated with the durometer results.
Bursting Bubbles and Bilayers

This paper discusses various interactions between ultrasound, phospholipid monolayer-coated gas bubbles, phospholipid bilayer vesicles, and cells. The paper begins with a review of microbubble physics models, developed to describe microbubble dynamic behavior in the presence of ultrasound, and follows this with a discussion of how such models can be used to predict inertial cavitation profiles. Predicted sensitivities of inertial cavitation to changes in the values of membrane properties, including surface tension, surface dilatational viscosity, and area expansion modulus, indicate that area expansion modulus exerts the greatest relative influence on inertial cavitation. Accordingly, the theoretical dependence of area expansion modulus on chemical composition - in particular, poly (ethylene glyclol) (PEG) - is reviewed, and predictions of inertial cavitation for different PEG molecular weights and compositions are compared with experiment. Noteworthy is the predicted dependence, or lack thereof, of inertial cavitation on PEG molecular weight and mole fraction. Specifically, inertial cavitation is predicted to be independent of PEG molecular weight and mole fraction in the so-called mushroom regime. In the “brush” regime, however, inertial cavitation is predicted to increase with PEG mole fraction but to decrease (to the inverse 3/5 power) with PEG molecular weight. While excellent agreement between experiment and theory can be achieved, it is shown that the calculated inertial cavitation profiles depend strongly on the criterion used to predict inertial cavitation. This is followed by a discussion of nesting microbubbles inside the aqueous core of microcapsules and how this significantly increases the inertial cavitation threshold. Nesting thus offers a means for avoiding unwanted inertial cavitation and cell death during imaging and other applications such as sonoporation. A review of putative sonoporation mechanisms is then presented, including those involving microbubbles to deliver cargo into a cell, and those - not necessarily involving microubbles - to release cargo from a phospholipid vesicle (or reverse sonoporation). It is shown that the rate of (reverse) sonoporation from liposomes correlates with phospholipid bilayer phase behavior, liquid-disordered phases giving appreciably faster release than liquid-ordered phases. Moreover, liquid-disordered phases exhibit evidence of two release mechanisms, which are described well mathematically by enhanced diffusion (possibly via dilation of membrane phospholipids) and irreversible membrane disruption, whereas liquid-ordered phases are described by a single mechanism, which has yet to be positively identified. The ability to tune release kinetics with bilayer composition makes reverse sonoporation of phospholipid vesicles a promising methodology for controlled drug delivery. Moreover, nesting of microbubbles inside vesicles constitutes a truly “theranostic” vehicle, one that can be used for both long-lasting, safe imaging and for controlled drug delivery.
A Static Memory Safety Annotation System for Safety Critical Java

Embedded systems must be able to operate for long periods of time with limited memory. Dynamic memory allocation is often discouraged in such systems as it requires careful analysis to rule out memory-related software defects. This paper presents an annotation system that can be used to rule out memory access errors in programs written in a subset of the Java programming language which targets safety critical applications. The annotations are optional. When present, they are used by the compiler to report, ahead of time, potential memory access errors. The proposed system is part of the upcoming Safety Critical Java Specification. It has been evaluated on a number of small benchmark programs (26 KLOC of Java code) and implemented in the oSCJ real-time Java virtual machine leading to performance improvements ranging from 1.7% to 26%.
Robust Face Recognition and Impostors Detection with Partial Occlusion and Small Number of Training Samples ⋆

This paper includes two contributions. The first, we present a new approach for face recognition subject to partially occlusion with a small number of training images. The new approach is an extension of our previous Posterior Union Model (PUM). It takes place the probability measure with a similarity measure, thereby allowing the use of a small number of images, or even a single image, to represent a class while keeping the robustness to partial occlusion. Base on the new method, this paper further studies the problem how to detect the invalid test samples or called “impostors” and propose a novel rule for impostors detection in face recognition. Experiment results on XM2VTS and AR database indicate that the new system is able to perform as well as an oracle system for dealing with various simulated and realistic partial occlusion without requiring prior information and also show new impostors detection rule outperforms traditional residuals-based decision measurement.
Shall I Use Heterogeneous Data Centers? - A Case Study on Video on Demand Systems

Recent research work and industrial experience show that heterogeneous data centers can be more cost-effective for some applications, especially those with intensive I/O operations. However, for a given application, it remains difficult to decide whether the application should be deployed on homogeneous nodes or heterogeneous nodes. In this paper, we perform a case study on finding optimized configurations for Video on Demand(VOD) systems. We examine two major modules in VOD systems, the streaming module and the transcoding module. In this study, we measure performance and power on different configurations by varying these factors: processor type, disk type, number of disks, operating systems and module mapping modes. We find that hosting VOD systems on heterogeneous nodes reduces no more than 35% power or cost per unit work done, compared with the server-only configuration. In Windows, multiplexing the two modules on servers achieves comparable power and cost reduction, but it is even worse than the non-multiplexing solution in Linux. The anti-intuitive and non-consistent results reflect the intrinsic complexity of finding an optimized configuration for a VOD system. Empirical data are necessary to support quantitative instead of qualitative analysis.