Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduced-state sequence estimation with set partitioning and decision feedback

A reduced-state sequence estimator for linear intersymbol interference channels is described. The estimator uses a conventional Viterbi algorithm with decision feedback to search a reduced-state subset trellis that is constructed using set-partitioning principles. The complexity of maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE) due to the length of the channel memory and the size of the signal set is systematically reduced. An error probability analysis shows that a good performance/complexity tradeoff can be obtained. In particular, the results indicate that the required complexity to achieve the performance of MLSE is independent of the size of the signal set for large enough signal sets. Simulation results are provided for two partial-response systems. A simple technique for quadrature partial-response signaling (QPRS) is described that eliminates the quasicatastrophic nature of the ML trellis. >
A Conditional Random Field Model for Video Super-resolution

In this paper, we propose a learning-based method for video super-resolution. There are two main contributions of the proposed method. First, information from cameras with different spatial-temporal resolutions is combined in our framework. This is achieved by constructing training dictionary using the high resolution images captured by still camera and the low resolution video is enhanced via searching in this customized database. Second, we enforce the spatio-temporal constraints using the conditional random field (CRF) and the problem of video super-resolution is posed as finding the high resolution video that maximizes the conditional probability. We apply the algorithm to video sequences taken from different scenes using cameras with different qualities and promising results are presented
Influence of Bone Implant Contact on Biomechanical performance of Short Implant Placed in Atrophic Posterior Mandible

In excessive reduced alveolar bone height patients, thickness of cortical bone is less and available bone height for placing implant is limited. Placing conventional long implant may invasive additional bone. To minimize unnecessary bone invasion, short implants is considered to be a good option. However, Crown-to-Implant (CI) ratio remains questionable in success of dental implant at different Bone-to-Implant Contact (BIC) levels. Therefore, biomechanical performance of short implants with suprastructure on the posterior atrophic mandible was then studied for difference of BIC contact and CI ratio. Six three-dimensional (3D) finite element models of a 6 mm short implant with 6 mm and 12 mm crown height represented a CI ratio of 1:1 and 2:1, respectively, with 30%, 60%, and 90% BIC were modeled. Uniform thickness of the cortical bone model was 1 mm covering the trabecular layer. Axial force of 200 N was applied to the occlusal surface. Results revealed that the maximum von Mises stress of bone is relatively low, indicating that low chance of bone resorption occurred. Elastic strain of cortex and trabecular at BIC level 30%, 60% and 90% were almost similar for CI ratios of both 1:1 and 2:1. Magnitude of elastic strain at a 30% BIC level was also in range for physiologic bone remodelling. These findings may help patients who have risk of low osseointegration.
Opinions on Abortion as Measured by the Lost-Letter Technique

This study uses a postal card as a modification of the “lost letter” technique to obtain information about abortion attitudes. The message on the cards (which can be read easily by the finder) included 100 with a promise to donate money to a proabortion committee, 100 to an antiabortion committee, and 100 contained a neutral message having nothing to do with abortion. 50 of each type of card were dropped in one of two urban areas. There were more antiabortion than proabortion cards mailed, but the highest return rate of neutral cards suggests a need for additional study of abortion attitudes.
Efficient navigation based on the Landmark-Tree map and the Z∞ algorithm using an omnidirectional camera

Map based navigation is a crucial task for any mobile robot. On many platforms this problem is addressed by applying Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) based on metric grid-maps. Such solutions work well on robots with adequate resources and limited workspaces. Platforms with limited payload which operate in unbounded workspaces, do often have insufficient resources to keep a metric world representation. Nevertheless, many applications demand that the robot can autonomously navigate between different operation areas. In this work the Landmark-Tree map (LT-map), a resource efficient topological map concept, is for the first time applied to a mobile robotic platform equipped with an omnidirectional camera. It enables the robot to efficiently adapt the acquired map online to the available memory. During map acquisition and navigation the motion is estimated by the Z∞-algorithm. Both methods are based on similar concepts, which results in a mutual benefit. An efficient navigation strategy based on the LT-map allows the robot to reliably follow previously recorded paths. The presented approach is evaluated on a mobile robot in indoor and outdoor scenarios. The experiments prove its feasibility and show that pruning the map just smooths the trajectories, which is the expected and desired behaviour.
Information Geometry and Evolutionary Game Theory

The Shahshahani geometry of evolutionary game theory is realized as the information geometry of the simplex, deriving from the Fisher information metric of the manifold of categorical probability distributions. Some essential concepts in evolutionary game theory are realized information-theoretically. Results are extended to the Lotka-Volterra equation and to multiple population systems.
No Need for Dark Matter in Galaxies

Unhappily, there has been a maelstrom of problems for dark matter theories over the last few years and many serious difficulties still have no resolution in sight. This article reviews the evidence for dark matter in galaxies. The haloes built up by hierarchical merging in dark matter cosmogonies are cusped and dominated by dark matter at the center. Evidence from the microlensing optical depth towards Baade's Window and from dynamical modelling of the Galactic bar already suggests that the Galactic halo is not cusped. Similarly, evidence from the stability of unbarred disk galaxies, as well as the survival of fast bars in barred galaxies, suggests that the this result holds good more generally. Judged on the data from galactic scales alone, the case for dark matter is weak and non-standard theories of gravity provide a better description. Of course, non-standard theories of gravity have their own problems, but not on galactic scales.
IMMUNE SUPPRESSION AND THE COST OF REPRODUCTION IN THE GROUND CRICKET, ALLONEMOBIUS SOCIUS

Abstract One of the most common life history trade-offs in animals is the reduction in survivorship with increasing reproductive effort. Despite the prevalence of this pattern, its underlying physiological mechanisms are not well understood. Here we test the hypothesis that immune suppression mediates this phenotypic trade-off by manipulating reproductive effort and measuring immune function and mortality rates in the striped ground cricket, Allonemobius socius. Because A. socius males provide females with a hemolymph-based nuptial gift during copulation, and many structural components of immunity reside in the hemolymph, we also predicted that sexual selection may differentially affect how disease resistance evolves in males and females. We found that an increased mating effort resulted in a reduced immune ability, coupled with an increased rate in age-specific mortality for both sexes. Thus, immune suppression appears to be a link between reproductive effort and cost in this system. In addition, males and females appeared to differentially invest in several aspects of immunity prior to mating, with males exhibiting a higher concentration of circulating hemocytes and a superior bacterial defense capability. This pattern may be the result of previously established positive selection on gift size due to its affect on female fecundity. In short, female choice for larger gifts may lead to a sexually dimorphic immune ability.
Sequence-specific recognition of DNA minor groove by an NIR-fluorescence switch-on probe and its potential applications

In molecular biology, understanding the functional and structural aspects of DNA requires sequence-specific DNA binding probes. Especially, sequence-specific fluorescence probes offer the advantage of real-time monitoring of the conformational and structural reorganization of DNA in living cells. Herein, we designed a new class of D2A (one-donor-two-acceptor) near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence switch-on probe named quinone cyanine–dithiazole (QCy–DT) based on the distinctive internal charge transfer (ICT) process for minor groove recognition of AT-rich DNA. Interestingly, QCy–DT exhibited strong NIR-fluorescence enhancement in the presence of AT-rich DNA compared to GC-rich and single-stranded DNAs. We show sequence-specific minor groove recognition of QCy–DT for DNA containing 5′-AATT-3′ sequence over other variable (A/T)4 sequences and local nucleobase variation study around the 5′-X(AATT)Y-3′ recognition sequence revealed that X = A and Y = T are the most preferable nucleobases. The live cell imaging studies confirmed mammalian cell permeability, low-toxicity and selective staining capacity of nuclear DNA without requiring RNase treatment. Further, Plasmodium falciparum with an AT-rich genome showed specific uptake with a reasonably low IC50 value (<4 µM). The ease of synthesis, large Stokes shift, sequence-specific DNA minor groove recognition with switch-on NIR-fluorescence, photostability and parasite staining with low IC50 make QCy–DT a potential and commercially viable DNA probe.
An Analysis of Critique Diversity in Case-Based Recommendation

Critiquing is a well-known form of user feedback in casebased recommender systems. A critique encodes the users preference in relation to a particular feature. For example, in a digital camera recommender a user may be allowed to indicate whether they are interested in cameras with a lower resolution than the one currently presented; so ‘lower resolution’ is an example of a critique over the resolution feature. Recent research demonstrates how the dynamic generation of compound critiques – critiques that operate over multiple features – can deliver significant performance improvements. However user-studies highlight diversity problems that arise during critique generation; for example, one compound critique might constrain resolution, memory and zoom while another might constrain resolution, memory and price. In this paper we describe how critique diversity can be improved and demonstrate that this can lead to significant usability and per-
Antihypertensive Properties of Plant-Based Prebiotics

Hypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Although various drugs for its treatment have been synthesized, the occurring side effects have generated the need for natural interventions for the treatment and prevention of hypertension. Dietary intervention such as the administration of prebiotics has been seen as a highly acceptable approach. Prebiotics are indigestible food ingredients that bypass digestion and reach the lower gut as substrates for indigenous microflora. Most of the prebiotics used as food adjuncts, such as inulin, fructooligosaccharides, dietary fiber and gums, are derived from plants. Experimental evidence from recent studies has suggested that prebiotics are capable of reducing and preventing hypertension. This paper will discuss some of the mechanisms involved, the evidence generated from both in-vitro experiments and in-vivo trials and some controversial findings that are raised.
Involvement of beta-glucuronidase in intestinal microflora in the intestinal toxicity of the antitumor camptothecin derivative irinotecan hydrochloride (CPT-11) in rats.

Irinotecan hydrochloride (CPT-11), an antitumor camptothecin derivative, causes severe forms of diarrhea clinically. We characterized CPT-11-induced diarrhea histologically and enzymologically and assessed the relationships between intestinal toxicity and the activity of the enzymes that play a key role in the major metabolic pathway of CPT-11 in rats. CPT-11 (60 mg/kg i.v. for 4 days) induced intestinal toxicity characterized by severe chronic diarrhea, loss of body weight, and anorexia. Histological damage was most severe in the cecum. The segmental difference in the degree of the damage showed good correlation with the beta-glucuronidase activity in the contents of the lumen in each case, but not with the intestinal tissue carboxylesterase activity, which converts CPT-11 to its active form (7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin). Inhibition of the beta-glucuronidase activity in the intestinal microflora by antibiotics (1 mg penicillin and 2 mg streptomycin per ml of drinking water) markedly ameliorated the diarrhea and reduced cecal damage. Analysis of CPT-11 and its metabolites in the feces indicated that antibiotics completely inhibited the deconjugation of the glucuronic conjugate of 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin by beta-glucuronidase. It is suggested that CPT-11-induced diarrhea would be attributable to the damage to the cecum, and that the inhibition of the beta-glucuronidase activity in the intestinal microflora is a major protective effect of antibiotics.
A Metadata Focused Crawler for Linked Data

The Linked Data best practices recommend publishers of triplesets to use well-known ontologies in the triplication process and to link their triplesets with other triplesets. However, despite the fact that extensive lists of open ontologies and triplesets are available, most publishers typically do not adopt those ontologies and link their triplesets only with popular ones, such as DBpedia and Geonames. This paper presents a metadata crawler for Linked Data to assist publishers in the triplification and the linkage processes. The crawler provides publishers with a list of the most suitable ontologies and vocabulary terms for triplification, as well as a list of triplesets that the new tripleset can be most likely linked with. The crawler focuses on specific metadata properties, including subclass of, and returns only metadata, hence the classification âmetadata focused crawlerâ.
A delay-constrained general achievable rate and certain capacity results for UWB relay channel

In this paper, we derive UWB version of (i) general best achievable rate for the relay channel with decode-and-forward strategy and (ii) max-flow min-cut upper bound, such that the UWB relay channel can be studied considering the obtained lower and upper bounds. Then, we show that by appropriately choosing the noise correlation coefficients, our new upper bound coincides with the lower bound in special cases of degraded and reversely degraded UWB relay channels. Finally, some numerical results are illustrated.
Barcoding the butterflies of southern South America: Species delimitation efficacy, cryptic diversity and geographic patterns of divergence

Because the tropical regions of America harbor the highest concentration of butterfly species, its fauna has attracted considerable attention. Much less is known about the butterflies of southern South America, particularly Argentina, where over 1,200 species occur. To advance understanding of this fauna, we assembled a DNA barcode reference library for 417 butterfly species of Argentina, focusing on the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot. We tested the efficacy of this library for specimen identification, used it to assess the frequency of cryptic species, and examined geographic patterns of genetic variation, making this study the first large-scale genetic assessment of the butterflies of southern South America. The average sequence divergence to the nearest neighbor (i.e. minimum interspecific distance) was 6.91%, ten times larger than the mean distance to the furthest conspecific (0.69%), with a clear barcode gap present in all but four of the species represented by two or more specimens. As a consequence, the DNA barcode library was extremely effective in the discrimination of these species, allowing a correct identification in more than 95% of the cases. Singletons (i.e. species represented by a single sequence) were also distinguishable in the gene trees since they all had unique DNA barcodes, divergent from those of the closest non-conspecific. The clustering algorithms implemented recognized from 416 to 444 barcode clusters, suggesting that the actual diversity of butterflies in Argentina is 3%–9% higher than currently recognized. Furthermore, our survey added three new records of butterflies for the country (Eurema agave, Mithras hannelore, Melanis hillapana). In summary, this study not only supported the utility of DNA barcoding for the identification of the butterfly species of Argentina, but also highlighted several cases of both deep intraspecific and shallow interspecific divergence that should be studied in more detail.
The incidentalome: a threat to genomic medicine.

GENOMIC MEDICINE IS POISED TO OFFER A BROAD ARray of new genome-scale screening tests. However, these tests may lead to a phenomenon in which multiple abnormal genomic findings are discovered, analogous to the “incidentalomas” that are often discovered in radiological studies. If practitioners pursue these unexpected genomic findings without thought, there may be disastrous consequences. First, physicians will be overwhelmed by the complexity of pursuing unexpected genomic measurements. Second, patients will be subjected to unnecessary follow-up tests, causing additional morbidity. Third, the cost of genomic medicine will increase substantially with little benefit to patients or physicians (but with great financial benefits to the genomic testing industry), thus throwing the overall societal benefit of genomebased medicine into question. In this article, we discuss the basis for these concerns and suggest several steps that can be taken to help avoid these substantive risks to the practice of genomically personalized medicine.
ANESTTE : a writer ’ s assistant for a specific purpose language

This paper presents a new automatic tool for assessing the linguistic quality of scientific papers written in English. A set of complex lexical and syntactic surface-level rules compute more than 80 style-related variables. Their combination defines the score of a text in the four dimensions of style assessment for scientific papers: clarity, variety, conciseness and conviction. The software has been tested on 60 published articles and incorporates an animated agent that acts as a personal assistant and explains the results to the writer and how to improve them.
Letter Binding and Invariant Recognition of Masked Words

Fluent readers recognize visual words across changes in case and retinal location, while maintaining a high sensitivity to the arrangement of letters. To evaluate the automaticity and functional anatomy of invariant word recognition, we measured brain activity during subliminal masked priming. By preceding target words with an unrelated prime, a repeated prime, or an anagram made of the same letters, we separated letter-level and whole-word codes. By changing the case and the retinal location of primes and targets, we evaluated the invariance of those codes. Our results indicate that an invariant binding of letters into words is achieved unconsciously through a series of increasingly invariant stages in the left occipito-temporal pathway.
Effect of Span-to-Depth Ratio on the Fracture Energy of Foam Concrete

The use of foam concrete as an alternative material in the construction industry has become popular in structure industries due to the low density range, good strength, high serviceability, and lightness of this material. Several studies have been conducted to determine the mechanical properties and strength of foam concrete. However, research on fracture energy is still ongoing. Therefore, these studies aim to experimentally investigate the effect of span-to-depth (S/W) ratio on the fracture energy of foam concrete using beam specimens with V-notches through a three-point bending test. Beam specimens were encased and prepared at a density of 1600 kg/m3. Moreover, three different S/W ratios (4, 5, and 6) with a notch height of 20 mm were adopted. Fracture energy was determined using the Hillerborg, Bazant, and Comite Euro-International du Beton models. From the experiment, results showed that S/W ratio affected fracture energy.
The development of a mechanical quadruped robot with animal-like muscle arrangement

Characteristics of bi-articular muscles were analyzed by examining a jumping mechanism inspired by the leg of an animal. Specifically, we proposed a leg mechanism called the pantograph model based on the bi-articular muscle arrangement that is only present in animals. We investigated the motion characteristics of the pantograph model and analyzed the change in motion when the ground reaction force is generated by extending the legs. The results show that this model transfers the torque generated by the actuator to the toe. In addition, this model automatically adjusts so that the ground reaction force turns toward the center of gravity. A robot equipped with this model in the legs can jump easily using this simple system.
Dietary Patterns during Pregnancy Are Associated with Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

Maternal dietary patterns before and during pregnancy play important roles in the development of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). We aimed to identify dietary patterns during pregnancy that are associated with GDM risk in pregnant U.S. women. From a 24 h dietary recall of 253 pregnant women (16–41 years) included in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003–2012, food items were aggregated into 28 food groups based on Food Patterns Equivalents Database. Three dietary patterns were identified by reduced rank regression with responses including prepregnancy body mass index (BMI), dietary fiber, and ratio of poly- and monounsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acid: “high refined grains, fats, oils and fruit juice”, “high nuts, seeds, fat and soybean; low milk and cheese”, and “high added sugar and organ meats; low fruits, vegetables and seafood”. GDM was diagnosed using fasting plasma glucose levels ≥5.1 mmol/L for gestation <24 weeks. Multivariable logistic regression models were used to estimate adjusted odds ratio (AOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for GDM, after controlling for maternal age, race/ethnicity, education, family poverty income ratio, marital status, prepregnancy BMI, gestational weight gain, energy intake, physical activity, and log-transformed C-reactive protein (CRP). All statistical analyses accounted for the appropriate survey design and sample weights of the NHANES. Of 249 pregnant women, 34 pregnant women (14%) had GDM. Multivariable AOR (95% CIs) of GDM for comparisons between the highest vs. lowest tertiles were 4.9 (1.4–17.0) for “high refined grains, fats, oils and fruit juice” pattern, 7.5 (1.8–32.3) for “high nuts, seeds, fat and soybean; low milk and cheese” pattern, and 22.3 (3.9–127.4) for “high added sugar and organ meats; low fruits, vegetables and seafood” pattern after controlling for maternal sociodemographic variables, prepregnancy BMI, gestational weight gain, energy intake and log-transformed CRP. These findings suggest that dietary patterns during pregnancy are associated with risk of GDM after controlling for potential confounders. The observed connection between a high consumption of refined grains, fat, added sugars and low intake of fruits and vegetables during pregnancy with higher odds for GDM, are consistent with general health benefits of healthy diets, but warrants further research to understand underlying pathophysiology of GDM associated with dietary behaviors during pregnancy.