Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring Identity-By-Descent Segments and Putative Functions Using Different Foundation Parents in Maize

Maize foundation parents (FPs) play no-alternative roles in hybrid breeding because they were widely used in the development of new lines and hybrids. The combination of different identity-by-descent (IBD) segments and genes could account for the formation patterns of different FPs, and knowledge of these IBD regions would provide an extensive foundation for the development of new candidate FP lines in future maize breeding. In this paper, a panel of 304 elite lines derived from FPs, i.e., B73, 207, Mo17, and Huangzaosi (HZS), was collected and analyzed using 43,252 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers. Most IBD segments specific to particular FP groups were identified, including 116 IBD segments in B73, 105 in Mo17, 111 in 207, and 190 in HZS. In these regions, 423 quantitative trait nucleotides (QTNs) associated with 15 agronomic traits and 804 candidate genes were identified. Some known adaptation-related genes, e.g., dwarf8 and vgt1 in HZS, zcn8 and epc in Mo17, and ZmCCT in 207, were validated as being tightly linked to particular IBD segments. In addition, numerous new candidate genes were also identified. For example, GRMZM2G154278 in HZS, which belongs to the cell cycle control family, was closely linked to a QTN of the ear height/plant height (EH/PH) trait; GRMZM2G051943 in 207, which encodes an endochitinase precursor (EP) chitinase, was closely linked to a QTN for kernel density; and GRMZM2G170586 in Mo17 was closely linked to a QTN for ear diameter. Complex correlations among these genes were also found. Many IBD segments and genes were included in the formation of FP lines, and complex regulatory networks exist among them. These results provide new insights on the genetic basis of complex traits and provide new candidate IBD regions or genes for the improvement of special traits in maize production.
Computing unions of Inevitable Collision States and increasing safety to unexpected obstacles

For reasoning about the safety of a robot system, it is sufficient to pretend the robot to reach an Inevitable Collision Sate (ICS). Otherwise, there exists no future trajectory which can avoid a collision. The usage of ICS is limited due to its computational complexity. One reason for this is, that the ICS computation cannot be done separately for each obstacle. Hence, ICS needs to be recomputed from scratch if another object appears in the scene. The main contribution of this paper is a modified ICS calculation which allows to compute the union of ICS sets in a sequential manner, thus reducing the computational requirements in case of new obstacles. Therefore, two novel ICS-Checker algorithms are presented reducing the computational effort. Furthermore, this novel calculation is used to reduce the probability of being in an ICS regarding an unforeseen obstacle.
Eighty-three per cent of elite athletes return to preinjury sport after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a systematic review with meta-analysis of return to sport rates, graft rupture rates and performance outcomes

Objectives The primary objective was to calculate the rate of return to sport (RTS) following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction in elite athletes. Secondary objectives were to estimate the time taken to RTS, calculate rates of ACL graft rupture, evaluate postsurgical athletic performance and identify determinants of RTS. Design Pooled RTS and graft rupture rates were calculated using random effects proportion meta-analysis. Time to RTS, performance data and determinants of RTS were synthesised descriptively. Data sources MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, CINAHL, AMI, PEDro, SPORTDiscus and The Cochrane Library were searched from inception to 19 January 2016. Hand searching of 10 sports medicine journals and reference checking were also performed. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies Studies were included if they reported the ratio of elite athletes who returned to their preinjury level of sport following ACL reconstruction. Twenty-four studies were included. Results The pooled RTS rate was 83% (95% CI 77% to 88%). The mean time to RTS ranged from 6 to 13 months. The pooled graft rupture rate was 5.2% (95% CI 2.8% to 8.3%). Six out of nine studies that included a noninjured control group found no significant deterioration in athletic performance following ACL reconstruction. Indicators of greater athletic skill or value to the team were associated with RTS. Summary and conclusions Eighty-three per cent of elite athletes returned to sport following ACL reconstruction, while 5.2% sustained a graft rupture. Most athletes who returned to sport performed comparably with matched, uninjured controls. This information may assist in guiding expectations of athletes and clinicians following ACL reconstruction.
Effects of Biologics on Pedicle Screw Fixation in a Sheep Model: Histological and Biomechanical Analysis

EFFECTS OF BIOLOGICS ON PEDICLE SCREW FIXATION IN A SHEEP MODEL: HISTOLOGICAL AND BIOMECHANICAL ANALYSIS Akshi Arora, BDS Marquette University, 2010 Objective: Osteoinductive recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein (rhBMP-2) was delivered on an absorbable collagen sponge (ACS) within a novel titanium screw implant in an IACUC approved non-osteoporotic ovine spine model. Biomechanical pull-out strength, undecalcified histology, microradiography, and quantitative histomorphometry were used to assess effects of augmentation with rhBMP2 on the holding power and peri-implant bone formation. Methodology: rhBMP-2 (0.43 mg/ml) soaked ACS was placed within and around cannulated and fenestrated titanium pedicle screw implants. Sixty-four implants were randomly divided into 4 treatment groups (n=16 each). Biomechanical pull-out testing was done on half of the screws (n=32) to determine the pull-out strength, stiffness, and energy to failure. For histology, half of the implants were sectioned perpendicular to the long axis (axial), and the other half were sectioned parallel to long axis (longitudinal). Differential staining, microradiography and histomorphometry were performed. Data were statistically analyzed by ANOVA (p=0.05) and Bonferroni/Dunn pair-wise comparisons (p=0.0083). Findings: Pull-out test: Empty 6 weeks group demonstrated the highest pull-out strength (3718N) compared to rhBMP-2/ACS 12 weeks (2330N, p<0.0025, Bonferroni/Dunn) and 6 weeks (2074N, p<0.0024, Bonferroni/Dunn) groups. rhBMP2/ACS 12 weeks group showed trend of improvement in stiffness over rhBMP-2/ACS-6 weeks (p<0.016, Bonferroni/Dunn). Empty 6 weeks group showed the highest pull-out energy. The rhBMP-2/ACS-12 weeks group showed the lowest required energy. Histomorphometry: No significant differences were found in amount of bone formed between the treatment groups for both axial (p=0.2359, ANOVA) and longitudinal sections (p=0.0569, ANOVA). Bone from the lowest mineral density in 6 weeks rhBMP2/ACS was significantly higher than other groups. rhBMP-2 application was associated with early transient bone resorption and extensive de novo osteopenic bone as far as 8-10 mm away from the screw. Conclusions: rhBMP-2 did not significantly improve the biomechanical pull-out properties (stiffness, strength, and energy) of the titanium implant. 12 weeks rhBMP2/ACS specimens had improved biomechanical pull-out strength and stiffness compared to 6 weeks rhBMP-2/ACS specimens. rhBMP-2 application was associated with early transient bone resorption, de novo florid osteopenic bone, and statistically significant bone density differences at the 6 weeks period. These were replaced by remodeled bone at the 12 weeks time period.
Stopping Outgoing Spam by Examining Incoming Server Logs

Processing server logs for the email arriving at an ISP can be used to detect remote sites where machines are infected by email viruses or have been hijacked and used for sending spam. Simple heuristics distinguish the patterns of such traffic from those of legitimate email. Stopping this material being sent is matter for the remote site. Nevertheless, this paper shows that processing can also detect if any of the ISP’s own customers have problems, because their email is logged when it is sent to other customers (or even back to themselves). Experimental results from a medium-sized ISP show that the scheme is successful in detecting customer problems. Unfortunately, if the spam or virus is not sent to anyone local then the problem remains undetected. Estimates of worldwide rates of compromise of end-user machines are used to give an indication of the likely overall effectiveness of the detection scheme.
A Crowdsourcing Assignment Model Based on Mobile Crowd Sensing in the Internet of Things

With the powerful sensing capability of mobile smart devices, users can easily obtained the crowd sensing services with smart devices in the Internet of Things (IoT). However, credible interaction issues between mobile users are still the hard problems in the past. In this paper, we focus on how to assign the crowdsourcing sensing tasks based on the credible interaction between users. First, a novel credible crowdsourcing assignment model is proposed based on social relationship cognition and community detection. Second, the service quality factor (SQF), link reliability factor (LRF), and region heat factor (RHF) are introduced to scientifically evaluate the user crowdsourcing preferences. Then, a crowdsourcing algorithm based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) theory is proposed. Finally, the simulation experiments prove the correctness, effectiveness, and robustness of our method.
Environmental and Health Risk Assessment of Particulate Matter Associated with Dusty Football Field

Over the decades there have been problems associated with Particulate Matter (PM) arising from anthropogenic activities. Evaluation and health risk assessment of PM associated with football field was carried out in 5 sampling locations, including the control station. Digital portable AEROCET 513 (Metone instrument) PM meter was used for the evaluation Results showed levels of PM for; PM1.0(13.73 – 20.18 µg/m3), PM2.5 (19.11 – 28.83 µg/m3), PM4.0 (24.73 – 44.63 µg/m3), PM7.0 (41.07 – 67.04 µg/m3), and PM10 ranging from 65.48 – 90.82 µg/m3. In addition, value of the control station was lowest amongst all recorded values of PM (p<0.05). Based on Air Quality Index evaluation, the football fields were predominantly rated as unhealthy, with other cases rates as; hazardous and unsafe for sensitive group. This investigation therefore concludes that the emission of PM from the football field are reflection of vehicular emissions and agitated dust particles. Hence mitigable measure must be applied without much ado, in order to ameliorate the daily chronic exposure to PM.
Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neuronal Networks:Their Electrical Functionality and Usability for Modelling and Toxicology

Micro electrode array (MEA)-based platforms have been used to study neuronal networks for decades. The used cells have, for the most part, been rodent primary neurons. The gained knowledge has indeed increased the understanding of neuronal network development and maturation both in vitro and in vivo. If aiming to understand the development of human brain, however, the used cell type should preferably be of human origin due to difficult interpolation from the rodent cell data. In addition, the development of functional human neuronal networks would open up a new era for, e.g., toxicology testing, drug screening and disease modelling. The use of MEA with bioelectrically active cells was first reported by Thomas et al. 1972. Gross et al. (1977; 1979) extended the applicability of the MEA platform to long-term recordings of neuronal cells and Pine (1980) reported the first recordings from dissociated neurons. Interestingly, although the solutions related to the MEA fabrication and design were similar in the above mentioned papers, all three groups came to their conclusions independently demonstrating the drive and need to record neurons in vitro. MEAs have been successfully tested in several species and cell types using organotypic and primary dissociated cell cultures. Due to their ease of use, the long-term survival of the cultures and vast possibilities of manipulation of the culture, MEAs provide an attractive tool to explore basic neuroscience as well as for pharmacology and toxicology. Functional neuronal networks have been derived from mouse embryonic stem cells (Evans & Kaufman 1981; Martin 1981), but the invention of culturing human embryonic stem cells (Thomson et al., 1998) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (Takahashi et al., 2007) have enabled the researchers to build up human cell-derived neuronal cells and networks (Ban et al., 2006; Carpenter et al., 2001; Heikkila et al., 2009; Karumbayaram et al., 2009; Nat et al., 2007). These studies have proved that human pluripotent stem cell-derived neuronal cells are indeed capable of forming functional neuronal networks which most likely resemble the networks in human brain. These human-derived neuronal networks have increased and will further increase the understanding of human brain development and functions. More importantly, with these networks it is possible to model the “normal” brain
Flexible Web document analysis for delivery to narrow-bandwidth devices

We propose a set of baseline heuristics for identifying genuinely tabular information and news links in HTML documents. A prototype implementation of these heuristics is described for delivering content from news providers' home pages to a narrow-bandwidth device such as a portable digital assistant or cellular phone display. Its evaluation on 75 Web sites is provided, along with a discussion of topics for future research.
The Effect of Speaker and Noise Type on the Accuracy of Estimated Speech Intelligibility Using Objective Measures

Previously, we compared several objective measures to estimate the subjective speech intelligibility scores of the Japanese Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT). PESQ-derived MOS, segmental SNR (SNRseg), frequency-weighed segmental SNR (fwSNRseg), and composite measures were tested. We mapped these measures to its corresponding intelligibility scores using quadratic equations trained on one speaker and one noise type, and tested on a different speaker with the same gender and noise type. Accurate intelligibility estimation was possible, especially when using fwSNRseg and SNRseg. In this paper, we further investigated the estimation accuracy when the training and testing speaker gender or the noise types do not match. There was almost no decrease in accuracy with speaker gender, but a slight decrease with noise type. However, with fwSNRseg, correlation between subjective and estimated intelligibility was above 0.8, while other measures showed much lower correlation.
Gift-Exchange, Incentives, and Heterogeneous Workers

Using a formal principal-agent model, I investigate the relation between monetary gift-exchange and incentive pay, while allowing for worker heterogeneity. I assume that some agents care more for their principal when they are convinced that the principal cares for them. Principals can signal their altruism by offering a generous contract, consisting of a base salary and an output-contingent bonus. I find that principals signal their altruism by offering relatively weak incentives and a relatively high expected total compensation, but the latter does not necessarily hold. Furthermore, since some agents do not reciprocate the principal's altruism, the principal may find it optimal to write a contract that simultaneously signals his altruism and screens reciprocal worker types. I show that such a contract is characterised by excessively strong incentives and relatively high expected total compensation.
Haptic Roughness Perception of Linear Gratings via Bare Finger or Rigid Probe

The magnitude of perceived roughness was haptically estimated as subjects freely explored linear gratings with either the bare finger or a rigid stylus-shaped probe. A considerably expanded range of ridge and groove width was investigated, relative to the extant literature. The four experiments collectively indicate that, for both finger and probe-end effectors, the variance in the estimates of perceived roughness was predominantly predicted by a single parameter: groove width. The functions relating perceived roughness to groove width increased over a narrow band relative to the full range of values, then flattened. These data have archival values for models of roughness perception involving both direct and indirect touch.
Problem of localization in the median plane: effect of pinnae cavity occlusion.

Localization of sound sources outside the median plane is influenced primarily by differences in head shadow and arrival time of the signal at the two ears of the observer. For sources located within this plane, localization is influenced primarily by the irregularities of the pinna. By progressively occluding these cavities, it is shown that localization ability decreases with increasing occlusion, that it is better for signals in the anterior than in the posterior sector of the median plane, and that high‐frequency signal content is more important than the low. A number of hypotheses regarding localization in the median plane are noted.
A Privacy-Preserving Grouping Proof Protocol Based on ECC with Untraceability for RFID

An RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification) system provides the mechanism to identify tags to readers and then to execute specific RFID-enabled applications. In those applications, secure protocols using lightweight cryptography need to be developed and the privacy of tags must be ensured. In 2010, Batina et al. proposed a privacy-preserving grouping proof protocol for RFID based on ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) in public-key cryptosystem. In the next year, Lv et al. had shown that Batina et al.’s protocol was insecure against the tracking attack such that the privacy of tags did not be preserved properly. Then they proposed a revised protocol based on Batina et al.’s work. Their revised protocol was claimed to have all security properties and resisted tracking attack. But in this paper, we prove that Lv et al.’s protocol cannot work properly. Then we propose a new version protocol with some nonce to satisfy the functions of Batina et al.’s privacy-preserving grouping proof protocol. Further we try the tracing attack made by Lv et al. on our protocol and prove our protocol can resist this attack to recover the untraceability.
Time-Space Trade-offs for Triangulating a Simple Polygon

An s-workspace algorithm is an algorithm that has read-only access to the values of the input, write-only access to the output, and only uses O(s) additional words of space. We give a randomized s-workspace algorithm for triangulating a simple polygon P of n vertices, for any s up to n. The algorithm runs in O(n^2/s+n(log s)log^5(n/s)) expected time using O(s) variables, for any s up to n. In particular, the algorithm runs in O(n^2/s) expected time for most values of s.
Low memory cost dynamic scheduling of large coarse grain task graphs

Scheduling large task graphs is an important issue in parallel computing since it allows the treatment of large size problems. We tackle the following problem: how to schedule a task graph, when it is too large to fit into memory. Our answer features the parameterized task graph (PTG), which is a symbolic representation of the task graph. We propose a dynamic scheduling algorithm which takes the PTG as an entry and allows to generate a generic program. The performance of the method is studied as well as its limitations. We show that our algorithm finds a good schedule for coarse grain task graphs, has a very low memory cost, and has a good computational complexity. When the average number of operations of each task is large enough, we prove that the scheduling overhead is negligible with respect to the makespan. The feasibility of our approach is studied on several compute-intensive kernels found in numerical scientific applications.
Monadic Second-Order Logic and Bisimulation Invariance for Coalgebras

Generalizing standard monadic second-order logic for Kripke models, we introduce monadic second-order logic MSO(T) interpreted over co algebras for an arbitrary set functor T. Similar to well-known results for monadic second-order logic over trees, we provide a translation of this logic into a class of automata, relative to the class of T-co algebras that admit a tree-like supporting Kripke frame. We then consider invariance under behavioral equivalence of MSO(T)-formulas, more in particular, we investigate whether the co algebraic mu-calculus is the bisimulation-invariant fragment of MSO(T). Building on recent results by the third author we show that in order to provide such a co algebraic generalization of the Janin-Walukiewicz Theorem, it suffices to find what we call an adequate uniform construction for the functor T. As applications of this result we obtain a partly new proof of the Janin-Walukiewicz Theorem, and bisimulation invariance results for the bag functor (graded modal logic) and all exponential polynomial functors. Finally, we consider in some detail the monotone neighborhood functor M, which provides co algebraic semantics for monotone modal logic. It turns out that there is no adequate uniform construction for M, whence the automata-theoretic approach towards bisimulation invariance does not apply directly. This problem can be overcome if we consider global bisimulations between neighborhood models: one of our main results provides a characterization of the monotone modal mu-calculus extended with the global modalities, as the fragment of monadic second order logic for the monotone neighborhood functor that is invariant for global bisimulations.
Multi Antenna Transmission Technique with Constellation Shaping for Secrecy at Physical Layer

Mobile communication systems must support multiple users achieving at same time privacy. Thus security is a crucial requirement to assure privacy of the data transmitted from and for each user. Several solutions can be adopted to implement security. Commonly they are based on encrypted algorithms implemented by higher layers, such as private and public encrypted keys. Also security can be implemented at physical layer and complemented with other security schemes from higher layers. Directivity introduced at the transmitted constellation can be also used to assure some kind of physical layer security. This is the case of power efficient transmission schemes where constellations are decomposed into several BPSK (Bi-Phase Shift Keying), being each one amplified and transmitted independently by an antenna. It can be shown that privacy among user contents is achieved under this approach, since each user must know the transmitter parameters associated to the constellation shaping, i.e., the direction in which the constellation is optimized, otherwise receives a meaningless data. If transmitter parameters are unknown, mutual information will be null which means a secrecy level of 100%. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.