Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crystal-chemical aspects of the roméite group, A2Sb2O6Y, of the pyrochlore supergroup

Abstract Four specimens of the roméite-group minerals oxyplumboroméite and fluorcalcioroméite from the Långban Mn-Fe deposit in Central Sweden were structurally and chemically characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, electron microprobe analysis and infrared spectroscopy. The data obtained and those on additional roméite samples from literature show that the main structural variations within the roméite group are related to variations in the content of Pb2+, which is incorporated into the roméite structure via the substitution Pb2+→A2+ where A2+ = Ca, Mn and Sr. Additionally, the cation occupancy at the six-fold coordinated B site, which is associated with the heterovalent substitution BFe3+ + Y□→BSb5+ + YO2-, can strongly affect structural parameters. Chemical formulae of the roméite minerals group are discussed. According to crystal-chemical information, the species associated with the name ‘kenoplumboroméite’, hydroxycalcioroméite and fluorcalcioroméite most closely approximate end-member compositions Pb2(SbFe3+)O6□, Ca2(Sb5+Ti) O6(OH) and (CaNa)Sb2O6F, respectively. However, in accord with pyrochlore nomenclature rules, their names correspond to multiple end-members and are best described by the general formulae: (Pb,#)2(Sb,#)2O6□, (Ca,#)2(Sb,#)2O6(OH) and (Ca,#)Sb2(O,#)6F, where ‘#’ indicates an unspecified charge-balancing chemical substituent, including vacancies.
Massive-MIMO Meets HetNet: Interference Coordination Through Spatial Blanking

In this paper, we study the downlink performance of a heterogeneous cellular network (HetNet) where both macro and small cells share the same spectrum and hence interfere with each other. We assume that the users are concentrated at certain areas in the cell, i.e., they form hotspots. While some of the hotspots are assumed to have a small cell in their vicinity, the others are directly served by the macrocell. Due to a relatively small area of each hotspot, the users lying in a particular hotspot appear to be almost co-located to the macrocells, which are typically deployed at some elevation. We assume a large number of antennas at the macrocell relative to the number of users simultaneously served. In this “massive MIMO” regime, the channel vectors become highly directional. We exploit this directionality in the channel vectors to obtain spatial blanking, i.e., concentrating transmission energy only in certain directions while creating transmission opportunities for the small cells lying in the other directions. In addition to this inherent interference suppression, we also develop three low-complexity interference coordination strategies: turn off small cells based on the amount of cross-tier interference they receive or cause to the scheduled macrocell hotspots; schedule hotspots such that treating interference as noise is approximately optimal for the resulting Gaussian interference channel; and offload some of the macrocell hotspots to nearby small cells to improve throughput fairness across all hotspots. For all these schemes, we study the relative merits and demerits of uniform deployment of small cells vs. deploying more small cells towards the cell center or the cell edge.
Location Privacy Preserving Dynamic Spectrum Auction in Cognitive Radio Network

Dynamic spectrum auction offers the flexibility and capability for bidders to request and acquire unoccupied channels from spectrum license holders. Compared with the conventional auction, spectrum auction allows various buyers to utilize the same channel simultaneously based on their locations, which is denoted as spectrum reusability. In this paper, we consider a novel kind of attack, which could compromise location privacy of bidders by observing the bid items as well as bid price. To thwart this attack, we introduce a new Location Privacy Preserving Dynamic Spectrum Auction (LPPA) scheme which consists of two components: Privacy Preserving Bid Submission protocol (PPBS) and Private Spectrum Distribution protocol (PSD). Based on the prefix membership verification scheme, PPBS allows the auctioneer to construct the conflict relationship between different users and obtain the maximum value of bids on various channels without leaking users' location information. Furthermore, PSD is proposed to efficiently distribute the spectrum among bidders and securely charge the winners with the help of periodically available TTP (Trusted Third Party). To demonstrate the effectivenss of the proposed scheme, we implement our attack and scheme on data extracted from Google Earth Coverage Maps released by FCC. The experiment results show the efficacy and efficiency of our approach.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Capital regulation and tail risk

The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context when banks may choose tail risk assets. We show that this undermines the traditional result that higher capital reduces excess risk-taking driven by limited liability. Moreover, higher capital may have an unintended e¤ect of enabling banks to take more tail risk without the fear of breaching minimal capital ratio in nontail risky project realizations. The results are consistent with stylized facts about pre-crisis bank behavior, and suggest implications for the optimal design of capital regulation. Email addresses: e.c. perotti@uva.nl, lratnovski@imf.org, r.e. vlahu@dnb.nl. We thank Stijn Claessens, Giovanni DellAriccia, Alexander Guembel and Javier Suarez for helpful comments. Any errors are ours. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the International Monetary Fund or the Dutch Central Bank. Vlahu gratefully acknowledges nancial support of the Stichting Gieskes-Strijbis Foundation.
In vitro and in vivo Pharmacodynamics of Colistin and Aztreonam Alone and in Combination against Multidrug-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Background: Reports of Pseudomonas aeruginosa with high antimicrobial resistance have steadily emerged, threatening the utility of a mainstay in antipseudomonal therapy. This study evaluated the antimicrobial activities of various combination therapies against P. aeruginosa with high antimicrobial resistance, including multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa (MDRP) using an in vitro and in vivo study. Methods: We evaluated 24 combination therapies, including colistin, aztreonam, meropenem, ceftazidime, ciprofloxacin, amikacin, rifampicin, arbekacin and piperacillin against 15 MDRP isolates detected at Aichi Medical University Hospital with the break-point checkerboard method. Based on the results of the in vitro study, we evaluated antimicrobial activity against highly antimicrobial-resistant P. aeruginosa with an in vivo murine thigh infection model. Results: The combination regimens including colistin and aztreonam showed higher antimicrobial activity against the 15 MDRP isolates. In the in vivo study, the high-dose colistin monotherapy (16 mg/kg every 12 h) achieved greater log10 CFU changes than the normal-dose colistin regimen (8 mg/kg every 12 h) against 5 P. aeruginosa isolates, including 2 MDRP isolates (p < 0.05). Aztreonam monotherapy (400 mg every 8 h) yielded bacterial densities similar to untreated control mice for the MDRP isolate evaluated. The combination therapy with a higher dose of colistin had superior antimicrobial activity against 5 P. aeruginosa with colistin (MIC 0.5 μg/ml) and aztreonam (MIC ≥128 μg/ml) than colistin monotherapy. Conclusion: The data suggest that the combination treatment of colistin and aztreonam could be the most useful for treating highly resistant P. aeruginosa with a higher susceptibility to colistin, including MDRP infections.
Selectivity and Potency of Microcystin Congeners against OATP1B1 and OATP1B3 Expressing Cancer Cells

Microcystins are potent phosphatase inhibitors and cellular toxins. They require active transport by OATP1B1 and OATP1B3 transporters for uptake into human cells, and the high expression of these transporters in the liver accounts for their selective hepatic toxicity. Several human tumors have been shown to have high levels of expression of OATP1B3 but not OATP1B1, the main transporter in liver cells. We hypothesized that microcystin variants could be isolated that are transported preferentially by OATP1B3 relative to OATP1B1 to advance as anticancer agents with clinically tolerable hepatic toxicity. Microcystin variants have been isolated and tested for cytotoxicity in cancer cells stably transfected with OATP1B1 and OATP1B3 transporters. Microcystin variants with cytotoxic OATP1B1/OATP1B3 IC50 ratios that ranged between 0.2 and 32 were found, representing a 150-fold range in transporter selectivity. As microcystin structure has a significant impact on transporter selectivity, it is potentially possible to develop analogs with even more pronounced OATP1B3 selectivity and thus enable their development as anticancer drugs.
Design of High Performance Distributed Snapshot/Recovery Algorithms for Ring Networks

In this work, we have presented non-blocking checkpointing and recovery algorithms for bidirectional networks. We have deviated from the conventional approach of taking first temporary checkpoints and then converting them to permanent ones by processes (as followed by any coordinated checkpointing scheme). Thus, the proposed coordinated checkpointing algorithm allows processes to take permanent checkpoints directly without taking temporary checkpoints and whenever a process is busy, it takes a checkpoint after completing its current procedure. We have shown that the presented algorithms take much less time for their execution and use much less number of control messages (and hence much less number of interrupts to a process) when compared to a noted recent work [4].
Irrevocable transactions and their applications

Transactional memory (TM) provides a safer, more modular, and more scalable alternative to traditional lock-based synchronization. Implementing high performance TM systems has recently been an active area of research. However, current TM systems provide limited, if any, support for transactions executing irrevocable actions, such as I/O and system calls, whose side effects cannot in general be rolled back. This severely limits the ability of these systems to run commercial workloads. This paper describes the design of a transactional memory system that allows irrevocable actions to be executed inside of transactions. While one transaction is executing an irrevocable action, other transactions can still execute and commit concurrently. We use a novel mechanism called single-owner read locks to implement irrevocable actions inside transactions that maximizes concurrency and avoids overhead when the mechanism is not used. We also show how irrevocable transactions can be leveraged for contention management to handle actions whose effects may be expensive to roll back. Finally, we present a thorough performance evaluation of the irrevocability mechanism for the different usage models.
Cost-Based Goal Recognition for Path-Planning

Recent developments in plan recognition have established a method of identifying an agent's most probable plan or goal by use of a classical planner and an appeal to the principle of rational action. We examine this technique in the strict context of path-planning. We show that a simpler formula provides an identical result in less than half the time under all but one set of conditions, which we identify. Further, we show that the probability distribution based on this technique is observation-independent and present a revised formula that achieves goal-recognition by reference to the agent's current location only.
Automated detection of diabetic retinopathy: results of a screening study.

BACKGROUND This study evaluated the operating characteristics of a reading software (Retinalyze System, Retinalyze A/S, Hørsholm, Denmark) for automated prescreening of digital fundus images for diabetic retinopathy. METHODS Digital fundus images of patients with diabetes were retrospectively selected from the Bro Taf diabetic retinopathy screening program in Wales, UK in the period of 2002-2004, which has been superseded by the Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Service for Wales. A gold standard reference was defined by classifying each patient as having or not having diabetic retinopathy based on overall visual grading of the digitized images using the Bro Taf reading protocol. Automated grading was applied using automated red or bright lesion detection at varying detection sensitivities and adjusting for image quality. Operating characteristics included sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive values, and negative predictive values (PPV and NPV, respectively). RESULTS Automated analysis of four hundred fundus photographs of 192 eyes from 96 patients with diabetes was performed. The automated red lesion detection had a sensitivity of 82%, specificity of 75%, PPV of 41%, and NPV of 95%. Combined automated red and bright lesion detection yielded a sensitivity of 88%, specificity of 52%, PPV of 28%, and NPV of 95%. Performance of the combined red and bright lesion detection at elevated thresholds in images of good quality demonstrated a sensitivity of 93%, specificity of 78%, PPV of 46%, and NPV of 98%. CONCLUSIONS Prescreening for diabetic retinopathy by automated detection of single fundus lesions seem to be achieved with minimal false negativity and can help to decrease the burden of manual diabetic retinopathy screening.
Potentials and limitations of multi-proxy records in speleothem research - Case studies in complex climate systems

The central goal of this dissertation is assessing the benefits and limitations of multi-proxy approaches in speleothem research with respect to paleo climate reconstruction. Hence, the aims were evaluating the environmental controls of speleothem proxies such as stable isotopes or trace elements, and the application to samples from locations affected by complex climate interactions. Thus, this thesis provides an important contribution to the recent scientific discussion in speleothem and climate research. The presented case studies comprise a Holocene stalagmite from southwestern Romania, and two speleothems from the Caribbean realm covering major parts of the last Glacial cycle. All records are based on high-precision dating methods, such as 230Th/U dating, lamina counting or radiocarbon dating. The analysis of stable isotope δ18O and δ13C composition together with trace elemental signatures enables a broad survey of past environmental changes comprising temperature and rainfall variability as well as soil and vegetation dynamics. The studies presented in this thesis demonstrate the strong benefits of the combination of several proxies in speleothems and in the investigated regions, they provide the first speleothem derived climate reconstructions, respectively, combining successfully both stable isotopes and elemental proxies. In tropical locations, the δ18O values in speleothems may be reliable recorders of past rainfall changes. However, a number of processes such as temperature variability, source effects and disequilibrium fractionation affecting the oxygen isotopic composition have to be carefully evaluated. Under certain circumstances, trace elements such as magnesium and strontium are found to constitute valuable tracers of hydrological variability, whereas phosphorus is most commonly associated with soil and vegetation dynamics. However, the interpretation of P/Ca is found to be diverse in the three case studies. To explain the non-conventional P systematics in the Cuban sample, a mechanism was devised which previously has received little attention. Stalagmite C09-2 from southwestern Romania emerged as one of the unique samples appropriate for quantitative reconstruction of past climate variability. The Mg/Ca ratio was found to be strongly connected with past winter rainfall, and the reconstructed precipitation estimates for the last 3.6 ka are in agreement with other local and supra-regional records. The δ18O record from stalagmite PR-LA-1 is one of the first speleothem derived long-term reconstructions of rainfall variability from the western tropical Atlantic realm which demonstrates the imprint of both the Heinrich stadials as well as the Dansgaard/Oeschger cycles on Puerto Rico during the last Glacial. In addition, stalagmite CM from western Cuba provides one of the longest speleothem records from the Caribbean region, and the geochemical evidence from the stable isotope and trace element signatures gives a comprehensive picture of past environmental variability over a long time interval of the last Glacial.
Multilingual Microblog Summarization

Microblogging is prominent e-communication medium on which short story are updated by the user based on their personal matter and other happening or coming immediate information. The quantity of information is large and also most of the data are redundant or irrelevant because of their popularity. This paper provides effectual techniques for summarization of inside story on microblogs sites such as twitter. The twitter data is the incredibly huge amount of small story circulate by users related to occurring situation or events. This technique focuses on finding factual most similar information respect to the query and used the ranking function for retrieving top-ranked twitter data related to query. Apply similarity measure function on top-ranked Relevant Tweets for detecting novel Tweets and which minimize similarity and maximize dissimilarity of twitter data. And also utilize threshold based decision to find a summary of novel tweets.
Visible Minorities Under the Canadian Employment Equity Act, 1987-1999

This study focuses on the effectiveness of the federal Employment Equity Act (EEA). We assess the EEA with regard to visible minority (VM) employees using quantitative data from employer reports published under the provisions of the EEA and the Canadian Census. Data in this study cover the period 1987 to 1999. We find that large companies, and larger employment groups within companies, have higher levels of employment equity attainment. There are also considerable variations in employment equity attainment across industrial sectors, across provinces and across occupations. Overall, there has been general improvement in employment equity (EE) attainment over time. However, visible minorities continue to be disadvantaged in management, sales and service and technical positions. Several policy implications are drawn from these findings.
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF POWER-AWARE ROUTE SELECTION PROTOCOLS IN MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS

DONGKYUN KIM, J.J. GARCIA-LUNA-ACEVES AND KATIA OBRACZKAComputer Engineering DepartmentUniversity of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USAE-mail: fdkkim, jj, katiag@cse.ucsc. eduJUAN-CARLOS CANO AND PIETRO MANZONIDepartment of Computer EngineeringPolytechnic University of ValenciaCamino de Vera, s/n, 46071 Valencia, SPAINE-mail: fjucano, pmanzonig@disca.upv. es
Error Probability for Direct-Sequence Spread-Spectrum Multiple-Access Communications - Part I: Upper and Lower Bounds

Upper and lower bounds on the average probability of error are obtained for direct-sequence spread-spectrum multiple-access communications systems with additive white Gaussian noise channels. The bounds, which are developed from convexity properties of the error probability function, are valid for systems in which the maximum multiple-access interference does not exceed the desired signal and the signature sequence period is equal to the duration of the data pulse. The tightness of the bounds is examined for system with a small number of simultaneously active transmitters. This is accomplished by comparisons of the upper and lower bounds for several values of the system parameters. The bounds are also compared with an approximation based on the signal-to-noise ratio and with the Chernoff upper bound.
Soil salinity mapping using dual-polarized SAR Sentinel-1 imagery

ABSTRACT Soil salinity is a major environmental threat, which has a negative impact on soil productivity and agricultural fields. One of the most promising methods for monitoring affected areas, which has special importance in land management studies, is through remote sensing technologies. While the potential of optical imagery in detecting saline soils is widely investigated, limited studies have been dedicated to assessing the potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery in monitoring soil salinity. Accordingly, this paper deals with soil salinity estimation using Sentinel-1 SAR imagery in an area which is highly affected by salinity hazard. Due to lack of a suitable theoretical model for simulating radar backscatter of soil based on salt contents, we investigated a new method to relate radar intensity to measured in-situ salinity directly. In the first step, Sentinel-1 dual polarized VV (Vertical transmit Vertical receive) and VH (Vertical transmit Horizontal receive) data were acquired from the study site. A field study was also conducted, simultaneously, and the Electrical Conductivity (EC) of several soil samples was measured. We then extracted some features based on the intensity images of both VV and VH polarization. Based on the fact that the target texture affects the radar response, an analysis of the texture was also performed by calculating the first and second order statistics, extracted from the histogram and Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM), respectively. The Support Vector Regression (SVR) technique, with different kernel functions, was used to relate explanatory variables to ground measured salinity. We also applied Feature Selection (FS) algorithms of the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Sequential Feature Selection (SFS) for optimizing the model and selecting the best explanatory features. The results showed that ε-SVR with Radial Basis Function (RBF) kernel had the most accuracy with the Coefficient of Determination (R2) = 0.9783 and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) = 0.3561 when the GA FS was applied. Also and had the best performance in salinity detection. It can be concluded that the intensity images of VV and VH polarization of SAR imagery have the potential to discriminate saline surface soils, regardless of the failure of common backscattering models.