Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Approaching the Capacity of Multiple Unicast Networks

In today’s wireless communication, interference has become the main factor limiting the data rate. Our aim is to understand the role of interference in wireless networks from an information-theoretic perspective. Recently, several coding schemes are developed: noisy network coding and its variant with short messages extend the classic compress-forward to general relay networks; interference alignment and compute-forward provide novel insights into how to handle interference. We review the above mentioned works in this proposal and outline our future research directions in multiple unicast networks.
Commentary: the United States labor market: status quio pr a new normal?

The starting point for the Lazear and Spletzer paper is the observation that the U.S. unemployment rate has risen considerably as a result of the recent recession and remains stubbornly high. They investigate if the increase is structural or cyclical, noting that the answer is important because central banks may be able to reduce cyclical unemployment but not structural unemployment. The authors focus their analysis on various aspects of the U.S. labor market. Quoting their summary, they do not find “any compelling evidence that there have been changes in the structure of the labor markets that are capable of explaining the pattern of persistently high unemployment rates” (p. 33). Thus, they conclude that the increase in unemployment is primarily cyclical in nature.
Discrete Neuroanatomical Networks Are Associated with Specific Cognitive Abilities in Old Age

There have been many attempts at explaining age-related cognitive decline on the basis of regional brain changes, with the usual but inconsistent findings being that smaller gray matter volumes in certain brain regions predict worse cognitive performance in specific domains. Additionally, compromised white matter integrity, as suggested by white matter hyperintensities or decreased regional white matter fractional anisotropy, has an adverse impact on cognitive functions. The human brain is, however, a network and it may be more appropriate to relate cognitive functions to properties of the network rather than specific brain regions. We report on graph theory-based analyses of diffusion tensor imaging tract-derived connectivity in a sample of 342 healthy individuals aged 72–92 years. The cognitive domains included processing speed, memory, language, visuospatial, and executive functions. We examined the association of these cognitive assessments with both the connectivity of the whole brain network and individual cortical regions. We found that the efficiency of the whole brain network of cortical fiber connections had an influence on processing speed and visuospatial and executive functions. Correlations between connectivity of specific regions and cognitive assessments were also observed, e.g., stronger connectivity in regions such as superior frontal gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex were associated with better executive function. Similar to the relationship between regional connectivity efficiency and age, greater processing speed was significantly correlated with better connectivity of nearly all the cortical regions. For the first time, regional anatomical connectivity maps related to processing speed and visuospatial and executive functions in the elderly are identified.
A Measurement-Based Admission Control Algorithm for Resource Management in Diffserv IP Networks

IP-based radio access networks (RANs) are envisaged to be the next generation access networks in UMTS. In order to provide a satisfactory level of quality of service (QoS) for real-time applications, and efficient network resource utilisation in the IP-based RAN, resource management in Diffserv (RMD) is proposed (A. Bader et al., 2005). RMD is a simple and scalable bandwidth resource management scheme that extends differentiated services for on-demand resource reservation and admission control. We evaluate measurement-based admission control (MBAC) algorithms for RMD. An MBAC algorithm proposed in literature was selected, namely the time scale decomposition (TSD). The main reason for choosing the TSD algorithm is that this algorithm is less dependent on traffic assumptions. In the TSD algorithm, two variants are specified. The first variant is based on per flow measurement statistics (TSD-FE criterion), which is not scalable. The second one uses aggregate measurement statistics (TSD-AE criterion). The main disadvantage of TSD-AE is that it provides poor utilisation performance due to inaccurate estimation of traffic statistics. Therefore, we enhance TSD-AE to improve its utilisation performance. A performance evaluation of different variants of TSD is conducted, the results show that our proposal, the TSD-EAE outperforms TSD-AE
A Case for Two-Component Signaling Systems As Antifungal Drug Targets

The recent outbreak of fungal meningitis caused by Exserohilum rostratum in patients receiving contaminated steroid injections resulted in 64 deaths, receiving a lot of press and briefly bringing into the public eye the difficulty of treating systemic fungal infections [1]. What is generally less well appreciated, however, is that there are several other, much more common fungal pathogens that pose a serious health threat. Indeed, currently more people die from these fungal diseases worldwide than from tuberculosis or malaria [2]. The fungal pathogens most frequently responsible for human mortality are: Aspergillus fumigatus, Candida spp. (predominantly C. albicans), Cryptococcus neoformans, Pneumocystis carinii, and dimorphic fungi that cause endemic mycoses (Coccidioides immitis, Histoplasma capsulatum, Blastomyces dermatitides, and Paracoccidioides brasiliensis). Fungal pathogens pose an especially high risk to individuals with compromised immunity, and this population of susceptible hosts is growing [3,4]. There has been a steady increase in the incidence of fungal infections over recent decades, primarily due to the AIDS pandemic, an increase in patients receiving cancer chemotherapy and allogeneic bone marrow transplants, a higher incidence of seriously ill patients in intensive care units, and the aging of the human population [3–8]. Despite the extensive list of fungal pathogens and the increasing frequency of their occurrence, we have at our disposal only a very limited number of antifungal drugs. The past two decades have seen the emergence of two classes of antifungals: those that target ergosterol synthesis (the azoles) and those that target cell wall β-1,3 glucan synthase (echinocandins). Of the azoles, the triazoles have gained importance as alternatives to the more toxic amphotericin B. Triazoles are fungistatic and their continued use has resulted in an increase in triazole resistance among formerly sensitive species and a rising number of disease cases caused by intrinsically azole-resistant non-albicans Candida species [4]. Echinocandins are fungicidal and are the drug of choice for treating most fungal infections, but these drugs are not effective in treating infections caused by C. neoformans, and echinocandin resistance is increasing in some Candida species [9]. Clearly, there is an urgent need to discover new drug targets to meet the challenges posed by fungal infections.
Survey on Opportunistic Routing Protocols in Wireless Networks

Opportunistic routing is an emerging technology that takes advantage of the broadcast nature of wireless networks. In opportunistic networks, mobile nodes communicate even if a connecting route doesn't exist. In Traditional routing protocols fixed routes are selected for transmission and packets are forwarded for each hop. In dynamic wireless environment, transmission failures occur frequently due to path breaks and demands retransmissions. This unreliable transmission causes additional traffic in the network and waste of network resources and bandwidth. Opportunistic routing promises to be an efficient routing protocol to improve the performance of wireless networks providing increased network throughput and transmission reli-ability. This paper discusses the concept behind opportunistic routing, its classification, metrics used, and efficiency of these protocols.
Evaluating Straight-Line Programs over Balls

Interval arithmetic achieves numerical reliability for a wide range of applications, at the price of a performance penalty. For applications to homotopy continuation, one key ingredient is the efficient and reliable evaluation of complex polynomials represented by straight-line programs. This is best achieved using ball arithmetic, a variant of interval arithmetic. In this article, we describe strategies for reducing the performance penalty of basic operations on balls. We also show how to bound the effect of rounding errors at the global level of evaluating a straight-line program. This allows us to introduce a new and faster “transient” variant of ball arithmetic.
Stability of Sn Ia Progenitors against Radial Oscillations

We analyze the possible existence of a pulsational instability excited by the ǫ-mechanism during the last few centuries of evolution of a Chandrasekhar mass white dwarf prior to its explosion as a Type Ia supernova. Our analysis is motivated by the temperature sensitivity of the nuclear energy generation rate (∼ T 23) in a white dwarf whose structural adiabatic index is near 4/3. Based upon a linear stability analysis, we find that the fundamental mode and higher order radial modes are indeed unstable and that the fundamental mode has the shortest growth time scale. However, the growth time scale for such instability never becomes shorter than the evolutionary timescale. Therefore, even though the star is pulsationally unstable, we do not expect these radial modes to have time to grow and to affect the structure and explosion properties of Type Ia supernovae.
Π-Avida - A Personalized Interactive Audio and Video Portal

We describe a system for enregistering, storing and distributing multimedia data streams. For each modality ‐ audio, speech, video ‐ characteristic features are extracted and used to classify the content into a range of topic categories. Using data mining techniques classifier models are determined from training data. These models are able to assign existing and new multimedia documents to one or several topic categories. We describe the features used as inputs for these classifiers. We demonstrate that the classification of audio material may be improved by using phonemes and syllables instead of words. Finally we show that the categorization performance mainly depends on the quality of speech recognition and that the simple video features we tested are of only marginal utility.
Inappropriate Arginine Vasopressin Levels and Hyponatremia Associated with Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome

We herein describe two children who presented with attacks of severe cyclic vomiting. The primary case was a 2.5-year-old girl with a history of several admissions with vomiting and altered mental status. She was diagnosed with cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS). During her attacks she developed significant hyponatremia on several occasions, which prompted us to measure plasma arginine vasopressin (AVP) levels during attacks. We found inappropriately high AVP levels with concomitant hyponatremia. We also measured plasma AVP and plasma sodium in another child with CVS who did not develop manifest hyponatremia but showed inappropriately elevated plasma AVP levels. Since the standard treatment of CVS consists of fluids, high plasma AVP levels may lead to dilutional hyponatremia. We would therefore like to emphasize the importance of close assessment of electrolyte levels in patients with CVS to avoid water intoxication.
Robot path planning based on four Point-EGSOR iterative method

This paper proposed a weighted block technique based on a block of four points known as 4 Point-EGSOR iterative method to solve path planning problem for mobile robot. It is based on the use of Laplace's equation to represent potential function in the configuration space of the robot. The experiment is carried out by applying finite-difference technique to produce smooth path that is free from local minima creation. The simulation results show that 4 Point-EGSOR method performs faster than the previous method in generating path for mobile robot motion.
ccz-1 mediates the digestion of apoptotic corpses in C. elegans

During development, the processes of cell division, differentiation and apoptosis must be precisely coordinated in order to maintain tissue homeostasis. The nematode C. elegans is a powerful model system in which to study cell death and its control. C. elegans apoptotic cells condense and form refractile corpses under differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy. Activation of the GTPase CED-10 (Rac) in a neighbouring cell mediates the recognition and engulfment of the cell corpse. After inclusion of the engulfed corpse in a phagosome, different proteins are sequentially recruited onto this organelle to promote its acidification and fusion with lysosomes, leading to the enzymatic degradation of the cell corpse. We show that CCZ-1, a protein conserved from yeasts to humans, mediates the digestion of these apoptotic corpses. CCZ-1 seems to act in lysosome biogenesis and phagosome maturation by recruiting the GTPase RAB-7 over the phagosome.
Coding-Aware Routing for Unicast Sessions in Wireless Networks

The selection of routes is an important issue in wireless networks when network coding is used. Existing researches formulated network-coding-aware routing as a linear optimization program. However, deploying such method in real wireless networks is impractical. To solve this issue, in this paper, a practical network-coding-aware routing protocol is proposed for unicast sessions in wireless networks. The protocol is based on a novel routing metric design that captures the characteristics of network coding and unicast sessions. To ensure the novel routing metric can operate with practical and widely available path calculation mechanisms, a unique mapping process is used to map a real wireless network to a virtual network. The mapping process ensures that the paths with the biggest coding opportunities will be selected by commonly used path calculation mechanisms. Simulation results show that the proposed routing protocol is effective.
Challenges in Central Banking: The Current Institutional Environment And Forces Affecting Monetary Policy

1. The state of play in central banking and the challenges to come Pierre L. Siklos, Martin T. Bohl and Mark E. Wohar Part I. Past, Present, and Future in the Conduct of Monetary Policy: 2. Is time ripe for price level path stability? Vitor Gaspar, Frank Smets and David Vestin 3. The principal-agent approach to monetary policy delegation Georgios E. Chortareas and Stephen M. Miller 4. Implementing monetary policy in the 2000s: operating procedures in Asia and beyond Corrinne Ho Part II. The Scope of Central Banking Operations and Central Bank Independence: 5. Analysis of financial stability Charles A. E. Goodhart and D. P. Tsomocos 6. National central banks in a multi-national system David G. Mayes and Geoffrey E. Wood 7. The complex relationship between central bank independence and inflation Bernd Hayo and Carsten Hefeker 8. Independence and accountability in supervision: comparing central banks and financial authorities Donato Masciandaro, Marc Quintyn and Michael W. Taylor Part III. Transparency and Governance in Central Banking: 9. The economic impact of central bank transparency: a survey Carin van der Cruijsen and Sylvester C. W. Eijffinger 10. How central banks take decisions: an analysis of monetary policy meetings Philip Maier 11. Institutional rules and the conduct of monetary policy: does a central bank need governing principles? Pierre L. Siklos Data and econometric specification Empirical evidence Conclusions.
Ultrasonic velocity measurements in volcanic rocks: correlation with microtexture

SUMMARY This paper summarizes results of a study of porosity, permeability, microstructure and acoustic properties of volcanic and pyroclastic rocks from Campi Flegrei (CF) and Mt. Etna (ET), Italy. We have measured the hydraulic, transport and acoustics properties of 28 room-dry samples at ambient conditions, 25 room-dry samples under confining pressure (up to 60 MPa) and 5 brine saturated samples under pressure (up to 45 MPa effective pressure). We established the following range of porosity, permeability, and Vp and Vs variations as functions of mineralogy and differential pressure in CF and ET lithologies: 1 Porosity CF pyroclastic rocks 30‐60 per cent CF and ET lava rocks 2‐20 per cent 2 Permeability CF pyroclastic rocks 10‐1000 mD CF and ET lava rocks 0.01‐100 mD 3 Velocity and Quality Factor CF pyroclastic rocks Vp 2‐3 km s x1 Vs 1‐2 km s x1 Qp 5‐80 CF and ET lava rocks Vp 3.5‐5.5 km s x1 Vs 2‐3 km s x1 Qp 10‐115 Mineralogy and microstructure govern the acoustic and petrophysical properties of these rocks under pressure. In pyroclastic rocks, changes in acoustic response are directly related to presence of zeolites and pumice and their reactions with the pore fluid. In dry conditions, collapse of the internal texture of pumice leads to decreasing velocity with pressure. In saturated conditions, the water‐zeolite interactions compete with effects due to collapsing internal textures and so velocity change with pressure is not as pronounced. The microstructural changes were confirmed by analyses of optical, hydraulic and transport properties after pressure: CT-scans show a macroscopically more compact structure; under optical microscopy, pumice and zeolitized pumice appear shredded. A significant reduction in porosity and permeability is measured after pressurization. In lava rock samples, acoustic velocities increase in function of pressure and the velocity‐pressure relationships are characteristic of samples with rounded pores. Our results emphasize the importance of conducting velocity measurements at simulated in situ conditions. By constraining the computations using site- and depth- specific rock physics properties, differences between ground deformation models in volcanic areas can be assessed and predicted more reliably thus reducing volcanic hazard.
Improved Single Global Lock Fallback for Best-effort Hardware Transactional Memory

Intel’s Haswell and IBM’s Blue Gene/Q and System Z are the first commercially available systems to include hardware transactional memory (HTM). However, they are all best-effort, meaning that every hardware transaction must have an alternative software fallback path that guarantees forward progress. The simplest and most widely used software fallback is a single global lock (SGL), in which aborted hardware transactions acquire the SGL before they are re-executed in software. Other hardware transactions need to subscribe to this lock and abort as soon as it is acquired. This approach, however, causes many hardware transactions to abort unnecessarily, determining even more transactions to fail and resort to the SGL. In this paper we suggest improvements to the simple SGL fallback. First, we use lazy subscription to reduce the rate of SGL acquisitions. Next, we propose fine-grained conflict detection mechanisms between hardware transactions and a software SGL transaction. Finally, we describe how our findings can be used to improve future generations of HTMs.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): A Scale Development Study in Iran

The present research aims to explore a scale of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Iran. In this way, it reviews the literature exist on corporate social responsibility, gathers data and analyzes the data to test the emerging trends. After confirmation of reliability, factor analysis and multi dimensional scaling are used to an established survey instrument. Finally CSR was achieved as a construct with five dimensions: obligation to employees, obligation to customers and markets, obligation to social programs and natural environment, obligation to laws and regulations and obligation to society. These five dimensions represent the corporate accountability to some different groups of its stakeholders. In this study the convenient samples of managers and employees used in collecting data and developing the scale, however in exploratory studies, this type of sampling can be acceptable. Nevertheless, some limitations should be taken into consideration, while interpreting the findings of the study and generalizing them to general business environment. Therefore enlarging the sample size and using a random sampling method of managers and employees in future studies has to make Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scale more useful and enhance the generalization.
The genetic mosaic suggests a new role for hitchhiking in ecological speciation

Early in ecological speciation, the genomically localized effects of divergent selection cause heterogeneity among loci in divergence between incipient species. We call this pattern of genomic variability in divergence the ‘genetic mosaic of speciation’. Previous studies have used FST outliers as a way to identify divergently selected genomic regions, but the nature of the relationship between outlier loci and quantitative trait loci (QTL) involved in reproductive isolation has not yet been quantified. Here, we show that FST outliers between a pair of incipient species are significantly clustered around QTL for traits that cause ecologically based reproductive isolation. Around these key QTL, extensive ‘divergence hitchhiking’ occurs because reduced inter‐race mating and negative selection decrease the opportunity for recombination between chromosomes bearing different locally adapted QTL alleles. Divergence hitchhiking is likely to greatly increase the opportunity for speciation in populations that are sympatric, regardless of whether initial divergence was sympatric or allopatric. Early in ecological speciation, analyses of population structure, gene flow or phylogeography based on different random or arbitrarily chosen neutral markers should be expected to conflict — only markers in divergently selected genomic regions will reveal the evolutionary history of adaptive divergence and ecologically based reproductive isolation. Species retain mosaic genomes for a very long time, and gene exchange in hybrid zones can vary dramatically among loci. However, in hybridizing species, the genomic regions that affect ecologically based reproductive isolation are difficult to distinguish from regions that have diverged for other reasons.
Towards a User-Centered Design of Web Applications based on a Task Model

Since more than a decade, several methods for engineering and developing web applications have been introduced and extensively used. Since these methods often focus on data and related processes, their approach to conceptual modeling of web applications is centered on the notions of data, objects, functions, processes, and services. In this paper, we show that these methods could be expanded by modeling the user interface of such web applications by adopting a user-centered approach based on a task model. A task model represents the user’s viewpoint on how to manipulate these data and trigger these functions so as to reach the goal associated to the task. Depending on the user, several different task models could be elaborated and each task model may lead in turn to different user interfaces for the same data and processes, as opposed to a single user interface as produced by traditional development methods. For this purpose, a case study is presented that demonstrates how a task can be modeled so as to represent the user’s viewpoint in the user interface and to refine the dialog of the application.