Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trellis-Based Optimal Baud-Rate Timing Recovery Loops for Magnetic Recording Systems

The advent of iteratively decodable codes has allowed a decrease in tolerable signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in magnetic recording systems, which typically translates into an increase in the recording densities. However, at such low SNRs, conventional timing recovery loops suffer from frequent cycle slips. Typical timing recovery loops in magnetic recording applications perform data detection, timing error detection, and loop filtering in a sequential manner. This sequence of operations in the timing recovery loop performs well if the timing error is a small fraction of the bit interval. However, in the cycle-slip regions, the timing error is comparable to the bit interval, and the loop fails. In this paper, we represent the timing error in magnetic recording systems by using a Markov model that does not confine the timing error to only small fractions of the bit interval. By utilizing such a model, we give a trellis representation of the timing error process. The trellis representation permits the formulations of two optimal baud-rate timing recovery loops, according to two optimality criteria. We prove that both optimality criteria lead to solutions similar to the classical first-order phase-locked loop. The new loops do not perform data detection, timing error detection, and loop filtering in a sequential manner. Instead, the loops perform data detection and timing error detection jointly on a trellis, without the need for a loop filter. Simulation results show that the new timing recovery loops outperform the standard second-order baud-rate Mueller and Muller phase-locked loop with fine-tuned loop parameters. This performance gain is substantial if the timing error process is extremely noisy or if there is residual frequency offset resulting from inaccurate acquisition from the sector preamble on a disk drive.
Learning to coordinate without communication in multi-user multi-armed bandit problems

We consider a setting where multiple users share multiple channels modeled as a multi-user multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem. The characteristics of each channel are initially unknown and may differ between the users. Each user can choose between the channels, but her success depends on the particular channel as well as on the selections of other users: if two users select the same channel their messages collide and none of them manages to send any data. Our setting is fully distributed, so there is no central control and every user only observes the channel she currently uses. As in many communication systems such as cognitive radio networks, the users cannot communicate among themselves so coordination must be achieved without direct communication. We develop algorithms for learning a stable configuration for the multiple user MAB problem. We further offer both convergence guarantees and experiments inspired by real communication networks.
Calcium currents in the A7r5 smooth muscle-derived cell line. Increase in current and selective removal of voltage-dependent inactivation by intracellular trypsin

We studied the effects of trypsin on L-type calcium current in the A7r5 smooth muscle cell line. Intracellular dialysis with trypsin increased the whole-cell current up to fivefold. The effect was concentration dependent, and was prevented by soybean trypsin inhibitor. Ensemble analysis indicated an increase in the number of functional channels, and possibly a smaller increase in the open probability, with no change in the single channel current. The shape of the current-voltage curve was unaffected. Trypsin also nearly eliminated inactivation of currents carried by Ba2+, but had little or no effect on the rapid inactivation process in Ca2+, This indicates that trypsin removes voltage-dependent but not Ca(2+)-dependent inactivation, suggesting the existence of distinct protein domains for these two mechanisms of calcium channel inactivation.
Exceptional Oxygen Sensing Properties of New Blue Light‐Excitable Highly Luminescent Europium(III) and Gadolinium(III) Complexes

New europium(III) and gadolinium(III) complexes bearing 8‐hydroxyphenalenone antenna combine efficient absorption in the blue part of the spectrum and strong emission in polymers at room temperature. The Eu(III) complexes show characteristic red luminescence whereas the Gd(III) dyes are strongly phosphorescent. The luminescence quantum yields are about 20% for the Eu(III) complexes and 50% for the Gd(III) dyes. In contrast to most state‐of‐the‐art Eu(III) complexes the new dyes are quenched very efficiently by molecular oxygen. The luminescence decay times of the Gd(III) complexes exceed 1 ms which ensures exceptional sensitivity even in polymers of moderate oxygen permeability. These sensors are particularly suitable for trace oxygen sensing and may be good substitutes for Pd(II) porphyrins. The photophysical and sensing properties can be tuned by varying the nature of the fourth ligand. The narrow‐band emission of the Eu(III) allows efficient elimination of the background light and autofluorescence and is also very attractive for use e.g., in multi‐analyte sensors. The highly photostable indicators incorporated in nanoparticles are promising for imaging applications. Due to the straightforward preparation and low cost of starting materials the new dyes represent a promising alternative to the state‐of‐the‐art oxygen indicators particularly for such applications as, e.g., food packaging.
Subjective and Objective Indicators of Racial Progress Betsey

Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in well-being has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well‐being among blacks relative to whites. Investigating various measures of well‐being, we find that the well‐being of blacks has increased both absolutely and relative to that of whites. While a racial gap in well‐being remains, two‐fifths of the gap has closed and these gains have occurred despite little progress in closing other racial gaps such as those in income, employment, and education. Much of the current racial gap in well‐being can be explained by differences in the objective conditions of the lives of black and white Americans. Thus making further progress will likely require progress in closing racial gaps in objective circumstances. JEL-Code: D600, I320, J100, J700, K100.
Primary pulmonary lymphoma mimicking a refractory lung abscess: A case report

The current study presents a case of primary pulmonary lymphoma (PPL) mimicking refractory lung abscess that was diagnosed at autopsy. An 80-year-old male with clinically inapparent aspiration presented with a large cavitated mass and pleural effusion. A lung abscess and empyema was diagnosed, therefore, antibiotics were administered and the pleural effusion was drained. Various examinations, including a biopsy, yielded no specific diagnosis. The lesion was considered inoperable due to the poor general condition of the patient. Subsequently, the mass that had been diagnosed as a refractory lung abscess became enlarged and a repeat biopsy resulted in a diagnosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. The patient succumbed to sudden respiratory failure, and the final diagnosis of PPL was confirmed at autopsy. PPL is a rare disease that accounts for 0.45% of all pulmonary malignant tumors and is difficult to diagnose in inoperable cases. Therefore, patients with PPL who do not undergo surgery can be misdiagnosed and consequently treated inappropriately. PPL should therefore be considered in the differential diagnosis of a refractory lung abscess.
A risk-metric framework for enterprise risk management

We describe a risk-metric framework that supports enterprise risk management. At the core of the framework is the notion of a risk profile that provides risk measurement for risk elements. By providing a generic template in which metrics can be codified in terms of metric space operators, risk profiles can be used to construct a variety of risk measures for different business contexts. These measures can vary from conventional economic risk calculations to the kinds of metrics that are used by decision support systems, such as those supporting inexact reasoning and that are considered to closely match how humans combine information.
Sensor Scheduling for Energy-Efficient Target Tracking in Sensor Networks

In this paper, we study the problem of tracking an object moving randomly through a network of wireless sensors. Our objective is to devise strategies for scheduling the sensors to optimize the tradeoff between tracking performance and energy consumption. We cast the scheduling problem as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), where the control actions correspond to the set of sensors to activate at each time step. Using a bottom-up approach, we consider different sensing, motion and cost models with increasing levels of difficulty. At the first level, the sensing regions of the different sensors do not overlap and the target is only observed within the sensing range of an active sensor. Then, we consider sensors with overlapping sensing range such that the tracking error, and hence the actions of the different sensors, are tightly coupled. Finally, we consider scenarios wherein the target locations and sensors' observations assume values on continuous spaces. Exact solutions are generally intractable even for the simplest models due to the dimensionality of the information and action spaces. Hence, we devise approximate solution techniques, and in some cases derive lower bounds on the optimal tradeoff curves. The generated scheduling policies, albeit suboptimal, often provide close-to-optimal energy-tracking tradeoffs.
Deadline Distribution Strategies for Scientific Workflow Scheduling in Commercial Clouds

Commercial clouds have become a viable platform for performing a significant range of large scale scientific analyses – due to the offerings of elasticity, specialist hardware, software infrastructure and pay-as-you-go cost model. Such clouds represent a low upfront capital cost alternative to the use of dedicated eScience infrastructure. However, there are still significant technical hurdles associated with obtaining the best performance for the cost - it is easy to provision commercial clouds inefficiently resulting in great and potentially unanticipated expense. In this paper we introduce a new heuristic scheduling algorithm Deadline Distribution Ratio (DDR) to address the workflow scheduling problem with the objectives of minimizing the cost of Cloud computing resources while satisfying a given deadline. Within this context, we also investigate a range of different deadline distribution strategies and their effect on the overall scheduling performance. We then compare the DDR algorithm against three other published algorithms, using five different scientific workflows generated using the pegasus workflow generator, on a CloudSim simulation that implements a pricing model based on AWS. In general, the DDR algorithm returns the lowest costs across the majority of deadlines and workflows, while maintaining a high scheduling success rate.
Dynamic symbolic database application testing

A database application differs form regular applications in that some of its inputs may be database queries. The program will execute the queries on a database and may use any result values in its subsequent program logic. This means that a user-supplied query may determine the values that the application will use in subsequent branching conditions. At the same time, a new database application is often required to work well on a body of existing data stored in some large database. For systematic testing of database applications, recent techniques replace the existing database with carefully crafted mock databases. Mock databases return values that will trigger as many execution paths in the application as possible and thereby maximize overall code coverage of the database application. In this paper we offer an alternative approach to database application testing. Our goal is to support software engineers in focusing testing on the existing body of data the application is required to work well on. For that, we propose to side-step mock database generation and instead generate queries for the existing database. Our key insight is that we can use the information collected during previous program executions to systematically generate new queries that will maximize the coverage of the application under test, while guaranteeing that the generated test cases focus on the existing data.
Energy Control based Routing for Mobile Ad hoc Network

Mobile Ad hoc network can operate in a selforganized and do not have any predefined infrastructure. However, the problem of limit energy often affects the communication in such network. In this paper, we present an energy management model which can effectively reduce energy consumption. Mobile nodes in such model transfer between power-save mode and active mode triggered by communication events and keep-alive timer. Base on the energy management model, we propose a new routing protocol with joint function considering both transmission power and residual energy of mobile nodes. Simulation experiments show that the proposed routing protocol with energy control mode can achieve higher performance and extend the life-span of network.
A New Fangled Insinuation for Stress Affect Speech Classification

Demarcation in human interaction is through two channels: one transmits explicit messages; the other transmits implicit messages about the speakers themselves knowingly or unknowingly. Both linguistics and technology have invested enormous effort in trying to understand the first (explicit) channel, but the second (implicit) is not as well understood. First, building an emotion detection system makes it possible to assess the extent to which theoretical proposals explain people's everyday competence in understanding emotion. Second, model building enforces coherence. It is true that emotions play an important role in the making of speech. The deduction of emotions from speech is of recent origin and it is the primary focus of this research paper.
Behaviourally meaningful representations from normalisation and context-guided denoising

Many existing independent component analysis algorithms include a preprocessing stage where the inputs are sphered. This amounts to normalising the data such that all correlations between the variables are removed. In this work, I show that sphering allows very weak contextual modulation to steer the development of meaningful features. Context-biased competition has been proposed as a model of covert attention and I propose that sphering-like normalisation also allows weaker top-down bias to guide attention.
Modelling pulsed releases for sterile insect techniques: fitness costs of sterile and transgenic males and the effects on mosquito dynamics

Summary 1. The development of transgenic technologies, coupled with sterile insect techniques (SIT), is being explored in relation to new approaches for the biological control of insect pests. Recent studies have shown that there are often fitness costs associated with transgenic insect strains, but the impact of these costs on their potential use in pest control is poorly understood. 2. In this paper, we explore the impact of an insect fitness cost on two control strategies (classical SIT and transgenic late-acting bisex lethality) using a stage-structured mathematical model, which is parameterized for the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Counter to the majority of studies, we use realistic pulsed release strategies and incorporate a fitness cost, which is manifested as a reduction in male mating competitiveness. 3. For both models we show that the level of control of a pest mosquito population is highly sensitive to the rate at which the transgenic or sterile males are released. Population control is more effective when smaller numbers of sterile/transgenic males are released more frequently than larger and less frequent releases. 4. If the wild-type mosquito population exhibits cycles of peaks and troughs in abundance, as is the case for many insect species, then high frequency releases of transgenic males not only reduce mosquito abundance, but they may dampen future pest outbreaks, whereas the use of SIT alone may have an adverse effect, causing an increase in mosquito abundance. Additionally, the timing of sterile/transgenic male release during the mosquito population cycle is critical in reducing pest outbreak levels. 5. In all cases, the reduced fitness of the sterile/transgenic males causes reductions in control, thus requiring more frequent or greater magnitude releases. 6. Synthesis and applications. The sterile insect technique is considered to be a valuable non-chemical tool for pest management. With the potential application of recent genetic developments to enhance the technique, it is becoming increasingly important to consider the wider ecological implications of this biological control strategy. Predicting the most efficient release strategies will be important in combating pest and vector insects as well as for limiting potential broader ecological effects. Although the focus of our models are based on the mosquito, A. aegypti, which can spread yellow fever, dengue fever and Chikungunya disease, our modelling approach and results can be applied more broadly to other species.
Kompozitní materiály na bázi magnetoreologických elastomerů

This thesis is focused on the preparation of the magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) and performing their rheological measurements in the presence of an external magnetic field. Silicone elastomer Polydimethylsiloxane was selected as a matrix. There were used two kinds of carbonyl iron powders, namely CI-SL and CI-HQ. Used fillers were evaluated via scanning electron microscopy in terms of morphology, particle size and distribution. Magnetic characteristics of fillers were also measured using a vibrating sample magnetometry. Samples of MR composites were prepared with both isotropic and anisotropic structure and both with different amount of filler. Particle distribution and internal structures in MR composites were examined via scanning electron microscopy images. All prepared MRE were measured by an oscillatory rheometer for the dependence of an elastic and viscous components of shear modulus on the intensity of the external magnetic field applied. Evaluating the results were focused on the influence of magnetic field, inner composite structure, the degree of filling and the particle size of the elastic component of the shear modulus.
Wavelet Algorithms for High-Resolution Image Reconstruction

High-resolution image reconstruction refers to the reconstruction of high-resolution images from multiple low-resolution, shifted, degraded samples of a true image. In this paper, we analyze this problem from the wavelet point of view. By expressing the true image as a function in ${\cal L}({\Bbb R}^2)$, we derive iterative algorithms which recover the function completely in the ${\cal L}$ sense from the given low-resolution functions. These algorithms decompose the function obtained from the previous iteration into different frequency components in the wavelet transform domain and add them into the new iterate to improve the approximation. We apply wavelet (packet) thresholding methods to denoise the function obtained in the previous step before adding it into the new iterate. Our numerical results show that the reconstructed images from our wavelet algorithms are better than that from the Tikhonov least-squares approach. Extension to super-resolution image reconstruction, where some of the low-resolution images are missing, is also considered.
Models for Representing Task Ontologies

Knowledge is of general utility and should be captured thinking in reuse. A key idea underlining knowledge capturing for reuse is to consider that there are two major kinds of knowledge: domain and task knowledge. Ontologies can be used for representing both kinds of knowledge. However, while domain ontologies are broadly used and there are many proposals of models for representing them, the same does not occur for task ontologies. In this paper we propose the use of UML activity diagrams for capturing task control-flow, and UML class diagrams for capturing the knowledge roles involved in its activities. We also discuss the interrelationship between these two models and how they can be combined with domain ontologies in order to describe the knowledge involved in a class of applications.
When should we expect microbial phenotypic traits to predict microbial abundances?

Species' phenotypic traits may predict their relative abundances. Intuitively, this is because locally abundant species have traits making them well-adapted to local abiotic and biotic conditions, while locally rare species are not as well-adapted. But this intuition may not be valid. If competing species vary in how well-adapted they are to local conditions, why doesn't the best-adapted species simply exclude the others entirely? But conversely, if species exhibit niche differences that allow them to coexist, then by definition there is no single best adapted species. Rather, demographic rates depend on species' relative abundances, so that phenotypic traits conferring high adaptedness do not necessarily confer high abundance. I illustrate these points using a simple theoretical model incorporating adjustable levels of “adaptedness” and “niche differences. ” Even very small niche differences can weaken or even reverse the expected correlation between adaptive traits and abundance. Conversely, adaptive traits confer high abundance when niche differences are very strong. Future work should be directed toward understanding the link between phenotypic traits and frequency-dependence of demographic rates.
Towards Modular Reasoning for Model Transformations

Model transformations have been studied for some time, typically using a semantics based on graph transformations. This has been very successful in defining, optimising and executing model transformations, but has been less useful for providing a firm semantic basis for modular, reusable transformations. We propose a novel rendering of transformation semantics in terms of constructive type theory and explore how this may be employed for expressing dependencies and guarantees of transformation modules in a formal framework. This is a position paper laying out research challenges to be overcome before we will be able to successfully modularise verifiable transformations.