Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliable Reception of Wireless Metering Data with Protocol Coding

Stationary collectors reading wireless, battery powered smart meters, often operate in harsh channel conditions to cut network installation cost to a minimum, challenging the individual link to each meter. The desired performance measure is reliable reception of at least some data from as many as possible meters, rather than increasing the fraction of received packets from one meter. As a first step for improving reliable reception, and motivated by the recent revision of Wireless M-Bus, we propose the use of a deterministic packet transmission interval to group packets from the same meter. We derive the probability of falsely pairing packets from different senders in the simple case of no channel errors, and show through simulation and data from an experimental deployment the probability of false pairing with channel errors. The pairing is an essential step towards recovery of metering data from as many as possible meters under harsh channel conditions. From the experiment we find that more than 15% of all conducted pairings are between two erroneous packets, which sets an upper bound on the number of additional meters that can be reliably recovered.
Fgf9 and Wnt4 Act as Antagonistic Signals to Regulate Mammalian Sex Determination

The genes encoding members of the wingless-related MMTV integration site (WNT) and fibroblast growth factor (FGF) families coordinate growth, morphogenesis, and differentiation in many fields of cells during development. In the mouse, Fgf9 and Wnt4 are expressed in gonads of both sexes prior to sex determination. Loss of Fgf9 leads to XY sex reversal, whereas loss of Wnt4 results in partial testis development in XX gonads. However, the relationship between these signals and the male sex-determining gene, Sry, was unknown. We show through gain- and loss-of-function experiments that fibroblast growth factor 9 (FGF9) and WNT4 act as opposing signals to regulate sex determination. In the mouse XY gonad, Sry normally initiates a feed-forward loop between Sox9 and Fgf9, which up-regulates Fgf9 and represses Wnt4 to establish the testis pathway. Surprisingly, loss of Wnt4 in XX gonads is sufficient to up-regulate Fgf9 and Sox9 in the absence of Sry. These data suggest that the fate of the gonad is controlled by antagonism between Fgf9 and Wnt4. The role of the male sex-determining switch— Sry in the case of mammals—is to tip the balance between these underlying patterning signals. In principle, sex determination in other vertebrates may operate through any switch that introduces an imbalance between these two signaling pathways.
Nonstructural Protein NS4 of Rice Stripe Virus Plays a Critical Role in Viral Spread in the Body of Vector Insects

Rice stripe virus (RSV), a tenuivirus, is transmitted by small brown planthopper (SBPH) in a persistent-propagative manner. In this study, sequential infection of RSV in the internal organs of SBPH after ingestion of virus indicated that RSV initially infected the midgut epithelium, and then progressed to the visceral muscle tissues, through which RSV spread to the entire alimentary canal. Finally, RSV spread into the salivary glands and reproductive system. During viral infection, the nonstructural protein NS4 of RSV formed cytoplasmic inclusions in various tissues of viruliferous SBPH. We demonstrated that the ribonucleoprotein particles of RSV were closely associated with NS4-specific inclusions in the body of viruliferous SBPH through a direct interaction between NS4 and nucleoprotein of RSV. Moreover, the knockdown of NS4 expression due to RNA interference induced by dsRNA from NS4 gene significantly prevented the spread of RSV in the bodies of SBPHs without a significant effect on viral replication in continuous cell culture derived from SBPH. All these results suggest that the nonstructural protein NS4 of RSV plays a critical role in viral spread by the vector insects.
Anycasting in DTNs using virtual magnetic fields

The typical low rate of unicast message delivery in DTNs (Delay Tolerant Networks) makes this kind of network unfit for many real-world applications. However, when it is sufficient to deliver a message to at least one node within a set of multiple potential destinations - which is called anycasting - then DTN's message delivery rate become acceptable. This paper presents an adaptation of the Virtual Magnetic Fields algorithm for routing anycast messages in DTNs. The algorithm performs routing through message attraction rather than the traditional approach of message forwarding.
Using a combination of sound and images to authenticate web users

Passwords and pin numbers are ubiquitous even though they are basically flawed and cause problems for users due to memory workload. There is a need for other mechanisms to be investigated. This paper explores a mechanism for web-based authentication which does not require any expensive hardware or extra software. Two evaluations were conducted using a combination of sound and images to authenticate web site users – exploiting users' associative memory strengths. The results and findings are presented, and conclusions drawn.
Adaptación literaria Transmedia en juego: fundamentos teóricos para un itinerario experimental para juego digital de Macunaíma, de Mário de Andrade

espanolEste articulo presenta los resultados de una investigacion sobre los parametros fundamentales para la produccion de guiones de narrativas interactivas de videojuegos transmediaticos, especialmente, videojuegos didacticos, presentando la fundamentacion teorica de sus principales caracteristicas - la no-linealidad, la interactividad, la hipermediacion, la multirramacion y, por fin, la narrativa compleja. La aplicacion de estos conceptos se dio por medio de la construccion de un guion constituido a partir de la adaptacion de la obra para el formato de videojuego de Macunaima, obra clasica de la literatura brasilena moderna, de autoria de Mario de Andrade. EnglishThis article presents the results of a research on the fundamental parameters for the production of interactive narrative scripts of transmedia videogames, especially, didactic videogames, presenting the theoretical foundation of its main characteristics - the non-linearity, the interactivity, the hypermediation, the multirramification and, finally, the complex narrative. The application of these concepts took place through the construction of a script based on the adaptation of the work for the videogame format of Macunaima, a classic work of modern Brazilian literature, authored by Mario de Andrade. portuguesEste artigo apresenta os resultados de uma pesquisa acerca dos parâmetros fundamentais para producao de roteiros de narrativas interativas de games transmidiaticos, especialmente, games didaticos, apresentando a fundamentacao teorica de suas principais caracteristicas – a nao-linearidade, a interatividade, a hipermediacao, a multirramificacao, e, por fim, a narrativa complexa. A aplicacao desses conceitos se deu por meio da construcao de um roteiro constituido a partir da adaptacao da obra para o formato de game de Macunaima, obra classica da literatura brasileira moderna, de autoria de Mario de Andrade.
A heuristic chunk scheduling algorithm reducing delay for Mesh-Pull P2P live streaming

Many Mesh-Pull P2P live streaming systems deployed in Internet catch a large number of users during recent years. While they have high scalability and low cost, they suffer from bad delay performance. In this paper, we aim at reducing the delay caused by chunk scheduling for Mesh-Pull P2P live streaming in the environment of heterogeneous upload bandwidth, heterogeneous and dynamic propagation delays. And we quantify and model the delivery latency of chunk scheduling as an optimization problem by introducing the propagation delay(usually ignored) between peers to the design of chunk scheduling, and put forward a heuristic pull-based chunk scheduling algorithm. Through simulation, our algorithm can adapt to random variance of propagation delays and outperform the two classical Mesh-Pull chunk scheduling algorithms not only in delay performance but also in chunk loss ratio.
2A4 binds soluble and insoluble light chain aggregates from AL amyloidosis patients and promotes clearance of amyloid deposits by phagocytosis †

Abstract Amyloid light chain (AL) amyloidosis is characterized by misfolded light chain (LC) (amyloid) deposition in various peripheral organs, leading to progressive dysfunction and death. There are no regulatory agency–approved treatments for AL amyloidosis, and none of the available standard of care approaches directly targets the LC protein that constitutes the amyloid. NEOD001, currently in late-stage clinical trials, is a conformation-specific, anti-LC antibody designed to specifically target misfolded LC aggregates and promote phagocytic clearance of AL amyloid deposits. The present study demonstrated that the monoclonal antibody 2A4, the murine form of NEOD001, binds to patient-derived soluble and insoluble LC aggregates and induces phagocytic clearance of AL amyloid in vitro. 2A4 specifically labeled all 21 fresh-frozen organ samples studied, which were derived from 10 patients representing both κ and λ LC amyloidosis subtypes. 2A4 immunoreactivity largely overlapped with thioflavin T–positive labeling, and 2A4 bound both soluble and insoluble LC aggregates extracted from patient tissue. Finally, 2A4 induced macrophage engagement and phagocytic clearance of AL amyloid deposits in vitro. These findings provide further evidence that 2A4/NEOD001 can effectively clear and remove human AL-amyloid from tissue and further support the rationale for the evaluation of NEOD001 in patients with AL amyloidosis.
Enhancing haptic detection of surface undulation

This paper introduces a device for enhancing detection of surface undulation through active touch. This device, which we call a “tactile contact lens,” is composed of a sheet and numerous pins arranged on one side of the sheet. Experimental results show that a small bump on a surface can be detected more accurately through this device than by bare finger and than through a flat sheet. A mathematical analysis of this phenomenon suggests two possible explanations for this phenomenon. One lies in the lever-like behavior of the pins. The pins convert the local inclination of the object surface into the tangential displacement of the skin surface. The second is the spatial aliasing effect resulting from the discrete contact. Due to this effect, the temporal change in the skin surface displacement is efficiently transduced into the temporal change in the skin tissue strain. The results of this analysis are then discussed in relation to other sensitivity-enhancing materials, tactile sensing mechanisms, and tactile/haptic display devices.
Increasing End-to-End Availability over Multiple Autonomous Systems

This paper presents a coordinated approach for increasing the end-to-end availability of inter-domain paths. Major reasons for intermittent failures are frequent inter-domain route changes and their long convergence times. The first part of our solution reduces the need for inter-domain path changes by introducing the Resilient Chain. The two other mechanisms — Fast Scoped Rerouting and Virtual Convergence — are intended to limit the impact of BGP rerouting. Keywords— Inter-domain, BGP, Availability, Routing, Convergence
3D-Printing: A promising technology to design three-dimensional microsystems

System miniaturization remains an important challenge in the field of microrobotics. Several works have been raised in this context. Maybe the most known and widespread are MEMS devices based on clean room technologies. Although they give option to design small systems with mico/nano features, such technologies are limited to planar structures with two or three degrees of freedom (DOF). To tackle this limitation, a new approach is proposed in this paper. Instead of planar construction, we proposed here to design three-dimensional micro-systems by taking advantages of additive manufacturing technology, namely 3D printing. The final objective consists to design a monolithic structure in one operation without assembly. Then functionalization could be achieved by equipping the structure with actuators and sensors. Starting from the fact that any complex structure could be decomposed into basic elements such as articulations or flexures, this paper will focus on how articulations could be fabricated without assembly using 3D printing facilities. Combining those articulations which are considered as fundamental bricks will make possible to design complex monolithic structures. As an illustration, a pivot articulation is experimentally demonstrated using 3D printing.
Cross-Language Code Analysis and Refactoring

Software composed of artifacts written in multiple (programming) languages is pervasive in today's enterprise, desktop, and mobile applications. Since they form one system, artifacts from different languages reference one another, thus creating what we call semantic cross-language links. By their very nature, such links are out of scope of the individual programming language, they are ignored by most language-specific tools and are often only established -- and checked for errors -- at runtime. This is unfortunate since it requires additional testing, leads to brittle code, and lessens maintainability. In this paper, we advocate a generic approach to understanding, analyzing and refactoring cross-language code by explicitly specifying and exploiting semantic links with the aim of giving developers the same amount of control over and confidence in multi-language programs they have for single-language code today.
What is the ensemble Kalman filter and how well does it work?

In this paper we described the ensemble Kalman filter algorithm. This approach to nonlinear Kalman filtering is a Monte Carlo procedure, which has been widely used in weather forecasting applications. Our goal was to apply the ensemble Kalman filter to representative examples to quantify the tradeoff between estimation accuracy and ensemble size. For all of the linear and nonlinear examples that we considered, the ensemble Kalman filter worked successfully once a threshold ensemble size was reached. In future work we will investigate the factors that determine this threshold value
Vision-based SLAM in Changing Outdoor Environments

For robots operating in outdoor environments, a number of factors such as weather, time of day, rough terrain, high speeds and hardware limitations make performing vision-based SLAM with current techniques infeasible due to factors such as image blur and/or underexposure, especially on smaller platforms and low cost hardware. In this paper we present novel visual place recognition and odometry techniques that address the challenges posed by low lighting, perceptual change and low cost cameras. Our primary contribution is a novel two-step algorithm that combines fast low resolution whole image matching with a higher resolution patch verification step, as well as image salience methods that simultaneously improve performance and decrease compute time. The algorithms are demonstrated using consumer cameras mounted on a small vehicle in a mixed urban and vegetated environment and a car traversing highway and suburban streets, at different times of day and night and in various weather conditions. The algorithms achieve reliable mapping over the course of a day, both when incrementally incorporating new visual scenes from different times of day into an existing map and when using a static map comprising visual scenes captured at only one point in time. Using the two-step place recognition process, we demonstrate for the first time single image, error-free place recognition at recall rates above 50% across a day-night dataset without prior training or utilization of image sequences. This place recognition performance enables topologically correct mapping across day-night cycles.
Design of a Comfortable Pure Moment Knee Exoskeleton

Lower-limb exoskeletons have the potential to enhance rehabilitation [1], assist in walking with gait impairments [2], reduce the metabolic cost of normal [3] and load-bearing walking [4], improve stability [5] and probe interesting questions about human locomotion [6]. The ankle produces larger peak torques and performs more positive work than either the hip or the knee during locomotion [7], and this makes it an effective location for applying assistance through an exoskeleton. However, it is difficult to assist a single joint without affecting other joints. Active plantarflexion causes a forward shift in ground reaction force, which extends the knee. This extension torque is resisted by the gastrocnemius as it acts as both a plantarflexor and a knee flexor. Forces in the gastrocnemius may be reduced when applying external torque to the ankle during push off, while knee extension torque resulting from ground reaction forces remains unchanged. This may cause hyperextension of the knee or increased activity of other knee flexors, thereby reducing the benefits of using an ankle exoskeleton. A knee exoskeleton may therefore be useful not only alone, but also in conjunction with an ankle exoskeleton to resist hyperextension during push off.
Learning Multi-Boosted HMMs for Lip-Password Based Speaker Verification

This paper proposes a concept of lip motion password (simply called lip-password hereinafter), which is composed of a password embedded in the lip movement and the underlying characteristic of lip motion. It provides a double security to a visual speaker verification system, where the speaker is verified by both of the private password information and the underlying behavioral biometrics of lip motions simultaneously. Accordingly, the target speaker saying the wrong password or an impostor who knows the correct password will be detected and rejected. To this end, we shall present a multi-boosted Hidden Markov model (HMM) learning approach to such a system. Initially, we extract a group of representative visual features to characterize each lip frame. Then, an effective lip motion segmentation algorithm is addressed to segment the lip-password sequence into a small set of distinguishable subunits. Subsequently, we integrate HMMs with boosting learning framework associated with a random subspace method and data sharing scheme to formulate a precise decision boundary for these subunits verification, featuring on high discrimination power. Finally, the lip-password, whether spoken by the target speaker with the pre-registered password or not, is identified based on all the subunit verification results learned from multi-boosted HMMs. The experimental results show that the proposed approach performs favorably compared with the state-of-the-art methods.
Geographical Distribution of Leishmania Species of Human Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in Fars Province, Southern Iran

Background The goal of this study was to know the identity of Leishmania species responsible of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) in Fars Province, southern Iran. Methods Five counties of Shiraz, Firouz Abad, Ghir-Karzin, Farashband and Larestan were prospected. Forty-four patients exhibiting cutaneous lesions were selected. Samples collected on skin lesions were examined both microscopically (after Giemsa staining) and molecularly (after PCR-RFLP). Results On the 44 examined patients, 39 exhibit Leishmania sp. by microscopical examination, all confirmed by PCR. For five patients with negative microscopical examination, PCR was positive for three of them. Among these 42 positive samples, 3 (7%) were infected by L. tropica and 39 (93%) by L. major. Conclusions Leishmania major is the most prevalent species in prospected area and L. tropica occurs in Shiraz and Ghir-Karzin counties.
Study of the impact of Beijing public transport subsidies on financial revenue under the public transport fare increase policy

The amount of public transport subsidies in Beijing increased year by year, but the effect of promoting traffic congestion is not significant. The paper analyzes the status of Beijing public transport subsidies, then establish the Beijing public transport subsidy model. Analyze the proportion of the public transport subsidy accounting for the finance revenue ranges from 4.19% to 6.92%. Based the data from the 2013 annual report of Beijing traffic development, the 2013 Beijing City Statistical Yearbook, under Beijing traffic price policies, using matlab to predict the impact of 2015-2020 public transport structure coefficient and share of transit rate on fiscal revenue.
Comparative Plasma Exposure and Lung Distribution of Two Human Use Commercial Azithromycin Formulations Assessed in Murine Model: A Preclinical Study

Azithromycin (AZM) therapeutic failure and relapses of patients treated with generic formulations have been observed in clinical practice. The main goal of this research was to compare in a preclinical study the serum exposure and lung tissue concentration of two commercial formulations AZM-based in murine model. The current study involved 264 healthy Balb-C. Mice were divided into two groups (n = 44): animals of Group A (reference formulation -R-) were orally treated with AZM suspension at 10 mg/kg of b.w. Experimental animals of Group B (generic formulation -G-) received identical treatment than Group A with a generic formulation AZM-based. The study was repeated twice as Phase II and III. Serum and lung tissue samples were taken 24 h post treatment. Validated microbiological assay was used to determine the serum pharmacokinetic and lung distribution of AZM. After the pharmacokinetic analysis was observed, a similar serum exposure for both formulations of AZM assayed. In contrast, statistical differences (P < 0.001) were obtained after comparing the concentrations of both formulations in lung tissue, being the values obtained for AUC and Cmax (AZM-R-) +1586 and 122%, respectively, than those obtained for AZM-G- in lung. These differences may indicate large differences on the distribution process of both formulations, which may explain the lack of efficacy/therapeutic failure observed on clinical practice.
A testability metric for path delay faults and its application

In this paper, we propose a new testability metric for path delay faults. The metric is computed efficiently using a non-enumerative algorithm. It has been validated through extensive experiments and the results indicate a strong correlation between the proposed metric and the path delay fault testability of the circuit. We further apply this metric to derive a path delay fault test application scheme for scan-based BIST. The selection of the test scheme Is guided by the proposed metric. The experimental results illustrate that the derived test application scheme can achieve a higher path delay fault coverage in scan-based BIST. Because of the effectiveness and efficient computation of this metric, it can be used to derive other design-for-testability techniques for path delay faults.