Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Projective geometry LDPC codes for ultralong-haul WDM high-speed transmission

In this letter, we investigate the performance of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes in long-haul optical communication systems for carrier-suppressed return-to-zero signal format at 40 Gb/s per channel in a wavelength-division-multiplexing environment. We are particularly concerned with high-rate codes based on projective geometries. These codes have large minimum distance and simple iterative decoding algorithms, which makes them good candidates for such high-speed application. We consider iterative decoding based on min-sum algorithm since it requires only simple addition and minimum operations and, as such, is suitable for high-speed optical transmission. Contrary to the common practice of considering the performance of error controlling schemes using the additive white Gaussian noise channel assumption, we consider the performance of the proposed LDPC schemes, taking into account in a natural way all major impairments in long-haul optical transmission such as amplifier spontaneous emission noise, pulse distortion due to fiber nonlinearities, chromatic dispersion or polarization dispersion, crosstalk effects, intersymbol interference, etc.
Mapping the Relationship of Inter-Village Variation in Agroforestry Tree Survival with Social and Ecological Characteristics: The Case of the Vi Agroforestry Project, Mara Region, Tanzania

Agroforestry practices can improve the adaptive capacity and resilience of local farming and subsistence systems while providing livelihood benefits to households. However, scaling up of agroforestry technology has often proved difficult. Many studies have been carried out to explain the lack of tangible impact, based mainly on formal household/farm surveys comparing characteristics of non-adopters with that of adopters. In this study, we mapped the relationship between agroforestry tree survival in villages that were a part of the Vi Agroforestry project in the Mara region, Tanzania with key social-ecological variables. A random sample of 21 households from each of 89 investigated project villages was used. The proportion of households with surviving agroforestry trees, varied from 10%–90% among villages. Social and ecological differences between villages were important explanations to this variation. Variables related to the project and its operations explained most of the inter-village variation in households with few surviving trees. To encourage the majority of village households to practice agroforestry their perceptions of tree ownership and the benefit of agroforestry were additional key factors to the project showing the importance of socio-cultural issues to the households’ decisions to continue beyond the initial tree planting and testing phase.
Flux Tensor Constrained Geodesic Active Contours with Sensor Fusion for Persistent Object Tracking

This paper makes new contributions in motion detection, object segmentation and trajectory estimation to create a successful object tracking system. A new efficient motion detection algorithm referred to as the flux tensor is used to detect moving objects in infrared video without requiring background modeling or contour extraction. The flux tensor-based motion detector when applied to infrared video is more accurate than thresholding "hot-spots", and is insensitive to shadows as well as illumination changes in the visible channel. In real world monitoring tasks fusing scene information from multiple sensors and sources is a useful core mechanism to deal with complex scenes, lighting conditions and environmental variables. The object segmentation algorithm uses level set-based geodesic active contour evolution that incorporates the fusion of visible color and infrared edge informations in a novel manner. Touching or overlapping objects are further refined during the segmentation process using an appropriate shape-based model. Multiple object tracking using correspondence graphs is extended to handle groups of objects and occlusion events by Kalman filter-based cluster trajectory analysis and watershed segmentation. The proposed object tracking algorithm was successfully tested on several difficult outdoor multispectral videos from stationary sensors and is not confounded by shadows or illumination variations.
A novel grouping harmony search algorithm for the no-wait flow shop scheduling problems with total flow time criteria

This paper presents a novel grouping harmony search algorithm for solving the no-wait flow shop scheduling problems with total flow time criteria. Flow-shop scheduling problem (FSSP) is a typical NP-hard combinational optimization. Firstly, the HS optimization mechanism and FSSP is presented and the total flow time is calculated by a novel method. Secondly, a largest-order-value rule is used to transform harmony in harmony memory from real vectors to job sequence so that the harmony search can be applied for FSSP. Thirdly, the main contribution of this study is due to the fact that harmony memory is divided into groups and groups share information reciprocally in the process of optimization. At last, simulations demonstrate the efficiency, effectiveness and robustness of harmony search algorithm for no-wait FSSP with total flow time criteria.
A systems approach to delineate functions of paralogous transcription factors: Role of the Yap family in the DNA damage response

Duplication of genes encoding transcription factors plays an essential role in driving phenotypic variation. Because regulation can occur at multiple levels, it is often difficult to discern how each duplicated factor achieves its regulatory specificity. In these cases, a “systems approach” may distinguish the role of each factor by integrating complementary large-scale measurements of the regulatory network. To explore such an approach, we integrate growth phenotypes, promoter binding profiles, and gene expression patterns to model the DNA damage response network controlled by the Yeast-specific AP-1 (YAP) family of transcription factors. This analysis reveals that YAP regulatory specificity is achieved by at least three mechanisms: (i) divergence of DNA-binding sequences into two subfamilies; (ii) condition-specific combinatorial regulation by multiple Yap factors; and (iii) interactions of Yap 1, 4, and 6 with chromatin remodeling proteins. Additional microarray experiments establish that Yap 4 and 6 regulate gene expression through interactions with the histone deacetylase, Hda1. The data further highlight differences among Yap paralogs in terms of their regulatory mode of action (activation vs. repression). This study suggests how other large TF families might be disentangled in the future.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 9 July 2011 Design Of Ubiquitous Information Systems For Digital Natives

This paper focuses on how we can design Ubiquitous Information Systems (UIS) for digital natives. Digital natives are those who have grown up in a digital world, where the use of information and communications technologies is pervasive and ubiquitous, and where these technologies are used in organisational and personal contexts. Digital natives, unlike digital immigrants, like new technologies and they like change. This paper suggests that the rise of the digital native has profound implications for the design of information systems, and particularly UIS. Since many of our previous theories and models assume most users to be digital immigrants (who tend to resist new technology), a new set of design principles are needed for digital natives. We propose four key dimensions of UIS design for this new audience, namely, the system, the activity, the user, and the context that the system is designed to support. We conclude with a roadmap for the design and implementation of UIS for digital natives.
An energy efficient sampling method through joint linear regression and compressive sensing

The wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed by the energy limited nodes. Data transmission can be decreased by exploiting both intra- and inter-signal correlation for saving energy consumption of nodes. In this paper, a dynamic clustering algorithm was proposed by exploiting inter-signal correlation. The nodes can be divided into clusters according to their data's linear correlation by our proposed clustering algorithm. Based on clustering, we also proposed an energy efficient sampling method through joint linear regression and compressive sensing (CS). The proposed method can accurately reconstruct data of nodes by using significantly low sampling rate at each sensor. Our results based on real data sets indicate a reduction in sensor sampling by up to 71%.
Guidelines for Expressing the Uncertainty of Measurement Results Containing Uncorrected Bias

This paper proposes a method to extend the current ISO Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement to include the case of known, but uncorrected, measurement bias. It is strongly recommended that measurement results be corrected for bias, however in some situations this may not be practical, hence an extension of the Guide is proposed to address this special situation. The method keeps with the spirit of the Guide in maintaining the link between uncertainty and statistical confidence. Similarly, the method maintains the transferability of one uncertainty statement to be included as a component in another uncertainty analysis. The procedure involves modifying the calculation of the expanded uncertainty, allowing it to become asymmetric about the measurement value. The method is compared to other alternative procedures, and an illustration of how it affects tolerance zones is presented.
A multicomponent intervention to prevent delirium in hospitalized older patients.

BACKGROUND Since in hospitalized older patients delirium is associated with poor outcomes, we evaluated the effectiveness of a multicomponent strategy for the prevention of delirium. METHODS We studied 852 patients 70 years of age or older who had been admitted to the general-medicine service at a teaching hospital. Patients from one intervention unit and two usual-care units were enrolled by means of a prospective matching strategy. The intervention consisted of standardized protocols for the management of six risk factors for delirium: cognitive impairment, sleep deprivation, immobility, visual impairment, hearing impairment, and dehydration. Delirium, the primary outcome, was assessed daily until discharge. RESULTS Delirium developed in 9.9 percent of the intervention group as compared with 15.0 percent of the usual-care group, (matched odds ratio, 0.60; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.39 to 0.92). The total number of days with delirium (105 vs. 161, P=0.02) and the total number of episodes (62 vs. 90, P=0.03) were significantly lower in the intervention group. However, the severity of delirium and recurrence rates were not significantly different. The overall rate of adherence to the intervention was 87 percent, and the total number of targeted risk factors per patient was significantly reduced. Intervention was associated with significant improvement in the degree of cognitive impairment among patients with cognitive impairment at admission and a reduction in the rate of use of sleep medications among all patients. Among the other risk factors per patient there were trends toward improvement in immobility, visual impairment, and hearing impairment. CONCLUSIONS The risk-factor intervention strategy that we studied resulted in significant reductions in the number and duration of episodes of delirium in hospitalized older patients. The intervention had no significant effect on the severity of delirium or on recurrence rates; this finding suggests that primary prevention of delirium is probably the most effective treatment strategy.
Pulmonary artery pseudoaneurysm arising secondary to cavitary pneumonia

Pulmonary artery pseudoaneurysms have classically been associated with the cavitary lesions of reactivation tuberculosis and termed Rasmussen’s aneurysm. There have been relatively few case reports of pulmonary artery pseudoaneuryms arising secondary to cavitary pneumonia. We present a case of pulmonary artery pseudoaneurysm occurring secondary to cavitating aspiration pneumonia that was treated successfully with coil embolization.
Temporal-Order Judgment of Audiovisual Events Involves Network Activity Between Parietal and Prefrontal Cortices

Our perception of the temporal order of everyday external events depends on the integrated sensory information in the brain. Our understanding of the brain mechanism for temporal-order judgment (TOJ) of unisensory events, particularly in the visual domain, is advanced. In case of multisensory events, however, there are unanswered questions. Here, by using physically synchronous and asynchronous auditory-visual events in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments, we identified the brain network that is associated with the perception of the temporal order of multisensory events. The activation in the right temporo-parietal junction was modulated by the perception of asynchronous audiovisual events. During this perception of temporal order, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex coordinated activity with the right temporo-parietal and the left inferior parietal cortices. These results suggest that the TOJ in the multisensory domain underlies a network activity between parietal and prefrontal cortices unlike the regional activity in the right temporo-parietal junction in the unisensory visual domain.
Management Turnover Across the Corporate Hierarchy

We study management turnover for the top five executives in a sample of 443 large firms from 1993 through 1998. The rate of forced turnover for non-CEOs is at least as great as that for CEOs, but the sensitivity of turnover to firm performance is smaller for non-CEOs. The probability that a non-CEO leaves office is elevated around CEO dismissals, particularly when the replacement CEO is an outsider. Many dismissed executives obtain new employment, but on average their new positions are significantly inferior to their prior jobs. Labor market outcomes are related to past compensation and the circumstances around departure.
Pay and performance in the NBA

This supplement focuses on the NBA with particular reference to pay and performance. In-depth analyses of positional pay variations, player negotiations, supply and demand and econometric models of pay and performance seek to give a much clearer picture of why, how and when pay is awarded in the sports industry and particularly in the NBA. The volume concludes with a retrospective of the 1995 All-Star Players.
Temporal dynamics of contrast gain in single cells of the cat striate cortex

Abstract The response amplitude of cat striate cortical cells is usually reduced after exposure to high-contrast stimuli. The temporal characteristics and contrast sensitivity of this phenomenon were explored by stimulating cortical cells with drifting gratings in which contrast sequentially incremented and decremented in stepwise fashion over time. All responses showed a clear hysteresis, in which contrast gain dropped on average 0.36 log unit and then returned to baseline values within 60 s. Noticeable gain adjustments were seen in as little as 3 s and with peak contrasts as low as 3%. Contrast adaptation was absent in responses from LGN cells. Adaptation was found to depend on temporal frequency of stimulation, with greater and more rapid adaptation at higher temporal frequencies. Two different tests showed that the mechanism controlling response reduction was influenced primarily by stimulus contrast rather than response amplitude. These results support the existence of a rapid and sensitive cortically based system that normalizes the output of cortical cells as a function of local mean contrast. Control of the adaptation appears to arise at least in part across a population of cells, which is consistent with the idea that the gain control serves to limit the information converging from many cells onto subsequent processing areas.
Isolation of a New Chlamydia species from the Feral Sacred Ibis (Threskiornis aethiopicus): Chlamydia ibidis

Investigations conducted on feral African Sacred Ibises ( Threskiornis aethiopicus ) in western France led to the isolation of a strain with chlamydial genetic determinants. Ultrastructural analysis, comparative sequence analysis of the 16S rRNA gene, ompA, and of a concatenate of 31 highly conserved genes, as well as determination of the whole genome sequence confirmed the relatedness of the new isolate to members of the Chlamydiaceae, while, at the same time demonstrating a unique position outside the currently recognized species of this family. We propose to name this new chlamydial species Chlamydia ibidis .
Threatening a rubber hand that you feel is yours elicits a cortical anxiety response

The feeling of body ownership is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness. The underlying neural mechanisms can be studied by using the illusion where a person is made to feel that a rubber hand is his or her own hand by brushing the person's hidden real hand and synchronously brushing the artificial hand that is in full view. Here we show that threat to the rubber hand can induce a similar level of activity in the brain areas associated with anxiety and interoceptive awareness (insula and anterior cingulate cortex) as when the person's real hand is threatened. We further show that the stronger the feeling of ownership of the artificial hand, the stronger the threat-evoked neuronal responses in the areas reflecting anxiety. Furthermore, across subjects, activity in multisensory areas reflecting ownership predicted the activity in the interoceptive system when the hand was under threat. Finally, we show that there is activity in medial wall motor areas, reflecting an urge to withdraw the artificial hand when it is under threat. These findings suggest that artificial limbs can evoke the same feelings as real limbs and provide objective neurophysiological evidence that the rubber hand is fully incorporated into the body. These findings are of fundamental importance because they suggest that the feeling of body ownership is associated with changes in the interoceptive systems.
A Differential Evolution Algorithm for computing the Fuzzy Variance

We propose a differential evolution (DE) algorithm for the calculation of the interval and fuzzy variance. In particular, we see that the DE methods can be efficient for the fuzzy variance of a relatively high number of fuzzy data; computational results with up to 100 data show that the number of function evaluations to obtain the estimated global solutions grows less then quadratically with the number of data.
Toward a Robust Search Method for the Protein-Drug Docking Problem

Predicting the binding mode(s) of a drug molecule to a target receptor is pivotal in structure-based rational drug design. In contrast to most approaches to solve this problem, the idea in this paper is to analyze the search problem from a computational perspective. By building on top of an existing docking tool, new methods are proposed and relevant computational results are proven. These methods and results are applicable for other place-and-join frameworks as well. A fast approximation scheme for the docking of rigid fragments is described that guarantees certain geometric approximation factors. It is also demonstrated that this can be translated into an energy approximation for simple scoring functions. A polynomial time algorithm is developed for the matching phase of the docked rigid fragments. It is demonstrated that the generic matching problem is NP-hard. At the same time, the optimality of the proposed algorithm is proven under certain scoring function conditions. The matching results are also applicable for some of the fragment-based de novo design methods. On the practical side, the proposed method is tested on 829 complexes from the PDB. The results show that the closest predicted pose to the native structure has the average RMS deviation of 1.06 Å.
Quadrivalent vaccine against human papillomavirus to prevent high-grade cervical lesions.

BACKGROUND Human papillomavirus types 16 (HPV-16) and 18 (HPV-18) cause approximately 70% of cervical cancers worldwide. A phase 3 trial was conducted to evaluate a quadrivalent vaccine against HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 (HPV-6/11/16/18) for the prevention of high-grade cervical lesions associated with HPV-16 and HPV-18. METHODS In this randomized, double-blind trial, we assigned 12,167 women between the ages of 15 and 26 years to receive three doses of either HPV-6/11/16/18 vaccine or placebo, administered at day 1, month 2, and month 6. The primary analysis was performed for a per-protocol susceptible population that included 5305 women in the vaccine group and 5260 in the placebo group who had no virologic evidence of infection with HPV-16 or HPV-18 through 1 month after the third dose (month 7). The primary composite end point was cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or 3, adenocarcinoma in situ, or cervical cancer related to HPV-16 or HPV-18. RESULTS Subjects were followed for an average of 3 years after receiving the first dose of vaccine or placebo. Vaccine efficacy for the prevention of the primary composite end point was 98% (95.89% confidence interval [CI], 86 to 100) in the per-protocol susceptible population and 44% (95% CI, 26 to 58) in an intention-to-treat population of all women who had undergone randomization (those with or without previous infection). The estimated vaccine efficacy against all high-grade cervical lesions, regardless of causal HPV type, in this intention-to-treat population was 17% (95% CI, 1 to 31). CONCLUSIONS In young women who had not been previously infected with HPV-16 or HPV-18, those in the vaccine group had a significantly lower occurrence of high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia related to HPV-16 or HPV-18 than did those in the placebo group. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00092534 [ClinicalTrials.gov].).