Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A self-seeded reflective SOA-based optical network unit for optical beat interference robust WDM/SCM-PON link

We have proposed and experimentally demonstrated a novel optical source configuration that uses a self-seeded reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) as an optical network unit (ONU) in a wavelength division multiplexed/subcarrier multiplexing (SCM)-passive optical network (PON). A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) was used to obtain a single longitudinal mode of the RSOA. The proposed ONU configuration is simple, cost-effective, and effective regardless of wavelength allocation. Additionally, it would be robust for optical beat interference (OBI) noise. As the ONU is composed only of an RSOA and FBG, the self-seeded RSOA, due to the strong self-injection caused by the reflection of the FBG, has a broad optical spectrum. A self-homodyne apparatus method was performed in order to demonstrate the robustness of the self-seeded RSOA in OBI. To confirm the validity of the proposed scheme, a 16-quadrature amplitude modulation transmission experiment was performed in a 10-, 20-km optical access link with an SCM frequency of 1 GHz. An error vector magnitude of less than 4% for 2 Msps was successfully obtained through the transmission experiment
Genetic Polymorphisms: A Cornerstone of Translational Biobehavioral Research

A new generation of interdisciplinary research seeks to use common functional genetic polymorphisms to model variability in brain chemistry that regulates behaviorally relevant brain structures and their functions. A new generation of interdisciplinary research seeks to use common functional genetic polymorphisms to model emergent variability in brain chemistry that regulates behaviorally relevant brain structure and function. This genetically mediated variability is then being mapped onto trajectories of risk for psychopathology, especially that precipitated by environmental adversity. This Perspective highlights a recent paper in Science that provides a powerful example of how a common functional genetic polymorphism can serve as a translational bridge between human and mouse research, extending our understanding of biological pathways that mediate individual differences in behavior and in risk for psychopathology.
Flavin Mononucleotide-Binding Flavoprotein Family in the Domain Archaea

ABSTRACT The protein (AfpA, for archaeoflavoprotein) encoded by AF1518 in the genome of Archaeoglobus fulgidus was produced in Escherichia coli and characterized. AfpA was found to be a homodimer with a native molecular mass of 43 kDa and containing two noncovalently bound flavin mononucleotides (FMNs). The cell extract of A. fulgidus catalyzed the CO-dependent reduction of AfpA that was stimulated by the addition of ferredoxin. Ferredoxin was found to be a direct electron donor to purified AfpA, whereas rubredoxin was unable to substitute. Neither NADH nor NADPH was an electron donor. Ferricyanide, 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol, several quinones, ferric citrate, bovine cytochrome c, and O2 accepted electrons from reduced AfpA, whereas coenzyme F420 did not. The rate of cytochrome c reduction was enhanced in the presence of O2 suggesting that superoxide is a product of the interaction of reduced AfpA with O2. Although AF1518 was previously annotated as encoding a decarboxylase involved in coenzyme A biosynthesis, the results establish that AfpA is an electron carrier protein with ferredoxin as the physiological electron donor. The genomes of several diverse Archaea contained afpA homologs clustered with open reading frames annotated as homologs of genes encoding reductases involved in the oxidative stress response of anaerobes from the domain Bacteria. A potential role for AfpA in coupling electron flow from ferredoxin to the putative reductases is discussed. A search of the databases suggests that AfpA is the prototype of a previously unrecognized flavoprotein family unique to the domain Archaea for which the name archaeoflavoprotein is proposed.
Gesture recognition system using reconstructed image from the acceleration sensor signal

This paper presents a new method for recognizing handwritten motions in 3-D space based on the reconstructed image from the signal of the three-axis acceleration (ACC) sensor of the smart mobile device. The proposed method is composed of gesture detection, data reconstruction and recognition. In our method, the start and end points of the meaningful gesture motions are detected automatically and the undefined hand motions are filtered out. The three-axis ACC data of the gesture segment is directly converted and reconstructed into gray-scale image. By reconstructing the ACC signal as an image, the detected gesture segments having different lengths are normalized and compressed. The classification and recognition of the gray-scale images representing different gestures are further carried out based on Softmax regression model. The recognition algorithm can recognize a large number of complex letter gestures with low computational cost. A library of 26 letter gestures with over 3000 samples is created to evaluate the proposed method, and the evaluation shows that the method achieves accuracy of 99.23% and the implemented recognition system on smart-phone shows that the average recognition time for a letter gesture is 15ms.
Fibronectin and vitronectin regulate the organization of their respective Arg-Gly-Asp adhesion receptors in cultured human endothelial cells

Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (ECs) adhere in vitro to proteins of the extracellular matrix including fibronectin (fn) and vitronectin (vn). Specific receptors for fn and vn have been previously characterized. These receptors belong to a family of membrane glycoproteins characterized (a) by being a transmembrane complex of two noncovalently linked subunits and (b) by recognizing the tripeptide Arg- Gly-Asp on their respective ligands. In this paper we investigated how vn and fn control the organization of their respective receptors over the surface of ECs. It was found that the clustering of individual receptors and the organization thereafter of focal contacts occurred only when ECs were exposed to the specific ligand and did not occur on the opposite ligand. The shape of receptor clusters was slightly different and a colocalization of the two receptors was found when ECs were cultured on a mixed matrix of fn plus vn. Adhesion was selectively inhibited by vn or fn receptor antibodies on their respective substrates. The clustering of both receptors preceded the association of vinculin with focal contacts and stress fiber formation. Also, the vn receptor, in the absence of associated fn receptor, was capable of inducing the organization of the membrane-microfilament interaction complex. Overall, these results indicate that individual matrix ligands induce only the clustering of their respective membrane receptors. The clustering of only one receptor is capable of supporting the subsequent formation of focal contacts and the local assembly of related cytoskeletal proteins.
A Theory of Forgetting in Logic Programming

The study of forgetting for reasoning has attracted considerable attention in AI. However, much of the work on forgetting, and other related approaches such as independence, irrelevance and novelty, has been restricted to the classical logics. This paper describes a detailed theoretical investigation of the notion of forgetting in the context of logic programming. We first provide a semantic definition of forgetting under the answer sets for extended logic programs. We then discuss the desirable properties and some motivating examples. An important result of this study is an algorithm for computing the result of forgetting in a logic program. Furthermore, we present a modified version of the algorithm and show that the time complexity of the new algorithm is polynomial with respect to the size of the given logic program if the size of certain rules is fixed. We show how the proposed theory of forgetting can be used to characterize the logic program updates.
Using Paxos For Distributed Agreement

As trends in application development shift away from a classically centralized approach and towards a massively distributed paradigm, the need for efficiently coordinating agreement between distributed application components becomes clear. This paper will provide a historical and technical overview of the Paxos algorithm, which provides a mechanism for achieving consensus between processors. Paxos provides basic failure guarantees, and optionally, Byzantine failure guarantees. We will briefly cover previous works that have shown Paxos is correct in its ability to maintain its guarantees, and is optimal in achieving consensus in a minimal number of message transmissions. We will conclude by noting that as a result of this optimality, Paxos has been deployed in a variety of large scale, mission critical distributed systems, and remains the protocol of choice for developers wishing to coordinate distributed state.
A Spectrum Sharing Algorithm Based on Spectrum Heterogeneity for Centralized Cognitive Radio Networks

Spectrum sharing is envisaged to allow multiple cognitive radio (CR) nodes to jointly use the vacant spectrum resource for opportunistic transmission. Most previous work on the spectrum sharing did not take into account the spectrum heterogeneity, such as different transmission ranges, error rates, etc. In this paper, a spectrum sharing algorithm is presented that accommodates spectrum heterogeneity for centralized CR networks, meanwhile the individual users are free to be mobile. Each node is uniquely assigned a channel while considering its channel occupancy time, the location of the node, and the fairness of channel access opportunity. Each of these metrics contributes in part to a larger optimization problem and the final objective is to maximize the total utility of system. Simulations results reveal significant improvement in reducing spectrum handoffs.
High gain linearly polarized wideband UHF antenna based on substrate integrated coaxial line feeding network

A high gain antenna array for the ultra high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) universal bandwidth (840–960 MHz) is herein proposed. A corporate feeding network is designed with substrate integrated coaxial line (SICL) technology in order to minimize losses due to dispersive mode propagation. Suspended E-shaped patches are employed to broaden the frequency band and improve antenna gain. A 2 ×2 antenna array prototype is manufactured and measured, revealing a sufficient S11 < −10dB bandwidth to cover the universal UHF RFID band, and a gain larger than 11 dBi within the bandwidth of interest.
Embryonic Development and Induction

95 gestion that viruses, from the type which appears to be of molecular proportions to those which are essentially microorganisms in the bacterial sense-have one (at least) distinguishing characteristic in common,-parasitism. From this he deduces: "We would suppose that the larger viruses were organisms which had lost the power to synthesise some factor or factors essential for their growth and multiplication, perhaps a ferment and co-ferments. As we pass down the scale and the viruses diminish in size, we would postulate the loss of more and more factors essential for growth. The intermediate sized viruses would have lost several essential ferment systems, and. the smallest viruses would have lost all ferments and all auto-synthetic potentialities. Divorced from the particular cells which they can infect, the structures we postulate would be inert and in a state of suspended animation; within the correct cell, however, they would have at hand all substances required for growth, and they would attract to themselves the requisite ferment systems from the host cells or utilise those in their immediate neighbourhood. " A thesis "that viruses are decadent forms of organisms degraded through long persistent parasitism," and that only, offers opportunity for thought, and may well provoke discussion. An able cytologist and his daughter have assembled a series of short descriptions of well-selected histological methods and technics. Many of these methods have been devised, developed, or adopted by Dr. Bensley during his long years of studies on the cell. Although some parts contain advice purely to beginners, the book has a useful place in any laboratory of histology. The procedures for studying living cells are well selected and should be included in any good course in Microscopic Anatomy. The book contains an index and one page of good references to literature on the subject. In these, the Silliman Lectures, Dr. Hans Spemann, one of the outstanding embryologists of the world, presents the results of years of experimentation carried out by himself and his students. These experiments were devised to answer numerous questions regarding the factors which determine and control development. Using the methods of experimental embryology, alterations were made in the relationships between parts of developing embryos
Issues of the heat dissipation coming from a big surface through a much smaller one

Considering thermoelectric refrigeration, it is remarkable how a small surface (Peltier pellet) should remove the heat emerging from a surface (surface of the place to be refrigerated) much larger than the one previously mentioned. Therefore, a problem of heat flux addressing rises. This work attempts to present, from a wide point of view, a possible device, based on the capillary phenomenon appearing in the porous media, capable of getting this heat flux addressing what makes easier the heat removal and improves the system efficiency. Furthermore, this element would improve the efficiency reached by the thermoelectric refrigerators including the current phase change devices.
Tracing Stateful Pirate Decoders

Most traitor tracing schemes in the literature assume that pirate decoders are stateless. This stateless assumption, however, is unrealistic especially in case of hardware decoders. Any tracing algorithm based on the above assumption may draw a wrong detecting conclusion. The present approach converts a tracing algorithm for stateless decoder into a tracing algorithm for stateful decoder. By employing a robust watermarking scheme, the proposed approach ensures that tracing processes and normal broadcast processes are indistinguishable for pirate decoders. This in turn allows a tracer to incriminate at least one traitor from a pirate decoder. Since the communication overhead for conversion is merely linear to the number of traitors and independent of the number of users, our approach is more efficient than the techniques in [1].
Group Leadership Estimation Based on Influence of Pointing Actions

When we act in a group with family members, friends, colleagues, each group member often play the respective role to achieve a goal that all group members have in common. This paper focuses on leadership among various kinds of roles observed in a social group and proposes a method to estimate a leader based on an interaction analysis. In order to estimate a leader in a group, we extract pointing actions of each person and measure how other people change their actions triggered by the pointing actions, i.e. how much influence the pointing actions have. When we can see the tendency that one specific person makes pointing actions and the actions have a high influence on another member, it is very likely that the person is a leader in a group. The proposed method is based on this intuition and measures the influence of pointing actions using their motion trajectories. We demonstrate that the proposed method has a potential for estimating the leadership through a comparison between the computed influence measures and subjective evaluations using some actual videos taken in a science museum.
Machine perfusion or cold storage in deceased-donor kidney transplantation.

Cyril Moers, M.D., Jacqueline M. Smits, M.D., Ph.D., Mark-Hugo J. Maathuis, M.D., Ph.D., Jürgen Treckmann, M.D., Frank van Gelder, Bogdan P. Napieralski, Margitta van Kasterop-Kutz, Jaap J. Homan van der Heide, M.D., Ph.D., Jean-Paul Squifflet, M.D., Ph.D., Ernest van Heurn, M.D., Ph.D., Günter R. Kirste, M.D., Ph.D., Axel Rahmel, M.D., Ph.D., Henri G.D. Leuvenink, Ph.D., Andreas Paul, M.D., Ph.D., Jacques Pirenne, M.D., Ph.D., and Rutger J. Ploeg, M.D., Ph.D.*
Algorithmic regularity for polynomials and applications

In analogy with the regularity lemma of Szemeredi [Sze75], regularity lemmas for polynomials proved by Green and Tao [GT09] and by Kaufman and Lovett [KL08] show that one can modify a given collection of polynomials F = {P1, . , Pm} into a new collection F' so that the polynomials in F' are "pseudorandom". These lemmas have various applications, such as (special cases of) Reed-Muller testing and worst-case to average-case reductions for polynomials. However, the transformation from F to F' in these works is not algorithmic. We define new notions of regularity for polynomials which, while being qualitatively equivalent to the above, also allow for efficient algorithms. Using the algorithmic regularity lemmas, we obtain an algorithmic version of the inverse theorem for Gowers norm (for bounded degree polynomials) over fields of high characteristic, by Green and Tao [GT09]. As an application, we show that if a polynomial P of degree d is within (normalized) Hamming distance 1 − 1/|F| − e of some unknown polynomial of degree k over a prime field F (for k < d < |F|), then there is an efficient algorithm for finding a degree-k polynomial Q, which is within distance 1 − 1/|F| − η of P, for some η depending on e. This can be thought of as decoding the Reed-Muller code of order k beyond the list decoding radius, in the sense of finding one close codeword, when the received word P itself is a polynomial (of degree larger than k but smaller than |F|). We also show an algorithmic inverse theorem for polynomials over fields of small characteristic and somewhat simplify the original proof by Tao and Ziegler [TZ12]. We also obtain an algorithmic version of the worst-case to average-case reductions by Kaufman and Lovett [KL08]. They show that if a polynomial of degree d can be weakly approximated by a polynomial of lower degree, then it can be computed exactly using a collection of polynomials of degree at most d − 1. We give an efficient algorithm to find this collection. Finally, our algorithmic regularity lemma over low characteristics can be used to efficiently decompose low-degree polynomials over Fn (for any prime order field F) into polynomials P1, . , Pm: Fn → F that satisfy prescribed degree bounds and for which P(x) = Γ(P1(x), . , Pm(x)) for a given m and Γ.
Expansion of mass-flowering crops leads to transient pollinator dilution and reduced wild plant pollination

Agricultural land use results in direct biodiversity decline through loss of natural habitat, but may also cause indirect cross-habitat effects on conservation areas. We conducted three landscape-scale field studies on 67 sites to test the hypothesis that mass flowering of oilseed rape (Brassica napus) results in a transient dilution of bees in crop fields, and in increased competition between crop plants and grassland plants for pollinators. Abundances of bumble-bees, which are the main pollinators of the grassland plant Primula veris, but also pollinate oilseed rape (OSR), decreased with increasing amount of OSR. This landscape-scale dilution affected bumble-bee abundances strongly in OSR fields and marginally in grasslands, where bumble-bee abundances were generally low at the time of Primula flowering. Seed set of Primula veris, which flowers during OSR bloom, was reduced by 20 per cent when the amount of OSR within 1 km radius increased from 0 to 15 per cent. Hence, the current expansion of bee-attractive biofuel crops results in transient dilution of crop pollinators, which means an increased competition for pollinators between crops and wild plants. In conclusion, mass-flowering crops potentially threaten fitness of concurrently flowering wild plants in conservation areas, despite the fact that, in the long run, mass-flowering crops can enhance abundances of generalist pollinators and their pollination service.
Saturating set point tracking control for linear systems subject to input constraints

We propose a new set point tracking controller achieving short settling times respecting for saturating input vectors. One major advantage of the method is that once we designed a controller stabilizing the origin with an associated domain of attraction we are able to state the tracking controller. Additionally, no assumptions concerning the rate of the reference signal are necessary.
Public Acceptability of Road User Charging: The Case of Edinburgh and the 2005 Referendum

Abstract In February 2005 residents of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, were given the opportunity to vote in a referendum on the introduction of a road user charging scheme, which had been in development for almost a decade. The public voted against the scheme by a ratio of 3:1 and it was consequently abandoned. The objective of this research was to determine the principal factors responsible for the public’s overwhelming opposition to the scheme. A postal self‐completion questionnaire was distributed to 1300 randomly selected households along a transect from central to south Edinburgh. The 368 completed questionnaires returned were analysed to assess the influence of several factors on the way respondents voted in the referendum. Car use was shown to be the principal determinant of voting behaviour, with car owners strongly opposing the scheme and non‐car owners only weakly supporting it. The public’s limited understanding of the scheme increased the strength of the opposing vote. Further, the public were largely unconvinced that the scheme would have achieved its dual objectives of reducing congestion and improving public transport. The findings suggest that more attention should have been paid to designing a simpler, more easily communicated scheme and convincing residents, particularly public transport users, of its benefits.
Dealing with the formal analysis of Information Security policies through ontologies: a case study

We present the structure of an ontology for Information Security (IS), applied to the extraction of knowledge from Natural Language texts (IS standards, security policies and security control descriptions). This ontology is composed of the vocabulary for the IS Domain, and a particular kind of ontology description, logical forms to determine the structure of the DL formulas associated with the texts. We also discuss the relationship between the structure of the formulas and the efficiency of the reasoner.
The august spoken dialogue system

This paper describes the Swedish spoken dialogue system August. This system has been used to collect spontaneous speech data, largely from people with no previous experience of speech technology or computers. The aim was to be able to analyse how novice users interact with a multi-modal information kiosk, placed without supervision in a public location. The system described in this paper featured an animated talking agent, August. Speech data was collected during the six months that the system was exposed to the general public. The system and its components are briefly described, with references to more detailed papers.