Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optimizing the Parameters of Relay Selection Model in OLSRv2 D2D Network

The Fifth generation (5G) cellular network's traffic load is certain to expand significantly in the near future as a result of its flexibility, high speed, increased bandwidth, better connectivity and low latency. Consequently, it is necessary to investigate the application of technologies that may be able to reduce the amount of the traffic on the core network. One such technique is D2D communication in 5G cellular network, which allows two or more devices to communicate with each other directly without transversing the cellular network. However, deployment of D2D communication required an effective relay and routing technique to off load the traffic of the network. On the other hand, Multipoint Relay (MPR) nodes in OLSRv2 experiences quick power failure and frequent disconnection due to selection of unsuitable MPR node. To solve this problem, this research employed Linear Programming (LP) technique to determine the optimum weight combination of four parameters in OLSRv2 relay selection model in D2D communication scenario. The four parameters are battery level, mobility speed, node degree and connection to base station. These parameters have been modelled based on their influences in maintaining D2D connectivity. However, to ensure each parameter contributes fairly to the OLSRv2 relay selection, the proposed model works out the weights of the parameters in the selection process. In addition, the proposed model is a general one and can handle $n$ number of parameters. Meanwhile, to determine the values of Wi for each parameter i, we formulated the problem as an LP model to obtain the optimum contribution for each of the parameters considered in our system for the selection of the optimum node. The results showed that application of LP has led to optimum weight allocation to the four parameters thereby leading to efficient OLSRv2 relay selection in D2D communication.
Near-Field Focusing mmWave Leaky Wave Antenna for Enhanced Wireless Power Transfer

A near-field focusing millimeter-wave (mmWave) leaky wave antenna (LWA) using non-periodic rectangular slots for wireless power transfer application is presented in this paper. The proposed design is based on a rectangular substrate integrated waveguide and fed by two coaxial probes. The phase distribution in the near field and slot positioning are derived by a theoretical approach. By skillfully manipulating the slot positions, the uniform slot elements facilitate an in-phase superposition within the desired near-field region, resulting in a significant focusing effect. To explore the performance of the antenna, the focusing effect is examined at a 2D focal distance of (10$\lambda$, 10$\lambda$). Here, $\lambda$ represents the free space wavelength at 28 GHz. While maintaining a beam steering from 27.5 GHz to 30.5 GHz, an impressive 69% enhancement compared to the traditional far-field LWAs is obtained at 28 GHz. This breakthrough design not only offers a substantial enhancement in focusing capability but also opens the door to an emerging transmitting system with a notably high beam efficiency for wireless power transfer (WPT).
Aberrant expression of MUC5AC and MUC6 gastric mucin genes in colorectal polyps

Altered mucin glycosylation and the de novo appearance of gastric mucin antigens have been described in colonic adenomas. The purpose of our study was to determine if expression of the gastric mucin genes MUC5AC and MUC6 occurs in colorectal adenomas and whether this correlates with histopathologic criteria of malignant potential. Immunohistochemical staining using antibodies against MUC5AC and MUC6 tandem repeat synthetic peptides was performed on specimens of normal colon mucosa (n = 26), hyperplastic polyps (n = 9) and adenomatous polyps (n = 111). Mucin mRNA levels were determined using RNase protection assays using riboprobes corresponding to unique non‐repetitive sequences. MUC5AC and MUC6 staining were rarely detected and of low intensity in normal colon and hyperplastic polyps. The number of immunoreactive polyps and intensity of MUC5AC and MUC6 staining were greatest in larger adenomas of moderate villous histology and dysplasia. MUC5AC and MUC6 staining tended to decrease in highly villous polyps with severe dysplasia. Increased MUC5AC mRNA levels were found in 26/45 of adenomas tested compared with 0/9 normal colon specimens. MUC6 mRNA levels were found in 20/45 of adenomas compared with 1/9 normal colon specimens. MUC5AC and MUC6 mRNA were present more frequently and at higher levels in polyps with intermediate stages of size, villous histology and dysplasia. We conclude that aberrant expression of MUC5AC and MUC6 mucin genes is likely responsible for an expanded repertoire of mucin antigen expression in colorectal neoplasia. Int. J. Cancer 80:210–218, 1999. Published 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases in high risk social networks of young Roma (Gypsy) men in Bulgaria: randomised controlled trial

Objective To determine the effects of a behavioural intervention for prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases that identified, trained, and engaged leaders of Roma (Gypsy) men's social networks to counsel their own network members. Design A two arm randomised controlled trial. Setting A disadvantaged, impoverished Roma settlement in Bulgaria. Participants 286 Roma men from 52 social networks recruited in the community. Intervention At baseline all participants were assessed for HIV risk behaviour, tested and treated for sexually transmitted diseases, counselled in risk reduction, and randomised to intervention or control groups. Network leaders learnt how to counsel their social network members on risk prevention. Networks were followed up three and 12 months after the intervention to determine evidence of risk reduction. Main outcome measure Occurrence of unprotected intercourse during the three months before each assessment. Results Reported prevalence of unprotected intercourse in the intervention group fell more than in control group (from 81% and 80%, respectively, at baseline to 65% and 75% at three months and 71% and 86% at 12 months). Changes were more pronounced among men with casual partners. Effects remained strong at long term follow-up, consistent with changes in risk reduction norms in the social network. Other measures of risk reduction corroborated the intervention's effects. Conclusions Endorsement and advice on HIV prevention from the leader of a social network produces well maintained change in the reported sexual practices in members of that network. This model has particular relevance for health interventions in populations such as Roma who may be distrustful of outsiders. Trial registration Clinical Trials NCT00310973.
3D-SLAM Implementation on Commercial UAV: Challenges and Future Insights

In recent years, the field of programming Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs) has gained significant attention from researchers due to their substantial potential in various applications, including surveillance, inspection, and critical situations like examining buildings that are burning or collapsing. For this purpose, drones that have several sensors installed would be of good use in constructing a 3D map and localizing most of the objects within a certain area or room, which is also referred to as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). However, installing these sensors would harden the mission of the drone since it would mean more power consumption, more computations, and less navigation flexibility. For this reason, monocular visual SLAM has become the trend, which refers to using a sole camera to build the map and locate the objects in each scene. This approach introduces new challenges, one of the most crucial challenges is estimating the depth (i.e., distances within an image) of each scene from a 2D image. For this task, Deep Learning (DL) models have been considered as a solution for this problem, and with the continuous development in DL and the computational resources that can carry out the expensive training of DL models, it was shown that a 3D map reconstruction is possible utilizing 2D images. This work investigates the performance of a combination of different SLAM and depth estimation models implemented on a commercial drone. The main goal is to carry out a comparison between different methodologies of depth estimation that support monocular 3D SLAM algorithms.
Towards Socio- and Resource-Aware Data Replication in User-Centric Networking

Recently, there has been a lot of research on decentralized social networks motivated by privacy concerns with centralized systems. However, an open challenge with decentralized systems is the actual data replication and retrieval among the participating devices. We argue this aspect can be greatly improved in terms of efficiency by taking social relationships, user behavior and locality into account. User-centric networking is a paradigm which includes the users’ own devices – from smartphones to highly available personal clouds – and targets at a socio-aware data storage, based on the users’ behavior and their devices’ availability. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a Decision Engine that chooses the replication devices based on multi-dimensional input parameters, from momentary conditions to long-time learned user behavior and social relationships.
Subband based voice conversion

A new voice conversion method that improves the quality of the voice conversion output at higher sampling rates is proposed. Speaker Transformation Algorithm Using Segmental Codebooks (STASC) is modified to process source and target speech spectra in different subbands. The new method ensures better conversion at sampling rates above 16KHz. Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) is employed for subband decomposition to estimate the speech spectrum better with higher resolution. Faster voice conversion is achieved since the computational complexity decreases at a lower sampling rate. A Voice Conversion System (VCS) is implemented using the proposed algorithm with necessary tools. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by both subjective listening tests and applications to film dubbing and looping. In ABX listening tests, the listeners preferred the subband based output by 92.1% as compared to the full-band based output.
From etymology to modern phraseology: A corpus-based study of structural variants of Chinese idioms in naturally-occurring contexts

Compared with recent developments in English corpus lexicology and phraseology, the study of Chinese lexicology and phraseology still remains at a level similar to what Fernando has described as quasi-lexicography (Fernando, 1996: 10-11) in the study of English idioms, where explanations provided in idiom dictionaries are rather prescriptive and static than descriptive and dynamic: a typical template of explanation consists in no more than a paraphrase meaning; the etymological origin of the entry; one or two illustrative examples and synonyms equally in a four-character idiomatic pattern if available. As a result, items collected in recent Chinese idiom dictionaries are presented as if they had not experienced morpho-syntactic variations or pragmatic shifts of any sort since they first came into use hundreds of years ago. The current situation of Chinese phraseology has largely restricted our understanding of the nature of Chinese idioms to a preliminary level of analysis as characterized by subjective or intuition-oriented judgements. Therefore, in the present study, I shall propose for the first time to situate the study on an essential subject of Chinese phraseology, namely the structural variability of Chinese idioms, within a naturally-occurring context as provided by the Corpus of Chinese (Beijing University, 2005), with a view to submitting the detected structural variants of Chinese idioms to a systematic description and to examine whether the seemingly idiosyncratic behaviour of Chinese idioms as highly responsive to the changing contextual circumstances is in fact governed by a set of underlying linguistic rules operating simultaneously at syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels (Minsky, 1980: I; Fillmore, 1976: 25; Brown & Yule, 1983: 236; Moon, 1998: 163-166). The results obtained in my investigation on the structural versatility of certain kinds of Chinese idioms are in the nature of a pilot study; and the corpus-driven approach adopted in describing and analysing the structural features of Chinese idiomatic variants in naturally-occurring contexts will help prepare the ground for the setting-up of an appropriate methodological framework for future research on the subject matter.
Synthesis-Embedded Verification

The proliferation of computing systems and subsystems combined with the need for high performance, product security and low energy have forced the development of tools that generate hardware systems and hardware components automatically from higher-level of algorithmic descriptions. The technology background behind this phenomenon is called High-Level Synthesis (HLS) and it has been an active research topic for at least the last 3 decades. HLS hasn't been established as a de facto design approach in industry because of problems with the quality of the generated hardware descriptions and the lack of complete automation and compatibility with all the programming constructs that sometimes require manual rewriting of the whole module in order for the HLS tool to be able to process it. One greater problem is that often the available HLS tools generate bugs in the generated hardware which are difficult to trace and correct, as the generated architecture usually contains hundreds of FSM states. Moreover, verification tasks and flows which are disjoint from the synthesis flows often fails to find all bugs and it is difficult to learn and run easy as in the case of formal verification. Here, we discuss a unique verification strategy that it is integrated in the synthesis flow and it doesn't require any verification skills at all, but only how to compile and run C programs, which are driven by run-time options activated by keystrokes. Moreover, because the verified model is the same as this of the synthesis process, it reassures that the verified module is exactly the same as the generated hardware, so the same regression tests can run as in the high-level specification C/Ada program model. The generated cycle accurate simulators are C programs that model the execution of the formal synthesized FSMs. Because of the synthesis transformation formal model with logic inference that we use, the whole synthesis/verification flow of our approach is formal.
Interleavers/Deinterlevers based On Michelson-Gires-Tournois Interferometers with Different Structures

In this paper MGTI's1filtering properties are presented. The properties of this filter are investigated by parameter changes such as: GTR front surface mirror reflectance ρ, GTR spacing d and interferometer arm length difference ΔL. Center-wavelength tunability and variable bandwidth capability are the characteristics, which are investigated. This structure can be used as an interleaver with low insertion loss, simple controllable and temperature indepence. Two structures of MGTI interleaver with one and two GTE2are investigated and simulation results for the two structures are presented. It has been shown that for interleaver with two GTEs the 0.5 dB pass band and 25 dB stop band are improved.
Treatment intensification with an insulin degludec (IDeg)/insulin aspart (IAsp) co‐formulation twice daily compared with basal IDeg and prandial IAsp in type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled phase III trial

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of two insulin intensification strategies for patients with type 2 diabetes previously treated with basal insulin – insulin degludec (IDeg) and insulin aspart (IAsp) – administered as a co‐formulation (IDegAsp) or as a basal‐bolus regimen (IDeg and IAsp in separate injections).
Analysis Of Data Forwarding Issues In Wireless Networks Aimed For Railway Signaling Systems

Due to the difficulties faced with wire-based signaling systems, wireless communication based signaling systems are gaining importance worldwide. While the cellular communication based systems like GSM-R and LTE-R were proposed in majority of the cases, the non-cellular communication systems that are based on adhoc networks and wireless sensor networks have also become equally important. In this later case, routing protocols like AODV are needed to forward the data packets when destination is not reachable directly from the source. In this context, if some improvements are made to these protocols to make it more suitable to these environments, it can help to have better performance. These aspects are studied and analyzed in this work by carrying out the simulation studies for the model network considered for railway signaling application. Results suggest that making use of GPS and keeping the alternate route on hand can improve the performance considerably. Omnet++ simulator with INET framework is used to carry out the simulations.
Data mining from web search queries: A comparison of google trends and baidu index

Numerous studies have explored the possibility of uncovering information from web search queries but few have examined the factors that affect web query data sources. We conducted a study that investigated this issue by comparing Google Trends and Baidu Index. Data from these two services are based on queries entered by users into Google and Baidu, two of the largest search engines in the world. We first compared the features and functions of the two services based on documents and extensive testing. We then carried out an empirical study that collected query volume data from the two sources. We found that data from both sources could be used to predict the quality of Chinese universities and companies. Despite the differences between the two services in terms of technology, such as differing methods of language processing, the search volume data from the two were highly correlated and combining the two data sources did not improve the predictive power of the data. However, there was a major difference between the two in terms of data availability. Baidu Index was able to provide more search volume data than Google Trends did. Our analysis showed that the disadvantage of Google Trends in this regard was due to Google's smaller user base in China. The implication of this finding goes beyond China. Google's user bases in many countries are smaller than that in China, so the search volume data related to those countries could result in the same issue as that related to China.
Rapid vanishing point estimation for general road detection

This paper deals with fast vanishing point estimation for autonomous robot navigation. Preceding approaches showed suitable results and vanishing point estimation was used in many robotics tasks, especially in the detection of illstructured roads. The main drawback of such approaches is the computational complexity - the possibilities of hardware accelerations are mentioned in many papers, however, we believe, that the biggest benefit of a vanishing point estimation algorithm is for primarily tele-operated robots in the case of signal loss, etc., that cannot use specialized hardware just for this feature. In this paper, we investigate possibilities of an efficient implementation by the expansion of Gabor wavelets into a linear combination of Haar-like box functions to perform fast filtering via integral image trick and discuss the utilization of superpixels in the voting scheme to provide a significant speed-up (more than 40 times), while we loose only 3-5% in precision.
A Novel QoS Interval Prediction Method for Web Services Based on Random Walk

The quality of service (QoS) of a candidate service plays a decisive role in Web service recommendation. How to accurately predict the QoS value of a service for specific users is a recent research hotspot. Previous work has focused on using a single value (i.e., a pip value) to predict the QoS of a web service. However, in reality, the QoS value of a web service is often uncertain and varies depending on the user's location, network status, and service load. Using intervals to estimate the QoS value of a web service may be more in line with the needs and realities of the user. Based on the fact that the QoS of a web service is often affected by the location of users and services, some research efforts suggest that additional user or service location information can be used to better address the data sparsity problem. On the other hand, the sparseness of the user's service call data makes the location-aware approach take into account the QoS experience of neighbors who are not very close or similar, which may reduce the prediction accuracy. In order to find a good balance, we propose a random walk-based QoS interval prediction method for Web services, which effectively combines location awareness and collaborative filtering methods. To evaluate the performance of our proposed method, we conducted a series of comprehensive experiments on a real web service dataset. The experimental results showed that our proposed random walk method achieved a better balance between confidence and accuracy compared to other collaborative filtering methods in service recommendation. Similarly, considering the dynamic changes in web service QoS, adopting interval based QoS prediction methods is more convincing than previous methods that predict precise QoS point values.
Lameness Prevalence and Risk Factors in Large Dairy Farms in Upstate New York. Model Development for the Prediction of Claw Horn Disruption Lesions

The main objectives of this prospective cohort study were a) to describe lameness prevalence at drying off in large high producing New York State herds based on visual locomotion score (VLS) and identify potential cow and herd level risk factors, and b) to develop a model that will predict the probability of a cow developing claw horn disruption lesions (CHDL) in the subsequent lactation using cow level variables collected at drying off and/or available from farm management software. Data were collected from 23 large commercial dairy farms located in upstate New York. A total of 7,687 dry cows, that were less than 265 days in gestation, were enrolled in the study. Farms were visited between May 2012 and March 2013, and cows were assessed for body condition score (BCS) and VLS. Data on the CHDL events recorded by the farm employees were extracted from the Dairy-Comp 305 database, as well as information regarding the studied cows’ health events, milk production, and reproductive records throughout the previous and subsequent lactation period. Univariable analyses and mixed multivariable logistic regression models were used to analyse the data at the cow level. The overall average prevalence of lameness (VLS > 2) at drying off was 14%. Lactation group, previous CHDL, mature equivalent 305-d milk yield (ME305), season, BCS at drying off and sire PTA for strength were all significantly associated with lameness at the drying off (cow-level). Lameness at drying off was associated with CHDL incidence in the subsequent lactation, as well as lactation group, previous CHDL and ME305. These risk factors for CHDL in the subsequent lactation were included in our predictive model and adjusted predicted probabilities for CHDL were calculated for all studied cows. ROC analysis identified an optimum cut-off point for these probabilities and using this cut-off point we could predict CHDL incidence in the subsequent lactation with an overall specificity of 75% and sensitivity of 59%. Using this approach, we would have detected 33% of the studied population as being at risk, eventually identifying 59% of future CHDL cases. Our predictive model could help dairy producers focusing their efforts on CHDL reduction by implementing aggressive preventive measures for high risk cows.