Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Security in Random Wireless Network with the Aid of Friendly Jammers

This thesis investigates the use of friendly jammers against adaptive and active eavesdroppers in wireless networks. The adaptive and active eavesdroppers are capable of both eavesdropping and jamming, thus disrupting the reliability and security of the communications. The friendly jammers jam only the eavesdroppers. The legitimate entities remain unaffected by the friendly jammers. The adaptive eavesdroppers are half-duplex and fail to jam while listening to the source-like signal by the friendly jammers. Again, the active or full-duplex eavesdroppers are also affected because of the interference from this friendly jamming. The numerical results show that friendly jammers can improve the secrecy performance by investigating two of the major secrecy metrics in the field of physical layer security, namely the secrecy capacity and the secrecy outage probability.
Writing Science: What Makes Scientific Writing Hard and How to Make It Easier

Writing is an integral part of science at every stage; it is how we outline a project idea, communicate with collaborators, draft a grant application, synthesize our insights into a manuscript, and share science beyond academia. Yet, when training students to be scientists, we often focus exclusively on the scientific method and the work of data collection. We rarely talk about the equally important topic of writing about science (Reynolds and Thompson 2011, Turbek et al. 2016). When we do discuss writing with students, trainees, and peers, we emphasize the mechanics: how to structure a manuscript, the style conventions of scientific writing, and the submission process (Guilford 2001, Turbek et al. 2016). As a scientific community, we rarely discuss the actual act of scientific writing itself. Unfortunately, the writer’s block that plagues most academics has nothing to do with manuscript structure or style conventions (Kwok 2020). Even when we have a detailed outline, know what we want to say, and have the citations bookmarked, we often struggle to turn the outline into a full draft. Indeed, advice columns in Science (Van Bavel and Gruber 2019), Nature (Kwok 2020), Inside Higher Education (Rockquemore 2015, 2016), and many scientific blogs are full of acknowledgments that the act of writing is hard.
In situ compression artifact removal in scientific data using deep transfer learning and experience replay

The massive amount of data produced during simulation on high-performance computers has grown exponentially over the past decade, exacerbating the need for streaming compression and decompression methods for efficient storage and transfer of this data—key to realizing the full potential of large-scale computational science. Lossy compression approaches such as JPEG when applied to scientific simulation data realized as a stream of images can achieve good compression rates but at the cost of introducing compression artifacts and loss of information. This paper develops a unified framework for in situ compression artifact removal in which the fully convolutional neural network architectures are combined with scalable training, transfer learning, and experience replay to achieve superior accuracy and efficiency while significantly decreasing the storage footprint as compared with the traditional optimization-based approaches. We demonstrate the proposed approach and compare it with compressed sensing postprocessing and other baseline deep learning models using climate simulations and nuclear reactor simulations, both of which are driven by hyperbolic partial differential equations. Our approach when applied to remove the compression artifacts on the JPEG-compressed nuclear reactor simulation data (using a transfer-trained model that was pretrained on the climate simulation data and updated incrementally as the nuclear reactor simulation progressed), achieved a significant improvement—mean peak signal-to-noise ratio of 42.438 as compared with 27.725 obtained with the compressed sensing approach.
Specific detection of cell-free DNA derived from intestinal epithelial cells using methylation patterns

Epithelial cells of the intestine undergo rapid turnover and are thought to be cleared via stool. Disruption of tissue architecture, as occurs in colorectal cancer (CRC), results in the release of material from dying intestinal epithelial cells to blood. This phenomenon could be utilized for diagnosis and monitoring of intestinal diseases, if circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) derived from intestinal cells could be specifically identified. Here we describe two genomic loci that are unmethylated specifically in intestinal epithelial cells, allowing for sensitive and specific detection of DNA derived from such cells. As expected, intestinal DNA is found in stool, but not in plasma, of healthy individuals. Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have minimal amounts of intestinal cfDNA in the plasma, whereas patients with advanced CRC show a strong signal. The intestinal markers are not elevated in plasma samples from patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), and a combination of intestine- and pancreas-specific markers allowed for robust differentiation between plasma cfDNA derived from CRC and PDAC patients. Intestinal DNA markers provide a mutation-independent tool for monitoring intestinal dynamics in health and disease.
Obstructive sleep apnea-induced multi-organ dysfunction after elective coronary artery bypass surgery in coronary heart disease patients

Background The aim of this study was to explore the underlying impact of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on postoperative parameters of multi-organ function among coronary heart disease (CHD) patients following elective coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). Methods Electronic literature databases were searched manually and automatically for relevant English articles. All of the included articles focused on a comparison of the incidence of postoperative parameters of multi-organ function in CHD patients undergoing elective CABG with and without OSA. Studies were excluded if they met any one of the following criteria: (I) duplicate publication; (II) ongoing or unpublished studies; (III) only published as abstracts or conference proceedings; and (IV) less than 30 patients in the patient cohort. Results A total of 13 articles met our inclusion criteria. The current study demonstrated OSA significantly increased the incidence of major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCEs) in CHD patients undergoing elective CABG compared with the controls [odds risk (OR), 1.97; 95% CI, 1.50 to 2.59, P<0.0001]. In addition, OSA was associated with an increased risk of new revascularization in CHD patients undergoing elective CABG (OR, 9.47; 95% CI, 2.69 to 33.33, P<0.0001). Moreover, reintubation and tracheostomy in the OSA group was increased 243% (OR, 3.43; 95% CI, 1.35 to 8.71; P=0.009) and 372% (OR, 4.72; 95% CI, 1.23 to 18.13; P=0.024), respectively, compared with the control group. Besides, we also confirmed OSA significantly increased the acute kidney injury (AKI) incidence by 124% (OR, 2.24; 95% CI, 1.07 to 4.72; P<0.0001). Conclusions OSA may contribute to postoperative multi-organ dysfunction among CHD patients undergoing elective CABG by increasing the incidence of MACCEs, especially new revascularization, as well as respiratory, and renal complications.
Emerging Mobile Learning Pedagogy Practices: Using tablets and constructive apps in early childhood education

ABSTRACT Early childhood teachers introduced mobile learning activities and educational software to the children's in-class learning activities. This qualitative study implemented one constructive creation app in two early childhood classrooms. It designed, implemented and evaluated the effectiveness of pedagogy practices (PP) for the meaningful implementation of constructive apps in an early childhood classroom. Two small groups of four to five years-old children engaged in weekly in-class research activities. Sixteen videos and 122 artifacts were analysed to determine each child's well-being, involvement, and motivation during the digital creation activities and evaluate the effectiveness of the implemented PP. The most effective PP embedded strategies that 1. enhanced the children's perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness, 2. implemented a flexible and generous use of direct interactions between teachers and students, and 3. provided app operational habit-shaping routines that guided young children’s engagement with the mobile device and app. The implications of these findings are practical and theoretical. Teachers may use the transferable PP to guide their efforts to develop and implement digital creation activities in their early childhood classrooms. The findings of this study may also contribute the development of a mobile learning theory for young children and address a gap in the research literature.
A novel loop closure detection method with the combination of points and lines based on information entropy

Visual simultaneous localization and mapping (visual‐SLAM) is a prominent technology for autonomous navigation of mobile robots. As a significant requirement for visual‐SLAM, loop closure detection (LCD) involves recognizing a revisited place, thereby helping visual‐SLAM eliminate accumulated errors and obtain consistent maps. Conventional LCD approaches mainly rely on point features to detect the loop. In challenging environments, the performance of point‐based LCD degrades, especially in low‐texture and perceptual aliasing environments. This paper presents a novel point and line‐based LCD. This approach allows for more robust LCD under an environment where point features are scarce and false‐positive loops are easily detected. First, point and line features are extracted to construct visual vocabularies (a point‐based vocabulary and a line‐based vocabulary) by using the bag‐of‐visual‐words model. Second, a novel weighting scheme is proposed by leveraging information entropy to combine the point‐based similarity score and line‐based similarity score to further improve the similarity evaluation accuracy of two images. Finally, a feature matching coherence check is added to determine the loop closure candidate searching area, which avoids false‐positive loops caused by a decrease in the robot's velocity or because the system is still. We compare the proposed method with point‐based LCD, line‐based LCD, and PL‐based (combining points and lines with the feature's number and dispersion) methods on public data sets in terms of precision and recall. The results reveal that the proposed method offers impressive results compared to other approaches.
Relationship of functional dyspepsia with mental and physical stress

Background: Functional Dyspepsia is a globally prevalent illness, which although not life-threatening, displays a strong influence on the quality of life. Functional Dyspepsia is essentially chronic indigestion with no obvious physical cause. The objective of this study was to evaluate the frequency of functional dyspepsia and its association with mental and physical stress. It could have the same significant association as Irritable Bowel Syndrome has with stress. Methodology: The data were collected from 221 students from 3 medical colleges of Karachi, Pakistan. Subjects were asked to fill out questionnaires concerning demographics, lifestyle, and dietary habits. Rome III criteria was employed to identify functional dyspepsia and sub-sections of the Sadaf Stress Scale (SSS) was used to measure mental and physical stress. Results: Out of the 221 subjects majority were females (67.4%) with a mean age of 21.47 years. 34.8% of subjects were diagnosed to have functional dyspepsia, out of which around three quarters were females (68.5%). A moderate positive correlation was observed between functional dyspepsia and mental and physical stress. Conclusion: It is concluded from the study results that there is a high frequency of functional dyspepsia among individuals with mental and physical stress or functional dyspepsia might cause the stress.
Adaptive Integral Non-Singular Terminal Sliding Mode Control of a Servo-Hydraulic System

This paper proposes an adaptive integral non-singular terminal sliding mode control in combination with a neural network (INTSMC-NN) for nonlinear servo-hydraulic actuator systems. The proposed controller has the advantages of the conventional non-singular terminal sliding mode control; it can tolerate external disturbances, evades the singularity problem of the conventional terminal sliding mode control, and also guarantees finite time convergence of states. The main problem and drawback of the sliding mode-based control is the chattering phenomenon which is caused by the switching part of the controller. This phenomenon can cause severe impacts on mechanical components of the hydraulic system. In order to overcome to this issue, and moderate the control signal, the discontinuous part of the controller is replaced by a neural network. The stability of the controller is investigated through Lyapunov stability criteria. To study the performance of the proposed INTSMC in combination with neural network a third-order nonlinear servo-hydraulic actuator is considered. Simulation results first, indicates the capability of the proposed method in eliminating the chattering from the control signal and also making the system states to track the desired trajectory with high accuracy. Second, the performance of the proposed integral NTSMC is studied and compared to the conventional NTSMC.
Characterization of potential probionts from blue swimming crab Portunus pelagicus and its antagonistic activity against Vibrio harveyi

The aim of this study was to isolate local bacteria as potential probiont in controlling the growth of pathogenic Vibrio harveyi. Eleven potential bacteria were successfully isolated from the haemolymph of four healthy Portunus pelagicus. All of the isolates were identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens by series of biochemical test using triple sugar ion test, oxidase and catalase test, followed by Internal Transcribe Spacer (ITS) gene sequence analysis. This isolate was able to inhibit the growth of V. harveyi in in-vitro screening assay by using well diffusion assay with the strong antagonistic activity from 7 to 16 mm. The potential strains at 108 CFU/ml showed highest inhibition response towards V. harveyi after co-cultured for 48 hr. The isolates produced four major extracellular enzymes which were amylase, protease, gelatinase and lipase and able to form biofilm after 24 hr of cultured. Thus, B. amyloliquefaciens showed important characteristics as probiotic which worth to be carried out for in vivo challenge assay.
Barriers and Solutions for Increasing the Integration of Solar Photovoltaic in Kenya’s Electricity Mix

Currently, Kenya depends mainly on oil, geothermal energy and hydro resources for electricity production, however all three have associated issues. Oil-based electricity generation is environmentally harmful, expensive and a burden to the national trade balance. The rivers for hydropower and their tributaries are found in arid and semi-arid areas with erratic rainfall leading to problems of supply security, and geothermal exploitation has cost and risk issues amongst others. Given these problems and the fact that Kenya has a significant yet underexploited potential for photo voltaic (PV)-based power generation, the limited—although growing—exploitation of solar PV in Kenya is explored in this paper as a means of diversifying and stabilising electricity supply. The potential for integration of PV into the Kenyan electricity generation mix is analysed together with the sociotechnical, economic, political, and institutional and policy barriers, which limit PV integration. We argue that these barriers can be overcome with improved and more robust policy regulations, additional investments in research and development, and improved coordination of the use of different renewable energy sources. Most noticeably, storage solutions and other elements of flexibility need to be incorporated to balance the intermittent character of electricity generation based on solar PV.
Better to have led and lost than never to have led at all? Lost leadership and effort provision in dynamic tournaments

In this paper, we develop and test a behavioral theory of lost leadership. Using insights from the literature on goals as reference points and prospect theory, we predict that former leaders exert more effort compared to otherwise identical competitors. We test this prediction using two contexts. The first, quasi-laboratory, data comes from an educational business game. The second setting draws on field data from a two-month banking sales contest. We find that provision of effort increases following the loss of leadership. We also explore whether past leaders exert more effort in general or simply shift effort from other, potentially less-salient goals. We find evidence of both mechanisms. Finally, we investigate the temporal effects and find that having been a leader has an attenuating effect on subsequent behavior.
Morpho-physiological characterization of wheat (Triticum aestivum) for Stay Green trait

Wheat is the major cereal crop all over the world, as the ecological cycle is changing day by day due to environmental changes so, efforts should be made to develop improved crops. Stay Green trait is one of the major character of the crop to sustain under abiotic stresses. In the present study, 10 wheat varieties viz. HUW 510, C 306, Sonalika, HD 2135, HD 2177, VL 401, K 9162, RAJ 3765, K 68, K 7410 were collected to develop the Stay Green genotype. The seeds of these ten wheat varieties were treated with 1% EMS for 90 minutes. Among the morphological characteristics of wheat varieties under controlled and treatment, the characters as: plant height, leaf area, numbers of productive tillers/plant, days of maturity were recorded at pre-harvest stage and seeds per spike, length of spike, spikelets/spike and 1000 grain weight were recorded at post-harvest stage. In the present study, significant reduction in yield components like seeds per spike, 1000 grain weight was observed in all the ten wheat varieties in control and treatment. After EMS treatment, the wheat variety K 7410 and RAJ 3765, performed better after EMS treatment can be considered as Stay Green genotype and may be resistant to abiotic stress like drought, high temperature etc.
Enteral Feeding: Brain-Visceral Interactions in the Processing of Nutrients

Enteral nutrition is often mandatory, especially for patients in vegetative or minimally conscious state. However, its application is nonviable in certain cases due to various adverse effects. Some of these are explained by absence of the cephalic phase of digestion, during which exocrine, endocrine, and motor physiological responses prepare the digestive system to receive, digest, transform, and utilize ingested nutrients. These responses result from the stimulation by nutrients of cephalic sensory systems, mainly in the oropharyngeal cavity, and can also be elicited by food-related thoughts or expectations. The digestive system appears able to rapidly assess the suitability of food and transmit this information to the brain. The vagus nerve and its brainstem relays in the caudal nucleus of the solitary tract (NST) and parabrachial complex appear to participate in the anatomic pathway responsible for this rapid processing. Thus, blockade of the vagus nerve, NST, or external lateral parabrachial region (LPBe) interrupts expression of conditioned taste preferences induced by administration of “predigested” food, while LPBe activation by electric stimulation generates similar preferences to those observed after cephalic food administration. This review may help design enteral diets better adapted to digestive physiology and develop pharmacological interventions against adverse effects of enteral nutrition.
Efficient feature selection on gene expression data: Which algorithm to use?

Background Feature selection seeks to identify a minimal-size subset of features that is maximally predictive of the outcome of interest. It is particularly important for biomarker discovery from high-dimensional molecular data, where the features could correspond to gene expressions, Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), proteins concentrations, e.t. c. We evaluate, empirically, three state-of-the-art, feature selection algorithms, scalable to high-dimensional data: a novel generalized variant of OMP (gOMP), LASSO and FBED. All three greedily select the next feature to include; the first two employ the residuals re-sulting from the current selection, while the latter rebuilds a statistical model. The algorithms are compared in terms of predictive performance, number of selected features and computational efficiency, on gene expression data with either survival time (censored time-to-event) or disease status (case-control) as an outcome. This work attempts to answer a) whether gOMP is to be preferred over LASSO and b) whether residual-based algorithms, e.g. gOMP, are to be preferred over algorithms, such as FBED, that rely heavily on regression model fitting. Results gOMP is on par, or outperforms LASSO in all metrics, predictive performance, number of features selected and computational efficiency. Contrasting gOMP to FBED, both exhibit similar performance in terms of predictive performance and number of selected features. Overall, gOMP combines the benefits of both LASSO and FBED; it is computationally efficient and produces parsimonious models of high predictive performance. Conclusions The use of gOMP is suggested for variable selection with high-dimensional gene expression data, and the target variable need not be restricted to time-to-event or case control, as examined in this paper.
Fiscal reforms in the EMU: the Greek response

ABSTRACT The common fiscal rules in the EMU constitute one of the main economic integration pillars, with the fiscal governance framework in the eurozone having been significantly reformed over the economic crisis period. Changes focusing on creating fiscal stability conditions, such as the national Fiscal Councils, the European Semester, the national Medium-Term Budgetary Frameworks (MTBFs), the debt brake and the automatic fiscal correction mechanism (budget cutter) were adopted through the legislative measures introduced by the Six Pack, the Two Pack and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU (TSCG). This paper examines both the formal and actual response of Greece to the eurozone fiscal governance reforms. Greece seems to promote the formal implementation of these reforms by transposing them into its national law, but the paper’s conclusions confirm that there is a deviation between reaching the defined goals and actually implementing the reforms.