Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High resolution testbed for heterogenous industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks

A modular and scalable testbed for synchronized network-wide power consumption evaluation and analysis of synchronization and latency performance within industrial wireless sensor and actuator networks (IWSAN) is presented in this paper. Using a dedicated measurement hardware the highly dynamic power consumption of wireless embedded systems can be tracked over 5 decades from μW in low power sleep modes up to several hundreds of mW during RF transmission and full processor activity. Further, as IWSANs have high demands on synchronicity and low latency, our testbed allows automated measurements to evaluate synchronization accuracy and latency within the network with a time granularity of 125 ns and thus meets most industrial requirements. For this we use an Industrial RealTime Ethernet (RTE) network. Our combination of distributed ethernet-connected power measurement circuits with the RTE system allows a network-wide synchronized acquisition of the sensor nodes power consumption and supply voltage waveforms of all observed nodes. The wired RTE and Ethernet networks guarantee a scalable measurement setup and are not in conflict with the wireless devices under test. We demonstrate the usability of the proposed measurement setup by means of investigating two different heterogenous setups of real-world wireless networks. First we analyze the timing behavior of distributed standardized ZigBee nodes exclusively based on their power consumption measurements. And in contrary we present a proprietary industrial WSN dedicated to low power consumption and high sampling synchronicity of the individual nodes and evaluate their synchronization performance.
Construction of a Generic Program Representation for Automated Metric Computation

Software code metrics provide a quantitative and qualitative measurement of a software component’s ability to perform under a specific set of objectives. Different metrics have been developed for analyzing various aspects of the source code to gain insight into the overall quality of the code under study. There are a variety of open source tools available for computing metrics for applications coded in most of the popular programming languages. However, there is no single tool that computes software metrics for the popular programming languages in use today. To address this problem, we describe an approach to software metric computation that can be applied to the popular programming languages currently in use, including both compiled and interpreted languages. The approach entails leveraging existing parser tools to produce a generalized abstract syntax tree that captures the important syntactic categories required for metric computation. To demonstrate the utility of our approach, we exploit front-end parser tools for the Python and C++ programming languages to produce a generalized abstract syntax tree and then compute software metrics as a form of tree traversal. We describe our results for applying two commonly used metrics to three open source software projects and various code samples written in both Python and C++. The context of this process is then extended to computer programming education, with the specific goal of helping students and programmers improve the quality of their code.
Periodic Leaky-Wave Antenna With Circular Polarization and Low-SLL Properties

A periodic leaky-wave array antenna with circular polarization and low sidelobe level (SLL) for millimeter-wave application is proposed. The unit cell of the array consists of four circular split rings located on both sides of a low-loss substrate, and a planar Goubau line is used to excite the split rings to generate radiation. The antenna can realize an impedance bandwidth larger than 67%, and the 3 dB axial-ratio bandwidth is about 8.9%. The maximum gain is about 18 dBi. To reduce the SLL, the leakage loss factor α along the radiation aperture is tapered, using beamforming technique, by controlling the aperture field distribution into a cosine function. The results show that the SLL of the proposed antenna is about 6 dB lower than that of the antenna with uniform aperture field distribution. The antenna was fabricated and measured, and the experimental results are in good agreement with those of simulation.
Homeostatic plasticity and external input shape neural network dynamics

In vitro and in vivo spiking activity clearly differ. Whereas networks in vitro develop strong bursts separated by periods of very little spiking activity, in vivo cortical networks show continuous activity. This is puzzling considering that both networks presumably share similar single-neuron dynamics and plasticity rules. We propose that the defining difference between in vitro and in vivo dynamics is the strength of external input. In vitro, networks are virtually isolated, whereas in vivo every brain area receives continuous input. We analyze a model of spiking neurons in which the input strength, mediated by spike rate homeostasis, determines the characteristics of the dynamical state. In more detail, our analytical and numerical results on various network topologies show consistently that under increasing input, homeostatic plasticity generates distinct dynamic states, from bursting, to close-to-critical, reverberating and irregular states. This implies that the dynamic state of a neural network is not fixed but can readily adapt to the input strengths. Indeed, our results match experimental spike recordings in vitro and in vivo: the in vitro bursting behavior is consistent with a state generated by very low network input (< 0.1%), whereas in vivo activity suggests that on the order of 1% recorded spikes are input-driven, resulting in reverberating dynamics. Importantly, this predicts that one can abolish the ubiquitous bursts of in vitro preparations, and instead impose dynamics comparable to in vivo activity by exposing the system to weak long-term stimulation, thereby opening new paths to establish an in vivo-like assay in vitro for basic as well as neurological studies.
Micronuclei as prognostic marker: A clinicopathologic study

Background: Tobacco products attribute to oral cancer. Chronic smoking causes permanent damage to the oral mucosal cells and results in micronuclei (MN) formation. Aims and Objectives: The present study design was to assess the MN number in different locations of the oral cavity and to assess the damaging effects in patients who smoke and those who had left the habit recently. Materials and Methods: Three groups were included in the study. The first group included smokers; the second group included those who recently quit the smoking habit; and the third group included those without habit. Cytosmears were taken and stained with rapid Papanicolaou. MN were observed using a polarized light microscope. Results: Mean values of MN were observed more in the buccal mucosa, followed by lower labial mucosa and floor of the mouth. A significant increase in MN was observed in smokers group, a significant decrease in recently quit habit group and no MN observed in the control group. Conclusion: The genotoxic effects of tobacco smoke cause MN, and the counts can be used as a non-invasive early diagnostic tool. This finding was important in using MN detection in various areas of the mouth and a prognostic indicator to determine smoking cessation.
Expansion of subarctic water masses in the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans and implications for mid‐Pleistocene ice sheet growth

[1] Past surface ocean circulation changes associated with the mid-Pleistocene transition, 0.9–0.6 Ma, were reconstructed in the northern North Atlantic (ODP 983) and the northwest Pacific (ODP 882), using proxies for subarctic/subpolar water mass distributions (%C37:4 alkenone) and sea surface temperature (U37 ). Both sites experienced a secular expansion of subarctic waters from � 1.15 Ma, spanning both glacial and interglacial intervals. After 0.9 Ma, low %C37:4 at Site 983 records a northward retreat of subarctic waters during interglacials in the Atlantic, while continued high glacial %C37:4 indicate extensive subarctic waters during glacial maxima associated with the development of the larger late Pleistocene ice sheets. In contrast, a secular decline in %C37:4 occurred at Site 882 from 0.9 to 0.5 Ma, marking a more gradual retreat of subarctic conditions in the Pacific. It is proposed that the expansion of subarctic waters between 1.15 and 0.9 Ma exerted negative feedbacks to the moisture supply to the ice sheet source regions and may account for the apparent delayed ice sheet response to atmosphere-ocean circulation changes associated with the mid-Pleistocene transition that began as early as 1.2 Ma.
Sexuality after Male-to-Female Gender Affirmation Surgery

Male-to-Female (MtF) gender affirmation surgery (GAS) comprises the creation of a functional and aesthetic perineogenital complex. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of GAS on sexuality. We retrospectively surveyed all 254 MtF transsexual patients who had undergone GAS with penile inversion vaginoplasty at the Department of Urology, University Hospital Essen, Germany, between 2004 and 2010. In total, we received 119 completed questionnaires after a median of 5.05 years since surgery. Of the study participants, 33.7% reported a heterosexual, 37.6% a lesbian, and 22.8% a bisexual orientation related to the self-perceived gender. Of those who had sexual intercourse, 55.8% rated their orgasms to be more intensive than before, with 20.8% who felt no difference. Most patients were satisfied with the sensitivity of the neoclitoris (73.9%) and with the depth of the neovaginal canal (67.1%). The self-estimated pleasure of sexual activity correlated significantly with neoclitoral sensitivity but not with neovaginal depth. There was a significant correlation between the ease with which patients were able to become sexually aroused and their ability to achieve orgasms. In conclusion, orgasms after surgery were experienced more intensely than before in the majority of women in our cohort and neoclitoral sensitivity seems to contribute to enjoyment of sexual activity to a greater extent than neovaginal depth.
Taking Omid to the Clouds: Fast, Scalable Transactions for Real-Time Cloud Analytics

We describe how we evolve Omid, a transaction processing system for Apache HBase, to power Apache Phoenix, a cloud-grade real-time SQL analytics engine. Omid was originally designed for data processing pipelines at Yahoo, which are, by and large, throughput-oriented monolithic NoSQL applications. Providing a platform to support converged real-time transaction processing and analytics applications - dubbed translytics - introduces new functional and performance requirements. For example, SQL support is key for developer productivity, multi-tenancy is essential for cloud deployment, and latency is cardinal for just-in-time data ingestion and analytics insights. We discuss our efforts to adapt Omid to these new domains, as part of the process of integrating it into Phoenix as the transaction processing backend. A central piece of our work is latency reduction in Omid's protocol, which also improves scalability. Under light load, the new protocol's latency is 4x to 5x smaller than the legacy Omid's, whereas under increased loads it is an order of magnitude faster. We further describe a fast path protocol for single-key transactions, which enables processing them almost as fast as native HBase operations.
Recent Progress in Log-Concave Density Estimation

In recent years, log-concave density estimation via maximum likelihood estimation has emerged as a fascinating alternative to traditional nonparametric smoothing techniques, such as kernel density estimation, which require the choice of one or more bandwidths. The purpose of this article is to describe some of the properties of the class of log-concave densities on $\mathbb{R}^d$ which make it so attractive from a statistical perspective, and to outline the latest methodological, theoretical and computational advances in the area.
Learning in Variational Autoencoders with Kullback-Leibler and Renyi Integral Bounds

In this paper we propose two novel bounds for the log-likelihood based on Kullback-Leibler and the R\'{e}nyi divergences, which can be used for variational inference and in particular for the training of Variational AutoEncoders. Our proposal is motivated by the difficulties encountered in training VAEs on continuous datasets with high contrast images, such as those with handwritten digits and characters, where numerical issues often appear unless noise is added, either to the dataset during training or to the generative model given by the decoder. The new bounds we propose, which are obtained from the maximization of the likelihood of an interval for the observations, allow numerically stable training procedures without the necessity of adding any extra source of noise to the data.
Fused Table Scans: Combining AVX-512 and JIT to Double the Performance of Multi-Predicate Scans

Recent work has started to combine two approaches for faster query execution: Vectorization and Just-in-Time Compilation (JIT). Combining the advantages of block-at-a-time and tuple-at-a-time processing opens up opportunities for performance improvements. In this context, we present the Fused Table Scan, a just-in-time-compiled scan operator for consecutive table scans. It makes use of the Intel AVX-512 instruction set to combine multiple predicates in a single scan. This reduces the number of instruction-level branches and makes memory access more efficient. We show that the Fused Table Scan doubles the scan performance in most cases and can achieve a speed-up of up to a factor of ten over sequential execution. Furthermore, we discuss which query plans profit from the Fused Table Scan and how the operator code can be generated at runtime.
Detection of Nearby Obstacles with Monocular Vision for Earthmoving Operations

The equipment used in earthmoving operations poses a significant threat to the safety of the equipment operator and construction workers due to the operator’s inherently poor visibility of the surrounding environment. This study proposes a method of automated detection of nearby obstacles with monocular vision, with the goal of protecting the equipment operator and construction workers from potentially dangerous situations, such as collisions between earthmoving equipment and obstacles within a certain proximity. The proposed method consists of three steps: 1) correction of lens distortion prior to further processing, 2) shadow removal, and 3) detection of nearby obstacles with a predefined height level via perspective transformations. The proposed method was tested on video streams acquired from a camera installed on the side of the equipment body while an excavator executed excavating and moving tasks. The experimental results showed that the proposed method can provide the equipment operator with information about nearby obstacles during the excavator’s manipulation and transportation. It is expected that the proposed method can be implemented in rearview monitoring systems and surrounding view monitoring systems for operator assistance and to achieve active safety.
Fast alternative to gradient computation in the DCT block domain for local binary patterns computation

Computationally efficient implementation of different image processing and analysis algorithms is very important when implementing such tasks on mobile devices. Such a case can be the visual surveillance of the critical infrastructures (like hydro-dams), where images can be acquired on-site by an operator using a mobile device and an objective result of their analysis may be desired. Texture features (edge density, local binary patterns) derived from local gradient information can be efficient to assess the degradation of the concrete hydro-dam walls (in terms of crack characterization and surface degradation), and their numerically efficient implementation in the compressed image data domain allow to be implemented on any device. We propose here an efficient solution to compute local binary patterns in the compressed DCT block domain, which is the basis of JPEG image encoding, via local omni-directional gradients. Results are illustrated on an image acquired from the downstream face of a concrete hydro-dam, compared to the decompressed image implementation, and discussed in terms of numerical efficiency.
Understanding Ephemeral Storage for Serverless Analytics

Serverless computing frameworks allow users to launch thousands of concurrent tasks with high elasticity and fine-grain resource billing without explicitly managing computing resources. While already successful for IoT and web microservices, there is increasing interest in leveraging serverless computing to run data-intensive jobs, such as interactive analytics. A key challenge in running analytics workloads on serverless platforms is enabling tasks in different execution stages to efficiently communicate data between each other via a shared data store. In this paper, we explore the suitability of different cloud storage services (e.g., object stores and distributed caches) as remote storage for serverless analytics. Our analysis leads to key insights to guide the design of an ephemeral cloud storage system, including the performance and cost efficiency of Flash storage for serverless application requirements and the need for a pay-what-you-use storage service that can support the high throughput demands of highly parallel applications.
Reducing the burden of venous thromboembolism in the acute medically ill population with extended-duration thromboprophylaxis

Abstract Hospitalized acute medically ill patients are vulnerable to venous thromboembolism (VTE), known as hospital-acquired thrombosis (HAT). The elevated risk of HAT is usually due to a combination of factors, with immobility and a prothrombotic state due to acute illness being the most frequent. The HAT risk persists well after hospital discharge, with more than half of events occurring after patient release. These HAT events may be fatal, and patients who survive the initial event may be subject to VTE recurrence, chronic discomfort from post-thrombotic syndrome and, although rare, may develop chronic thrombo-embolic pulmonary hypertension, which is often debilitating. The risk of HAT can be reduced with effective thromboprophylaxis. Current guidelines recommend thromboprophylaxis with subcutaneous heparin, low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) or fondaparinux for at-risk acute medically ill patients, but reports of real-world practice indicated that some patients do not receive protection in the short-term as outlined by the guidelines. Previous studies that have assessed extended thromboprophylaxis for 4–5 weeks with LMWH or direct oral anticoagulants in medically ill patients found they did not offer a net clinical benefit; any demonstrated efficacy was outweighed by the significantly increased risk of major haemorrhage. Therefore, there is an ongoing need for improved VTE prevention without increasing the risk of bleeding. In the APEX trial, conducted in an acute medically ill population, betrixaban provided a significant reduction in VTE events after 35 to 42 days of treatment compared with short-term enoxaparin without an increase in major bleeding.
Identifying Desert Regions for Improved Intercalibration of Satellite Microwave Radiometers

This paper describes the technical approach to generate homogeneous warm brightness temperature scene binary mask over the earth for the intercalibration of microwave imagers. The objective is to identify homogeneous desert scenes as targets in radiometric intercalibration of multisource multisensor systems such as Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) constellation. In this paper, a method is developed to generate mask over continental Australia using 10, 18, and 37 GHz vertical and horizontal polarized radiance observations from GPM Microwave Imager data. Major factors considered are diurnal variation, second Stokes parameter, spatial homogeneity, and surface emissivity. Major advantage of this tool is its minimal, almost negligible, dependence on any external ancillary modeled or observed data.
Microbiological processes in banded iron formation deposition

Banded iron formations have been studied for decades, particularly regarding their potential as archives of the Precambrian environment. In spite of this effort, the mechanism of their deposition and, specifically, the role that microbes played in the precipitation of banded iron formation minerals, remains unresolved. Evidence of an anoxic Earth with only localized oxic areas until the Great Oxidation Event ca 2·45 to 2·32 Ga makes the investigation of O2‐independent mechanisms for banded iron formation deposition relevant. Recent studies have explored the long‐standing proposition that Archean banded iron formations may have been formed, and diagenetically modified, by anaerobic microbial metabolisms. These efforts encompass a wide array of approaches including isotope, ecophysiological and phylogeny studies, molecular and mineral marker analysis, and sedimentological reconstructions. Herein, the current theories of microbial processes in banded iron formation mineral deposition with particular regard to the mechanisms of chemical sedimentation and post‐depositional alteration are described. The main findings of recent years are summarized and compared here, and suggestions are made regarding cross‐disciplinary information still required to constrain the role of the biosphere in banded iron formation deposition.
Invasion of Sargassum muticum in Limfjorden (Denmark) and its possible impact on the indigenous macroalgal community

Attached Sargassum muticum (Yendo) Fensholt was first observed in the westernmost part of Limfjorden (Denmark) in 1984, and it has since colonized Limfjorden from west to east at a rate of 15 to 17 km yr -1 . By 1997, S. muticum had become the most dominant macroalga, covering more than 6% of the bottom between 0 and 6 m depth, corresponding to ca 35% cover of the hard sub- strate. In 1990, the cover of S. muticum was strongly correlated with distance from the original source area in the westernmost part of the estuary, suggesting that colonization was still in progress. By 1997, the cover of S. muticum was less correlated with distance from the original source area and more strongly correlated with the amount of hard substrate, indicating that colonization was reach- ing its climax. The absence of S. muticum from certain parts of Limfjorden by 1997 is therefore best explained by lack of hard substrate in these areas, and not by insufficient colonization time. The increased abundance of S. muticum between 1990 and 1997 affected species richness and diversity of the macroalgal community only marginally. However, multivariate community analysis revealed significant changes in the macroalgal community structure that were closely related to the increased abundance of S. muticum. Not only did the dominance of S. muticum increase significantly from 1990 to 1997, but the cover of several indigenous species belonging to the genera Laminaria, Fucus, and Codium decreased during the same period, indicating competitive displacement through competition for hard substrate and light.
Circularly Polarized Transmitarray Antennas at Ka-Band

This letter presents the simulation, optimization, and demonstration of a collimated-beam transmitarray and a quad-beam transmitarray operating at Ka-band. Both transmitarrays are based on a 3 bit unit cell implementing both phase-shift and linear-to-circular polarization conversion functions. The collimated-beam transmitarray presents a measured gain of 33.8 dBi (corresponding to an aperture efficiency of 51.2%) and a 3 dB gain bandwidth larger than 15.9%. The quad-beam transmitarray phase distribution has been optimized by a genetic algorithm code coupled with an analytical tool. The array is designed to radiate four beams at θ0 = ± 25° in the horizontal and vertical planes at the frequency of optimization.