Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Affine Projection Versoria Algorithm for Robust Adaptive Echo Cancellation in Hands-Free Voice Communications

In vehicle hands-free communication systems and video teleconferencing systems, echoes are typically encountered. Adaptive filters are usually employed to remove the echoes in these applications. However, large outliers and highly correlated speech input signals are two key factors that limit the performance of the adaptive filters. In this paper, we propose an affine projection Versoria (APV) algorithm, which is obtained by maximizing the summation of Versoria-cost reusing with a constraint on the square of the L2-norm of the filter weight vector difference. In this way, the features of the Versoria-cost maximization and data reusing are combined and, consequently, the proposed APV algorithm obtains robustness to the large outliers and accelerates the convergence rate for the correlated input signals. The complexity of the proposed APV algorithm is analyzed and then a fast recursive filtering technique is introduced to reduce its complexity. A stability analysis proves that the proposed APV algorithm is convergent. In addition, an analytical expression of the steady-state excess mean-square error for the proposed APV algorithm has been derived and simulated results are in agreement with the theoretical analysis result. Simulations on echo channel estimation and echo cancellation show that the proposed APV algorithm performs much better than the maximum Versoria criterion, affine projection sign, and affine projection algorithms.
An Adaptive Multipath Algorithm to Overcome the Unpredictability of Heterogeneous Wireless Networks for High-Speed Railway

Accessing Internet services in high-speed mobile scenario is an increasing demand for passengers and vendors. Owing to the bandwidth limitation of a single wireless network, researchers attempt to utilize the heterogeneous wireless networks along tracks to achieve multipath parallel transmission. These multipath transmission schemes usually depend on the accurate estimation of network quality to achieve high performance. However, due to the unpredictability of wireless networks in high-speed mobile scenario, current multipath transmission schemes perform poorly. In this paper, first, we make quantitative analysis for the unpredictability of wireless networks. With lots of results of real experiments, we make quantitative analysis for the estimation error of classical algorithms in different scenarios. Second, aiming at the unpredictability of wireless networks, we propose a multipath transmission algorithm named receiver adaptive incremental delay (RAID) that can aggregate bandwidth for heterogeneous networks independent of accurate network quality estimation. Final, we deploy the RAID algorithm into a real system. Abundant of real experiments and simulations prove that our proposed algorithm has a better performance than the earliest completion first algorithm and the weighted round Robin (WRR) algorithm in high-speed mobile scenario.
A Computationally Efficient and Hierarchical Control Strategy for Velocity Optimization of On-Road Vehicles

Velocity profile optimization of on-road vehicles is one of the main eco-driving techniques, which has great potential to extend the capability of powertrain and automatic longitudinal control by minimizing the energy consumption. Due to the multi factors affecting the driving trajectory and longer prediction horizon comparing with other traditional control, the calculation of a velocity profile optimization often requires a large number of computations. In this paper, a hierarchical control (HC) strategy of velocity optimization is proposed to reduce computation burden with little accuracy loss. In the HC strategy, a specific driving task is divided into several operation of modes as acceleration (A), constant speed (C), deceleration (D), and braking (B). The shift timing of the driving modes are optimized by formulating a nonlinear programming problem in a master controller. Then, engine torque, gear position, and brake force are optimized in each driving mode. Results indicate that the computation time of velocity profile optimization using the proposed HC strategy is reduced by 90% of the ones using the basic centralized optimal controller while the resulting velocities are similar. It is also shown that an improvement of 30% in fuel economy is achieved compared with the real-life human-driven velocity profiles.
Kafe: Can OS Kernels Forward Packets Fast Enough for Software Routers?

It is widely believed that software routers based on commodity operating systems cannot deliver high-speed packet processing, and a number of alternative approaches (including user-space network stacks) have been proposed. This paper revisits the inefficiency of kernel-level packet processing inside modern OS-based software routers and explores whether a redesign of kernel network stacks can improve the incompetence. We present a case contrary to the belief through a redesign: Kafe—a kernel-based advanced forwarding engine that can process packets as fast as user-space network stacks. The Kafe neither adds any new API nor depends on proprietary hardware features, but the Kafe outperforms Linux by seven times and RouteBricks by three times. The current implementation of the Kafe can forward 64-byte IPv4 packets at 28.2 Gbps using eight cores running at 2.6 GHz. Our evaluation results show that the Kafe achieves similar packet forwarding performance to Intel DPDK while consuming much less CPU and memory resources.
A Load-Balancing Mechanism for Distributed SDN Control Plane Using Response Time

Software-defined networking (SDN) has become a popular paradigm for managing large-scale networks including cloud servers and data centers because of its advantages of centralized management and programmability. The issues of scalability and reliability that a single centralized controller suffers makes distributed controller architectures emerge. One key limitation of distributed controllers is the statically configured switch-controller mapping, easily causing uneven load distribution among controllers. Previous works have proposed load-balancing methods with switch migration to address this issue. However, the higher-load controller is always directly considered as the overloaded controller that need to shift its load to other controllers, even if it has no response time delay. The pursuit of absolute load-balancing effect can also result in frequent network delays and service interruptions. Additionally, if there are several overloaded controllers, just one controller with the maximum load can be addressed within a single load-balancing operation, reducing load-balancing efficiency. To address these problems, we propose SMCLBRT, a load-balancing strategy of multiple SDN controllers based on response time, considering the changing features of real-time response times versus controller loads. By selecting the appropriate response time threshold and dealing with multiple overloading controllers simultaneously, it can well solve load-balancing problem in SDN control plane with multiple overloaded controllers. Simulation experiments exhibit the effectiveness of our scheme.
Analog Precoding Designs for Millimeter Wave Communication Systems

Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is expected to be a key technology for 5G networks, because it can provide high data rates and large available bandwidth. Large antenna array is necessary to be applied to mmWave system to overcome the high path loss. Restricted by power consumption and system complexity, traditional digital precoding cannot be used for mmWave system. Therefore, analog radio frequency signal processing is introduced to simplify the architecture of precoder. In this paper, we propose dominant vector approaching (DVA) searching method for analog precoder design. Assuming that the channel state information is known at both transmitter and receiver sides, we decompose the analog precoding problem into a series of subproblems. For each subproblem, we just need to optimize one column of analog precoding matrix. Then, we can apply DVA searching method to solve these subproblems under unit modulus constraint. For the fully-connected structure (FS) and the partially-connected structure (PS), we propose DVA-FS and DVA-PS as our precoding designs, respectively. In addition, we prove that DVA searching method finds the near-optimal solutions for the nonconvex subproblems. Through simulation, we show that DVA algorithms achieve near-optimal performance with analog precoder in different scenarios. Besides, we investigate the effect of quantization and the energy efficiency of DVA algorithms, and find that they perform well with rough quantization.
Timely-Throughput Optimal Scheduling With Prediction

Motivated by the increasing importance of providing delay-guaranteed services in general computing and communication systems, and the recent wide adoption of learning and prediction in network control, in this paper, we consider a general stochastic single-server multi-user system and investigate the fundamental benefit of predictive scheduling in improving timely-throughput, being the rate of packets that are delivered to destinations before their deadlines. By adopting an error rate based prediction model, we first derive a Markov decision process (MDP) solution to optimize the timely-throughput objective subject to an average resource consumption constraint. Based on a packet-level decomposition of the MDP, we explicitly characterize the optimal scheduling policy and rigorously quantify the timely-throughput improvement due to predictive-service, which scales as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Theta (p[C_{1}{(a-a_{\max }q)}\rho ^{\tau }/({p-q})+C_{2}(1-({1}/{p})](1-\rho ^{D}))$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$a, a_{\max }, \rho \in (0, 1), C_{1}>0, C_{2}\ge 0$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are constants, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the true-positive rate in prediction, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$q$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the false-negative rate, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\tau $ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the packet deadline, and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$D$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the prediction window size. We also conduct extensive simulations to validate our theoretical findings. Our results provide novel insights into how prediction and system parameters impact performance and provide useful guidelines for designing predictive low-latency control algorithms.
Exploring the mechanistic link between corticosterone and insulin-like growth factor-1 in a wild passerine bird

Background Physiological regulators of life history trade-offs need to be responsive to sudden changes of resource availability. When homeostasis is challenged by unpredictable stressors, vertebrates respond through a set of physiological reactions, which can promote organismal survival. Glucocorticoids have been traditionally recognized as one of the main regulators of the physiological stress response, but the role of an evolutionarily more conserved pathway, the hypothalamic-pituitary-somatotropic (HPS) axis producing insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) has received much less attention. Although IGF-1 is known to affect several life history traits, little is known about its role in the physiological stress response and it has never been studied directly in adult wild animals. Methods In this study, we combined field observations with a controlled experiment to investigate how circulating levels of IGF-1 change in response to stress and whether this change is due to concomitant change in glucocorticoids in a free-living songbird, the bearded reedling Panurus biarmicus. We used a standard capture-restraint protocol in field observation, in which we took first and second (stress induced: 15 minutes later) samples. In a follow-up experiment, we used a minimally invasive oral corticosterone manipulation. Results We showed that corticosterone levels significantly increased while IGF-1 levels significantly decreased during capture and handling stress. However, change in corticosterone levels were not related to change in IGF-1 levels. We found that experimentally elevated corticosterone levels did not affect IGF-1 levels. Discussion Our results are the first to highlight that circulating IGF-1 levels are responsive to stress independently from glucocorticoids and suggest that the HPS axis is an autonomous physiological pathway that may play an important role as regulator of life-history decisions.
Can serum progranulin levels be a biomarker following gastric ulcer therapy?

Introduction Progranulin is a novel growth factor that has several physiological and pathological roles such as cell growth, tumourigenesis, embryogenesis, wound healing, and inflammation. Aim To compare the pre-treatment and post-treatment serum levels of the angiogenic factor vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), pro-inflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), and progranulin in peptic ulcer (PU) patients with a healthy control group. Material and methods Serum VEGF, TNF-α, and progranulin levels were studied with ELISA in 42 PU patients (antral ulcer (AU): 22, duodenal ulcer (DU): 20) and 15 healthy controls. Results The serum progranulin levels before treatment were 4237.35 ±1091.30 pg/ml in the patients with AU, 4682.64 ±1501.46 pg/ml in the patients with DU, 3055.66 ±626.88 pg/ml in the control group, and 4460 ±1315 pg/ml in the ulcer (AU and DU) group. The serum progranulin levels were 3607.7 ±869.4 pg/ml in the AU group, 4286.5 ±1208.78 pg/ml in the DU group, and 3947.1 ±1094.64 pg/ml in the ulcer group after the treatment. When comparing pre-treatment serum progranulin levels of the AU group, DU group, and ulcer group with the control group there were statistically significant differences (p < 0.001, p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001, respectively). Conclusions The disappearance of the difference in terms of post-treatment serum levels of progranulin between the AU group and the control group suggests that serum levels of progranulin can be used as a biomarker of gastric ulcer healing.
Management of autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease—state-of-the-art

Abstract Autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is the most frequent genetic cause of end-stage renal disease in adults. Affected individuals and families face a significant medical and psychosocial burden due to both renal and extrarenal manifestations. Consequently, interventions that ameliorate the course of the disease and specifically slow down the loss of kidney function are of special interest. Major research efforts in both the clinical and pre-clinical setting in the last two decades resulted in a number of pivotal clinical trials aimed to ameliorate the disease. These studies have underlined the important role of specific supportive measures and provided the basis for first targeted pharmacological therapies. Very recently, the concept of repurposing drugs approved for other conditions for a use in ADPKD has gained increasing attention. Here, we review the current best-practice management of ADPKD patients with a focus on interventions that have reached clinical use to maintain kidney function and give an outlook on future trials and potential novel treatment strategies.
Bio‐Inspired Micropatterned Platforms Recapitulate 3D Physiological Morphologies of Bone and Dentinal Cells

Cells exhibit distinct 3D morphologies in vivo, and recapitulation of physiological cell morphologies in vitro is pivotal not only to elucidate many fundamental biological questions, but also to develop new approaches for tissue regeneration and drug screening. However, conventional cell culture methods in either a 2D petri dish or a 3D scaffold often lead to the loss of the physiological morphologies for many cells, such as bone cells (osteocytes) and dentinal cells (odontoblasts). Herein, a unique approach in developing a 3D extracellular matrix (ECM)‐like micropatterned synthetic matrix as a physiologically relevant 3D platform is reported to recapitulate the morphologies of osteocytes and odontoblasts in vitro. The bio‐inspired micropatterned matrix precisely mimics the hierarchic 3D nanofibrous tubular/canaliculi architecture as well as the compositions of the ECM of mineralized tissues, and is capable of controlling one single cell in a microisland of the matrix. Using this bio‐inspired 3D platform, individual bone and dental stem cells are successfully manipulated to recapitulate the physiological morphologies of osteocytes and odontoblasts in vitro, respectively. This work provides an excellent platform for an in‐depth understanding of cell–matrix interactions in 3D environments, paving the way for designing next‐generation biomaterials for tissue regeneration.
The Physical Attributes Most Required in Professional Ballet: A Delphi Study

Abstract Background It is commonly accepted that dancers are undoubtedly athletes, with ballet perhaps the most demanding dance form. No previous study has sought to define the physical attributes most desired for classical ballet by professional companies and vocational schools. These are likely to include both aesthetic features and attributes that reduce the risk of injury as well as enhance performance. Method An initial survey question using the modified Delphi technique was sent using Opinio Survey Software to a selected international expert panel. This was drawn both from those involved in selection of elite professional ballet dancers, and the international medical professionals involved in the care of dancers. The first questionnaire was open-ended to scope for all the physical attributes most favoured by the professional experts. Results There were 148 responses from the panel of international experts. In total 34 physical attributes were suggested. The 2 most recommended physical criteria for selection into the profession were overall flexibility and overall strength. These results are discussed in the context of the published literature on the mechanics, anatomy and physiology of ballet. Conclusion Flexibility and strength are the 2 features most sought after in elite ballet dancers.
Porcine Dermal Xenograft as Augmentation in the Treatment of Large Rotator Cuff Tears: Clinical and Magnetic Resonance Results at 2-Year Follow-Up

Abstract Purpose The aim of the present retrospective study is to describe the results obtained at 2-year follow-up by using a porcine dermis-derived collagen membrane implanted as augmentation to treat large rotator cuff tears. Methods Thirty-five patients in total were included according to the following criteria: large or massive rotator cuff tear, confirmed during surgery, measuring between 3 and 5 cm in width and stage 1 to 2 fatty infiltration documented at magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Patients underwent arthroscopic repair of the cuff augmented by the implantation of a porcine dermal collagen membrane. Patients were evaluated up to 24 months after surgery by the Constant score and MRI imaging to assess functional outcomes and re-tear rate. The results obtained were compared to those of a matched cohort of 35 patients operated by arthroscopic repair alone by the same surgical team. Results The application of the porcine membrane proved to be safe without scaffold-related adverse events documented. A statistically significant difference in the Constant score in favor of the treatment group was documented at the final evaluation (p = 0.036). Furthermore, a subgroup analysis revealed that patients treated by augmentation and presenting re-tear at MRI showed a significantly higher functional outcome compared with control patients with MRI evidence of re-tear (p = 0.0136). Conclusion Arthroscopic repair augmented by porcine dermal xenograft for the treatment of chronic and retracted rotator cuff tears with low-grade fatty degeneration proved to be safe and also effective, with higher functional score compared with the arthroscopic repair alone. Level of Evidence This is a Level III, retrospective cohort study.
Relationships between Cornell Musculoskeletal Discomfort Questionnaire and Online Rapid Office Strain Assessment Questionnaire

Background: The Rapid Office Strain Assessment (ROSA) is a tool employed online to screen office workstations, which may require modification to decrease musculoskeletal discomfort of workers. This study aimed to examine if the ROSA is able to evaluate pain severity in the lower back, shoulder and neck of office workers accurately. Methods: Overall, 142 participants (height: 1.80 ± 0.15 m, BMI: 26.08± 6.70, age: 35±15 yr) with at least a year of working experience completed both questionnaires, the online ROSA and the Cornell musculoskeletal discomfort, in 2016 in Malaysia. Results: Relationship between the total scores of both questionnaires for lower back, shoulder and neck pain were significant but exhibited a weak to moderate relationship (range of r values from 0.012 (CI 95%, −0.153–0.176) to 0.503 (CI 95%, 0.369–0.616). Conclusion: The online ROSA does not appear to be a reasonable tool for evaluating the severity of lower back, shoulder and neck pain among office workers as the correlations were low. We suggest continued use of the musculoskeletal discomfort questionnaire. Additional studies are required to further examine the ROSA for other anatomical regions.
Mechanical stress contributes to osteoarthritis development through the activation of transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1)

Objectives The role of mechanical stress and transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) is important in the initiation and progression of osteoarthritis (OA). However, the underlying molecular mechanisms are not clearly known. Methods In this study, TGF-β1 from osteoclasts and knee joints were analyzed using a co-cultured cell model and an OA rat model, respectively. Five patients with a femoral neck fracture (four female and one male, mean 73.4 years (68 to 79)) were recruited between January 2015 and December 2015. Results showed that TGF-β1 was significantly upregulated in osteoclasts by cyclic loading in a time- and dose-dependent mode. The osteoclasts were subjected to cyclic loading before being co-cultured with chondrocytes for 24 hours. Results A significant decrease in the survival rate of co-cultured chondrocytes was found. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate nick end labelling (TUNEL) assay demonstrated that mechanical stress-induced apoptosis occurred significantly in co-cultured chondrocytes but administration of the TGF-β1 receptor inhibitor, SB-505124, can significantly reverse these effects. Abdominal administration of SB-505124 can attenuate markedly articular cartilage degradation in OA rats. Conclusion Mechanical stress-induced overexpression of TGF-β1 from osteoclasts is responsible for chondrocyte apoptosis and cartilage degeneration in OA. Administration of a TGF-β1 inhibitor can inhibit articular cartilage degradation.Cite this article: R-K. Zhang, G-W. Li, C. Zeng, C-X. Lin, L-S. Huang, G-X. Huang, C. Zhao, S-Y. Feng, H. Fang. Mechanical stress contributes to osteoarthritis development through the activation of transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1). Bone Joint Res 2018;7:587-594. DOI: 10.1302/2046-3758.711. BJR-2018-0057.R1.