Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design of Survivable Optical Networks by Mathematical Optimization

Abstract The cost-efficient design of survivable optical telecommunication networks is the topic of this thesis. In cooperation with network operators, we have developed suitable concepts and mathematical optimization methods to solve this comprehensive planning task in practice. Optical technology is more and more employed in modern telecommunication networks. Digital information is thereby transmitted as short light pulses through glass fibers. Moreover, the optical medium allows for simultaneous transmissions on a single fiber by use of different wavelengths. Recent optical switches enable a direct forwarding of optical channels in the network nodes without the previously required signal retransformation to electronics. Their integration creates ongoing optical connections,which are called lightpaths. We study the problem of finding cost-efficient configurations of optical networks which meet specified communication requirements. A configuration comprises the determination of all lightpaths to establish as well as the detailed allocation of all required devices and systems. We use a flexible modeling framework for a realistic representation of the networks and their composition. For different network architectures, we formulate integer linear programs which model the design task in detail. Moreover, network survivability is an important issue due to the immense bandwidths offered by optical technology. Operators therefore request for designs which perpetuate protected connections and guarantee for a defined minimum throughput in case of malfunctions. In order to achieve an effective realization of scalable protection, we present a novel survivability concept tailored to optical networks and integrate several variants into the models. Our solution approach is based on a suitable model decomposition into two subtasks which separates two individually hard subproblems and enables this way to compute cost-efficient designs with approved quality guarantee. The first subtask consists of routing the connections with corresponding dimensioning of capacities and constitutes a common core task in the area of network planning. Sophisticated methods for such problems have already been developed and are deployed by appropriate integration. The second subtask is characteristic for optical networks and seeks for a conflict-free assignment of available wavelengths to the lightpaths using a minimum number of involved wavelength converters. For this coloring-like task, we derive particular models and study methods to estimate the number of unavoidable conversions. As constructive approach, we develop heuristics and an exact branch-and-price algorithm. Finally, we carry out an extensive computational study on realistic data, provided by our industrial partners. As twofold purpose, we demonstrate the potential of our approach for computing good solutions with quality guarantee, and we exemplify its flexibility for application to network design and analysis.
Promoting synthetic symbiosis under environmental disturbances

By virtue of complex interactions, the behaviour of mutualistic systems is difficult to study and nearly impossible to predict. We have developed a theoretical model of a modifiable experimental yeast system that is amenable to exploring self-organised cooperation while considering the production and use of specific metabolites. Leveraging the simplicity of an artificial yeast system, a simple model of mutualism, we develop and test the assumptions and stability of this theoretical model. We examine how one-off, recurring and permanent changes to an ecological niche affect a cooperative interaction and identify an ecological “Goldilocks zone” in which the mutualism can survive. Moreover, we explore how a factor like the cost of mutualism – the cellular burden of cooperating – influences the stability of mutualism and how environmental changes shape this stability. Our results highlight the fragility of mutualisms and suggest the use of synthetic biology to stave off an ecological collapse.
Mapping QoS parameters for multimedia services using ATM MIB objects

In this work, we first introduce the multimedia QoS parameters. We then construct the multimedia QoS service and management architecture composed of the service and management components for the end-to-end management of the QoS parameters. Component interactions between the service and management planes across the management layers are developed for the service access and negotiation phase. The QoS parameters are mapped onto the layers and components of the architecture and onto the different management domains. At the end, we demonstrate the mapping of the QoS parameters by using ATM SNMPv2 management information base (MIB) objects.
Short‐term load forecasting using informative vector machine

In this paper, a novel method is proposed for short‐term load forecasting, which is one of the important tasks in power system operation and planning. The load behavior is so complicated that it is hard to predict the load. The deregulated power market is faced with the new problem of an increase in the degree of uncertainty. Thus, power system operators are concerned with the significant level of load forecasting. Namely, probabilistic load forecasting is required to smooth power system operation and planning. In this paper, an IVM (Informative Vector Machine) based method is proposed for short‐term load forecasting. IVM is one of the kernel machine techniques that are derived from an SVM (Support Vector Machine). The Gaussian process (GP) satisfies the requirements that the prediction results are expressed as a distribution rather than as points. However, it is inclined to be overtrained for noise due to the basis function with N2 elements for N data. To overcome this problem, this paper makes use of IVM that selects necessary data for the model approximation with a posteriori distribution of entropy. That has a useful function to suppress the excess training. The proposed method is tested using real data for short‐term load forecasting. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 166(2): 23– 31, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www. interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.20693
No support for the sexy-sperm hypothesis in the seed beetle: sons of monandrous females fare better in post-copulatory competition

The sexy-sperm hypothesis posits that polyandrous females derive an indirect fitness benefit from multi-male mating because they increase the probability their eggs are fertilized by males whose sperm have high fertilizing efficiency, which is assumed to be heritable and conferred on their sons. However, whether this process occurs is contentious because father-to-son heritability may be constrained by the genetic architecture underlying traits important in sperm competition within certain species. Previous empirical work has revealed such genetic constraints in the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, a model system in sperm competition studies in which female multi-male mating is ubiquitous. Using the seed beetle, I tested a critical prediction of the sexy-sperm hypothesis that polyandrous females produce sons that are on average more successful under sperm competition than sons from monandrous females. Contrary to the prediction of the sexy-sperm hypothesis, I found that sons from monandrous females had significantly higher relative paternity in competitive double matings. Moreover, post-hoc analyses revealed that these sons produced significantly larger ejaculates when second to mate, despite being smaller. This study is the first to provide empirical evidence for post-copulatory processes favoring monandrous sons and discusses potential explanations for the unexpected bias in paternity.
Narrowly confined and glomerulus-specific onset latencies of odor-evoked calcium transients in the periglomerular cells of the mouse main olfactory bulb

Odor information is transmitted from olfactory sensory neurons to principal neurons at the glomeruli of the olfactory bulb. The intraglomerular neuronal circuit also includes hundreds of GABAergic interneurons referred to as periglomerular (PG) cells. Stimulus selectivity is well correlated among PG cells that are associated with the same glomerulus, consistent with their highly homogeneous sensory inputs. However, much less is known about the temporal aspects of their activity, including the temporal coordination of their odor-evoked responses. As many PG cells within a glomerular module respond to the same stimulus, the extent to which their activity is temporally aligned will affect the temporal profile of their population inhibitory inputs. Using random-access high-speed two-photon microscopy, we recorded the odor-evoked calcium transients of mouse PG cells and compared the onset latency and rise time among neurons putatively associated with the same and different glomeruli. Whereas the overall onset latencies of odor-evoked transients were distributed across a ~150 ms time window, those from cells putatively associated with the same glomerulus were confined to a much narrower window of several tens of milliseconds. This result suggests that onset latency primarily depends on the associated glomerulus. We also observed glomerular specificity in the rise time. The glomerulus-specific temporal pattern of odor-evoked activity implies that the temporal patterns of inhibitory inputs are unique to individual glomerulus–odor pairs, which may contribute to efficient shaping of the temporal pattern of activity in the principal neurons.
IRON MAN, a ubiquitous family of peptides that control iron transport in plants

Iron (Fe) is an essential mineral nutrient which severely affects the growth, yield and nutritional quality of plants if not supplied in sufficient quantities. We here report that a short C-terminal amino acid sequence consensus motif (IRON MAN; IMA) conserved across numerous, highly diverse peptides in angiosperms, is essential for Fe uptake in plants. Overexpression of the IMA sequence in Arabidopsis induced Fe uptake genes in roots, causing accumulation of Fe and manganese in all plant parts including seeds. Silencing of all eight IMA genes harbored by the Arabidopsis genome abolished Fe uptake and caused severe chlorosis; increasing the Fe supply or overexpressing IMA1 restored the wild-type phenotype. IMA1 is predominantly expressed in the phloem, preferentially in leaves, and reciprocal grafting showed that IMA1 peptides in shoots positively regulate Fe uptake in roots. IMA homologs are highly responsive to the Fe status and functional when heterologously expressed across species. IMA constitutes a novel family of peptides which are critical for the acquisition and cellular homeostasis of Fe across land plants.
Making Sense of Patient Safety Event Data

Over the past two decades, the focus on capturing and understanding patient safety events has led to the development of several initiatives and programs in hospitals across the country to increase the reporting of these events. Computerized reporting systems are an integral part of these programs. With these systems going live, hospitals now have databases that contain large numbers of patient safety event reports. Now, the challenge is to make sense of and effectively analyze the data by examining trends and predicting future events. The purpose of this practice-orientated paper is to describe and demonstrate how to apply advances in information visualization techniques and methods to patient safety event data with the goal of making these data more understandable and actionable. We will discuss the process of how we developed patient safety event visualizations for a multi-hospital healthcare system and provide visualization techniques, resources, guidelines, and practical examples.
Analysis of Single-Cell RNA-seq Data by Clustering Approaches

The recently developed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has attracted a great amount of attention due to its capability to interrogate expression of individual cells, which is superior to traditional bulk cell sequencing that can only measure mean gene expression of a population of cells. scRNA-seq has been successfully applied in finding new cell subtypes. New computational challenges exist in the analysis of scRNA-seq data. We provide an overview of the features of different similarity calculation and clustering methods, in order to facilitate users to select methods that are suitable for their scRNA-seq. We would also like to show that feature selection methods are important to improve clustering performance. We first described similarity measurement methods, followed by reviewing some new clustering methods, as well as their algorithmic details. This analysis revealed several new questions, including how to automatically estimate the number of clustering categories, how to discover novel subpopulation, and how to search for new marker genes by using feature selection methods. Without prior knowledge about the number of cell types, clustering or semisupervised learning methods are important tools for exploratory analysis of scRNA-seq data.
A comparison of various DC-DC converters and their application to power factor correction

For rectifier circuits with power factor correction, boost converters are generally used, and as a result the output voltage becomes limited. To expand the controlled voltage range, buck-boost or Cuk converter types should be utilized. This paper presents a circuit configuration with power factor correction by a third type of buck boost converter, termed a canonical switching cell. Single phase power factor correction using a buck boost converter can control the output voltage over a wide range, because it has the ability to step-up and step-down the output voltage. Firstly, this paper compares the mechanisms of the power transmission and the characteristics based on the switching ripple of various converters, in which the Luo converter is added in discussion. Secondly, the canonical switching cell is applied to the single phase power factor correction. It is shown that this converter is suitable for power factor correction.
Le mélanome cutané : Des modèles rationalisés aux soins des patients

Le melanome cutane a pour origine la transformation tumorale des melanocytes, des cellules pigmentees qui produisent la melanine et la transmettent aux keratinocytes environnants de la peau, des poils et des cheveux. La fonction principale de la melanine est de proteger les cellules et leur ADN des dommages causes par les ultraviolets. Le melanome est le cancer cutane le plus agressif. Son incidence n’a cesse d’augmenter au cours des dernieres decennies. Les progres de la recherche fondamentale ont cependant permis d’obtenir une meilleure comprehension des evenements moleculaires et cellulaires responsables de l’initiation et de la progression des melanomes. Nous presentons dans cette revue un apercu des connaissances qui ont ete acquises ces dernieres annees et nous montrons comment les progres recents permettent d’envisager de nouvelles approches therapeutiques ciblees plus efficaces.
Document Image Binarization Using Image Segmentation Algorithm in Parallel Environment

: - The Segmentation of text from poorly degraded document images is a very hard due to the high intravariation between the document background and the foreground text of di ﬀ erent document images. The algorithms used for Image processing take more time for execution on a single core processor. Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is becoming most popular due to their speed, programmability, less price and more integral execution cores in it . The main goal of this research work is to make binarization faster for recognition of a large number of degraded document images on GPU as well as on single core processor. In this system we provide new image segmentation algorithm that each pixel in the image has its own threshold proposed. We are doing parallel work on a window of m*n size and extract object pixel of text stroke of that window. The document text is further segmented by a local threshold that is estimated based on the intensities of detected text stroke edge pixels within a local window.
Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.)Walp., Fabaceae) landrace (local farmers varieties) diversity and ethnobotany in Southwestern and Eastern parts of Ethiopia

The present research was carried out to identify and document the landrace diversity and ethnobotanical uses of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp) (Fabaceae) in Southwestern and Eastern Ethiopia. Data were collected through field observations, semi-structured interviews, guided field walk with cowpea farmers and users, and market surveys. Descriptive statistics, preference ranking and informant consensus were employed in the analysis. Forty-four cowpea accessions were collected from geographical locations ranging from 428- 2128 m.a.s.l. and 05° 17' 06.6” to 09°33' 58.5'' N and 34° 15' 54.5'' to 42° 26' 30.4'' E. The landraces had diverse seed sizes, colours, growth habits and germination potentials. Local variety ‘Rapo’ (Anywaa language) of V. unguiculata subsp. dekindtiana was found in Gambella Region; ‘Atera babile’ (Oromo language) of V. unguiculata subsp. cylindrica and subsp. unguiculata were found in all regions studied. Farmers grew cowpea for the purposes of human food, livestock Feed, improving soil fertility and medicine. The majority of farmers (63.33%) preferred the widely known ‘Atera babile’ which belongs to subsp. unguiculata because of its spreading nature, ability to produce more biomass than other varieties, effectiveness for improving soil fertility and ability to supersede weeds as a ground cover. Further research should focus on local landraces maintained by farmers and the crop wild relative is a worthwhile undertaking given its local importance and for future genetic improvement both as a food and feed crop. Key words: Cowpea, ethnobotany, inter-cropping, landrace, sole cropping.
Identification of Pirin as a Molecular Target of the CCG-1423/CCG- 203971 Series of Anti-Fibrotic and Anti-Metastatic Compounds

A series of compounds (including CCG-1423 and CCG-203971) discovered through an MRTF/SRF dependent luciferase screen has shown remarkable efficacy in a variety of in vitro and in vivo models, including melanoma metastasis and bleomycin-induced fibrosis. Although these compounds are efficacious, the molecular target is unknown. Here, we describe affinity isolation-based target identification efforts which yielded pirin, an iron-dependent co-transcription factor, as a target of this series of compounds. Using biophysical techniques including isothermal titration calorimetry and X-ray crystallography, we verify that pirin binds these compounds in vitro. We also show with genetic approaches that pirin modulates MRTF-dependent SRE.L Luciferase activation. Finally, using both siRNA and a previously validated pirin inhibitor, we show a role for pirin in TGF-p induced gene expression in primary dermal fibroblasts. A recently developed analog, CCG-257081, which co-crystallizes with pirin, is also effective in the prevention of bleomycin-induced dermal fibrosis.
Genomic Structure of Hstx2 Modifier of Prdm9-Dependent Hybrid Male Sterility in Mice

F1 hybrids between mouse inbred strains PWD and C57BL/6 represent the most thoroughly genetically defined model of hybrid sterility in vertebrates. Hybrid male sterility can be fully reconstituted from three components of this model, the Prdm9 gene, intersubspecific homeology of Mus musculus musculus and Mus musculus domesticus autosomes, and the X-linked Hstx2 locus. Hstx2 modulates the extent of Prdm9-dependent meiotic arrest and harbors two additional factors responsible for intersubspecific introgression-induced oligospermia (Hstx1) and meiotic recombination rate (Meir1). To facilitate positional cloning and to overcome the recombination suppression within the 4.3 Mb encompassing the Hstx2 locus, we designed Hstx2-CRISPR and SPO11/Cas9 transgenes aimed to induce DNA double-strand breaks specifically within the Hstx2 locus. The resulting recombinant reduced the Hstx2 locus to 2.70 Mb (chromosome X: 66.51–69.21 Mb). The newly defined Hstx2 locus still operates as the major X-linked factor of the F1 hybrid sterility, and controls meiotic chromosome synapsis and meiotic recombination rate. Despite extensive further crosses, the 2.70 Mb Hstx2 interval behaved as a recombination cold spot with reduced PRDM9-mediated H3K4me3 hotspots and absence of DMC1-defined DNA double-strand-break hotspots. To search for structural anomalies as a possible cause of recombination suppression, we used optical mapping and observed high incidence of subspecies-specific structural variants along the X chromosome, with a striking copy number polymorphism of the microRNA Mir465 cluster. This observation together with the absence of a strong sterility phenotype in Fmr1 neighbor (Fmr1nb) null mutants support the role of microRNA as a likely candidate for Hstx2.
Structure et dynamique de protéines isolées : approches statistiques

Ce travail de these est une etude theorique des proprietes thermodynamiques de polypeptides en phase gazeuse avec comme objectif une meilleure comprehension des mecanismes fondamentaux impliques dans le repliement des proteines. Une approche statistique basee sur des algorithmes Monte Carlo dans les ensembles generalises, comme le Monte Carlo d'echange ou la methode Wang-Landau, a ete utilisee pour echantillonner le paysage energetique complexe de ces systemes. Les peptides etudies comprenant de 2 a 20 acides amines ont ete modelises par le champ de force AMBER 96. Les simulations ont ete realisees en etroite interaction avec les avancees experimentales du groupe. Nous avons ainsi tente de comprendre l'influence de la structure secondaire sur les mecanismes de photofragmentation, le role de l'entropie dans la stabilisation des feuillets beta a temperature ambiante et l'effet d'un champ electrique intense sur la conformation de peptides.
Automatic protection switching for link failures in optical networks with bi-directional links

This paper proposes a methodology for performing automatic protection switching (APS) for link failures in optical networks with arbitrary topologies and bi-directional links. In the scenario considered, the protection fibers' layout and the protection switches' set-up is implemented in non-real time, during the set-up of the network. When a fiber link fails, the connections that use that link are automatically restored and their signals are routed to their original destination using the protection fibers and protection switches. Depending on the position of the link failures multiple faults can be restored simultaneously.
An all dynamic MAC protocol for wireless body area network

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is considered as a special type of WSN. It consists of low-power wireless sensor nodes, which are placed on or implanted in the body for continuous health monitoring. MAC protocol is responsible for conflict detection, processing, priority control, timeslot assignment, transmission order etc. So the design of MAC protocol plays an important role in the reliability and efficiency of WBAN. In order to increase the energy efficiency and reliability of WBAN, a new wireless body area network MAC protocol-AD-MAC protocol is proposed. The proposed protocol adopts dynamic priority control, dynamic timeslot allocation mechanism and dynamic length allocation mechanism of different access periods to achieve reliable transmission in the situation of low latency and low power consumption. The simulation results show that AD-MAC protocol is superior to IEEE802.15. 6 MAC and CA-MAC in terms of throughput, power consumption and delay.