Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Indoor Location Control with Visible Light Communication

In this work, the use of courtesy lamps for communicating with visible light has been proposed for low cost indoor positioning. Modulated light emitting diode (LED) lights have been used for both positioning and lightening. The lamp ID information has been transmitted to three LED lamps. With the proposed system, the mobile receiver is provided with the location information and the environment on the screen is visualized. The proposed system consists of three components. These are the light transmission module, the light driver and the receiver circuit. The system is recommended for the display of works of art in indoor environments such as museums and art centers.
Multiple Access Techniques for VLC in Large Space Indoor Scenarios: A Comparative Study

The growing demand for high speed indoor wireless connectivity is among the driving forces for data transmission based on visible-light communications (VLC). For relatively large-space indoor scenarios, the development of appropriate spectrally-efficient multiple-access (MA) techniques enables efficient handling of multiple users, in particular, in dealing with the limited modulation bandwidth of the light-emitting diodes. In this paper, we present a comparative study between different MA techniques proposed in the recent literature for VLC networks. The most appropriate schemes for large-scale network deployments are further investigated in different scenarios to contrast their performance in terms of the achievable throughput.
Compression of Preferential Attachment Graphs

We study structural properties of preferential attachment graphs (with parameter m ≥ 1 giving the number of attachment choices that each new vertex makes) which intervene in two complementary algorithmic/statistical/information-theoretic problems involving the information shared between a random graph’s labels and its structure: in structural compression, we seek to compactly describe a graph’s structure by a bit string, throwing away its label information; in node arrival order recovery, we seek to recover node labels, given only a graph structure. In particular, we study the typical size of the automorphism group, as well as some shape parameters (such as the number of linear extensions and height) of the directed version of the graph, which in turn allows us to estimate the typical number of admissible labeled representatives of a given graph structure. Our result on the automorphism group positively settles a conjecture to the effect that, provided that m ≥ 3, preferential attachment graphs are asymmetric with high probability, and completes the characterization of the number of symmetries for a broad range of parameters of the model (i.e., for all fixed m). These results allow us to give an algorithmically efficient, asymptotically optimal algorithm for compression of unlabeled preferential attachment graphs. To show the optimality of our scheme, we also derive new, precise estimates of the Shannon entropy of both the unlabeled and labeled version of the model. Our results also imply inapproximability results for the problem of node arrival order recovery.
Predictive Maintenance System for Efficiency Improvement of Heating Equipment

Heating appliances such as HVAC systems consume around 48% of the energy power spent on household appliances every year. With this in mind, it is relevant to increase the efficiency of those solutions. Moreover, a malfunctioning device can increase this value even further. Thus, there is a need to develop methods that allow the identification of eventual failures before they occur. This is only achievable when services capable of analyzing data, interpret it and obtaining knowledge from it, are created. This paper presents an infrastructure that supports the inspection of failure detection in boilers, making viable to forecast faults and errors. A major part of the work is data analysis and the creation of procedures that can process it. The main goal is creating an efficient system able to identify, predict and notify the occurrence of failure events. Our fundamental contribution is the possibility to scale the system to others datasets, being able to resolve different Big Data issues.
DNN assisted Sphere Decoder

A modified sphere decoding (SD) scheme is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems in this paper. The contribution of the paper includes the introduction of a systematic approach to sphere radius design and control based on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) as well as the complexity advantage yielded by the proposed scheme. The learning model is introduced to predict the number of lattice points inside the sphere with some radius. Since this number is cleverly learnt by a neural network (NNW), the SD updates the radius until expecting a small number of points and then starts the search hypersphere, which greatly reduces the computational complexity. We show through simulation that for high dimensional MIMO systems the number of lattice points highly reduces in the new SD algorithm, which leads to a complexity only 3 times of the MMSE decoder complexity.
Source resolvability problem with respect to a certain subclass of f-divergence

This paper deals with the source resolvability problem which is one of typical random number generation problems. In the literatures, the achievable rate in the source resolvability problem with respect to the variational distance as well as the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence have been analyzed. On the other hand, in this study we consider the problem with respect to a subclass of f-divergence. The f-divergence is a general non-negative measure between two probabilistic distributions and includes several important measures such as the variational distance, the KL divergence, the Hellinger distance and so on. Hence, it is meaningful to consider the source resolvability problem with respect to the f-divergence. We derive the general formula of the optimum achievable rate for a certain subclass of the f-divergence. Then, we reveal that it is easy to derive previous results from our general formula.
Consensus-Based Coordination of Time-Shiftable Flexible Demand

Distributed, consensus-based algorithms constitute a promising approach for the coordination of distributed energy resources (DER) due to their practical advantages over centralized approaches. However, state-of-the-art consensus-based algorithms address the coordination problem in independent time periods and therefore are inherently unable to capture the time-shifting flexibility of the demand side. This paper demonstrates that state-of-the-art algorithms fail to converge when time-shiftable flexible demands (TSFD) are present. In order to address this fundamental limitation, a relative maximum power restriction is introduced, which effectively mitigates the concentration of the TSFD responses at the same time periods and steers the consensus-based algorithm towards a feasible and near-optimal solution.
Optimization based Real-Time Home Energy Management in the Presence of Renewable Energy and Battery Energy Storage

This paper introduces a new Home Energy Management System (HEMS) to reduce the daily household energy costs, Maximize the PV self-consumption and increase customer benefits through managing the operation of a Home Energy Storage System (HESS) in an economic way. The proposed HEMS uses an optimization-based rolling horizon technique to determine the optimal settings of the HESS based on real-time measurements. The optimization process is executed every two minutes to update the settings for the HESS. The results obtained show the capability of the HEMS to reduce household utility bills and achieve an overall reduction in peak energy demand.
Reducing Neighborhood Peak Loads with implicit Peer-to-Peer energy trading under Subscribed Capacity tariffs

Increased power demand is a growing problem for distribution system operators (DSO) capable of causing unwanted and expensive grid upgrades. Descending prices for flexible resources and power generation such as house batteries, electric vehicles (EV) and photovoltaic (PV) cells allow for consumers to have a more active role in the energy system and possibly help avoid these expensive upgrades. We developed a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimization model performed on a small neighborhood consisting of 30 consumers with different amounts of flexible resources to test grid tariffs impact on power peak reduction. We simulate four different case studies, and the results show an 11% decrease in peak power import during scarcity hours and a more stable import when implicit peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading is enabled under a subscription based tariff structure. The main conclusion from this study is that there is a clear potential in local electricity markets and capacity based grid tariff structures, especially when metered at neighborhood level.
Principal Component Analysis of Categorized Polytomous Variable-Based Classification of Diabetes and Other Chronic Diseases

A chronic disease diabetes mellitus is assuming pestilence proportion worldwide. Therefore prevalence is important in all aspects. Researchers have introduced various methods, but still, the improvement is a need for classification techniques. This paper considers data mining approach and principal component analysis (PCA) techniques, on a single platform to approaches on the polytomous variable-based classification of diabetes mellitus and some selected chronic diseases. The PCA result shows eigenvalues, and the total variance is explained for the principal components (PCs) solution. Total of twelve attributes was analyzed with the intention to precise the pattern of the correlation with minimum factors as possible. Usually, factors with large eigenvalues retained. The first five components have their eigenvalues large enough to be retained. Their variances are 18.9%, 14.0%, 13.6%, 10.3%, and 8.6%, respectively. That explains ~65.3% of the total variance. We further applied K-means clustering with the aid of the first two PCs. As well, correlation results between diabetes mellitus and selected diseases; it has revealed that diabetes patients are more likely to have kidney and hypertension. Therefore, the study validates the proposed polytomous method for classification techniques. Such a study is important in better assessment on low socio-economic status zone regions around the globe.
Medically Unnecessary Genital Cutting and the Rights of the Child: Moving Toward Consensus

See also the project sponsored by the ULB-UNIL privileged partnership "Les determinants sociologiques de l’offre et de la demande de chirurgie plastique genitale : reparatrice chez les femmes avec une MGF vs. cosmetique sur vulve intacte" (7/2018-6/2020). Online summary: https://www.unil. ch/international/en/home/menuguid/partenariats-privilegies/universite-libre-de-bruxelles/projets-2018/offre-et-demande-de-chirurgie-plastique.html
PML hyposumoylation is responsible for the resistance of pancreatic cancer

The dismal prognosis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is mainly due to its rapidly acquired resistance to all conventional treatments. Despite drug‐specific mechanisms of resistance, none explains how these cells resist the stress induced by any kind of anticancer treatment. Activation of stress‐response pathways relies on the post‐translational modifications (PTMs) of involved proteins. Among all PTMs, those mediated by the ubiquitin family of proteins play a central role. Our aim was to identify alterations of ubiquitination, neddylation, and sumoylation associated with the multiresistant phenotype and demonstrate their implications in the survival of PDAC cells undergoing treatment. This approach pointed at an alteration of promyelocytic leukemia (PML) protein sumoylation associated with both gemcitabine and oxaliplatin resistance. We could show that this alteration of PML sumoylation is part of a general mechanism of drug resistance, which in addition involves the abnormal activation of NF‐αB and cAMP response element binding pathways. Importantly, using patient‐derived tumors and cell lines, we identified a correlation between the levels of PML expression and sumoylation and the sensitivity of tumors to anticancer treatments. —Swayden, M. , Alzeeb, G. , Masoud, R. , Berthois, Y. , Audebert, S. , Camoin, L. , Hannouche, L. , Vachon, H. , Gayet, O. , Bigonnet, M. , Roques, J., Silvy, F. , Carrier, A. , Dusetti, N. , Iovanna, J. L. , Soubeyran, P. PML hyposumoylation is responsible for the resistance of pancreatic cancer. FASEB J. 33, 12447–12463 (2019). www.fasebj. org
Effects of Carrion Relocation on the Succession of Newly Arriving Adult Necrophilous Insects

Abstract Ecological succession of necrophilous insects follows a predictable sequence, related to their differential attraction to changing odor profiles associated with carrion and colonizing insects. However, the dependency of insect arrival on the duration of the carrion's residency at a location has not been investigated. To assess the fidelity of necrophilous insects to carrion of specific decomposition ages, independent of its location, we monitored the decomposition of neonate pigs in one field and then simultaneously relocated carcasses of different decomposition ages to an ecologically similar but remote field. We examined the effects of decomposition age and relocation on the assembly of the necrophilous insect community, using a novel vented-chamber trap, which excluded all sensory cues except odors. Community composition differed over a 4-d decomposition period, showing that insects were differentially attracted to pigs of different decomposition ages. There was overall concordance between respective decomposition ages in the two fields, with similar relative abundances of taxa before and after transfer. Although different decomposition ages continued to attract different insects, differentiation of the necrophilous insect communities relative to the age of decomposition was less pronounced after transfer. The results of this study demonstrate that translocating a decomposing body to a new, but geographically and ecologically similar location continues the predicted insect succession, albeit with greater variance, based on olfactory cues alone. Several rare taxa were sampled only prior to relocation, including the first documentation of the invasive hairy maggot blow fly, Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart) (Diptera: Calliphoridae), in central North Carolina.
Structural, Dermal and Ungual Characteristics of the Foot in Patients with Type II Diabetes

Background and Objectives: Diabetes is a chronic and metabolic disease, considered as an important public health problem. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of podiatric pathology in type II diabetic patients. Materials and Methods: An observational descriptive study of prevalence in the endocrinology service of Complexo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña (CHUAC) (A Coruña-Spain) was carried out (n = 153). Type II diabetic patients included, of legal age who signed the informed consent. Sociodemographic variables were studied (age, sex, body mass index (BMI), smoking habit, alcohol consumption, family history), disease variables (time of evolution of diabetes, treatments, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), glucose), podiatric variables: measurement of the footprint, metatarsal and digital formula, nail, skin, hindfoot and forefoot alterations. The data collection was done in 2018 and the data analysis was carried out in 2019. Results: The patients with type II diabetes had greater age, obesity and arterial hypertension it compared to the general population. Diabetic patients had a higher prevalence of flat feet than the general population (71.2% vs. 20.7%, p < 0.001), with a predominance of normal foot according to the podoscope. The predominant podological pathology was the presence of claw toes (94.8%), followed by dermal (78.4%) and nail (71.9%) alterations, and the Hallux Valgus (66.0%). The Clarke angle and the Chippaux index showed a Kappa concordance index of 0.26 with the type of footprint measured with the podoscope. The Staheli index showed a Kappa index of 0.27 associated with an observed agreement of 54%. Conclusions: This study shows that foot problems continue to be prevalent in subjects with type II diabetes mellitus and for this reason, podiatry is essential in its treatment.
Detection of Rickettsiae, Borreliae, and Ehrlichiae in Ticks Collected from Walker County, Texas, 2017–2018

Cases of tick-borne diseases, including spotted fever rickettsioses, borreliosis, babesiosis, anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis, in the United States and territories have more than doubled from 2004 to 2016 and account for 77% of all vector-borne disease reports. In an effort to inform control efforts, the presence of tick-borne pathogens and their vectors was assessed in a recreational park in Walker County, Texas. Here we report data from questing ticks collected on three dates from June 2017 to June 2018. The majority of ticks collected were Amblyomma americanum (96.69%) followed by three additional tick species: Dermacentor variabilis (2.59%), Ixodes scapularis (0.52%), and A. maculatum (0.21%). Ticks were pooled and tested for molecular evidence of bacterial and viral pathogens, respectively. All of the 68 pools of A. americanum had molecular evidence of the spotted fever group rickettsia, Rickettsia amblyommatis. Additionally, six (8.82%) of the A. americanum pools contained sequences matching Ehrlichia chaffeensis, the pathogen responsible for human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis, and 11 (16.18%) for E. ewingii. Three of the A. americanum pools demonstrated evidence of Borrelia lonestari. The presence of etiologic agents of known human disease in this study merits the continued surveillance efforts of ticks and their pathogens in areas where they could pose risks to public health.
Atomistic Simulation on the Twin Boundary Migration in Mg under Shear Deformation

In this paper, the {101¯2} twinning and detwinning was studied by molecular dynamics simulation under different shear directions and strain rates. The results showed that the twin was thickened under [1¯011] shear direction and shrunken with shearing in the opposite direction. The critical resolved shear stress of {101¯2} twin boundary migration increased with the increase of the strain rate. By analyzing the atom’s displacement, it was concluded that the {101¯2} twin migration was achieved by both the shear and the atomic shuffling. Every atom would be affected by the shear, and different shear directions would cause opposite move directions, which led to twinning or detwinning. The atom shuffling was only used for adjusting the glide twin boundary and mirror-symmetric twin boundary structure evolution.
Passive muscle tension increases in proportion to intramuscular fluid volume

ABSTRACT During extended bouts of exercise, muscle can increase in volume by as much as 20% as vascular fluid moves into the tissue. Recent findings suggest that the fluid content of muscle can influence the mechanics of force production; however, the extent to which natural volume fluctuations should be expected to influence muscle mechanics in vivo remains unclear. Here, using osmotic perturbations of bullfrog muscle, we explored the impacts of physiologically relevant volume fluctuations on a fundamental property of muscle: passive force production. We found that passive force and fluid volume were correlated over a 20% increase in muscle volume, with small changes in volume having significant effects on force (e.g. a 5% volume increase results in a >10% passive force increase). A simple physical model of muscle morphology reproduces these effects. These findings suggest that physiologically relevant fluid fluxes could alter passive muscle mechanics in vivo and affect organismal performance. Summary: Passive tension in skeletal muscle increases in proportion to tissue fluid volume, suggesting that natural fluctuations in water content may influence muscle performance in vivo.
Increased circulating IgG levels, myocardial immune cells and IgG deposits support a role for an immune response in pre‐ and end‐stage heart failure

The chronic inflammatory response plays an important role in adverse cardiac remodelling and the development of heart failure (HF). There is also evidence that in the pathogenesis of several cardiovascular diseases, chronic inflammation is accompanied by antibody and complement deposits in the heart, suggestive of a true autoimmune response. However, the role of antibody‐mediated immune responses in HF progression is less clear. We assessed whether immune cell infiltration and immunoglobulin levels are associated with HF type and disease stage, taking sex differences into account. We found IgG deposits and increased infiltration of immune cells in the affected myocardium of patients with end‐stage HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF, n = 20). Circulating levels of IgG1 and IgG3 were elevated in these patients. Furthermore, the percentage of transitional/regulatory B cells was decreased (from 6.9% to 2.4%) compared with healthy controls (n = 5). Similarly, increased levels of circulating IgG1 and IgG3 were observed in men with left ventricular diastolic dysfunction (LVDD, n = 5), possibly an early stage of HF with preserved EF (HFpEF). In conclusion, IgG deposits and infiltrates of immune cells are present in end‐stage HFrEF. In addition, both LVDD patients and end‐stage HFrEF patients show elevated levels of circulating IgG1 and IgG3, suggesting an antibody‐mediated immune response upon cardiac remodelling, which in the early phase of remodelling appear to differ between men and women. These immunoglobulin subclasses might be used as marker for pre‐stage HF and its progression. Future identification of auto‐antigens might open possibilities for new therapeutic interventions.
Mesenchymal WNT-5A/5B Signaling Represses Lung Alveolar Epithelial Progenitors

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) represents a worldwide concern with high morbidity and mortality, and is believed to be associated with accelerated ageing of the lung. Alveolar abnormalities leading to emphysema are a key characteristic of COPD. Pulmonary alveolar epithelial type 2 cells (AT2) produce surfactant and function as progenitors for type 1 cells. Increasing evidence shows elevated WNT-5A/B expression in ageing and in COPD that may contribute to the disease process. However, supportive roles for WNT-5A/B in lung regeneration were also reported in different studies. Thus, we explored the role of WNT-5A/B on alveolar epithelial progenitors (AEPs) in more detail. We established a Precision-Cut-Lung Slices (PCLS) model and a lung organoid model by co-culturing epithelial cells (EpCAM+/CD45-/CD31-) with fibroblasts in matrigel in vitro to study the impact of WNT-5A and WNT-5B. Our results show that WNT-5A and WNT-5B repress the growth of epithelial progenitors with WNT-5B preferentially restraining the growth and differentiation of alveolar epithelial progenitors. We provide evidence that both WNT-5A and WNT-5B negatively regulate the canonical WNT signaling pathway in alveolar epithelium. Taken together, these findings reveal the functional impact of WNT-5A/5B signaling on alveolar epithelial progenitors in the lung, which may contribute to defective alveolar repair in COPD.