Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Empirical modelling of spectrum use and evaluation of adaptive spectrum sensing in dynamic spectrum access networks

The increasing popularity of wireless communication and multimedia applications yields a growing demand for radio spectrum. However, most of the commercially interesting spectrum has been assigned to various services and allocating further spectrum is a cumbersome process. Some authors claim that current policies are inefficient and cause an artificial spectrum scarcity. Recent measurements support these statements by showing that significant amount of spectrum is underutilized. Secondary use of licensed but vacant spectrum has been proposed as solution to this problem and several architectures for Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) have been studied. The most popular one assumes prioritized Primary Users (PUs), who often possess the spectrum license, and Secondary Users (SUs) that opportunistically access spectrum bands left idle by the PUs. The SUs search for vacant spectrum bands, socalled spectrum sensing, and may exploit these as long as the secondary emissions do not cause harmful interference to the primary system. Most measurement activities have been carried out in the USA and there is a lack of comparable results from Europe. Additionally, the scope of most campaigns has been limited to selected spectrum bands or the sole estimation of the duty cycle. Similarly, only simplified models focused on single aspects of spectrum use are available that prevent a more complete study. We address these shortcomings in this thesis and present an integrated approach to spectrum modelling and evaluation of DSA. The empirical work spans from the careful design of two flexible measurement setups to the execution of extensive spectrum measurements in various scenarios and two European countries. We confirm that considerable amount of spectrum is underutilized and verify further analytical results on cooperative sensing. Based on the gathered measurement data, we identify main properties of spectrum use and present models that reproduce almost all determined characteristics. In this process, special care is taken to develop a generic modelling methodology not specific to our measurement scenarios but still provide realistic model parameters. As example for model applications we study adaptive spectrum sensing using a renewal theory based problem formulation. Exploiting knowledge on spectrum use statistics enables performance enhancements although we also point out that the gains computed in previous analytical studies can hardly be accomplished under more realistic conditions. This result shows the importance of accurate and comprehensive spectrum modelling as put forward in this thesis. Recent spectrum regulatory decisions to allow for secondary access in selected spectrum bands and the increasing number of standardization activities demonstrate the wider interest in DSA. However, most existing work has been limited in scope and focused on single system components. We believe that the presented modelling methodology and the listed parameters provide a valuable basis for further DSA research under well justifiable assumptions.
Digital Television: Technology and Standards

Preface. 1. Introduction to Analog and Digital Television. 2. Characteristics of Video Material. 3. Predictive Encoding. 4. Transform Coding. 5. Video Coder Syntax. 6. The MPEG-2 Video Compression Standard. 7. Perceptual Audio Coding. 8. Frequency Analysis and Synthesis. 9. MPEG Audio. 10. Dolby AC-3 Audio. 11. MPEG-2 Systems. 12. DVB Service Information and ATSC Program and System Information Protocol. 13. Digital Television Channel Coding and Modulation. 14. Closed Captioning, Subtitling, and Teletext. Appendix: MPEG Tables. Index.
On the orbital stability of a family of traveling waves for the cubic Schrödinger equation on the Heisenberg group

We consider the focusing energy-critical Schr{o}dinger equation on the Heisenberg group in the radial case\[i\partial_t u-\Delta_{\mathbb{H}^1} u=|u|^2u,\quad\Delta_{\mathbb{H}^1}=\frac{1}{4}(\partial_x^2+\partial_y^2)+(x^2+y^2)\partial_s^2,\quad(t,x,y,s)\in \mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{H}^1,\]which is a model for non-dispersive evolution equations. For this equation, existence of smooth global solutions and uniqueness of weak solutions in the energy space are open problems. We are interested in a family of ground state traveling waves parametrized by their speed $\beta \in (-1,1)$. We show that the traveling waves of speed close to $1$ present some orbital stability in the following sense. If the initial data is radial and close enough to one traveling wave, then there exists a global weak solution which stays close to the orbit of this traveling wave for all times. A similar result is proven for the limiting system associated to this equation.
Tentative evidence for inequity aversion to unequal work‐effort but not to unequal reward distribution in Goffin's cockatoos

One hallmark in the evolution of cooperation is the ability to evaluate one's own payoff for a task against that of another person. To trace its evolutionary history, there has recently been a surge in comparative studies across different species. In non-human animals, evidence of inequity aversion has so far been identified in several primate species, dogs, and rats. Research in birds revealed mixed findings so far: among corvids, crows and ravens did react sensitively to unequal payoffs and work-effort, while New Caledonian crows did not. Among psittacids, kea were studied so far: Yet, despite the fact that they live in large, hierarchically organized social groups that show complex interactions, they did not show a significant reaction to inequitable payoffs. Here we tested for the first time a Cacatua, the Goffin's cockatoo, using a standardized token exchange paradigm in which first the partner and then the subject could exchange a token for a food reward. Our results show that subjects did not react to unequal reward distributions. However, in comparison to the Equity Condition, the likelihood to exchange was lower in the condition in which the partner received the same reward as a gift (without having to work for it) whereas the subject had to perform a task involving substantial work-effort, suggesting that the Goffin's cockatoos do react aversively to work-effort inequity. In a follow-up experiment, subjects never received a reward but observed a conspecific receive a high-quality reward depending on condition. We found again no evidence for an aversion for the unequal reward distribution, but only that, independent of condition, subjects quickly lost their motivation to participate due to not receiving a reward. In summary, Goffins showed some sensitivity to increased unequal work-effort, but did not react to unequal reward distribution.
Conceptual Design and Fabrication of Porous Structured Scaffold for Tissue Engineering Applications

Today, organ and tissue transplantation remains one of the most important while complex options in order to restore or enhance life expectancy. Though it is a complex option, it is more preferable than other restorations due to its high success rate. The organ and tissue transplantation bring about the idea to generate bone scaffolds using natural bone like materials to treat bone losses, fractures or any other bone related issues. The increasing number of bone losses, critical-sized bone defects, delayed bone unions in orthopedic, drive the quest for bone tissue regeneration. Permanent bone scaffolds implants are usually made of stainless steel or titanium plates. Despite the high success rate of these scaffolds there are several withdrawals such as rust formation leading to bacterial infection and periodic replacement of these steel plates among children due to the gradual growth of the bone. Hence, to overcome the above issues bio-compatible scaffolds must be designed, developed and implanted without causing any harm to the human body. The developed scaffold should also be porous to allow the growth of tissues and nerve endings which enable the union of the bone. Thus, the scaffold should also withstand the stress and should have adequate load bearing capacity. The pore size should also be sufficient enough such that it allows the penetration of the cells and tissues growth. This research work deals with the design of porous scaffold models with different configuration and the selection of suitable material and manufacturing method. The pore geometry and its arrangement are changed in the scaffold. Pores with a cube, sphere shape and their shifted arrangements are considered for this study. The pore size considered is in the range of 800 microns to 1200 microns and the porosity ranges from 40 % to 70 %. The best configuration must be selected based on the strength requirement.
What are the trans fatty acids issues in foods after discontinuation of industrially produced trans fats? Ruminant products, vegetable oils, and synthetic supplements

Adverse health effect of trans fatty acids (TFAs) are well recognized, which has precipitated efforts to reduce their content in food products. With the decline of dietary TFAs derived from partial oil hydrogenation, interest is focused on the remaining sources of dietary TFAs derived from ruminants (rTFA), deodorized vegetable oils, trans isomerization during frying, and synthetic conjugated FA (CFA) supplements. Partial hydrogenation and heat‐treated oils result in a random distribution of TFA isomers, whereas rTFAs contain specific isomers resulting from enzymatic processes. Reviews of human observational and metabolic intervention studies have suggested that consumption of rTFAs at current levels should not raise health concerns. However, these studies were not based on rTFA levels currently sold in retail markets. Current feeding practices of ruminants result in higher total TFAs with trans‐18:1 isomers other than vaccenic acid, and many CFAs other than rumenic acid. The definition of TFA adopted by several countries does not distinguish among isolated TFAs of concern and ignores CFAs that should be included in total TFA due to their negative health effects. Accurate TFA definition establishment and nutritional assessment of individual TFA isomers is needed for labeling purposes. Also required are adoptions of analytical methods to resolve all TFA isomers. This information can then be used to construct a database and as a basis for meaningful recommendations. Practical applications: Areas that require further investigations have been identified: 1) Establish a uniform TFA nomenclature based on chemical structure. 2) Standardize, assess and normalize appropriate methodologies for the analysis of TFAs. 3) Synthesize pure reference standards for TFA identification. 4) Report total TFA levels with undesirable biological activities rather than total TFA content. 5) Assess the nutritional characteristics of individual TFAs independent of their origin. 6) Develop strategies to increase the content of desirable TFA isomers in ruminants. 7) Identify potential bioactivetransmetabolites produced fromPUFAs inruminants. 8) Developlabeling regulations based on specific chemical structures and physiological effects regardless of their origin. 9) Construct an accurate database complemented with specific surveys of ruminant product fatty acid (FA) composition that can be accessed by regulatory agencies to make appropriate TFA recommendations.
Social-Aware Privacy-Preserving Mechanism for Correlated Data

We study a privacy-preserving data collection problem by considering individuals’ data correlation and social relationship. A data collector gathers data from some data reporters to perform certain analysis with a privacy-preserving mechanism. Due to the data correlation, the analysis will cause privacy leakage not only to the data reporters but also to those individuals who do not report data. Owing to the social relationship among them, the data reporters would consider the possibility of adding some random noise to the reported data to reduce the privacy leakage. The privacy loss of the individuals (both data reporters and non-reporters) depend on all the data reporters’ strategies, which naturally leads to a game theoretical analysis. A key result shows that the data reporters can be ordered based on their levels of joint considerations of social relationship and data correlation, and at the Nash Equilibrium of the game at most one data reporter with the most significant consideration may add noise to the reported data. We design an efficient algorithm for the data collector to construct the data reporter set, and derive the optimal privacy-preserving mechanism to ensure all the data reporters’ truthful reporting. We conduct extensive simulations with the Facebook social data to demonstrate some insights: It is optimal for the data collector to adopt a more conservative mechanism when the data correlation or the social relationship is stronger. Compared with the data correlation information, the social network information plays a more critical role in the data collector’s utility maximization problem.
Biology and host-range of Boreioglycaspis melaleucae (Hemiptera: Psyllidae), potential biological control agent for Melaleuca quinquenervia (Myrtaceae)

The Australian broad-leaved paperbark tree, Melaleuca quinquenervia S. T. Blake, has become a serious weed in southern Florida. Surveys in Australia identified a sapsucking psyllid, Boreioglycaspis melaleucae Moore, as a promising biological control agent. We collected this psyllid in Queensland and northern New South Wales; it has also been recorded from Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Eggs are attached to leaves by a pedicel and most hatch within 18 d of oviposition. Nymphs congregate on leaves and secrete white, flocculent threads that can completely cover the immatures in the 3rd–5th instars. Nymphs are parasitised by Encyrtidae and predated by a coccinellid and lygaeid. Both adults and nymphs feed on the sap of M. quinquenervia , but nymphs cause the most damage and high numbers kill potted M. quinquenervia saplings in laboratory cages. Development from egg to adult takes 28–40 d, and females lay an average of 78 eggs. Literature records and our collections indicate that the Held host-range of B. melaleucae is restricted to M. quinquenervia and 4 of its close relatives. This psyllid oviposited on 27 of the 42 plant species tested. However, immatures only developed to the adult stage on M. quinqueneroia , M. nodosa (Gaertner) Smith, and M. viridifiora Solander ex. Gaertner.
Strong complete minors in digraphs

Kostochka and Thomason independently showed that any graph with average degree $\Omega(r\sqrt{\log r})$ contains a $K_r$ minor. In particular, any graph with chromatic number $\Omega(r\sqrt{\log r})$ contains a $K_r$ minor, a partial result towards Hadwiger’s famous conjecture. In this paper, we investigate analogues of these results in the directed setting. There are several ways to define a minor in a digraph. One natural way is as follows. A strong $\overrightarrow{K}_{\! \! r}$ minor is a digraph whose vertex set is partitioned into r parts such that each part induces a strongly connected subdigraph, and there is at least one edge in each direction between any two distinct parts. We investigate bounds on the dichromatic number and minimum out-degree of a digraph that force the existence of strong $\overrightarrow{K}_{\! \! r}$ minors as subdigraphs. In particular, we show that any tournament with dichromatic number at least 2r contains a strong $\overrightarrow{K}_{\! \! r}$ minor, and any tournament with minimum out-degree $\Omega(r\sqrt{\log r})$ also contains a strong $\overrightarrow{K}_{\! \! r}$ minor. The latter result is tight up to the implied constant and may be viewed as a strong-minor analogue to the classical result of Kostochka and Thomason. Lastly, we show that there is no function $f\;:\;\mathbb{N} \rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ such that any digraph with minimum out-degree at least f(r) contains a strong $\overrightarrow{K}_{\! \! r}$ minor, but such a function exists when considering dichromatic number.
Activity-inducible kinase Plk2 regulates APP amyloidogenic processing and Abeta mediated synaptic depression

iii TABLE OF CONTENTS . v INTRODUCTION . 1 A. Alzheimer’s disease . 1 AD pathology . 1 Hallmarks in AD brain . 2 Late-onset vs. early-onset AD . 3 Aβ peptides as a potential causative component in AD . 4 B. APP and proteolytic processing . 5 APP (Amyloid Precursor Protein) . 5 Amyloidogenic processing and β-secretase . 7 Non-amyloidogenic processing and α-secretase . 8 γ-secretase . 8 Balance between amyloidogenic and non-amyloidogenic pathways . 9 C. Mouse model of AD. 11 FAD related mutations . 11 Mouse models of AD . 12 Aberrant synaptic activity in AD . 13 vi D. Excitatory synapses . 13 Dendritic spines . 13 AMPA receptors . 14 Synaptic plasticity . 15 E. Synaptic activity and Aβ . 16 Activity dependent Aβ production . 16 Homeostatic synaptic depression . 17 F. Homeostatic plasticity by Plk2 . 17 Polo-like kinase family . 17 Plks in post-mitotic cells . 18 Plk2 as a homeostatic regulator . 18 Kinase-dependent and -independent pathway of Plk2 . 19 Suppression of Plk2 in vivo . 20 G. Parallel regulation and activities of Plk2 and Aβ . 20 Common property and affected area in brain. 20 Emerging hypotheses . 21 MATERIALS AND METHODS . 22 A. Cell cultures, transfection, infection and stimulation . 22 B. DNA constructs . 22
Étude et optimisation de l'absorption optique et du transport électronique dans les cellules photovoltaïques à base de nanofils

La conversion photovoltaique est un procede tres attractif pour la fourniture d’energie propre et renouvelable. Cette filiere est en plein essor grâce a une reduction constante des couts de revient et des politiques incitatives de nombreux pays. Pourtant, l’ensemble des panneaux photovoltaiques installes ne produit qu’une faible part de la consommation mondiale en electricite. Les recents developpements technologiques dans l’industrie photovoltaique se sont surtout concentres sur les cellules dites de seconde generation, a savoir les couches minces a base de CIGS, CdTe, a-Si, a-SiGe. Cette filiere permet la fourniture d’electricite a cout inferieur a la technologie standard silicium, mais les rendements de conversion demeurent encore faibles, ce qui necessite de larges surfaces disponibles. Il est a noter notamment que les cellules couches minces a base de materiaux semiconducteurs a gap direct comme le CIGS et le CdTe sont en plein essor puisqu’ils profitent en particulier d’une absorption accrue par rapport au silicium ; toutefois, ces materiaux sont presents en quantite limitee a la surface de la planete (In, Te). Dans ce contexte, les cellules a base de nanofils constituent une solution interessante aux problemes de l’absorption de la lumiere, du transport et de la separation des porteurs de charge photo-generes mais aussi de la quantite de matiere utilisee. En effet, en utilisant une jonction radiale (i.e. entourant le nanofil), il est possible de separer l’absorption de la lumiere ( liee notamment a la longueur du nanofil) de la collecte des porteurs de charge (qui depend du diametre des nanofils). L’interet de ces structures reside egalement dans les proprietes de base des nanofils : la relaxation elastique favorable sur leur surface laterale ouvre le champ au depot de nanofils par hetero-epitaxie sur tout type de substrat alors que la faible densite de defauts etendus en leur sein est propice a un transport efficace des porteurs de charges. Ainsi, la possibilite de realiser des nanofils sur substrat souple en reduisant de maniere importante la quantite de matiere utilisee par rapport a une cellule en silicium cristallin massif peut etre envisagee. Plusieurs laboratoires grenoblois ont deja une expertise dans le domaine de la croissance des nanofils. Cette these a pour but de realiser une analyse experimentale approfondie des proprietes optoelectroniques des nanofils (par des mesures de reflectivite, de duree de vie des porteurs minoritaires et de recombinaisons en surface et aux interfaces) combinee a des simulations optiques (de type RCWA ou FDTD) et electriques (TCAD). L’objectif ultime etant de concevoir et de developper des cellules a base de nanofils de silicium et de ZnO/CdTe. Des demonstrateurs seront realises sur la base des simulations electro-optiques. Pour cela, les moyens d’elaboration, de caracterisation et de technologie des differents laboratoires et entites, ainsi que les competences associees, seront mis en commun pour accompagner les travaux du doctorant.
HyFM: function merging for free

Function merging is an important optimization for reducing code size. It merges multiple functions into a single one, eliminating duplicate code among them. The existing state-of-the-art relies on a well-known sequence alignment algorithm to identify duplicate code across whole functions. However, this algorithm is quadratic in time and space on the number of instructions. This leads to very high time overheads and prohibitive levels of memory usage even for medium-sized benchmarks. For larger programs, it becomes impractical. This is made worse by an overly eager merging approach. All selected pairs of functions will be merged. Only then will this approach estimate the potential benefit from merging and decide whether to replace the original functions with the merged one. Given that most pairs are unprofitable, a significant amount of time is wasted producing merged functions that are simply thrown away. In this paper, we propose HyFM, a novel function merging technique that delivers similar levels of code size reduction for significantly lower time overhead and memory usage. Unlike the state-of-the-art, our alignment strategy works at the block level. Since basic blocks are usually much shorter than functions, even a quadratic alignment is acceptable. However, we also propose a linear algorithm for aligning blocks of the same size at a much lower cost. We extend this strategy with a multi-tier profitability analysis that bails out early from unprofitable merging attempts. By aligning individual pairs of blocks, we are able to decide their alignment’s profitability separately and before actually generating code. Experimental results on SPEC 2006 and 2017 show that HyFM needs orders of magnitude less memory, using up to 48 MB or 5.6 MB, depending on the variant used, while the state-of-the-art requires 32 GB in the worst case. HyFM also runs over 4.5×× faster, while still achieving comparable code size reduction. Combined with the speedup of later compilation stages due to the reduced number of functions, HyFM contributes to a reduced end-to-end compilation time.
NETs Enhance STING To Promote Surgical Adhesion

Background Postoperative adhesion (PA) following abdominal surgery may cause bowel obstruction, chronic pain, infertility, or even death. Knowledge of adhesion biology is limited, and preventive agents in clinical trials have failed to achieve efficacy. Results In the present study, we showed that neutrophils accumulate in the injured peritoneum at early stage of PA, and neutrophils within the ischemic buttons undergo cell death and form neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) that contribute to PA. Neutrophil depletion reduces adhesion burden at 7 days after adhesion induction. Peptidylarginine deiminase 4 (PAD4), an essential enzyme for NET formation, is increased in ischemic buttons. Degradation of NETs by DNase 1 and suppression of NET formation by pharmacologic inhibition of PAD4 alleviated adhesion burden, collogen deposition and fibrosis formation. Mechanistically, administration of DNase I and PAD inhibitor reduces STING-mediated inflammatory response. STING deficiency attenuates adhesion burden, collogen deposition, and α-SMA production in the adhesive tissues at 7 days after surgery. Conclusions Collectively, our findings reveal NETs/STING signaling as a therapeutic target to prevent PA.