Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Better Cardinality Estimator with Fewer Bits, Constant Update Time, and Mergeability

Cardinality estimation is a fundamental problem with diverse practical applications. HyperLogLog (HLL) has become a standard in practice because it offers good memory efficiency, constant update time, and mergeability. Some recent work achieved better memory efficiency, but typically at the cost of impractical update time or losing mergeability, making them incompatible with applications like network-wide traffic measurement. This work presents SpikeSketch, a better cardinality estimator that reduces memory usage of HLL by 37% without sacrificing other crucial metrics. We adopt a bucket-based data structure to promise constant update time, design a smoothed log4 ranking and a spike coding scheme to compress cardinality observables into buckets, and propose a lightweight mergeable lossy compression to balance memory usage, information loss, and mergeability. Then we derive an unbiased estimator for recovering cardinality from the lossy-compressed sketch. Theoretical and empirical results show that SpikeSketch can work as a drop-in replacement for HLL because it achieves a near-optimal MVP (memory-variance-product) of 4.08 (37% smaller than HLL) with constant update time and mergeability. Its memory efficiency even defeats ACPC and HLLL, the state-of-the-art lossless-compressed sketches using linear-time compression to reduce memory usage.
Sub-Structural Parameter Identification Including Cracks of Beam Structure Using PZT Patch

Abstract This paper presents the numerical simulation of damage identification of beam structures using novel One Dimensional (1-D) PZT patch model with sub-structuring applied to the PZT Patch boundaries. The 1-D PZT patch model is simple and requires less computational effort than 2-D or 3-D models. A hybrid element constituted of 1-D beam element and a PZT sensor is used with reduced material properties which is very convenient for beams and is a novel application. The accuracy of 1-D hybrid element with cracked structure is first verified experimentally. The stiffness, damping and crack parameters are identified by minimizing the deviation between the predicted and measured voltage from the PZT patch using an optimization algorithm. The numerical signals are polluted with 5% Gaussian noise to simulate experimental noise. Numerical studies are performed on a beam and a nine member frame structure for sub-structural parameter and multiple crack identification. The PZT patches are attached at either ends of beam member to be identified. Sub-structuring is done to isolate the beam with patch, thus reducing the size of model to be identified. The numerical results show significant improvement in identification accuracy compared to other methods.
Representation of ICI as AWGN in PD-NOMA System Model

Power Domain Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (PD-NOMA) is recognized as one of the most promising technologies for next-generation multiple access in future wireless networks. Such multiplexing leads to the controlled inter-channel interference (ICI) cancelled at the receiver. In reality, ICI is represented as quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) symbols (or other modulation). However, the vast majority of research papers use signal models in which ICI is represented as the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with the equivalent power. Yet, such a replacement is not fully equivalent, because it reduces the accuracy of signal decoding. This is a significant simplification of the system model, which results in an additional inaccuracy in obtaining a number of system characteristics. This paper presents an approach that allows solving this problem and representing ICI as AWGN by means of a coefficient without increasing the decoding error. It also describes an expression for calculating the coefficient obtained and its performance confirmed by simulation results.
Recent Advances in DNA Nanomaterials

Applications of DNA-containing nanomaterials (DNA-NMs) in science and technology are currently attracting increasing attention in the fields of medicine, environment, engineering, etc. Such objects have become important for various branches of science and industries due to their outstanding characteristics such as small size, high controllability, clustering actions, and strong permeability. For these reasons, DNA-NMs deserve a review with respect to their recent advancements. On the other hand, precise cluster control, targeted drug distribution in vivo, and cellular micro-nano operation remain as problems. This review summarizes the recent progress in DNA-NMs and their crossover and integration into multiple disciplines (including in vivo/in vitro, microcircles excisions, and plasmid oligomers). We hope that this review will motivate relevant practitioners to generate new research perspectives and boost the advancement of nanomanipulation.
Promoting Ghanaian languages: The role of telenovela series

Telenovelas have become an attractive form of entertainment for many Ghanaians largely because of the use of local Ghanaian languages as voice-overs during telecast. The question that arises is – Does the telecast of telenovelas in a local language play any role in the promotion of Ghanaian languages? Using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, we explored the role of Telenovelas with voice-overs in the promotion of Ghanaian languages among residents of some communities in Accra, Ghana; specifically, Lapaz, Osu and Gbawe Mallam communities, University students and market women. Findings show that due to low English literacy levels, voice-over telenovelas were preferred among residents in Lapaz community and the market women. A privately-owned television station, Max TV, emerged as the station with a wider audience due to its innovative broadcasting strategy of voice-over Telenovelas using the Ghanaian (Akan) language. Overall, the telenovelas appear to be promoting the Akan language by exposing viewers to lexical knowledge, facilitating the acquisition of new vocabulary items, and shaping children’s learning of Akan. This paper, therefore, unearths the significance of glocalization of telenovelas in the promotion of local languages in Ghana.
A Three-Way Interaction of Sex, PER2 rs56013859 Polymorphism, and Family Maltreatment in Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents

The prevalence of depressive symptoms in adolescents is 12–18% and is twice as frequent in females. Sleep problems and thoughts of death are depressive symptoms or co-occurrent phenomena. Family maltreatment is a risk factor for later depressive symptoms and the period circadian regulator (PER) has been studied in relation to neurotransmitters, adaptation to stress, and winter depression. The purpose of this work was to study the relation of the three-way interactions of sex, PER2 rs56013859, and family maltreatment in relation to core depressive symptoms, sleep complaints, and thoughts of death and suicide in self-reports from a cohort of Swedish adolescents in 2012, 2015, and 2018. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses with linear and logistic regressions were used to study the relationships to the three outcomes. The three-way interaction was related to core depressive symptoms at both baseline and six years later. In contrast, the model did not show any relation to the other dependent variables. At 13–15 years, a sex-related differential expression was observed: females with the minor allele C:C/C:T exposed to family maltreatment showed higher levels of core depressive symptoms. Six years later, the trend was inverted among carriers of minor alleles.
Dimensioning Wireless Embedded Test Environments to Support Continuous Integration

Software development and testing is a complex process involving skilled people and infrastructure. A mix of evolving organizational practices, development practices and infrastructure contribute to the efficiency of the overall process, which is relatively well understood for general-purpose development. The development of wireless firmware and its testing in a real environment, however, is notably more challenging because the code needs to be compiled, uploaded and tested on target embedded hardware instead of a general-purpose computer. This requires purposefully developed testing infrastructure that needs to be optimally dimensioned to satisfy the needs of the development team. In this paper, we propose a capacity dimensioning of the supporting infrastructure illustrated in a reference case study. In particular, our capacity dimensioning simulator shows that for a team of 10 developers, only 1–2 parallel embedded test environments are needed to ensure test completion in less than 10 minutes in 95 % of the cases.
Improving Methods for Synchronizing Generators

Synchronization is a process that correctly turns on synchronous generators for parallel operation with the rest of the electric power system. During synchronization, the regime parameters of the synchronous machine (voltage and its phase, frequency) are changed in a certain way to equalize them with similar parameters of the equivalent network generator. Today synchronization is carried out manually by personnel or automatically. Synchronization process may have consequences depending on the selected synchronization method. At present two traditional synchronization methods exist: ideal synchronization, self-synchronization. Each of the traditional methods has its drawbacks – the ideal synchronization method is very time-consuming, and the self-synchronization method leads to large equalizing currents, which causes thermic and dynamic effects on the aggregate. In order to eliminate the disadvantages and improve the traditional methods of synchronization, it is proposed to develop a new method. The method is called accelerated because it allows you to switching on the faster than with ideal synchronization. The method is can be used when equipment is connected to the network in emergency and post-emergency modes (for example, when there is an imbalance of active power in the electrical network). The experiments carried out on the physical model confirm that the use of the accelerated method makes it possible to reduce the process execution time by two times compared to the exact synchronization method. The average duration of the developed method is 40 seconds, while the exact synchronization method is more than 83 seconds.
Mammalian Transforming growth factor-b s: Smad signaling and physio-pathological roles

Since its discovery in the early 80s, Transforming Growth Factor-b (TGF-b ) has emerged as a family of growth factors involved in essential physiological processes, including embryonic development, differentiation, tissue repair and cell growth control. Knockout experiments for the three mammalian isoforms of TGF-b s in mice have demonstrated their importance in regulating inflammation and tissue repair. Also, TGF-b has been implicated in the pathogenesis of human diseases, including tissue fibrosis and carcinogenesis where, in the latter case, it may exert both tumor suppressor and pro-oncogenic activities depending on the stage of the tumor. Cellular signaling by TGF-b family members is initiated by the assembly of specific cell surface serine/threonine kinase type receptors that activate transcription factors of the Smad family.
Localisation d'un véhicule à l'aide d'un SLAM visuel contraint

Pour se localiser en ville, la majorite des solutions commercialisees se base sur les systemes GPS. Meme si ces systemes offrent une precision suffisante hors agglomeration, celle-ci se degradent considerablement en villes a cause des phenomenes connus sous le nom du canyon urbain (i.e. reflexion du signal GPS sur les facades des bâtiments). Pour pallier ce probleme, les solutions basees sur un SLAM visuel (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping) semblent une alternative prometteuse. En plus de l’estimation des six degres de liberte de la camera mobile, il fournit une carte 3D de la scene observee. Toutefois, la localisation assuree par le SLAM visuel n’est pas geo-referencee et presente souvent des derives (e.g. mauvaise estimation du facteur d’echelle, accumulation des erreurs). Pour faire face a ces limitations et afin de proposer une solution facile a deployer, nous avons etudie la possibilite d’integrer au SLAM des informations supplementaires qui pourraient contraindre l’ensemble de la reconstruction fournie. Ces dernieres doivent alors etre peu couteuses et disponibles en milieux urbains denses et peri-urbains. C’est pour cette raison que nous avons choisi d’exploiter les contraintes fournies par un GPS standard et celles apportees par des modeles issus des Systemes d’Information Geographique, plus precisement : des modeles 3D des bâtiments et des modeles d’elevation de terrain. La principale contribution de ces travaux reside en l’integration de ces contraintes au sein de l’ajustement de faisceaux (i.e. processus d’optimisation du SLAM). Ceci n’est pas trivial etant donne que combiner des contraintes agissant sur la trajectoire de la camera et la reconstruction 3D peut entrainer des problemes de convergences, en particulier lorsque les informations exploitees ont des incertitudes variees, voire meme des donnees biaisees ou aberrantes (e.g. Pour les mesures du GPS). Differentes solutions Larnaout et al. (2012, 2013a,b,c) permettant de combiner plusieurs de ces contraintes simultanement tout en limitant les problemes de convergence ont ete developpees. Les solutions proposees ont ete validees sur des sequences de synthese et d’autres reelles de plusieurs kilometres enregistrees dans des conditions de circulation normale. Les resultats obtenus montrent que la precision atteinte au niveau de l’estimation des six degres de liberte de la camera permet d’assurer des nouvelles applications d’aide a la navigation par le biais de la Realite Augmentee. En plus de leur precision, nos approches ont l’avantage d’etre rapides, peu couteuses et faciles a deployer (ne necessitant pas un materiel sophistique).
Indagine biometrica sul “grande Myotis ”(Chiroptera, Vespertilionidae) della Grotta Sa RoccaUlari (Borutta) e di altre località della Sardegna

Vengono sottoposti ad analisi biometrica numerosi esemplari di "grande Myotis" della Grotta Sa Rocca Ulari (Borutta) e di altre localita della Sardegna. I dati vengono confrontati con quelli di Myotis myotis e Myotis blythii di altre localita italiane. I risultati consentono di escludere la presenza in Sardegna di Myotis blythii e indicano una maggiore affinita delle popolazioni sarde a Myotis myotis , con una leggera differenziazione che potrebbe confermare la similitudine con la specie del nord Africa ipotizzata in altri studi recenti.
Towards a Network Aware Model of the Time Uncertainty Bound in Precision Time Protocol

Synchronizing the system time between devices by exchanging timestamped messages over the network is a popular method to achieve time-consistency in distributed applications. Accurate time synchronization is essential in applications such as cellular communication, industrial control, and transactional databases. These applications consider the maximum possible time offset or the Time Uncertainty Bound (TUB) in the network while configuring their guard bands and waiting times. Choosing the right value for the TUB poses a fundamental challenge to the system designer - a conservatively high value of the TUB decreases the chances of time-based byzantine faults but increases latency due to larger guard bands and waiting times. The TUB is affected by packet delay variation (PDV) of time synchronization messages due to congestion from background network traffic. In this work, we use Network Calculus (NC) to derive the relation between network traffic and the TUB for a network built with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. For centrally deployed and monitored local area networks (LAN)s such as in cellular networks and datacenters this relation could be useful for system designers to plug a better-informed value of the TUB.
Implementation of Functional Behavior Assessments for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities Exhibiting Sexually Inappropriate Behaviors

A functional behavior assessment is an evidence-based process that identifies the function of challenging behaviors in order for educators to develop behavior intervention plans for students with disabilities. All behaviors are under stimulus control and research indicates that behaviors typically serve four functions: tangible, escape, attention, and automatic. However, when individuals with developmental disabilities engage in inappropriate sexual behaviors such as exposing their genitalia in public places or groping a stranger, it is not typical for practitioners to implement this functional behavior assessment process as these sexual behaviors are often viewed as different from non-sexual inappropriate behaviors like screaming in class or throwing school materials. This article presents information of how to complete a comprehensive functional behavior assessment for three students with developmental disabilities who exhibit sexually inappropriate behaviors in school settings to highlight the usefulness of the functional behavior assessment process for developing behavior intervention plans for long lasting behavior change
Task Scoping: Generating Task-Specific Simplifications of Open-Scope Planning Problems

A general-purpose agent must learn an open-scope world model: one rich enough to tackle any of the wide range of tasks it may be asked to solve over its operational lifetime. This stands in contrast with typical planning approaches, where the scope of a model is limited to a specific family of tasks that share significant structure. Unfortunately, planning to solve any specific task within an open-scope model is computationally intractable—even for state-of-the-art methods— due to the many states and actions that are necessarily present in the model but irrelevant to that problem. We propose task scoping: a method that exploits knowledge of the initial state, goal conditions, and transition system to automatically and efficiently remove provably irrelevant variables and actions from grounded planning problems. Our approach leverages causal link analysis and backwards reachability over state variables (rather than states) along with operator merging (when effects on relevant variables are identical). Using task scoping as a pre-planning step can shrink the search space by orders of magnitude and dramatically decrease planning time. We empirically demonstrate that these improvements occur across a variety of open-scope domains, including Minecraft, where our approach reduces search time by a factor of 75 for a state-of-the-art numeric planner, even after including the time required for task scoping itself.
Phase-dependent asymmetry of pattern masking in natural images explained by intrinsic position uncertainty

A number of recent studies have been directed at measuring and modeling detection of targets at specific locations in natural backgrounds, a key subtask of visual search in natural environments. A useful approach is to bin natural background patches into joint histograms with bins along specific background dimensions. By measuring psychometric functions in a sparse subset of these bins, it is possible to estimate how the included dimensions jointly affect detectability over the whole space of natural backgrounds. In previous studies, we found that threshold is proportional to the product of the background luminance, contrast, and similarity; a result predicted by a simple template-matching observer with divisive normalization along each of the dimensions. The measure of similarity was the cosine similarity of the amplitude spectra of the target and background (SA)—a phase-invariant measure. Here, we investigated the effect of the cosine similarity of the target and background images (SI|A)—a phase-dependent measure. We found that threshold decreases monotonically with SI|A in agreement with a recent study (Rideaux et al., 2022). In contrast, the template-matching observer predicts threshold to be a U-shaped function of SI|A reaching a minimum when the target and background are orthogonal (SI|A = 0). Surprisingly, when the template-matching observer includes a small amount of intrinsic position uncertainty (measured in a separate experiment) the pattern of thresholds is explained.
Acetaminophen-induced Liver Injury: Protective Effect of Laportea aestuans Aqueous Leaf Extract in Experimental Mice Model

Acetaminophen commonly referred to as paracetamol is an analgesic and antipyretic drug commonly available as over the counter medications. Indiscriminate use of acetaminophen for management of pain and fever causes liver damage. The study evaluated the hepatoprotective effect of the Laportea aestuans aqueous leaf extract in acetaminophen-treated mice. Group 1: control, Group 2: APAP treated, Group 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 received 25, 50, 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg bw of the extract for 7 days and then treated with 300 mg/kg bw APAP respectively, Group 8: silymarin group. Biochemical parameters were analyzed. Activities of liver function marker enzymes (gamma- glutamyl transferase, alkaline phosphatase, lactate and glutamate dehydrogenases, aspartate, and alanine aminotransferases) were significantly (p< 0.05) lower in the serum of acetaminophen-treated mice pre-administered with the Laportea aestuans aqueous leaf extract extract when compared to the acetaminophen-treated control mice. Activities of antioxidant enzymes significantly (p<0.05) increased in groups pre-administered with the extract or silymarin. Histological micrographs also showed that the hepatic architectures of the preadministered mice were maintained following treatment with APAP. Pre-administration of 100 mg/kg bw of Laportea aestuans aqueous leaf extract gave the best protective effect against APAP-induced hepatotoxicity. Findings from this study showed that L. aestuans leaf extract evidently protects mice against acetaminophen-induced liver injury, exhibiting antioxidant and hepatoprotective properties. This study supports the ethnobotanical use of L. aestuans for the prevention and treatment of liver diseases.
Results from the tall tower measurement station for atmospheric greenhouse gases at Białystok, Poland

min.m. kg 7.8 Results from the Tall Tower Measurement Station for Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases at Bialystok, Poland E. Popa, M. Gloor, A. Jordan, U. Schultz, F. Haensel, A. C. Manning, T. Seifert, M.Heimann 1 Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany 2 Energy research Centre of the Netherlands, Petten, Netherlands 3 University of Leeds, Leeds, UK 4 University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
The Program for Control of Visceral Leishmaniasis in Brazil: Effect of Systematic Euthanasia of Seropositive Dogs as Single Control Action in Porteirinha, a Brazilian City with Intense Transmission of Visceral Leishmaniasis

: Background: Porteirinha is endemic for visceral leishmaniasis (VL), with intense disease transmission of the disease. We evaluated the impact of canine euthanasia as a single control measure on the incidence of VL in humans and canines. Methods: A prospective observational cohort study was carried out over four years (1998 – 2002) in eight of the 12 neighborhoods of the city. The dynamics of canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) transmission were evaluated for 2 years, before beginning the screening-culling intervention. The comparative morbidity index (CMI) was used to stratify areas with the greatest risk of CVL, and the spatial distribution of human and canine VL cases was compared using univariate and bivariate K functions. Results: Human cases conglomerated in three neighborhoods. Spatial clusters were detected for CVL in 1998, 2000, and 2001, but not in 1999, when greater spatial dispersion occurred. The screening and culling intervention reduced the number of human VL cases and decreased the incidence of CVL, mainly in neighborhoods with a high CMI. Conclusions: The systematic euthanasia of seropositive dogs was shown to be an effective control action of the Program for Control of Visceral Leishmaniasis (PCLV) in Brazil. The fundamental role of domestic dogs in the epidemiological chain of VL was reaffirmed.