Video Tester -- A multiple-metric framework for video quality assessment over IP networks

This paper presents an extensible and reusable framework which addresses the problem of video quality assessment over IP networks. The proposed tool (referred to as Video-Tester) supports raw uncompressed video encoding and decoding. It also includes different video over IP transmission methods (i.e.: RTP over UDP unicast and multicast, as well as RTP over TCP). In addition, it is furnished with a rich set of offline analysis capabilities. Video-Tester analysis includes QoS and bitstream parameters estimation (i.e.: bandwidth, packet inter-arrival time, jitter and loss rate, as well as GOP size and I-frame loss rate). Our design facilitates the integration of virtually any existing video quality metric thanks to the adopted Python-based modular approach. Video-Tester currently provides PSNR, SSIM, ITU-T G.1070 video quality metric, DIV and PSNR-based MOS estimations. In order to promote its use and extension, Video-Tester is open and publicly available.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures. For the Google Code project, see http://video-tester.googlecode.com

A new method for identifying bivariate differential expression in high dimensional microarray data using quadratic discriminant analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>One of the drawbacks we face up when analyzing gene to phenotype associations in genomic data is the ugly performance of the designed classifier due to the small sample-high dimensional data structures (<it>n</it> ≪ <it>p</it>) at hand. This is known as the peaking phenomenon, a common situation in the analysis of gene expression data. Highly predictive bivariate gene interactions whose marginals are useless for discrimination are also affected by such phenomenon, so they are commonly discarded by state of the art sequential search algorithms. Such patterns are known as weak/marginal strong bivariate interactions. This paper addresses the problem of uncovering them in high dimensional settings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We propose a new approach which uses the quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) as a search engine in order to detect such signals. The choice of QDA is justified by a simulation study for a benchmark of classifiers which reveals its appealing properties. The procedure rests on an exhaustive search which explores the feature space in a blockwise manner by dividing it in blocks and by assessing the accuracy of the QDA for the predictors within each pair of blocks; the block size is determined by the resistance of the QDA to peaking. This search highlights chunks of features which are expected to contain the type of subtle interactions we are concerned with; a closer look at this smaller subset of features by means of an exhaustive search guided by the QDA error rate for all the pairwise input combinations within this subset will enable their final detection. The proposed method is applied both to synthetic data and to a public domain microarray data. When applied to gene expression data, it leads to pairs of genes which are not univariate differentially expressed but exhibit subtle patterns of bivariate differential expression.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We have proposed a novel approach for identifying weak marginal/strong bivariate interactions. Unlike standard approaches as the top scoring pair (TSP) and the CorScor, our procedure does not assume a specified shape of phenotype separation and may enrich the type of bivariate differential expression patterns that can be uncovered in high dimensional data.</p

Genetic algorithm optimization of entanglement

We present an application of a genetic algorithmic computational method to the optimization of the concurrence measure of entanglement for the cases of one dimensional chains, as well as square and triangular lattices in a simple tight-binding approach in which the hopping of electrons is much stronger than the phonon dissipationComment: 26 pages with 13 figures, based on Chapter 3 of the Master thesis of the first author defended at IPICyT, San Luis Potosi, Mx, on 22nd of February 2006, similar to the published version [Fig. 5 left out but contains the Appendix figure

How Reproducible are Surface Areas Calculated from the BET Equation?

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (NanoMOFdeli), ERC-2016-COG 726380, Innovate UK (104384) and EPSRC IAA (IAA/RG85685). N.R. acknowledges the support of the Cambridge International Scholarship and the TrinityHenry Barlow Scholarship (Honorary). O.K.F. and R.Q.S. acknowledge funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FG02-08ER15967). R.S.F. and D.B. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (SCoTMOF), ERC-2015-StG 677289. Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office, through the Hydrogen Storage Materials Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC). This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government. J.D.E. acknowledges the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) at TU Dresden. S.K.G. and S.M. acknowledge SERB (Project No. CRG/2019/000906), India for financial support. K.K. and R.K. acknowledge Active Co. Research Grant for funding. S.K. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (COSMOS), ERC-2017-StG 756489. N.L. and J.G.M acknowledge funding from the European Commission through the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019 program (ZEOBIOCHEM -872102) and the Spanish MICINN and AEI/FEDER (RTI2018-099504-B-C21). N.L. thanks the University of Alicante for funding (UATALENTO17-05). ICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa program from the Spanish MINECO (Grant No. SEV-2017-0706) S.M.J.R. and A.L. wish to thank the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO), under grant nos. 12T3519N and 11D2220N. L.S. was supported by the EPSRC Cambridge NanoDTC EP/L015978/1. C.T.Y. and T.S.N. acknowledges funds from the National Research Foundation of Korea, NRF-2017M3A7B4042140 and NRF-2017M3A7B4042235. P.F. and H. Y. acknowledge US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division under Award No. DE-SC0010596 (P.F.). R.O. would like to acknowledge funding support during his Ph.D. study from Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education-LPDP with the contract No. 202002220216006. Daniel Siderius: Official contribution of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), not subject to copyright in the United States of America. Daniel Siderius: Certain commercially available items may be identified in this paper. This identification does not imply recommendation by NIST, nor does it imply that it is the best available for the purposes described. B.V.L, S.T.E and A.M.P acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (Grant agreement no. 639233, COFLeaf).Porosity and surface area analysis play a prominent role in modern materials science. At the heart of this sits the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory, which has been a remarkably successful contribution to the field of materials science. The BET method was developed in the 1930s for open surfaces but is now the most widely used metric for the estimation of surface areas of microand mesoporous materials. Despite its widespread use, the calculation of BET surface areas causes a spread in reported areas, resulting in reproducibility problems in both academia and industry. To prove this, for this analysis, 18 already-measured raw adsorption isotherms were provided to sixty-one labs, who were asked to calculate the corresponding BET areas. This roundrobin exercise resulted in a wide range of values. Here, the reproducibility of BET area determination from identical isotherms is demonstrated to be a largely ignored issue, raising critical concerns over the reliability of reported BET areas. To solve this major issue, a new computational approach to accurately and systematically determine the BET area of nanoporous materials is developed. The software, called “BET surface identification” (BETSI), expands on the well-known Rouquerol criteria and makes an unambiguous BET area assignment possible.European Research Council (ERC) ERC-2016-COG 726380 ERC-2015-StG 677289 ERC-2017-StG 756489 639233UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) Innovate UK 104384 UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) IAA/RG85685Cambridge International Scholarship TrinityHenry Barlow ScholarshipUnited States Department of Energy (DOE) DE-FG02-08ER15967National Nuclear Security Administration DE-NA-0003525United States Department of Energy (DOE)Alexander von Humboldt FoundationCenter for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) at TU DresdenDepartment of Science & Technology (India)Science Engineering Research Board (SERB), India CRG/2019/000906Active Co. Research GrantEuropean Commission through the H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019 program ZEOBIOCHEM -872102Spanish MICINN and AEI/FEDER RTI2018-099504-B-C21University of Alicante UATALENTO17-05Spanish Government SEV-2017-0706 FWO 12T3519N 11D2220NUK Research & Innovation (UKRI)Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) EP/L015978/1National Research Foundation of Korea NRF-2017M3A7B4042140 NRF-2017M3A7B4042235United States Department of Energy (DOE) DE-SC0010596Indonesian Endowment Fund for Education-LPDP 20200222021600

The Tidal Evolution of Local Group Dwarf Spheroidals

(Abridged) We use N-body simulations to study the evolution of dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) driven by galactic tides. We adopt a cosmologically-motivated model where dSphs are approximated by a King model embedded within an NFW halo. We find that these NFW-embedded King models are extraordinarily resilient to tides; the stellar density profile still resembles a King model even after losing more than 99% of the stars. As tides strip the galaxy, the stellar luminosity, velocity dispersion, central surface brightness, and core radius decrease monotonically. Remarkably, we find that the evolution of these parameters is solely controlled by the total amount of mass lost from within the luminous radius. Of all parameters, the core radius is the least affected: after losing 99% of the stars, R_c decreases by just a factor of ~2. Interestingly, tides tend to make dSphs more dark-matter dominated because the tightly bound central dark matter ``cusp'' is more resilient to disruption than the ``cored'' King profile. We examine whether the extremely large M/L ratios of the newly-discovered ultra-faint dSphs might have been caused by tidal stripping of once brighter systems. Although dSph tidal evolutionary tracks parallel the observed scaling relations in the luminosity-radius plane, they predict too steep a change in velocity dispersion compared with the observational estimates hitherto reported in the literature. The ultra-faint dwarfs are thus unlikely to be the tidal remnants of systems like Fornax, Draco, or Sagittarius. Despite spanning four decades in luminosity, dSphs appear to inhabit halos of comparable peak circular velocity, lending support to scenarios that envision dwarf spheroidals as able to form only in halos above a certain mass threshold.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figs., accepted by Ap

Habitat Characterization of Juvenile Atlantic Tarpon (Megalops atlanticus) in Isle of Youth, Cuba

Tarpon is considered a ‘Vulnerable’ species by IUCN but is also a highly prized recreational species. It is reportedly abundant in Cuba and may be threatened by high levels of fishing pressure. However, the current knowledge about Tarpon habitat characteristics and ecology in Cuba is very poor, which limit any attempt for its management and conservation. Here we summarize abiotic characteristics of juvenile Tarpon habitats in Lanier Swamp, Isle of Youth, Cuba, which is a RAMSAR site and Faunal Refuge. Three locations in Lanier Swamp were sampled for juvenile Tarpon presence during 2015-2017: Colony Lagoon (CL), Punta Francés Lagoon (PFL) and San Pedro (SP) river system. Abiotic characteristics were sampled from these same sites in January 2017. The smallest Tarpon (~150 mm fork length (FL, n= 22) occurred at CL, characterized by shallower waters with extreme salinities (0.6 and 50.8), less connection with the sea, and more protection from sunlight. In contrast, larger juvenile Tarpon (~630 mm FL, n= 20) were captured at SP, the location with the greatest connectivity to the ocean and greatest depth (~353 cm). The main results suggest that water depth, salinity, sunlight exposure and spatial dimensions are important habitat characteristics. Additionally, this study demonstrates the importance of coastal mangroves as juvenile Tarpon habitat and highlights the potential of using Tarpon as an umbrella species with broader conservation benefits. This study is an important first step to understanding Tarpon habitat use patterns in Cuba and developing a comprehensive conservation plan. Resumen El sábalo es considerado especie ‘Vulnerable’ según la UICN, pero también es altamente apreciado en la pesca recreativa. Se ha registrado como una especie abundante en Cuba y pudiera estar amenazado por altos niveles de presión pesquera. Sin embargo, el conocimiento actual sobre los hábitats y la ecología del sábalo en Cuba es escaso, lo cual limita cualquier intento de manejo y conservación. En este estudio se describen las características abióticas de hábitats de sábalos juveniles en la Ciénaga de Lanier, Isla de la Juventud, Cuba; área que es sitio RAMSAR y Refugio de Fauna. Tres localidades en la Ciénaga de Lanier fueron muestreados para juveniles por la presencia de sábalos juveniles durante 2015-2017: Laguna Colony (CL), Laguna Punta Francés (PFL) y sistema rivereño San Pedro (SP). Se tomaron muestras de las características abióticas de estos mismos sitios en enero de 2017. Los sábalos más pequeños (~150 mm de longitud horquilla (LH, n= 22) habitaron sitios en CL menos profundos, con salinidades extremas (0,6 and 50,8), menos conectados con el mar, y más protegidos de la luz solar. Los sábalos juveniles más grandes (~630 mm LH, n= 20) fueron capturados en SP, la localidad con mayor conectividad con el mar y mayor profundidad (~353 cm). Los resultados encontrados sugieren que la profundidad del agua, salinidad, exposición solar y dimensión espacial, son importantes características del hábitat. Adicionalmente, se demuestra la importancia de los manglares como hábitats de sábalos juveniles y se resalta el potencial de emplear al sábalo como especie sombrilla con amplios beneficios en la conservación. Este estudio es una importante contribución para entender los patrones de uso del hábitat de los sábalos en Cuba y desarrollar un plan de conservación integral

Analysis of the critical moments in the League ACB 2007-2008

The aim of this paper was to identify the variables that determine winning or losing in the critical moments of the basketball games. A total of forty one critical moments were analyzed, corresponding to 30 games of the regular season from the Spanish Professional League (ACB, season 2007-2008). Games were selected according to the definition of critical moments (described in the available literature), which corresponded to overtime and the last 5 minutes of games with score differences equal or below to six points. The results revealed better values in the winners in defensive rebounds and successful free-throws