Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
reusing design experience for petri nets through patterns

Industrial applications of Petri nets for modeling and design often result in very complex models (Zurawski and Zhou 1994; Esser, Janneck, and Naedele 1997). Designers can handle this complexity much better if they can (re)use structures expressing expert modeling experience at a higher level of design and abstraction than the basic elements. In the software engineering domain this observation led to the recent trend of using software design patterns (Buschmann and Meunier 1995; Gamma et al. 1995). Our experience with Petri nets, an established and well researched visual language for systems modeling, simulation, and analysis (Murata 1989; Reisig 1992; Zurawski and Zhou 1994), in projects concerned with modeling of manufacturing machines (Esser, Janneck, and Naedele 1997; Naedele and Janneck 1998) and integrated circuits (Gries 1998), shows that patterns are very useful in this area as well. In this paper we continue work presented in (Naedele and Janneck 1998) describing a template to capture, document, and present design knowledge in the form of design patterns. Finally, the example of the modeling of an integrated circuit shows an application of that template.
The impact of pediatric neuropsychological consultation in mild traumatic brain injury: a model for providing feedback after invalid performance

Abstract Objective: In recent years, pediatric practitioners have increasingly recognized the importance of objectively measuring performance validity during clinical assessments. Yet, no studies have examined the impact of neuropsychological consultation when invalid performance has been identified in pediatric populations and little published guidance exists for clinical management. Here we provide a conceptual model for providing feedback after noncredible performance has been detected. In a pilot study, we examine caregiver satisfaction and postconcussive symptoms following provision of this feedback for patients seen through our concussion program. Methods: Participants (N = 70) were 8–17-year-olds with a history of mild traumatic brain injury who underwent an abbreviated neuropsychological evaluation between 2 and 12 months post-injury. We examined postconcussive symptom reduction and caregiver satisfaction after neuropsychological evaluation between groups of patients who were determined to have provided noncredible effort (n = 9) and those for whom no validity concerns were present (n = 61). Results: We found similarly high levels of caregiver satisfaction between groups and greater reduction in self-reported symptoms after feedback was provided using the model with children with noncredible presentations compared to those with credible presentations. Conclusion: The current study lends preliminary support to the idea that the identification and communication of invalid performance can be a beneficial clinical intervention that promotes high levels of caregiver satisfaction and a reduction in self-reported and caregiver-reported symptoms.
Ear Molding in Newborn Infants with Auricular Deformities

Background: A review of a single physician's experience in managing over 831 infant ear deformities (488 patients) is presented. Methods: The authors' methods of molding have advanced from the use of various tapes, glues, and stents, to a comprehensive yet simple system that shapes the antihelix, the triangular fossa, the helical rim, and the overly prominent conchal-mastoid angle (EarWell Infant Ear Correction System). Results: The types of deformities managed, and their relative occurrence, are as follows: (1) prominent/cup ear, 373 ears (45 percent); (2) lidding/lop ear, 224 ears (27 percent); (3) mixed ear deformities, 83 ears (10 percent) (all had associated conchal crus); (4) Stahl's ear, 66 ears (8 percent); (5) helical rim abnormalities, 58 ears (7 percent); (6) conchal crus, 25 ears (3 percent); and (7) cryptotia, two ears (0.2 percent). Bilateral deformities were present in 340 patients (70 percent), with unilateral deformities in 148 patients (30 percent). Fifty-eight infant ears (34 patients) were treated using the final version of the EarWell Infant Ear Correction System with a success rate exceeding 90 percent (good to excellent results). The system was found to be most successful when begun in the first week of the infant's life. When molding was initiated after 3 weeks from birth, only approximately half of the infants had a good response. Conclusions: Congenital ear deformities are common and only approximately 30 percent self-correct. These deformities can be corrected by initiating appropriate molding in the first week of life. Neonatal molding reduces the need for surgical correction with results that often exceed what can be achieved with the surgical alternative.
Floating-point analog-to-digital converter

A floating-point ADC (FP-ADC) has been proposed for the purpose of achieving a wide dynamic range without demanding a high resolution, when the high resolution is merely for covering the signal dynamic range rather than the quantization accuracy. In an FP-ADC, the dynamic range and resolution can be designed independently. Unlike the known logarithmic amplifier solution, it directly gives a linear digital output. It can work with a small input range imposed by a low voltage supply as its virtual input range is greatly expanded. The principle, key circuitry, achievable performance and sensitivities to mismatches are addressed in this paper. Simulation results indicate that this approach is capable of achieving up to a 16 bit dynamic range with an 8-10 bit effective resolution at a sampling rate of 40 MS/s in submicron CMOS.
Truncated Polynomial Expansion Downlink Precoders and Uplink Detectors for Massive MIMO

In TDD reciprocity-based massive MIMO it is essential to be able to compute the downlink precoding matrix over all OFDM resource blocks within a small fraction of the uplink-downlink slot duration. Early implementation of massive MIMO are limited to the simple Conjugate Beamforming (ConjBF) precoding method, because of such computation latency limitation. However, it has been widely demonstrated by theoretical analysis and system simulation that Regularized Zero-Forcing (RZF) precoding is generally much more effective than ConjBF for a large but practical number of transmit antennas. In order to recover a significant fraction of the gap between ConjBF and RZF and yet meeting the very strict computation latency constraints, truncated polynomial expansion (TPE) methods have been proposed. In this paper we present a novel TPE method that outperforms all previously proposed methods in the general non-symmetric case of users with arbitrary antenna correlation. In addition, the proposed method is significantly simpler and more flexible than previously proposed methods based on deterministic equivalents and free probability in large random matrix theory. We consider power allocation with our TPE approach, and show that classical system optimization problems such as min-sum power and max-min rate can be easily solved. Furthermore, we provide a detailed computation latency analysis specifically targeted to a highly parallel FPGA hardware architecture.
Evaluation of Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Activities and Phenolic Profile for Hyssopus officinalis, Ocimum basilicum and Teucrium chamaedrys

This study was designed to examine the in vitro antioxidant and antimicrobial activities and to characterize the polyphenolic composition of the ethanolic extracts of Hyssopus officinalis, Ocimum basilicum and Teucrium chamaedrys. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the major phenolic compounds were conducted using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). The total polyphenols, caffeic acid derivatives and flavonoids content was spectrophotometrically determined. The phenolic profile showed the presence of phenolic acid derivatives (caftaric, gentisic, caffeic, p-coumaric, chlorogenic and ferulic acids), flavonoid glycosides (rutin, isoquercitrin and quercitrin) and free flavonoid aglycons (luteolin, quercetin), in different concentrations. DPPH radical scavenging assay, Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) method, hemoglobin ascorbate peroxidase activity inhibition (HAPX) assay, and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) radicals detection were employed, revealing several aspects of the antioxidant activities of these species. The antimicrobial tests were performed using the disk diffusion assay. These extracts contained a large amount of the polyphenolic compounds (77.72, 175.57, and 243.65 mg/g, respectively), and they showed a good antioxidant activity, as witnessed by a number of methods. T. chamaedrys had a high antimicrobial activity. Besides their antioxidant activity, the antimicrobial effect of these extracts confirms the biological activities of these herbal medicinal products.
Flash Flood Detection in Urban Cities Using Ultrasonic and Infrared Sensors

Floods are the most common type of natural disaster, often leading to loss of lives and properties in the thousands yearly. Among these events, urban flash floods are particularly deadly because of the short timescales on which they occur, and because of the population density of cities. Since most flood casualties are caused by a lack of information on the impending flood (type, location, and severity), sensing these events is critical to generate accurate and detailed warnings and short term forecasts. However, no dedicated flash flood sensing systems, that could monitor the propagation of flash floods, in real time, currently exist in cities. In this paper, first, a new sensing device that can simultaneously monitor urban flash floods and traffic congestion has been presented. This sensing device is based on the combination of ultrasonic range finding with remote temperature sensing, and can sense both phenomena with a high degree of accuracy, using a combination of L1-regularized reconstruction and artificial neural networks to process measurement data. Second, corresponding algorithms have been implemented on a low-power wireless sensor platform, and their performance in water level estimation in a six months test involving four different sensors is illustrated. The results demonstrate that urban water levels can be reliably estimated with error less than 2 cm, and that the preprocessing and machine learning schemes can run in real time on currently available wireless sensor platforms.
Ancestor worship in CS1: on the primacy of arrays

History has given us the array as the fundamental data structure to present to students within the CS1 curriculum. However, with the recent growth in popularity of object-oriented languages for CS1 (C++, Java, C#), and with that, the acceptance of the objects-first or objects-early approach to teaching CS1, it becomes imperative that we re-evaluate our long-held beliefs about what is appropriate to teach. It is our position that the first data structure that students are exposed to should not be arrays, but rather some other form of collection. We will give some examples of how to use <i>java.util. HashMap</i> and some of the other Java Collections classes in substitution of arrays. We also present data concerning the academic performance of students using arrays versus those using Java Collections for CS1 lab exercises.
Intestinal Microbiota and Microbial Metabolites Are Changed in a Pig Model Fed a High-Fat/Low-Fiber or a Low-Fat/High-Fiber Diet

The intestinal microbiota and its metabolites appear to be an important factor for gastrointestinal function and health. However, research is still needed to further elaborate potential relationships between nutrition, gut microbiota and host’s health by means of a suitable animal model. The present study examined the effect of two different diets on microbial composition and activity by using the pig as a model for humans. Eight pigs were equally allotted to two treatments, either fed a low-fat/high-fiber (LF), or a high-fat/low-fiber (HF) diet for 7 weeks. Feces were sampled at day 7 of every experimental week. Diet effects on fecal microbiota were assessed using quantitative real-time PCR, DNA fingerprinting and metaproteomics. Furthermore, fecal short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) profiles and ammonia concentrations were determined. Gene copy numbers of lactobacilli, bifidobacteria (P<0.001) and Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (P<0.05) were higher in the LF pigs, while Enterobacteriaceae were more abundant in the HF pigs (P<0.001). Higher numbers of proteins affiliated to Enterobacteriaceae were also present in the HF samples. Proteins for polysaccharide breakdown did almost exclusively originate from Prevotellaceae. Total and individual fecal SCFA concentrations were higher for pigs of the LF treatment (P<0.05), whereas fecal ammonia concentrations did not differ between treatments (P>0.05). Results provide evidence that beginning from the start of the experiment, the LF diet stimulated beneficial bacteria and SCFA production, especially butyrate (P<0.05), while the HF diet fostered those bacterial groups which have been associated with a negative impact on health conditions. These findings correspond to results in humans and might strengthen the hypothesis that the response of the porcine gut microbiota to a specific dietary modulation is in support of using the pig as suitable animal model for humans to assess diet-gut-microbiota interactions. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD003447.
Extracellular iron reductases: identification of a new class of enzymes by siderophore-producing microorganisms.

This study identifies extracellular iron reductases in culture supernatant fluids of the siderophore-producing microorganisms Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These enzymes were constitutively produced and reduced and released iron from a variety of ferric chelators. Dialyzable cofactors, necessary for the transfer of electrons in the enzymatic reduction of iron, were identified. The reductases were sensitive to treatment with proteinase K and guanidine-HCl, were not associated with siderophore activity, and were apparently released from the cell as extracellular enzymes. The acquisition of 59Fe2+ by cell suspensions of E. coli and P. aeruginosa was saturable, suggesting that the ferrous iron generated by these reductases can be bound and transported. Salmonella typhimurium mutants feoB, tonB, entB, and entBfeoB, deficient in numerous known iron uptake pathways, were found to exhibit substantial extracellular iron-reducing activities over that of the parent. A hypothesis is proposed in which the extracellular iron reductases excreted by siderophore-producing microorganisms may be responsible for the mobilization of iron during conditions of iron repletion when siderophores are repressed and may also function in concert with siderophores during periods of iron starvation.
New normative standards of conditional reasoning and the dual-source model

There has been a major shift in research on human reasoning toward Bayesian and probabilistic approaches, which has been called a new paradigm. The new paradigm sees most everyday and scientific reasoning as taking place in a context of uncertainty, and inference is from uncertain beliefs and not from arbitrary assumptions. In this manuscript we present an empirical test of normative standards in the new paradigm using a novel probabilized conditional reasoning task. Our results indicated that for everyday conditional with at least a weak causal connection between antecedent and consequent only the conditional probability of the consequent given antecedent contributes unique variance to predicting the probability of conditional, but not the probability of the conjunction, nor the probability of the material conditional. Regarding normative accounts of reasoning, we found significant evidence that participants' responses were confidence preserving (i.e., p-valid in the sense of Adams, 1998) for MP inferences, but not for MT inferences. Additionally, only for MP inferences and to a lesser degree for DA inferences did the rate of responses inside the coherence intervals defined by mental probability logic (Pfeifer and Kleiter, 2005, 2010) exceed chance levels. In contrast to the normative accounts, the dual-source model (Klauer et al., 2010) is a descriptive model. It posits that participants integrate their background knowledge (i.e., the type of information primary to the normative approaches) and their subjective probability that a conclusion is seen as warranted based on its logical form. Model fits showed that the dual-source model, which employed participants' responses to a deductive task with abstract contents to estimate the form-based component, provided as good an account of the data as a model that solely used data from the probabilized conditional reasoning task.
Apo‐parvalbumin as an intrinsically disordered protein

Recently defined family of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP) includes proteins lacking rigid tertiary structure meanwhile fulfilling essential biological functions. Here we show that apo‐state of pike parvalbumin (α‐ and β‐isoforms, pI 5.0 and 4.2, respectively) belongs to the family of IDP, which is in accord with theoretical predictions. Parvalbumin (PA) is a 12‐kDa calcium‐binding protein involved into regulation of relaxation of fast muscles. Differential scanning calorimetry measurements of metal‐depleted form of PA revealed the absence of any thermally induced transitions with measurable denaturation enthalpy along with elevated specific heat capacity, implying the lack of rigid tertiary structure and exposure of hydrophobic protein groups to the solvent. Calcium removal from the PAs causes more than 10‐fold increase in fluorescence intensity of hydrophobic probe bis‐ANS and is accompanied by a decrease in α‐helical content and a marked increase in mobility of aromatic residues environment, as judged by circular dichroism spectroscopy (CD). Guanidinium chloride‐induced unfolding of the apo‐parvalbumins monitored by CD showed the lack of fixed tertiary structure. Theoretical estimation of energetics of the charge–charge interactions in the PAs indicated their pronounced destabilization upon calcium removal, which is in line with sequence‐based predictions of disordered protein chain regions. Far‐UV CD studies of apo‐α‐PA revealed hallmarks of cold denaturation of the protein at temperatures below 20°C. Moreover, a cooperative thermal denaturation transition with mid‐temperature at 10–15°C is revealed by near‐UV CD for both PAs. The absence of detectable enthalpy change in this temperature region suggests continuous nature of the transition. Overall, the theoretical and experimental data obtained show that PA in apo‐state is essentially disordered nevertheless demonstrates complex denaturation behavior. The native rigid tertiary structure of PA is attained upon association of one (α‐PA) or two (β‐PA) calcium ions per protein molecule, as follows from calorimetric and calcium titration data. Proteins 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Thermal Signal Analysis for Breast Cancer Risk Verification

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in the world. Currently, there are no effective methods to prevent this disease. However, early diagnosis increases chances of remission. Breast thermography is an option to be considered in screening strategies. This paper proposes a new dynamic breast thermography analysis technique in order to identify patients at risk for breast cancer. Thermal signals from patients of the Antonio Pedro University Hospital (HUAP), available at the Mastology Database for Research with Infrared Image - DMR-IR were used to validate the study. First, each patient's images are registered. Then, the breast region is divided into subregions of 3x3 pixels and the average temperature from each of these regions is observed in all images of the same patient. Features of the thermal signals of such subregions are calculated. Then, the k-means algorithm is applied over feature vectors building two clusters. Silhouette index, Davies-Bouldin index and Calinski-Harabasz index are applied to evaluate the clustering. The test results showed that the methodology presented in this paper is able to identify patients with breast cancer. Classification techniques have been applied on the index values and 90.90% hit rate has been achieved.
The Orthodox View of Brain Sexual Differentiation

The standard view of sexual differentiation of the brain, derived primarily from work with mammals, is that the same steroidal signal which permanently masculinizes the body early in life, androgen, also permanently masculinizes the nervous system. This oversimplified view overlooks the rich diversity of mechanisms produced by natural selection. We review the mechanisms underlying sexual differentiation of what may be the simplest mammalian model, the spinal nucleus of the bulbocavernosus (SNB), a system that is intimately associated with sexual differentiation of the periphery. Indeed, in many instances, early androgen can permanently masculinize the SNB system but, surprisingly, these early influences may depend to some extent on social mediating factors. Furthermore, in adulthood, androgen continues to affect the SNB system in diverse ways, acting on several different loci, indicating a life-long plasticity in even this simple system. Finally, there is evidence that adult androgens interact with social experience in order to affect the SNB system. Thus the SNB system displays a far richer array of interactions than the standard view of sexual differentiation would predict. Examination of other systems and other species, as depicted in the following reports, reveals a far more complicated, and far more interesting perspective on how the brains and behaviors of males and females diverge.
The Effect of Plastic Anisotropy on the Residual Stress within a 316L Stainless Steel Bead-on-Plate Specimen

Plastic anisotropy can affect the strains measured by neutron diffraction. If this is not properly accounted for significant errors can result in the calculated stresses. This paper illustrates addresses this issue using measurements of the residual strain field around a 60 mm long single weld bead deposited on the surface of a 17 mm thick stainless steel plate. Measurements were made on ENGIN-X, the engineering spectrometer at the ISIS facility of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK). Diffraction spectra from these measurements have been fitted using both single and multi-peak fitting approaches. Both residual strain and stress results have been presented for (111) and (200) single peak fits and compared to a multi-peak fit (Rietveld) analysis. Results from these analyses have revealed significant anisotropy in the response of the individual lattice planes. This effect is most severe in measurements carried out in the normal direction and is shown to be predicted using an elasto-plastic self-consistent model.
Noninvasive estimation of right ventricular systolic pressure by Doppler ultrasound in patients with tricuspid regurgitation.

We evaluated the accuracy of a noninvasive method for estimating right ventricular systolic pressures in patients with tricuspid regurgitation detected by Doppler ultrasound. Of 62 patients with clinical signs of elevated right-sided pressures, 54 (87%) had jets of tricuspid regurgitation clearly recorded by continuous-wave Doppler ultrasound. By use of the maximum velocity (V) of the regurgitant jet, the systolic pressure gradient (delta P) between right ventricle and right atrium was calculated by the modified Bernoulli equation (delta P = 4V2). Adding the transtricuspid gradient to the mean right atrial pressure (estimated clinically from the jugular veins) gave predictions of right ventricular systolic pressure that correlated well with catheterization values (r = .93, SEE = 8 mm Hg). The tricuspid gradient method provides an accurate and widely applicable method for noninvasive estimation of elevated right ventricular systolic pressures.