Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear differential equation approach for the two-way shape memory effects of one-dimensional shape memory alloy structures

In the current paper, a macroscopic differential model is constructed for the modeling of two-way shape memory effects in one-dimensional shape memory alloy (SMA) structures. The model is based on the phenomenological theory of thermoelastic phase transformations in SMAs. Hysteresis loops in both mechanical and thermal fields are treated as macroscopic illustrations of martensite transformations and martensite variant re-orientations. A non-convex free energy function is constructed such that each of its local equilibriums can be used to characterize one of the phases involved in the transformations. System states (strain) can be transformed upon external loadings (mechanical or thermal) from one stable equilibrium to another, thus the dynamics of phase transformations can be modeled by investigating the system state transformations. Governing equations for the transformation dynamics are formulated by employing the Lagrange's equation, and are expressed as nonlinear differential equations. Numerical examples of thermal and mechanical hysteresis loops associated with the transformations caused by thermal and mechanical loadings are presented. Two way shape memory effects and pseudo-elastic effects are successfully modeled.
Genetic and antigenic characterization of Borrelia coriaceae, putative agent of epizootic bovine abortion

Borrelia coriaceae was characterized genetically and antigenically by utilizing the following techniques: restriction endonuclease analysis, Southern blotting and genomic hybridization, pulsed-field electrophoresis, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and immunoblotting. The B. coriaceae genome revealed unique and characteristic banding patterns both by agarose gel electrophoresis and by hybridization when compared with several Borrelia burgdorferi isolates. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis demonstrated several linear plasmids ranging from 65 to 30 kilobase pairs. Cross-reaction with B. burgdorferi antigens ranging from 21 to 26 kilodaltons were demonstrated by immunoblotting with rabbit anti-B. coriaceae antiserum. However, most B. coriaceae antigens were quite distinct when compared with B. burgdorferi and Leptospira interrogans antigens.
Male circumcision reduces penile high-risk human papillomavirus viral load in a randomised clinical trial in Rakai, Uganda

Objectives Male circumcision reduces penile high-risk human papillomavirus (HR-HPV) prevalence in randomised trials. The goal of this study was to examine the effect of circumcision on HPV viral load among HPV-infected men in a randomised trial of male circumcision. Methods In a randomised trial to assess the efficacy of circumcision on HIV acquisition in Rakai, Uganda, HIV-negative men were randomised to immediate (intervention) or delayed (control) circumcision and followed over 24 months. We performed quantitative-PCR HPV viral load assays on penile swabs which tested positive by Linear Array (LA) for six HR-HPV genotypes and estimated viral load in the remaining types by LA signal strength. Results At 24 months, circumcision intervention arm men infected with one of the six selected HR-HPV genotypes had a lower viral load and significantly reduced HR-HPV high LA band intensity (PRR=0.61, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.86) compared to infected men in the control arm of the trial. The decreased viral load associated with circumcision was seen among HPV infections acquired after enrolment but not among infections that persisted from trial enrolment to 24 months (p=0.80). Conclusions The decreased penile HR-HPV shedding observed among HPV-infected circumcised men may help to explain the protective association observed between circumcision and reduced acquisition of HR-HPV in female partners.
Homocysteine Metabolism Gene Polymorphisms (MTHFR C677T, MTHFR A1298C, MTR A2756G and MTRR A66G) Jointly Elevate the Risk of Folate Deficiency

Folate deficiency is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease. We aimed to explore the joint effect of the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) C677T and A1298C, methionine synthase (MTR) A2756G, and methionine synthase reductase (MTRR) A66G polymorphisms on folate deficiency in a Chinese hypertensive population. A total of 480 subjects aged 28–75 were enrolled in this study from September 2005–December 2005 from six hospitals in different Chinese regions. Known genotypes were detected by PCR-RFLP methods and serum folate was measured by chemiluminescence immunoassay. Our results showed that MTHFR 677TT and MTR 2756AG + GG were independently associated with a higher risk of folate deficiency (TT vs. CC + CT, p < 0.001 and AG + GG vs. AA p = 0.030, respectively). However, the MTHFR A1298C mutation may confer protection by elevating the serum folate level (p = 0.025). Furthermore, patients carrying two or more risk genotypes showed higher odds of folate deficiency than null risk genotype carriers, especially those carrying four risk genotypes. These findings were verified by generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction (p = 0.0107) and a cumulative effects model (p = 0.001). The results of this study have shown that interactions among homocysteine metabolism gene polymorphisms lead to dramatic elevations in the folate deficiency risk.
Evaluation of the facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD1) phenotype in correlation to the concurrence of 4q35 and 10q26 fragments

Probe p13E‐11 (locus D4F104S1) detects two highly homologous polymorphic loci on chromosomes 4q35 and 10q26. Previous reports in the literature have described a correlation of shortened 4q35‐specific fragments and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD1). We have identified 30 FSHD1 families (46 patients) carrying one short 4q35 and one short 10q26 fragment. The clinical data of these patients were compared with those of 47 families (131 patients) showing a single short 4q35 fragment, in order to evaluate a potentially modifying influence of shortened 10q26 fragments on the phenotype. According to our results, the polymorphic locus on 10q26 does not modify the FSHD1 phenotype. The normal population (14%) and our FSHD1 population (13%) did not significantly differ in the overall frequency of short polymorphic 10q26 fragments. The specificity of the p13E‐11/EcoRI–BlnI test for FSHD1 was 100%.
Simulating weathering of basalt on Mars and Earth by thermal cycling

Physical weathering induced by heating and cooling may cause rock breakdown on Mars and Earth. We report results from parallel weathering simulations on basalt blocks exposed to diurnal cycles representing Mars‐like (two simulation runs from −55 to +20 oC and −75 to +10 oC, 1–100% relative humidity, 4–8 mbar pressure, CO2 atmosphere) and hot arid Earth (23–72o C, 30–100% relative humidity) conditions. Under Earth conditions, thermally pre‐stressed blocks showed measurable strength declines, whilst salt pre‐treated blocks showed strength gains. Under Mars‐like conditions, pre‐stressed blocks recorded greater or similar strength declines and salt pre‐treated blocks showed more muted strength declines than under Earth conditions. The results imply that on Earth and Mars diurnal cycling of temperature alone can cause deterioration of basalt with a pre‐existing stress history. The type of stress history is important, with salt pre‐treatment affecting the response of thermally pre‐stressed blocks under both Earth and Mars conditions.
MUC4 and MUC1 Expression in Adenocarcinoma of the Stomach Correlates with Vessel Invasion and Lymph Node Metastasis: An Immunohistochemical Study of Early Gastric Cancer

We have previously reported that MUC4 expression is a poor prognostic factor in various carcinomas. Our previous study also showed that MUC1 expression in gastric cancers, including the early and advanced stages is a poor prognostic factor. In the present study, the expression profiles of MUC4 and MUC1 were examined by immunohistochemistry (IHC) using two anti-MUC4 monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), 8G7 and 1G8, and anti-MUC1 MAb DF3 in 104 gastrectomy specimens of early gastric adenocarcinoma with submucosal invasion (pT1b2), including 197 histological subtype lesions. Before the IHC study of the human specimens, we evaluated the specificity of the two MAbs by Western blotting and IHC of two MUC4 mRNA expressing gastric cancer cell lines. MAb 8G7 reacted clearly, whereas MAb 1G8 did not show any reactivity, in either Western blotting or IHC. In the IHC of the gastric cancers, the expression rates of MUC4/8G7 detected by MAb 8G7, MUC4/1G8 detected by MAb 1G8 and MUC1/DF3 detected by MAb DF3 in well differentiated types (70%, 38/54; 67%, 36/54; 52%, 28/54) were significantly higher than those in poorly differentiated types (18%, 10/55; 36%, 20/55; 13%, 7/55) (P<0.0001; P = 0.0021; P<0.0001), respectively. The MUC4/8G7 expression was related with lymphatic invasion (r = 0.304, P = 0.033). On the other hand, the MUC4/1G8 expression was related with lymphatic invasion (r = 0.395, P = 0.001) and lymph node metastasis (r = 0.296, P = 0.045). The MUC1/DF3 expression was related with lymphatic invasion (r = 0.357, P = 0.032) and venous invasion (r = 0.377, P = 0.024). In conclusion, the expression of MUC4 as well as MUC1 in early gastric cancers is a useful marker to predict poor prognostic factors related with vessel invasion.
Effects of duty cycle on electrodeposition behaviour of Ni–SiCp composite coatings

Abstract Ni–SiCp composite coatings were synthesised by pulse electrocodeposition with different duty cycles. The grain size and the SiC particle content were found to increase with increasing duty cycle, and a maximum microhardness value was obtained at a duty cycle of 50%. Based on the results of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, an equivalent circuit model was used to estimate the charge transfer current of the electrodeposition process at different duty cycles. The peak charge transfer current was found to decrease with increasing duty cycle. An analytical volume fraction equation was also applied to predict the content of embedded SiC particles in the composite coatings. The trend of the predictions was in consistent with the experimental results.
Two-layered evolutionary forecasting for IPO underpricing

In this paper we present a two-layered evolutionary system based on Voronoi regions to predict the initial return of a sample of initial pubic offerings. The proposed solution partitions the input space by evolving a set of prototypes using evolution strategies and subsequently fits specialized models to each of them. The exercise is repeated to produce a set of predictive models. The forecast for the return of new patterns is obtained averaging the solutions provided by different models into a single figure. The system is benchmarked against alternatives with the result of a strong relative performance.
Partitioning strategies for spatio-textual similarity join

Given a collection of geo-tagged objects with associated textual descriptors, the spatio-textual similarity join (STJoin) problem is to identify all pairs of similar objects that are close in distance. This task, which is useful in localized recommendations and other applications, is challenging since computing the join is super-linear with respect to the size of the collection. In this paper, we explore partitioning strategies for tackling STJoin. One approach is to start with a spatial data structure, traverse regions and apply a previous algorithm for identifying similar pairs of textual documents called All-Pairs. An alternative approach is to construct a global index but partition postings spatially and modify the All-Pairs algorithm to prune candidates based on distance. We evaluate these approaches on two real-world datasets and find that when running in a single thread, both approaches are comparable in terms of performance. However, a multi-threaded implementation of the global index approach is able to achieve far better speedup given its ability to parallelize at a finer granularity to avoid skewed distributions in task sizes. In addition to using All-Pairs as the underlying textual similarity join algorithm, we also explored an alternate algorithm known as PPJ: our findings are consistent, which suggests that load balancing is a fundamental issue affecting parallel implementations of STJoin algorithms.
Diet SODA: A power-efficient processor for digital cameras

Power has become the most critical design constraint for embedded handheld devices. This paper proposes a power-efficient SIMD architecture, referred to as Diet SODA, for DSP applications. The key design idea is to apply near-threshold operation on a single instruction and multiple data (SIMD) architecture to significantly lower the power consumption. The major features of Diet SODA are very wide SIMD width, scatter/gather data prefetcher, and dual mode operation. A case study was performed on digital still camera (DSC) applications; the results show that Diet SODA achieves ∼130x better performance and ∼340x better energy efficiency than a DSP solution.
Maximum-Likelihood Image Matching

Image-matching applications, such as tracking and stereo, commonly use the sum-of-squared-difference (SSD) measure to determine the best match. However, this measure is sensitive to outliers and is not robust to template variations. Alternative measures have also been proposed that are more robust to these issues. We improve upon these using a probabilistic formulation for image matching in terms of maximum-likelihood estimation that can be used for both edge template matching and gray-level image matching. This formulation generalizes previous edge-matching methods based on distance transforms. We apply the techniques to stereo matching and feature tracking. Uncertainty estimation techniques allow feature selection to be performed by choosing features that minimize the localization uncertainty.
Learning to Avoid Local Minima in Planning for Static Environments

In many robot motion planning problems such as manipulation planning for a personal robot in a kitchen or an industrial manipulator in a warehouse, all motion planning queries are in an environment that is largely static. Consequently, one should be able to improve the performance of a planning algorithm by training on this static environment ahead of operation time. In this work, we propose a method to improve the performance of heuristic search-based motion planners in such environments. The first, learning, phase of our proposed method analyzes search performance on multiple planning episodes to infer local minima zones, that is, regions where the existing heuristic(s) are weakly correlated with the true cost-to-go. Then, in the planning phase of the method, the learnt local minima are used to modify the original search graph in a way that improves search performance. We prove that our method preserves guarantees on completeness and bounded suboptimality with respect to the original search graph. Experimentally, we observe significant improvements in success rate and planning time for challenging 11 degree-of-freedom mobile manipulation problems.
Cholesterol lowering trials in coronary heart disease: frequency of citation and outcome.

OBJECTIVE--To see if the claim that lowering cholesterol values prevents coronary heart disease is true or if it is based on citation of supportive trials only. DESIGN--Comparison of frequency of citation with outcome of all controlled cholesterol lowering trials using coronary heart disease or death, or both, as end point. SUBJECTS--22 controlled cholesterol lowering trials. RESULTS--Trials considered by their directors as supportive of the contention were cited almost six times more often than others, according to Science Citation Index. Apart from trials discontinued because of alleged side effects of treatment, unsupportive trials were not cited after 1970, although their number almost equalled the number considered supportive. In three supportive reviews the outcome of the selected trials was more favourable than the outcome of the excluded and ignored trials. In the 22 controlled cholesterol lowering trials studied total and coronary heart disease mortality was not changed significantly either overall or in any subgroup. A statistically significant 0.32% reduction in non-fatal coronary heart disease seemed to be due to bias as event frequencies were unrelated to trial length and to mean net reduction in cholesterol value; individual changes in cholesterol values were unsystematically or not related to outcome; and after correction for a small but significant increase in non-medical deaths in the intervention groups total mortality remained unchanged (odds ratio 1.02). CONCLUSIONS--Lowering serum cholesterol concentrations does not reduce mortality and is unlikely to prevent coronary heart disease. Claims of the opposite are based on preferential citation of supportive trials.
Handwriting recognition for a digital whiteboard collaboration platform

The research presented in this paper addresses challenges at the intersection of two disciplines: web based collaboration using digital whiteboards and handwriting recognition. The main focus is on the handwriting recognition in order to enable asynchronous usage of the whiteboard content beyond the existing web portal. We present a way to analyze unstructured whiteboard content including drawings, sketches and handwritten text. Our approach uses a recursive extension of the DBSCAN algorithm in order to transfer smaller portions of content to the recognition engine and achieve an appropriate spatial clustering of the content. The adjustment of the configuration parameters, as well as the development of a break condition for the recursion, are shown in detail. We show that it is possible to use an online handwriting recognition engine with offline data and still achieve meaningful results. The presented architecture on the one hand, and the combination of online and offline recognition on the other, ease asynchronous modes of interaction using digital whiteboards.
Voltage Noise Induced DRAM Soft Error Reduction Technique for 3D-CPUs

Three-dimensional integration enables stacking DRAM on top of CPU, providing high bandwidth and short latency. However, non-uniform voltage fluctuation and local thermal hotspot in CPU layers are coupled into DRAM layers, causing a non-uniform bit-cell leakage (thereby bit flip) distribution. We propose a performance-power-resilience simulation framework to capture DRAM soft error in 3D multi-core CPU systems. A dynamic resilience management (DRM) scheme is investigated, which adaptively tunes CPU's operating points to adjust DRAM's voltage noise and thermal condition during runtime. The DRM uses dynamic frequency scaling to achieve a resilience borrow-in strategy, which effectively enhances DRAM's resilience without sacrificing performance.
Contextual modal type theory

The intuitionistic modal logic of necessity is based on the judgmental notion of categorical truth. In this article we investigate the consequences of relativizing these concepts to explicitly specified contexts. We obtain contextual modal logic and its type-theoretic analogue. Contextual modal type theory provides an elegant, uniform foundation for understanding metavariables and explicit substitutions. We sketch some applications in functional programming and logical frameworks.
Chemical substructures that enrich for biological activity

Motivation: Certain chemical substructures are present in many drugs. This has led to the claim of ‘privileged’ substructures which are predisposed to bioactivity. Because bias in screening library construction could explain this phenomenon, the existence of privilege has been controversial. Results: Using diverse phenotypic assays, we defined bioactivity for multiple compound libraries. Many substructures were associated with bioactivity even after accounting for substructure prevalence in the library, thus validating the privileged substructure concept. Determinations of privilege were confirmed in independent assays and libraries. Our analysis also revealed ‘underprivileged’ substructures and ‘conditional privilege’—rules relating combinations of substructure to bioactivity. Most previously reported substructures have been flat aromatic ring systems. Although we validated such substructures, we also identified three-dimensional privileged substructures. Most privileged substructures display a wide variety of substituents suggesting an entropic mechanism of privilege. Compounds containing privileged substructures had a doubled rate of bioactivity, suggesting practical consequences for pharmaceutical discovery. Contact: fritz_roth@hms.harvard. edu Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
The Chemical Evolution of Magnesium Isotopic Abundances in the Solar Neighbourhood

Abstract The abundance of the neutron-rich magnesium isotopes observed in metal-poor stars is explained quantitatively with a chemical evolution model of the local Galaxy that considers — for the first time — the metallicity-dependent contribution from intermediate mass stars. Previous models that simulate the variation of Mg isotopic ratios with metallicity in the solar neighbourhood have attributed the production of 25Mg and 26Mg exclusively to hydrostatic burning in massive stars. These models match the data well for [Fe/H] > –1.0 but severely underestimate 25,26Mg/24Mg at lower metallicities. Earlier studies have noted that this discrepancy may indicate a significant role played by intermediate mass stars. Only recently have detailed calculations of intermediate mass stellar yields of 25Mg and 26Mg become available with which to test this hypothesis. In an extension of previous work, we present a model that successfully matches the Mg isotopic abundances in nearby Galactic disk stars through the incorporation of nucleosynthesis predictions of Mg isotopic production in asymptotic giant branch stars.
Reorganization in congenital hemiparesis acquired at different gestational ages

It is well established that the reorganizational potential of the developing human brain is superior to that of the adult brain, but whether age‐dependent differences exist already in the prenatal and perinatal period is not known. We have studied sensorimotor reorganization in 34 patients with congenital hemiparesis (age range, 5–27 years), using transcranial magnetic stimulation and functional magnetic resonance imaging during simple hand movements. Underlying pathologies were brain malformations (first and second trimester lesions; n = 10), periventricular brain lesions (early third trimester lesions; n = 12), and middle cerebral artery infarctions (late third trimester lesions; n = 12). Of this cohort, eight patients with malformations and all patients with periventricular lesions have been published previously. In all three groups of pathologies, transcranial magnetic stimulation identified patients in whom the paretic hand was controlled via ipsilateral corticospinal projections from the contralesional hemisphere (n = 16). In these patients, the motor dysfunction of the paretic hand correlated significantly with the timing period of the underlying brain lesion. This demonstrates that the efficacy of reorganization with ipsilateral corticospinal tracts indeed decreases during pregnancy. Ann Neurol 2004