Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Closed-Loop Regulation of a Physiological Parmeter by an IPFM/SDC (Integral Pulse Frequency Modulated/Smith Delay Compensator) Controller

This theoretical paper discusses the realization of a discrete, closed-loop control system which uses an integral pulse frequency modulated/Smith delay compensator (IPFM/SDC) controller to regulate an in vivo physiological parameter to the prescribed quantity in real time. The pharmacokinetic (PK) plant considered is the sodium nitroprusside (SNP) blood-pressure plant. The simulated plant is appropriately time-and amplitude-scaled using op-amps and RC active filter elements.
Characterization of PET nanocomposites produced by different melt-based production methods

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) based nanocomposites containing 3 wt % of different nanoparticles (MontMorilloniTe–MMT; titanium dioxide–TiO2; and silica dioxide–SiO2) were prepared via two independent procedures: mechanical mixing with subsequent direct injection molding (DIM) and mechanical mixing, followed by extrusion blending and injection molding (EIM). The contributions of nanofillers with respect to pure PET were evaluated. The incorporation of nanofillers reduces the intrinsic viscosity of the polymer matrix when processed by DIM and EIM. SAXS results showed that: MMT layers were intercalated for both processing procedures, but slightly higher for EIM; a better dispersion with smaller agglomerates size is achieved for TiO2 and SiO2 nanoparticles for EIM than for DIM. According to the results of DSC analysis, all fillers behave as nucleating agents for PET except SiO2 that acts as inhibitor in case of DIM procedure. The mechanical behavior was assessed in tensile testing. The mechanical test revealed that the addition of nanoparticles have a slight influence on the elastic modulus and yield stress, but a drastic negative influence on the deformation capabilities of the moldings. The measured optical properties of the moldings gloss and haze are also strongly affected by the presence of nanoparticles. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007
Introducing shared task evaluation to NLG : The TUNA shared task evaluation challenges

Shared Task Evaluation Challenges (stecs) have only recently begun in the field of nlg. The tuna stecs, which focused on Referring Expression Generation (reg), have been part of this development since its inception. This chapter looks back on the experience of organising the three tuna Challenges, which came to an end in 2009. While we discuss the role of the stecs in yielding a substantial body of research on the reg problem, which has opened new avenues for future research, our main focus is on the role of different evaluation methods in assessing the output quality of reg algorithms, and on the relationship between such methods.
Topical Application of 0.5% Timolol Maleate Hydrogel for the Treatment of Superficial Infantile Hemangioma

The therapeutic options for infantile hemangiomas (IHs) have been greatly altered since the introduction of oral propranolol for successful treatments of IHs. Recently, there is an increase in the application of topical timolol maleate for treating superficial IHs. In the present study, we developed a new formulation of timolol maleate 0.5% hydrogel and treated 321 patients with superficial IHs to evaluate its efficacy and safety in the treatment of superficial IHs. This new timolol hydrogel was applied three times daily with a mean duration of 7.1 months. Response to treatment was assessed according to cosmetic improvement by using visual analog scale (VAS). The average VAS improvement after treatment was 76.4, with 126 patients (39.3%) achieving excellent responses, 159 patients (49.5%) achieving good responses, 33 patients (10.3%) achieving fair responses, and three patients (0.9%) achieving poor responses. Age at treatment initiation (P = 0.0349) and lesion thickness (P = 0.0147) were significantly associated with therapeutic efficacy. No severe side effects were observed in all patients. In conclusion, this new topical timolol maleate 0.5% hydrogel appears to be a proper candidate for treating superficial IHs, and our study provides supportive evidence and experience of topical timolol maleate in treating superficial IHs.
Ceramic-Based Bone Grafts as a Bone Grafts Extender for Lumbar Spine Arthrodesis: A Systematic Review

Study Design Systematic review. Objective Ceramic-based bone grafts have been widely utilized to reduce the need for iliac crest bone grafting given the complications associated with the harvest of iliac crest autograft. As a family, ceramics vary widely based on differences in composition, manufacturing, porosity, and structure, which may ultimately affect their efficacy. This article reviews the current data of ceramics used in different environments in the lumbar spine to achieve arthrodesis. Methods Medline, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched for publications from 1980 to 2013 involving ceramic-based bone grafts in the lumbar spine. Variables such as age of patients, volume of ceramic, procedure, time to evaluation, method of evaluation, specific composition of ceramic, adjuncts used with ceramic products, type of fusion, and fusion rate were compared using a multivariate logistic regression model. Results Thirty studies with 1,332 patients met the final inclusion criteria. The overall fusion rate for all ceramic products as a bone graft extender in the lumbar spine was 86.4%. Age, gender, method of evaluation (plain radiographs, computed tomography, or combination), or specific ceramic product did not significantly affect fusion rate. Ceramics used in combination with local autograft resulted in significantly higher fusion rates compared with all other adjuncts, and bone marrow aspirate and platelet concentrates resulted in significantly lower fusion rates. Conclusions Ceramic-based bone grafts represent a promising bone graft extender in lumbar spine fusion when an osteoinductive stimulus, such as local bone graft is available.
Fast Human Detection by Boosting Histograms of Oriented Gradients

In this paper, a novel real-time human detection system based on Viola's face detection framework and Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) features is presented. Each bin of the histogram is treated as a feature and used as the basic building element of the cascade classifier. The system keeps both the discriminative power of HOG features for human detection and the real-time property of Viola's face detection framework. Experiments on Daimler Chrysler pedestrian benchmark data set and INRIA human database demonstrate that this framework is more powerful than Viola's object detection framework on human detection.
Understanding Movements in Aggregate and Product-Level Real-Exchange Rates ∗

We document new facts on international relative price movements using wholesale price data for common products sold in Canada and United States over the period 2004-2006, and information on the country of production for individual products. We find that international relative prices at the level of individual products are roughly three to four times as volatile as the Canada-US nominal exchange rate at quarterly frequencies. Aggregate real-exchange rates, constructed by averaging movements in international relative prices for individual goods, closely follow the appreciation of the Canadian dollar over this period. These patterns hold both for matched products that are locally produced in each country, as well as for goods that are produced in one country and traded to other countries. The large movements in international relative prices for traded goods are in conflict with the hypothesis of relative purchasing power parity, but instead point to the practice of pricing-to-market by exporters. In light of these findings, we construct a model of international trade and pricingto-market that can account for the observed movements in product- and aggregate real-exchange rates for both traded and non-traded products. The international border plays a key role in accounting for our pricing facts by segmenting competitors across countries.
Two Cryptic Species within Astragalus cusickii Delimited Using Molecular Phylogenetic Techniques

Understanding the source of phenotypic variability is a challenge in the biological sciences. Variation in phenotypes is the result of variation in the genetics and environment the organism experiences, but elucidating the relative contribution of these two parameters can pose problems, especially in the field of systematics. Systematists are challenged to classify biological diversity into groups that share common ancestry. Phenotypic variation can be useful to demonstrate common ancestry, but only when the primary contributor to the variation is under strong genetic control, and thus heritable. Cusick’s milkvetch (Astragalus cusickii) is a perennial forb endemic to the intermountain west region of the United States. The species currently comprises four varieties based on subtle morphological dissimilarities, such as leaf size and density, and the size and shape of the seed pods. The taxonomic organization of the varieties of A. cusickii and related species of Astragalus were reexamined through phylogenetic analysis of nuclear, nuclear-ribosomal, and chloroplast gene regions. Maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, the genealogical sorting index, an approximately unbiased test, and multispecies coalescent analysis were used to determine appropriate species boundaries under the phylogenetic species concept. The results support reclassification of A. cusickii var. packardiae and A. cusickii var. sterilis as separate species. Additionally, evidence suggests a chloroplast capture event may have occurred in one population of A. cusickii var. packardiae.
mHealth Data Collector: An Application to Collect and Report Indicators for Assessment of Cardiometabolic Risk

Traditional population surveys use paper forms that are filled manually by an interviewer. This process can take a long time; in comparison, computerizing the process reduces time, promotes safety and accuracy of data, improves patient care, and offers better control over the compiled information. From this perspective, it can be argued that mobile health supports mechanisms for the diagnosis, control, and prevention of metabolic diseases. In recent years, mobile devices have been applied in several health areas, such as remote monitoring, data logging, clinical decision-making, and with applications that can help maintain or initiate practices beneficial to individual health and wellbeing. However, there is a lack of applications for conducting population surveys. Thus, this work presents an application called mHealth Data Collector (mHDC) as a model for applications used in population surveys that contain such data as Body Mass Index (BMI), health-related issues, and health habit indicators. The design of this system occurred through interviews with health professionals who utilized a prototyping method to extract requirements. To develop this mobile app, the Android platform was adopted and the SQLite database was used to store patients' health data. The JExcelAPI and AchartEngine were also employed to generate spreadsheets and charts. The mHDC was tested using a case study in a Brazilian city. The results indicated that the health team took half the time to interview patients. In addition, the system has reduced the use of paper; centered and organized data; and allowed quick data recovery and standardization to improve the readability of data input. The mHDC proved efficient at collecting, analyzing, and safely exporting the results, thus reducing time collecting and analyzing the population survey.
NKp46 and NKG2D receptor expression in NK cells with CD56dim and CD56bright phenotype: regulation by histamine and reactive oxygen species

The cytotoxicity of natural killer (NK) cells is dependent on the interaction between target cell ligands and a series of stimulatory receptors on NK cells. Two of these triggering receptors, the NKp46 natural cytotoxicity receptor (NKp46) and the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I‐interactive NKG2D receptor, are deficiently expressed by NK cells recovered from patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), but little is known regarding the regulation of NKp46 and NKG2D expression. Here we report that mononuclear and polymorphonuclear phagocytes downregulate the cell surface density of NKp46 and NKG2D on NK cells with CD56dim phenotype in vitro by a mechanism that is dependent on the availability of phagocyte‐derived reactive oxygen species (ROS). Histamine maintained NKp46 and NKG2D expression despite the presence of inhibitory phagocytes by targeting an H2 receptor on phagocytes. By contrast, NKp46 and NKG2D expression by the CD56bright subset of NK cells was resistant to inhibition by phagocytes. Our findings are suggestive of a novel mechanism of relevance to the regulation of NKp46/NKG2D receptor expression. Moreover, our findings suggest that the previously reported action of histamine on NK cell‐mediated killing of leukaemic cells may be related to the preservation of activatory NK‐cell receptors.
Relating substitution to single-chain conformation and aggregation in poly(p-phenylene vinylene) films

The morphology of films of PPV derivatives is studied with molecular (single chain) resolution by phase-imaging scanning force microscopy. It is found that the symmetry of substitution is directly related to surface morphology and aggregation behavior. The molecular resolution in the phase contrast is shown to result from van der Waals interaction between the conjugated backbone of the polymer chains and the metallic tip, and can quantitatively be described by a simple harmonic oscillator model.
Quantifying the Information Leak in Cache Attacks through Symbolic Execution

Cache timing attacks allow attackers to infer the properties of a secret execution by observing cache hits and misses. But how much information can actually leak through such attacks? For a given program, a cache model, and an input, our CHALICE framework leverages symbolic execution to compute the amount of information that can possibly leak through cache attacks. At the core of CHALICE is a novel approach to quantify information leak that can highlight critical cache side-channel leaks on arbitrary binary code. In our evaluation on real-world programs from OpenSSL and Linux GDK libraries, CHALICE effectively quantifies information leaks: For an AES-128 implementation on Linux, for instance, CHALICE finds that a cache attack can leak as much as 127 out of 128 bits of the encryption key.
Steel Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Corbels: Experimental Behavior and Shear Strength Prediction

Corbels are structural members often used in reinforced concrete structures to transfer vertical and horizontal forces to principal members. This paper presents experimental research regarding the flexural behavior of corbels in plain and fibrous concrete and in the presence of steel bars. The study considers the influence of the type of concrete grade (normal- and high-strength concretes), of the fiber percentage and of the arrangement and percentage of the steel bars on the flexural behavior of the corbels. The results in terms of load-deflection curves and crack patterns show the effectiveness in using fibrous reinforced concrete corbels as well as in the presence of stirrups ensuring adequate strength and deformation capacity in reinforced concrete corbels. A simplified analytical model is proposed to calculate the shear strength of fibrous reinforced concrete corbels as well as in the presence of stirrups. The expression proposed for the calculation of the shear strength is then compared with other expression from the literature. The experimental results generated in terms of bearing capacity and those available in the literature are compared with the results obtained through the proposed model and with existing analytical expression. They show a good level of approximation, highlighting the role of the individual contributions from bars, concrete and fibers in the resistant mechanisms.
PTPan - overcoming memory limitations in oligonucleotide string matching for primer/probe design

MOTIVATION Nucleic acid diagnostics has high demands for non-heuristic exact and approximate oligonucleotide string matching concerning in silico primer/probe design in huge nucleic acid sequence collections. Unfortunately, public sequence repositories grow much faster than computer hardware performance and main memory capacity do. This growth imposes severe problems on existing oligonucleotide primer/probe design applications necessitating new approaches based on space-efficient indexing structures. RESULTS We developed PTPan (spoken Peter Pan, 'PT' is for Position Tree, the earlier name of suffix trees), a space-efficient indexing structure for approximate oligonucleotide string matching in nucleic acid sequence data. Based on suffix trees, it combines partitioning, truncation and a new suffix tree stream compression to deal with large amounts of aligned and unaligned data. PTPan operates efficiently in main memory and on secondary storage, balancing between memory consumption and runtime during construction and application. Based on PTPan, applications supporting similarity search and primer/probe design have been implemented, namely FindFamily, ProbeMatch and ProbeDesign. All three use a weighted Levenshtein distance metric for approximative queries to find and rate matches with indels as well as substitutions. We integrated PTPan in the worldwide used software package ARB to demonstrate usability and performance. Comparing PTPan and the original ARB index for the very large ssu-rRNA database SILVA, we recognized a shorter construction time, extended functionality and dramatically reduced memory requirements at the price of expanded, but very reasonable query times. PTPan enables indexing of huge nucleic acid sequence collections at reasonable application response times. Not being limited by main memory, PTPan constitutes a major advancement regarding rapid oligonucleotide string matching in primer/probe design now and in the future facing the enormous growth of molecular sequence data. AVAILABILITY Supplementary Material, PTPan stand-alone library and ARB-PTPan binary on http://ptpan.lrr. in.tum. de/. CONTACT meierh@in.tum. de SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Shared Reality: Experiencing Commonality with others' Inner States about the World

Humans have a fundamental need to experience a shared reality with others. We present a new conceptualization of shared reality based on four conditions. We posit (a) that shared reality involves a (subjectively perceived) commonality of individuals' inner states (not just observable behaviors); (b) that shared reality is about some target referent; (c) that for a shared reality to occur, the commonality of inner states must be appropriately motivated; and (d) that shared reality involves the experience of a successful connection to other people's inner states. In reviewing relevant evidence, we emphasize research on the saying-is-believing effect, which illustrates the creation of shared reality in interpersonal communication. We discuss why shared reality provides a better explanation of the findings from saying-is-believing studies than do other formulations. Finally, we examine relations between our conceptualization of shared reality and related constructs (including empathy, perspective taking, theory of mind, common ground, embodied synchrony, and socially distributed knowledge) and indicate how our approach may promote a comprehensive and differentiated understanding of social-sharing phenomena.
Cement-based electronics

The term Intelligent Highway is usually intended to mean external systems that are added to pre-existing highways. However, the ability to construct basic passive electronic elements is demonstrated employing electrically dissimilar Portland cement pastes. These electronic elements include resistors, rectifying pn-junctions, piezoelectric and piezoresistive sensors, and thermocouple junctions. It may therefore be possible to build intelligence into the highway itself utilizing cement-based electronic devices. As compared to semiconductor-based electronic components, those derived from cement have minimal materials and processing costs, do not require clean rooms, and are mechanically more rugged. Results and characterizations are presented for resistive elements and rectifying pn-junctions derived from admixtures of stainless steel fiber (n-type) and carbon fiber (p-type) in Portland cement. These elements are then combined to produce a monolithic cement-based digital logic 2-input AND gate.
Relative Entropy Policy Search

Policy search is a successful approach to reinforcement learning. However, policy improvements often result in the loss of information. Hence, it has been marred by premature convergence and implausible solutions. As first suggested in the context of covariant policy gradients, many of these problems may be addressed by constraining the information loss. In this paper, we continue this path of reasoning and suggest the Relative Entropy Policy Search (REPS) method. The resulting method differs significantly from previous policy gradient approaches and yields an exact update step. It can be shown to work well on typical reinforcement learning benchmark problems.
Draft-do not cite Toward an Axiomatic Theory of Corporate Growth

Investment and financing decisions are generally made under the assumption of a given objective function. Deriving growth from the value of a firm, however, requires the initial size and discount rates to be known a priori. The presentation of financial planning as a standard dynamic optimization problem usually works with overly restrictive assumptions. As an alternative, it is proposed to arrive at a decision on the basis of axiomatic principles of admissibility and efficiency. Conditions for the existence of a growth program satisfying these principles are defined. The maintenance of capital is an important side constraint. Investment and financing programs, payoffs, (intrinsic) corporate value and interest rates result as endogenous magnitudes of an axiomatic model which is specified for the cases of certain and of uncertain expectations.
Holotranscobalamin as a Predictor of Vitamin B12 Status

Abstract We report on the performance of a new test, holotranscobalamin, as compared to well established markers of vitamin B12 deficiency (plasma cobalamins, methylmalonic acid, and homocysteine). Holotranscobalamin was analyzed in 143 samples by a competitive radiobinding assay (Axis-Shield). Employing a cut-off value of 50 pmol/l, holotranscobalamin showed a sensitivity of 1.00 and a specificity of 0.89 as regards discriminating between individuals with test results indicating vitamin B12 deficiency (methylmalonic acid >0.70 μmol/l and plasma cobalamins <200 pmol/l, n = 35) and individuals with test results inside the reference intervals (methylmalonic acid <0.29 μmol/l and plasma cobalamins ≥200 pmol/l, n = 35). In a group (n = 37) with low plasma cobalamins (<200 pmol/l) and normal methylmalonic acid (<0.29 μmol/l), 27 individuals had low holotranscobalamin, and in nine of these individuals plasma homocysteine supported the deficiency state (homocysteine >15 μmol/l). Holotranscobalamin was low in 12 individuals with increased methylmalonic acid (>0.40 μmol/l) and normal plasma cobalamins ≥200 pmol/l) (n = 36), and plasma homocysteine supported the deficiency state in four of these individuals. We conclude that holotranscobalamin is likely to be a sensitive marker of vitamin B12 deficiency that also has a reasonable specificity. Large-scale clinical studies are warranted in order to clarify the usefulness of holotranscobalamin in the clinical setting.