Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Verification of hierarchical IEC 61499 component systems with behavioral event contracts

Behavioral event contracts constrain the ordering of input events received and possible output events returned from a software component. Interface automata as introduced by de Alfaro and Henzinger are a light-weight formalism that allow capturing such temporal aspects of software component interfaces and the associated theory allows answering such fundamental questions as interface compatibility, component composition, and refinement. The work presented in this paper applies the results from the theory of interface automata in a hierarchical design and verification approach for IEC 61499 automation solutions. IEC 61499 adapters and service sequences are used for specification of rich behavioral component interfaces. In this approach, components are built hierarchically in master-slave arrangements where each component defines a provided interface contract for its upper-level and specifies required interface contracts for its subcomponents. Verification methods allows verifying if a component uses all its subcomponents according to their contracts, allows checking if a concrete component satisfies a given contract, and allows computing an abstraction of a component representing its externally visible behavior.
Learning Curve Characteristics of Pacing Lead Extraction with a Laser Sheath

The learning curve characteristics of lead extraction with a laser sheath were examined in 19 patients. Forty‐two leads were removed: five leads were removed by traction alone, five required a femoral approach as a primary procedure and a laser sheath was used in 32 lead extraction attempts. Primary laser success was achieved in 26 attempts (81 %). A femoral approach was successfully applied as a back‐up procedure in five of the failures. Overall, 26% of the leads were removed by the femoral approach. The overall success rate was 98% (41 of 42 leads). No variables related to the patients, leads, or extraction techniques were significantly related to failure of laser sheath extraction. There was a distinct learning curve with all but one failure occurring in the first half of our cases. All failures occurred with leads implanted from the right subclavian vein. In four, a sharply angled curve at the subclavian vein‐superior vena cava junction could not be passed with the laser sheath. The ability to smooth this curve improved the results during the learning curve. All procedures were performed in the operating room for safety reasons. This precaution was lifesaving in a case of acute tamponade after laser extraction of an atrial lead. In another case the left internal mammary artery was torn after laser sheath extraction, causing the formation of a false aneurysm. New pacing leads were introduced in nine patients during the same procedure. The mean procedure time was 255 ± 110 min. reflecting the complexity of these procedures.
Hydrogen-bonded layers in the 1:2 cocrystal of 2,2'-dithiodibenzoic acid with isonicotinohydrazide.

Cocrystallization of 2,2'-dithiodibenzoic acid with isonicotinohydrazide from methanol solution yields the 1:2 cocrystal 2,2'-dithiodibenzoic acid-isonicotinohydrazide (1/2), C(14)H(10)O(4)S(2) x 2 C(6)H(7)N(3)O. The component molecules are linked by intermolecular O-H.N, N-H.O, N-H.N and C-H.O hydrogen bonds into layers running parallel to the (010) plane, and these layers are further linked into a three-dimensional framework structure by means of weak aromatic pi-pi stacking interactions. As a potential cocrystallization agent, isonicotinohydrazide may be used for effective and versatile synthetic supramolecular strategies utilizing hydrogen bonding of specific molecular building blocks.
Proteasome inhibitors: a novel class of potent and effective antitumor agents.

The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway plays a critical role in the regulated degradation of proteins involved in cell cycle control and tumor growth. Dysregulating the degradation of such proteins should have profound effects on tumor growth and cause cells to undergo apoptosis. To test this hypothesis, we developed a novel series of proteasome inhibitors, exemplified by PS-341, which we describe here. As determined by the National Cancer Institute in vitro screen, PS-341 has substantial cytotoxicity against a broad range of human tumor cells, including prostate cancer cell lines. The PC-3 prostate cell line was, therefore, chosen to further examine the antitumor activity of PS-341. In vitro, PS-341 elicits proteasome inhibition, leading to an increase in the intracellular levels of specific proteins, including the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, p21. Moreover, exposure of such cells to PS-341 caused them to accumulate in the G2-M phase of the cell cycle and subsequently undergo apoptosis, as indicated by nuclear condensation and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase cleavage. Following weekly i.v. treatment of PS-341 to mice bearing the PC-3 tumor, a significant decrease (60%) in tumor burden was observed in vivo. Direct injection of PS-341 into the tumor also caused a substantial (70%) decrease in tumor volume with 40% of the drug-treated mice having no detectable tumors at the end of the study. Studies also revealed that i.v. administration of PS-341 resulted in a rapid and widespread distribution of PS-341, with highest levels identified in the liver and gastrointestinal tract and lowest levels in the skin and muscle. Modest levels were found in the prostate, whereas there was no apparent penetration of the central nervous system. An assay to follow the biological activity of the PS-341 was established and used to determine temporal drug activity as well as its ability to penetrate tissues. As such, PS-341 was shown to penetrate PC-3 tumors and inhibit intracellular proteasome activity 1.0 h after i.v. dosing. These data illustrate that PS-341 not only reaches its biological target but has a direct effect on its biochemical target, the proteasome. Importantly, the data show that inhibition of this target site by PS-341 results in reduced tumor growth in murine tumor models. Together, the results highlight that the proteasome is a novel biochemical target and that inhibitors such as PS-341 represent a unique class of antitumor agents. PS-341 is currently under clinical evaluation for advanced cancers.
Panpsychism, aggregation and combinatorial infusion

Deferential Monadic Panpsychism (DMP) is a view that accepts that physical science is capable of discovering the basic structure of reality. However, it denies that reality is fully and exhaustively described purely in terms of physical science. Consciousness is missing from the physical description and cannot be reduced to it. DMP explores the idea that the physically fundamental features of the world possess some intrinsic mental aspect. It thereby faces a severe problem of understanding how more complex mental states emerge from the mental features of the fundamental features. Here I explore the idea that a new form of aggregative emergence, which I call “combinatorial infusion”, could shed light on this problem and bolster the prospects for this form of panpsychism. 1. Deferential Monadic Panpsychism (DMP) The core claim of any panpsychist doctrine is that mentality, primarily and most especially consciousness, is fundamental and ubiquitous. The fundamentality of the mental entails that it is not reducible to or explicable in terms of entirely non-mental features of the world. Ubiquity requires that the mental be in some sense involved with everything in the world. It is important to stress, however, that the ubiquity of the mental does not require that everything in the world be possessed of mind. If, for example, there is a finite set of types of fundamental entities from which all other entities, and all phenomena, in the world emerge then panpsychism only requires that these fundamental entities have a mental dimension to them. It does not demand that everything in the non-fundamental domain also exemplify mental properties. Beyond these basic principles, panpsychism can be articulated in several different ways. Idealism satisfies the core principles but denies that anything at all is non-mental. This is a rather uninteresting version of the theory, albeit one with immense historical significance, which can be regarded as a limiting case. Much more interesting are accounts of the dual-aspect or neutral monistic forms. The former regards both mind and matter as co-
Laser therapy in diabetic macular edema.

OBJECTIVES Diabetic macular edema results in irreversible loss of vision and is the major cause of visual morbidity in patients with Diabetes of adult onset. DCCT trial has linked this to poorer control and increased duration of DM. laser treatment in such cases is known to reduce visual impairment by 50% for a period of 5 years. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of laser on visual outcome in patients with clinically significant macular edema and also evaluate the effect of some factors like control of blood sugar, hypertension, nephropathy etc. METHODS Retrospective analysis of 165 eyes of patients with diabetic maculopathy who underwent laser as per the ETDRS (early treatment diabetic retinopathy study) protocol was made. All these patients underwent Visual Acuity check, slit lamp examination of anterior segment, IOP check and after dilatation detailed examination of macula with 78/90 d lens and areas of retinal thickening recorded and subjected to focal laser/grid laser depending upon whether the maculopathy was focal/diffuse. Patients were assessed for control of sugar and presence of hypertension/nephropathy or any other related systemic diseases. Patients were followed up for a minimum of 6 months to a maximum of 24 months. The visual acuity at the end of 3-4 months was taken as final visual acuity after laser. RESULTS 165 eyes of patients having CSME (clinically significant macular edema) were subjected to laser. 108 (64.54%) eyes underwent focal laser and the rest were given grid laser. 153 eyes underwent macular laser without PRP (Pan retinal photocoagulation) while rest had even PRP along with macular laser. 92 eyes (55.75%) totally, 39 eyes (59.1%) in controlled group and 26 eyes (56.5%) in the controlled group and 12 eyes (54.5%) in patients with hypertension had stable vision 3-4 months after laser. 44 eyes (26.7%) overall, 18 eyes (27.3%) in controlled group, 16 eyes (34.8%) in uncontrolled group and 7 eyes (31.8%) in hypertensive showed improvement of vision after laser. CONCLUSION More than 50% of eyes of patients who underwent laser had stabilization of VA and >25% of eyes had improvement in VA. No correlation was found between outcome of laser and control of blood sugar and associated hypertension.
Integrated Microfluidic Cooling and Interconnects for 2D and 3D Chips

Power dissipation in microprocessors is projected to reach a level that may necessitate chip-level liquid cooling in the near future. An on-chip microchannel heat sink can reduce the total thermal interfaces between an integrated circuit chip and the convective cooling medium and therefore yield smaller junction-to-ambient thermal resistance. This paper reports the fabrication, assembly, and testing of a silicon chip with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor process compatible microchannel heat sink and thermofluidic chip input/output (I/O) interconnects fabricated using wafer-level batch processing. Ultra-small form factor, low-cost fabrication and assembly (system integration) are achieved for 2D and 3D chips, as the microchannel heat sink is fabricated directly on back-side of each chip. Through-wafer electrical and fluidic vias are used to interconnect the monolithically integrated microchannel heat sink to thermofluidic chip I/O interconnections. The feasibility of the novel fluidic I/O interconnect is demonstrated through preliminary thermal resistance measurements.
An Automatic Scoring System for PDA Integrated Ecology Observation Worksheet

This study aims to develop an automatic scoring system for evaluating the ecology observation worksheets in mobile learning activities. The feedbacks for constructed response tasks were provided online to motivate students searching for detailed information in e-library, such that their inquiry abilities could be enhanced. Three PDA integrated outdoor observation activities and worksheets were arranged for elementary school's ecology learning. A scoring rubric and two scoring methods, i.e. keyword pattern-matching (PM) and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), have been developed for rating the construct responses of worksheet. The scoring consistencies between human raters and the scoring methods were examined. Twenty-seven 5th to 6th graders from Tainan district participated in this study. The inter-rater reliability between two human raters was higher than 0.90. The correlation coefficients between keyword PM and LSA and human rating were around 0.88 and 0.74, respectively. That is, keyword PM had better performance than LSA in scoring the task specific construct responses.
Distribution of Clostridium difficile PCR ribotype 027 in British hospitals.

An outbreak of Clostridium difficile infection in Stoke Mandeville hospital in south-east England [1] in 2004/2005 was primarily due to a new and possibly more virulent strain known in the United Kingdom (UK) as PCR ribotype 027. Coinciding with this outbreak, a surveillance programme of C. difficile isolates from symptomatic patients in England with additional results of outbreak investigation requests to the Anaerobe Reference Laboratory (ARL) in Cardiff has established the true extent of its spread throughout British hospitals.
Vancomycin susceptibility trends of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolated from burn wounds: a time for action.

INTRODUCTION Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with reduced susceptibility to vancomycin poses a threat for patients in burn units throughout the world. This study aimed to investigate the reduced susceptibility to vancomycin of MRSA isolated from wounds of patients admitted to the Burns and Plastic Surgery Centre in Tripoli, Libya. METHODOLOGY All isolates were initially identified by chromagen medium then confirmed by PCR. The minimum inhibition concentration (MIC) was determined by E-test glycopeptide resistance detection (GRD). RESULTS During the study, 210 isolates were obtained from 560 patients representing 132 (62.9%) and 78 (37.1%) of total samples received during years 2009 and 2010, respectively. MIC levels for vancomycin ranged from 0.5 to 2 µg/ml during the study, 13% of isolates displayed MIC of 1.5 µg/ml and 9% of the isolates displayed 2 µg/ml. Although MRSA isolates decreased dramatically during 2010 (37.1%) compared to 2009 (62.9%), overall, there was a significant increase in the proportion of MRSA isolates exhibiting higher vancomycin MICs during 2010 compared to 2009 (P = 0.0155). There was a significant increase of MICs at 1 µg/ml during 2010 compared with 2009 (P = 0.36). No vancomycin intermediate or resistant strains were found. CONCLUSION There was a significant increase in the proportion of MRSA isolates exhibiting higher vancomycin MICs. We recommend that MRSA isolates should be monitored. Furthermore, implementation of infection control measures is urgently needed to prevent the spread of MRSA.
The fire retardant properties and pyrolysis mechanism of polysulfonamide (PSA) fibers

In the present work, the fire retardant properties and pyrolysis mechanism of polysulfonamide (PSA) fibers were investigated by cone calorimetry, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The fire retardant behaviors were reflected by the cone calorimeter data under heat fluxes of 35, 50, and 75 kW/m2. This demonstrated that, when exposed to higher heat flux, PSA fibers were ignited easier and burned more completely, indicated by lower time to ignition and higher peak heat release rate. It was further confirmed from the morphology of the residual chars that the original fiber shape can be kept at lower heat flux, but it changed into coherent carbonaceous chars with holes at higher heat flux. In comparison of the FTIR spectra of raw fibers with residual chars, it was noticed that upon heating, the amide linkage was more liable to be broken than that of sulfone groups. Additionally, with elevated heat flux, most of the absorption bands vanished and transformed into the typical feature of carbonaceous material. The pyrolysis products showed that some volatile products with small molecular weight, such as benzene, benzonitrile, and aniline, can be created at high temperature, which can be easily ignited. With this research, the fire retardant properties of PSA fibers are revealed and the corresponding pyrolysis mechanism is proposed, which can guide its application in practice.
Specific PCR Assay for Rapid and Direct Detection of Neisseria meningitidis in Cerebrospinal Fluid Specimens

Background: Neisseria meninigitidis is one of the most frequently encountered microorganisms associated with central nervous system infections. The aim of this study was to evaluate a PCR-based assay for specific and rapid detection of N. meninigitidis in CSF specimens. Methods: Since April 2002 to July 2006, 130 CSF specimens were collected from patients suspected of having bacterial meningitis. Bacterial isolation and identification was carried out according to the standard bacteriological methods. The PCR was used to amplify a 101bp fragment of capsular transport gene A (ctrA) of N. meningitidis. Results: PCR yielded an amplified product with the expected size of 101 base pair fragment. Sensitivity test proved 500 ng of N. meningitidis DNA as the final detection limit and specificity test revealed no cross-reaction for a wide range of respiratory pathogenic organisms. Conclusion: The PCR assay was more sensitive than the bacterial culturing. It might be possible to apply this procedure for rapid diagnosis of meningococci in clinical samples.
China's Natural Wetlands: Past Problems, Current Status, and Future Challenges

Abstract Natural wetlands, occupying 3.8% of China's land and providing 54.9% of ecosystem services, are unevenly distributed among eight wetland regions. Natural wetlands in China suffered great loss and degradation (e.g., 23.0% freshwater swamps, 51.2% costal wetlands) because of the wetland reclamation during China's long history of civilization, and the population pressure and the misguided policies over the last 50 years. Recently, with an improved understanding that healthy wetland ecosystems play a vital role in her sustainable economic development, China started major efforts in wetland conservation, as signified by the policy to return reclaimed croplands to wetlands, the funding of billions of dollars to restore degraded wetlands, and the national plan to place 90% of natural wetlands under protection by 2030. This paper describes the current status of the natural wetlands in China, reviews past problems, and discusses current efforts and future challenges in protecting China's natural wetlands.
Aliasing on the world wide web: prevalence and performance implications

Aliasing occurs in Web transactions when requests containing different URLs elicit replies containing identical data payloads. Conventional caches associate stored data with URLs and can therefore suffer redundant payload transfers due to aliasing and other causes. Existing research literature, however, says little about the prevalence of aliasing in user-initiated transactions, or about redundant payload transfers in conventional Web cache hierarchies.This paper quantifies the extent of aliasing and the performance impact of URL-indexed cache management using a large client trace from WebTV Networks. Fewer than 5% of reply payloads are aliased (referenced via multiple URLs) but over 54% of successful transactions involve aliased payloads. Aliased payloads account for under 3.1% of the trace's "working set size" (sum of payload sizes) but over 36% of bytes transferred. For the WebTV workload, roughly 10% of payload transfers to browser caches and 23% of payload transfers to a shared proxy are redundant, assuming infinite-capacity conventional caches. Our analysis of a large proxy trace from Compaq Corporation yields similar results.URL-indexed caching does not entirely explain the large number of redundant proxy-to-browser payload transfers previously reported in the WebTV system. We consider other possible causes of redundant transfers (e.g., reply metadata and browser cache management policies) and discuss a simple hop-by-hop protocol extension that completely eliminates all redundant transfers, regardless of cause.
Distortion Criteria of the Human Viewer

The ultimate judges of the quality of reproduced pictures are human observers. In many practical situations it is desirable to have objective measures which closely mirror the performance of the human viewer; today we lack accurate measures. To study this problem, a set of five pictures was used in which distortions of different types were introduced. The resulting series of pictures was rated by viewers by means of an impairment rating test. These ratings were then compared with various objective measures of the error. The objective measure is sought which is most closely monotonically related in a smooth manner to the subjective measure. The average spread of the subjective deviations about a polynomial regression of the subjective measure onto the objective measure is used as the criterion. This technique is used to study both linearly filtered error measures and picture dependent nonlinear weightings of the error. The procedure has enabled a crude quantative model of the human viewer to be determined.
Removal of Cr(VI) from Water Using a New Reactive Material: Magnesium Oxide Supported Nanoscale Zero-Valent Iron

The chromium pollution of water is an important environmental and health issue. Cr(VI) removal by means of metallic iron is an attractive method. Specifically, nanoscopic zero valent iron (NZVI) shows great reactivity, however, its applicability needs to be further investigated. In the present paper, NZVI was supported on MgO grains to facilitate the treatments for remediation of chromium-contaminated waters. The performances and mechanisms of the developed composite, in the removal of hexavalent chromium, were investigated by means of batch and continuous tests. Kinetic studies, under different operating conditions, showed that reduction of Cr(VI) could be expressed by a pseudo second-order reaction kinetic. The reaction rate increased with the square of Fe(0) amount, while it was inversely proportional to the initial chromium concentration. The process performance was satisfactory also under uncontrolled pH, and a limited influence of temperature was observed. The reactive material was efficiently reusable for many cycles without any regeneration treatment. The performances in continuous tests were close to 97% for about 80 pore volume of reactive material.