Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling of horns for sonic/ultrasonic applications

JPL has a requirement for telerobotic tools for planetary sample acquisition, which require low power and have the ability to work in harsh environments. We are currently investigating the possibility of using ultrasonic horns to develop a family of ultrasonic tools for these environments. In an effort to determine control parameters a one-dimensional Mason's model for a stepped ultrasonic horn assembly was developed which includes the effects of mechanical and electrical losses in the piezoelectric material and acoustic elements. The model is separated into three regions; the piezoelectric stack including stress bolt, the backing layer and the horn. The model is found to predict the impedance data of the horn assembly very accurately up to the first coupled (radial) resonance. The model also allows for the calculation of the velocity and force and power delivered to each acoustic element. FEM modeling and accelerometer data from the horn tip were used to corroborate the model. The difficulties associated with modeling the load impedance of various devices will be discussed and current directions noted.
Using an HPSG grammar for the generation of prosody

In this paper, we report on an experiment showing how the introduction of prosodic information from detailed syntactic structures into synthetic speech leads to better disambiguation of structurally ambiguous sentences. Using modifier attachment (MA) ambiguities and subject/object fronting (OF) in German as test cases, we show that prosody which is automatically generated from deep syntactic information provided by an HPSG generator can lead to considerable disambiguation effects, and can even override a strong semantics-driven bias. The architecture used in the experiment, consisting of the LKB generator running a large-scale grammar for German, a syntax-prosody interface module, and the speech synthesis system MARY is shown to be a valuable platform for testing hypotheses in intonation studies.
Positron range in PET imaging: an alternative approach for assessing and correcting the blurring

Positron range impairs resolution in PET imaging, especially for high-energy emitters and for small-animal PET. De-blurring in image reconstruction is possible if the blurring distribution is known. Furthermore, the percentage of annihilation events within a given distance from the point of positron emission is relevant for assessing statistical noise. This paper aims to determine the positron range distribution relevant for blurring for seven medically relevant PET isotopes, 18F, 11C, 13N, 15O, 68Ga, 62Cu and 82Rb, and derive empirical formulas for the distributions. This paper focuses on allowed-decay isotopes. It is argued that blurring at the detection level should not be described by the positron range r, but instead the 2D projected distance δ (equal to the closest distance between decay and line of response). To determine these 2D distributions, results from a dedicated positron track-structure Monte Carlo code, Electron and POsitron TRANsport (EPOTRAN), were used. Materials other than water were studied with PENELOPE. The radial cumulative probability distribution G2D(δ) and the radial probability density distribution g2D(δ) were determined. G2D(δ) could be approximated by the empirical function 1 – exp(–Aδ2 – Bδ), where A = 0.0266 (Emean)−1.716 and B = 0.1119 (Emean)−1.934, with Emean being the mean positron energy in MeV and δ in mm. The radial density distribution g2D(δ) could be approximated by differentiation of G2D(δ). Distributions in other media were very similar to water. The positron range is important for improved resolution in PET imaging. Relevant distributions for the positron range have been derived for seven isotopes. Distributions for other allowed-decay isotopes may be estimated with the above formulas.
Early bacterial colonization and soft tissue health around zirconia and titanium abutments: an in vivo study in man.

AIM To compare the early bacterial colonization and soft tissue health of mucosa adjacent to zirconia (ZrO(2)) and titanium (Ti) abutment surfaces in vivo. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty edentulous subjects received two endosseous mandibular implants. The implants were fitted with either a ZrO(2) or a Ti abutment (non-submerged implant placement, within-subject comparison, left-right randomization). Sulcular bacterial sampling and the assessment of probing pocket depth, recession and bleeding on probing were performed at 2 weeks and 3 months post-surgery. Wilcoxon matched-pairs, sign-rank tests were applied to test differences in the counts of seven marker bacteria and the clinical parameters that were associated with the ZrO(2) and Ti abutments, at the two observation time points. RESULTS ZrO(2) and Ti abutments harboured similar counts of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Tannerella forsythia, Peptostreptococcus micros, Fusobacterium nucleatum and Treponema denticola at 2 weeks and 3 months. Healthy clinical conditions were seen around both ZrO(2) and Ti abutments at all times, without significant differences in most clinical parameters of peri-implant soft tissue health. Mean probing depths around Ti abutments were slightly deeper than around ZrO(2) abutments after 3 months (2.2 SD 0.8 mm vs. 1.7 SD 0.7 mm, P=0.03). CONCLUSIONS No difference in health of the soft tissues adjacent to ZrO(2) and Ti abutment surfaces or in early bacterial colonization could be demonstrated, although somewhat shallower probing depths were observed around ZrO(2) abutments after 3 month.
VDC Planner: Dynamic migration-aware Virtual Data Center embedding for clouds

Cloud computing promises to provide computing resources to a large number of service applications in an on demand manner. Traditionally, cloud providers such as Amazon only provide guaranteed allocation for compute and storage resources, and fail to support bandwidth requirements and performance isolation among these applications. To address this limitation, recently, a number of proposals advocate providing both guaranteed server and network resources in the form of Virtual Data Centers (VDCs). This raises the problem of optimally allocating both servers and data center networks to multiple VDCs in order to maximize the total revenue, while minimizing the total energy consumption in the data center. However, despite recent studies on this problem, none of the existing solutions have considered the possibility of using VM migration to dynamically adjust the resource allocation, in order to meet the fluctuating resource demand of VDCs. In this paper, we propose VDC Planner, a migration-aware dynamic virtual data center embedding framework that aims at achieving high revenue while minimizing the total energy cost over-time. Our framework supports various usage scenarios, including VDC embedding, VDC scaling as well as dynamic VDC consolidation. Through experiments using realistic workload traces, we show our proposed approach achieves both higher revenue and lower average scheduling delay compared to existing migration-oblivious solutions.
Calcium-dependent inactivation of the dihydropyridine-sensitive calcium channels in GH3 cells

The inactivation of calcium channels in mammalian pituitary tumor cells (GH3) was studied with patch electrodes under voltage clamp in cell- free membrane patches and in dialyzed cells. The calcium current elicited by depolarization from a holding potential of -40 mV passed predominantly through one class of channels previously shown to be modulated by dihydropyridines and cAMP-dependent phosphorylation (Armstrong and Eckert, 1987). When exogenous calcium buffers were omitted from the pipette solution, the macroscopic calcium current through those channels inactivated with a half time of approximately 10 ms to a steady state level 40-75% smaller than the peak. Inactivation was also measured as the reduction in peak current during a test pulse that closely followed a prepulse. Inactivation was largely reduced or eliminated by (a) buffering free calcium in the pipette solution to less than 10(-8) M; (b) replacing extracellular calcium with barium; (c) increasing the prepulse voltage from +10 to +60 mV; or (d) increasing the intracellular concentration of cAMP, either 'directly' with dibutyryl-cAMP or indirectly by activating adenylate cyclase with forskolin or vasoactive intestinal peptide. Thus, inactivation of the dihydropyridine-sensitive calcium channels in GH3 cells only occurs when membrane depolarization leads to calcium ion entry and intracellular accumulation.
Long-term mortality after community-acquired pneumonia—impacts of diabetes and newly discovered hyperglycaemia: a prospective, observational cohort study

Objectives Community-acquired pneumonia is associated with a significant long-term mortality after initial recovery. It has been acknowledged that additional research is urgently needed to examine the contributors to this long-term mortality. The objective of the present study was to assess whether diabetes or newly discovered hyperglycaemia during pneumonia affects long-term mortality. Design A prospective, observational cohort study. Setting A single secondary centre in eastern Finland. Participants 153 consecutive hospitalised patients who survived at least 30 days after mild-to-moderate community-acquired pneumonia. Interventions Plasma glucose levels were recorded seven times during the first day on the ward. Several possible confounders were also recorded. The surveillance status and causes of death were recorded after median of 5 years and 11 months. Results In multivariate Cox regression analysis, a previous diagnosis of diabetes among the whole population (adjusted HR 2.84 (1.35–5.99)) and new postprandial hyperglycaemia among the non-diabetic population (adjusted HR 2.56 (1.04–6.32)) showed independent associations with late mortality. New fasting hyperglycaemia was not an independent predictor. The mortality rates at the end of follow-up were 54%, 37% and 10% among patients with diabetes, patients without diabetes with new postprandial hyperglycaemia and patients without diabetes without postprandial hyperglycaemia, respectively (p<0.001). The underlying causes of death roughly mirrored those in the Finnish general population with a slight excess in mortality due to chronic respiratory diseases. Pneumonia was the immediate cause of death in just 8% of all late deaths. Conclusions A previous diagnosis of diabetes and newly discovered postprandial hyperglycaemia increase the risk of death for several years after community-acquired pneumonia. As the knowledge about patient subgroups with an increased late mortality risk is gradually gathering, more studies are needed to evaluate the possible postpneumonia interventions to reduce late mortality.
A new heuristic providing an effective initial solution for a simulated annealing approach to energy resource scheduling in smart grids

An intensive use of dispersed energy resources is expected for future power systems, including distributed generation, especially based on renewable sources, and electric vehicles. The system operation methods and tool must be adapted to the increased complexity, especially the optimal resource scheduling problem. Therefore, the use of metaheuristics is required to obtain good solutions in a reasonable amount of time. This paper proposes two new heuristics, called naive electric vehicles charge and discharge allocation and generation tournament based on cost, developed to obtain an initial solution to be used in the energy resource scheduling methodology based on simulated annealing previously developed by the authors. The case study considers two scenarios with 1000 and 2000 electric vehicles connected in a distribution network. The proposed heuristics are compared with a deterministic approach and presenting a very small error concerning the objective function with a low execution time for the scenario with 2000 vehicles.
Disruption of the cingulin gene does not prevent tight junction formation but alters gene expression

Cingulin, a component of vertebrate tight junctions, contains a head domain that controls its junctional recruitment and protein interactions. To determine whether lack of junctional cingulin affects tight-junction organization and function, we examined the phenotype of embryoid bodies derived from embryonic stem cells carrying one or two alleles of cingulin with a targeted deletion of the exon coding for most of the predicted head domain. In homozygous (–/–) embryoid bodies, no full-length cingulin was detected by immunoblotting and no junctional labeling was detected by immunofluorescence. In hetero- and homozygous (+/– and –/–) embryoid bodies, immunoblotting revealed a Triton-soluble, truncated form of cingulin, increased levels of the tight junction proteins ZO-2, occludin, claudin-6 and Lfc, and decreased levels of ZO-1. The +/– and –/– embryoid bodies contained epithelial cells with normal tight junctions, as determined by freeze-fracture and transmission electron microscopy, and a biotin permeability assay. The localization of ZO-1, occludin and claudin-6 appeared normal in mutant epithelial cells, indicating that cingulin is not required for their junctional recruitment. Real-time quantitative reverse-transcription PCR (real-time qRT-PCR) showed that differentiation of embryonic stem cells into embryoid bodies was associated with up-regulation of mRNAs for several tight junction proteins. Microarray analysis and real-time qRT-PCR showed that cingulin mutation caused a further increase in the transcript levels of occludin, claudin-2, claudin-6 and claudin-7, which were probably due to an increase in expression of GATA-6, GATA-4 and HNF-4α, transcription factors implicated in endodermal differentiation. Thus, lack of junctional cingulin does not prevent tight-junction formation, but gene expression and tight junction protein levels are altered by the cingulin mutation.
Performance of Wireless Powered Amplify and Forward Relaying Over Nakagami-$m$ Fading Channels With Nonlinear Energy Harvester

Performance of wireless powered relay with amplify-and-forward protocol is studied for Nakagami-m fading channels. Different from the existing literature, we consider the nonlinearity of the energy harvester. An analytical expression is derived for the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. Using the CCDF, outage capacity is calculated.
High-saturation high-speed traveling-wave InGaAsP-InP electroabsorption modulator

High-saturation power traveling-wave electroabsorption modulators (TW-EAMs) with modulation bandwidth greater than 40 GHz have been demonstrated. Microwave properties of the TW-EAM waveguide are extracted from the measured S-parameters using an equivalent circuit model. Excellent agreement is obtained between the predicted and the measured frequency responses.
Antimycobacterial Activities of Isoxyl and New Derivatives through the Inhibition of Mycolic Acid Synthesis

ABSTRACT Isoxyl (ISO), a thiourea (thiocarlide; 4,4′-diisoamyloxythiocarbanilide), demonstrated potent activity againstMycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv (MIC, 2.5 μg/ml),Mycobacterium bovis BCG (MIC, 0.5 μg/ml),Mycobacterium avium (MIC, 2.0 μg/ml), andMycobacterium aurum A+ (MIC, 2.0 μg/ml), resulting in complete inhibition of mycobacteria grown on solid media. Importantly, a panel of clinical isolates of M. tuberculosis from different geographical areas with various drug resistance patterns were all sensitive to ISO in the range of 1 to 10 μg/ml. In a murine macrophage model, ISO exhibited bactericidal killing of viable intracellular M. tuberculosis in a dose-dependent manner (0.05 to 2.50 μg/ml). The selective action of ISO on mycolic acid synthesis was studied through the use of [1,2-14C]acetate labeling of M. tuberculosis H37Rv, M. bovisBCG, and M. aurum A+. At its MIC for M. tuberculosis, ISO inhibited the synthesis of both fatty acids and mycolic acids (α-mycolates by 91.6%, methoxymycolates by 94.3%, and ketomycolates by 91.1%); at its MIC in M. bovis BCG, ISO inhibited the synthesis of α-mycolates by 87.2% and that of ketomycolates by 88.5%; and the corresponding inhibitions for M. aurum A+ were 87.1% for α-mycolates, 87.2% for ketomycolates, and 86.5% for the wax-ester mycolates. A comparison with isoniazid (INH) and ethionamide (ETH) demonstrated marked similarity in action, i.e., inhibition of the synthesis of all kinds of mycolic acids. However, unlike INH and ETH, ISO also inhibited the synthesis of shorter-chain fatty acids. ISO showed no acute toxicity against primary macrophage cell cultures as demonstrated by diminution of redox activity. A homologous series of ISO derivatives were synthesized. Most derivatives were as effective or more effective than the parent compound in the agar proportion assay. Thus, these thioureas, like INH and ETH, specifically inhibit mycolic acid synthesis and show promise in counteracting a wide variety of drug-sensitive and -resistant strains of M. tuberculosis.
A Micromachined Nanopositioner With On-Chip Electrothermal Actuation and Sensing

This letter describes the design of a micromachined nanopositioner with thermal actuation and sensing capabilities in a single chip. The positioner has a dynamic range of 14.4 m, and the sensor drift is 8.9 nm over 2000 s with a differential sensing scheme. The on-chip displacement sensing enables a feedback control capability. A proportional-integral feedback controller is designed and implemented digitally. The closed-loop step response results show a positioning resolution of 7.9 nm and a time constant of 1.6 ms.
2 Laplacian , the Green ’ s function and PageRank

We examine the relationship between PageRank and several invariants occurring in the study of random walks and electrical networks. We consider a generalized version of hitting time and effective resistance with an additional parameter which controls the ‘speed’ of diffusion. We will establish their connection with PageRank . Through these connections, a combinatorial interpretation of PageRank is given in terms of rooted spanning forests by using a generalized version of the matrix-tree theorem. Using PageRank, we will illustrate that the generalized hitting time leads to finding sparse cuts and efficient approximation algorithms for PageRank can be used for approximating hitting time and effective resistance.
Pre-neoplastic epigenetic disruption of transcriptional enhancers in chronic inflammation

Chronic periodontitis (CP) is a chronic inflammatory disease independently associated with higher incidence of oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). However, the molecular mechanism responsible for this increased incidence is unknown. Here we profiled the DNA methylome of CP patients and healthy controls and compared to a large set of OSCC samples from TCGA. We observed a significant overlap between the altered DNA methylation patterns in CP and in OSCC, suggesting an emergence of a pre-neoplastic epigenome in CP. Remarkably, the hypermethylated CpGs in CP were significantly enriched for enhancer elements. This aberrant enhancer methylation is functional and able to disrupt enhancer activity by preventing the binding of chromatin looping factors. This study provides new insights on the molecular mechanisms linking chronic inflammation and tumor predisposition, highlighting the role of epigenetic disruption of transcriptional enhancers.
An Efficient Incremental Algorithm for Generating All Maximal Independent Sets in Hypergraphs of Bounded Dimension

We show that for hypergraphs of bounded edge size, the problem of extending a given list of maximal independent sets is NC-reducible to the computation of an arbitrary maximal independent set for an induced sub-hypergraph. The latter problem is known to be in RNC. In particular, our reduction yields an incremental RNC dualization algorithm for hypergraphs of bounded edge size, a problem previously known to be solvable in polynomial incremental time. We also give a similar parallel algorithm for the dualization problem on the product of arbitrary lattices which have a bounded number of immediate predecessors for each element.
The Multi-Level Impact of Clinical Decision Support System: a Framework and a Call for mixed Methods Evaluation

Clinical decision support systems are important healthcare systems that help in improving healthcare quality and in reducing cost. These systems have multiple levels of outcomes on the individual, group, organization, and society levels. However, despite the abundant studies conducted to evaluate CDSS, most of these studies failed to recognize these multiple levels of impact and mostly focused on the clinical efficacy of these systems using randomized controlled trials (RCT) designs. In this paper, we propose that CDSS evaluation is a complex task that cannot be accomplished using a single research methodology. We propose a framework that identifies the multiple levels impacted by CDSS and the appropriate methodologies that can be used to evaluate these impacts. We also provide an example of using this framework to evaluate a pain management CDSS. This study informs future evaluation studies on what and how to evaluate at different levels of CDSS interventions.
A New Method for using Prestressed Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Laminates for Strengthening and Repair of Structural Members

Strengthening and repair of bridges using adhered prestressed CFRP (Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers) laminates has many advantages compared to conventional strengthening methods using e.g. steel plates. The major drawback of prestressed CFRP laminates are the high shear stresses that arise near the laminate ends causing failure by plate debonding. This has traditionally been solved using mechanical anchors that require large modifications to the structure and time consuming inspections. To overcome this, a method where the prestressing force is introduced to the laminate in steps is developed. Experiments show that introducing the prestress in even steps over a distance of the laminate is an efficient way of eliminating the need of mechanical anchors. A concept based on the theory of stepwise prestressing is further developed to enable convenient use outside of the test lab and to refine function and overcome practical issues. In order to develop the concept of stepwise prestressing, an in depth study of the behaviour of FRP strengthening systems is carried out. This includes identifying the parameters affecting the stress distribution and magnitude of the stresses along the bond line and the possible solutions to reduce the interfacial stresses. The main objective is to further develop and find practical ways of fulfilling the concept of stepwise prestressing. The development of the prestressing concept will mainly be driven by FE-analyses using detailed models where the interfacial stresses are studied. This is necessary to identify and solve many of the problems that arise during the development of the concept. The theory of stepwise prestressing is proven to work and with the results of the FE-analyses, potential problem areas with the concept have been improved and several practical issues solved. A working concept has been further refined and although it has been developed in several areas there is room for improvement. The many advantageous properties of prestressed CFRP strengthening are now available without the need of labour intensive mechanical anchors and time consuming inspections.