Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alternate Hybrid-Stress Elements for Analysis of Multilayer Composite Plates

Two quadrilateral-shaped multilayer plate bending/stretching elements based on the assumed-stress hybrid finite-element model are presented. These elements may be applied to the analysis of fiber composite plates and shells composed of an arbitrary number of layers and arbitrary mate rial properties and fiber direction within each layer. Both elements incor porate the effects of transverse shear by including the transverse shear stresses τ xz and τyz , and by assuming independent rotations of the normals to the plate midsurface, so that normals to the midsurface in the un deformed state need not be normal to the midsurface after deformation. In the formulation of an element based on the assumed-stress hybrid model, the stress distribution in the interior of the element is expressed in terms of a finite number of stress parameters such that equilibrium is satisfied, and the displacement distribution on the boundary of the element is expressed in terms of generalized nodal displacements such that interelement displacement compatibility is maintained. The principle difference between the two elements presented is the level of approxima tion incorporated into the stress and displacement assumptions. For one element the stresses within each layer are related to a set of stress param eters within that layer, and the boundary displacement assumption allows for independent cross-sectional rotations within each layer (and is thus capable of modeling the severe cross-sectional warping often associated with thick laminated plates). For the other element, the stresses within each layer are related to a set of stress parameters associated with the entire laminate, and the boundarv displacement assumption allows for a uniform rotation of the cross section of the laminate (not necessarily normal to the plate midsurface). To assess the behavior of the two elements, two laminated composite plate example problems are considered, for which analytic solutions are available. The accuracy of predicted stress and displacement results obtained by using the two hybrid elements are compared with the exact solutions for cases involving both thick and moderately thick plates. Com parisons of the relative accuracy and computing efficiency of the two elements are presented, and the limitations on the use of each element are also discussed.
Ten-year series of splenic abscesses in a general hospital in Singapore.

INTRODUCTION Splenic abscess is an uncommon clinical problem. Traditionally, the "gold standard" treatment has been splenectomy. However, there is increasing use of non-operative treatments worldwide. MATERIALS AND METHODS A 10-year (1996-2005) retrospective review of case records from a single centre (an 800-bed general hospital) was performed. Information regarding demographics, clinical presentation, aetiological agents and management was gathered and analysed. RESULTS There were 21 cases from 1996 to 2005. Nineteen (90%) had multiple abscesses. Disseminated melioidosis was the most common aetiological agent (15 cases, 71%). Only 3 patients underwent splenectomy. The remainder were treated conservatively with antibiotics. Almost all the patients (19, 90%) also suffered from diabetes mellitus. CONCLUSIONS The most common aetiological agent encountered was Burkholderia pseudomallei. Diabetes mellitus may be an important co-factor in the pathogenesis of splenic abscesses. The majority of our patients were managed conservatively and splenectomy was only occasionally required.
Fizzy is required for activation of the APC/cyclosome in Xenopus egg extracts

The Xenopus homologue of Drosophila Fizzy and budding yeast CDC20 has been characterized. The encoded protein (X‐FZY) is a component of a high molecular weight complex distinct from the APC/cyclosome. Antibodies directed against FZY were produced and shown to prevent calmodulin‐dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) from inducing the metaphase to anaphase transition of spindles assembled in vitro in Xenopus egg extracts, and this was associated with suppression of the degradation of mitotic cyclins. The same antibodies suppressed M phase‐promoting factor (MPF)‐dependent activation of the APC/cyclosome in interphase egg extracts, although they did not appear to alter the pattern or extent of MPF‐dependent phosphorylation of APC/cyclosome subunits. As these phosphorylations are thought to be essential for APC/cyclosome activation in eggs and early embryos, we conclude that at least two events are required for MPF to activate the APC/cyclosome, allowing both chromatid segregation and full degradation of mitotic cyclins. The first one, which does not require FZY function, is the phosphorylation of APC/cyclosome subunits. The second one, that requires FZY function (even in the absence of MAD2 protein and when the spindle assembly checkpoint is not activated) is not yet understood at its molecular level.
Protocol for the examination of specimens from patients with invasive carcinoma of renal tubular origin.

The College of American Pathologists offers these protocols to assist pathologists in providing clinically useful and relevant information when reporting results of surgical specimen examinations. The College regards the reporting elements in the ‘‘Surgical Pathology Cancer Case Summary (Checklist)’’ portion of the protocols as essential elements of the pathology report. However, the manner in which these elements are reported is at the discretion of each specific pathologist, taking into account clinician preferences, institutional policies, and individual practice. The College developed these protocols as an educational tool to assist pathologists in the useful reporting of relevant information. It did not issue the protocols for use in litigation, reimbursement, or other contexts. Nevertheless, the College recognizes that the protocols might be used by hospitals, attorneys, payers, and others. Indeed, effective January 1, 2004, the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons mandated the use of the checklist elements of the protocols as part of its Cancer Program Standards for Approved Cancer Programs. Therefore, it becomes even more important for pathologists to familiarize themselves with these documents. At the same time, the College cautions that use of the protocols other than for their intended educational purpose may involve additional considerations that are beyond the scope of these documents.
Identification of proteases from periodontopathogenic bacteria as activators of latent human neutrophil and fibroblast-type interstitial collagenases

Activation of latent human fibroblast-type and neutrophil interstitial procollagenases as well as degradation of native type I collagen by supra- and subgingival dental plaque extracts, an 80-kDa trypsinlike protease from Porphyromas gingivalis (ATCC 33277), a 95-kDa chymotrypsinlike protease from Treponema denticola (ATCC 29522), and selected bacterial species commonly isolated in periodontitis was studied. The bacteria included were Prevotella intermedia (ATCC 25261), Prevotella buccae (ES 57), Prevotella oris (ATCC 33573), Porphyromonas endodontalis (ES 54b), Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans (ATCC 295222), Fusobacterium nucleatum (ATCC 10953), Mitsuokella dentalis (DSM 3688), and Streptococcus mitis (ATCC 15909). None of the bacteria activated latent procollagenases; however, both sub- and supragingival dental plaque extracts (neutral salt extraction) and proteases isolated from cell extracts from potentially periodontopathogenic bacteria P. gingivalis and T. denticola were found to activate latent human fibroblast-type and neutrophil interstitial procollagenases. The fibroblast-type interstitial collagenase was more efficiently activated by bacterial proteases than the neutrophil counterpart, which instead preferred nonproteolytic activation by the oxidative agent hypochlorous acid. The proteases were not able to convert collagenase tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP-1) complexes into active form or to change the ability of TIMP-1 to inhibit interstitial collagenase. None of the studied bacteria, proteases from P. gingivalis and T. denticola, or extracts of supra- and subgingival dental plaque showed any significant collagenolytic activity. However, the proteases degraded native and denatured collagen fragments after cleavage by interstitial collagenase and gelatinase. Our results indicate that proteases from periodontopathogenic bacteria can act as direct proteolytic activators of human procollagenases and degrade collagen fragments. Thus, in concert with host enzymes the bacterial proteases may participate in periodontal tissue destruction.
On bitcoin and red balloons

Many large decentralized systems rely on information propagation to ensure their proper function. We examine a common scenario in which only participants that are aware of the information can compete for some reward, and thus informed participants have an incentive not to propagate information to others. One recent example in which such tension arises is the 2009 DARPA Network Challenge (finding red balloons). We focus on another prominent example: Bitcoin, a decentralized electronic currency system. Bitcoin represents a radical new approach to monetary systems. It has been getting a large amount of public attention over the last year, both in policy discussions and in the popular press. Its cryptographic fundamentals have largely held up even as its usage has become increasingly widespread. We find, however, that it exhibits a fundamental problem of a different nature, based on how its incentives are structured. We propose a modification to the protocol that can eliminate this problem. Bitcoin relies on a peer-to-peer network to track transactions that are performed with the currency. For this purpose, every transaction a node learns about should be transmitted to its neighbors in the network. As the protocol is currently defined and implemented, it does not provide an incentive for nodes to broadcast transactions they are aware of. In fact, it provides an incentive not to do so. Our solution is to augment the protocol with a scheme that rewards information propagation. Since clones are easy to create in the Bitcoin system, an important feature of our scheme is Sybil-proofness. We show that our proposed scheme succeeds in setting the correct incentives, that it is Sybil-proof, and that it requires only a small payment overhead, all this is achieved with iterated elimination of dominated strategies. We complement this result by showing that there are no reward schemes in which information propagation and no self-cloning is a dominant strategy.
A Stream Virtual Element Formulation of the Stokes Problem on Polygonal Meshes

In this paper we propose and analyze a novel stream formulation of the virtual element method (VEM) for the solution of the Stokes problem. The new formulation hinges upon the introduction of a suitable stream function space (characterizing the divergence free subspace of discrete velocities) and it is equivalent to the velocity-pressure (inf-sup stable) mimetic scheme presented in [L. Beirao da Veiga et al., J. Comput. Phys., 228 (2009), pp. 7215--7232] (up to a suitable reformulation into the VEM framework). Both schemes are thus stable and linearly convergent but the new method results to be more desirable as it employs much less degrees of freedom and it is based on a positive definite algebraic problem. Several numerical experiments assess the convergence properties of the new method and show its computational advantages with respect to the mimetic one.
A flexible approach to multi-level agent-based simulation with the mesoscopic representation

Large-scale simulations often use multiple agent representations to permit the study of specific multi-agent phenomena, and to find a balance between run-time performance and level of detail of the simulation. Although these approaches are effective, they do not always offer the desired level of analysis, especially when this level is between the resolutions of the models available. In this paper, we aim at offering a finer resolution in exploring this trade-off by introducing an intermediate level between two given resolutions, which can apply to all agent models and allows a more progressive transition to offer the desired level of analysis. We introduce a framework for such a methodology and evaluate it through the extension of an existing approach, along two criteria: its impact on computational resources, and an estimate of the dissimilarity between a simulation using our methodology and one without. Initial experiments show that consistency is almost maintained while CPU gain varies from low to significant depending on the context.
Macrophage-Targeted Overexpression of Urokinase Causes Accelerated Atherosclerosis, Coronary Artery Occlusions, and Premature Death

Background—Human atherosclerotic lesions contain elevated levels of urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA), expressed predominantly by macrophages. Methods and Results—To test the hypothesis that macrophage-expressed uPA contributes to the progression and complications of atherosclerosis, we generated transgenic mice with macrophage-targeted overexpression of uPA. The uPA transgene was bred into the apolipoprotein E–null background, and transgenic mice and nontransgenic littermate controls were fed an atherogenic diet. uPA-transgenic mice had significantly elevated uPA activity in the atherosclerotic artery wall, of a magnitude similar to elevations reported in atherosclerotic human arteries. Compared with littermate controls, uPA-transgenic mice had accelerated atherosclerosis, dilated aortic roots, occlusive proximal coronary artery disease, myocardial infarcts, and early mortality. Conclusions—These data support the hypothesis that overexpression of uPA by artery wall macrophages is atherogenic and suggest that uPA inhibitors might be therapeutically useful.
Rethinking DRAM Power Modes for Energy Proportionality

We re-think DRAM power modes by modeling and characterizing inter-arrival times for memory requests to determine the properties an ideal power mode should have. This analysis indicates that even the most responsive of today's power modes are rarely used. Up to 88% of memory is spent idling in an active mode. This analysis indicates that power modes must have much shorter exit latencies than they have today. Wake-up latencies less than 100ns are ideal. To address these challenges, we present MemBlaze, an architecture with DRAMs and links that are capable of fast power up, which provides more opportunities to power down memories. By eliminating DRAM chip timing circuitry, a key contributor to power up latency, and by shifting timing responsibility to the controller, MemBlaze permits data transfers immediately after wake-up and reduces energy per transfer by 50% with no performance impact. Alternatively, in scenarios where DRAM timing circuitry must remain, we explore mechanisms to accommodate DRAMs that power up with less than perfect interface timing. We present MemCorrect which detects timing errors while MemDrowsy lowers transfer rates and widens sampling margins to accommodate timing uncertainty in situations where the interface circuitry must recalibrate after exit from power down state. Combined, MemCorrect and MemDrowsy still reduce energy per transfer by 50% but incur modest (e.g., 10%) performance penalties.
Simultaneous optimization of the electromagnetic and mechanical properties of honeycomb materials

In this work a combined analysis of the out-of-plane mechanical and dielectric properties of auxetic re-entrant honeycombs is performed. Experimental and numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the correlation between the anisotropicity of the transverse mechanical properties (shear and compressive modulus) and the permittivity tensor of general and auxetic (Negative Poisson's ratio) honeycombs. Different numerical and experimental techniques have been applied to obtain the mechanical and dielectric properties of general and auxetic honeycombs versus the core material and unit cell geometry parameters. The results are evaluated to assess the feasibility of this kind of cellular solid for electromagnetic screen applications with high structural integrity performance.
Effectively visualizing large networks through sampling

We study the problem of visualizing large networks and develop techniques for effectively abstracting a network and reducing the size to a level that can be clearly viewed. Our size reduction techniques are based on sampling, where only a sample instead of the full network is visualized. We propose a randomized notion of "focus" that specifies a part of the network and the degree to which it needs to be magnified. Visualizing a sample allows our method to overcome the scalability issues inherent in visualizing massive networks. We report some characteristics that frequently occur in large networks and the conditions under which they are preserved when sampling from a network. This can be useful in selecting a proper sampling scheme that yields a sample with similar characteristics as the original network. Our method is built on top of a relational database, thus it can be easily and efficiently implemented using any off-the-shelf database software. As a proof of concept, we implement our methods and report some of our experiments over the movie database and the connectivity graph of the Web.
Current and emerging treatment options for Peyronie’s disease

Peyronie’s disease (PD) is a condition of the penis, characterized by the presence of localized fibrotic plaque in the tunica albuginea. PD is not an uncommon disorder, with recent epidemiologic studies documenting a prevalence of 3–9% of adult men affected. The actual prevalence of PD may be even higher. It is often associated with penile pain, anatomical deformities in the erect penis, and difficulty with intromission. As the definitive pathophysiology of PD has not been completely elucidated, further basic research is required to make progress in the understanding of this enigmatic condition. Similarly, research on effective therapies is limited. Currently, nonsurgical treatments are used for those men who are in the acute stage of PD, whereas surgical options are reserved for men with established PD who cannot successfully penetrate. Intralesional treatments are growing in clinical popularity as a minimally invasive approach in the initial treatment of PD. A surgical approach should be considered when men with PD do not respond to conservative, medical, or minimally invasive therapies for approximately 1 year and cannot have satisfactory sexual intercourse. As scientific breakthroughs in the understanding of the mechanisms of this disease process evolve, novel treatments for the many men suffering with PD are anticipated.
Bringing Ethics into Focus: How Regulatory Focus and Risk Preferences Influence (Un)ethical Behavior

In four laboratory studies, we find that regulatory focus induced by situational cues (such as the framing of an unrelated task) or primed influences people's likelihood to cross ethical boundaries. A promotion focus leads individuals to be more likely to act unethically than a prevention focus (Studies 1, 2, and 3). These higher levels of dishonesty are explained by the influence of a person's induced regulatory focus on his or her behavior toward risk. A promotion focus leads to risk-seeking behaviors, while a prevention focus leads to risk avoidance (Study 3). Through higher levels of dishonesty, promotion focus also results in higher levels of virtuous behavior (Studies 2 and 3), thus providing evidence for compensatory ethics. Our results also demonstrate that the framing of ethics (e.g., through an organization's ethics code) influences individuals' ethical behavior and does so differently depending on an individual's induced regulatory focus (Study 4).
Patterns of deficit in auditory temporal processing among dyslexic adults

We characterized temporal psychoacoustic performance in a group of adult dyslexics with excellent cognitive abilities. These individuals performed adequately on a two-tone frequency discrimination task when inter-stimulus intervals were long (≥1 s or more). However, their performance gradually deteriorated as interval duration was shortened (0.7–0.1 s). Dyslexics with similar reading abilities, but with average cognitive abilities, performed poorly at all intervals. These findings show that, though both groups suffer from non-phonological deficits in auditory discrimination, the nature of their deficits differs. Dyslexics with excellent cognitive abilities seem to have slow, yet adequate, stimulus identification and comparison mechanisms. The fundamental impairment of the other dyslexic group is difficult to determine because their performance was poor across all intervals.
Assessing The Adequacy Of Split-Plot Design Models

This paper assesses the adequacy of model fit of the split-plot design models, that is the whole plot (WP) sub-design model with WP error and the split-plot (SP) sub-design model with SP error for comparing the effectiveness of resistant measures that use medians instead of means, resulting in a coefficient that is more resistant to outliers or extreme data points. This paper presents empirical application of four measures of model adequacy check and they are coefficient of determination (R2), modelling efficiency (MEF) statistic, prediction coefficient of determination (R2prod), and mean square error prediction (MSEP). These four measures were explored using their mean and median form. A 2(1+3) replicated two-level SP design and a 31 × 42 replicated mixed level SP design were used for computing the measures of model adequacy of fit for each WP and SP sub-design models. These measures in their median form described the predictive performance of each WP and SP sub-design models adequately.
Kennel Disinfectants for Microsporum canis and Trichophyton sp.

The antifungal efficacy of commonly used kennel disinfectants for large surfaces was tested using naturally infective material from untreated animals (M. canis and Trichophyton sp.) soaked and macerated but unfiltered leaving visible fluorescing hairs and/or scales in the test inoculum to create a robust challenge. Disinfectants included sodium hypochlorite (1 : 32 and 1 : 100), enilconazole (1 : 100), accelerated hydrogen peroxide (1 : 16), potassium peroxymonosulfate (1% and 2%), and calcium hypochlorite “dry bleach. ” Disinfectants were tested at a 1 : 10, 1 : 5, and 1 : 1 dilution of test inoculum to disinfectant with a 10 min contact time. Good efficacy was defined as a disinfectant resulting in no growth. Control plates grew >300 colonies of each pathogen per plate. Enilconazole, sodium hypochlorite (all dilutions), accelerated hydrogen peroxide, and 2% potassium peroxymonosulfate (but not 1%) inhibited all growth of both pathogens at 1 : 10, 1 : 5, and 1 : 1 dilutions. Calcium hypochlorite showed no antifungal efficacy (>300 colonies per plate). Enilconazole (1 : 100), sodium hypochlorite (1 : 32 or 1 : 100), accelerated hydrogen peroxide (1 : 16), and 2% potassium peroxymonosulfate are recommended for decontamination of kennels exposed to dermatophyte pathogens.