Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electrochemical and Capacitive Properties of Carbon Dots/Reduced Graphene Oxide Supercapacitors

There is much recent interest in graphene-based composite electrode materials because of their excellent mechanical strengths, high electron mobilities, and large specific surface areas. These materials are good candidates for applications in supercapacitors. In this work, a new graphene-based electrode material for supercapacitors was fabricated by anchoring carbon dots (CDs) on reduced graphene oxide (rGO). The capacitive properties of electrodes in aqueous electrolytes were systematically studied by galvanostatic charge-discharge measurements, cyclic voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The capacitance of rGO was improved when an appropriate amount of CDs were added to the material. The CD/rGO electrode exhibited a good reversibility, excellent rate capability, fast charge transfer, and high specific capacitance in 1 M H2SO4. Its capacitance was as high as 211.9 F/g at a current density of 0.5 A/g. This capacitance was 74.3% higher than that of a pristine rGO electrode (121.6 F/g), and the capacitance of the CD/rGO electrode retained 92.8% of its original value after 1000 cycles at a CDs-to-rGO ratio of 5:1.
Comparing HMM, maximum entropy, and conditional random fields for disfluency detection

Automatic detection of disfluencies in spoken language is important for making speech recognition output more readable, and for aiding downstream language processing modules. We compare a generative hidden Markov model (HMM)-based approach and two conditional models — a maximum entropy (Maxent) model and a conditional random field (CRF) — for detecting disfluencies in speech. The conditional modeling approaches provide a more principled way to model correlated features. In particular, the CRF approach directly detects the reparandum regions, and thus avoids the use of ad-hoc heuristic rules. We evaluate performance of these three models across two different corpora (conversational speech and broadcast news) and for two types of transcriptions (human transcriptions and recognition output). Overall we find that that the conditional modeling approaches (Maxent and CRF) provide benefit over the HMM approach. Effects of speaking style, word recognition errors, and future directions are also discussed.
Weaving pedagogies of possibility

It is easy to feel impatient with the pace of change when it comes to developing truly sustainable culture yet things are happening all over the world to lay the ground work, create the architecture and language of sustainability as a cultural reality. In Weaving Pedagogies of Possibility the authors seek to leverage from such developments. In this chapter the authors share their adventure in designing an open learning system within, across and between their institutions. We insist this work involves pedagogies in the plural as we seek to affirm and embrace alternative approaches to learning that draw on many cultures and places. We take as axiomatic that the world is always becoming other than what it appears to be; that this is contested space; and that it is in the play of environment, context, structure, culture and identity that the future lies. This sensitivity to the multiple and contested nature of social and ecological space lies at the heart of our vision and practice of pedagogies of possibility.
Extraction and Genotyping of Cryptosporidium parvum DNA from Fecal Smears on Glass Slides Stained Conventionally for Direct Microscope Examination

ABSTRACT A method was developed for extracting cryptosporidial DNA from stained fecal smears on glass microscope slides. The correct genotype of Cryptosporidium parvum was amplified by PCR from 89 (85%) of 105 smears following conventional staining but not from negative controls. This technique may have applications for analysis of other infectious agents.
Young guns: an empirical study of persons who use a firearm in a suicide or a homicide

Objectives—The purpose of this investigation was to identify population groups at highest risk of using a firearm in a fatal incident. Setting—Los Angeles County (California, USA). Methods—Data were gathered from vital statistics reports and law enforcement records on the characteristics of suicide victims (n = 4799) and homicide suspects (n = 5369) from 1990 through 1994. Logistic regression was used to identify characteristics of the actor/perpetrator that were associated with firearm use. Results—Persons less than 21 years old and males were more likely to use a firearm to kill themselves or someone else. Even when their other demographic attributes and characteristics of the incident itself were taken into consideration, persons under the age of 18 were substantially more likely than those 21 or more years old to use a firearm in the commission of a homicide (adjusted odds ratio = 2.59). Asians were less likely than white people to use a firearm in the commission of a suicide, whereas black people, Hispanics, and Asians were more likely than whites to use a firearm in the commission of a homicide. Conclusions—The US enacts and enforces some policies differentially by age. These data support the idea that such an approach may be warranted when addressing fatalities associated with the use of a firearm. Of particular interest, given minimum age requirements for firearm purchases, is the source of the weapons themselves.
RILAnalyzer: a comprehensive 3G monitor on your phone

The popularity of smartphones, cloud computing, and the app store model have led to cellular networks being used in a completely different way than what they were designed for. As a consequence, mobile applications impose new challenges in the design and efficient configuration of constrained networks to maximize application's performance. Such difficulties are largely caused by the lack of cross-layer under- standing of interactions between different entities -applications, devices, the network and its management plane. In this paper, we describe RILAnalyzer, an open-source tool that provides mechanisms to perform network analysis from within a mobile device. RILAnalyzer is capable of recording low-level radio information and accurate cellular net- work control-plane data, as well as user-plane data. We demonstrate how such data can be used to identify previously overlooked issues. Through a small user study across four cellular network providers in two European countries we infer how different network configurations are in reality and explore how such configurations interact with application logic, causing network and energy overheads.
Potential Cellular Mechanisms of Hydrogen Peroxide‐Induced Cardiac Arrhythmias

The electrophysiologic effects of hydrogen peroxide on the isolated guinea pig right ventricular free wall were studied using simultaneous recordings of action potentials from the epicardium and the endocardium. Exposure to hydrogen peroxide caused a time- and concentration-dependent change in action potential characteristics. Action potential durations at 50 and 90% of repolarization (APD50 and APD90, respectively) were significantly prolonged by hydrogen peroxide in both the epicardium and the endocardium. Although prolongation occurred at lower concentrations (0.5 mM) in the epicardium, increases in APD in response to higher concentrations of hydrogen peroxide (1 or 4 mM) were maintained for a longer period of time in the endocardium. In addition, hydrogen peroxide (1 or 4 mM) caused significant depolarization in the epicardium after 10 min, although this effect was observed only in the endocardium exposed to 4 mM hydrogen peroxide. Ventricular arrhythmias were observed in 5 of 7, 6 of 7, and 7 of 7 preparations exposed to 0.5, 1, and 4 mM hydrogen peroxide, respectively. The most frequently observed electrophysiologic abnormalities were associated with increased automaticity. Coupled beats, including clearly indentifiable early and delayed depolarizations, were also observed. Verapamil (2 μM) and amiloride (0.1 mM) reduced both the incidence and the duration of hydrogen peroxide-induced arrhythmias but did not influence the effects on APD. This study is the first demonstration of hydrogen peroxide-mediated transmural dispersion in APD that could play an important role in the development of ventricular arrhythmias. In addition, our results demonstrate that hydrogen peroxide can induce ventricular arrhythmias through several cellular mechanisms, including increased automaticity, coupled beats, and triggered activity.
Reduction of Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus Type 1 (HTLV-1) Proviral Loads in Rats Orally Infected with HTLV-1 by Reimmunization with HTLV-1-Infected Cells

ABSTRACT Human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) persistently infects humans, and the proviral loads that persist in vivo vary widely among individuals. Elevation in the proviral load is associated with serious HTLV-1-mediated diseases, such as adult T-cell leukemia and HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis. However, it remains controversial whether HTLV-1-specific T-cell immunity can control HTLV-1 in vivo. We previously reported that orally HTLV-1-infected rats showed insufficient HTLV-1-specific T-cell immunity that coincided with elevated levels of the HTLV-1 proviral load. In the present study, we found that individual HTLV-1 proviral loads established in low-responding hosts could be reduced by the restoration of HTLV-1-specific T-cell responses. Despite the T-cell unresponsiveness for HTLV-1 in orally infected rats, an allogeneic mixed lymphocyte reaction in the splenocytes and a contact hypersensitivity response in the skin of these rats were comparable with those of naive rats. HTLV-1-specific T-cell response in orally HTLV-1-infected rats could be restored by subcutaneous reimmunization with mitomycin C (MMC)-treated syngeneic HTLV-1-transformed cells. The reimmunized rats exhibited lower proviral loads than untreated orally infected rats. We also confirmed that the proviral loads in orally infected rats decreased after reimmunization in the same hosts. Similar T-cell immune conversion could be reproduced in orally HTLV-1-infected rats by subcutaneous inoculation with MMC-treated primary T cells from syngeneic orally HTLV-1-infected rats. The present results indicate that, although HTLV-1-specific T-cell unresponsiveness is an underlying risk factor for the propagation of HTLV-1-infected cells in vivo, the risk may potentially be reduced by reimmunization, for which autologous HTLV-1-infected cells are a candidate immunogen.
Adaptive interfaces and agents

As its title suggests, this chapter covers a broad range of interactive systems. But they all have one idea in common: that it can be worthwhile for a system to learn something about each individual user and adapt its behavior to them in some nontrivial way. An example that will be familiar to most readers is shown in Figure 15.1. A visitor to amazon.com has just explicitly requested recommendations, without having specified a particular type of product. During the user’s past visits, AMAZON has learned something about his interests, on the basis of items he has purchased and ratings he has made. Therefore, the system can make recommendations that are especially likely to appeal to this particular user.
Balancing Egoism and Altruism on Interference Channel: The MIMO Case

Abstract- This paper considers the so-called Multiple-Input- Multiple-Output interference channel (MIMO-IC) which has relevance in applications such as multi-cell coordination in cellular networks as well as spectrum sharing in cognitive radio networks among others. We address the design of pre- coding (i.e. beamforming) vectors at each sender with the aim of striking a compromise between beamforming gain at the intended receiver (Egoism) and the mitigation of interference created towards other receivers (Altruism). Combining egoistic and altruistic beamforming has been shown previously to be instrumental to optimizing the rates in a Multiple-Input-Single- Output (MISO) interference channel (i.e. where receivers have no interference canceling capability). Here we explore these game-theoretic concepts in the more general context of MIMO channels and use the framework of Bayesian games which allows us to derive (semi-)distributed precoding techniques. We draw parallels with important existing work on the MIMO-IC, including rate-optimizing and interference-alignment precoding techniques, and show how such techniques may be re-interpreted through a common prism based on balancing egoistic and altruistic beamforming. Our analysis and simulations attest the improvements in terms of complexity and performance.
Maritime anomaly detection using Gaussian Process active learning

A model of normal vessel behaviours is useful for detecting illegal, suspicious, or unsafe behaviour; such as vessel theft, drugs smuggling, people trafficking or poor sailing. This work presents a data-driven non-parametric Bayesian model, based on Gaussian Processes, to model normal shipping behaviour. This model is learned from Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and uses an Active Learning paradigm to select an informative subsample of the data to reduce the computational complexity of training. The resultant model allows a measure of normality to be calculated for each newly-observed transmission according to its velocity given its current latitude and longitude. Using this measure of normality, ships can be identified as potentially anomalous and prioritised for further investigation. The model performance is assessed by its ability to detect artificially generated AIS anomalies at locations around the United Kingdom. Finally, the model is demonstrated on case studies from artificial and real vessel data to detect anomalies in unusual tracks.
The term structure of interest rates , volatility and risk premia : evidence from the eurolira spot and option markets

This paper investigates the relation between interest rate volatility and risk premia in the eurolira market. The expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHTS) constitutes a convenient benchmark for assessing the importance of time-varying volatility and risk premia in driving interest rates movements. Most empirical studies (see Shiller (1990) for a survey) have often found that nominal interest rates are non-stationary stochastic processes. Under these circumstances, a necessary condition for the EHTS to hold is that the spread between short and long-term interest rates be stationary; a sufficient condition would also require the spread to be approximately constant. As is well known, time-varying risk premia can be a source of EHTS violation; time varying volatility may account for time variation in term premia. This relationship can be studied by modelling the term structure rates with respect to its fundamentals, which allows a joint and consistent treatment of spot and derivative markets in estimating volatility and risk premia. For simplicity, our modelling strategy is based on the Cox, Ingersoll and Ross (CIR, 1985) one-factor model; volatility and risk premia are estimated for the eurolira spot and option markets and standard measures of implied volatility, based on Black and Scholes option pricing, are brought to bear on the issue of volatility measurement. The paper is organised as follows; Section 1 looks at the theoretical implications of the EHTS; Section 2 deals with testing the econometric restriction implied by the EHTS for the eurolira interest rates; Section 3 introduces the CIR model for spot and swap rates and Section 4 extends it to the pricing of options on the three-month eurolira futures rate; Section 5 contains estimates of volatility and associated risk premia based on spot and option markets; conclusions are set out in the final section.
Haptic interface in UAV tele-operation using force-stiffness feedback

This study investigates the use of force-stiffness feedback, i.e., a combination of force offset and extra spring load, in UAV tele-operation with transmission time delay. The goal was to further increase the level of safety of tele-operation with a reduction in operator workload with respect to force feedback, i.e., using force offset alone. A theoretical analysis is given of using force-stiffness feedback to improve collision avoidance. Wave variables are included to reduce time delay effects. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of force-stiffness feedback on safety of operation, operator performance, control activity, and workload. Results indicate that force-stiffness feedback improves the haptic interface with respect to force feedback alone. Safety of tele-operation increases without increasing operator workload with respect to force feedback.
Report on the SIGIR 2015 Workshop on Reproducibility, Inexplicability, and Generalizability of Results (RIGOR)

The SIGIR 2015 Workshop on Reproducibility, Inexplicability, and Generalizability of Results (RIGOR) took place on Thursday, August 13, 2015 in Santiago, Chile. The goal of the workshop was two fold. The first to provide a venue for the publication and presentation of negative results. The second was to provide a venue through which the authors of open source search engines could compare performance of indexing and searching on the same collections and on the same machines - encouraging the sharing of ideas and discoveries in a like-to-like environment. In total three papers were presented and seven systems participated.
Resummed event shapes at hadron - hadron colliders

This article introduces definitions for a number of new event shapes and jet-rates in hadron-hadron dijet production. They are designed so as to be measurable in practice at the Tevatron and the LHC, and to be global so that they can be resummed with currently available techniques. We explain how to vary their sensitivity to beam fragmentation, limiting its impact for purely perturbative studies, or deliberately enhancing it so as to focus on non-perturbative effects. Explicit next-to-leading logarithmic resummed results are presented, as obtained with CAESAR.
Glucose control in critically ill patients.

To the Editor: In the Normoglycemia in Intensive Care Evaluation–Survival Using Glucose Algorithm Regulation (NICE-SUGAR) study (ClinicalTrials. gov number, NCT00220987), reported by Finfer et al. (March 26 issue),1 intensive glucose control increased mortality. These findings are clearly at variance with the decreased mortality that we reported from our center in Leuven, Belgium.2-4 Finfer et al. do not address several possible explanations for this discrepancy. First, normoglycemia (blood glucose level, <110 mg per deciliter [6.1 mmol per liter]) was compared with distinct blood glucose control with target ranges of 140 to 180 mg per deciliter (7.8 to 10.0 mmol per liter) in the NICE-SUGAR study and 180 to 215 mg per deciliter (10.0 to 11.9 mmol per liter) in the Leuven studies, making the studies fundamentally different. Second, safe adjustment of the insulin dose to target normoglycemia requires standardized and accurate techniques for glucose measurement and monitoring of the potassium level. Otherwise, the degree of treatment compliance (the targets reached and acceptable fluctuations in glucose levels) is enigmatic. In the NICE-SUGAR study, it is surprising that a variety of glucometers, most of which were unsuitable for this purpose,5 were allowed; thus, undetected hypoglycemia, large fluctuations in glucose levels, and possibly hypokalemia were tolerated or even induced. Such errors may have contributed to excess “cardiovascular” deaths, in the absence of differences in organ failure. Third, in the NICE-SUGAR study, patients received enteral nutrition exclusively, whereas in the Leuven studies, parenteral nutrition supplemented insufficient enteral feeding. The administration of insulin during hypocaloric feeding in the NICE-SUGAR study may have been deleterious. Finally, an unexplained policy of early withdrawal of care in the NICE-SUGAR study (after a median duration of study treatment of 6 days), which was not balanced between the two treatment groups of this nonblinded study, may have introduced a bias that could explain the excess mortality.
Immune Regulatory Neural Stem/Precursor Cells Protect from Central Nervous System Autoimmunity by Restraining Dendritic Cell Function

Background The systemic injection of neural stem/precursor cells (NPCs) provides remarkable amelioration of the clinico-pathological features of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). This is dependent on the capacity of transplanted NPCs to engage concurrent mechanisms of action within specific microenvironments in vivo. Among a wide range of therapeutic actions alternative to cell replacement, neuroprotective and immune modulatory capacities of transplanted NPCs have been described. However, lacking is a detailed understanding of the mechanisms by which NPCs exert their therapeutic plasticity. This study was designed to identify the first candidate that exemplifies and sustains the immune modulatory capacity of transplanted NPCs. Methodology/Principal Findings To achieve the exclusive targeting of the peripheral immune system, SJL mice with PLP-induced EAE were injected subcutaneously with NPCs and the treatment commenced prior to disease onset. NPC-injected EAE mice showed significant clinical improvement, as compared to controls. Exogenous NPCs lacking the expression of major neural antigens were reliably (and for long-term) found at the level of draining lymph nodes, while establishing sophisticated anatomical interactions with lymph node cells. Importantly, injected NPCs were never found in organs other than lymph nodes, including the brain and the spinal cord. Draining lymph nodes from transplanted mice showed focal up-regulation of major developmental stem cell regulators, such as BMP-4, Noggin and Sonic hedgehog. In lymph nodes, injected NPCs hampered the activation of myeloid dendritic cells (DCs) and steadily restrained the expansion of antigen-specific encephalitogenic T cells. Both ex vivo and in vitro experiments identified a novel highly NPC-specific–BMP-4-dependent–mechanism hindering the DC maturation. Conclusion/Significance The study described herein, identifies the first member of the TGF β/BMP family of stem cell regulators as a novel tolerogenic factor released by NPCs. Full exploitation of this pathway as an efficient tool for vaccination therapy in autoimmune inflammatory conditions is underway.
Feedback-controlled laser-mediated cartilage reshaping.

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate feedback-controlled laser-mediated cartilage reshaping using dynamic measurements of tissue optical properties and radiometric surface temperatures. DESIGN Flat cartilage specimens were reshaped into curved configurations using a feedback-controlled laser device. MATERIALS Fresh porcine nasal septum, stripped of perichondrium and cut into uniform strips (25 x 10 x 1.5-2.1 mm) with a custom guillotine microtome. INTERVENTIONS Cartilage specimens secured in a cylindrical reshaping jig (2.5 cm in diameter) and irradiated with an Nd:YAG laser (lambda = 1.32 microns, 25 W/cm2, 50-Hz pulse repetition rate). During laser irradiation, radiometric surface temperature was measured along with changes in forward-scattered light from a diode probe laser (lambda = 650 nm, 5 mW), using a lock-in detection technique. Sequential irradiation of the specimen outer surface was made (3 laser passes). Characteristic changes in tissue temperature and light-scattering signals were used to terminate laser irradiation. RESULTS Effective reshaping was accomplished for both thin (1.5-mm) and thick (2.1-mm) specimens. Following reshaping, specimens were stored in saline solution at 4 degrees C for 21 days. No return to the original flat configuration was noted during this period. CONCLUSIONS The prototype device effectively reshapes flat native porcine cartilage into curve configurations. The use of optical and thermal signals provides effective feedback control for optimizing the reshaping process.