Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Similarity-based Heterogeneous Neural Networks

This research introduces a general class of functions serving as generalized neuron models to be used in artificial neural networks. They are cast in the common framework of computing a similarity function, a flexible definition of a neuron as a pattern recognizer. The similarity endows the model with a clear conceptual view and leads naturally to handle heterogeneous information, in the form of mixtures of continuous numbers (crisp or fuzzy), linguistic information and discrete quantities (ordinal, nominal and finite sets). Missing data are also explicitly considered. The absence of coding schemes and the precise computation attributed to the neurons makes the networks highly interpretable. The resulting heterogeneous neural networks are trained by means of a special-purpose genetic algorithm. The cooperative integration of different soft computing techniques (neural networks, evolutionary algorithms and fuzzy sets) makes these networks capable of learning from non-trivial data sets with a remarkable effectiveness, comparable or superior to that of classical models. This claim is demonstrated by a set of experiments on benchmarking realworld data sets.
Functional decomposition through structural analysis of decision diagrams-the binary and multiple-valued cases

The problem of disjoint functional decomposition is both an important and difficult task for theoretical reasons and synthesis purposes. The use of efficient representation techniques (decision diagrams) permits a novel approach, which surpasses the preceding ones by identifying graph-structures rather than algebraic relations. In this paper we present a demonstration of a new fact about functional decomposition, and a necessary and sufficient criterion to identify feasible decompositions of a generic function. We implemented and validated the algorithm integrating it in a decision diagram package.
An Efficiency Optimized Controlling Scheme for Dynamic Load Modulation of Power Amplifiers

An efficiency optimized controlling scheme for dynamic load modulation (DLM) of power amplifiers (PAs) is proposed. In this scheme, both the input signal and load impedance are controlled to allow high efficiency operation of PAs for a desired output signal modulation. The proposed technique is demonstrated by two 1 GHz, LDMOS, switched mode power amplifiers (SMPAs) which are characterized by varying the input power during load-pull measurements. It is shown that the power-added efficiency (PAE) of the PAs in back-off operation can significantly be improved by the optimum controlling scheme.
Specific inhibition of serine/arginine-rich protein kinase attenuates choroidal neovascularization

Purpose To investigate the applicability of serine/arginine-rich protein kinase (SRPK)-specific inhibitor, SRPIN340, for attenuation of choroidal neovascularization (CNV) formation using a mouse model. Methods Laser photocoagulation was performed to induce CNV in C57BL/6J mice, followed by intravitreal injection of SRPIN340 or vehicle. Seven days after the treatment, the CNV size was evaluated using a flatmount technique. Protein levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and inflammation-associated molecules, such as monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1 and intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-1, in the retinal pigment epithelium-choroid complex were measured with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Expression levels of total Vegf, exon 8a-containing Vegf isoforms, and F4/80 (a specific marker for macrophage) were assessed using real-time PCR. Results SRPIN340 inhibited CNV formation in a dose-dependent manner. Compared with the vehicle, SRPIN340 significantly decreased the protein levels of VEGF, MCP-1, ICAM-1, and consequently inhibited macrophage infiltration. Furthermore, SRPIN340 suppressed the gene expression levels of total Vegf and exon 8a-containing Vegf isoforms. Conclusions SRPIN340, a specific inhibitor of SRPK, suppressed Vegf expression and attenuated CNV formation. Our data suggest the possibility that SRPIN340 is applicable for neovascular age-related macular degeneration as a novel chemical therapeutics.
Fast object distribution

On Spore, we have a need to procedurally distribute game objects, subject to a number of constraints. As a starting point, the objects should positioned in a way that seems visually random, but be well spaced, as in a poisson disc distribution. There are other desirable characteristics, having multiple object types that don't overlap; naturally varying object scale, orientation and colour; control over the density of objects from some from of map, be it procedural, game-generated, or pre-authored. The problem domain is similar to that of [Ostromoukhov et al. 2004] and related papers, although our performance constraints are tighter.
Algorithms for the scaling toward nanometer VLSI physical synthesis

Algorithms for the Scaling Toward Nanometer VLSI Physical Synthesis. (December 2005) Chin Ngai Sze, B.Eng., The Chinese University of Hong Kong; M.Phil., The Chinese University of Hong Kong Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Jiang Hu Along the history of Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI), we have successfully scaled down the size of transistors, scaled up the speed of integrated circuits (IC) and the number of transistors in a chip these are just a few examples of our achievement in VLSI scaling. It is projected to enter the nanometer ( ) scale era in the nearest future. At the same time, the scaling has imposed new challenges to physical synthesis. Among all the challenges, this thesis focuses on the following problems: Increasingly domination of interconnect delay leads to a need in interconnect-centric design flows; Different design stages (e.g. floorplanning, placement and global routing) have unmatched timing estimation, which brings difficulty in timing closure; More and more VLSI circuits are designed in architectural styles, which require a new set of algorithms. The paper consists of two parts, each of which focuses on several specific problems in VLSI physical synthesis when facing the new challenges. Part-1 Place and route aware buffer Steiner tree construction Efficient techniques are presented for the problem of buffered interconnect tree construction under blockage and routing congestion constraint. This part also contains
Pharmacokinetics of 1,4-Butanediol in Rats: Bioactivation to γ-Hydroxybutyric Acid, Interaction with Ethanol, and Oral Bioavailability

Abstract1,4-Butanediol (BD), a substance of abuse, is bioactivated to γ-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), but its fundamental pharmacokinetics (PK) have not been characterized. Because this bioactivation is partly mediated by alcohol dehydrogenase, we hypothesized that there may also be a metabolic interaction between ethanol (ETOH) and BD. We therefore studied, in rats, the plasma PK of GHB, BD and ETOH each at two intravenous (IV) doses, when each substance was given alone, and when GHB or BD was co-administered with ETOH. Results showed that bioconversion of intravenously administered BD to GHB was complete, and that both GHB and BD exhibited nonlinear PK. Various population PK models were analyzed using NONMEM VI, and the best disposition model was found to include two PK compartments each for BD, an (unmeasured) putative semialdehyde intermediate (ALD), GHB and ETOH, the presence of nonlinear (Michaelis–Menten) elimination for each compound, and several mutual inhibition processes. The most prominent mutual metabolic inhibition was found between ETOH and BD, while that between GHB and ETOH was not significant. In vitro studies using liver homogenates confirmed mutual metabolic inhibitions between GHB and BD. Oral absorption of BD was best described by a first-order process with lag-time and pre-systemic metabolism from BD to ALD. Oral absorption of BD (as BD plus ALD) was rapid and complete. The fraction of the absorbed dose entering the central compartment as BD was 30% for the 1.58 mmol/kg dose and 55% for the 6.34 mmol/kg dose. At 6.34 mmol/kg IV, the onset of loss of righting reflex (LRR) for BD was significantly delayed vs. that produced by GHB (72.0 ± 9.1 min vs. 6.7 ± 0.6 min, respectively, p < 0.001), and the total duration of LRR was prolonged for BD vs. GHB (192 ± 28 min vs. 117 ± 2 min, respectively, p < 0.05). Relative to IV dosing, oral BD produced similar but more variable LRR effects. These results may provide a quantitative PK framework for the understanding of the toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics of both BD and GHB.
Toward an Understanding of the Mediating Role of "Trust" in Mobile Banking Service: An Empirical Test of Indonesia Case

Mobile banking has been considered to be one of the most value-added and important mobile services currently available. Considering the fact that the penetration of this technology is undefined well, particularly in developing country, this study clarified the role of trust as a mediating variable in mobile banking environment. An empirical study was undertaken in Indonesia and the data of 100 respondents were collected. The empirical results provided strong evidence for the explanatory power of our research model. Firstly, we found that the trust mediated the effects of information quality to perceived usefulness and end-user satisfaction. Second, the both relationships of system quality and perceived usefulness and system quality and end-user satisfaction were partially mediated by trust. Third, trust also showed a direct effect on both end-user satisfaction and perceived usefulness. Lastly, the result provided support of the positive relationship between perceived usefulness and end-user satisfaction. Implication for both practice and further research were also discussed.
Effect of One Percent Chlorhexidine Addition on the Antibacterial Activity and Mechanical Properties of Sealants: An in vitro Study

ABSTRACT Aim: The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of addition of 1% chlorhexidine digluconate solution on the antibacterial activity and mechanical properties of glass ionomer and resin based sealant. Materials and methods: Conventional glass ionomer sealant (GIS) (Fuji VII, Japan) and resin sealant (Clinpro 3M ESPE, USA) were used in this study. Chlorhexidine digluconate (CHX) (20%) liquid was added to both the sealants, and the concentration of chlorhexidine in sealants was adjusted to 1%. The sealants were divided into four groups as: group A (GIS), group B (GIS + 1% CHX), group C (resin sealant), group D (resin sealant + 1% CHX). Five cylindrical specimens were prepared in each group. Their antibacterial activity against Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus acidophilus, and their mechanical properties (compressive strength and diametrical tensile strength) were assessed. Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used appropriately for statistical analysis (SPSS version 19). Result: Addition of one percent chlorhexidine significantly increased the antibacterial activity of both the sealants. There was a significant difference between groups A and B (p < 0.009), and groups C and D (p < 0.008). There was no significant difference in the mechanical properties of the sealants. Conclusion: Addition of one percent chlorhexidine to the glass ionomer and resin based sealants provided sufficient antibacterial activity, without significantly affecting the mechanical property of the sealants. How to cite this article: Shanmugaavel AK, Asokan S, John JB, Geetha Priya PR, Gnana Devi J. Effect of one percent Chlorhexidine Addition on the Antibacterial Activity and Mechanical Properties of Sealants: An in vitro Study. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2015;8(3):196-201.
Meneco, a Topology-Based Gap-Filling Tool Applicable to Degraded Genome-Wide Metabolic Networks

Increasing amounts of sequence data are becoming available for a wide range of non-model organisms. Investigating and modelling the metabolic behaviour of those organisms is highly relevant to understand their biology and ecology. As sequences are often incomplete and poorly annotated, draft networks of their metabolism largely suffer from incompleteness. Appropriate gap-filling methods to identify and add missing reactions are therefore required to address this issue. However, current tools rely on phenotypic or taxonomic information, or are very sensitive to the stoichiometric balance of metabolic reactions, especially concerning the co-factors. This type of information is often not available or at least prone to errors for newly-explored organisms. Here we introduce Meneco, a tool dedicated to the topological gap-filling of genome-scale draft metabolic networks. Meneco reformulates gap-filling as a qualitative combinatorial optimization problem, omitting constraints raised by the stoichiometry of a metabolic network considered in other methods, and solves this problem using Answer Set Programming. Run on several artificial test sets gathering 10,800 degraded Escherichia coli networks Meneco was able to efficiently identify essential reactions missing in networks at high degradation rates, outperforming the stoichiometry-based tools in scalability. To demonstrate the utility of Meneco we applied it to two case studies. Its application to recent metabolic networks reconstructed for the brown algal model Ectocarpus siliculosus and an associated bacterium Candidatus Phaeomarinobacter ectocarpi revealed several candidate metabolic pathways for algal-bacterial interactions. Then Meneco was used to reconstruct, from transcriptomic and metabolomic data, the first metabolic network for the microalga Euglena mutabilis. These two case studies show that Meneco is a versatile tool to complete draft genome-scale metabolic networks produced from heterogeneous data, and to suggest relevant reactions that explain the metabolic capacity of a biological system.
Quantitative Computed Tomography of Pulmonary Emphysema and Ventricular Function in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension

Objective This study strived to evaluate the relationship between degree of pulmonary emphysema and cardiac ventricular function in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) using electrocardiographic-gated multidetector computed tomography (CT). Materials and Methods Lung transplantation candidates with the diagnosis of COPD and PH were chosen for the study population, and a total of 15 patients were included. The extent of emphysema is defined as the percentage of voxels below -910 Hounsfield units in the lung windows in whole lung CT without intravenous contrast. Heart function parameters were measured by electrocardiographic-gated CT angiography. Linear regression analysis was conducted to examine the associations between percent emphysema and heart function indicators. Results Significant correlations were found between percent emphysema and right ventricular (RV) measurements, including RV end-diastolic volume (R2 = 0.340, p = 0.023), RV stroke volume (R2 = 0.406, p = 0.011), and RV cardiac output (R2 = 0.382, p = 0.014); the correlations between percent emphysema and left ventricular function indicators were not observed. Conclusion The study revealed that percent emphysema is correlated with RV dysfunction among COPD patients with PH. Based on our findings, percent emphysema can be considered for use as an indicator to predict the severity of right ventricular dysfunction among COPD patients.
1 S ep 2 00 5 Higher order PDE ’ s and iterated processes

We introduce a class of stochastic processes based on symmetric αstable processes, for α ∈ (0, 2]. These are obtained by taking Markov processes and replacing the time parameter with the modulus of a symmetric α-stable process. We call them α-time processes. They generalize Brownian time processes studied in [1, 2, 3], and they introduce new interesting examples. We establish the connection of α−time processes to some higher order PDE’s for α rational. We also study the exit problem for α-time processes as they exit regular domains and connect them to elliptic PDE’s. We also obtain the PDE connection of subordinate killed Brownian motion in bounded domains of regular boundary. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 60J65, 60K99.
White matter lesions and temporal lobe atrophy related to incidence of both dementia and major depression in 70‐year‐olds followed over 10 years

A number of studies have suggested associations between dementia and depression in older adults. One reason could be that these disorders share structural correlates, such as white matter lesions (WMLs) and cortical atrophy. No study has examined whether these lesions precede both dementia and depression independently of each other in the general population.
Leontief economies encode nonzero sum two-player games

We consider Leontief exchange economies, i.e., economies where the consumers desire goods in fixed proportions. Unlike bimatrix games, such economies are not guaranteed to have equilibria in general. On the other hand, they include suitable restricted versions which always have equilibria.We give a reduction from two-player games to a special family of Leontief exchange economies, which are guaranteed to have equilibria, with the property that the Nash equilibria of any game are in one-to-one correspondence with the equilibria of the corresponding economy.Our reduction exposes a potential hurdle inherent in solving certain families of market equilibrium problems: finding an equilibrium for Leontief economies (where an equilibrium is guaranteed to exist) is at least as hard as finding a Nash equilibrium for two-player nonzero sum games.As a corollary of the one-to-one correspondence, we obtain a number of hardness results for questions related to the computation of market equilibria, using results already established for games [17]. In particular, among other results, we show that it is NP-hard to say whether a particular family of Leontief exchange economies, that is guaranteed to have at least one equilibrium, has more than one equilibrium.Perhaps more importantly, we also prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether a Leontief exchange economy has an equilibrium. This fact should be contrasted against the known PPAD-completeness result of [30], which holds when the problem satisfies some standard sufficient conditions that make it equivalent to the computational version of Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem.On the algorithmic side, we present an algorithm for finding an approximate equilibrium for some special Leontief economies, which achieves quasi-polynomial time whenever each trader does not demand too much more of any good than some other good.
A Study on Human Upper-Limb Muscles Activities during Daily Upper-Limb Motions

Human upper-limb involves for many daily human activities. The human intention for upperlimb motions can be estimated based on the activation pattern of upper-limb muscles. The upper-limb muscle activities during the daily upper-limb motions have been studied to enable power-assist robotic exoskeleton systems to estimate human upper-limb motions based on muscle electromyographic (EMG) signals. The relationship between the upper-limb motions and the activity levels of main muscles concerning the daily upper-limb motions are analyzed in this study. The muscle combinations are identified to separate each basic motions of upper-limb. The EMG signals of identified muscles will be used as input information to design the controllers of the upper-limb power-assist robotic exoskeleton systems.
Transgenerational memory effect of ageing in Drosophila

Children born to older parents tend to have lower intelligence and are at higher risk for disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Such observations of ageing damage being passed on from parents to offspring are not often considered within the evolutionary theory of ageing. Here, we show the 25% memory impairment in Drosophila melanogaster offspring solely dependent on the age of the parents and also passed on to the F2 generation. Furthermore, this parental age effect was not attributed to a generalized reduction in condition of the offspring but was specific to short‐term memory. We also provide evidence implicating oxidative stress as a causal factor by showing that lines selected for resistance to oxidative stress did not display a memory impairment in offspring of old parents. The identification of the parental age‐related memory impairment in a model system should stimulate integration between mechanistic studies of age‐related mortality risk and functional studies of parental age effects on the fitness of future generations.
Measurement of the Division of Lightning Return Stroke Current among the Multiple Arresters and Grounds of a Power Distribution Line

A triggered-lightning experiment was conducted during the summer of 2000 at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing (ICLRT) in north-central Florida for the purpose of studying the lightning current division in an 829 rn long, 18-pole, three-phase plus neutral, unenergized, overhead distribution line equipped with six arrester stations. Eight lightning flashes containing a total of 34 recorded return strokes, as well as low amplitude, long duration steady currents, were artificially initiated (triggered) from natural thunderclouds using the rocket-and-wire technique, and the flash currents were directed to phase C (the outermost conductor of the three-phase cross-arm-configured line). Six of the eight triggered lightning flashes caused damage to one of the two closest phase C arresters. In the case when no arrester was damaged or was not yet damaged by current in the flash, it is inferred that about 40% of the return stroke peak current and about 25% or more of the return stroke charge transferred in the first millisecond passed to the neutral conductor through each of the two closest arresters on either side of the strike point. The bulk of the peak current then flowed from the neutral conductor to ground through the groundings of the two closest arresters. The charge transferred in the first millisecond from the neutral to the eight system groundings, six at arrester stations and one at each of the two line-end poles, appears to be distributed inversely to the low-frequency, low-current grounding resistances.
The Effect of ENSO Events on the Tropical Pacific Mean Climate: Insights from an Analytical Model

AbstractTo better understand the causes of climate change in the tropical Pacific on decadal and longer time scales, the authors delineate the rectification effect of ENSO events into the mean state by contrasting the time-mean state of a low-order model for the Pacific with its equilibrium state. The model encapsulates the essential physics of the ENSO system, but remains simple enough to allow for the obtaining of its equilibrium state. The model has an oscillatory regime that resembles the observations. In this oscillatory regime, the time-mean SST in the eastern equatorial Pacific is found to be significantly different from the corresponding equilibrium SST, with the former being warmer than the latter. The difference is found to be proportional to the amplitude of ENSO. In addition, the zonal SST contrast of the time-mean state is found to be less sensitive to increases in external forcing than that of the equilibrium state, due to warming effect of ENSO events on the eastern Pacific. It is further s.