Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Studies of laser-based, solid freeform fabrication and coating processes using nanoscale and functionally-graded materials

The purpose of this body of investigation is to examine the role of nanoscale and functionally-graded materials on the laser processing and performance of freeform parts and coatings. Both laser experiments and thermal transport models were utilized to achieve the end goal with applications targeted to dies, molds and light-weight aluminum structures. Specifically a computer-numerical-controlled, high-power CO2 laser system with the aid of computer-aided-design models was used to study: 1) nanoscale material additive manufacturing (NAM) process where Ni-nanoparticles are dispersed in H13 steel molten pool in layer-by-layer fashion to produce three-dimensional gear molds; 2) laser-cladding based freeform fabrication (LBFF) process where shaped beam and novel quasi co-axial powder delivery system were used to produce functionally graded H13/Ni-Cr/TiC mold inserts; and 3) laser sintering (LS) of nanocrystalline diamond powders on aluminum alloy substrate to form thick diamond-like carbon coatings for enhanced wear resistance. In the NAM process, AISI H13 steel micro-powder (70-100 μm), the standard material in the industry for dies and molds, was blended with Ni nano-powder (70-150 nm) in a volumetric ratio of 4:1 and then laser melted under conditions such that only H13 powder was melted and solidified. With the aid of CAD/CAM models and layer-by-layer addition process, gearshaped molds were fabricated, characterized and tested. Scanning electron microscopy, surface profilometry, Rockwell and Vicker’s hardness tests, corrosion test and injectionmolding test using polystyrene were used to evaluate the performance of Ni/H13 molds. Results showed that nanoparticle dispersion has distinct improvements on the functional
A Bayesian Approach Toward Finding Communities and Their Evolutions in Dynamic Social Networks

Although a large body of work are devoted to finding communities in static social networks, only a few studies examined the dynamics of communities in evolving social networks. In this paper, we propose a dynamic stochastic block model for finding communities and their evolutions in a dynamic social network. The proposed model captures the evolution of communities by explicitly modeling the transition of community memberships for individual nodes in the network. Unlike many existing approaches for modeling social networks that estimate parameters by their most likely values (i.e., point estimation), in this study, we employ a Bayesian treatment for parameter estimation that computes the posterior distributions for all the unknown parameters. This Bayesian treatment allows us to capture the uncertainty in parameter values and therefore is more robust to data noise than point estimation. In addition, an efficient algorithm is developed for Bayesian inference to handle large sparse social networks. Extensive experimental studies based on both synthetic data and real-life data demonstrate that our model achieves higher accuracy and reveals more insights in the data than several state-of-theart algorithms. keywords: Social Network, Community, Community Evolution, Dynamic Stochastic Block Model, Bayesian Inference, Gibbs Sampling
Psychological distress related to smoking cessation in patients with acute myocardial infarction

Among all causes of preventable deaths, smoking is responsible for the greatest number of deaths worldwide and predisposes to fatal, noncommunicable diseases, especially cardiovascular diseases. Lifestyle changes are effective in the treatment of patients with smoking-related diseases and assist in the prevention of premature mortality. Our objective was to investigate the available scientific evidence regarding the psychological distress related to smoking cessation in patients who have had acute myocardial infarction. To that end, we conducted an integrative review of the literature in order to summarize relevant studies on this topic. The selected databases were Scopus, PubMed Central, Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science (Core Collection), ScienceDirect, EMBASE, SciELO, LILACS e PsycINFO. On the basis of the inclusion and exclusion criteria adopted for this study, 14 articles were selected for analysis. Those studies showed that the prevalence of psychological distress is higher among smokers than among nonsmokers, and distress-related symptoms are much more common in smokers with acute myocardial infarction than in those without. Smoking cessation depends on the active participation of the smoker, whose major motivation is the underlying disease. Most studies have shown that there is a need to create treatment subgroups as a means of improving the treatment provided. This review article expands the knowledge regarding smoking cessation and shows the need to invest in future research that investigates subgroups of smokers diagnosed with the major smoking-related comorbidities, such as acute myocardial infarction, in order to develop specific interventions and psychological support strategies.
Plan evaluation with incomplete action descriptions

This paper presents a framework that justifies an agent's goal-directed behavior, even in the absence of a provably correct plan. Most prior planning systems rely on a complete causal model and circumvent the <i>frame problem</i> by implicitly assuming that no unspecified relationships exist between actions and the world. In our approach, a domain modeler provides explicit statements about which actions have been incompletely specified. Thus, an agent can minimize its dependence on implicit assumptions when selecting an action sequence to achieve its goals.
PAVEMENTS AND SLABS ON GRADE WITH STRUCTURALLY ACTIVE REINFORCEMENT

This paper gives the theoretical analyses for the various load cases, and summarizes the results in simple design diagrams. A review of tests carried out shows the reliability of these results. Also the influence of temperature and shrinkage effects are treated and simple formulas are given for the joint design. A design example shows the method of calculation and the use of the diagrams.
Rewarded by Punishment: Reflections on the Disuse of Positive Reinforcement in Schools

Most approaches for dealing with student disruptions involve the use of various forms of punishment such as removals from the classroom, fines, restitutional activities, inschool and out-of-school suspensions, and expulsions. Although some of these approaches may make schools safer by removing the offending students, they have little effect on encouraging students to perform socially appropriate behaviors. There are many reasons why educators find punishment a more acceptable approach for managing students' challenging behaviors than positive reinforcement. This article delineates these reasons and argues for educators to plan the occurrence of positive reinforcement to increase appropriate behaviors rather than running the risk of it haphazardly promoting inappropriate behaviors.
A systematic approach to incorporate deterministic prior knowledge in broadband adaptive MIMO systems

Various approaches for incorporating prior system knowledge into adaptive filtering algorithms exist, e.g., using constrained adaptation. Moreover, also the basic setup of the adaptation problem, e.g., whether it is supervised or blind, can be considered as prior system knowledge. In this paper, we consider a systematic approach to incorporate such deterministic prior knowledge in broadband adaptive MIMO systems by optimizing the coefficients in arbitrary partly smooth manifolds. The resulting generic set of update equations explicitly shows all the available degrees of freedom for a top-down algorithm design. Using practically relevant examples, we show how both well-known and novel algorithms for various applications can be derived using the framework.
Shareholder protection and dividend policy : an experimental analysis

For nearly half a century, the literature on dividend payments has questioned why firms pay dividends at all. Two competing models have emerged to explain this. In low investor protection regimes, corporate insiders give dividends to signal trust. In high-protection regimes, outside investors have the power to demand dividends. Using a unique laboratory experiment, our results back the empirical literature, favoring the complement (outcome) model over the substitute model. An increase in outside shareholders’ rights increases dividend payments, reducing overall efficiency. The efficiency loss moving from lowto high-protection treatments can occur via multiple channels, and we find significant evidence of losses through each. One benefit of laboratory analysis is that some of these channels are not observable outside the lab (such as insider expropriations). Additionally, we find that high investor protection causes a greater efficiency loss than dividend taxes do. ∗LaRiviere: Department of Economics, University of Tennessee-Knoxville (jlarivi1@utk.edu). McMahon: Department of Economics, University of Tennessee-Knoxville (mmcmaho2@vols.utk.edu). Neilson: Department of Economics, University of Tennessee-Knoxville (wneilson@utk.edu). Affiliation changes are pending. We will be grateful to anybody who will give us useful feedback.
Physical aging in isotactic polypropylene

Physical aging studies were made using commercial and laboratory samples of isotactic polypropylene. Linear and nonlinear viscoelastic responses were measured after quenching the glass from above the glass transition temperatures to below the glass transition. Results show that aging is not eliminated by large mechanical deformations; rather, the time required for the glass to age into equilibrium is independent of the applied stress. Results obtained are purely kinetic and interpreted as the effects accompanying the process of glass formation in a semicrystalline polymer. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Raised pulmonary artery pressures measured with Doppler echocardiography in rheumatoid arthritis patients.

OBJECTIVE To study the prevalence of echocardiographic abnormality and pulmonary hypertension in an unselected population of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHOD One hundred and forty-six RA patients, irrespective of cardiopulmonary symptoms, were assessed clinically and by echocardiography, including pulmonary artery pressure measurement, ECG, pulmonary function tests and high-resolution computed tomography scanning of the thorax. RESULTS Two-dimensional echocardiography demonstrated significant cardiac disease in the form of reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (<64%) in 9% of patients, moderate mitral regurgitation in 4%, aortic stenosis in 4%, aortic regurgitation in 3% and Valsalva sinus rupture in 0.7%. In addition, 1% had detectable pericardial effusions. Thirty-one per cent of the RA patients had an estimated pulmonary artery systolic pressure of 30 mmHg or more, and 21% of all the RA patients had pulmonary hypertension without significant cardiac disease or lung disease evident on pulmonary function testing. CONCLUSIONS A wide and frequent variety of echocardiographic cardiac abnormalities may be found in an unselected population of patients with RA. Using Doppler echocardiography, we have found pulmonary hypertension secondary to lung disease in 6% of the population and a larger than expected prevalence of mild primary pulmonary hypertension in patients with RA. The latter observation may be relevant to the high incidence of cardiovascular-related deaths observed in patients with RA
Practical market-based resource allocation

The arrival of large-scale open platforms such as cloud-computing infrastructures and petascale clusters is fueling the emergence of a new class of users and applications with large and diverse resource needs. Optimizing for traditional system-centric metrics such as response time or throughput does not capture the diverse and often conflicting needs of different users and resource providers. Collaboration between economists and computer scientists over the past ten years has lead to many important results describing designs of market-based mechanisms to address exactly these issues. However, there is very little progress in building these systems due to apprehensions about their potential unfairness and fragility in a live deployment. The resulting reality is that systems continue to rely on traditional and inadequate designs despite theoretical results demonstrating the potentially significant value added to all stakeholders by designing market-based systems. This dissertation investigates the sensitivity, applicability, and practicality of a market-based policy to increase the efficiency of resource allocations—measured using a utilitarian social welfare metric—in real, large-scale computing systems. We build upon previous work in this space by moving beyond "paper designs" and using an iterative process of implementation, deployment, measurement, modeling and simulation. We begin by presenting Mirage, our implementation of a microeconomic resource allocation system for a sensor network, which is still in use today. In this context, we identify the compromises that deployed market-based systems must make when using traditional theoretical designs due to computational challenges and various imperfect conditions of a live deployment. Nonetheless, based upon user data, we find that these systems are still expected to be robust to typical user errors seen in traditional computing systems. We also describe extensions of existing designs to address some of these limitations. Finally, we discuss our experience with deploying systems with real users and applications and conclude by discussing the forthcoming challenges in pushing more widespread adoption of these market-based designs in real systems.
Saturation of Transverse Cracking with Delamination in Polymer Cross-Ply Composite Laminates

Delamination along the 0°/90° interface following transverse cracking in the 90° plies of a cross-ply composite laminate is analyzed based on the principle of minimum potential energy. The laminate is subjected to longitudinal applied tensile loading and internal residual thermal stresses. The strain energy release rate criterion has been employed to evaluate the critical applied stresses for transverse cracking and interface delamination. The effect of delamination along the 0°/90° interface on laminate stiffness and thermal property is presented for E-glass/epoxy and graphite/epoxy composite laminates. The longitudinal tensile stress in the 90° plies decreases gradually as the transverse crack density increases and thereby decreasing the tendency for transverse crack multiplication. For a given laminate configuration there exists a saturation (limit) crack density. Continued loading beyond this limit, delamination at the 0°/90° interface would occur. The analytical results are compared with the available experimental data.
An ISMC Approach to Robust Stabilization of Uncertain Stochastic Time-Delay Systems

Integral sliding mode control (ISMC) of uncertain stochastic systems with time delay is investigated in this paper. Aiming to remove a very restrictive assumption required in most existing ISMC schemes for stochastic systems, a new ISMC approach is proposed. It is shown that the closed-loop control system trajectories can be kept on the integral sliding surface almost surely since the initial time and the stochastic stability of the sliding motion can be guaranteed in terms of linear matrix inequalities. MATLAB simulation results on a numerical example and a practical stream water quality preserving system are provided to show the effectiveness and advantage of the proposed approaches.
The impact of LSIL‐H terminology on patient follow‐up patterns

The Papanicolaou (Pap) test category of “low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, cannot exclude high grade squamous intraepithelial lesion” (LSIL‐H) is not recognized by The Bethesda System but is commonly used. It is essentially an amalgamation of the official LSIL and ASC‐H categories. Since these two categories have similar follow‐up algorithms, the clinical utility of the combined LSIL‐H category is unclear. We have therefore studied follow‐up patterns for these three entities in our laboratory to determine the real‐world impact of each in our patient population. We searched our pathology database over an 18‐month period to find Pap tests (predominantly ThinPrep) interpreted as LSIL‐H (137), LSIL (2,189), and ASC‐H (101). Like other studies, we found that the discovery rate of high grade dysplasia in biopsies after LSIL‐H (31.9%) was similar to ASC‐H (35.3%) and was higher than LSIL (7.6%; P < 0.0001). In women with no previous history of dysplasia, the frequency of biopsy follow‐up after the initial Pap test was significantly higher for LSIL‐H (68.3%) than for LSIL (49.6%; P = 0.0038) and similar to ASC‐H (62.3%). We also found that women with an initial negative biopsy or a biopsy positive for low grade dysplasia were more likely to undergo an additional biopsy if the initial Pap test was LSIL‐H (36.2%) than if it was LSIL (18.2%; P = 0.0023). ASC‐H (26.9%) had an intermediate rate. In our patient population, the use of the terminology LSIL‐H is associated with follow‐up biopsy patterns much more similar to ASC‐H than to LSIL. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2013;41:960–964. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Mammalian Bcnt/Cfdp1, a potential epigenetic factor characterized by an acidic stretch in the disordered N-terminal and Ser250 phosphorylation in the conserved C-terminal regions

We characterized the mammalian Bcnt/Cfdp1 (Bucentaur/craniofacial developmental protein 1) protein, a potential epigenetic factor, by showing that an acidic stretch in the N-terminal region and Ser250 phosphorylation in the C-terminal region are critical for its anomalous SDS/PAGE mobility.
Passivity Based Control of Stochastic Port-Hamiltonian Systems

This paper introduces Stochastic Port-Hamiltonian Systems (SPHS's), whose dynamics are described by Itô stochastic differential equations. SPHS's are extension of the deterministic port-Hamiltonian systems which are used to express various passive systems. First, we show a necessary and sufficient condition to preserve the stochastic port-Hamiltonian structure of the system under a class of coordinate transformations. Second, we derive a condition for the system to be stochastic passive. Third, we equip Stochastic Generalized Canonical Transformations (SGCT's), which are pairs of coordinate and feedback transformations preserving the stochastic port-Hamiltonian structure. Finally, we propose a stochastic stabilization framework based on stochastic passivity and SGCT's.
Overview of the TREC 2004 Novelty Track

TREC 2004 marks the third and ﬁnal year for the novelty track. The task is as follows: Given a TREC topic and an ordered list of documents, systems must ﬁnd the relevant and novel sentences that should be returned to the user from this set. This task integrates aspects of passage retrieval and information ﬁltering. As in 2003, there were two categories of topics – events and opinions – and four subtasks which provided systems with varying amounts of relevance or novelty information as training data. This year, the task was made harder by the inclusion of some number of irrelevant documents in document sets. Fourteen groups participated in the track this year.
Second and Higher-Order Quasinormal Modes in Binary Black Hole Mergers

Black-hole (BH) oscillations known as quasinormal modes (QNMs) are one of the most important gravitational wave (GW) sources. We propose that higher perturbative order of QNMs, generated by nonlinear gravitational interaction near the BHs, are detectable and worth searching for in observations and simulations of binary BH mergers. We calculate the metric perturbations to second order and explicitly regularize the master equation at the horizon and spatial infinity. We find that the second-order QNMs have frequencies twice the first-order ones and the GW amplitude is up to {approx}10% of that of the first-order one. The QNM frequency would also shift blueward up to {approx}1%. This provides a new test of general relativity as well as a possible distance indicator.
Neural Correlates of Inter-Trial Priming and Role-Reversal in Visual Search

Studies of priming of visual perception demonstrate that observers respond more quickly to targets in a field of distractors when relevant features are repeated versus novel or role-reversed. In a recent brain imaging study by Kristjánsson et al. (2007), participants were presented with two items of one color and a single item in a different color with the task of reporting the orientation of the uniquely colored item. Consistent with previous behavioral reports, they found that observers were faster to respond when the target and distractor colors were identical to the previous trial than when they were reversed. They found reduced BOLD activity in brain areas linked with attentional control on trials where the target and distractor colors were repeated relative to reversed, which they interpreted as reflecting response suppression (decreased BOLD signal for repeated stimuli). However, since their design only compared repeated versus reversed task demands, it is logically possible that this pattern reflects increased BOLD signal for role-reversed stimuli: activity required to inhibit previously facilitated information and select previously inhibited information. We explored this possibility with a task where we contrasted the signal generated by repeated, reversed, and novel features. Our data suggest that the majority of the change in neural signal elicited by priming of pop-out reflects increased activation when selection criteria are reversed.
The surprising Crab pulsar and its nebula: a review

The Crab nebula and its pulsar (referred to together as ‘the Crab’) have historically played a central role in astrophysics. True to this legacy, several unique discoveries have been made recently. The Crab was found to emit gamma-ray pulsations up to energies of 400 GeV, beyond what was previously expected from pulsars. Strong gamma-ray flares, of durations of a few days, were discovered from within the nebula, while the source was previously expected to be stable in flux on these time scales. Here we review these intriguing and suggestive developments. In this context we give an overview of the observational properties of the Crab and our current understanding of pulsars and their nebulae.
Changes in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid proteins in sarcoidosis: a proteomics approach

In sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, the protein profile of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) is altered. To study the BALF protein pattern changes in sarcoidosis, samples from six patients and four healthy individuals were analysed by two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A comparison of the protein-spot patterns showed a significantly higher number of protein spots in the pH range 5.5–6.7 in patients compared to controls (472 versus 384). Furthermore, the number of protein spots in the patients were significantly decreased in the acidic pH range 4.5–5.5 (399 versus 518). Measurement of the optical density in the gels showed varying expression levels for several protein spots. Seventeen of the altered protein spots were identified, of which seven have previously not been reported for BALF. Many of these are nonplasma proteins involved in the inflammatory and oxidant-antioxidant processes. In conclusion, the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid protein content is altered in sarcoidosis patients, especially for proteins that are not derived from plasma. The described proteomics approach will in the future be used to asses overall changes in the protein content associated with sarcoidosis and may offer the possibility of identifying disease-specific proteins.