Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanics of Growth and Coalescence of Preexisting Voids

This paper experimentally investigates the growth and coalescence of preexisting voids in a ductile matrix and presents quantitative kinetics data for these processes. Leaded copper alloys have been selected as model materials, in which lead inclusions act as pre-existing voids – as demonstrated by unit cell numerical simulations for a wide range of stress states – and the varying alloy content of the ductile matrix results in different deformation and failure behaviors of the intervoid ligaments. The model materials are deformed and fractured in combined torsion / tension / compression tests and notched tensile tests to subject them to the desired wide range of stress triaxialities. Quantitative fractography and metallography provide the desired void kinetics data that can be correlated with numerical simulations and existing void growth and coalescence models.
Multidisciplinary Ophthalmic Imaging Impact of Acute Exposure to High Altitude on Anterior Chamber Geometry

Citation: Willmann G, Schatz A, Zhour A, et al. Impact of acute exposure to high altitude on anterior chamber geometry. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2013;54:4241–4248, DOI:10.1167/ iovs.13-12158 PURPOSE. This study aimed to quantify the impact of exposure to high altitude on individual layers of the cornea in regard to central corneal thickness (CCT) and the geometry of the anterior chamber angle (ACA). This work is related to the Tübingen High Altitude Ophthalmology study.
Integrated Systems and Technologies : Mathematical Oncology Network Modeling of TGF b Signaling in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition Reveals Joint Sonic Hedgehog and Wnt Pathway Activation

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a developmental process hijacked by cancer cells to leave the primary tumor site, invade surrounding tissue, and establish distant metastases. A hallmark of EMT is the loss of E-cadherin expression, and onemajor signal for the induction of EMT is TGFb, which is dysregulated in up to 40% of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We have constructed an EMT network of 70 nodes and 135 edges by integrating the signaling pathways involved in developmental EMT and known dysregulations in invasive HCC. We then used discrete dynamic modeling to understand the dynamics of the EMT network driven by TGFb. Our network model recapitulates known dysregulations during the induction of EMT and predicts the activation of the Wnt and Sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling pathways during this process. We show, across multiple murine (P2E and P2M) and human HCC cell lines (Huh7, PLC/PRF/5, HLE, and HLF), that the TGFb signaling axis is a conserved driver of mesenchymal phenotype HCC and confirm that Wnt and SHH signaling are induced in these cell lines. Furthermore, we identify by network analysis eight regulatory feedback motifs that stabilize the EMT process and show that thesemotifs involve cross-talk amongmultiplemajor pathways. Ourmodelwill be useful in identifying potential therapeutic targets for the suppression of EMT, invasion, andmetastasis inHCC. Cancer Res; 74(21); 5963–77. 2014 AACR.
Creating a corpus for automatic punctuation prediction in Persian texts

We present a novel corpus for automatic punctuation prediction in Persian texts. Punctuation prediction is an important task in automatic speech recognition (ASR). The output of ASR systems is typically a raw sequence of words with no punctuation marks; this makes the text difficult or even impossible to make sense of for humans and also for any text processing unit. In this work, we have assembled a state-of-the-art Persian corpus to train and test a punctuation prediction model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ever corpus specifically designed for punctuation prediction in Persian texts. The corpus is a modification of a manually part-of-speech (POS) tagged Persian one, with almost 2.6 million words, including punctuation marks. We have made many diligent improvements to the already existing corpus to make one that deliberately facilitates experimental studies on Persian punctuation prediction: 1- replacing 3175 word types with their correct form, 2- normalizing the words (e.g. replacing kashida with hyphen), 3- correcting 451 and 192 words with incorrect DELM and DEFAULT tags, respectively, 4- investigating 17 word types to correct the punctuations around them, and 5- making numerous corrections to the punctuation marks. The final corpus contains nearly 2.3 million words and 221 thousand punctuation marks. Finally, we have trained and tested a CRF (conditional random field) model that shows a micro-averaged F1-score of 60.69% in our preliminary experiments.
Blood Pressure Course In Patients With Acute Stroke and Matched Controls

Forty-four studies of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), fractional oxygen extraction (rOER) and oxygen consumption (rCMROi) were made on twenty-five patients with recent internal carotid artery territory infarcts. The purpose was to study flow-metabolism relationships in the contralaterai hemispheres, and to investigate whether contralaterai rCMRO2 was depressed as a result of the recent infarcts. Two groups of controls were included for comparison — seventeen normal volunteers, and ten patients with proven extracranial cerebrovascular disease but without evidence of cerebral infarction. The results demonstrated that: 1) contralaterai hemispheric rCMRO2 was less variable than regional oxygen availability (the product of rCBF and arterial oxygen content). This was due, in part, to the effect of individual variations in PaCO2 on rCBF, but other uncontrolled factors, such as IntracraniaJ pressure, may have had influences. As a result, rCMRC>2 did not correlate with rCBF; 2) mean rCMROj in the contralaterai hemispheres was 12% lower than normal (a significant difference), but was not different from the value found in patients with extracranial vascular disease in whom there was no evidence of infarction or ischemia; 3) contralaterai rCMRO2 did not correlate with the size of the infarct in the opposite hemisphere. It is conchided that rCMRO2 cannot be inferred from rCBF measurements in uncontrolled human studies (as frequently done in the past), and that depression of contralaterai rCMRO2 may have preceded infarction in the opposite hemisphere, a consequence of the previous influences of diseases that predispose to stroke.
5'nucleotidase is sorted to the apical domain of hepatocytes via an indirect route [published erratum appears in J Cell Biol 1993 Nov;123(3):following 767]

In hepatocytes, all newly synthesized plasma membrane (PM) proteins so far studied arrive first at the basolateral domain; apically destined proteins are subsequently endocytosed and sorted to the apical domain via transcytosis. A mechanism for the sorting of newly synthesized glycophosphatidylinositol (GPI)-linked proteins has been proposed whereby they associate in lipid microdomains in the trans-Golgi network and then arrive at the apical domain directly. Such a mechanism poses a potential exception to the hepatocyte rule. We have used pulse-chase techniques in conjunction with subcellular fractionation to compare the trafficking of 5' nucleotidase (5NT), an endogenous GPI-anchored protein of hepatocytes, with two transmembrane proteins. Using a one- step fractionation technique to separate a highly enriched fraction of Golgi-derived membranes from ER and PM, we find that both 5NT and the polymeric IgA receptor (pIgAR) traverse the ER and Golgi apparatus with high efficiency. Using a method that resolves PM vesicles derived from the apical and basolateral domains, we find that 5NT first appears at the basolateral domain as early as 30 min of chase. However the subsequent redistribution to the apical domain requires > 3.5 h of chase to reach steady state. This rate of transcytosis is much slower than that observed for dipeptidylpeptidase IV, an apical protein anchored via a single transmembrane domain. We propose that the slow rate of transcytosis is related to the fact that GPI-linked proteins are excluded from clathrin-coated pits/vesicles, and instead must be endocytosed via a slower nonclathrin pathway.
Analysis of Chloride Diffusion into Partially Saturated Concrete

This paper describes the governing equations of moisture, heat, and chloride ion flows through concrete within the framework of a distributed parameter model. The coupling terms and the nonlinearity of the problems are taken into account and a numerical procedure based on the finite element method is developed to solve the set of equations. This study examined chloride diffusion even in partially saturated concrete by considering the variability of ion diffusion coefficients with concrete parameters. Chloride intrusion in various environmental conditions was investigated and the effect of moisture flux in transporting dissolved ions through the porous media is considered. Comparisons with experimental tests are also carried out to show the reliability and the effectiveness of the proposed numerical model.
Stromal tumor of the pancreas with expression of c‐kit protein: Report of a case

Abstract We report on a case of a stromal tumor, similar to a gastrointestinal stromal tumor, originating from the pancreas. The patient was a 54‐year‐old woman, who was seen at the Kofu Municipal Hospital because of an abdominal tumor. On abdominal computed tomography and splenic arteriography, the tumor was detected in the pancreatic tail. The patient underwent distal pancreatectomy with splenectomy. Macroscopically, the cut surface of the tumor showed almost completely surrounded by the normal pancreatic tissue. Microscopically, the tumor composed of spindle‐shaped cells that were immunoreactive for vimentin, CD34, and c‐kit protein. Therefore, the tumor was diagnosed as a stromal tumor of the pancreas. The expression of c‐kit protein suggests that this pancreatic stromal tumor may originate from primitive mesenchymal cells which can be a logical candidate for the origin of gastrointestinal stromal tumors and extra‐gastrointestinal stromal tumors.
Hard and tough electrodeposited aluminum-manganese alloys with tailored nanostructures

Tailoring the nanostructure of electrodeposited Al-Mn films to achieve high hardness and toughness is the overarching goal of this thesis. Binary Al-Mn alloys are electrodeposited using a conventional current waveform in a chloroaluminate electrolyte at ambient temperature. It is found that alloys with low Mn contents comprise micrometer-sized FCC grains. At intermediate Mn contents, the FCC grain size decreases abruptly to the nanometer regime upon the appearance of a secondary amorphous phase. In these dual-phase alloys, the phases are distributed in a characteristic domain-network structure. At high Mn contents, an amorphous phase that contains pre-existing nanoquasicrystalline nuclei dominates. Leveraging the effects of surface kinetics at the electrode on the alloy microstructure, a reverse-pulse current waveform is designed to tailor the grain size and phase distribution of the electrodeposits; single phase FCC alloys. with nanocrystalline grains, as well as dualphase alloys with homogeneous phase distribution are synthesized. Solute distributions in these alloys are investigated using atom probe tomography. Implanted Ga ions are used as chemical markers for the amorphous phase; this method permits more robust phase identification and measurement of their compositions. Whereas uniform Mn distributions are observed in the single phase alloys, Mn is found to weakly partition into amorphous phase of the dual-phase alloy by -2 at. %. Micro-indentation of the reverse-pulsed alloys and the guided bend tests reveal high hardness and toughness that are comparable to steels. High hardness is attributed to a combination of solid-solution strengthening effects and structural refinement; high toughness of the nanostructured alloys arises from the activation of both grain boundaryand dislocation-mediated deformation mechanisms; malleability of the amorphous alloys stems from the simultaneous operation of multiple shear bands during deformation. An unprecedented combination of high hardness, toughness and lightweight is thus achieved in our electrodeposited Al-Mn alloys. Thesis Supervisor: Christopher Schuh Title: Danae and Vasilios Salapatas Associate Professor of Metallurgy
Femtosecond-pulsed laser deposition of diamond-like carbon films onto silicone rubber

Low frictional, textured diamond-like carbon (DLC) films were deposited onto silicone [SiO(CH3)2]n] rubber by femtosecond laser ablation of frozen pentanel (C5H11OH). Deposition rate of the films for silicone rubber was higher than that for Si wafer. A broad Raman peak centred at 1530 cm−1 was measured from the films deposited on silicone, showing a DLC film. The Raman spectra of the DLC films on silicone and Si wafer, a textured DLC films were also formed on silicone rubber. A coarse texture of the films was obtained by increasing the deposition time. The textured DLC films could improve frictional property of a sticky silicone rubber.
Regional differences in hippocampal PKA immunoreactivity after training and reversal training in a spatial Y‐maze task

It is suggested that the hippocampus functions as a comparator by making a comparison between the internal representation and actual sensory information from the environment (for instance, comparing a previously learned location of a food reward with an actual novel location of a food reward in a Y‐maze). However, it remains unclear to what extent the various hippocampal regions contribute to this comparator function. One of the proteins known to be crucially involved in the formation of hippocampus‐dependent long‐term memory is the adenosine 3′,5′ cyclic monophosphate dependent protein kinase (PKA). Here, we examined region‐specific changes in immunoreactivity (ir) of the regulatory IIα,β subunits of PKA (PKA RIIα,β‐ir) in the hippocampus during various stages of spatial learning in a Y‐maze reference task. Thereafter, we compared changes in hippocampal PKA RIIα,β‐ir induced by training and reversal training in which the food reward was relocated to the previously unrewarded arm. We show that: (1) There was a clear correlation between behavioral performance and elevated PKA RIIα,β‐ir during the acquisition phase of both training and reversal training in area CA3 and dentate gyrus (DG), (2) PKA RIIα,β‐ir was similarly enhanced in area CA1 during the acquisition phase of reversal training, but did not correlate with behavioral performance, (3) PKA RIIα,β‐ir did not change during training or reversal training in the subiculum (SUB), (4) No changes in PKA RIIα,β protein levels were found using Western blotting, and (5) AMPA receptor phosphorylation at serine 845 (S845p; the PKA site on the glutamate receptor 1 subunit (GluR1)), was enhanced selectively during the acquisition phase of reversal training. These findings reveal that training and reversal training induce region‐specific changes in hippocampal PKA RIIα,β‐ir and suggest a differential involvement of hippocampal subregions in match‐mismatch detection in case of Y‐maze reference learning. Alterations in AMPA receptor regulation at the S845 site seems specifically related to the novelty detector function of the hippocampus important for match‐mismatch detection. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
PR ] 3 1 A ug 2 00 9 Uniqueness of Brownian motion on Sierpinski carpets

We prove that, up to scalar multiples, there exists only one local regular Dirichlet form on a generalized Sierpinski carpet that is invariant with respect to the local symmetries of the carpet. Consequently for each such fractal the law of Brownian motion is uniquely determined and the Laplacian is well defined. Research partially supported by NSERC (Canada), and EPSRC (UK). Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0601783. Corresponding author Research partially supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 18340027. Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0505622.
Effect of Additional Mass on the Young's Modulus of a Wooden Beam

We investigated the influence of an additional mass bonded on a wooden beam on its Young's modulus based on Euler-Bernoulli's elementary theory of bending. Thin rectangular beams of Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis Carr.) were used as the experimental materials. After bonding an iron piece on a beam, a free-free flexural vibration test was performed to obtain Young's modulus. The Young's modulus decreased with an increase in the resonance mode number without iron pieces, but there was no such tendency when the iron piece was bonded on the specimen. This was because the constants that are needed for the Euler-Bernoulli theory are changed by the additional mass. We developed an equation that contains the effects of the weight and position of the iron piece on the constants. The Young's moduli calculated by this equation were very similar to experimental values without an iron piece.
Requirement of Pretone by Thromboxane A2 for Hypoxic Pulmonary Vasoconstriction in Precision-cut Lung Slices of Rat

Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction (HPV) is physiologically important response for preventing mismatching between ventilation and perfusion in lungs. The HPV of isolated pulmonary arteries (HPV-PA) usually require a partial pretone by thromboxane agonist (U46619). Because the HPV of ventilated/perfused lungs (HPV-lung) can be triggered without pretone conditioning, we suspected that a putative tissue factor might be responsible for the pretone of HPV. Here we investigated whether HPV can be also observed in precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) from rats. The HPV in PCLS also required partial contraction by U46619. In addition, K+ channel blockers (4AP and TEA) required U46619-pretone to induce significant contraction of PA in PCLS. In contrast, the airways in PCLS showed reversible contraction in response to the K+ channel blockers without pretone conditioning. Also, the airways showed no hypoxic constriction but a relaxation under the partial pretone by U46619. The airways in PCLS showed reliable, concentration-dependent contraction by metacholine (EC50, ~210 nM). In summary, the HPV in PCLS is more similar to isolated PA than V/P lungs. The metacholine-induced constriction of bronchioles suggested that the PLCS might be also useful for studying airway physiology in situ.
Molecular Adsorbent Recirculating System Can Reduce Short-Term Mortality Among Patients With Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure—A Retrospective Analysis*

Objectives: Acute-on-chronic liver failure is associated with numerous consecutive organ failures and a high short-term mortality rate. Molecular adsorbent recirculating system therapy has demonstrated beneficial effects on the distinct symptoms, but the associated mortality data remain controversial. Design: Retrospective analysis of acute-on-chronic liver failure patients receiving either standard medical treatment or standard medical treatment and molecular adsorbent recirculating system. Secondary analysis of data from the prospective randomized Recompensation of Exacerbated Liver Insufficiency with Hyperbilirubinemia and/or Encephalopathy and/or Renal Failure trial by applying the recently introduced Chronic Liver Failure-criteria. Setting: Medical Departments of University Hospital Muenster (Germany). Patients: This analysis was conducted in two parts. First, 101 patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure grades 1–3 and Chronic Liver Failure-C-Organ Failure liver subscore equals to 3 but stable pulmonary function were identified and received either standard medical treatment (standard medical treatment, n = 54) or standard medical treatment and molecular adsorbent recirculating system (n = 47) at the University Hospital Muenster. Second, the results of this retrospective analysis were tested against the Recompensation of Exacerbated Liver Insufficiency with Hyperbilirubinemia and/or Encephalopathy and/or Renal Failure trial. Interventions: Standard medical treatment and molecular adsorbent recirculating system. Measurements and Main Results: Additionally to improved laboratory variables (bilirubin and creatinine), the short-term mortality (up to day 14) of the molecular adsorbent recirculating system group was significantly reduced compared with standard medical treatment. A reduced 14-day mortality rate was observed in the molecular adsorbent recirculating system group (9.5% vs 50.0% with standard medical treatment; p = 0.004), especially in patients with multiple organ failure (acute-on-chronic liver failure grade 2–3). Concerning the affected organ system, this effect of molecular adsorbent recirculating system on mortality was particularly evident among patients with increased kidney, brain, or coagulation Chronic Liver Failure-C-Organ Failure subscores. Subsequent reanalysis of the Recompensation of Exacerbated Liver Insufficiency with Hyperbilirubinemia and/or Encephalopathy and/or Renal Failure dataset with adoption of the Chronic Liver Failure-classification resulted in similar findings. Conclusions: Molecular adsorbent recirculating system treatment was associated with an improved short-term survival of patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure and multiple organ failure. Among these high-risk patients, molecular adsorbent recirculating system treatment might bridge to liver recovery or liver transplantation.
Poker-CNN: A Pattern Learning Strategy for Making Draws and Bets in Poker Games Using Convolutional Networks

Poker is a family of card games that includes many varia- tions. We hypothesize that most poker games can be solved as a pattern matching problem, and propose creating a strong poker playing system based on a unified poker representa- tion. Our poker player learns through iterative self-play, and improves its understanding of the game by training on the results of its previous actions without sophisticated domain knowledge. We evaluate our system on three poker games: single player video poker, two-player Limit Texas Hold’em, and finally two-player 2-7 triple draw poker. We show that our model can quickly learn patterns in these very different poker games while it improves from zero knowledge to a competi- tive player against human experts. The contributions of this paper include: (1) a novel represen- tation for poker games, extendable to different poker vari- ations, (2) a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based learning model that can effectively learn the patterns in three different games, and (3) a self-trained system that signif- icantly beats the heuristic-based program on which it is trained, and our system is competitive against human expert players.