Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corrosion and wear properties of Zn–Ni and Zn–Ni–Al2O3 multilayer electrodeposited coatings

Zn–Ni and Zn–Ni–Al2O3 multilayer coatings with 32, 128, and 512 layers were electroplated on a low carbon steel substrate by pulse electrodeposition under alternative changes in the duty cycle between 20% and 90% and a constant frequency of 250 Hz. Corrosion behavior was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization test and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and wear behavior of the coatings was evaluated by a pin on disk test. The results showed that the corrosion resistance of coatings was improved by increasing the number of layers (the decrease in layer thickness) as well as the presence of alumina nanoparticles. The lowest corrosion current density corresponds to Zn–Ni–Al2O3 with 512 layers equal to 3.74 µA cm−2. Increasing the number of layers in the same total thickness and the presence of alumina nanoparticles within the coating also leads to the improvement in wear resistance of the samples. The coefficient of friction decreased with increasing number of layers and the lowest coefficient of friction (0.517) corresponds to Zn–Ni–Al2O3 coating with 512 layers. Wear mechanism of Zn–Ni coatings with a different number of layers is adhesive while in the Zn–Ni–Al2O3 coatings wear mechanism is a combination of adhesive and abrasive wear, where by increasing the number of the layers to 512 abrasive wear mechanism becomes dominant.
Support Vector Machine Classifier for Predicting Drug Binding to P-glycoprotein

Unforeseen reduction in bio-availability of drugs contribute heavily to late phase failure in drug discovery processes. P-glycoprotein, an efflux pump, that evicts a wide range of drugs is a major cause for reduction in bioavailability. Classification of potential drugs into binders and non-binders of this protein will aid greatly in weeding out the failures early in the discovery processes. The need to tap the power of computational approaches for such prediction is increasingly becoming evident, given the speed and ease with which predictions can be integrated into the discovery programs. In this paper, we report development of a prediction method to identify substrates and nonsubstrates of Pglycoprotein, based on a support vector machine algorithm. The method uses a combination of descriptors, encoding substructure types and their relative positions in the drug molecule, thus considering both the chemical nature as well as the three dimensional shape information. A novel pattern recognition method, recently reported by us has been implemented for delineating substructures. The results obtained using the hybrid approach has been compared with those available in the literature for the same data set. An improvement in prediction accuracy with most methods is seen, with an accuracy reaching over 93%.
On Fast Algorithms for Computing Spatial Distance Histograms ( SDH )

Particle simulation has become an important research tool i n many scientific and engineering fields. Data generated by such simulations impose great chal lenges to database storage and query processing. One of the queries against particle simulation data, the spatial distance histogram (SDH) query, is the building block of many high-level analytics, a nd requires quadratic time to compute using a straightforward algorithm. Previous work has developed e ffici nt algorithms that compute exact SDHs with time complexityO (
Exploiting Agreement and Disagreement of Human Annotators for Word Sense Disambiguation

It is generally agreed that the success of a Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) system depends, in large, on having enough sense annotated data available at hand, and a well-motivated sense inventory into which the disambiguations are made. We report a Web-based approach to (1) constructing large sense tagged corpora by exploiting agreement of Web users who contribute word sense annotation, and (2) deriving a coarse-grained sense inventory from a ﬁne-grained inventory by exploiting disagreements of independent contributors about word senses. We investigate the quantity and quality of the sense tagged data collected with this approach over the past year. We also present and evaluate an automatic clustering algorithm able to derive sense clusters that compare well with manually constructed clusters. The live collection system, Open Mind Word Expert, and the data it has collected are available online at http://teach-computers.org.
Young People’s Narratives of Media and Identity

Abstract The article explores how upper secondary students use the learning activity mediagraphy to reflect on their identity and on media as constraining and enabling factors in their social practice. In mediagraphy, the students research four generations of their own families, including themselves. They write a mediagraphy essay on the differences and similarities across the generations in media use and turning points in individuals’ lives, in addition to societal and media-related developments. Data from student products and interviews are analysed through three “identity dilemmas” that any identity claim faces: the constant navigation between 1) continuity and change, 2) sameness and difference with regard to others, and 3) agency as “person-to-world” and “world-to-person”. The findings suggest that mediagraphy is a type of identity work that can potentially help students develop an agentive identity in a time of insecurity, with rapidly shifting social and cultural conditions and increasing media density.
Phylogeny of Trypanosoma (Megatrypanum) theileri and related trypanosomes reveals lineages of isolates associated with artiodactyl hosts diverging on SSU and ITS ribosomal sequences

SSU ribosomal sequences of trypanosomes from Brazilian cattle and water buffalo were used to infer phylogenetic relationships between non-pathogenic T. theileri and allied species parasitic in artiodactyls. T. theileri trypanosomes from distinct geographical regions in Brazil and from other countries were tightly clustered into the ‘clade T. theileri’ distant from the ‘T. brucei clade’ of pathogenic parasites of artiodactyls, and also distinct from trypanosomes of other mammals. The existence of this monophyletic assemblage (T. theileri clade) composed only by isolates from artiodactyl species justifies the continued recognition of the subgenus T. (Megatrypanum) with T. theileri as its type species. Phylogenies based on SSU and ITS1 ribosomal sequences produced the same branching pattern with isolates from different mammalian hosts clustered in 5 lineages: A, related to water buffalo; B, C and D, to cattle; E, to fallow deer. The pattern of host specificity allied to some congruence between host and parasite phylogenies suggested association of these trypanosomes with their respective hosts. Segregation of cattle isolates into three lineages revealed an overall geographical structure. Moreover, positioning of trypanosomes infecting tabanids in the T. theileri clade is consistent with the role of these flies as important vectors of these trypanosomes.
Sodium-hydrogen exchanger, cardiac overload, and myocardial hypertrophy.

Received March 15, 2006; accepted August 30, 2006. Overload of neonatal and adult cardiomyocytes and multicellular myocardial preparations, which include whole hearts, are accompanied by an enhanced activity of the Na+/H+ exchanger 1 (NHE-1). Exogenous administration of prohypertrophic agents such as angiotensin II (Ang II), endothelin-1 (ET-1), and α1-adrenergic agonists also stimulates NHE-1 activity, which leads to an increased concentration of intracellular Na+ ([Na+]i). Moreover, inhibition of NHE-1 activity prevents the increase in [Na+]i, induces the regression of cardiac hypertrophy, and exerts beneficial effects in experimental heart failure. The present review summarizes the current knowledge of the causative factors and pathophysiological correlation of cardiac overload and NHE-1 activity. NHE is an integral membrane glycoprotein expressed ubiquitously in mammalian cells, and it electroneutrally exchanges intracellular H+ for extracellular Na+ (1:1) to regulate intracellular pH (pHi) and the concentration of [Na+]i. Nine isoforms of this exchanger have been described: NHE-1 to NHE-9. NHE-1, the first isoform to be cloned, is expressed ubiquitously in the plasma membrane and is considered to be the cardiac-specific isoform.1 The inward gradient of Na+, produced mainly by the Na+/K+ ATPase, provides a constant driving force for H+ extrusion and Na+ influx through the NHE. NHE-1 (Figure 1) is a protein of 815 amino acid residues with a predicted molecular mass of 85 kDa that can be separated into an N-terminal membrane-associated domain (≈500 amino acid residues) and a long C-terminal cytoplasmic tail. The membrane domain, composed of 12 transmembrane regions, is associated with ionic transport, and it contains the allosteric H+ sensor site that determines the exquisite sensitivity of the exchanger to intracellular H+. The cytoplasmic …
MDCT-Based Perceptual Hashing for Compressed Audio Content Identification

In this paper, a perceptual audio hashing method in compressed domain is proposed for content identification, in which MDCT coefficients as the intermediate decoding result are selected for perceptual feature extraction and hash generation. The perceptual feature extraction is based on psychoacoustic model and exhibits good discrimination ability for different audio contents but robustness against common audio signal processing operations. Via feature extraction in the compressed domain, the MDCT-based compressed audios, such as MP3, AAC, etc., could be efficiently identified without complete decoding which facilitates those practical applications with strict requirements of memory and computational complexity, such as online audio retrieval, indexing of massive compressed audio data, audio identification by mobile phone, etc. The algorithm is highly robust against MDCT compression which is widely used in audio coding. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Distributions of secondary particles in proton and carbon-ion therapy: a comparison between GATE/Geant4 and FLUKA Monte Carlo codes

Monte Carlo simulations play a crucial role for in-vivo treatment monitoring based on PET and prompt gamma imaging in proton and carbon-ion therapies. The accuracy of the nuclear fragmentation models implemented in these codes might affect the quality of the treatment verification. In this paper, we investigate the nuclear models implemented in GATE/Geant4 and FLUKA by comparing the angular and energy distributions of secondary particles exiting a homogeneous target of PMMA. Comparison results were restricted to fragmentation of 16O and 12C. Despite the very simple target and set-up, substantial discrepancies were observed between the two codes. For instance, the number of high energy (>1 MeV) prompt gammas exiting the target was about twice as large with GATE/Geant4 than with FLUKA both for proton and carbon ion beams. Such differences were not observed for the predicted annihilation photon production yields, for which ratios of 1.09 and 1.20 were obtained between GATE and FLUKA for the proton beam and the carbon ion beam, respectively. For neutrons and protons, discrepancies from 14% (exiting protons–carbon ion beam) to 57% (exiting neutrons–proton beam) have been identified in production yields as well as in the energy spectra for neutrons.
Three-dimensional photoionization modelling of the planetary nebula NGC 3918

The three-dimensional Monte Carlo photoionization code mocassin has been applied to construct a realistic model of the planetary nebula NGC 3918. Three different geometric models were tried, the first being the biconical density distribution already used some years ago by Clegg et al. In this model the nebula is approximated by a biconical structure of enhanced density, embedded in a lower-density spherical region. Spindle-like density distributions were used for the other two models (models A and B). Model A used a mass distribution slightly modified from one of Mellema's hydrodynamical models that had already been adopted by Corradi et al. for their observational analysis of NGC 3918. Our spindle-like model B instead used an analytical expression to describe the shape of the inner shell of this object as consisting of an ellipsoid embedded in a sphere. The effects of the interaction of the diffuse fields coming from two adjacent regions of different densities were investigated. These are found to be non-negligible, even for the relatively uncomplicated case of a biconical geometry. We found that the ionization structure of low-ionization species near the boundaries is particularly affected. It is found that all three models provided acceptable matches to the integrated nebular optical and ultraviolet spectrum. Large discrepancies were found between all of the model predictions of infrared fine-structure line fluxes and ISO SWS measurements. This was found to be largely due to an offset of ≈14 arcsec from the centre of the nebula that affected all of the ISO observations of NGC 3918. For each model, we also produced projected emission-line maps and position–velocity diagrams from synthetic long-slit spectra, which could be compared to recent HST images and ground-based long-slit echelle spectra. This comparison showed that spindle-like model B provided the best match to the observations. Although the integrated emission-line spectrum of NGC 3918 can be reproduced by all three of the three-dimensional models investigated in this work, the capability of creating projected emission-line maps and position–velocity diagrams from synthetic long-slit spectra was found to be crucial in allowing us to constrain the structure of this object.
Growth and inequality: Access to advanced education under credit constraint

This Master thesis starts by reviewing a wide strand of the literature about the linkage between growth and inequality. It then proposes an overlapping generation model with altruistic agents that are heterogeneous in ability and initial wealth. They go through a two-stage education process, during which the decision of investing in higher education is left to them. Possibility for borrowers to evade debt payments imposes a constraint on credit which will impact human capital accumulation. Quality of the two educational sectors (basic and advanced) depends on public funding which is allocated to each sector. We analyze the impact of initial distribution of wealth on the subsequent achievements of the economy as well as the possible policy recommendations as regards the allocation of resources between the educational sectors.
QuARK: Quality-configurable approximate STT-MRAM cache by fine-grained tuning of reliability-energy knobs

Emerging STT-MRAM memories are promising alternatives for SRAM memories to tackle their low density and high static power consumption, but impose high energy consumption for reliable read/write operations. However, absolute data integrity is not required for many approximate computing applications, allowing energy savings with minimal quality loss. This paper proposes QuARK, a hardware/software approach for trading reliability of STT-MRAM caches for energy savings in the on-chip memory hierarchy of multi- and many-core systems running approximate applications. In contrast to SRAM-based cache-way-level actuators, QuARK utilizes fine-grained cache-line-level actuation knobs with different levels of reliability for individual read and write accesses which are unique to STT-MRAM and suitable for systems running multiple applications with mixed accuracy sensitivity, thus avoiding interapplication actuation interference. Our experimental results with a set of recognition, mining and synthesis (RMS) benchmarks demonstrate up to 40% energy savings over a fully-protected STT-MRAM cache, with negligible loss in the quality of the generated outputs.
Total Ionizing Dose Response of Multiple-Gate Nanowire Field Effect Transistors

This paper investigates the total ionizing dose (TID) response of nanoscaled field-effect transistors (FET) made of silicon multiple-gate nanowire (NW). The NWFET architecture relies on its remarkable electrostatic properties to push “silicon”-based technologies much deeper into device scaling than present FinFETs. However, as commonly observed when a new device or technology concept is proposed, such as shallow trench isolation and silicon-on-insulator or FinFET, TID effects reveal unexpected behaviors that can permanently modify pristine device electrical characteristics. This is why this paper discusses the impact of several parameters including the NWFET design and the transistor’s type to get thorough insights into the NWFET TID behavior.
Understanding Consumer Adoption of Internet Banking: An Interpretive Study in the Australian Banking Context

This paper reports key findings from an interpretive study of Australian banking consumer experiences with the adoption of internet banking. The paper provides an understanding of how and why specific factors affect the consumer decision whether or not to bank on the internet, in the Australian context. A theoretical framework is provided that conceptualizes and links consumer-oriented issues influencing adoption of internet banking. The paper also provides a set of recommendations for Australian banks. Specifically, the findings suggest that convenience is the main motivator for consumers to bank on the internet, while there is a range of other influential factors that may be modulated by banks. The findings also highlight increasing risk acceptance by consumers in regard to internet-based services and the growing importance of offering deep levels of consumer support for such services. Gender differences are also highlighted. Finally, the paper suggests that banks will be better able to manage consumer experiences with moving to internet banking if they understand that such experiences involve a process of adjustment and learning over time, and not merely the adoption of a new technology.
Systematic analysis of the crystal structure, chemical ordering, and microstructure of Ni-Mn-Ga ferromagnetic shape memory alloys

Ni–Mn–Ga based ferromagnetic shape-memory alloys (FSMAs) have shown great promise as an active material that yields a large output strain over a range of actuation frequencies. The maximum strain has been reported to be 6% in the tetragonal martensitic phase and up to 10% in the orthorhombic phase. There has been a large body of work exploring the engineering properties of these alloys but less extensive work in the understanding of the underlying structure and its connection to the material properties. This is particularly true for the off-stoichiometry compositions that are of most practical interest. The crystal structure of Ni-Mn-Ga ferromagnetic shape-memory alloys is extremely sensitive to composition. Several martensitic structures including tetragonal (5-layer), orthorhombic (7-layer) and non-modulated tetragonal have been identified. A systematic exploration of the composition-structure relationship has been performed using x-ray diffraction on samples taken from several single crystals with different compositions. A room temperature phase diagram has been constructed delineating the fields where the tetragonal and orthorhombic martensites are found. Temperature-dependent magnetic and x-ray measurements have revealed markedly different transformation behavior in the tetragonal and orthorhombic materials. The orthorhombic material shows a much larger difference between the martensite start and finish temperatures as compared to tetragonal martensite. The observed difference in transformation behavior has been shown not to be related to composition inhomogeneity or the presence of intermediate martensitic phases. A thermodynamic model is proposed to explain the differences in the transition behavior by including strain energy effects in the two martensite phases that may arise during the transformation. Single-crystal and powder neutron diffraction have been employed to study for the first time the chemical ordering in the austenite and martensite phases in offstoichiometric alloy compositions. A comparison of compositions with close to 50 at%
Fundamental Analysis of Aggregate Interlock

A model for aggregate interlock has been developed based on the behavior of micro scale. The relation between displacements and stresses across the crack faces are defined to be a function of deformation and sliding at particle level. This relation is derived for one particle projecting from one of the crack faces with an arbitrary diameter and an arbitrary embedment depth. The most probable distribution of aggregate particles, crossed by the plane of cracking and their positions with regard to this plane are assessed by a statistical analysis. The general relations between stresses and displacements for a unit crack area are obtained by integrating all particle contributions. The model proves to give adequate results, compared with experiments, carried out on several types of (cracked) concrete. Using this model, further analysis of the mechanism of aggregate interlock has been carried out, explaining tendencies observed in tests of other investigators.
Delta-Dual Hierarchical Dirichlet Processes: A pragmatic abnormal behaviour detector

In the security domain a key problem is identifying rare behaviours of interest. Training examples for these behaviours may or may not exist, and if they do exist there will be few examples, quite probably one. We present a novel weakly supervised algorithm that can detect behaviours that either have never before been seen or for which there are few examples. Global context is modelled, allowing the detection of abnormal behaviours that in isolation appear normal. Pragmatic aspects are considered, such that no parameter tuning is required and real time performance is achieved.
Mapping Geographic Zones of Cancer Risk with Epigenetic Biomarkers in Normal Breast Tissue

Purpose: Genetic alterations were previously identified in normal epithelia adjacent to invasive cancers. The aim of this study was to determine DNA methylation in histologically normal tissues from multiple geographic zones adjacent to primary breast tumors. Experimental Design: First, methylation status of a 4-kb region of RASSF1A promoter was interrogated using oligonucleotide-based microarray in 144 samples (primary tumors, 47; adjacent normals, 69; reduction mammoplasty tissues, 28). Second, allelic imbalance (AI)/loss of heterozygosity (LOH) surrounding RASSF1A promoter were analyzed in 30 samples (tumors, 8; adjacent normals, 22). Third, global methylation screening of 49 samples (tumors, 12; adjacent normals, 25; reduction mammoplasty, 12) was done by differential methylation hybridization. Real-time quantitative methylation-specific PCR was used to validate the microarray findings. Results: DNA methylation in the core RASSF1A promoter was low in reduction mammoplasty tissues (P = 0.0001) when compared with primary tumors. The adjacent normals had an intermediate level of methylation. The regions surrounding the core were highly methylated in all sample types. Microsatellite markers showed AI/LOH in tumors and some of the adjacent normals. Concurrent AI/LOH and DNA methylation in RASSF1A promoter occurred in two of six tumors. Global methylation screening uncovered genes more methylated in adjacent normals than in reduction mammoplasty tissues. The methylation status of four genes was confirmed by quantitative methylation-specific PCR. Conclusions: Our findings suggest a field of methylation changes extending as far as 4 cm from primary tumors. These frequent alterations may explain why normal tissues are at risk for local recurrence and are useful in disease prognostication.