Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic Properties of Lightweight Concrete Beams Made by Sedimentary Lightweight Aggregate

This research aimed to investigate the engineering and dynamic properties, such as unit weight, stiffness, natural frequency and damping ratio, of lightweight aggregate concrete (LWAC) beams made with sedimentary lightweight aggregate (LWA) and to compare with companion normal weight concrete (NWC) beams. The primary design variables included compressive strengths of 20, 40, and 60 MPa and reinforcement ratios of 0%, 1.03%, and 2.32%, respectively. A total of 62 beams were made and tested. Test results showed that the unit weight of LWAC beams was about 16–23% lower than that of NWC beams for the same strength level. In addition, the reduced modulus of elasticity of LWAC resulted in a stiffness decrease of reinforced lightweight concrete (RLC) beams of 5–15% related to the reinforced NWC (RC) beams. Nevertheless, the natural frequency of RLC was still higher by about 1–10% than that of RC. In contrast, it was also found that the porous LWA with high damping capacity enhanced the damping ratio of RLC beams by 13–30% for concrete strength in the range from 20 to 60 MPa. As a whole, the lower the concrete strength is (e.g., 20 MPa), the more effective will be for the lightness of LWAC beam and the damping ratio, which in turn is more favorable to the seismic resistant efficiency of LWAC beam.
Optimum Forming Loading Paths for Pb-Sn Superplastic Sheet Materials

The bulge forming performance of Pb-Sn superplastic sheet materials is evaluated under different forming pressure-time profiles. In addition, an “optimum” pressure-time profile based on variable strain rates is proposed. Results of forming time, achieved amount of deformation, and thinning behavior are reported for the different forming pressure profiles. Not only the forming time was significantly reduced, when forming with the optimum pressure profile, but the integrity of the formed part was also maintained. Furthermore, the results show that forming profiles based on uniaxial models cannot successfully predict the actual forming behavior when the loading path is biaxial. In fact, the one-dimensional strain rate hardening relation, along with von Mises criterion, predict failure at a much higher strain (time) than the actual case.
Non-saturation and saturation analysis of IEEE 802.11e EDCA with starvation prediction

An analytical model is proposed to describe the priority schemes of the EDCA mechanism of the IEEE 802.11e standard. EDCA provides class-based differentiated QoS to IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The main contribution of this paper opposed to other works is that the model predicts the throughput, delay and frame dropping probabilities of the different traffic classes in the whole range from a lightly loaded, non-saturated channel to a heavily congested, saturated medium. Furthermore, the model describes differentiation based on different AIFS-values, in addition to the other adjustable parameters (i.e. window-sizes, retransmission limits, TXOP lengths etc.) also encompassed by previous models. AIFS differentiation is described by a simple equation that enables access points to predict at which traffic loads starvation of a traffic class will occur. The model is calculated numerically and validated against simulation results. We observed a good match between the analytical model and simulations.
Online Adaptive Estimation of Sparse Signals: Where RLS Meets the $\ell_1$ -Norm

Using the ℓ1-norm to regularize the least-squares criterion, the batch least-absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) has well-documented merits for estimating sparse signals of interest emerging in various applications where observations adhere to parsimonious linear regression models. To cope with high complexity, increasing memory requirements, and lack of tracking capability that batch Lasso estimators face when processing observations sequentially, the present paper develops a novel time-weighted Lasso (TWL) approach. Performance analysis reveals that TWL cannot estimate consistently the desired signal support without compromising rate of convergence. This motivates the development of a time- and norm-weighted Lasso (TNWL) scheme with ℓ1-norm weights obtained from the recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithm. The resultant algorithm consistently estimates the support of sparse signals without reducing the convergence rate. To cope with sparsity-aware recursive real-time processing, novel adaptive algorithms are also developed to enable online coordinate descent solvers of TWL and TNWL that provably converge to the true sparse signal in the time-invariant case. Simulated tests compare competing alternatives and corroborate the performance of the novel algorithms in estimating time-invariant signals, and tracking time-varying signals under sparsity constraints.
Cochlear Reimplantation after Surgery for Electric-Acoustic Stimulation

Background/Aims: Combined electric-acoustic stimulation (EAS) of the auditory system usually results in better speech understanding than electric stimulation only, assuming low-frequency hearing can be preserved. Treatment options and outcomes for 4 subjects experiencing compromised hearing after EAS surgery are discussed. Methods: Each subject underwent revision surgery to replace the original 21-mm electrode arrays used in EAS surgery with cochlear implants (CIs) with 31-mm arrays. Our aims were: (1) to investigate whether deeper insertion is possible, and (2) to evaluate the influence of electrode insertion angle by comparing speech perception scores before and after revision surgery. Results: Deeper insertion was feasible in all subjects. Speech understanding scores after reimplantation were comparable to those seen after the first intervention. Conclusion: A 360-degree insertion under EAS conditions provides sufficient speech understanding, even in cases of additional hearing loss. Reimplantation with a longer electrode array is feasible in former EAS patients.
Covariance based local salient descriptors for visual tracking

When visual tracking is performed by human, we typically pay attention to some salient regions or points of the target instead of the whole target. Inspired by this visual saliency property of human visual system, the paper proposes a novel salient regions extraction method to model target appearance. In order to capture the salient and spatial information within this model, the method extracts a set of local salient descriptors based on covariance features from the target. Afterwards, an optimization problem is constructed with respect to the features of these salient regions, and the optimal target state is obtained by solving this problem using a gradient descent algorithm. Experiments on several challenging video sequences demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method compared with four state-of-art tracking methods.
Decentralized Resource Management and Fault-Tolerance for Distributed CORBA Applications

Assigning an application’s fault-tolerance properties (e.g., replication style, checkpointing frequency) statically, and in an arbitrary manner, can lead to the application not achieving its target resilience and performance. The resource management infrastructure that we have developed transparently determines a CORBA application’s resource usage and its rate/pattern of invocation across a distributed system. Using this information, our infrastructure makes more informed decisions about the application’s fault-tolerance properties, and dynamically adapts these decisions, as faults occur, and as resources are added and removed from the system. We have designed our prototype to be decentralized so that it is scalable and does not itself constitute a single point of failure.
Temporal evolution of seizure burden for automated neonatal EEG classification

The aim of this paper is to use recent advances in the clinical understanding of the temporal evolution of seizure burden in neonates with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy to improve the performance of automated detection algorithms. Probabilistic weights are designed from temporal locations of neonatal seizure events relative to time of birth. These weights are obtained by fitting a skew-normal distribution to the temporal seizure density and introduced into the probabilistic framework of the previously developed neonatal seizure detector. The results are validated on the largest available clinical dataset, comprising 816.7 hours. By exploiting these priors, the ROC area is increased by 23% (relative) reaching 96.75%. The number of false detections per hour is decreased from 0.72 to 0.36, while maintaining the correct detection of seizure burden at 75%.
Cellular and morphological characterization of blastoderms from freshly laid broiler eggs

&NA; The pioneering study of Eyal‐Giladi and Kochav (EG&K; Eyal‐Giladi and Kochav, 1976) on the early developmental stages—from fertilization, through oviposition, to the gastrulation process—set the standard for characterizing chicken embryos, and has been used in numerous studies over the years. During uterine development, the chicken embryo undergoes dramatic changes, extremely rapid cell cycles, massive cell death, and axial determination processes. However, once the egg is laid, the temperature drops and the embryo enters into a diapause‐like state. This phenomenon is utilized to store fertile eggs prior to incubation. The ability to resume development to hatching, following storage, relies on several factors, including the number of living cells and the embryonic developmental stage. These factors are highly influenced by the storage conditions—mainly duration and temperature. Thus, to study the effects of storage conditions on embryonic viability, a comprehensive characterization of the starting point—shortly after oviposition—is needed. In this study, we characterized freshly laid broiler eggs from Ross 308 flocks for embryonic developmental stage, total cell count, and cell viability. Using the novel high‐resolution episcopic microscopy (HREM) system, we show, for the first time, high‐resolution 3D morphological models of blastoderms which allow for highly accurate embryonic staging. Staging was also done under a dissecting microscope thus allowing for a direct side‐by‐side comparison of the two methods. Analysis of freshly laid blastomeres showed that the total nucleus count increases with developmental stage from ˜60,000 at stage X EG&K to ˜130,000 at stage XIII EG&K, whereas the proportion of mitotic index and dying cells at oviposition are ˜2% and ˜5%, respectively. Moreover, staging embryos from young and old flocks revealed that the blastoderms of the old flocks are more developed. Specifically, the predominant embryonic stages were XI and XII EG&K in young and old flocks, respectively. Collectively, we characterized parameters that can serve to analyze the maladaptive effects of prolonged storage under various conditions on embryo survival.
Unsaturated Fatty Acids Revert Diet-Induced Hypothalamic Inflammation in Obesity

Background In experimental models, hypothalamic inflammation is an early and determining factor in the installation and progression of obesity. Pharmacological and gene-based approaches have proven efficient in restraining inflammation and correcting the obese phenotypes. However, the role of nutrients in the modulation of hypothalamic inflammation is unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we show that, in a mouse model of diet-induced obesity, partial substitution of the fatty acid component of the diet by flax seed oil (rich in C18:3) or olive oil (rich in C18:1) corrects hypothalamic inflammation, hypothalamic and whole body insulin resistance, and body adiposity. In addition, upon icv injection in obese rats, both ω3 and ω9 pure fatty acids reduce spontaneous food intake and body mass gain. These effects are accompanied by the reversal of functional and molecular hypothalamic resistance to leptin/insulin and increased POMC and CART expressions. In addition, both, ω3 and ω9 fatty acids inhibit the AMPK/ACC pathway and increase CPT1 and SCD1 expression in the hypothalamus. Finally, acute hypothalamic injection of ω3 and ω9 fatty acids activate signal transduction through the recently identified GPR120 unsaturated fatty acid receptor. Conclusions/Significance Unsaturated fatty acids can act either as nutrients or directly in the hypothalamus, reverting diet-induced inflammation and reducing body adiposity. These data show that, in addition to pharmacological and genetic approaches, nutrients can also be attractive candidates for controlling hypothalamic inflammation in obesity.
Human Staufen1 Associates to MiRNAs Involved in Neuronal Cell Differentiation and is Required for Correct Dendritic Formation

Double-stranded RNA-binding proteins are key elements in the intracellular localization of mRNA and its local translation. Staufen is a double-stranded RNA binding protein involved in the localised translation of specific mRNAs during Drosophila early development and neuronal cell fate. The human homologue Staufen1 forms RNA-containing complexes that include proteins involved in translation and motor proteins to allow their movement within the cell, but the mechanism underlying translation repression in these complexes is poorly understood. Here we show that human Staufen1-containing complexes contain essential elements of the gene silencing apparatus, like Ago1-3 proteins, and we describe a set of miRNAs specifically associated to complexes containing human Staufen1. Among these, miR-124 stands out as particularly relevant because it appears enriched in human Staufen1 complexes and is over-expressed upon differentiation of human neuroblastoma cells in vitro. In agreement with these findings, we show that expression of human Staufen1 is essential for proper dendritic arborisation during neuroblastoma cell differentiation, yet it is not necessary for maintenance of the differentiated state, and suggest potential human Staufen1 mRNA targets involved in this process.
Automatic Curriculum Graph Generation for Reinforcement Learning Agents

In recent years, research has shown that transfer learning methods can be leveraged to construct curricula that sequence a series of simpler tasks such that performance on a final target task is improved. A major limitation of existing approaches is that such curricula are handcrafted by humans that are typically domain experts. To address this limitation, we introduce a method to generate a curriculum based on task descriptors and a novel metric of transfer potential. Our method automatically generates a curriculum as a directed acyclic graph (as opposed to a linear sequence as done in existing work). Experiments in both discrete and continuous domains show that our method produces curricula that improve the agent's learning performance when compared to the baseline condition of learning on the target task from scratch.
A multi-system analysis of document and term selection for blind feedback

Experiments were conducted to explore the impact of combining various components of eight leading information retrieval systems. Each system demonstrated improved effectiveness with the use of <i>blind feedback</i>, in which the results of a preliminary retrieval step were used to augment the efficacy of a secondary retrieval step. The hybrid combination of primary and secondary retrieval steps from different systems in a number of cases yielded better effectiveness than either of the constituent systems alone. This positive combining effect was observed when entire documents were passed between the two retrieval steps, but not when only the expansion terms were passed. Several combinations of primary and secondary retrieval steps were fused using the CombMNZ algorithm; all yielded significant effectiveness improvement over the individual systems, with the best yielding a an improvement of 13% (<i>p</i> = 10<sup>-6</sup>) over the best individual system and an improvement of 4% (<i>p</i> = 10<sup>-5</sup>) over a simple fusion of the eight systems.
Genotypes and Toxin Gene Profiles of Staphylococcus aureus Clinical Isolates from China

A total of 108 S. aureus isolates from 16 major hospitals located in 14 different provinces in China were characterized for the profiles of 18 staphylococcal enterotoxin (SE) genes, 3 exfoliatin genes (eta, etb and etd), and the toxic shock syndrome toxin gene (tsst) by PCR. The genomic diversity of each isolate was also evaluated by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), multilocus sequence typing (MLST), and accessory gene regulator (agr) typing. Of these strains, 90.7% (98/108) harbored toxin genes, in which tsst was the most prevalent toxin gene (48.1%), followed by sea (44.4%), sek (42.6%) and seq (40.7%). The see and etb genes were not found in any of the isolates tested. Because of high-frequency transfer of toxin gene-containing mobile genetic elements between S. aureus strains, a total of 47 different toxin gene combinations were detected, including a complete egc cluster in 19 isolates, co-occurrence of sea, sek and seq in 38 strains, and sec and sel together in 11 strains. Genetic typing by PFGE grouped all the strains into 25 clusters based on 80% similarity. MLST revealed 25 sequence types (ST) which were assigned into 16 clonal complexes (CCs) including 2 new singletons. Among these, 11 new and 6 known STs were first reported in the S. aureus strains from China. Overall, the genotyping results showed high genetic diversity of the strains regardless of their geographical distributions, and no strong correlation between genetic background and toxin genotypes of the strains. For genotyping S. aureus, PFGE appears to be more discriminatory than MLST. However, toxin gene typing combined with PFGE or MLST could increase the discriminatory power of genotyping S. aureus strains.
Thermal Fatigue in CANDU Stations

The risk of thermal fatigue, and the resulting pressure boundary failures, have resulted in a significant amount of research in the Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) and Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) communities in the past two decades. Thermal stresses arising from thermal stratification phenomena are typically not taken into account in design calculations. Because various forms of thermal fatigue events occurred in safety-related piping, non-design basis thermal fatigue has been the subject of a number of U.S. NRC bulletins that led to a significant amount of research by the nuclear industry. This paper discusses the relevance of known thermal fatigue mechanisms to the CANDU® design (a pressurized heavy water reactor), and thermal fatigue operational experience in CANDU plants. These mechanisms are various forms of thermal stratification phenomena, turbulence penetration and large-scale temperature oscillations in mixing fluid streams.Copyright © 2009 by AECL
Geographic and climatic factors associated with exfoliation syndrome.

OBJECTIVE To identify geographic and climatic risk factors associated with exfoliation syndrome (ES). METHODS A retrospective study of 626 901 eye care recipients, dating from 2001 to 2007 from 47 US states in a managed care network. Incident ES cases-patients (N = 3367) were identified by using billing codes. We assessed the risk of ES by geographic latitude tier in the continental United States and assigned state-level climatic data (eg, ambient temperature, elevation, and sun exposure) according to patients' residential location. The hazard of ES was calculated by using multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression models. RESULTS Compared with middle-tier residence, northern-tier residence (above 42°N) was associated with an increased hazard of ES (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 2.14; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.94-2.35). Southern-tier (below 37°N) was associated with a reduced hazard of ES (HR, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.75-0.93). Excluding whites did not change these associations. After adjustment for joint environmental effects, for every 1° increase in July high temperature, the hazard of ES decreased by 9% (HR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.89-0.93); for every 1° increase in January low temperature, the hazard decreased 3% (0.97; 0.96-0.98). For each additional sunny day annually, the hazard increased by 1.5% (HR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01-1.02) in locations with average levels of other climatic factors. CONCLUSION Ambient temperature and sun exposure may be important environmental triggers of ES.
In-memory grid files on graphics processors

Recently, graphics processing units, or GPUs, have become a viable alternative as commodity, parallel hardware for general-purpose computing, due to their massive data-parallelism, high memory bandwidth, and improved general-purpose programming interface. In this paper, we explore the use of GPU on the grid file, a traditional multidimensional access method. Considering the hardware characteristics of GPUs, we design a massively multi-threaded GPU-based grid file for static, memory-resident multidimensional point data. Moreover, we propose a hierarchical grid file variant to handle data skews efficiently. Our implementations on the NVIDIA G80 GTX graphics card are able to achieve two to eight times' higher performance than their CPU counterparts on a single PC.
Attaining realistic and substantial reductions in HIV incidence: model projections of combining microbicide and male circumcision interventions in rural Uganda

Objectives This study simulates the potential impact of male circumcision and female microbicide interventions, singularly and in combination, in rural Uganda. Methods A dynamic model was parameterised and fitted to setting-specific data, and used to estimate the impact on HIV transmission of a microbicide and/or male circumcision intervention over 15 years. The proportion of circumcised men or women using microbicides was assumed to increase linearly from 0.18 (male circumcision) or 0.00 (microbicide use) to the final proportion 10 years later, then remain constant for 5 years. Women using microbicides were assumed to use the product in 80% of penile–vaginal sex acts. Male circumcision or microbicide use was assumed to reduce the per-act probability of HIV acquisition in men or women, respectively, by 60%. Results Independently, to obtain a 30% relative reduction in HIV incidence at 15 years, the model suggests that the final proportion of women using microbicides would need to be 0.91 (95% CI 0.75 to 1.00) or the proportion of circumcised men would need to be 0.96 (0.83 to impact not possible). The same impact could be achieved by combining the interventions, eg, if the proportion of women using microbicides was 0.49 (0.39 to 0.56) and the proportion of circumcised men was 0.67 (0.57 to 0.74). Conclusions Under these assumptions, as separate interventions it is unlikely that increases in either the proportion of men circumcised or of women using microbicides could reduce HIV incidence by 30% or more at 15 years. A combination-prevention strategy using complementary interventions may be a more feasible approach to achieve substantial reductions in incidence.