Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Two-Phase Flow in Double-Pipe Condensers and Evaporators With Special Emphasis on Transition Zones: Numerical Model and Experimental Comparison

A numerical study of the thermal and fluid-dynamic behavior of the two-phase flow in conducts is presented. The numerical simulation has been developed by means of the finite volume technique based on a onedimensional transient integration of the conservative equations. The discretized governing equations are solved using the step by step algorithm or the pressure-based method SIMPLEC, giving special emphasis on the treatment of the transition zones between the different phases. The numerical comparative results show the verification of the numerical model developed, while the experimental comparative results validate the simulation and show the improvements in the solution when the special treatment is used. A experimental unit has been designed and built to analyse single stage vapour compression refrigerating equipment and to compare the whole refrigerating system numerically. A detailed instrumented evaporator has been added in order to obtain the experimental information of temperature and pressure distribution along the heated duct. The electrically heated instrumented evaporator has given detailed experimental data to be compared with the numerical results.
Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought

From the Publisher: "Catching Ourselves in the Act is no less than an attempt to explain intelligence. Delightful how the author dismantles traditional views in psychology, artificial intelligence, ethology, and philosophy. But he goes beyond criticism by providing alternative explanations, drawing on recent work in situated robotics. A masterpiece in combining detailed analysis with grand theorizing. A must for any cognitive scientist. " -- Rolf Pfeifer, AI Laboratory, Computer Science Department, University of Zurich Catching Ourselves in the Act uses situated robotics, ethology, and developmental psychology to erect a new framework for explaining human behavior. Rejecting the cognitive science orthodoxy that formal task-descriptions and their implementation are fundamental to an explanation of mind, Horst Hendriks-Jansen argues for an alternative model based on the notion of interactive emergence. Situated activity and interactive emergence are concepts that derive from the new discipline of autonomous agent research. Hendriks-Jansen puts these notions on a firm philosophical basis and uses them to anchor a "genetic" or "historical" explanation of mental phenomena in species-typical activity patterns that have been selected by a cultural environment of artifacts, language, and intentional scaffolding by adults. Situated robotics, allied with techniques and principles from ethology, allows the testing of hypotheses framed in terms of natural kinds that can be grounded through the theory of natural selection. This approach negotiates the "nature versus nurture" dispute in a radically new way. Catching Ourselves in the Act provides a thorough overview of autonomous agent research in America and Europe, focusing in particular on work by such eminent researchers as Rodney Brooks, Pattie Maes, Maja Mataric, and Rolf Pfeifer. It reassesses the basic principles of artificial life and explores the repercussions of autonomous agent research for human psychology and the philosophy of mind, as well as its affinities with the "contextual revolution" in sociology and anthropology. A Bradford Book. Complex Adaptive Systems
Intramyocardial Transplantation of Undifferentiated Rat Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Causes Tumorigenesis in the Heart

Background Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are a novel candidate for use in cardiac stem cell therapy. However, their intrinsic tumorigenicity requires further investigation prior to use in a clinical setting. In this study we investigated whether undifferentiated iPSCs are tumorigenic after intramyocardial transplantation into immunocompetent allogeneic recipients. Methodology/Principal Findings We transplanted 2×104, 2×105, or 2×106 cells from the established rat iPSC line M13 intramyocardially into intact or infarcted hearts of immunocompetent allogeneic rats. Transplant duration was 2, 4, or 6 weeks. Histological examination with hematoxylin-eosin staining confirmed that undifferentiated rat iPSCs could generate heterogeneous tumors in both intracardiac and extracardiac sites. Furthermore, tumor incidence was independent of cell dose, transplant duration, and the presence or absence of myocardial infarction. Conclusions/Significance Our study demonstrates that allogeneic iPSC transplantation in the heart will likely result in in situ tumorigenesis, and that cells leaked from the beating heart are a potential source of tumor spread, underscoring the importance of evaluating the safety of future iPSC therapy for cardiac disease.
Individually Rational, Balanced-Budget Bayesian Mechanisms and the Informed Principal Problem

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We demonstrate that all social choice rules that generate a nonnegative ex-ante surplus, including ex-post efficient ones, can generically be implemented via such mechanisms for any profile of the utility functions. The aggregate expected surplus in these mechanisms can be distributed in an arbitrary way. Also generically, any ex-post efficient social choice rule can be implemented in an informed principal framework, i.e. when the mechanism is offered by one of the informed parties. Only ex-post efficient social choice rules that allocate all surplus to the party designing the mechanism are both sequential equilibrium outcomes and neutral optima, i.e. outcomes that can never be blocked. This result implies that even an informed principal can extract all surplus from players in a Bayesian mechanism
A prognostic factor study of disease-free interval and survival following enucleation for uveal melanoma.

Prognostic indicators of uveal melanoma disease-free interval and survival following enucleation were evaluated for 267 patients. The median follow-up time was 17 years. Analysis involved Kaplan-Meier survival curves based on time to tumor-related deaths and multivariate proportional hazards analysis, which provides an estimate of the "force of mortality. " Prognostic indicators considered included demographic, clinical, and histopathological factors. Cell type was classified according to the number of epithelioid cells present per high-power field (HPF) on light microscopy. Various classifications of size of the tumor were compared for prognostic value. The five leading predictors of survival in order of importance were as follows: (1) number of epithelioid cells per HPF, (2) largest dimension of the tumor, (3) location of the anterior margin of the tumor, (4) invasion to the line of transection, and (5) degree of pigmentation. Risk categories for survival were constructed based on the three leading prognostic factors.
Top-Down Modulation of the Auditory Steady-State Response in a Task-Switch Paradigm

Auditory selective attention is an important mechanism for top-down selection of the vast amount of auditory information our perceptual system is exposed to. In the present study, the impact of attention on auditory steady-state responses is investigated. This issue is still a matter of debate and recent findings point to a complex pattern of attentional effects on the auditory steady state response (aSSR). The present study aimed at shedding light on the involvement of ipsilateral and contralateral activations to the attended sound taking into account hemispheric differences and a possible dependency on modulation frequency. In aid of this, a dichotic listening experiment was designed using amplitude-modulated tones that were presented to the left and right ear simultaneously. Participants had to detect target tones in a cued ear while their brain activity was assessed using MEG. Thereby, a modulation of the aSSR by attention could be revealed, interestingly restricted to the left hemisphere and 20 Hz responses: contralateral activations were enhanced while ipsilateral activations turned out to be reduced. Thus, our findings support and extend recent findings, showing that auditory attention can influence the aSSR, but only under specific circumstances and in a complex pattern regarding the different effects for ipsilateral and contralateral activations.
A Systematic Review of Biomarkers for Disease Progression in Alzheimer's Disease

Background Using surrogate biomarkers for disease progression as endpoints in neuroprotective clinical trials may help differentiate symptomatic effects of potential neuroprotective agents from true slowing of the neurodegenerative process. A systematic review was undertaken to determine what biomarkers for disease progression in Alzheimer's disease exist and how well they perform. Methods MEDLINE and Embase (1950–2011) were searched using five search strategies. Abstracts were assessed to identify papers meriting review in full. Studies of participants with probable Alzheimer's disease diagnosed by formal criteria were included. We made no restriction on age, disease duration, or drug treatment. We only included studies with a longitudinal design, in which the putative biomarker and clinical measure were both measured at least twice, as this is the only appropriate study design to use when developing a disease progression biomarker. We included studies which attempted to draw associations between the changes over time in the biomarker used to investigate disease progression and a clinical measure of disease progression. Results Fifty-nine studies were finally included. The commonest biomarker modality examined was brain MRI (17/59, 29% of included studies). Median follow-up in included studies was only 1.0 (IQR 0.8–1.7) year and most studies only measured the putative biomarker and clinical measure twice. Included studies were generally of poor quality with small numbers of participants (median 31 (IQR 17 to 64)), applied excessively restrictive study entry criteria, had flawed methodologies and conducted overly simplistic statistical analyses without adjusting for confounding factors. Conclusions We found insufficient evidence to recommend the use of any biomarker as an outcome measure for disease progression in Alzheimer's disease trials. However, further investigation into the efficacy of using MRI measurements of ventricular volume and whole brain volume appeared to be merited. A provisional ‘roadmap’ to improve the quality of future disease progression biomarker studies is presented.
Accounting for measurement error in uncertainty modeling and decision‐making using indicator kriging and p‐field simulation: application to a dioxin contaminated site

In many environmental studies spatial variability is viewed as the only source of uncertainty while measurement errors tend to be ignored. This article presents an indicator kriging‐based approach to account for measurement errors in the modeling of uncertainty prevailing at unsampled locations. Probability field simulation is then used to assess the probability that the average pollutant concentration within remediation units exceeds a regulatory threshold, and probability maps are used to identify hazardous units that need to be remediated. This approach is applied to two types of dioxin data (composite and single spoon samples) with different measurement errors which were collected at the Piazza Road dioxin site, an EPA Superfund site located in Missouri. A validation study shows that the proportion of contaminated soil cores provides a reasonable probability threshold to identify hazardous remediation units. When a lower probability threshold is chosen, the total remediation costs are unreasonably high while false negatives are unacceptably frequent for a higher probability threshold. The choice of this threshold becomes critical as the sampling density decreases. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Effects of Exercise on Cardiovascular Outcomes in Monkeys With Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease

Objective—Exercise reduces the risk for coronary heart disease. However, the mechanisms mediating the beneficial effects of exercise remain ambiguous. In particular, it is uncertain whether exercise inhibits the development of atherosclerosis, a major pathobiologic process underlying heart disease. Methods and Results—To address this question, adult male monkeys were fed an atherogenic diet while assigned to one of four experimental conditions for 34 months: 1) runner/no group disruption, ie, “stable” (n=19); 2) runner plus frequent social group disruption, ie, “unstable” (n=19); 3) sedentary/stable (n=15); or 4) sedentary/unstable (n=18). Neither exposure to exercise nor social group disruption significantly affected the resulting coronary artery atherosclerosis extent or lumen areas (all ANOVA values, P >0.05). When compared with sedentary individuals, exercise animals had lower resting heart rates (119.0±3 vs132.0±3 bpm, P =0.002), greater echocardiographically measured left ventricular ejection fractions (77.2±0.01% vs 73.8±0.01%, P =0.02), greater quantitative angiographically measured dilation of coronary arteries to phenylephrine (2.6±1% vs −3.7±1% change from baseline diameter, P =0.003), and a reduced cortisol response to an adrenocorticotropin challenge. These measures were not significantly affected by social condition. Conclusions—Thus, exercise improved some measures of cardiovascular health and reduced stress responsivity but did not inhibit progression of coronary artery atherosclerosis or promote positive artery remodeling. It is concluded that exercise may exert cardioprotective effects without influencing atherosclerosis extent.
Persistence and change in behavioral/emotional problems reported by parents of children aged 4–14: an epidemiological study

Crucial to our understanding of psychopathology in children is information on the stability and change of behavioral/emotional problems and competencies across time. Existing studies, reviewed in this article, provide only limited answers due to one or more of the following factors: restriction of the sample to a single locality, the use of selected samples, large sample attrition, the use of different assessment instruments at different times, the small number of specific behavioral/emotional problems or the use of very broad categories of functioning. The present study was designed to test the persistence and change of behavioral/emotional problems and competencies as reported by parents of 1,412 children aged 4-14 over a two-year period in a representative sample of the general population. At both points, standardized parents' reports were obtained using the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). A recovery rate of 80.2% was obtained. Our study is the only one, as far as we known, to present follow-up data separately for ages covering the preschool period to adolescence, making it possible to compare stabilities in the occurence of behavioral/emotional problems across various developmental levels. Over the two-year follow-up period, there was a significant decrease in problem scores. Although possible, it is unlikely that the mental health of children in our sample increased very much. A decrease in problem scores over time has been demonstrated for clinical as well as general population samples in other studies as well. No satisfactory explanations are available for this phenomenon. It is important, however, that studies employing a retest design take account of this phenomenon. Irrespective of changes in the magnitude of group scores over time, stability coefficients can tell us whether individual children tend to preserve their rank orders. The stability coefficients between Time 1 and Time 2 total problem scores ranged from . 62 (girls, aged 4-5) to . 71 (boys, aged 6-11). No significant differences between stability coefficients for different age-groups and for both sexes could be demonstrated. The changes in scores across time for individual items were consistent with the cross-sectional data of our earlier study (Verhulst et al. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 1985, 72, suppl. 323). Stability coefficients for social competence scores at both times of assessment were generally somewhat weaker than those found for problem scores. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Adolescents’ academic achievement and life satisfaction: the role of parents’ education

Drawing on the background of positive psychology, there has only recently been a focus on adolescents’ life satisfaction (LS) in the context of education. Studies examining the relationship between adolescents’ academic achievement and LS have shown conflicting results and the reasons are not fully understood. The present study investigated the role of parents’ education as a potential moderator of the relationship between adolescents’ academic achievement and LS. A sample of German high school students (N = 411) reported parents’ educational attainment, as an indicator of family socio-economic status, and students’ academic achievement was operationalized by grade point average in five subjects. Results indicated that only mothers’ education functioned as a moderator of the relationship between academic achievement and students’ LS. The association between academic achievement and LS was only found in the group of students whose mothers had achieved the same or a higher education (at least high school diploma) as their own children. Fathers’ educational attainment, however, was not a significant moderator of the respective relationship. Directions for future research and the differential influences of fathers’ and mothers’ education are discussed with regard to potential underlying processes.
Wireless RF camera monitoring for underwater cooperative robotic archaeological applications

The increasing demand for underwater robotic intervention systems around the world in several application domains requires of more versatile and inexpensive systems. One example of such applications is the archaeology, where experimented divers study and reconstruct the history, recovering key objects in order to classify and preserve them properly. Moreover, this task is especially dangerous at deeps below 50 meters, where the archaeologist needs more sophisticated diving equipment and degree of experience due to high risk to which it is exposed caused by possible decompression situations. The use of supervised semi-autonomous robots can help to this task. To achieve this goal, a wireless communication system can provide freedom of movements to the robot and, at the same time, will allow the operator to get camera feedback and supervise the intervention.
Neurosonological Examination: A Non-Invasive Approach for the Detection of Cerebrovascular Impairment in AD

There has been a growing interest in vascular impairment associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This interest was stimulated by the findings of higher incidence of vascular risk factors in AD. Signs of vascular impairment were investigated notably in the field of imaging methods. Our aim was to explore ultrasonographic studies of extra- and intracranial vessels in patients with AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and define implications for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of the disease. The most frequently studied parameters with extracranial ultrasound are intima-media thickness in common carotid artery, carotid atherosclerosis, and total cerebral blood flow. The transcranial ultrasound concentrates mostly on flow velocities, pulsatility indices, cerebrovascular reserve capacity, and cerebral microembolization. Studies suggest that there is morphological and functional impairment of cerebral circulation in AD compared to healthy subjects. Ultrasound as a non-invasive method could be potentially useful in identifying individuals in a higher risk of progression of cognitive decline.
Continual reassessment method: a practical design for phase 1 clinical trials in cancer.

This paper looks at a new approach to the design and analysis of Phase 1 clinical trials in cancer. The basic idea and motivation behind the approach stem from an attempt to reconcile the needs of dose-finding experimentation with the ethical demands of established medical practice. It is argued that for these trials the particular shape of the dose toxicity curve is of little interest. Attention focuses rather on identifying a dose with a given targeted toxicity level and on concentrating experimentation at that which all current available evidence indicates to be the best estimate of this level. Such an approach not only makes an explicit attempt to meet ethical requirements but also enables the use of models whose only requirements are that locally (i.e., around the dose corresponding to the targeted toxicity level) they reasonably well approximate the true probability of toxic response. Although a large number of models could be contemplated, we look at a particularly simple one. Extensive simulations show the model to have real promise.
Word and Sentence Tokenization with Hidden Markov Models

We present a novel method (“waste”) for the segmentation of text into tokens and sentences. Our approach makes use of a Hidden Markov Model for the detection of segment boundaries. Model parameters can be estimated from pre-segmented text which is widely available in the form of treebanks or aligned multi-lingual corpora. We formally define the waste boundary detection model and evaluate the system’s performance on corpora from various languages as well as a small corpus of computer-mediated communication.
Stimulated Raman Scattering and Four-Wave Mixing Effects on Crosstalk of Multicore Fibers

The numerical analysis of inter-core crosstalk in multicore fibers (MCFs) based on a novel theoretical approach that includes stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and four-wave mixing (FWM) nonlinearities in the presence of random perturbations is presented. The coupled propagation equations can be employed to numerically analyze wavelength-division multiplexed systems with homogenous and heterogeneous cores. Propagation of ten optical channels, 200-GHz spaced, along 10 km of a homogeneous two-core fiber shows that the wavelength dependence of the relative average inter-core crosstalk induced by SRS and FWM is comparable with the one produced by only considering the wavelength dependence of the linear coupling coefficient, thus allowing tuning of the overall effect. Our formalism represents a valuable tool in the design of future multi-channel MCF systems.