Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fault Hiding and Reliable Regulation in Control Systems Subject to Polynomial Exogenous Signals

This paper addresses a regulation problem under a fault-tolerance constraint. Specifically, the goal consists in designing a control system which guarantees signal tracking and disturbance rejection when an arbitrary number of sensors and/or actuators faults occur, that is, when some feedback loops open. The considered plants are Linear Time Invariant (LTI), asymptotically stable and subject to perturbations, and the exogenous signals are polynomial in time. The regulator is composed by a nominal controller supervised by a reconfiguration block. The former solves the regulation problem above when all the sensors and actuators are operational, and is suitably modified by the latter in case of faults. The structure of the regulator is the one adopted in what is called fault hiding approach to fault-tolerant control. First, it is discussed the extent to which signal tracking and disturbance rejection can be achieved for each pattern of sensors and actuators faults. Further, the actions to be performed by the reconfiguration block are established. Then, the synthesis of the nominal controller is dealt with, and necessary and sufficient conditions for its existence are given. Finally, a nominal controller is proposed, which has the least possible order and renders particularly simple the implementation of the actions of the reconfiguration block.
University of Birmingham Characterisation of mutations in GroES that allow GroEL to function as a single ring.

25 The chaperonin GroEL contains two seven-subunit rings, and allosteric signals between them are 26 required to complete the GroEL reaction cycle. For this reason SR1, a mutant of GroEL that forms 27 only single rings, cannot function as a chaperone. Mutations in SR1 that restore chaperone function 28 weaken its interaction with the cochaperonin GroES. We predicted that GroES mutants with reduced 29 afﬁnity for GroEL would also restore function to SR1. To test this, we mutated residues in GroES in 30 and near its contact site with GroEL. Nearly half of the mutants showed partial function with SR1. 31 Two mutants were conﬁrmed to have reduced afﬁnity for GroEL. Intriguingly, some GroES mutants 32 were able to function with active single ring mutants of GroEL. 33 (cid:2) 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies.
CHA2DS2‐VASc scores for outcome prediction in acute ischaemic stroke

The CHADS2 and CHA2DS2‐VASc scores are clinical risk stratification instruments that are used clinically to assess the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the prestroke CHADS2 and CHA2DS2‐VASc scores could be useful for predicting infarction severity and long‐term outcomes in patients with acute ischaemic stroke.
Biomechanical Comparison of Four Different Atlantoaxial Posterior Fixation Constructs in Adults: A Finite Element Study

Study Design. Finite element analysis. Objective. To compare the biomechanical stability imparted to the C1 and C2 vertebrae by the transarticular (TA), C1 lateral mass (LM)-C2 pedicle (PS), C1LM-C2 pars, and C1LM-C2 translaminar (TL) screw fixation techniques. Summary of Background Data. Cadaveric biomechanical studies of several atlantoaxial posterior fixation techniques have been performed, showing significant heterogeneity in biomechanical properties among the studies. Methods. From computed tomography images, a nonlinear intact three-dimensional C1–2 finite element model was developed and validated. Four finite element models were reconstructed from different C1–2 fixation techniques. The range of motion (ROM) and maximum von Misses stresses for the four screw techniques were compared under flexion, extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation. Results. C1LM-C2PS showed the greatest decrease in ROM with flexion/extension and lateral bending. C1–2TA and C1LM-C2 pars showed less ROM reduction than the other techniques, in flexion/extension. C1LM-C2TL showed the least decrease in ROM during axial rotation. For C1–2TA, the maximum stress was in the C1–2 joint region. In the C1LM-C2PS, the C1 rod head, C2 pars screw, and C2TL screw were stressed at the C2 rod head. The maximal von Mises stress on the C1–2TA at the C1–2 joint site was the highest at flexion/extension, whereas the C1LM-C2PS had the lowest stress on the screw at flexion/extension and lateral bending. The C1LM-C2TL showed the highest stress in axial rotation and lateral bending. Conclusion. In this study, C1LM-C2PS fixation was the most stable technique. If surgeons have to use other fixation methods besides the C2 pedicle screw, they need to be aware that additional fixation or postoperative immobilization may be required to achieve ROM restriction. Careful observation at the maximum stress site on the screw including screw loosening, screw-bone interface disruption or screw fracture will be necessary during follow-up imaging examinations (x-ray and computed tomography scan) after atlantoaxial fixation. Level of Evidence: N/A
An Iterative Flux Tracing Method Without Deutsch Assumption for Ion-Flow Field of AC/DC Hybrid Transmission Lines

It is an attractive way to build the ac/dc hybrid overhead lines to increase the capability of scarce transmission corridors. In this paper, a new approach is present to solve the fully coupled ion-flow problem of ac/dc hybrid lines. The 2-D transport equation of ions is transferred to 1-D fully coupled characteristic equations along each flux line, based on the methodology of the flux tracing method (FTM). An iterative process is proposed to reduce the error due to Deutsch assumption used in FTM. The calculation is efficient as only 1-D transport equations are solved. The iteration converges within only a few times since all the boundary conditions can be satisfied at each step. Results coincide well with measurements and calculations in the previous literature. Comparison shows that Deutsch assumption may lead to significant errors for the hybrid models and the proposed modification should be used.
Modelling of solid-state and excimer laser processes for 3 D micromachining

An efficient simulation method has recently been developed for multi-pulse ablation processes. This is based on pulseby-pulse propagation of the machined surface according to one of several phenomenological models for the lasermaterial interaction. The technique allows quantitative predictions to be made about the surface shapes of complex machined parts, given only a minimal set of input data for parameter calibration. In the case of direct-write machining of polymers or glasses with ns-duration pulses, this data set can typically be limited to the surface profiles of a small number of standard test patterns. The use of phenomenological models for the laser-material interaction, calibrated by experimental feedback, allows fast simulation, and can achieve a high degree of accuracy for certain combinations of material, laser and geometry. In this paper, the capabilities and limitations of the approach are discussed, and recent results are presented for structures machined in SU8 photoresist.
Cost-Effectiveness of Pre-exposure HIV Prophylaxis During Pregnancy and Breastfeeding in Sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction:Antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for the prevention of HIV acquisition is cost-effective when delivered to those at substantial risk. Despite a high incidence of HIV infection among pregnant and breastfeeding women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a theoretical increased risk of preterm birth on PrEP could outweigh the HIV prevention benefit. Methods:We developed a decision analytic model to evaluate a strategy of daily oral PrEP during pregnancy and breastfeeding in SSA. We approached the analysis from a health care system perspective across a lifetime time horizon. Model inputs were derived from existing literature and local sources. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of PrEP versus no PrEP was calculated in 2015 U.S. dollars per disability-adjusted life year (DALY) averted. We evaluated the effect of uncertainty in baseline estimates through one-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Results:PrEP administered to pregnant and breastfeeding women in SSA was cost-effective. In a base case of 10,000 women, the administration of PrEP averted 381 HIV infections but resulted in 779 more preterm births. PrEP was more costly per person ($450 versus $117), but resulted in fewer disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (3.15 versus 3.49). The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $965/DALY averted was below the recommended regional threshold for cost-effectiveness of $6462/DALY. Probabilistic sensitivity analyses demonstrated robustness of the model. Conclusions:Providing PrEP to pregnant and breastfeeding women in SSA is likely cost-effective, although more data are needed about adherence and safety. For populations at high risk of HIV acquisition, PrEP may be considered as part of a broader combination HIV prevention strategy.
Added value and limitations of amyloid-PET imaging: review and analysis of selected cases of mild cognitive impairment and dementia

ABSTRACT Amyloid-positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the brain detects elevated amyloid-beta (amyloid-β) neuritic plaques in vivo, which can be helpful in appropriately selected cases of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia, when Alzheimer’s disease remains a possible etiology, after a comprehensive clinical evaluation. We reviewed cases of cognitively impaired patients who underwent amyloid-PET imaging because of diagnostic uncertainty. Pre- and post-PET elements of diagnosis and management were first compared, to assess impact of scan results on clinical decision-making, and then an analysis of those decisions was undertaken in appropriate clinical situations, to delineate the added value and limitations of amyloid-PET imaging. The potential benefits and limitations of this diagnostic tool are important to understand in an era when the utility of such scans in clinical practice is evolving.
Magnetic States of Nanoparticles with RKKY Interaction

Conditions of phase transitions in systems of identical ferromagnetic spherical nanoparticles randomly distributed in metal nonmagnetic matrix and superlattices of small number of nanoparticles with the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction are researched. In the framework of the Ising model the behavior of superspins is well described with the random interaction field method. The alteration of the effective magnetic moment due to the change in volume affects the choice of the magnetic state of the system: ferromagnetic spin glass or antiferromagnetic spin glass. The ground state of superlattice depends on the distance between particles.
Denoised Senone I-Vectors for Robust Speaker Verification

Recently, it has been shown that senone i-vectors, whose posteriors are produced by senone deep neural networks (DNNs), outperform the conventional Gaussian mixture model (GMM) i-vectors in both speaker and language recognition tasks. The success of senone i-vectors relies on the capability of the DNN to incorporate phonetic information into the i-vector extraction process. In this paper, we argue that to apply senone i-vectors in noisy environments, it is important to robustify the phonetically discriminative acoustic features and senone posteriors estimated by the DNN. To this end, we propose a deep architecture formed by stacking a deep belief network on top of a denoising autoencoder (DAE). After backpropagation fine-tuning, the network, referred to as denoising autoencoder–deep neural network (DAE–DNN), facilitates the extraction of robust phonetically-discriminitive bottleneck (BN) features and senone posteriors for i-vector extraction. We refer to the resulting i-vectors as denoised BN-based senone i-vectors. Results on NIST 2012 SRE show that senone i-vectors outperform the conventional GMM i-vectors. More interestingly, the BN features are not only phonetically discriminative, results suggest that they also contain sufficient speaker information to produce BN-based senone i-vectors that outperform the conventional senone i-vectors. This work also shows that DAE training is more beneficial to BN feature extraction than senone posterior estimation.
Modeling Distinctive Feature Emergence

While these two claims are not contradictory, this paper provides an account of the abundance of natural classes without recourse to innate features. Evidence is provided in Section 3 from a simulation of class emergence which is based on readily-observable aspects of phonetic similarity, provided in turn by a phonetic similarity metric detailed in Section 2. One way to examine the claim that common classes are the ones which are statable in terms of distinctive features is to conduct a survey of classes that are involved in sound patterns, and see how many of these can be accounted for in terms of features in different theories.1 Mielke (2004) reports on phonologically active classes from grammars of 561 languages, about 17,000 sound patterns. A phonologically active class is defined as any group of sounds which, to the exclusion of all other sounds in a given inventory, (a) undergo a phonological pattern, or (b) trigger a phonological pattern. The database contains 6077 distinct classes fitting this description. All of these classes are naturally occurring, and the terms “natural” and “unnatural” will only be used in reference to a specific feature theory. A class of sounds is natural with respect to a particular theory if the class is statable as a conjunction of features in that theory. A class of sounds is unnatural with respect to a particular theory if it is not statable as a conjunction of features, but rather requires special treatment, such as disjunction or subtraction of natural classes, or is unstatable. The results show that unnatural classes are not particularly rare. 3640 classes (59.90%) are natural according to the feature system of Preliminaries to Speech Analysis (Jakobson, Fant, and Halle 1954), while 4313 classes (70.97%) are natural according to the feature system of The Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle 1968), and 3872 classes (63.72%) are natural according to Unified Feature Theory (Clements and Hume 1995). 1496 classes (24.65%) are unnatural according to all three of these feature theories. Figure 1 shows the distribution of natural and unnatural classes in terms of the Unified Feature Theory feature system, which in this case is fairly representative of the three systems examined. In this chart, unique feature specifications are arranged along the x-axis in order of decreasing frequency. Light bars represent classes which are natural in Unified Feature Theory, and dark bars represent
Prevalence and risk factors of diabetic retinopathy among Jordanian patients with type 2 diabetes.

Objective To estimate the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) who attended the National Center of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Genetics (NCDEG) in Jordan, and to determine the relationship between duration of DM, hyperglycemia, smoking, hypertension, age, gender, body mass index (BMI) and diabetic retinopathy. Methods This is a cross-sectional study that investigates a sample of 1000 diabetic patients suffering from type 2 DM who attended the NCDEG between September 2006 and January 2007. Eye examination by an ophthalmologist under adequate dilatation was performed in all patients. Socio-demographic, clinical and laboratory data were obtained. Diabetic Retinopathy was defined according to the International Clinical Diabetic Retinopathy Severity Scale adopted by American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) and the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO). Statistical analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 11.5). Results Out of 1000 patients; 51 percent were male, 49 percent were female. The mean age and duration of diabetes were 57.8 and 9.6 years, respectively. The prevalence of diabetic retinopathy in patients was 34.1 percent. Non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy was documented in 24.5 percent, while 9.6 percent had proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Duration of DM and hyperglycemia, as measured by HbA1C, were statistically significantly associated with diabetic retinopathy. Conclusion Diabetic retinopathy is highly prevalent among Jordanian patients with type 2 DM. Serious national efforts should be directed towards increasing primary prevention through regular ophthalmic examinations and strict glycemic control in patients with type 2 DM.
Highly Sensitive Soft Tactile Sensors for an Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand

This paper describes the design and realization of novel tactile sensors based on soft materials and magnetic sensing. In particular, the goal was to realize: 1) soft; 2) robust; 3) small; and 4) low-cost sensors that can be easily fabricated and integrated on robotic devices that interact with the environment. We targeted a number of desired features, the most important being: 1) high sensitivity; 2) low hysteresis; and 3) repeatability. The sensor consists of a silicone body in which a small magnet is immersed; an Hall-effect sensor placed below the silicone body measures the magnetic field generated by the magnet, which changes when the magnet is displaced due to an applied external pressure. Two different versions of the sensor have been manufactured, characterized, and mounted on an anthropomorphic robotic hand. Experiments, in which the hand interacts with real-world objects, are reported.
As-rigid-as-possible shape manipulation

We present an interactive system that lets a user move and deform a two-dimensional shape without manually establishing a skeleton or freeform deformation (FFD) domain beforehand. The shape is represented by a triangle mesh and the user moves several vertices of the mesh as constrained handles. The system then computes the positions of the remaining free vertices by minimizing the distortion of each triangle. While physically based simulation or iterative refinement can also be used for this purpose, they tend to be slow. We present a two-step closed-form algorithm that achieves real-time interaction. The first step finds an appropriate rotation for each triangle and the second step adjusts its scale. The key idea is to use quadratic error metrics so that each minimization problem becomes a system of linear equations. After solving the simultaneous equations at the beginning of interaction, we can quickly find the positions of free vertices during interactive manipulation. Our approach successfully conveys a sense of rigidity of the shape, which is difficult in space-warp approaches. With a multiple-point input device, even beginners can easily move, rotate, and deform shapes at will.
Antibody response to seasonal influenza vaccination in patients with multiple sclerosis receiving immunomodulatory therapy

We have previously shown that patients with multiple sclerosis receiving immunomodulatory treatment have reduced seroprotection rates after influenza immunization. The aim of this study was to further investigate the influence of immunomodulatory therapies on the antibody response and seroprotection rates in patients immunized with seasonal influenza vaccine in 2012/2013 compared with healthy controls.
Chemical modification of graphene

In this thesis investigations into chemically modified graphene structures are presented. Chemical functionalization of graphene is the chemical attachment of molecules or atoms to the graphene surface via covalent or Van der Waals bonds, this process offers a unique way to tailor the properties of graphene to make it useful for a wide range of device applications. One type of chemical functionalization presented in this thesis is fluorination of graphene which is the covalent attachment of fluorine to the carbon atoms of graphene and the resultant material is fluorographene which is a wide bandgap semiconductor. For low fluorine coverage the low temperature electron transport is through localized states due to the presence of disorder induced sub-gap states. For high fluorine coverage the electron transport can be explained by a lightly doped semiconductor model where transport is through thermal activation across an energy gap between an impurity and conduction bands. On the other hand, at low temperatures the disorder induced sub-gap density of states dominates the electrical properties, and the conduction takes place via hopping through these localized states. In this thesis it is also shown that electron beam irradiation can be used to tune the coverage of fluorine adatoms and therefore control energy gap between the impurity and conduction bands. Futhermore, electron beam irradiation also offers a valuable way to pattern conductive structures in fluorinated graphene via the irradiation-induced dissociation of fluorine from the fluorinated graphene. This technique can be extended to the patterning of semiconducting nano-ribbons in fluorinated graphene where the spatial localization of electrons is just a few nm. The second type of chemical functionalization presented in this thesis is the intercalation of few layer graphene with ferric chloride which greatly enhances the electrical conductivity of few layer graphene materials making them the best known transparent conductors.
Experimentally reducing species abundance indirectly affects food web structure and robustness

Studies on the robustness of ecological communities suggest that the loss or reduction in abundance of individual species can lead to secondary and cascading extinctions. However, most such studies have been simulation-based analyses of the effect of primary extinction on food web structure. In a field experiment we tested the direct and indirect effects of reducing the abundance of a common species, focusing on the diverse and self-contained assemblage of arthropods associated with an abundant Brazilian shrub, Baccharis dracunculifolia D.C. (Asteraceae). Over a 5-month period we experimentally reduced the abundance of Baccharopelma dracunculifoliae (Sternorrhyncha: Psyllidae), the commonest galling species associated with B. dracunculifolia, in 15 replicate plots paired with 15 control plots. We investigated direct effects of the manipulation on parasitoids attacking B. dracunculifoliae, as well as indirect effects (mediated via a third species or through the environment) on 10 other galler species and 50 associated parasitoid species. The experimental manipulation significantly increased parasitism on B. dracunculifoliae in the treatment plots, but did not significantly alter either the species richness or abundance of other galler species. Compared to control plots, food webs in manipulated plots had significantly lower values of weighted connectance, interaction evenness and robustness (measured as simulated tolerance to secondary extinction), even when B. dracunculifoliae was excluded from calculations. Parasitoid species were almost entirely specialized to individual galler species, so the observed effects of the manipulation on food web structure could not have propagated via the documented trophic links. Instead, they must have spread either through trophic links not included in the webs (e.g. shared predators) or non-trophically (e.g. through changes in habitat availability). Our results highlight that the inclusion of both trophic and non-trophic direct and indirect interactions is essential to understand the structure and dynamics of even apparently discrete ecological communities.