Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of a High-Power Reversible Converter in a Hybrid Traction Power Supply System

A high-power reversible converter can achieve a variety of functions, such as recovering regenerative braking energy, expanding traction power capacity, and improving an alternating current (AC) grid power factor. A new hybrid traction power supply scheme, which consists of a high-power reversible converter and two 12-pulse diode rectifiers, is proposed. A droop control method based on load current feed-forward is adopted to realize the load distribution between the reversible converter and the existing 12-pulse diode rectifiers. The direct current (DC) short-circuit characteristics of the reversible converter is studied, then the relationship between the peak fault current and the circuit parameters is obtained from theoretical calculations and validated by computer simulation. The first two sets of 2 MW reversible converters have been successfully applied in Beijing Metro Line 10, the proposed hybrid application scheme and coordinated control strategy are verified, and 11.15% of average energy-savings is reached.
Influence of incorporation of ZnO nanoparticles and biaxial orientation on mechanical and oxygen barrier properties of polypropylene films for food packaging applications

In this work, the effect of zinc oxide (ZnO) concentration and shape on processing and properties of new biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP)-ZnO nanocomposites was studied. The use of spherical nanoparticles and nanorods was expected to differently influence the properties of the final material. Films of isotactic polypropylene prepared with different ZnO incorporation were biaxially oriented under conditions of temperature and strain rate that were similar to those encountered in a commercial film process. Scanning electron microscopy analysis was performed to visualize the dispersion degree of the ZnO nanoparticles in the polymer matrix and to observe the surface and the orientation of the elongated nanoparticles. Furthermore, the prepared ZnO-BOPP nanocomposites were evaluated for both mechanical and oxygen barrier property enhancement. A good combination of mechanical and oxygen barrier properties was obtained for the ZnO-BOPP films. This result makes the ZnO-BOPP nanocomposite a proper material for applications such as food packaging. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2011
Machine Teaching: An Inverse Problem to Machine Learning and an Approach Toward Optimal Education

I draw the reader's attention to machine teaching, the problem of finding an optimal training set given a machine learning algorithm and a target model. In addition to generating fascinating mathematical questions for computer scientists to ponder, machine teaching holds the promise of enhancing education and personnel training. The Socratic dialogue style aims to stimulate critical thinking.
Chronic Oxaliplatin Resistance Induces Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition in Colorectal Cancer Cell Lines

Purpose: Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a process whereby cells acquire molecular alterations that facilitate cell motility and invasion. In preliminary studies, we observed that oxaliplatin-resistant (OxR) colorectal cancer (CRC) cells underwent morphologic changes suggestive of a migratory phenotype, leading us to hypothesize that OxR CRC cells undergo EMT. Experimental Design: The human CRC cell lines KM12L4 and HT29 were exposed to increasing doses of oxaliplatin to establish stable cell lines resistant to oxaliplatin. Migration and invasion were assessed by modified Boyden chamber assays. Morphologic and molecular changes characteristic of EMT were determined by immunofluorescence staining and Western blot analyses. Results: The OxR cells showed phenotypic changes consistent with EMT: spindle-cell shape, loss of polarity, intercellular separation, and pseudopodia formation. KM12L4 and HT29 OxR cells exhibited an ∼8- to 15-fold increase in migrating and invading cells, respectively (P < 0.005 for both). Immunofluorescence staining of OxR cells revealed translocation of E-cadherin and β-catenin from their usual membrane-bound complex to the cytoplasm and nucleus, respectively. The OxR cells also had decreased expression of the epithelial adhesion molecules E-cadherin and plakoglobin and an increase in the mesenchymal marker vimentin. The KM12L4 OxR cells exhibited increased nuclear expression of Snail, an EMT-regulatory transcription factor, whereas the HT29 OxR cells exhibited an increase in nuclear expression of the EMT-associated transcription factor nuclear factor κB. Conclusion: We hypothesize that induction of EMT may contribute to the decreased efficacy of therapy in chemoresistant CRC, as the tumor cells switch from a proliferative to invasive phenotype. Further understanding of the mechanisms of chemoresistance in CRC will enable improvements in chemotherapy for metastatic disease.
Miniaturization of artificial magnetic conductors

In this paper, we introduce a novel multilayer artificial magnetic conductor providing a λ/60 unit cell periodicity while maintaining a 10% bandwidth. Full-wave simulations are mainly driven to give a proof of concept of this miniaturization method. Experimental validation of simple cases leads to a very good agreement with both numerical results and analytical method specifically de-velopped to model multilayer structures.
Brain natriuretic peptide in pulmonary arterial hypertension: biomarker and potential therapeutic agent

B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is a member of the natriuretic peptide family, a group of widely distributed, but evolutionarily conserved, polypeptide mediators that exert myriad cardiovascular effects. BNP is a potent vasodilator with mitogenic, hypertrophic and pro-inflammatory properties that is upregulated in pulmonary hypertensive diseases. Circulating levels of BNP correlate with mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP) and pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR) in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Elevated plasma BNP levels are associated with increased mortality in patients with PAH and a fall in BNP levels after therapy is associated with improved survival. These findings have important clinical implications in that a noninvasive blood test may be used to identify PAH patients at high-risk of decompensation and to guide pulmonary vasodilator therapy. BNP also has several biologic effects that could be beneficial to patients with PAH. However, lack of a convenient method for achieving sustained increases in circulating BNP levels has impeded the development of BNP as a therapy for treating pulmonary hypertension. New technologies that allow transdermal or oral administration of the natriuretic peptides have the potential to greatly accelerate research into therapeutic use of BNP for cor pulmonale and pulmonary vascular diseases. This review will examine the basic science and clinical research that has led to our understanding of the role of BNP in cardiovascular physiology, its use as a biomarker of right ventricular function and its therapeutic potential for managing patients with pulmonary vascular disease.
A novel method to monitor human stress states using ultra-short-term ECG spectral feature

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal represents autonomous nervous system responses to human emotional states. This research demonstrates that the spectral ECG features within ultra-short-term window duration (10-sec) could be utilized to monitor human emotional states. Experiments were conducted with five different stress protocols including mental and physical tasks. Experimental results showed feasible classification performance of ECG spectral features compared to that of HRV parameters. The averaged classification accuracy across 13 subjects and all stress protocols was 81.16% using Naïve Bayes algorithm. In addition, the results showed stress responses in mental arithmetic tasks was the most separable from those in resting states (87.31%) compared to the other stress situations.
Application of response surface methodology for optimization of paracetamol particles formation by RESS method

Ultrafine particles of paracetamol were produced by Rapid Expansion of Supercritical Solution (RESS). The experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of extraction temperature (313-353 K), extraction pressure (10-18MPa), preexpansion temperature (363-403 K), and postexpansion temperature (273-323 K) on particles size and morphology of paracetamol particles. The characterization of the particles was determined by Scanning ElectronMicroscopy (SEM), Transmission ElectronMicroscopy (TEM), and Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis. The average particle size of the original paracetamol was 20.8 µm, while the average particle size of paracetamol after nanonization via the RESS process was 0.46 µm depending on the experimental conditions used. Moreover, the morphology of the processed particles changed to spherical and regular while the virgin particles of paracetamol were needle-shape and irregular. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the process parameters. The extraction temperature, 347 K; extraction pressure, 12MPa; preexpansion temperature, 403 K; and postexpansion temperature, 322 K was found to be the optimum conditions to achieve the minimum average particle size of paracetamol.
agentTool process editor: supporting the design of tailored agent-based processes

This paper describes the agentTool Process Editor (APE), an Eclipse plug-in based on the Eclipse Process Framework. The aim of APE is to facilitate the design, verification, and management of custom agent-oriented software development processes. APE provides five basic structures. The Library is a repository of agent-oriented method fragments. A Process Editor allows the management of tailored processes. Task Constraints help process engineers specify guidelines to constrain how tasks can be assembled, while a Process Consistency mechanism verifies the consistency of tailored processes against those constraints. Finally, the Process Management integrates APE with the agentTool III development environment and provides a way to measure project progress using Earned Value Analysis.
Co-opetition of cooperative and competitive relationship: A network analysis approach

This Study investigates how firms identify cooperators and competitors in the industry. The traditional approach was a good contribution, but it only used the dyadic view, which is unable to find triadic or even multi information. Thus, we developed a new method through the observation of twenty firms who own more than 95% of RFID patents in the United States. Findings supported the concept of cluster and block modeling shows that the complementariness of competition and cooperation would appear at the same time. This article extends co-opetition research from qualitative research to quantitative research. Finally, this study explores the hidden information of patent citation and offers more messages.
Field experiments on dual-polarized MIMO transmission with ultra-multilevel OFDM signals toward digital terrestrial broadcasting for the next generation

We developed a transmission system using ultra-multilevel orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology and dual-polarized multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology for experimental purposes based on the conventional digital terrestrial broadcasting signal format, ISDB-T. We conducted field experiments at 27 reception points around NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) using an experimental transmitter installed at NHK STRL. As a result, we obtained quasi error free (QEF) operation in MIMO -OFDM transmission whose carrier modulation scheme was 4096QAM. We found that the average required field strength was about 60 dBµV/m for 4096QAM in the field experiments and there was a large difference in field strength at some reception points between both polarized signals that deteriorated the bit error rate characteristics, even if the average field strength was sufficiently high.
Real-time license plate localization based on a new scale and rotation invariant texture descriptor

In this paper, we present a real-time and robust license plate localization method for traffic control applications. According to our approach, edge content of gray-scale image is approximated using line segments features by means of a local connective Hough transform. Then a new, scale and rotation invariant, texture descriptor which describes the regularity, similarity, directionality and alignment is proposed for grouping lines segments into potential license plates. After a line-based slope estimation and correction, false candidates are eliminated by using geometrical and statistical constraints. Proposed method has been integrated in a optimal license plate localization system. Evaluation is conducted on two image databases which were taken from real scene under various configurations and variability. The result shows that our method is real-time, robust to illumination condition and viewpoint changes.
Spectral Characterization of a Digital Still Camera's NIR Modification to Enhance Archaeological Observation

Scholars using still cameras to take (mostly) oblique imagery from a low-flying aircraft of various possible archaeologically related anomalies can be defined as aerial archaeologists. At present, as well as in the past, aerial/air archaeology has been acquiring data almost exclusively in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This phenomenon can largely be attributed to the critical imaging process and sometimes unconvincing results related to the film-based approach of near-infrared (NIR) photography. To overcome the constraints of detecting and interpreting only the varying visible colors in vegetation (the so-called crop marks), while still maintaining the flexible and low-cost approach characteristic for aerial archaeology, a consumer digital still camera was modified to capture NIR radiation. By its spectral characterization, more insight was gained into its imaging properties and necessary guidelines for data processing, and future improvements could be formulated, all in an attempt to better capture the archaeologically induced anomalous growth stresses in crops.
What do we mean by governance and accountability ?

These barriers are not insurmountable: conceptual, analytic and design challenges can be addressed through reviews of analytic methodologies and multi-country studies, including historical analyses, using shared analytic frameworks on common themes and widening use of innovative tools. Demand can be strengthened through integrating research on governance within national policy development and strategic review processes, and through civil societyresearcher links in community based and participatory action research.
Confidence measures for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition

In this paper, we present several confidence measures for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. We propose to estimate the confidence of a hypothesized word directly as its posterior probability, given all acoustic observations of the utterance. These probabilities are computed on word graphs using a forward-backward algorithm. We also study the estimation of posterior probabilities on N-best lists instead of word graphs and compare both algorithms in detail. In addition, we compare the posterior probabilities with two alternative confidence measures, i.e., the acoustic stability and the hypothesis density. We present experimental results on five different corpora: the Dutch ARISE 1k evaluation corpus, the German Verbmobil '98 7k evaluation corpus, the English North American Business '94 20k and 64k development corpora, and the English Broadcast News '96 65k evaluation corpus. We show that the posterior probabilities computed on word graphs outperform all other confidence measures. The relative reduction in confidence error rate ranges between 19% and 35% compared to the baseline confidence error rate.
Fast hierarchical clustering and other applications of dynamic closest pairs

We develop data structures for dynamic closest pair problems with arbitrary distance functions, that do not necessarily come from any geometric structure on the objects. Based on a technique previously used by the author for Euclidean closest pairs, we show how to insert and delete objects from an <i>n</i>-object set, maintaining the closest pair, in <i>O</i>(<i>n</i> log<sup>2</sup> <i>n</i>) time per update and <i>O</i>(<i>n</i>) space. With quadratic space, we can instead use a quadtree-like structure to achieve an optimal time bound, <i>O</i>(<i>n</i>) per update. We apply these data structures to hierarchical clustering, greedy matching, and TSP heuristics, and discuss other potential applications in machine learning, Gröbner bases, and local improvement algorithms for partition and placement problems. Experiments show our new methods to be faster in practice than previously used heuristics.
Subsynchronous Torsional Interaction of Wind Farms with FSIG Wind Turbines Connected to LCC-HVDC Lines

High-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines with line-commutated converter (LCC) are being increasingly employed to transmit bulk wind power over long distance. However, this may cause the sub-synchronous torsional interaction (SSTI) between the wind farms and the LCC-HVDC system. The SSTI characteristics of wind farms with fixed-speed induction generator (FSIG) wind turbines connected to LCC-HVDC are investigated in this paper. To simplify the calculations, a modular modeling method is proposed for building the small-signal mathematical model of the investigated system. Small-signal analysis, participation factor analysis, and impact of dominant factors analysis are then applied to investigate the SSTI characteristics under different operating conditions. Three oscillation modes associated with the SSTI are identified in the entire system through small-signal and participation factor analysis, comprising two torsional modes and an electromechanical mode. Impact of dominant factors analysis shows that the system becomes less stable as the wind farm capacity grows and the distance between FSIG wind farm and the rectifier station increases. Moreover, the above analysis suggests that wind farms with FSIG connected to LCC-HVDC lines may not cause unstable SSTI. The electromagnetic transient simulations based on PSCAD/EMTDC (Power Systems Computer-Aided Design/Electromagnetic Transients including DC) verify these results.
Effects of Thicknesses of Sheet and Adhesive Layer on Plastic-Bending of Adhesively Bonded Sheet Metals

In this paper, the effects of the thicknesses of sheet and adhesive layer on plastic forming of adhesively bonded sheet metals were investigated by experiments and the corresponding numerical simulation. The main conclusions obtained are as follows: (1) When the thickness of the adherends increases, the gull-wing bend of the bent sheet and the transverse shear deformation in the adhesive layer become larger, which in some cases the delamination occurs in the adhesive layer. (2) The gull-wing bend of the bent sheet becomes larger with increasing adhesive layer thickness, but conversely the shear strain in the adhesive layer becomes smaller.
The input/output complexity of triangle enumeration

We consider the well-known problem of enumerating all triangles of an undirected graph. Our focus is on determining the input/output (I/O) complexity of this problem. Let E be the number of edges, M<E the size of internal memory, and B the block size. The best results obtained previously are sortE3/2) I/Os (Dementiev, PhD thesis 2006) and O(E2/MB) I/Os (Hu et al., SIGMOD 2013), where sort(n) denotes the number of I/Os for sorting n items. We improve the I/O complexity to O(E3/2/(√MB) expected I/Os, which improves the previous bounds by a factor min(√E/M),√M). Our algorithm is cache-oblivious and also I/O optimal: We show that any algorithm enumerating t distinct triangles must always use Ω(√MB) I/Os, and there are graphs for which t=Ω(E3/2). Finally, we give a deterministic cache-aware algorithm using O(E3/2/√MB) I/Os assuming M > Ec for a constant c > 0. Our results are based on a new color coding technique, which may be of independent interest.
A fuzzy gain-scheduler for the attitude control of an unmanned helicopter

In this paper, we address the design of an attitude controller that achieves stable, and robust aggressive maneuverability for an unmanned helicopter. The controller proposed is in the form of a fuzzy gain-scheduler, and is used for stable and robust altitude, roll, pitch, and yaw control. The controller is obtained from a realistic nonlinear multiple-input-multiple-output model of a real unmanned helicopter platform, the APID-MK3. The results of this work are illustrated by extensive simulation, showing that the objective of aggressive, and robust maneuverability has been achieved.
Black Hole Attack on Multicast Routing Protocols

A mobile ad-hoc network is an autonomous system of mobile nodes connected by wireless links in which nodes cooperate by forwarding packets for each other thereby enabling communication beyond direct wireless transmission range. The nature of ad-hoc networks makes them vulnerable to attacks especially in routing protocols. Providing security in mobile ad-hoc networks has been a major issue over the recent years. One of the prominent multicast routing protocols used in ad-hoc networks is Multicast Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector (MAODV) protocol. The security of MAODV is compromised by a primary routing attack called black hole attack. In this attack a malicious node advertises itself as having the shortest path to the node whose packets it wants to intercept. This paper discusses the impact of black hole attack on MAODV protocol under various scenarios.
INNOVATION IN ONLINE BRAND COMMUNITIES

The explosive growth of social media and online communities offers companies new unique opportunities to utilize information and knowledge capital by involving users in the company’s innovation activities. Companies started to realize the huge potential of online brand communities as a source of R&D innovations, and the ability to utilize and manage customer knowledge effectively can create competitive advantage for companies. The objective of this research is to identify factors which explain community members’ participation in open innovation activities in online brand communities. It is important from the research and business viewpoint to identify the factors which motivate users to participate in open innovation and enable new value creation for the company’s services and products. Structural equation modeling results indicate that both task involvement and utility explain significantly information and knowledge sharing and willingness to participate in open innovation activities. In addition, information and knowledge sharing has a strong significant impact on participation in open innovation. Implications for research and practice are suggested.