Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Novel local PCA-based method for detecting activation signals in fMRI

A novel Local Principal Component Analysis (LPCA) technique is presented in this paper for activation detection in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) without explicit knowledge about the shape of the activation signal. The proposed LPCA method is very different from the traditional PCA methods for fMRI signal detection in principle. At first, our LPCA algorithm does not require any orthogonality assumption between the activation signal and other signal components, while the traditional PCA methods are based on this assumption. In addition, our LPCA algorithm applies PCA to the temporal sequence of each individual voxel instead of applying PCA to the whole data set. In our algorithm, we first apply a linear regression procedure to alleviate the common baseline drift artifact. Then the baseline-corrected temporal signals are partitioned into active and inactive segments according to the paradigm used for the fMRI data acquisition. Several most dominant principal components are computed from all these segments for each voxel by the PCA. By projecting the segments of each voxel onto a linear subspace formed by the corresponding dominant principal components, two separate clusters are formed from the active and inactive segments. An activation measure is defined based on the degree of separation between these two clusters in the projection space. Experimental results of applying our LPCA algorithm to detect fMRI activation signals on various data sets are given. From our experiments, the LPCA algorithm in general provides 4 - 6 times signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement over the standard t-test method.
Rotor position detection based on BEMF zero-crossing detection method with three-EMF force superposition

Compared with the position sensor control, sensorless control avoids a lot of defects caused by the position sensor, at the same time makes the system more stability and stronger anti-interference performance, it has more advantages and meets control field's requirements better in the future, it has gradually become a hotspot in the brushless DC motor control field. The rotor position detection has been a very critical research in the brushless DC motor sensorless control. In this paper, a new type of rotor position detection method is proposed, which is based on the principle and mathematical model of a brushless DC motor after the analysis of advantages and disadvantages of the back EMF principle of zero-detection and the method of the back-EMF superposition, which means a combination of the method of the two rotor position detection, as above. This method neither need a delay of 30° nor require a depth filter, the hardware circuit is also simple and there is no need to compensate for the phase shift. Then, the frequency of the detection signal is three times of fundamental wave frequency in this method and the detection signal is easier to detect when the motor running at low speed, which expand the applicable speed range of the electric motor. This paper analyzes the principle and commutation logic of the rotor position detection method, it come up with a conclusion that the stagnation point of the three BEMF superposition derivative is the commutation points of the stator windings, and it uses the method of the back-EMF zero crossings to determine the current conduction state. The simulation model of the brushless DC motor's control system is established in MATLAB/Simulink, it uses speed and current double close loop PI control. The result shows that the method is correct and feasible, it can get the right rotor position signal and control motor commutation correctly, the method can achieve the control of brushless DC motor without position sensor, and it can provide a reference for further research.
Efficient and Effective Duplicate Detection in Hierarchical Data

Although there is a long line of work on identifying duplicates in relational data, only a few solutions focus on duplicate detection in more complex hierarchical structures, like XML data. In this paper, we present a novel method for XML duplicate detection, called XMLDup. XMLDup uses a Bayesian network to determine the probability of two XML elements being duplicates, considering not only the information within the elements, but also the way that information is structured. In addition, to improve the efficiency of the network evaluation, a novel pruning strategy, capable of significant gains over the unoptimized version of the algorithm, is presented. Through experiments, we show that our algorithm is able to achieve high precision and recall scores in several data sets. XMLDup is also able to outperform another state-of-the-art duplicate detection solution, both in terms of efficiency and of effectiveness.
Pilot scale simulation of cokemaking in integrated steelworks

Abstract Pilot scale coke ovens are widely used to produce coke samples for characterisation and also to assess the coking behaviour of coal blends. The Newcastle Technology Centre of BHP Billiton has built a sophisticated 400 kg oven, which can produce cokes under a range of carefully controlled bulk densities and heating rates. A freely movable heating wall allows the thrust generated at this wall at the different stages of coking oven to be determined. This paper describes comparative work carried out to determine a laboratory stabilisation technique for laboratory cokes. The strength of stabilised cokes are characterised using a number of tumble tests, and correlations between different drum sizes are also given since a major constraint in laboratory testing is the limitation in the mass of sample available. Typical oven wall pressure results, and results obtained from embedded temperature and pressure probes in the charge during coking, are also presented.
Small-Scale Fabrication of Biomimetic Structures for Periodontal Regeneration

The periodontium is the supporting tissues for the tooth organ and is vulnerable to destruction, arising from overpopulating pathogenic bacteria and spirochaetes. The presence of microbes together with host responses can destroy large parts of the periodontium sometimes leading tooth loss. Permanent tissue replacements are made possible with tissue engineering techniques. However, existing periodontal biomaterials cannot promote proper tissue architectures, necessary tissue volumes within the periodontal pocket and a “water-tight” barrier, to become clinically acceptable. New kinds of small-scale engineered biomaterials, with increasing biological complexity are needed to guide proper biomimetic regeneration of periodontal tissues. So the ability to make compound structures with small modules, filled with tissue components, is a promising design strategy for simulating the anatomical complexity of the periodotium attachment complexes along the tooth root and the abutment with the tooth collar. Anatomical structures such as, intima, adventitia, and special compartments such as the epithelial cell rests of Malassez or a stellate reticulum niche need to be engineered from the start of regeneration to produce proper periodontium replacement. It is our contention that the positioning of tissue components at the origin is also necessary to promote self-organizing cell–cell connections, cell–matrix connections. This leads to accelerated, synchronized and well-formed tissue architectures and anatomies. This strategy is a highly effective preparation for tackling periodontitis, periodontium tissue resorption, and to ultimately prevent tooth loss. Furthermore, such biomimetic tissue replacements will tackle problems associated with dental implant support and perimimplantitis.
Distortion Invariant Object Recognition in the Dynamic Link Architecture

An object recognition system based on the dynamic link architecture, an extension to classical artificial neural networks (ANNs), is presented. The dynamic link architecture exploits correlations in the fine-scale temporal structure of cellular signals to group neurons dynamically into higher-order entities. These entities represent a rich structure and can code for high-level objects. To demonstrate the capabilities of the dynamic link architecture, a program was implemented that can recognize human faces and other objects from video images. Memorized objects are represented by sparse graphs, whose vertices are labeled by a multiresolution description in terms of a local power spectrum, and whose edges are labeled by geometrical distance vectors. Object recognition can be formulated as elastic graph matching, which is performed here by stochastic optimization of a matching cost function. The implementation on a transputer network achieved recognition of human faces and office objects from gray-level camera images. The performance of the program is evaluated by a statistical analysis of recognition results from a portrait gallery comprising images of 87 persons. >
Characterization of Hepatic and Intestinal Glucuronidation of Magnolol: Application of the Relative Activity Factor Approach to Decipher the Contributions of Multiple UDP-Glucuronosyltransferase Isoforms

Magnolol is a food additive that is often found in mints and gums. Human exposure to this compound can reach a high dose; thus, characterization of magnolol disposition in humans is very important. Previous studies indicated that magnolol can undergo extensive glucuronidation in humans in vivo. In this study, in vitro assays were used to characterize the glucuronidation pathway in human liver and intestine. Assays with recombinant human UDP-glucuronosyltransferase enzymes (UGTs) revealed that multiple UGT isoforms were involved in magnolol glucuronidation, including UGT1A1, -1A3, -1A7, -1A8, -1A9, -1A10, and -2B7. Magnolol glucuronidation by human liver microsomes (HLM), human intestine microsomes (HIM), and most recombinant UGTs exhibited strong substrate inhibition kinetics. The degree of substrate inhibition was relatively low in the case of UGT1A10, whereas the reaction catalyzed by UGT1A9 followed biphasic kinetics. Chemical inhibition studies and the relative activity factor (RAF) approach were used to identify the individual UGTs that played important roles in magnolol glucuronidation in HLM and HIM. The results indicate that UGT2B7 is mainly responsible for the reaction in HLM, whereas UGT2B7 and UGT1A10 are significant contributors in HIM. In summary, the current study clarifies the glucuronidation pathway of magnolol and demonstrates that the RAF approach can be used as an efficient method for deciphering the roles of individual UGTs in a given glucuronidation pathway in the native tissue that is catalyzed by multiple isoforms with variable and atypical kinetics.
Direct Writing of Channels for Microfluidics in Silica by MeV Ion Beam Lithography

The lithographic exposure characteristic of amorphous silica (SiO2) was investigated for 6.8 MeV 16O3+ ions. A programmable proximity aperture lithography (PPAL) technique was used for the ion beam exposure. After exposure, the exposed pattern was developed by selective etching in 4% v/v HF. Here, we report on the development of SiO2 in term of the etch depth dependence on the ion fluence. This showed an exponential approach towards a constant asymptotic etch depth with increasing ion fluence. An example of microfluidic channels produced by this technique is demonstrated.
Extending systems-on-chip to the third dimension: performance, cost and technological tradeoffs

Because of the today's market demand for high-performance, high-density portable hand-held applications, electronic system design technology has shifted the focus from 2-D planar SoC single-chip solutions to different alternative options as tiled silicon and single-level embedded modules as well as 3-D integration. Among the various choices, finding an optimal solution for system implementation dealt usually with cost, performance and other technological trade-off analysis at the system conceptual level. It has been identified that the decisions made within the first 20% of the total design cycle time will ultimately result up to 80% of the final product cost. In this paper, we discuss appropriate and realistic metric for performance and cost trade-off analysis both at system conceptual level (up-front in the design phase) and at implementation phase for verification in the three-dimensional integration. In order to validate the methodology, two ubiquitous electronic systems are analyzed under various implementation schemes and discuss the pros and cons of each of them.
A Modular Reference Application for IEEE 802.11n Wireless LAN MACs

Designing efficient yet flexible medium access controllers (MAC) for wireless protocols is a challenge. Not only are these protocols still evolving, they are also increasingly demanding in terms of throughput and real-time requirements. In order to support a careful application-driven architecture development, reference applications are required that expose the full system and enable the quantitative evaluation of performance-flexibility tradeoffs. For this purpose, we have captured the 802.11n MAC protocol in an executable reference application which comprises the system function and its environment including traffic scenarios. We model the reference in Click, a packet processing framework. The functionally-correct model captures performance-relevant aspects such as the wireless protocol timing exactly. Leveraging extensions to Click we can use the model for the development and deployment of embedded architectures. Our 802.11n MAC model comprises between 118 and 1238 functional elements and can be simulated in real time depending on the scenario. Due to ts modularity, additional scenarios can be added productively.
Selfishness in device-to-device communication underlaying cellular networks

In a device-to-device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular network, user equipments are required to operate cooperatively and unselfishly to transmit data as relays. However, most users behave in a more or less selfish way, which makes user selfishness a key factor that affects the performance of the whole communication system. We focus on the impact of node selfishness on D2D communications. By separating the user selfishness into two types in accordance with two D2D transmission modes - connected D2D transmission and opportunistic D2D transmission, we propose a time-varying graph model that characterizes the impacts of both individual and social selfishness on D2D communications. Simulation results obtained under the realistic networking settings indicate that the interaction between connected and opportunistic selfishness worsens the impairment caused by individual selfishness, while the harmful interaction caused by social selfishness can be alleviated.
On-chip order-exploiting routing table minimization for a multicast supercomputer network

SpiNNaker is a many-core supercomputer - designed for the simulation of large neural-networks - in which cores communicate with multicast packets. Routing within SpiNNaker is controlled by Ternary Content Addressable Memories (TCAMs) of quite limited size. As not all neural-network applications will result in routing tables sufficiently small to fit in TCAM some minimization is necessary. In this paper we argue that existing techniques neither result in sufficiently minimized tables nor can be implemented within the small code and memory footprint available to a SpiNNaker core. To resolve these issues we present a new algorithm, Ordered-Covering (OC), which exploits the ordered nature of TCAMs to achieve good compression of routing tables while meeting the code-space and memory constraints of the SpiNNaker platform. We show that, for one benchmark, on-chip routing table minimization using OC results in a 64.5 χ speed-up compared with performing the minimization off-chip. For a second, more challenging, benchmark we show that a 2.8 χ speed-up in table minimization time is achieved by combined on- and off-chip minimization.
Use of Quantitative Real-Time PCR To Study the Kinetics of Extracellular DNA Released from Candida albicans, with Implications for Diagnosis of Invasive Candidiasis

ABSTRACT Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) is considered one of the most sensitive methods to detect low levels of DNA from pathogens in clinical samples. To improve the design of qPCR for the detection of deeply invasive candidiasis, we sought to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the kinetics of DNA released from Candida albicans in vitro and in vivo. We developed a C. albicans-specific assay targeting the rRNA gene complex and studied the kinetics of DNA released from C. albicans alone, in the presence of human blood monocytes (H-MNCs), and in the bloodstream of rabbits with experimental disseminated candidiasis. The analytical qPCR assay was highly specific and sensitive (10 fg). Cells of C. albicans incubated in Hanks balanced salt solution (±10% bovine serum albumin [BSA]) or RPMI (±10% BSA) showed a significant release of DNA at T equal to 24 h compared to T equal to 0 h (P ≤ 0.01). C. albicans incubated with H-MNCs exhibited a greater release of DNA than C. albicans cells alone over 24 h (P = 0.0001). Rabbits with disseminated candidiasis showed a steady increase of detectable DNA levels in plasma as disease progressed. Plasma cultures showed minimal growth of C. albicans, demonstrating that DNA extracted from plasma reflected fungal cell-free DNA. In summary, these studies of the kinetics of DNA release by C. albicans collectively demonstrate that cell-free fungal DNA is released into the bloodstream of hosts with disseminated candidiasis, that phagocytic cells may play an active role in increasing this release over time, and that plasma is a suitable blood fraction for the detection of C. albicans DNA.
Construction and decoding of generalized skew-evaluation codes

Skew polynomials are elements of a noncommutative ring that, in recent years, have found applications in coding theory and cryptography. Skew polynomials have a well-defined evaluation map. This map leads to the definition of a class of codes called Generalized Skew-Evaluation codes that contains Gabidulin codes as a special case as well as other related codes with additional desirable properties. A Berlekamp-Welch-type decoder for an important class of these codes can be constructed using Kötter interpolation in skew polynomial rings.
A High-Efficiency Low-Voltage CMOS Rectifier for Harvesting Energy in Implantable Devices

We present, in this paper, a new full-wave CMOS rectifier dedicated for wirelessly-powered low-voltage biomedical implants. It uses bootstrapped capacitors to reduce the effective threshold voltage of selected MOS switches. It achieves a significant increase in its overall power efficiency and low voltage-drop. Therefore, the rectifier is good for applications with low-voltage power supplies and large load current. The rectifier topology does not require complex circuit design. The highest voltages available in the circuit are used to drive the gates of selected transistors in order to reduce leakage current and to lower their channel on-resistance, while having high transconductance. The proposed rectifier was fabricated using the standard TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS process. When connected to a sinusoidal source of 3.3 V peak amplitude, it allows improving the overall power efficiency by 11% compared to the best recently published results given by a gate cross-coupled-based structure.
Inter-sectional hybrids obtained from reciprocal crosses between Begonia semperflorens (section Begonia) and B. ‘Orange Rubra’ (section Gaerdita × section Pritzelia)

Inter-sectional hybrids were successfully obtained by the reciprocal crosses between 11 cultivars (including 6 diploids and 5 tetraploids) of Begonia semperflorens (SS & SSSS genomes) and B. ‘Orange Rubra’ (RR genome) with the aid of in vitro culture of mature or immature seeds on MS medium containing 0.1 mg l−1 α-naphthylacetic acid, 0.1 mg l−1 6-benzyladenine, 10 mg l−1 gibberellic acid, 30 g l−1 sucrose and 2.5 g l−1 gellan gum. Embryo rescue as ovary culture with immature seeds 12th–16th day after pollination (DAP) generally gave higher efficiency of plantlet formation, but in some cross combinations, culture of mature seeds (30 DAP) resulted in higher yield of plantlets. Flow cytometric analysis revealed that they were consisted of the plants with various genomic combinations (RS, RR, RSS, RRS, RRSS and RRRRSS) as estimated by the DNA contents of both parents. Hybridity of these plants with various genomic combinations including RR was confirmed by random amplified polymorphic DNA analysis. These results suggested that unreduced gamete formation and spontaneous chromosome doubling were involved in the hybrid formation of various ploidy levels and genomic combinations. These hybrids showed various levels of intermediate traits between both parents according to the genomic compositions, and some of them had desirable characters of both parents.
Configuration of the optic chiasm in humans with albinism as revealed by magnetic resonance imaging.

PURPOSE To determine whether the size and configuration of the optic chiasm in humans with albinism is different from that in normal control subjects. METHODS Seventeen patients and 15 control subjects underwent magnetic resonance imaging of the entire head. Images were reformatted to the chiasm region and analyzed with observer-independent morphometry and measurements by a blinded observer. RESULTS The albino group showed significantly smaller chiasmatic widths, smaller optic nerves and tracts, and wider angles between nerves and tracts. Statistical morphometry showed a different configuration of the optic chiasm. CONCLUSIONS Size and configuration of the optic chiasm in humans with albinism are distinctly different from those in normal control subjects and reflect the atypical crossing of optic fibers.
High-performance emulation of heterogeneous systems using adaptive time dilation

Building a testbed for evaluating the performance of large-scale heterogeneous systems can be costly and inefficient. Emulation is often used to evaluate the performance of a system in a controlled environment. Time dilation allows virtual machines (VMs) to emulate higher performance than that of their physical machine. We present an approach using adaptive time dilation to emulate large-scale distributed systems composed of heterogeneous machines and Operating Systems (OSs). In our implementation, VMs are globally synchronized. To evaluate our system, distributed VMs running Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and Junos are emulated on general-purpose physical machines.
Marauders light: replacing the wand with a mobile camera projector unit

Classic paper-based maps provide high-resolution, large-scale information and are ubiquitous in larger cities and even outdoors. In this paper we present a combination of their advantages with a mobile camera projector unit to create a new mobile and intuitive buddy finder interface. Current friend or buddy finder systems on mobile phones such as Google Latitude suffer from the small screen estate and display size of mobile devices. To overcome this problem we use a lightweight mobile camera projector unit to augment the paper map with a projected overlay of the buddies' positions. By using digital and geo-referenced representations of public maps no extra preperation for the tracking is needed. The idea is presented by enhancing Google Latitude, which allows users to browse the positions of their friends, to project the positions directly on the paper map without the cumbersome panning and zooming of a digital map on a small display.