Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Effective Powerful Test for Supplier Selection Evaluation with Multiple Characteristics

Recently, the extensive applications of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) products have been increasing rapidly (for example, smart phones, monitors, and liquid crystal display televisions). Supplier selection in TFT-LCD manufacturing industries has become more essential and has received considerable attention. It is a problem of comparing two suppliers and selecting the one that has a significantly higher process capability. In this paper, we consider an effective test to determine supplier selection for glass substrate processes with multiple characteristics using the yield index S pk T , which can provide an exact measure of the process yield. In order to determine the selection decisions, critical values of the hypothesis testing for two procedures are calculated. For the practitioners’ convenience in applying our procedures, various sample sizes required for designated selection powers are tabulated and discussed. For illustration purposes, a real-world problem in TFT-LCD factories is considered and solved for supplier selection evaluation.
CEEC: Centralized energy efficient clustering a new routing protocol for WSNs

Energy efficient routing protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is one of the most challenging task for researcher. Hierarchical routing protocols have been proved more energy efficient routing protocols, as compare to flat and location based routing protocols. Heterogeneity of nodes with respect to their energy level, has also added extra lifespan for sensor network. In this paper, we propose a Centralized Energy Efficient Clustering (CEEC) routing protocol. We design the CEEC for three level heterogeneous network. CEEC can also be implemented in multi-level heterogeneity of networks. For initial practical, we design and analyze CEEC for three level advance heterogeneous network. In CEEC, whole network area is divided into three equal regions, in which nodes with same energy are spread in same region.
Mesenchymal stem cells and cardiac repair

• Introduction • MSC isolation, characterization and standardization ‐ Isolation from different sources ‐ Isolation under different culture conditions ‐ Characterization of MSCs ‐ Standardization of MSCs • Mechanisms of cardiac repair ‐ Differentiation of MSCs towards cardiomyocytes ‐ Paracrine effect of MSCs ‐ MSCs and blood vessel regeneration ‐ MSC integration into the injured myocardium • Ex vivo manipulation of MSCs ‐ Pre‐treatment with growth factors ‐ Genetic engineering ‐ Hypoxia preconditioning ‐ Pharmacological interventions • Pre‐clinical application on cardiovascular disease • Clinical application: where are we? • Summary
Improved consensus clustering via linear programming

We consider the problem of Consensus Clustering. Given a finite set of input clusterings over some data items, a consensus clustering is a partitioning of the items which matches as closely as possible the given input clusterings. The best exact approach to tackling this problem is by modelling it as a Boolean Integer Program (BIP). Unfortunately, the size of the BIP grows cubically in the number of data items, hence this method is applicable to only small sets of items. In this paper we show how to tackle the problem progressively, leading to much improved solution times and far less memory usage than previously. For the case where approximate clusterings are acceptable, we show a number of heuristic techniques for extracting good clusterings from the solutions of the linear relaxation of the BIP, and on several very large data sets we demonstrate much higher quality approximations than previously possible. When optimal solutions are desired, the problem is much harder, and we present some novel and existing techniques that can assist in finding candidate answers and proving the optimality thereof. For the first time we present optimal Consensus Clusterings for several complete, albeit small, data sets.
Low-cost designs for domestic photovoltaic applications

Photovoltaic (PV) inverters, whatever the rated power, have currently very high efficiency. For home systems, cost is the key point to remain competitive. When comparing performance, the conversion efficiency is being emphasized, while the overall system harvest efficiency is unfairly neglected. This paper investigates specific constraints on PV inverters and offers a design methodology resulting in optimal cost/performance designs.
WATER AVAILABILITY IN SOUTHERN PORTUGAL FOR DIFFERENT CLIMATE CHANGE SCENARIOS SUBJECTED TO BIAS CORRECTION

Regional climate models provided precipitation and temperature time series for control (1961-1990) and scenario (2071-2100) periods. At southern Portugal, the climate models in the control period systematically present higher temperatures and lower precipitation than the observations. Therefore, the direct input of climate model data into hydrological models might result in more severe scenarios for future water availability. Three bias correction methods (Delta Change, Direct Forcing and Hybrid) are analysed and their performances in water availability impact studies are assessed. The Delta Change method assumes that the observed series variability is maintained in the scenario period and is corrected by the evolution predicted by the climate models. The Direct Forcing method maintains the scenario series variability, which is corrected by the bias found in the control period, and the Hybrid method maintains the control model series variability, which is corrected by the bias found in the control period and by the evolution predicted by the climate models. To assess the climate impacts in the water resources expected for the scenario period, a physically based spatially distributed hydrological model, SHETRAN, is used for runoff projections in a southern Portugal basin. The annual and seasonal runoff shows a runoff decrease in the scenario period, increasing the water shortage that is already experienced. The overall annual reduction varies between -80% and -35%. In general, the results show that the runoff reductions obtained with climate models corrected with the Delta Change method are highest but with a narrow range that varies between -80% and -52%.
Large intracranial volume accelerates conversion to dementia in males and APOE4 non-carriers with mild cognitive impairment

ABSTRACT Background: It is unclear how brain reserve interacts with gender and apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) genotype, and how this influences the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The association between intracranial volume (ICV) and progression to AD in subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and differences according to gender and APOE4 genotype, was investigated. Methods: Data from subjects initially diagnosed with MCI and at least two visits were downloaded from the ADNI database. Those who progressed to AD were defined as converters. The longitudinal influence of ICV was determined by survival analysis. The time of conversion from MCI to AD was set as a fiducial point, as all converters would be at a similar disease stage then, and longitudinal trajectories of brain atrophy and cognitive decline around that point were compared using linear mixed models. Results: Large ICV increased the risk of conversion to AD in males (HR: 4.24, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.17–15.40) and APOE4 non-carriers (HR: 10.00, 95% CI: 1.34–74.53), but not in females or APOE4 carriers. Cognitive decline and brain atrophy progressed at a faster rate in males with large ICV than in those with small ICV during the two years before and after the time of conversion. Conclusions: Large ICV increased the risk of conversion to AD in males and APOE4 non-carriers with MCI. This may be due to its influence on disease trajectory, which shortens the duration of the MCI stage. A longitudinal model of progression trajectory is proposed.
Improving NoC performance under spatio-temporal variability by runtime reconfiguration: a general mathematical framework

Real-world applications exhibit time varying traffic volumes and patterns (structures). However, regular or application specific networks-on-chip (NoC) optimized at design time are predominantly developed either under the assumption of time independent application structures and dynamics, or without considering them at all. The limited adaptability of the monolithic NoCs to spatio-temporal application variability results in poor performance and power inefficient designs. Most of prior reconfiguration approaches are evaluated and validated through a subset of experimental instances out of the entire problem space, resulting in a constrained applicability to general cases. Towards this end, we propose a general mathematical framework for reconfigurable NoC design and runtime optimization under spatio-temporal varying workloads. Our proposed mathematical modeling framework can be applied to NoCs of arbitrary topologies, sizes and routing protocols. More precisely, we first propose the general mathematical modeling for reconfigurable NoC systems. Then, as a case study, we formulate the runtime NoC reconfiguration as an optimization problem assuming applications modeled via time dependent graphical models. We show this problem is NP-hard and prove its submodularity. This submodularity property provides guarantees that our proposed greedy algorithms attaints optimality region. To further justify the mathematical framework, we investigate a reconfigurable NoC architecture and evaluate it under real-world applications. Experimental results demonstrate a 52.3% latency improvement and a 30.2% energy reduction compared to baseline design.
Regulation of L-type Voltage Gated Calcium Channel CACNA1S in Macrophages upon Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection

We demonstrated earlier the inhibitory role played by Voltage Gated Calcium Channels (VGCCs) in regulating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) survival and pathogenesis. In this report, we investigated mechanisms and key players that regulate the surface expression of VGCC-CACNA1S by Rv2463 and M. tb infection in macrophages. Our earlier work identified Rv2463 to be expressed at early times post infection in macrophages that induced suppressor responses to dendritic cells and macrophages. Our results in this study demonstrate a role of MyD88 independent TLR pathway in mediating CACNA1S expression. Dissecting the role for second messengers, we show that calcium homeostasis plays a key role in CACNA1S expression during M. tb infection. Using siRNAs against molecular sensors of calcium regulation, we show an involvement of ER associated Stromal Interaction Molecules 1 and 2 (STIM1 and STIM2), and transcription factor pCREB, towards CACNA1S expression that also involved the MyD88 independent pathway. Interestingly, reactive oxygen species played a negative role in M. tb mediated CACNA1S expression. Further, a cross-regulation of ROS and pCREB was noted that governed CACNA1S expression. Characterizing the mechanisms governing CACNA1S expression would improve our understanding of the regulation of VGCC expression and its role in M. tb pathogenesis during M. tb infection.
A study of recent contributions on performance and simulation techniques for accelerator devices

High performance computing platform is moving from homogeneous individual unites to heterogeneous systems. Where each unit is a combination of homogeneous cores and accelerator devices. Accelerator s uch as GPUs, FPGAs, DSPs, these devices usually designed for the specific and intensive type of computing tasks. The presence of these devices have created fresh and attractive development platforms for developers and designers, brand new performance analysis frameworks and optimization tools. This is the cutting edge in the performance of some accelerator devices like GPUs and Intel's Xeon Phi. We outline some of the existing heterogeneous systems and their development frameworks. The core of this study is a review of performance modeling of these devices. In this paper, we address the emerging issues that affect the performance of these devices and associated techniques employed for simulation and evaluation.
A Paleoclimate Model of Ice-Albedo Feedback Forced by Variations in Earth's Orbit

Earth undergoes long-term temperature cycles alternating between glacial and interglacial episodes. It is widely accepted that changes in Earth's orbit and rotation axis cause variations in solar input which drive the glacial cycles. However, classic papers have clearly established that the response of Earth's climate system to orbital forcing is not a simple linear phenomenon and must include non- linear feedback mechanisms. One of these mechanisms is ice-albedo feedback, which can be modeled as a dynamical system. When combined with the cycles in the orbital elements and compared with the climate data, the model confirms that ice-albedo feedback is an important component of Earth's climate.
Congestion control in resilient packet rings

Congestion control in ring based packet networks is challenging due to the fact that every node in the network runs both a rate adaptation algorithm, analogous to an endpoint algorithm in other network architectures, and a rate allocation algorithm, analogous to switch-based algorithms in other network architectures. This work describes a congestion control algorithm for IEEE 802.17 resilient packet rings called the enhanced conservative mode algorithm that aims to avoid congestion and achieve a fair rate allocation for fairness eligible traffic in the case of a single bottleneck. We first present analysis to show that existing approaches for RPR congestion control (aggressive and conservative mode) have deficiencies. We present simulation results showing that the proposed enhanced conservative mode congestion control algorithm is a significant improvement. In conjunction with other mechanisms specified in the IEEE 802.17 MAC, the proposed algorithm achieves high utilization on the ring with minimal starvation and oscillations, allows sources to fast start, and provides quality of service for multiple classes of service that require rate, delay and jitter guarantees.
Costs and benefits of increased weapon size differ between sexes of the slender crayfish, Cherax dispar

SUMMARY Unreliable signals of weapon strength are considered to be problematic for signalling theory and reliable signals are predicted to be the dominant form of signalling among conspecifics in nature. Previous studies have shown that males of the Australian freshwater crayfish (Cherax dispar) routinely use unreliable signals of strength whereas females use reliable signals of weapon strength. In this study, we examined the performance benefits of increased weapon (chela) size for both males and females of C. dispar. In addition, we investigated the possibility of functional trade-offs in weapon size by assessing the relationship between chela size and maximum escape swimming performance. We found males possessed larger and stronger chelae than females and the variance in chela force was greater for males than females. By contrast, females possessed greater absolute and body length-specific escape swimming speeds than males. Swimming speed was also negatively correlated with chela size for males but not females, suggesting that a functional trade-off exists for males only. Decreases in swimming speed with increases in weapon size suggest there could be important fitness costs associated with larger chelae. Larger weaponry of males may then act as a handicap ensuring large chelae are reliable signals of quality.
Microscopic image classification via ℂWT-based covariance descriptors using Kullback-Leibler distance

In this paper, we present a novel method for classification of cancer cell line images using complex wavelet-based region covariance matrix descriptors. Microscopic images containing irregular carcinoma cell patterns are represented by randomly selected subwindows which possibly correspond to foreground pixels. For each subwindow, a new region descriptor utilizing the dual-tree complex wavelet transform coefficients as pixel features is computed. ℂWT as a feature extraction tool is preferred primarily because of its ability to characterize singularities at multiple orientations, which often arise in carcinoma cell lines, and approximate shift invariance property. We propose new dissimilarity measures between covariance matrices based on Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence and L2-norm, which turn out to be as successful as the classical KL divergence, but with much less computational complexity. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed image classification framework. The proposed algorithm outperforms the recently published eigenvalue-based Bayesian classification method.
TOWARD DESIGN FOR SAFETY PART 1 : FUNCTIONAL REVERSE ENGINEERING DRIVEN BY AXIOMATIC DESIGN

The design process of product development is the earliest opportunity to integrate safety into products. The term 'design for safety' captures this effort to integrate safety knowledge in the design process. Whereas, reverse engineering (RE) has been a common method to obtain design feedback and knowledge of the existing system, this paper presents a method for functional reverse engineering (FRE). Axiomatic Design (AD) is an attractive support for the concept of FRE because of its criteria for evaluating designs, its standard format for recording design decisions, and its ability to present design requirements and associated design parameters. The power takeoff (PTO) system is used as a case study to illustrate and examine the proposed method.
Predator–prey distance and latency to flee from an immobile predator: functional relationship and importance

Abstract When an immobile prey has detected an immobile predator nearby, predation risk is greater when the predator is closer. Consequently, prey flee with shorter latency as standing distance (predator–prey distance when both are still) decreases. Since it was first reported in 2009, this relationship has been confirmed in the few species studied. However, little is known about the functional relationship between standing distance and latency to flee (LF). We hypothesized that LF increases as standing distance increases at short distances, but reaches a plateau at longer distances where prey can escape reliably if attacked. We simulated immobile predators by moving slowly into positions near striped plateau lizards Sceloporus virgatus, stopping and then remaining immobile, and recording LF from the stopping time. LF increased from shorter to longer standing distances in a decelerating manner. The relationship was concave downward, and LF was indistinguishable among the longer standing distance groups. Latency to flee appears to reach a plateau or approach an asymptotic value as standing distance increases. The effect size of standing distance was large, indicating that S. virgatus sensitively adjusts LF to the level of risk associated with standing distance. Relationships between risk assessment and theoretical zones associated with risk, its assessment by prey, and escape decisions are discussed. Effect sizes of standing distance were substantial to large in all studies to date, indicating that standing distance is an important predation risk factor when both predator and prey are immobile.
Study the effect of viscoelastic matrix model on the stability of CNT/polymer composites by multiscale modeling

In this article, a Molecular Structural Mechanics/Finite Element (MSM/FE) multiscale modeling of carbon nanotube/polymer composites with viscoelastic (VE) polymer matrix is introduced. The nanotube is modeled at the atomistic scale using structural molecular mechanics. The matrix deformation is analyzed by nonlinear finite element method considering VE behavior. The nanotube and matrix are assumed to be bonded by van der Waals interactions based on the Lennard-Jones potential at the interface. Using the MSM/FE multiscale model, we investigate the effect of carbon nanotube (CNT) on the improvement of mechanical stability of the nanocomposite. Also, the buckling behavior of these nanocomposites is studied considering large deformation behavior of the VE polymer, and the results are compared with those of the linear elastic matrix. The results show that using carbon nanotubes, the mechanical stability of polymer materials can be improved significantly. Also, it is revealed that by considering the VE behavior model for polymer matrix instead of linear elastic one, the buckling onset strain decreases drastically. Comprising the obtained results from the model with and without considering VE matrix, with the experimental data shows that the model with VE polymer matrix predicts the behavior of real CNT-reinforced polymer composites better and thus should be used for more accurate simulations. POLYM. COMPOS. , 2009. © 2009 Society of Plastics Engineers
Exercise testing in children with cystic fibrosis.

The medical management of paediatric patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) is multidisciplinary and most therapeutic efforts are centred on the main clinical manifestations of progressive destructive airway disease and pancreatic insufficiency. Chest physiotherapy aims to reduce airway obstruction, improve ventilation and delay the progression of the pulmonary disease process and is an integral component of care. In addition to airway clearance, advice regarding exercise, posture and maintenance of thoracic mobility1 are also components of the physiotherapy regimen. Exercise testing, advice and prescription are no longer seen as merely complementary to airway clearance techniques but play an increasingly relevant role. Debate remains, however, as to the most effective, appropriate and useful way to determine a patient’s tolerance of physical activity. This article explores some of the issues raised in this debate, discusses the practical aspects of exercise tests currently used in the paediatric CF population and offers some recommendations for clinical practice.
The concentration of sodium in thermal sweat

It is generally agreed that the concentration of sodium in thermal sweat is always less than that in plasma and that it usually increases with sweat rate (Johnson, Pitts & Consolazio, 1944; Robinson & Robinson, 1954). However, an increase in sweat rate is normally accompanied by a rise in both skin and rectal temperatures, and it is difficult to distinguish the effect of these three factors on sweat sodium concentration. Several authors have come to the conclusion that skin temperature has a direct effect on the salt concentration of the sweat (Johnson et al. 1944; Robinson, Gerking, Turrell & Kincaid, 1950; Weiner & van Heyningen, 1952). In this paper evidence is presented which is contrary to that contention, and the following hypothesis is put forward to explain the quantitative relationship between the sweat sodium concentration and the sweat rate. Sweat must ultimately be derived from interstitial fluid, the sodium concentration of which is almost the same as that of plasma: in the formation of sweat sodium must therefore be retained in some way, since its concentration is lower in the sweat. It is suggested that sweat is formed from a precursor fluid with the same sodium concentration as interstitial fluid and that sodium is retained by the sweat glands as this fluid passes through them. Evidence will be presented that the quantitative relationship between the sweat sodium concentration and the sweat rate can be explained by supposing that the amount of sodium retained by the sweat glands reaches a constant maximal value at high sweat rates. Three experiments were performed to test this hypothesis; in the first two the skin temperature was allowed to vary with sweat rate, in the third it was allowed to vary on some days but kept as constant as possible on others. In this way it was hoped to distinguish the direct effect of skin temperature from that of sweat rate. The first two experiments have been briefly reported before (Bulmer & Forwell, 1954).