Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vivo blood flow imaging by swept-source-based Fourier domain optical Doppler tomography

A swept source based Fourier domain optical Doppler tomography (FDODT) system was developed. The technique is based on a phase resolved method where phase information was retrieved from the reconstructed complex fringe signals. The aliasing effects and artifacts caused by lateral scanning and sample movement were removed with a signal processing technique. The standard deviation of the phase shift of the system was reduced from 49 to 1.8 degree with the signal processing method employed. Structural and Doppler images of fluid flow through glass channels were quantified and blood flow through vessels of chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) were demonstrated in vivo.
A Simple Broadcast Algorithm for Recurrent Dynamic Systems

This paper presents a simple broadcast algorithm suited to dynamic systems where links can repeatedly appear and disappear. The algorithm is proved correct and a simple improvement is introduced, that reduces the number and the size of control messages. As it extends in a simple way a classical network traversal algorithm to the dynamic context, the proposed algorithm has also pedagogical flavor.
IMMUNOCHEMICAL STUDIES OF FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE

Three antigenic variants of foot-and-mouth disease virus, type A, strain 119, were demonstrated in Ouchterlony analyses utilizing serum collected from guinea pigs 7 days postinfection (DPI). Such antisera contain antibodies of the 19S class. Guinea pig antisera that contained antibodies of the 7S class were unable to distinguish between the antigenic variants. Similarly, 19S antibody was able to demonstrate antigenic differences in trypsin- and chymotrypsin-treated viruses that were not detected by 7S antibody-containing antisera. One of the antigenic variants of virus is apparently the wild type and is tentatively considered to have two antigenic determinant groupings termed the a- and b-sites (140S-ab). The 140S-ab variant was the sole or predominant antigenic type produced in guinea pigs and in large plaque-forming- and tissue culture-low passage sources of the virus. Another antigenic variant appears to possess only the b-site (140S-b) and was the major constituent in tissue culture-high passage virus preparations. The third variant, a small plaque former, was also devoid of the a-site and contains an antigenic determinant that is related to, but not identical with, the b-site. This variant appears to be a minor constituent of tissue culture-high passage virus. 7-DPI serum could be absorbed with a suitable concentration of tissue culture-high passage virus to remove antibody reactive with the b-determinant site. This absorbed serum still precipitated 140S-ab virus by virtue of still containing antibody reactive with the a-determinant site; however, the neutralizing activity was eliminated. This suggests that the b-site is critical with respect to neutralization while the a-site is noncritical.
Evaluation of PNCC and extended spectral subtraction methods for robust speech recognition

This paper evaluates the robustness of different approaches for speech recognition with respect to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), to signal level and to presence of non-speech data before and after utterances to be recognized. Three types of noise robust features are considered: Power Normalized Cepstral Coefficients (PNCC), Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) after applying an extended spectral subtraction method, and Sphinx embedded denoising features from recent sphinx versions. Although removing C0 in MFCC-based features leads to a slight decrease in speech recognition performance, it makes the speech recognition system independent on the speech signal level. With multi-condition training, the three sets of noise-robust features lead to a rather similar behavior of performance with respect to SNR and presence of non-speech data. Overall, best performance is achieved with the extended spectral subtraction approach. Also, the performance of the PNCC features appears to be dependent on the initialization of the normalization factor.
Thermomechanical Characterization of Shape Memory Polymers

Data from comprehensive thermomechanical tests of shape memory polymers are reported, with specimens tested up to 75% strain and between 30—120°C temperatures. The data is analyzed and key observations are drawn. The stress/strain behavior during loading at temperatures above glass transition for the Veriflex TM shape memory polymer tested was linear and did not show much variation with the actual temperature. When the polymer is cooled with end constraints, thermally-induced tensile stresses developed, but only after the temperature reduced below glass transition and the material stiffened. When the constraints were then released, 97—98% of the original strain was locked in. Reheating the shape memory polymer beyond the glass transition temperature resulted in shape recovery (shape memory effect). When the polymer was reheated while constraining the strain, the full recovery stress developed was about the stress that the polymer was initially loaded to during deformation at high temperature. Examining the Young's modulus at elevated and low temperature showed that the loading modulus at high temperatures is around 60 times lower than the low temperature unloading modulus of the stretched sample, and around 3000 times lower than the low temperature loading modulus of an unstretched sample.
Exploring and Analyzing the Real Impact of Modern On-Package Memory on HPC Scientific Kernels

High-bandwidth On-Package Memory (OPM) innovates the conventional memory hierarchy by augmenting a new on-package layer between classic on-chip cache and off-chip DRAM. Due to its relative location and capacity, OPM is often used as a new type of LLC. Despite the adaptation in modern processors, the performance and power impact of OPM on HPC applications, especially scientific kernels, is still unknown. In this paper, we fill this gap by conducting a comprehensive evaluation for a wide spectrum of scientific kernels with a large amount of representative inputs, including dense, sparse and medium, on two Intel OPMs: eDRAM on multicore Broadwell and MCDRAM on manycore Knights Landing. Guided by our general optimization models, we demonstrate OPM’s effectiveness for easing programmers’ tuning efforts to reach ideal throughput for both compute-bound and memory-bound applications.CCS CONCEPTS•Hardware $\rightarrow$Memory and dense storage; Power estimation and optimization; •Computer systems organization $\rightarrow$Multicore architectures; •Computing methodologies $\rightarrow$Model development and analysis;
ANALYSIS OF RELIABILITY AND IMPACT FACTORS OF MUTUAL INFORMATION SIMILARITY CRITERION FOR REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY TEMPLATE MATCHING

Reliability of similarity measure is a key factor for successful image matching. In this paper, mutual information is introduced to template image matching as a similarity measure. Its ability of adapting to different scene, overcoming the grey reversal, and factors which influence on the successful matching of mutual information method are discussed. These factors include signal-noise ratio, information content and self-similarity. The test data are remote sensing images captured by different sensors, with different spatial resolution and at different seasons. Some typical scenes such as city, town, village, river, stream, and field land are used to test its ability of adapting to different scenes and the ability to overcome the grey reversal. The experiments manifest that there is no strong relationship between success rate and the amount of signal-noise ratio or information content for the mutual information matching method. The successful matching based on mutual information is mainly affected by whether there are similar pattern areas in the reference image or not. The experiments also indicate that when the scene has large non-linear change of grey, the success rate of mutual information matching method is much greater than that of cross-correlation method. Corresponding author. Tel. : +86 025 83787578; E-mail addresses: anrunj@yahoo.com. cn; anrunj@163.com.
Leisure activities and the risk of dementia in the elderly

Objective: There is accumulating evidence that involvement in leisure activities may be related to risk of dementia; however, there is no consensus concerning the underlying mechanism of this association. Hypothesizing that leisure activities may contribute to cognitive reserve (CR), we examined the association between leisure activities and risk of incident dementia and its subtypes within a general population sample, categorizing leisure activity as stimulating, passive, physical, and social. The possibility that these associations may be driven by other proxies of CR was also examined. Methods: Analyses were carried out on 5,698 dementia-free participants aged 65 and over included in the Three-City cohort study in Dijon and Montpellier (France) in 1999–2001. Hazard ratios (HR) were calculated for incident dementia and its subtypes (mixed/vascular dementia and Alzheimer disease) in relation to category of leisure activity. Results: Stimulating leisure activities were found to be significantly associated with a reduced risk of dementia (n = 161, HR = 0.49, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.31; 0.79) and Alzheimer disease (n = 105, HR = 0.39, 95% CI: 0.21; 0.71) over the 4-year follow-up 1) independently of other proxies of CR, 2) after adjusting for vascular risk factors, depressive symptoms, and physical functioning, and 3) independently of other leisure activities. Furthermore, no significant association was found with other leisure activities and dementia after controlling for the potential confounders. Conclusion: Our findings support the hypothesis that cognitively stimulating leisure activities may delay the onset of dementia in community-dwelling elders.
PCR Detection of Borrelia burgdorferi Sensu Lato, Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus, and the Human Granulocytic Ehrlichiosis Agent in Ixodes persulcatus Ticks from Western Siberia, Russia

ABSTRACT PCR assays were used to test adult Ixodes persulcatus ticks from Western Siberia, Russia, for Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV), and the human granulocytic ehrlichiosis (HGE) agent. Of the 150 ticks that were studied, 38% were infected with B. burgdorferi, 46% were infected with TBEV, and 8% were infected with the HGE agent. These three pathogens were distributed in the ticks independently of one another.
Bone Marrow–Derived Vascular Modulatory Cells in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Hematopoiesis and vascular homeostasis are closely linked to each other via subsets of circulating bone marrow–derived cells with potent activity to repair endothelial injury and promote angiogenesis. As a consequence, abnormalities in hematopoiesis will eventually affect vascular health. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a vascular disease characterized by severe remodeling of the pulmonary artery wall. Over the past decade, circulating hematopoietic cells have been assigned an increasing role in the remodeling, such that these cells have been used in new therapeutic strategies. More recently, research has been extended to the bone marrow where these cells originate to identify abnormalities in hematopoiesis that may underlie PAH. Here, we review the current literature and identify gaps in knowledge of the myeloid effects on PAH.
Damage-tolerant composite materials produced by stitching carbon fibers

NASA-Langley has undertaken the investigation of composite damage-tolerance enhancement and fabrication economies-maximization via reinforcement-stitching, in combination with resin transfer molding. Attention is given to results obtained by an experimental evaluation of composites tailored for damage tolerance by stitching layers of dry carbon-fiber fabric with closely-spaced threads, in order to furnish through-the-thickness reinforcement. Various stitching patterns and thread materials have been evaluated, using flat-plate specimens; blade-stiffened structural elements have been fabricated and tested. The results presented indicate that stitched laminates furnish damage tolerance performance comparable to that of more expensive, toughened-matrix composites.
SNP@Domain: a web resource of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within protein domain structures and sequences

The single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in conserved protein regions have been thought to be strong candidates that alter protein functions. Thus, we have developed SNP@Domain, a web resource, to identify SNPs within human protein domains. We annotated SNPs from dbSNP with protein structure-based as well as sequence-based domains: (i) structure-based using SCOP and (ii) sequence-based using Pfam to avoid conflicts from two domain assignment methodologies. Users can investigate SNPs within protein domains with 2D and 3D maps. We expect this visual annotation of SNPs within protein domains will help scientists select and interpret SNPs associated with diseases. A web interface for the SNP@Domain is freely available at and from .
An Agent-Based Multimodal Interface for Sketch Interpretation

We present a multimodal interface for sketch interpretation that relies on a multi-agent architecture. The design of the interpretation engine and the different agents are based on a user-centered approach where efficiency measure is defined as user satisfaction. So far, several graphical agents have been implemented for recognizing basic graphical objects (e.g. lines, circles, etc.) as well as more complex (e.g., hatches, stairs, captions, etc) in architectural design. Besides, vocal agents have been developed for recognizing spoken annotations (e.g. dimensions) and interface commands. Realistic evaluations with professional users have demonstrated the potential interest of the proposed system
Linking numbers and boundaries of varieties

called a "cornerstone" of algebraic geometry ([GH, p. 62]), is a simple consequence of the fact that analytic varieties carry a natural orientation. Recast in terms of linking numbers, it is our principal motivation. It implies the following: Let M be a smooth oriented compact 3-manifold in C3. Suppose that M bounds a bounded complex 2-variety V. Here "bounds" means, in the sense of Stokes' theorem, i.e., that b[V] = [M] as currents. Let A be an algebraic curve in C3 which is disjoint from M. Consider the linking number link(M, A) of M and A. Since this linking number is equal to the intersection number (i.e. the sum of the intersection indices) of V and A, by the positivity
Cloning, characterization, and expression analysis of the pig (Sus scrofa) C1q tumor necrosis factor-related protein-5 gene

Purpose Autosomal dominant early-onset long anterior zonules (LAZs) and late-onset retinal degeneration (L-ORD) in humans are associated with the S163R mutation of the complement 1q-tumor necrosis factor related protein-5 (CTRP5) gene. For using the pig as an L-ORD model for the study of pathology, we cloned, characterized, and studied the expression profile of pig CTRP5 (pCTRP5). Methods The pCTRP5 was cloned and sequenced from porcine genomic DNA. Bioinformatic analysis was done to evaluate the functional domains present in the pCTRP5 using PROSITE tools. The V5 epitope-tagged constructs of pCTRP5 and the mammalian promoters, elongation factor 1-α (EF) promoter and 579 bp of the putative promoter located upstream to pCTRP5 DNA, were used for in vitro expression analysis. The pCTRP5 expression, protein size, and cellular localization were studied in transiently transfected Cos-7 or ARPE-19 cells by western blot analysis using anti-CTRP5 and anti-V5 epitope antibodies. Expression of pCTRP5 in the pig eye tissues was analyzed by western blot analysis, real-time PCR, and immunohistochemistry. Results As predicted, pCTRP5 showed a 92% DNA homology and 98% amino acid homology with human CTRP5 (hCTRP5). Bioinformatic analysis revealed the presence of an alternate in-frame translational start site upstream to the presumed initiator codon. The presence of a putative promoter region upstream to the pCTRP5 was identified. The putative pCTRP5 promoter was found to be functional by western blot analysis. The size of the pCTRP5 protein (pCTRP5) was consistent with its predicted molecular weight, indicating that the potential alternative start site was not used. Western blot and RT–PCR analyses showed that pCTRP5 was predominantly expressed in RPE, a pattern of expression consistent with that found in mouse and human eyes. Conclusions The sequence and genomic organization of pCTRP5 was found to be similar to the human homolog. The DNA and protein sequence of pCTRP5 are highly homologous to hCTRP5, indicating that they are highly conserved. A putative promoter region (579 bp) present upstream to pCTRP5 was found to be functional and was able to drive the expression of the pCTRP5 gene cloned downstream. The tissue distribution in the eye and the expression profile of pCTRP5 in transiently transfected cells is consistent with hCTRP5 expression. Immunohistochemistry analysis of the pig retinal sections revealed localization of pCTRP5 to the apical and basolateral regions on the RPE and in the ciliary body. The potential in-frame alternate start site was found to be nonfunctional by western blot analysis of transiently transfected cells. Similarities between human and pig CTRP5 and the presence of an area centralis region in the pig similar to the human macula, together with its large eyeball size, makes the domestic pig a good model for the study of LAZs and L-ORD.
QoS routing in MPLS networks using active measurements

We consider the problem of selecting an appropriate LSP (label switched path) for a new connection request from several possible LSPs which can satisfy the QoS of the new connection. We propose an active measurement approach where a probing stream is sent along each LSP. Based on the end-to-end delays of the packets of the probing stream, we estimate the mean delays and the throughput the new connection can get. Our approach allows the effect of the new connection also to be included in estimating the mean delay and the throughput. The new connection may use TCP or UDP.
An adaptive query execution system for data integration

Query processing in data integration occurs over network-bound, autonomous data sources. This requires extensions to traditional optimization and execution techniques for three reasons: there is an absence of quality statistics about the data, data transfer rates are unpredictable and bursty, and slow or unavailable data sources can often be replaced by overlapping or mirrored sources. This paper presents the Tukwila data integration system, designed to support adaptivity at its core using a two-pronged approach. Interleaved planning and execution with partial optimization allows Tukwila to quickly recover from decisions based on inaccurate estimates. During execution, Tukwila uses adaptive query operators such as the double pipelined hash join, which produces answers quickly, and the dynamic collector, which robustly and efficiently computes unions across overlapping data sources. We demonstrate that the Tukwila architecture extends previous innovations in adaptive execution (such as query scrambling, mid-execution re-optimization, and choose nodes), and we present experimental evidence that our techniques result in behavior desirable for a data integration system.
EDM Machinabilities of EC-PCD Using Ultrasonic Assisted EDM and Bipolar Pulse Current EDM

In order to achieve a high efficient and high quality EDM of PCD, the authors have developed a new PCD having superior electrical conductivity by using boron diamond as a source material. On the other hand they applied a method to give ultrasonic vibrations to the electrode, and have made it clear that even the standard PCD could be machined at the similar level of efficiency to the cases of EDMing die steels and cemented carbides. With a purpose to obtain a good surface roughness on the PCD at high efficiency, various EDM conditions and methods were compared in this paper. Firstly, influence of discharge duration time was examined, and it was found that a shorter pulse duration time as te=0. 5μs showed high efficiency and smaller electrode wear rate. Secondary, influence of bipolar pulse current method was examined, and it was found that the method effected higher efficiency but rather large amount of electrode wear resulted. Thirdly, ultrasonic assisted EDM was conducted, and it was found that the method showed superior result regarding efficiency and wear rate on both standard PCD and EC-PCD. A combination use of ultrasonic assisted and bipolar pulse current EDM methods was also attempted in this research. On the contrary to the expectation, efficiency and electrode wear rate became worse in EDM of standard and EC-PCD in comparison with other methods tested before.
An interactive driver assistance system monitoring the scene in and out of the vehicle

This paper presents a framework for interactive driver assistance systems including techniques for fast speed sign detection and classification, car detection and tracking, and lane departure warning. In addition, the driver's actions are monitored. The integrated system uses information extracted from the road scene (speed signs, position within the lane, relative position to other cars, etc.) together with information about the driver's state such as eye gaze and head pose, to issue adequate warnings. A touch screen monitor presents relevant information and allows the driver to interact with the system. The research is focused around robust on-line algorithms. Initial results of online speed sign detection and car tracking are presented in the context of a driver assistance system.
Future thinking instructions improve prospective memory performance in adolescents

ABSTRACT Studies on prospective memory (PM) development in adolescents point to age-related increases through to adulthood. The goal of the present study was to examine whether instructing adolescents to engage in an episodic prospection of themselves executing future actions (i.e., future thinking) when forming an intention would improve their PM performance and reduce age-related differences. Further, we set out to explore whether future thinking instructions result in stronger memory traces and/or stronger cue–context associations by evaluating retrospective memory for the PM cues after task completion and monitoring costs during PM task processing. Adolescents and young adults were allocated to either the future thinking, repeated-encoding or standard condition. As expected, adolescents had fewer correct PM responses than young adults. Across age groups, PM performance in the standard condition was lower than in the other encoding conditions. Importantly, the results indicate a significant interaction of age by encoding condition. While adolescents benefited most from future thinking instructions, young adults performed best in the repeated-encoding condition. The results also indicate that the beneficial effects of future thinking may result from deeper intention-encoding through the simulation of future task performance.
Anisotropic Damage Mechanism during Grinding of CdZnTe Wafers

The grinding wheels with grit size of #600 and #2000 are employed to grind CdZnTe (110) and (111) planes, and ground surface and subsurface damages were investigated. The experimental results show the damage types are affected by the crystallographic orientation and grit size. When grinding CdZnTe wafers with grit size of #600, due to different angle between the cleavage plane and ground surface, the surface morphology and directions of cracks on the (111) plane are different from those on the (110) plane. When grinding CdZnTe wafers with grit size of #2000, the (111) plane has less plastic deformation than the (110) plane, and there is obvious direction of stacking faults on subsurface.