Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protopiper: Physically Sketching Room-Sized Objects at Actual Scale

Physical sketching of 3D wireframe models, using a hand-held plastic extruder, allows users to explore the design space of 3D models efficiently. Unfortunately, the scale of these devices limits users' design explorations to small-scale objects. We present protopiper, a computer aided, hand-held fabrication device, that allows users to sketch room-sized objects at actual scale. The key idea behind protopiper is that it forms adhesive tape into tubes as its main building material, rather than extruded plastic or photopolymer lines. Since the resulting tubes are hollow they offer excellent strength-to-weight ratio, thus scale well to large structures. Since the tape is pre-coated with adhesive it allows connecting tubes quickly, unlike extruded plastic that would require heating and cooling in the kilowatt range. We demonstrate protopiper's use through several demo objects, ranging from more constructive objects, such as furniture, to more decorative objects, such as statues. In our exploratory user study, 16 participants created objects based on their own ideas. They rated the device as being "useful for creative exploration", "its ability to sketch at actual scale helped judge fit", and "fun to use. "
Transposon Mutagenesis of Azospirillum brasilense and Azospirillum lipoferum: Physical Analysis of Tn5 and Tn5-Mob Insertion Mutants

Tn5-induced insertion mutants were generated in Azospirillum brasilense Sp7 and A. lipoferum SpBr17 by mating with Escherichia coli strains carrying suicide plasmid vectors. The sources of Tn5 were the suicide plasmids pGS9 and pSUP2021. Kanamycin-resistant Azospirillum colonies appeared from crosses with E. coli at maximum frequencies of 10−7 per recipient cell. Transposon Tn5 also conferred streptomycin resistance on Azospirillum colonies as was observed earlier for Rhizobium sp. Eight Tn5-induced Kmr SmrA. brasilense Sp7 mutants with reduced nitrogen-fixing capacity were isolated. The potential use of Tn5-Mob for labeling and mobilization of Azospirillum-indigenous plasmids was demonstrated by isolating Tn5-Mob insertions in the megaplasmids of A. brasilense Sp7.
Spatial variability in factors that control the sinking flux of organic and inorganic particles in the Cariaco Basin: a vision from space

ABSTRACT The Cariaco Basin, located on the continental margin of the south-eastern Caribbean Sea, has been a site of extensive oceanographic research since the early 1950s. Here we examined the seasonal and spatial variability in satellite wind, sea surface temperature (SST), surface chlorophyll (CHL), and primary production (PP) within the Cariaco Basin (1994–2009). This variability has implications in modulating the vertical flux of particulate material to the bottom of the basin. While cross-shore Ekman Transport was positive (upwelling inducing) year-round, it showed 20–60% higher values (stronger upwelling) in the eastern sub-basin, compared to the western sub-basin 1.35–2.77 m2 s−1 and 1.06–1.73 m2 s−1, respectively; p < 0.01). This translated into differences in CHL concentration and PP rates between the eastern and western Cariaco sub-basins. Long-term seasonal means of SST, CHL, and PP showed significant inter-basin differences (p < 0.01) between December and July; during that period the eastern basin was cooler (24.86 ± 1.03°C vs. 25.56 ± 0.80°C, p < 0.01), with higher CHL (0.50 mg m−3 vs. 0.35 mg m−3; p < 0.01) and PP (1763 ± 994 vs. 782 ± 129 mg C m−2 day−1, p < 0.01) than the western sub-basin. The eastern Cariaco sub-basin had larger seasonal amplitude and variability in oceanographic characteristics than the western sub-basin, while the western sub-basin had slightly higher and more variable seasonal riverine run-off inputs. These differences have implications for the interpretation of the paleoclimate sediment record stored in different sectors of the Cariaco Basin.
Effects of Different Levels of Pressure Support on Intra-Individual Breath-to-Breath Variability

BACKGROUND: Evidence exists that during pressure support ventilation (PSV), the addition of an extrinsic (ie, ventilator-generated) breath-to-breath variability (BBV) of breathing pattern improves respiratory function. If BBV is beneficial per se, choosing the PS level that maximizes it could be considered a valid strategy for conventional PSV. In this study, we evaluated the effect of different PS levels on intrinsic BBV in acutely ill, mechanically ventilated subjects to determine whether a significant relationship exists between PS level and BBV magnitude. METHODS: Fourteen invasively mechanically ventilated subjects were prospectively studied. PS was adjusted at 20 cm H2O and sequentially reduced to 15, 10, and 5 cm H2O. Arterial blood gas analysis and pressure at 0.1 s after the onset of inspiration (P0.1) were measured at each PS level. Airway and esophageal pressure and air flow were continuously recorded. Peak inspiratory flow, tidal volume (VT), breathing frequency, and pressure-time product (PTP) were calculated on a breath-by-breath basis. The breathing pattern variability was assessed by the coefficient of variation of the time series of VT, peak inspiratory flow, and breathing frequency from ∼60 consecutive breath cycles at each PS level. A general linear model for repeated measures was applied, with PS as an independent factor. A significance level of . 05 was considered. RESULTS: Despite a large inter-individual difference in all measured variables (P < .001), the coefficient of variation was as low as 30%, and no significant differences in the coefficient of variation of peak inspiratory flow, breathing frequency, and VT between PS levels were observed (P > .15). Additionally, a significant increase in P0.1, PTP, and breathing frequency (P < .01) and a reduction in VT (P < .001) were observed with PS reduction. CONCLUSIONS: Despite a significant increase in spontaneous activity with PS reduction, BBV was not influenced by the PS level and was as low as 30% for all evaluated parameters.
Verifying programs via iterated specialization

We present a method for verifying properties of imperative programs by using techniques based on the specialization of constraint logic programs (CLP). We consider a class of C programs with integer variables and we focus our attention on safety properties, stating that no error configuration can be reached from the initial configurations. We encode the interpreter of the language as a CLP program I, and we also encode the safety property to be verified as the negation of a predicate unsafe defined in I. Then, we specialize the CLP program I with respect to the given C program and the given initial and error configurations, with the objective of deriving a new CLP program I_sp which either contains the fact 'unsafe' (and in this case the C program is proved unsafe) or contains no clauses with head 'unsafe' (and in this case the C program is proved safe). If I_sp does not enjoy this property we iterate the specialization process with the objective of deriving a CLP program where we can prove unsafety or safety. During the various specializations we may apply different strategies for propagating information (either propagating forward from an initial configuration, or propagating backward from an error configuration) and different operators (such as widening and convex hull operators) for generalizing predicate definitions. Due to the undecidability of program safety, the iterated specialization process may not terminate. By an experimental evaluation carried out on a set of examples taken from the literature, we show that our method is competitive with respect to state-of-the-art software model checkers.
Maintaining mRNA Integrity during Decalcification of Mineralized Tissues

Biomineralization of the extracellular matrix occurs inappropriately in numerous pathological conditions such as cancer and vascular disease, but during normal mammalian development calcification is restricted to the formation of the skeleton and dentition. The comprehensive study of gene expression in mineralized skeletal tissues has been compromized by the traditional decalcification/fixation methods that result in significant mRNA degradation. In this study we developed a novel RNAlater/EDTA decalcification method that protects the integrity of the mRNA in mature mouse tibial epiphyses. Furthermore, this method preserves the tissue structure to allow histological sectioning and microdissection to determine region-specific gene expression, in addition to immuno- and in situ histology. This method will be widely applicable to the molecular analysis of calcified tissues in various pathological conditions, and will be of particular importance in dissection of the gene expression in mouse bone and joint tissues during development and in important clinical conditions such as arthritis.
The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of Aedes vigilax (Diptera: Culicidae)

Abstract The complete mitochondrial genomes of two main clades of the medically significant saltmarsh mosquito Aedes vigilax Skuse (Diptera: Culicidae) were obtained using combined Illumina and Sanger sequencing. The two 15,877 bp circular genomes share 99.0% nucleotide identity and encode 37 genes with identical gene arrangement similar to previously published Culicidae species with a non-coding A + T rich region between rns and tRNA-Ile. Protein initiation codon is ATN apart from ND5 (GTG) and COX1 (TCG). Eight protein-coding genes encode full TAA stop codon, while five are completed by mRNA polyadenylation. Typical cloverleaf structures containing DHU and TΨC stem and loops can be inferred for all 22 tRNAs.
Making paths explicit in the Scout operating system

This paper makes a case for paths as an explicit abstraction in operating system design. Paths provide a unifying infrastructure for several OS mechanisms that have been introduced in the last several years, including fbufs, integrated layer processing, packet classifiers, code specialization, and migrating threads. This paper articulates the potential advantages of a path-based OS structure, describes the specific path architecture implemented in the Scout OS, and demonstrates the advantages in a particular application domain---receiving, decoding, and displaying MPEG-compressed video.
Learning Subjectivity Phrases missing from Resources through a Large Set of Semantic Tests

In recent years, blogs and social networks have particularly boosted interests for opinion mining research. In order to satisfy real-scale applicative needs, a main task is to create or to enhance lexical and semantic resources on evaluative language. Classical resources of the area are mostly built for english, they contain simple opinion word markers and are far to cover the lexical richness of this linguistic phenomenon. In particular, infrequent subjective words, idiomatic expressions, and cultural stereotypes are missing from resources. We propose a new method, applied on french, to enhance automatically an opinion word lexicon. This learning method relies on linguistic uses of internet users and on semantic tests to infer the degree of subjectivity of many new adjectives, nouns, verbs, noun phrases, verbal phrases which are usually forgotten by other resources. The final appraisal lexicon contains 3,456 entries. We evaluate the lexicon enhancement with and without textual context.
Ridges Based Curled Textline Region Detection from Grayscale Camera-captured Document Images

As compared to scanners, cameras offer fast, flexible and non-contact document imaging, but with distortions like uneven shading and warped shape. Therefore, camera-captured document images need preprocessing steps like binarization and textline detection for dewarping so that traditional document image processing steps can be applied on them. Previous approaches of binarization and curled textline detection are sensitive to distortions and loose some crucial image information during each step, which badly affects dewarping and further processing. Here we introduce a novel algorithm for curled textline region detection directly from a grayscale camera-captured document image, in which matched filter bank approach is used for enhancing textline structure and then ridges detection is applied for finding central line of curled textlines. The resulting ridges can be potentially used for binarization, dewarping or designing new techniques for camera-captured document image processing. Our approach is robust against bad shading and high degrees of curl. We have achieved around 91% detection accuracy on the dataset of CBDAR 2007 document image dewarping contest.
Secure control applications in building automation using domain knowledge

When security-critical applications are considered to be integrated into the building automation domain, two requirements need to be fulfilled: providing security features at the network level and support for security mechanisms at the application level. This paper tackles the second goal using domain knowledge based on existing and related international application level standards. After the demands for secure applications and an underlying security policy are stated, a system model is derived that allows specifying security attributes for data points, function blocks, embedded applications, and, finally, distributed control applications. In conclusion, the applicability of the model is demonstrated for selected use cases.
A novel method for secure intellectual property deployment in embedded systems

The configuration data sequence of a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is an Intellectual Property (IP) of the original designer. With the increase in deployment of FPGAs in modern embedded systems, the IP protection of FPGA has become a necessary requirement for many IP vendors. There have been already many proposals to overcome this problem using symmetric encryption techniques but these methods need a cryptographic key to be stored in a non-volatile memory located on FPGA or in a battery-backed RAM as done in some of the current FPGAs. The expenses with the proposed methods are, occupation of larger area on FPGA in the former case and limited lifetime of the device in the latter. In contrast, we propose a novel method which combines the Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration (Dynamic PR) feature of an SRAM-based FPGA with the Public Key Cryptography (PKC) to protect the FPGA configuration files without the need of fixed key storage on FPGA or external to FPGA. The proposed method, is secure against the known attacks such as the Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attack and replay attack. Therefore, the method can be used for secure deploying of IPs from local and remote vendors. Also, using this novel method not only high-end FPGAs but also low-end FPGAs with PR capabilities are secured.
Consistent parametrization by quinary subdivision for remeshing and mesh metamorphosis

The vertex correspondence establishment among multiple objects is a versatile operation in computer graphics and geometry processing. We propose a systematic method called recursive quinary subdivision to efficiently find a dissection for a meshed object of genus-zero with little user input. The process can be easily extended to multiple objects, taking into account the alignment of extra feature points for applications such as mesh metamorphosis, to derive a common dissection. Based on the dissection and the parameterization associated with each resulting patch, uniform or adaptive remeshing can be performed to yield a set of semi-regular meshes. Moveover, geometric details can be easily resampled and stored as normal maps. We demonstrate the mesh metamorphosis application between two or more objects based on the vertex correspondence established by the common dissection and parameterization.
Due-Date Scheduling: Asymptotic Optimality of Generalized Longest Queue and Generalized Largest Delay Rules

Consider the following due-date scheduling problem in a multiclass, acyclic, single-station service system: Any classk job arriving at timet must be served by its due datet+ D k . Equivalently, its delayt kmust not exceed a given delay or lead-timeD k . In a stochastic system, the constraintt k=D kmust be interpreted in a probabilistic sense. Regardless of the precise probabilistic formulation, however, the associated optimal control problem is intractable with exact analysis. This article proposes a new formulation which incorporates the constraint through a sequence of convex-increasing delay cost functions. This formulation reduces the intractable optimal scheduling problem into one for which the GeneralizedcÂµ (G cÂµ) scheduling rule is known to be asymptotically optimal. The G cÂµ rule simplifies here to a generalized longest queue (GLQ) or generalized largest delay (GLD) rule, which are defined as follows. LetN kbe the number of classk jobs in system,? ktheir arrival rate, anda kthe age of their oldest job in the system. GLQ and GLD are dynamic priority rules, parameterized by? : GLQ( ? )serves FIFO within class and prioritizes the class with highest index? kN k , whereas GLD( ? )uses index? k? ka k . The argument is presented first intuitively, but is followed by a limit analysis that expresses the cost objective in terms of the maximal due-date violation probability. This proves that GLQ( ? *)and GLD( ? *), where? *, k= 1/ ? kD k , asymptotically minimize the probability of maximal due-date violation in heavy traffic. Specifically, they minimize lim inf n ? 8 Pr{max k sup s? [0,t ]t k ( ns)/ n 1/2D k=x} for all positivet andx, wheret k ( s) is the delay of the most recent classk job that arrived before times. GLQ with appropriate parameter ? a also reduces "total variability" because it asymptotically minimizes a weighted sum of ath delay moments. Properties of GLQ and GLD, including an expression for their asymptotic delay distributions, are presented.
The Classification of Imbalanced Spatial Data

This paper describes a method of improving the prediction of urbanization. The four datasets used in this study were extracted using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Each dataset contains seven independent variables related to urban development and a class label which denotes the urban areas versus the rural areas. Two classification methods Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Neural Networks (NN) were used in previous studies to perform the two-class classification task. Previous results achieved high accuracies but low sensitivity, because of the imbalanced feature of the datasets. There are several ways to deal with imbalanced data, but two sampling methods are compared in this study.
On the Complexity of Immersed Normal Surfaces

Normal surface theory, a tool to represent surfaces in a triangulated 3-manifold combinatorially, is ubiquitous in computational 3-manifold theory. In this paper, we investigate a relaxed notion of normal surfaces where we remove the quadrilateral conditions. This yields normal surfaces that are no longer embedded. We prove that it is NP-hard to decide whether such a surface is immersed. Our proof uses a reduction from Boolean constraint satisfaction problems where every variable appears in at most two clauses, using a classification theorem of Feder. We also investigate variants, and provide a polynomial-time algorithm to test for a local version of this problem.
Digital Background-Calibration Algorithm for “Split ADC” Architecture

The ldquosplit ADCrdquo architecture enables continuous digital background calibration by splitting the die area of a single ADC design into two independent halves, each converting the same input signal. The two independent outputs are averaged to produce the ADC output code. The difference of the two outputs provides information for a background-calibration algorithm. Since both ADCs convert the same input, when correctly calibrated, their outputs should be equal, and the difference should be zero. Any nonzero difference provides information to an error-estimation algorithm, which adjusts digital-calibration parameters in an adaptive process similar to a least mean square algorithm. This paper describes the calibration algorithm implemented in the specific realization of a 16-bit 1-MS/s algorithmic cyclic ADC. In addition to correcting ADC linearity, the calibration and estimation algorithms are tolerant of offset error and remove linear scale-factor-error mismatch between the ADC channels. Simulated results are presented confirming self-calibration in approximately 10 000 conversions, which represents an improvement of four orders of magnitude over previous statistically based calibration algorithms.
Optimize Routing in Hybrid SDN Network with Changing Traffic

Traffic Engineering is an efficient tool to balance the network flows and, thus improving the network performance with limited network resources. The goal of traffic engineering is to find an efficient and robust routing to balance the flows with changing traffic. Multiple traffic matrices are good representatives of the changing traffic. The emergence of Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides us a more flexible way to route the network flows with multiple traffic matrices. We expect to optimize the routing of the average case performance over multiple traffic matrices and, at the same time, bound the worst case performance for some unexpected traffic in hybrid SDN network. In this paper, we first formulate the problem of optimizing both the average case and worst case performance of the routing over multiple traffic matrices. Then, we prove the problem is NP-hard and propose a heuristic algorithm to solve it. Finally, we evaluate our algorithm with real traffic datasets. Through extensive experiments, we observe that the worst case performance of our routing can be dramatically improved by 32.15% with a little sacrifice of the average case performance by 2.01% and demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in optimizing both the average case and worst case performance of routing.
Histochemistry of giant cells in tumours induced in golden hamsters by murine sarcoma virus‐harvey

Tumours induced by murine sarcoma virus‐Harvey (MSV‐H) in golden hamsters are characterized by the presence of multinucleate giant cells. A histochemical study was undertaken to determine the relationship of the giant cells to each other and to the surrounding tumour. It was shown that the giant cells were not a homogeneous cell population. Those found in subcutaneous tumours showed no substrate‐specific phosphatases and had marked histochemical similarity to cells of the adjacent tumour. In paw, muscle and bone‐eroding tumours, most of the giant cells showed strong substrate‐specific phosphatase activity and no histochemical resemblance to cells of the adjacent tumour. Giant cells probably related to skeletal muscle were seen only where muscle was infiltrated by tumour. It was concluded that the giant cells were possibly related to the tumour cells only in the case of the subcutaneous tumours and that in the other tumours they were probably related to macrophages.