Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A fatigue damage model for composite materials

Composite materials using polymer resins as matrices possess viscoelastic properties such that the fatigue behavior of the composite could be changed by different stress levels, stress ratio, stress frequency, or temperature. Based on a physical phenomenon of damage growth, this work develops a fatigue damage model including the nonlinear effects of stress ratio and stress frequency on the damage processes for carbon/epoxy composites. A damage index is defined and used to confirm the damage evolution behavior, and a series of fatigue tests of unidirectional specimens under monotonous loading and two-stress level loading are conducted to test the proposed fatigue damage model. The results reveal that the proposed model could reasonably predict the fatigue life of composite materials under complicated loading conditions and it also includes the sequence effect of cyclic block loadings. POLYM. COMPOS. , 2009. © 2008 Society of Plastics Engineers
Progression and regression of carotid atherosclerosis in clinical trials.

Progression and regression of carotid atherosclerosis in clinical trials 1524-4636 Copyright © 1991 American Heart Association. All rights reserved. Print ISSN: 1079-5642. Online ISSN: 7272 Greenville Avenue, Dallas, TX 72514 Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology is published by the American Heart Association. 1991, 11:443-451 Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol http://atvb.ahajournals. org/content/11/2/443.citation located on the World Wide Web at: The online version of this article, along with updated information and services, is
The function of the left anterior temporal pole: evidence from acute stroke and infarct volume

The role of the anterior temporal lobes in cognition and language has been much debated in the literature over the last few years. Most prevailing theories argue for an important role of the anterior temporal lobe as a semantic hub or a place for the representation of unique entities such as proper names of peoples and places. Lately, a few studies have investigated the role of the most anterior part of the left anterior temporal lobe, the left temporal pole in particular, and argued that the left anterior temporal pole is the area responsible for mapping meaning on to sound through evidence from tasks such as object naming. However, another recent study indicates that bilateral anterior temporal damage is required to cause a clinically significant semantic impairment. In the present study, we tested these hypotheses by evaluating patients with acute stroke before reorganization of structure–function relationships. We compared a group of 20 patients with acute stroke with anterior temporal pole damage to a group of 28 without anterior temporal pole damage matched for infarct volume. We calculated the average percent error in auditory comprehension and naming tasks as a function of infarct volume using a non-parametric regression method. We found that infarct volume was the only predictive variable in the production of semantic errors in both auditory comprehension and object naming tasks. This finding favours the hypothesis that left unilateral anterior temporal pole lesions, even acutely, are unlikely to cause significant deficits in mapping meaning to sound by themselves, although they contribute to networks underlying both naming and comprehension of objects. Therefore, the anterior temporal lobe may be a semantic hub for object meaning, but its role must be represented bilaterally and perhaps redundantly.
Preprocessing CVS Data for Fine-Grained Analysis

All analyses of version archives have one phase in common: the preprocessing of data. Preprocessing has a direct impact on the quality of the results returned by an analysis. In this paper we discuss four essential preprocessing tasks necessary for a fine-grained analysis of CVS archives: (a) data extraction, (b) transaction recovery, (c) mapping of changes to fine-grained entities, and (d) data cleaning. We formalize the concept of sliding time windows and show how commit mails can relate revisions to transactions. We also present two approaches that map changes to the affected building blocks of a file, e.g. functions or sections.
Accelerating collision detection for large-scale crowd simulation on multi-core and many-core architectures

The computing capabilities of current multi-core and many-core architectures have been used in crowd simulations for both enhancing crowd rendering and simulating continuum crowds. However, improving the scalability of crowd simulation systems by exploiting the inherent parallelism of these architectures is still an open issue. In this paper, we propose different parallelization strategies for the collision check procedure that takes place in agent-based simulations. These strategies are designed for exploiting the parallelism in both multi-core and many-core architectures like graphic processing units (GPUs). As for the many-core implementations, we analyse the bottlenecks of a previous GPU version of the collision check algorithm, proposing a new GPU version that removes the bottlenecks detected. In order to fairly compare the GPU with the multi-core implementations, we propose a parallel CPU version that uses read--copy update (RCU), a new synchronization method which significantly improves performance. We perform a comparison study of these different implementations. On the one hand, the comparison study shows the first performance evaluation of RCU in a real user-space application with complex data structures. On the other hand, the comparison shows that the GPU greatly accelerates the collision test with respect to any other implementation optimized for multi-core CPUs. In addition, we analyse the efficiency of the different implementations taking into account the theoretical performance and power consumption of each platform. The evaluation results show that the GPU-based implementation consumes less energy and provides a minimum speedup of 45× with respect to any of the CPU-based implementations. Since interactivity is a hard constraint in crowd simulations, this acceleration of the collision check process represents a significant improvement in the overall system throughput and response time. Therefore, the simulations are significantly accelerated, and the system throughput and scalability are improved.
Modélisation de processus industriels par réseaux bayésiens orientés objet (RBOO)

This paper proposes a methodology to d evelop a decision-making a id system, based on Object Oriented Bayesian Networks (OOBNs), of which pu rpose is the overall performance ev aluation o f a manufacturing process from its implementation and during its operating pha se. The added value of t he methodology is to formalise models from prior knowledge both on the system functioning and malfunctioning. Networks are built on principles of adaptability and integrate uncertainties on the relationships between causes and effects. Thus, the aim is to evaluate, in term of performance, the impact of several decisions about maintenance of t he system. This is made thanks to an influence diagram allowing the valuation of the cost associated with every decision. This methodology is tested, in an industrial context, thanks to the maintenance aid on a lathe machine.
Methylated HBHA Produced in M. smegmatis Discriminates between Active and Non-Active Tuberculosis Disease among RD1-Responders

Background A challenge in tuberculosis (TB) research is to develop a new immunological test that can help distinguish, among subjects responsive to QuantiFERON TB Gold In tube (QFT-IT), those who are able to control Mtb replication (remote LTBI, recent infection and past TB) from those who cannot (active TB disease). IFN-γ response to the Heparin-binding-hemagglutinin (HBHA) of Mtb has been associated with LTBI, but the cumbersome procedures of purifying the methylated and immunological active form of the protein from Mtb or M. bovis Bacillus Calmette et Guerin (BCG) have prevented its implementation in a diagnostic test. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the IFN-γ response to methylated HBHA of Mtb produced in M. smegmatis (rHBHAms) in individuals at different stages of TB who scored positive to QFT-IT. Methodology/Principal Findings 87 individuals at different stages of TB who scored positive to QFT-IT were selected. IFN-γ response to in vitro whole blood stimulation with rHBHAms was evaluated by short-term and long-term tests and detected by ELISA or flow cytometry. We demonstrated that the IFN-γ response to rHBHAms is mediated by CD4+ T-cells with an effector-memory phenotype. This response, evaluated by short-term-tests, is significantly lower in active TB than in remote LTBI (p = 0.0010) and past TB (p = 0.0152). These results were confirmed by long-term tests. The qualitative data confirmed that IFN-γ responses higher than the cut-off point identified by ROC analysis are associated with the status of non-active disease. Conclusions In this study we show that the T-cell response to a recombinant and methylated HBHA of Mtb produced in M. smegmatis is useful to discriminate between active and non-active TB disease among those responsive to QFT-IT in a whole blood system. Further studies are needed to improve the accuracy of the assay.
Can Routing Oscillations be Good? The Benefits of Route-switching in Self-aware Networks

Adaptive routing is once again becoming of interest because of the possibility to couple on-line probing in networks with real-time dynamic and distributed control of paths and flows. Wireless networks, with their rapidly changing network conditions also create a need to revisit this issue. This paper uses measurements in a wired adaptive network test-bed, the cognitive packet network (CPN), to investigate the pros and cons of adaptive routing. CPN routes packet flows through a store and forward network according to their quality of service (QoS) needs through an on-line, distributed reinforcement learning mechanism. This paper investigates routing oscillations which occur due to the interaction of multiple flows and studies their effect on QoS in the context of CPN. Our results indicate that routing oscillations can be easily controlled by randomising the route switching, and that from an overall QoS viewpoint increased switching can also lead to improved performance.
Association of gingival biotype with the results of scaling and root planing

Purpose The concept of gingival biotype has been used as a predictor of periodontal therapy outcomes since the 1980s. In the present study, prospective and controlled experiments were performed to compare periodontal pocket depth (PPD) reduction and gingival shrinkage (GSH) after scaling and root planing (SRP) according to gingival biotype. Methods Twenty-five patients diagnosed with chronic periodontitis participated in the present study. The PPD and GSH of the labial side of the maxillary anterior teeth (from the right canine to the left canine) were evaluated at baseline and 3 months after SRP. Changes in the PPD following SRP were classified into 4 groups according to the gingival thickness and initial PPD. Two more groups representing normal gingival crevices were added in evaluation of the GSH. The results were statistically analyzed using the independent t-test. Results In the end, 16 patients participated in the present study. With regard to PPD reduction, there were no significant differences according to gingival biotype (P>0.05). Likewise, sites with a PPD of over 3 mm failed to show any significant differences in the GSH (P>0.05). However, among the sites with a PPD of under 3 mm, those with the thin gingival biotype showed more GSH (P<0.05). Conclusions PPD changes after SRP were not affected by gingival biotype with either shallow or deep periodontal pockets. GSH also showed equal outcomes in all the groups without normal gingival crevices. The results of SRP seem not to differ according to gingival biotype.
MECHANISMS OF BIOELECTRIC ACTIVITY IN ELECTRIC TISSUE

The electric discharge of electric fish was early recognized to be identical in nature with the less powerful electric activity of nerve and muscle and was, therefore, the subject of numerous investigations aimed at the analysis of bioelectric potentials. These studies primarily concerned themselves with the physical and physiological properties of the electric organ up to 1937, when Nachmansohn and his colleagues began to analyze the biochemical events associated with the generation of the electrical activity. The voluminous earlier literature on the physiological data was summarized by Rosenberg (18); a later discussion is by Albe-Fessard (1); while the biochemical findings were reviewed by Nachmansohn (17). In recent years interest has largely centered on the responses of a few or single cells of the electric organ. Early attempts in this direction were carried out by Fessard and his colleagues (11). A new contribution is the work of Keynes and Martins-Ferreira (15), which has been paralleled by similar independent work in this laboratory. The present paper presents the first of a series of reports on our work, and confines itself to the results obtained with external electrodes on the responses of one or a few cells of the electric organ. Emphasis is put in this report on the responses of the cells to indirect stimulation through their nerves.
An enigmatic crocodyliform tooth from the bauxites of western Hungary suggests hidden mesoeucrocodylian diversity in the Early Cretaceous European archipelago

Background. The Cretaceous of southern Europe was characterized by an archipelago setting with faunas of mixed composition of endemic, Laurasian and Gondwanan elements. However, little is known about the relative timing of these faunal influences. The Lower Cretaceous of East-Central Europe holds a great promise for understanding the biogeographic history of Cretaceous European biotas because of the former proximity of the area to Gondwana (as part of the Apulian microcontinent). However, East-Central European vertebrates are typically poorly known from this time period. Here, we report on a ziphodont crocodyliform tooth discovered in the Lower Cretaceous (Albian) Alsópere Bauxite Formation of Olaszfalu, western Hungary. Methods. The morphology of the tooth is described and compared with that of other similar Cretaceous crocodyliforms. Results. Based on the triangular, slightly distally curved, constricted and labiolingually flattened crown, the small, subequal-sized true serrations on the carinae mesially and distally, the longitudinal fluting labially, and the extended shelves along the carinae lingually the tooth is most similar to some peirosaurid, non-baurusuchian sebecosuchian, and uruguaysuchid notosuchians. In addition, the paralligatorid Wannchampsus also possesses similar anterior teeth, thus the Hungarian tooth is referred here to Mesoeucrocodylia indet. Discussion. Supposing a notosuchian affinity, this tooth is the earliest occurrence of the group in Europe and one of the earliest in Laurasia. In case of a paralligatorid relationship the Hungarian tooth would represent their first European record, further expanding their cosmopolitan distribution. In any case, the ziphodont tooth from the Albian bauxite deposit of western Hungary belongs to a group still unknown from the Early Cretaceous European archipelago and therefore implies a hidden diversity of crocodyliforms in the area.
Efficient methods for sampling spike trains in networks of coupled neurons

Monte Carlo approaches have recently been proposed to quantify connectivity in neuronal networks. The key problem is to sample from the conditional distribution of a single neuronal spike train, given the activity of the other neurons in the network. Dependencies between neurons are usually relatively weak; however, temporal dependencies within the spike train of a single neuron are typically strong. In this paper we develop several specialized Metropolis--Hastings samplers which take advantage of this dependency structure. These samplers are based on two ideas: (1) an adaptation of fast forward--backward algorithms from the theory of hidden Markov models to take advantage of the local dependencies inherent in spike trains, and (2) a first-order expansion of the conditional likelihood which allows for efficient exact sampling in the limit of weak coupling between neurons. We also demonstrate that these samplers can effectively incorporate side information, in particular, noisy fluorescence observations in the context of calcium-sensitive imaging experiments. We quantify the efficiency of these samplers in a variety of simulated experiments in which the network parameters are closely matched to data measured in real cortical networks, and also demonstrate the sampler applied to real calcium imaging data.
Efficient mining of frequent itemsets in social network data based on MapReduce framework

Social Networks promote information sharing between people everywhere and at all times. Mining data produced in this data-rich environment can be extremely useful. Frequent itemset mining plays an important role in mining associations, correlations, sequential patterns, causality, episodes, multidimensional patterns, max-patterns, partial periodicity, emerging patterns, and many other significant data mining tasks in social networks. With the exponential growth of social network data towards a terabyte or more, most of the traditional frequent itemset mining algorithms become ineffective due to either huge resource requirements or large communications overhead. Cloud computing has proved that processing very large datasets over commodity clusters can be done by providing the right programming model. As a parallel programming model, MapReduce, one of most important techniques for cloud computing, has emerged in the mining of datasets of terabyte scale or larger on clusters of computers. In this paper, we propose an efficient frequent itemset mining algorithm, called IMRApriori, based on MapReduce framework which deals with Hadoop cloud, a parallel store and computing platform. The paper demonstrates experimental results to corroborate the theoretical claims.
WattsUpDoc: Power Side Channels to Nonintrusively Discover Untargeted Malware on Embedded Medical Devices

Medical devices based on embedded systems are ubiquitous in clinical settings. Increasingly, they connect to networks and run off-the-shelf operating systems vulnerable to malware. But strict validation requirements make it prohibitively difficult or costly to use anti-virus software or automated operating system updates on these systems. Our add-on monitoring system, WattsUpDoc, uses a traditionally undesirable side channel of power consumption to enable run-time malware detection. In our experiments, WattsUpDoc detected previously known malware with at least 94% accuracy and previously unknown malware with at least 85% accuracy on several embedded devices--detection rates similar to those of conventional malware-detection systems on PCs. WattsUpDoc detects malware without requiring hardware or software modifications or network communication.
Identification of an RNA Hairpin in Poliovirus RNA That Serves as the Primary Template in the In Vitro Uridylylation of VPg

ABSTRACT The first step in the replication of the plus-stranded poliovirus RNA is the synthesis of a complementary minus strand. This process is initiated by the covalent attachment of UMP to the terminal protein VPg, yielding VPgpU and VPgpUpU. We have previously shown that these products can be made in vitro in a reaction that requires only synthetic VPg, UTP, poly(A), purified poliovirus RNA polymerase 3Dpol, and Mg2+ (A. V. Paul, J. H. van Boom, D. Filippov, and E. Wimmer, Nature 393:280–284, 1998). Since such a poly(A)-dependent process cannot confer sufficient specificity to poliovirus RNA replication, we have developed a new assay to search for a viral RNA template in conjunction with viral or cellular factors that could provide this function. We have now discovered a small RNA hairpin in the coding region of protein 2C as the site in PV1(M) RNA that is used as the primary template for the in vitro uridylylation of VPg. This hairpin has recently been described in poliovirus RNA as being an essential structure for the initiation of minus strand RNA synthesis (I. Goodfellow, Y. Chaudhry, A. Richardson, J. Meredith, J. W. Almond, W. Barclay, and D. J. Evans, J. Virol. 74:4590–4600, 2000). The uridylylation reaction either with transcripts of cre(2C) RNA or with full-length PV1(M) RNA as the template is strongly stimulated by the addition of purified viral protein 3CDpro. Deletion of the cre(2C) RNA sequences from minigenomes eliminates their ability to serve as template in the reaction. A similar signal in the coding region of VP1 in HRV14 RNA (K. L. McKnight and S. M. Lemon, RNA 4:1569–1584, 1998) and the poliovirus cre(2C) can be functionally exchanged in the assay. The mechanism by which the VPgpUpU precursor, made specifically on the cre(2C) template, might be transferred to the site where it serves as primer for poliovirus RNA synthesis, remains to be determined.
A biomimetic jellyfish robot based on ionic polymer metal composite actuators

A biomimetic jellyfish robot based on ionic polymer metal composite actuators was fabricated and activated to mimic real locomotive behavior with pulse and recovery processes. To imitate the curved shape of the jellyfish, a thermal treatment was applied to obtain a permanent initial deformation of a hemispherical form. The bio-inspired input signal was generated for mimicking real locomotion of the jellyfish. The vertical floating displacement and the thrust force of the biomimetic jellyfish robot under various input signals were measured and compared. The present results show that the bio-inspired electrical input signal with pulse-recovery process generates much higher floating velocity of the biomimetic jellyfish robot in comparison with pure sinusoidal excitations. The curved shape of the IPMC actuator through thermal treatments can be successfully applied to mimic the real biomimetic robots with smooth curves.
Effect of Proton Irradiation Induced Defects on 4H-SiC Schottky Diode X-Ray Detectors

Detectors capable of withstanding high radiation environments for prolonged periods of exposure are essential for the monitoring of nuclear power stations and nuclear waste as well as for space exploration. Schottky diode X-ray detectors were exposed to high dose proton irradiation (1013 cm-2, 50 MeV) and changes in the detection resolution (spectroscopic full width half-maximum) have been observed. Using Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy (DLTS) and the degradation of the electrical characteristics of the diode, we have shown that radiation induced traps located in the upper half of the bandgap have reduced the concentration of carriers.
The scaling evolution of cosmological constant

In quantum field theory the parameters of the vacuum action are subject to renormalization group running. In particular, the ``cosmological constant'' is not a constant in a quantum field theory context, still less should be zero. In this paper we continue with previous work, and derive the particle contributions to the running of the cosmological and gravitational constants in the framework of the Standard Model in curved space-time. At higher energies the calculation is performed in a sharp cut off approximation. We assess, in two different frameworks, whether the scaling dependences of the cosmological and gravitational constants spoil primordial nucleosynthesis. Finally, the cosmological implications of the running of the cosmological constant are discussed.