Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Digitalization: Laser Metal Deposition — The Future of Spare Parts and Repairs for Industrial Steam Turbines

Laser metal deposition (LMD) — also referred to as laser deposition welding — has been a well-established process for years. One example of its use is for tip repair for gas turbine blades from Siemens. The decision to also implement laser welding technology for the service of industrial steam turbines was based primarily on the fact that repairs — especially conventional welds and coatings including heat treatment and testing — are very time consuming and are very difficult to reconcile with the overhaul periods planned by customers. The robot supported automation of the LMD process and the fact of its lower heat input, reduced layer thicknesses and the resulting lowered deformation of the part due to reduced coating areas makes it possible to optimize lead times. The high level of process automation and reliability of a laser welding process represents another important benefit. Similarly, process parameters are constantly monitored and tracked, to ensure that the required quality standards are maintained and even increased. Furthermore, laser metal deposition completely replaced the conventional processes such as tungsten inert gas method (TIG), plasma transferred arc (PTA) and detonation spraying. In addition the technology unleashes now the possibility to repair and refurbish parts instead of new manufacturing, and therefore delivery times can be tremendously reduced. Based on the decision to six-axis robots it becomes possible enhancing the LMD process for complex 3D surfaces. After modeling a digital twin in Siemens NX CAM it is possible to generate, optimize and simulate the whole motion-sequences offline before starting the LMD process in the robot cell. So already designed parts in 3D-CAD can be used to develop the final robot program. In addition already existing technologies like 3D surface scanning will be implemented in the chain to support the LMD process. Digitalization turns from a buzzword to an established technology for industrial steam turbine manufacturing and repair.
Relationship between activities of daily living and cognitive ability in a sample of older adults with heterogeneous educational level

Introduction: A number of studies have shown the impact of cognitive abilities on instrumental activities of daily living, in particular executive functions. Nevertheless, it is not clear to what extent these results can be generalized, given that most samples studied have not included people with a low educational level. Objectives: The current study aims to investigate the association between cognitive abilities and activities of daily living in older adults — with and without dementia — from a middle-income country. Sample: The sample consisted of 48 healthy older adults and 29 people with dementia, who were evaluated in an Outpatient Care Unit in a University Reference Center in Rio de Janeiro. Results: Regression analyses indicated that the best predictors for activities of daily living were performance in immediate verbal memory in the case of controls and in a categorical fluency task in the patient group. The educational level itself was not a significant predictor of functional ability in either sample, but showed moderate correlation with the predictors. Conclusions: These results suggest that educational level may be a mediating factor in the association of cognitive variables and activities of daily living, and indicate a potential dissociation in terms of predictors according to the diagnostic status, pointing to relevant treatment directions.
Efficacy of B-cell-targeted therapy with rituximab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

BACKGROUND An open-label study indicated that selective depletion of B cells with the use of rituximab led to sustained clinical improvements for patients with rheumatoid arthritis. To confirm these observations, we conducted a randomized, double-blind, controlled study. METHODS We randomly assigned 161 patients who had active rheumatoid arthritis despite treatment with methotrexate to receive one of four treatments: oral methotrexate (> or =10 mg per week) (control); rituximab (1000 mg on days 1 and 15); rituximab plus cyclophosphamide (750 mg on days 3 and 17); or rituximab plus methotrexate. Responses defined according to the criteria of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) were assessed at week 24 (primary analyses) and week 48 (exploratory analyses). RESULTS At week 24, the proportion of patients with 50 percent improvement in disease symptoms according to the ACR criteria, the primary end point, was significantly greater with the rituximab-methotrexate combination (43 percent, P=0.005) and the rituximab-cyclophosphamide combination (41 percent, P=0.005) than with methotrexate alone (13 percent). In all groups treated with rituximab, a significantly higher proportion of patients had a 20 percent improvement in disease symptoms according to the ACR criteria (65 to 76 percent vs. 38 percent, P< or =0.025) or had EULAR responses (83 to 85 percent vs. 50 percent, P< or =0.004). All ACR responses were maintained at week 48 in the rituximab-methotrexate group. The majority of adverse events occurred with the first rituximab infusion: at 24 weeks, serious infections occurred in one patient (2.5 percent) in the control group and in four patients (3.3 percent) in the rituximab groups. Peripheral-blood immunoglobulin concentrations remained within normal ranges. CONCLUSIONS In patients with active rheumatoid arthritis despite methotrexate treatment, a single course of two infusions of rituximab, alone or in combination with either cyclophosphamide or continued methotrexate, provided significant improvement in disease symptoms at both weeks 24 and 48.
Reading in Devanagari: Insights from functional neuroimaging

Abstract Objectives: The current study used functional MRI (fMRI) to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the neural network underlying visual word recognition in Hindi/Devanagari, an alphasyllabic - partly alphabetic and partly syllabic Indian writing system on which little research has hitherto been carried out. Materials and Methods: Sixteen (5F, 11M) neurologically healthy, native Hindi/Devanagari readers aged 21 to 50 named aloud 240 Devanagari words which were either visually linear - had no diacritics or consonant ligatures above or below central plane of text, e.g. फल, वाहन, or nonlinear - had at least one diacritic and/or ligature, e.g. फूल, किरण, and which further included 120 words each of high and low frequency. Words were presented in alternating high and low frequency blocks of 10 words each at 2s/word in a block design, with linear and nonlinear words in separate runs. Word reading accuracy was manually coded, while fMRI images were acquired on a 3T scanner with an 8-channel head-coil, using a T2FNx01-weighted EPI sequence (TR/TE = 2s/35ms). Results: After ensuring high word naming accuracy (M = 97.6%, SD = 2.3), fMRI data analyses (at FDR P < 0.005) revealed that reading Devanagari words elicited robust activations in bilateral occipito-temporal, inferior frontal and precentral regions as well as both cerebellar hemispheres. Other common areas of activation included left inferior parietal and right superior temporal cortices. Primary differences seen between nonlinear and linear word reading networks were in the right temporal areas and cerebellum. Conclusion: Distinct from alphabetic scripts, which are linear in their spatial organization, and recruit a primarily left-lateralized network for word reading, our results revealed a bilateral reading network for Devanagari. We attribute the additional activations in Devanagari to increased visual processing demands arising from the complex visuospatial arrangement of symbols in this ancient script.
Intrapopulation genomics in a model mutualist: Population structure and candidate symbiosis genes under selection in Medicago truncatula

Bottom‐up evolutionary approaches, including geographically explicit population genomic analyses, have the power to reveal the mechanistic basis of adaptation. Here, we conduct a population genomic analysis in the model legume, Medicago truncatula, to characterize population genetic structure and identify symbiosis‐related genes showing evidence of spatially variable selection. Using RAD‐seq, we generated over 26,000 SNPs from 191 accessions from within three regions of the native range in Europe. Results from STRUCTURE analysis identify five distinct genetic clusters with divisions that separate east and west regions in the Mediterranean basin. Much of the genetic variation is maintained within sampling sites, and there is evidence for isolation by distance. Extensive linkage disequilibrium was identified, particularly within populations. We conducted genetic outlier analysis with FST‐based genome scans and a Bayesian modeling approach (PCAdapt). There were 70 core outlier loci shared between these distinct methods with one clear candidate symbiosis related gene, DMI1. This work sets that stage for functional experiments to determine the important phenotypes that selection has acted upon and complementary efforts in rhizobium populations.
Behaviour of strengthened timber beams using near surface mounted Basalt Fibre Reinforced Polymer (BFRP) rebars

Reinforcement of structural timber members with fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) rods offers merits over that of the conventional steel type. In recent times, near surface mounted (NSM) FRP reinforcement with timber has emerged as a promising alternative for reinforcing timber structures in both flexural and shear loading configurations. Previous investigations have shown that NSM FRP reinforcement technique has higher bond performance than externally bonded equivalents because it (NSM FRP technique) is able to utilise the full capacity of the FRP materials. In spite of these merits, the investigations and the use of this innovative technique are limited. In this paper, an experiment was conducted to investigate the bond characteristics and performance of NSM basalt FRP reinforcement with solid timber structures. In order to predict the performance of the reinforced beam structures, unreinforced control timber members of the same timber characteristics were tested. The results showed that the average bond capacity of the NSM FRP reinforced members was 16% higher than the corresponding unreinforced beams.
Is Mood Affected by Interactions With People at Risk for Affective Disorders?

The interpersonal behavior of individuals who have affective disorders can increase the likelihood of interpersonal conflicts. A related issue is whether vulnerability for developing affective disorder expresses itself in social interactions that affect the mood of interaction partners as well. Adolescents (n = 119) have been divided into subgroups: “mania risk” (scoring high on “Hypomanic Personality”); “unipolar risk” (scoring high on “Rigidity”); and a control group (scoring low on both scales). Interviews were conducted by raters blind to risk status. Interviewers provided ratings of their own mood before and after the interview. Negative mood of the interviewers did not change. Interviewers' positive mood decreased when interacting with individuals at risk for unipolar disorder as well as when interacting with the control subjects, but not when interacting with people at risk for mania. It seems that individuals high in hypomanic traits keep the interaction partner longer engaged and interested.
Joint antenna selection and power allocation for distributed-stbc cognitive small cell networks

Small cell networks enhance spectrum efficiency by handling the indoor traffic of mobile networks on a frequency-reuse operation. Because most of the current mobile traffic happens indoor, we introduce a prioritization shift by imposing a limitation on the outage generated by the outdoor mobile system to the indoor small cells. In this paper, we consider downlink spectrum sharing between a system consisting of small cells and a macrocell relay network. The relays constitute a distributed-STBC relaying which provides the data traffic for the outdoor system terminals. We propose a joint transmit antenna selection and power allocation which minimizes the bit error rate of the outdoor mobile terminal. The optimization is constrained by the outage at the small cell located near the cooperating transmit relays. The proposed optimization yields a dynamic selection of the relays pertaining to the outdoor mobile terminal performance. The simulation results show that our proposal exhibits a better bit error rate compared to the conventional Alamouti STBC with equal power allocation.
ECF: An MPTCP Path Scheduler to Manage Heterogeneous Paths

Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP) is a new standardized transport protocol that enables devices to utilize multiple network interfaces. The default MPTCP path scheduler prioritizes paths with the smallest round trip time (RTT). In this work, we examine whether the default MPTCP path scheduler can provide applications the ideal aggregate bandwidth, i.e., the sum of available bandwidths of every paths. Our experimental results show that heterogeneous paths cause underutilization of the fast path, resulting in undesirable application behaviors such as lower streaming quality in a video than can be obtained using the available aggregate bandwidth. To solve this problem, we propose and implement a new MPTCP path scheduler, ECF (Earliest Completion First), that utilizes all relevant information about a path, not just RTT. We compare ECF with both the default and other MPTCP path schedulers, using both an experimental testbed and in-the-wild measurements. Our results show that ECF consistently utilizes all available paths more efficiently than other approaches under path heterogeneity, particularly for streaming video. In Web browsing workloads, ECF also does better in some scenarios and never does worse.
Light and Electron Microscopy Analysis of Gold Nanoparticle Penetration in Stiffness varying 3D Tumor Spheroids

xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 Background on Breast Cancer.1 1.2 Cancer Models: Monolayer and 3D.2 1.2.1 Monolayer.2 1.2.2 3D or Spheroids.3 1.2.3 Monolayer versus 3D.5 CHAPTER 2: GOLD NANOPARTICLE PENETRATION AND STIFFNESS STUDY IN 3D TUMOR MODELS.8 2.1 3D spheroid culture via Liquid Overlay Technique (LOT). 8 2.1.1 Spheroid Culture Protocol.9 2.2 Stiffness analysis in a single cell/tissue.10 2.2.1 Stiffness study in 3D tumor models . 11 2.3 Previous diffusion studies in Monolayer cancer cells.12
Health Care Segregation and Race Disparities in Infectious Disease

Examining nursing home segregation and race disparities in influenza vaccinations, this study demonstrates that segregation may increase both susceptibility and exposure to seasonal flu for black Americans. Evidence based on the 2004 U.S. National Nursing Home Survey shows that individuals in nursing homes with high percentages of black residents have less personal immunity to flu because they are less likely to have been vaccinated against the disease; they may also be more likely to be exposed to flu because more of their coresidents are also unvaccinated. This implies that segregation may generate dual disease hazards for contagious conditions. Segregation appears to limit black Americans’ access to personal preventive measures against infection, while spatially concentrating those people who are most likely to become contagious.
Computational methods for the detection of cis-regulatory modules

Metazoan transcription regulation occurs through the concerted action of multiple transcription factors that bind co-operatively to cis-regulatory modules (CRMs). The annotation of these key regulators of transcription is lagging far behind the annotation of the transcriptome itself. Here, we give an overview of existing computational methods to detect these CRMs in metazoan genomes. We subdivide these methods into three classes: CRM scanners screen sequences for CRMs based on predefined models that often consist of multiple position weight matrices (PWMs). CRM builders construct models of similar CRMs controlling a set of co-regulated or co-expressed genes. CRM genome screeners screen sequences or complete genomes for CRMs as homotypic or heterotypic clusters of binding sites for any combination of transcription factors. We believe that CRM scanners are currently the most advanced methods, although their applicability is limited. Finally, we argue that CRM builders that make use of PWM libraries will benefit greatly from future advances and will prove to be most instrumental for the annotation of regulatory regions in metazoan genomes.
Distance to Market: Propinquity across In-store and Online Food Retailing

This qualitative research examines propinquity across two grocery shopping situations – real (in‐store) and virtual (online). Examining how the same consumers shop for the same or similar commodities provides quasi‐experimental conditions to examine differences in shopping behaviour. Convergent interviews with 15 respondents identified that consumer reasons – expectations of convenience, trust and satisfaction – for choosing online over in‐store shopping fall into three categories of propinquity: physical, temporal and relational. The main reason consumers chose online shopping was convenience, to save time. To maximize trust and satisfaction, consumers seldom changed brand in online grocery shopping situations. The analysis also identified four distinct online shopper types – occasional, nasties, speciality and dependent – based on perceptions of convenience and trust and satisfaction associated with virtual situations.
Effect of ApoE Genotype on Response to Donepezil in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease

Background/Aims: The possible influence of apolipoprotein E (ApoE) genotype on the response to acetylcholinesterase inhibitor therapy in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains a matter of controversy. In order to address this issue, we investigated the effects of ApoE genotype on the clinical response to donepezil in patients with mild to moderate AD. Methods: An open study was carried out in 51 patients with probable AD who were treated with 5–10 mg of donepezil per day for 48 weeks. Results: Eighteen (35.3%) of the 51 patients had 1 or 2 ApoE Ε4 alleles. ApoE Ε4 carriers with AD showed a mean 1.1-point increase from the baseline score of 23.9 on the 70-point Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Component at 48 weeks, while the ApoE Ε4 noncarrier group showed a 3.1-point increase from the baseline score of 22.5 (p = 0.03). The ApoE Ε4 carrier group exhibited a mean 0.13-point worsening from the baseline score of 0.97 on the Korean Instrumental Activities of Daily Living at 48 weeks, while the ApoE Ε4 noncarrier group exhibited a 0.17-point worsening from the baseline score of 0.64 (p = 0.05). Conclusion: AD patients who carry the ApoE Ε4 allele may respond more favorably to donepezil than Ε4 noncarriers.
Applying modern accounting techniques in complex manufacturing

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the applicability of lean accounting and throughput accounting in a company with considerable investments in advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). Design/methodology/approach – The paper compares lean accounting and throughput accounting with the traditional accounting system the company is using today. The authors investigate the differences between the three alternative approaches and use a case study approach to illustrate the effects of applying different modern accounting approaches in a complex manufacturing setting. Findings – Pair-wise comparisons of the three approaches provide some interesting cost information as to the role of bottlenecks and value streams. Research limitations/implications – The specific results of this study are limited to the case company, but can hopefully contribute to further research on how to combine lean and throughput accounting for mixed manufacturing environments, involving both value streams and bottlenecks. Prac.
Assessment of Steel Subjected to the Thermomechanical Control Process with Respect to Weldability

The study is concerned with the assessment of the weldability of steel S700MC subjected to the thermomechanical control process (TMCP) and precipitation hardening and characterised by a high yield point. Appropriate mechanical and plastic properties of steel S700MC were obtained using the thermomechanical control process through precipitation, solution, and strain hardening as well as by using grain-refinement-related processes. Constituents responsible for the hardening of steel S700MC include Ti, Nb, N, and C. The hardening is primarily affected by (Ti,Nb)(C,N)-type dispersive precipitates sized from several nanometres to between ten and twenty nanometres. The welding process considerably differs from TMCP conditions, leading to the reduction of plastic properties both in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) and in the weld area. This study demonstrates that in cases of TMCP steels, where the effect of precipitation hardening is obtained through titanium and niobium hardening phases, the carbon equivalent and phase transformation γ–α cannot constitute the basis of weldability assessment. The properties of welded joints made from the above-named group of steels are primarily affected by the stability of hardening phases, changes in their dispersion, and ageing processes. The most inferior properties were identified in the high-temperature and coarse-grained HAZ area, where the nucleation of hardening phases in the matrix and their uncontrolled reprecipitation in the fine-dispersive form lead to a sharp decrease in toughness.
Control of AmtB-GlnK Complex Formation by Intracellular Levels of ATP, ADP, and 2-Oxoglutarate*

PII proteins are one of the most widespread families of signal transduction proteins in nature, being ubiquitous throughout bacteria, archaea, and plants. They play a major role in coordinating nitrogen metabolism by interacting with, and regulating the activities of, a variety of enzymes, transcription factors, and membrane transport proteins. The regulatory properties of PII proteins derive from their ability to bind three effectors: ATP, ADP, and 2-oxoglutarate. However, a clear model to integrate physiological changes with the consequential structural changes that mediate PII interaction with a target protein has so far not been developed. In this study, we analyzed the fluctuations in intracellular effector pools in Escherichia coli during association and dissociation of the PII protein GlnK with the ammonia channel AmtB. We determined that key features promoting AmtB-GlnK complex formation are the rapid drop in the 2-oxoglutarate pool upon ammonium influx and a simultaneous, but transient, change in the ATP/ADP ratio. We were also able to replicate AmtB-GlnK interactions in vitro using the same effector combinations that we observed in vivo. This comprehensive data set allows us to propose a model that explains the way in which interactions between GlnK and its effectors influence the conformation of GlnK and thereby regulate its interaction with AmtB.