Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Traffic modeling with a combination of phase-type distributions and ARMA processes

The adequate modeling of correlated input processes is necessary to obtain realistic models in areas like computer or communication networks but is still a challenge in simulation modeling. In this paper we present a new class of stochastic processes which has been developed for describing correlated input processes and combines acyclic Phase-type distributions to model the marginal distribution with an ARMA process to capture the autocorrelation. The processes are an extension of ARTA processes, a well established input model in stochastic simulations. For the new process type we propose a fitting algorithm that allows one to approximate arbitrary sets of joint moments and autocorrelation coefficients and investigate the effect of different sets of approximated quantities on the quality of the fitted process empirically. We furthermore present an efficient way to generate random numbers and show how the processes can be easily integrated into simulation models.
Mobile usage patterns and privacy implications

Privacy is an important concern for mobile computing. Users might not understand the privacy implications of their actions and therefore not alter their behavior depending on where they move, when they do so, and who is in their surroundings. Since empirical data about the privacy behavior of users in mobile environments is limited, we conducted a survey study of ~600 users recruited from Florida State University and Craigslist. Major findings include: (1) People often exercise little caution preserving privacy in mobile computing environments; they perform similar computing tasks in public and private. (2) Privacy is orthogonal to trust; people tend to change their computing behavior more around people they know than strangers. (3) People underestimate the privacy threats of mobile apps, and comply with permission requests from apps more often than operating systems. (4) Users' understanding of privacy is different from that of the security community, suggesting opportunities for additional privacy studies.
The hepatitis C virus 3′-untranslated region or a poly(A) tract promote efficient translation subsequent to the initiation phase

Enhancement of eukaryotic messenger RNA (mRNA) translation initiation by the 3′ poly(A) tail is mediated through interaction of poly(A)-binding protein with eukaryotic initiation factor (eIF) 4G, bridging the 5′ terminal cap structure. In contrast to cellular mRNA, translation of the uncapped, non-polyadenylated hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome occurs independently of eIF4G and a role for 3′-untranslated sequences in modifying HCV gene expression is controversial. Utilizing cell-based and in vitro translation assays, we show that the HCV 3′-untranslated region (UTR) or a 3′ poly(A) tract of sufficient length interchangeably stimulate translation dependent upon the HCV internal ribosomal entry site (IRES). However, in contrast to cap-dependent translation, the rate of initiation at the HCV IRES was unaffected by 3′-untranslated sequences. Analysis of post-initiation events revealed that the 3′ poly(A) tract and HCV 3′-UTR improve translation efficiency by enabling termination and possibly ribosome recycling for successive rounds of translation.
Chronic pain after cardiac surgery: a prospective study

Background: Chronic pain is a complication of several surgical procedures. The prevalence of chronic pain reported after cardiac surgery varies from 18% to 61%. However, most studies are retrospective, do not use validated instruments for pain measurement or include only pain at the sternum site. The aim of the present study was to assess chronic pain and health‐related quality of life (HRQOL) after cardiac surgery.
E-Textiles for Autonomous Location Awareness

This paper describes an autonomous, wearable location awareness system that determines a user's location within a building given a map of that building. The system uses a moderate number of ultrasonic range transceivers as the sensing elements. Given a set of range readings from these sensors, the system attempts to match those actual readings to expected readings associated with a set of candidate locations for the wearer. These expected readings are calculated using a simulation model of the propagation of ultrasonic signals within a building. A complementary algorithm is given for determining the wearer's movement between rooms, allowing for the uncertainty associated with sensor readings in complex, multiroom environments. A wearable prototype system is described and results from this system in a range of scenarios are presented and analyzed
On the Optimal Design of Place-Based Policies: A Structural Evaluation of EU Regional Transfers

We quantify general equilibrium effects of place-based policies in a multi-region framework with population mobility, trade and agglomeration economies. Using detailed data on EU transfers, we infer the local effects of different transfer types on productivity, income and transportation cost. Based on these estimates and the general equilibrium model we derive the spatial distribution of economic activity and the resulting aggregate welfare effects if (i) no transfers were paid and taxes set to zero, (ii) transfers were distributed uniformly, (iii) transfers were welfare-optimally distributed. Characterizing the optimal distributions, we reveal complementarities between transfer types and between transfers and local endowments.
Rapid microwave-enhanced hydrothermal synthesis and shape evolution of uniform NaGdF4:Yb, Er (Tm/Ho) nanocrystals with upconversion and paramagnetic properties

An efficient microwave-enhanced hydrothermal synthesis strategy was developed for the rapid synthesis of β-NaGdF4:Ln3+ (Ln = Yb, Er/Tm/Ho) nanocrystals (NCs) with multicolour upconversion luminescence and paramagnetic properties. It has been found that the uniform β-NaGdF4:Ln3+ NCs could be rapidly formed within a few minutes at 160 °C and the shape of the NCs can be manipulated from uniform rod-like to spherical just by tuning the initial reactants’ concentration. In comparison to conventional hydrothermal routes, a burst homogeneous nucleation and higher growth rate as well as enhanced dimensional homogeneity of the NaGdF4:Ln3+ was achieved in microwave synthesis. A microwave-heating-based classical crystallization mode and surfactant-assisted anisotropic growth mechanism were proposed for the formation of β-NaGdF4:Ln3+ NCs.
Elimination of NADPH Oxidase Activity Promotes Reductive Stress and Sensitizes the Heart to Ischemic Injury

Background The NADPH oxidase family (Nox) produces reactive oxygen species by adding the electron donated by NADPH to oxygen. Excessive reactive oxygen species production under a variety of pathological conditions has been attributed to increased Nox activity. Here, we aimed at investigating the role of Nox in cardiac ischemic injury through gain‐ and loss‐of‐function approaches. Methods and Results We modulated Nox activity in the heart by cardiac‐specific expression of Nox4 and dominant negative Nox4. Modulation of Nox activity drastically changes the cellular redox status. Increasing Nox activity by cardiac‐specific overexpression of Nox4 imposed oxidative stress on the myocardium [increased NAD(P)+/NAD(P)H and decreased glutathione/glutathione disulfide ratio] and worsened cardiac energetics and contractile function after ischemia‐reperfusion. Overexpression of the dominant negative Nox4 (DN), which abolished the Nox function, led to a markedly reduced state [decreased NAD(P)+/NAD(P)H and increased glutathione/glutathione disulfide ratio] at baseline and paradoxically promoted mitochondrial reactive oxygen species production during ischemia resulting in no recovery of heart function after reperfusion. Limiting the generation of reducing equivalent through modulating carbon substrates availability partially restored the NAD+/NADH ratio and protected dominant negative Nox4 hearts from ischemic injury. Conclusions This study reveals an important role of Nox in cardiac redox regulation and highlights the complexity of developing therapies that affect the intricately connected redox states.
Friction Stir Blind Riveting for Dissimilar Cast MG AM60 and Al Alloy Sheets

A new one-sided joining method, friction stirring blind riveting (FSBR) was successfully implemented to form lap-shear joints for dissimilar metals from pairs of 3.05mm thick cast Mg AM60, rolled 1.5mm thick Al AA6022 and extruded 3.15mm thick Al AA6082 specimens. The concept of this process is riveting the two workpieces with reduced force under frictional heat and fastening the workpieces through blind riveting once the rivet is fully inserted. In this research the process was experimentally analyzed and optimized for four joint combinations. It was demonstrated that switching the positions of Mg and Al alloy specimens has a significant effect on the process window and maximum tensile load of the joints. Three quality issues of the FSBR joints were observed and discussed. The mechanisms associated with joint strength were discussed and explain the effects of FSBR process, material matching and sheet position on the joint tensile strength.Copyright © 2014 by ASME and General Motors
An improved hop-by-hop interest shaper for congestion control in named data networking

Hop-by-hop interest shaping has been proposed as a viable congestion control mechanism in Named Data Networking (NDN). Interest shaping exploits the strict receiver-driven traffic pattern and the symmetric bidirectional forwarding in NDN to control the returning data rate. In this paper, we point out that both interests and contents contribute to congestion and their interdependence must be considered in any interest shaping algorithm. We first analyze this issue mathematically by formulating it as an optimization problem to obtain the optimal shaping rate. Then a practical interest shaping algorithm is proposed to achieve high link utilization without congestive data loss. We further note that flow differentiation in NDN is complicated and design our scheme independently of traffic flows. We demonstrate our hop-by-hop interest shaper in conjunction with simple Additive-Increase-Multiplicative-Decrease (AIMD) clients using the ns3-based NDN simulator (ndnSIM). Our results show that the proposed shaping algorithm can effectively control congestion and achieve near-optimal throughput.
Estimation of Frequencies in the Input and Output of Nonlinear Systems

The estimation of the frequencies from experimental data has attracted a great deal of attention for many years. As the output of a nonlinear system often contains not only the fundamental frequency of the input, but also its harmonics, it is therefore necessary to consider the estimation of the frequencies in both the input and the output. In this paper, the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the estimate of the frequencies using both the input and output data is derived and a procedure for estimating the frequencies in the input and output variables is presented. It is shown in the simulation example that the estimated frequencies of the input and output using the proposed method is close to the CRLB obtained using both input and output data, much smaller than that using just the output or input data.
Inductive definitions in constraint programming

Constraint programming (CP) and answer set programming (ASP) are two declarative paradigms used to solve combinatorial problems. Many modern solvers for both these paradigms rely on partial or complete Boolean representations of the problem to exploit the extremely efficient techniques that have been developed for solving propositional satisfiability problems. This convergence on a common representation makes it possible to incorporate useful features of CP into ASP and vice versa. There has been significant effort in recent years to integrate CP into ASP, primarily to overcome the grounding bottleneck in traditional ASP solvers that exists due to their inability to handle integer variables efficiently. On the other hand, ASP solvers are more efficient than CP systems on problems that involve inductive definitions, such as reachability in a graph. Besides efficiency, ASP syntax is more natural and closer to the mathematical definitions of such concepts. In this paper, we describe an approach that adds support for answer set rules to a CP system, namely the lazy clause generation solver chuffed. This integration also naturally avoids the grounding bottleneck of ASP since constraint solvers natively support finite domain variables. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by comparing our new system against two competitors: the state-of-the-art ASP solver clasp, and clingcon, a system that extends clasp with CP capabilities.
Domain-aware Matching of Events to DBpedia

In this paper, we present our work on the enrichment of the EventMedia dataset as provided by the DeRiVE data challenge with links to DBpedia. Our main contribution is an exploration into the use of domain knowledge in the matching process. As a starting point we take DBpedia Spotlight, an off-the-shelf tool for matching textual resources to DBpedia. We present a bootstrap method to automatically derive the needed domain knowledge from an initial set of high confidence matches, and compare this to a baseline method without any domain knowledge, and an ‘oracle’ method with perfect domain knowledge.
The effect of sampling and quantization on frequency estimation

The effect of sampling and quantization on frequency estimation for a single sinusoid is investigated. The Cramer-Rao bound for 1 bit quantization is derived, and compared with the limit of infinite quantization. It is found that 1 bit quantization gives a slightly worse performance, however, with a dramatic increase of variance at certain frequencies. This can be avoided by using 4 times oversampling. The effect of sampling when using non-ideal antialiasing lowpass filters is therefore investigated. Cramer-Rao lower bounds are derived, and the optimal filters and sampling frequencies are found. Finally, fast estimators for 1 bit sampling, in particular correlation based estimators, are derived. The paper concludes with simulation results for 4 times oversampled 1 bit quantization.
Profilin 1 Associates with Stress Granules and ALS-Linked Mutations Alter Stress Granule Dynamics

Mutations in the PFN1 gene encoding profilin 1 are a rare cause of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Profilin 1 is a well studied actin-binding protein but how PFN1 mutations cause ALS is unknown. The budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has one PFN1 ortholog. We expressed the ALS-linked profilin 1 mutant proteins in yeast, demonstrating a loss of protein stability and failure to restore growth to profilin mutant cells, without exhibiting gain-of-function toxicity. This model provides for simple and rapid screening of novel ALS-linked PFN1 variants. To gain insight into potential novel roles for profilin 1, we performed an unbiased, genome-wide synthetic lethal screen with yeast cells lacking profilin (pfy1Δ). Unexpectedly, deletion of several stress granule and processing body genes, including pbp1Δ, were found to be synthetic lethal with pfy1Δ. Mutations in ATXN2, the human ortholog of PBP1, are a known ALS genetic risk factor and ataxin 2 is a stress granule component in mammalian cells. Given this genetic interaction and recent evidence linking stress granule dynamics to ALS pathogenesis, we hypothesized that profilin 1 might also associate with stress granules. Here we report that profilin 1 and related protein profilin 2 are novel stress granule-associated proteins in mouse primary cortical neurons and in human cell lines and that ALS-linked mutations in profilin 1 alter stress granule dynamics, providing further evidence for the potential role of stress granules in ALS pathogenesis.
Electrospinning and crosslinking of polyvinyl alcohol/chitosan composite nanofiber for transdermal drug delivery

The drug-loaded polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/chitosan (CS) composite nanofibers intended to be used as matrix for transdermal drug delivery were fabricated by electrospinning, and then crosslinked through glulataraldehyde (GA). The morphology, chemical structure, thermal behavior, mechanical properties, hydrophilicity and drug release properties of drug-loaded PVA/CS composite nanofibers before and after crosslinking were characterized. The results showed that the morphology of PVA/CS composite nanofibers was not been destroyed in both crosslinking and in vitro drug release process. The Young's modulus, tensile strength, thermal properties and hydrophobicity of crosslinked PVA/CS composite nanofibers significantly increased in comparison with those of PVA/CS (without crosslinking) due to the formation of crosslinking network structure. In vitro release studies showed that crosslinked PVA/CS composite nanofibers had lower drug release rate and smaller amount of drug burst release than that of PVA/CS. According to release exponent “n”, the release of ampicillin sodium from crosslinked PVA/CS composite nanofibers fit to the Fickian diffusion mechanism. Those results demonstrate the potential utilization of crosslinked PVA/CS composite nanofibers as a transdermal drug delivery system.
A WUSCHEL-Independent Stem Cell Specification Pathway Is Repressed by PHB, PHV and CNA in Arabidopsis

The homeostatic maintenance of stem cells that carry out continuous organogenesis at the shoot meristem is crucial for plant development. Key known factors act to signal between the stem cells and an underlying group of cells thought to act as the stem cell niche. In Arabidopsis thaliana the homeodomain transcription factor WUSCHEL (WUS) is essential for stem cell initiation and maintenance at shoot and flower meristems. Recent data suggest that the WUS protein may move from the niche cells directly into the stem cells to maintain stem cell identity. Here we provide evidence for a second, previously unknown, pathway for stem cell specification at shoot and flower meristems that bypasses the requirement for WUS. We demonstrate that this novel stem cell specification pathway is normally repressed by the activity of the HD-zip III transcription factors PHABULOSA (PHB), PHAVOLUTA (PHV) and CORONA (CNA). When de-repressed, this second stem cell pathway leads to an accumulation of stem cells and an enlargement of the stem cell niche. When de-repressed in a wus mutant background, this second stem cell pathway leads to functional meristems with largely normal cell layering and meristem morphology, activation of WUS cis regulatory elements, and extensive, but not indeterminate, organogenesis. Thus, WUS is largely dispensable for stem cell specification and meristem function, suggesting a set of key stem cell specification factors, competitively regulated by WUS and PHB/PHV/CNA, remain unidentified.
WikiPathways: building research communities on biological pathways

Here, we describe the development of WikiPathways (http://www.wikipathways.org), a public wiki for pathway curation, since it was first published in 2008. New features are discussed, as well as developments in the community of contributors. New features include a zoomable pathway viewer, support for pathway ontology annotations, the ability to mark pathways as private for a limited time and the availability of stable hyperlinks to pathways and the elements therein. WikiPathways content is freely available in a variety of formats such as the BioPAX standard, and the content is increasingly adopted by external databases and tools, including Wikipedia. A recent development is the use of WikiPathways as a staging ground for centrally curated databases such as Reactome. WikiPathways is seeing steady growth in the number of users, page views and edits for each pathway. To assess whether the community curation experiment can be considered successful, here we analyze the relation between use and contribution, which gives results in line with other wiki projects. The novel use of pathway pages as supplementary material to publications, as well as the addition of tailored content for research domains, is expected to stimulate growth further.
Optimized Image Resizing using Piecewise Seam Carving

Seam Carving, the popular content aware image resizing technique removes seams of low energy iteratively without considering the global visual impact of the image. It is computation intensive. Sometimes seams unavoidable pass through the ROIs and distort their geometric shapes. The ROIs of low energy cannot sustain seam carving. We proposed a piecewise approach which can preserve the ROIs of low energy and minimize shape distortions. It can take advantage of parallel algorithms to improve speed. It is further optimized by using a saliency map to automatically identify the ROIs and segment the image, in addition with the interactive one. It is hybridized with a shift map editing approach to adjust structure deformations.
A SWITCHING CONTROLLER FOR THE STABILIZATION OF THE DAMPING INVERTED PENDULUM CART SYSTEM

We present a switching approach for the stabilization of the strongly damped inverted pendulum cart system, provided that the pendulum is initialized inside of the upper-half plane, and the linear viscous force is known. The control strategy uses two stabilizing controllers. The first is a nonlinear controller, devoted to bringing the pendulum very close to its unstable equilibrium point. Then, this controller switches to a second linear controller in charge of asymptotically and exponentially renders the pendulum to the origin. The stability analysis and the estimation of the attraction domain were made using Lyapunov related tools. Convincing numerical experiments were included, where some comparison among others well-known strategies were performed.
Microlens Arrays by Direct-Writing Inkjet Print for LCD Backlighting Applications

In this paper, we demonstrated the Inkjet print method to fabricate a ultraviolet (UV)-curable epoxy microlens deflecting array with controllable curvature and filling factor, by which a 7-in light guide plate with 82% uniformity and 70% light efficiency was successfully implemented. The microlenses can be directly formed by plastic discharged by inkjet head, eliminating the need for molds and slashing development time. Proposed method will certainly has a promising impact on rapid prototyping and other specialized microfeatures due to its simplicity and versatility.
Titration of kappa toxin of Clostridium perfringens and kappa antitoxin by a modified azocoll method.

Azo-dye was liberated from azocoll not only by proteolytic enzymes but also by albumin (serum or egg), a culture medium (papain digest of meat) or polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP). Pretreatment of azocoll with papain and PVP increased the reactivity of azocoll to ƒÈ-toxin of Clostridium perfringens. A rapid and reliable assay method of ƒÈ-toxin and ƒÈ-antitoxin using the pretreated azocoll is described.