Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preparation and properties of β-phase graphene oxide/PVDF composite films

We report preparation of graphene oxide (GO) from expanded graphite (EG) via a modified Hummers method. GO/PVDF composites films were obtained using solvent N, N-Dimethylformamide (DMF) and cosolvent comprising deionized water/DMF combination. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses revealed that the main crystal structure of the composite films is β-phase, and use cosolvent method tends to favor the formation of β-phase. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the microstructure of composite films. Storage modulus and loss modulus were measured by Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). Broadband dielectric spectrum tests showed an increase in the dielectric constant of the GO/PVDF composite films with the rising content of GO, and by cosolvent method could improve the dielectric constant while reducing the dielectric loss. Our method that uses GO as an additive and deionized water/DMF as the cosolvent provides a promising and low-cost pathway to obtain high dielectric materials. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41577.
A Thrombin Generation Test

Much recent research on blood clotting has dealt with prothrombin and factors which influence its activation. In the development of such investigations experimental procedures have become increasingly complex and artificial. They usually involve the use of anticoagulants, often multistage fractionation by precipitation, adsorption or filtration, and, almost invariably, the addition of tissue extracts to promote thrombin generation. These techniques have yielded information of great importance, but they must have a limited application, since they are far removed from the natural process of clotting. Normal blood taken by a clean venepuncture into a glass vessel Clots firmly in a few minutes without any stimulus other than surface contact. It must therefore have some intrinsic source of thromboplastic activity, in the sense that something is formed which converts prothrombin to thrombin. It is clear that a study of this intrinsic thromboplastin is essential to further understanding of normal clotting and its various defects, because the ability of blood to clot without artificial assistance probably determines its haemostatic efficiency. Fractionation techniques can give no information on the earliest stages of natural clotting, which must, initially, be studied in blood which has been altered as little as possible. Estimations of clotting time and of prothrombin consumption can be made on unaltered blood, but because both give only a single figure which is influenced by several different factors, they are of little help in analysing the causes of delayed or deficient coagulation. More information would be provided if a series of determinations of the thrombin content of whole blood were made at intervals during clotting. In 1901 Arthus carried out an experiment of this sort. He took serial samples of dog's blood which was defibrinated by beating, added sodium fluoride, and after centrifuging determined their ability to clot fluoride dog plasma. A simplified technique described in the following paper uses unaltered whole blood from which serial samples are simply transferred to fibrinogen, the clotting time of which indicates the thrombin concentration of the blood at the time of sampling. By plotting thrombin concentration against time, curves are obtained which show the speed of thrombin generation and destruction and thus may indicate the rate of production and the activity of blood thromboplastin. The generation of thrombin in whole blood can only reflect thromboplastic activity if irrelevant variable factors are controlled as much as possible. Variations in prothrombin, antithrombin, and calcium concentration are likely to have a considerable effect on thrombin generation, but they were avoided by the use of normal blood, or blood from cases of haemophilia or thrombocytopenia in which these factors are almost certainly normal.
Combined Molecular and Biochemical Approach Identifies Aspergillus japonicus and Aspergillus aculeatus as Two Species

ABSTRACT We examined nine Aspergillus japonicus isolates and 10Aspergillus aculeatus isolates by using molecular and biochemical markers, including DNA sequences of the ITS1-5.8S rRNA gene-ITS2 region, restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLP), and secondary-metabolite profiles. The DNA sequence of the internal transcribed spacers (ITS1 and ITS2) and the 5.8S rRNA gene could not be used to distinguish between A. japonicus and A. aculeatus but did show that these two taxa are more closely related to each other than to other species of black aspergilli.Aspergillus niger pyruvate kinase (pkiA) and pectin lyase A (pelA) and Agaricus bisporus 28S rRNA genes, which were used as probes in the RFLP analysis, revealed clear polymorphism between these two taxa. The A. niger pkiA and pelA probes placed six strains in anA. japonicus group and 12 isolates in an A. aculeatus group, which exhibited intraspecific variation when they were probed with the pelA gene. The secondary-metabolite profiles supported division of the isolates into the two species and differed from those of other black aspergilli. The strains classified as A. japonicus produced indole alkaloids and a polar metabolite, while the A. aculeatusisolates produced neoxaline, okaramins, paraherquamidelike compounds, and secalonic acid. A. aculeatus CBS 114.80 showed specific RFLP patterns for all loci examined. The secondary-metabolite profile of strain CBS 114.80 also differed from those of A. japonicus and A. aculeatus. Therefore, this strain probably represents a third taxon. This study provides unambiguous criteria for establishing the taxonomic positions of isolates of black aspergilli, which are important in relation to industrial use and legal protection of these organisms.
Cloud Task Scheduling Based on Chaotic Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

In cloud computing environment, there is a large quantity of submitted tasks by users. How to schedule these massive tasks efficiently and reasonably becomes a serious challenge. This paper proposes a Chaotic Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (CPSO) to overcome the problems of Standard Particle Swarm algorithm such as premature convergence and low accuracy. Firstly, in initial process, chaotic sequence is introduced to enhance the diversity of particles. Then, an effective diagnosis mechanism of premature is adopted to determine local convergence and algorithm correction is performed by chaotic mutation, which could activate the particles in stagnation and make them escape from local optimum. Simulation experiments show that the proposed approach is feasible and effective.
Murine Model for Assessment of Plasmodium falciparum Transmission-Blocking Vaccine Using Transgenic Plasmodium berghei Parasites Expressing the Target Antigen Pfs25

ABSTRACT Currently, there is no animal model for Plasmodium falciparum challenge to evaluate malaria transmission-blocking vaccines based on the well-established Pfs25 target antigen. The biological activity of transmission-blocking antibodies is typically assessed using an assay known as the membrane feeding assay (MFA). It is an in vitro method that involves mixing antibodies with cultured P. falciparum gametocytes and feeding them to mosquitoes through an artificial membrane followed by assessment of infection in the mosquitoes. We genetically modified Plasmodium berghei to express Pfs25 and demonstrated that the transgenic parasites (TrPfs25Pb) are susceptible to anti-Pfs25 antibodies during mosquito-stage development. The asexual growth kinetics and mosquito infectivity of TrPfs25Pb were comparable to those of wild-type parasites, and TrPfs25Pb displayed Pfs25 on the surface of ookinetes. Immune sera from nonhuman primates immunized with a Pfs25-based vaccine when passively transferred to mice blocked transmission of TrPfs25Pb to Anopheles stephensi. Furthermore, mice immunized with Pfs25 DNA vaccine and challenged with TrPfs25Pb displayed reduced malaria transmission compared to mice immunized with wild-type plasmid. These studies describe development of an animal malaria model alternative to the in vitro MFA and show that the model can facilitate P. falciparum transmission-blocking vaccine evaluation based on the target antigen Pfs25. We believe that an animal model to test transmission-blocking vaccines would be superior to the MFA, since there may be additional immune factors that synergize the transmission-blocking activity of antibodies in vivo.
Lightweight Monitoring of Distributed Streams

As data becomes dynamic, large, and distributed, there is increasing demand for what have become known as distributed stream algorithms. Since continuously collecting the data to a central server and processing it there incurs very high communication and computation complexities, it is advantageous to define local conditions at the nodes, such that -- as long as they are maintained -- some desirable global condition holds. A generic algorithm which proved very useful for reducing communication in distributed streaming environments is geometric monitoring (GM). Alas, applying GM to many important tasks is computationally very demanding, as it requires solving a notoriously difficult problem -- computing the distance between a point and a surface, which is often very time-consuming even in low dimensions. Thus, while useful for reducing communication, GM often suffers from exceedingly heavy computational burden at the nodes, which renders it very problematic to apply, especially for ``thin'', battery-operated sensors, which are prevalent in numerous applications, including the ``Internet of Things'' paradigm. Here we propose a very different approach, designated CB (for Convex/Concave Bounds). CB is based on directly bounding the monitored function by suitably chosen convex and concave functions, that naturally enable monitoring distributed streams. These functions can be checked on the fly, yielding far simpler local conditions than those applied by GM. CB's superiority over GM is demonstrated in reducing computational complexity, by several orders of magnitude in some cases. As an added bonus, CB also reduced communication overhead in all application scenarios we tested.
Fix my street or else: using the internet to voice local public service concerns

UK local governments have invested heavily in ICT in recent years to improve public service delivery. Most local governments now operate contact centres and websites to exchange information and transactions with citizens. But the aspirations of central government go much further - to service "transformation" - and the expectation that citizens and communities will be actively engaged in service design and delivery. In parallel with this new political agenda, technological developments are enabling users to create their own online fora, and to generate their own content. These fora often address public service areas, such as healthcare, crime and education. This paper presents an evaluation of one of the first citizen-driven systems for local public service improvement in the UK: FixMyStreet.com (FMS). The system enables citizens to report, view or discuss local problems such as graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs or street lighting, and to track their resolution by the local government concerned. The system went live in February 2007. FMS has attracted over 3000 problem reports and updates in its first six months, and is viewed very favourably by the citizens surveyed here. But many problems reported to the site remain "unfixed" with status "unknown". Local government officers voice a number of concerns: the site duplicates their own websites; they cannot report fixes directly to ensure the information is up-to-date; nor can they manage user expectations regarding service performance. And the site has no "sense of virtual community" (SOVC) [1], with individuals posting in isolation without the support of fellow citizens to amplify their voices or to contribute to problem resolution. The paper concludes by combining the concept of SOVC, factors identified as encouraging growth in online communities, and the example of a successful London community website, BRAIN, to suggest possible future developments for FMS and for public service fora in general.
Concept Mapping: Connecting Educators Proc. of the Third Int. Conference on Concept Mapping Concept Map Generation from Owl Ontologies

The paper is dedicated to concept map generation from OWL ontologies. This is an important issue because creation of concept maps for knowledge assessment tools are time and effort consuming. During last years since ontology description language OWL is developed amount of created ontologies have been extremely increased. A lot of ontologies written in OWL are freely available on Internet and could be reused as a base for concept maps. Therefore these resources may be effectively used if corresponding algorithms and tools are available. The paper presents algorithms for concept map generation from OWL ontology. The proposed algorithms are implemented into a software tool which is tested for concept map generation.
Heat resistance of Paenibacillus polymyxa in relation to pH and acidulants

The efficacy of different organic acids in decreasing the heat resistance of Paenibacillus polymyxa spores was assessed. The relationship between concentration of the undissociated form of different organic acids and decrease in heat resistance was also investigated. The heat resistance of P. polymyxa spores was tested in distilled water at 85, 90 and 95 °C, at pH 4 and in the presence of 50, 100 and 200 mmol l−1 of the undissociated form of lactic, citric or acetic acid and sodium citrate or acetate. The undissociated form of organic acids was responsible for increasing the heat sensitivity of spores. The most effective acid was lactic acid. The d values of the spores decreased rapidly (between 74 and 43%) in the presence of 50 mmol l−1 of the undissociated form of organic acid, and increasing concentrations of these forms affected the heat resistance of spores less than proportionally. The heat resistance of the spores in milk was approximately threefold lower than in distilled water. This work has shown that the undissociated fraction of organic acids increases, albeit non‐linearly, the sensitivity of spores to heat, even in complex substrates such as milk. By knowing the amount of organic acids added to a given substrate, their dissociation constants and the final pH, it could be possible to estimate the concentration of undissociated forms and the corresponding increase in lethality of heat treatments. This would help the food industry to maximize the lethality achieved by heat processes and/or safely reduce the heat treatments already in use.
Motion control of synthetic actors: an integrated view of human animation

This paper explains the ideal concepts that must be part of a system for synthetic actor animation. After a brief introduction to the role of synthetic actors, five major steps to the motion control of these actors are discussed: positional constraints and inverse kinematics, dynamics, impact of the environment, task planning and behavioral animation. 1. The synthetic actor approach Three-dimensional human modeling and animation have existed for more than 15 years [Badler,1982; Magnenat-Thalmann and Thalmann, 1985]. However emphasis has been placed on separate aspects of this animation. For example, a great deal of research has been done on the modeling and animation of the body [Badler and Smoliar, 1979; Kroyer, 1986; Forest et al. 1986], on facial animation [Parke, 1974; Platt and Badler, 1981; Pearce et al., 1986; Hill et al., 1988; Lewis and Parke, 1987; Waters, 1987; Magnenat-Thalmann et al., 1988b] and hand animation [Catmull, 1972; Badler and Morris, 1982; Magnenat-Thalmann et al. 1988]. More recently, researchers have incorporated mechanical aspects factors into the animation of articulated bodies [Armstrong and Green, 1985; Armstrong and Green, 1985b; Wilhelms and Barsky, 1985; Wilhelms, 1987; Girard, 1987; Isaacs and Cohen, 1987]. Also task level factors have been studied by several researchers [Zeltzer, 1982; Zeltzer, 1985; Badler et al., 1985; Badler et al. 1987]. Other authors have tried to animate more realistic characters, from an image synthesis point of view, but using primitive methods like rotoscopy or image-based keyframe animation. The synthetic actor approach corresponds to an integration of all methods, allowing the creation of 3D characters, with the appearance of real human characters. Ideal synthetic actors should satisfy the following criteria: they should have the appearance of real persons their behavior should be similar to that of real persons they should have their own personality: two different actors should have different personalties, i.e. different reactions to the same situation
We-care: An IoT-based health care system for elderly people

In a world with an accelerated population aging, there is an increasingly interest in developing solutions for the elderly living assistance. The Internet of Things is a new reality that is completely changing our everyday life, and promises to revolutionize modern healthcare by enabling a more personalized, preventive and collaborative form of care. Aiming to combine these two important topics, this work presents an IoT-ready solution for the elderly living assistance which is able to monitor and register patients vital information as well as to provide mechanisms to trigger alarms in emergency situations. Its effective low-power/low-cost and wireless characteristics turns this solution suitable to be used anywhere and by anyone, in a discrete and comfortable wristband. Experiments demonstrated a good system performance for the implemented functionalities, and regarding the autonomy we obtained an average battery lifetime of 306 hours (around 12 days). For the working range, the system have proved to perform well within a range of 60 meters before the out-of-range warning being triggered.
Teleseismic P‐wave tomogram of the Yellowstone plume

Inversion of a new data set of teleseismic P‐wave travel‐times from three PASSCAL seismic deployments around the Yellowstone hotspot reveals a 100 km diameter upper mantle plume that extends from the Yellowstone volcanic caldera to 500 km depth and dips 20° to the northwest. A monotonic decrease in the velocity perturbation of the plume from −3.2% at 100 km to −0.9% at 450 km is consistent with a uniform thermal anomaly of 180°C. Where the plume crosses the 410 km discontinuity, previous research shows a depression in the 410 km discontinuity consistent with a warm plume (Fee and Dueker, 2004). Additionally, a region of high velocities extends to 250 km beneath the Wind River basin in NW Wyoming that may represent a convective downwelling of the lithosphere.
Experience of Time by People on the Go

We explore the psychological interface of time and motion. Locomotion, the proclivity toward movement and change, constitutes a significant determinant of persons’ orientation toward time, both as a valuable resource and as a flow advancing from past to future. High locomotors act quickly, multitask and refrain from procrastination, thus conserving time as a resource. Their preoccupation with movement, moreover, affects their relation to the flow of time. High locomotors are future oriented and eschew preoccupation with the past. They are optimistic, experience little regret, generate few counterfactuals, feel little guilt about past wrongdoings, and leave behind past friends. Evidence accumulates that locomotors’ “fast forward” orientation pervades diverse aspects of their behavior and has significant consequences for individuals and societies.
A Playback Interruption Model of P2P VoD Streaming System

in P2P video-on-demand (VoD) streaming system, aggregate download bandwidth of users fluctuates significantly because of peer departure, bandwidth heterogeneity and network delay. The playback rate of videos also fluctuates in order to attain constant image quality. These two kinds of dynamics cause playback interruptions. Prefetching some video content before playback is an effective method to offset the adverse effect of dynamics. In this paper, we choose the number of interruptions in a viewing process as the metric of user perceived QoS (UPQoS). Then we propose a stochastic model to relate the UPQoS with some important system parameters, such as playback rate, downloading speed and prefetched content volume (PCV). It is found that reducing the system dynamics or increasing the PCV or aggregate download bandwidth can improve UPQoS. Besides, the interruption occurs at the beginning of a viewing process with great probability; a few users suffer many interruptions in a viewing process while most of users experience no interruption. Finally, we do a large scale network measurement towards PPLive VoD streaming system and the measurement result is consistent with the conclusion got from this model.
A Hybrid Model of Context-aware Service Provisioning Implemented on Smart Phones

Mobile users of future ubiquitous environments require novel means for locating relevant services available in their daily surroundings, where relevance has a user-specific definition. In this paper, we propose the hybrid service provisioning model which complements the traditional model of interaction service provider to consumer with peer-to-peer functionalities. In addition to being notified proactively and in a context-aware manner about services available in the surroundings, users can generate several types of contextual messages, attach them to services or to the environment, and share them with other peers. We have designed and implemented a platform that supports this hybrid service provisioning model. The current application prototype runs on commercial smart phones. To demonstrate the feasibility and technical deployability of our approach, we conducted field trials in which the research subject was a community of recreational boaters
Multi‐style paper pop‐up designs from 3D models

Paper pop‐ups are interesting three‐dimensional books that fascinate people of all ages. The design and construction of these pop‐up books however are done manually and require a lot of time and effort. This has led to computer‐assisted or automated tools for designing paper pop‐ups. This paper proposes an approach for automatically converting a 3D model into a multi‐style paper pop‐up. Previous automated approaches have only focused on single‐style pop‐ups, where each is made of a single type of pop‐up mechanisms. In our work, we combine multiple styles in a pop‐up, which is more representative of actual artist's creations. Our method abstracts a 3D model using suitable primitive shapes that both facilitate the formation of the considered pop‐up mechanisms and closely approximate the input model. Each shape is then abstracted using a set of 2D patches that combine to form a valid pop‐up. We define geometric conditions that ensure the validity of the combined pop‐up structures. In addition, our method also employs an image‐based approach for producing the patches to preserve the textures, finer details and important contours of the input model. Finally, our system produces a printable design layout and decides an assembly order for the construction instructions. The feasibility of our results is verified by constructing the actual paper pop‐ups from the designs generated by our system.
Testing Equivalence for Mobile Processes

The impact of applying the testing approach to a calculus of processes with dynamic communication topology is investigated. A proof system is introduced that consists of two groups of laws: those for strong observational equivalence and those needed to deal with invisible actions. Soundness and completeness of this proof system w.r. t. a testing preorder are shown. A fully abstract denotational model for the language is presented that takes advantage of reductions of processes to normal forms.