Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The unified switched inductor model

The switched inductor model (SIM) is rigorously developed by considering the average voltages and currents in PWM converters. The limitations and error bounds of the SIM are examined and compared with those of the state space average model. The two models are found to be identical when the parasitic resistances are negligibly small. These errors are relatively small in practical converters. Good agreement was also found between computer simulations based on the proposed SIM and experimental results. <<ETX>>
Context-dependent deep neural networks for commercial Mandarin speech recognition applications

Recently, context-dependent deep neural network hidden Markov models (CD-DNN-HMMs) have been successfully used in some commercial large-vocabulary English speech recognition systems. It has been proved that CD-DNN-HMMs significantly outperform the conventional context-dependent Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-HMMs (CD-GMM-HMMs). In this paper, we report our latest progress on CD-DNN-HMMs for commercial Mandarin speech recognition applications in Baidu. Experiments demonstrate that CD-DNN-HMMs can get relative 26% word error reduction and relative 16% sentence error reduction in Baidu's short message (SMS) voice input and voice search applications, respectively, compared with state-of-the-art CD-GMM-HMMs trained using fMPE. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time the performances of CD-DNN-HMMs are reported for commercial Mandarin speech recognition applications. We also propose a GPU on-chip speed-up training approach which can achieve a speed-up ratio of nearly two for DNN training.
SmartInsole: A foot-based activity and gait measurement device

In this paper we present SmartInsole, a physical activity and gait measuring system integrated inside an insole. To achieve its goal, it uses force and acceleration sensors that track the wearer's movements. The device is fitted with a radio transceiver in order to convey measured information to listening computers. Contrary to previous works which integrate electronic modules into custom shoes, all sensors, control, power and wireless components are integrated on the same insole. Therefore, the user is not restricted to wear a customized pair of shoes. A power saving mechanism has been developed in order to improve the longevity of the integrated rechargeable battery.
Peripheral Selection of  T Cell Repertoires: The Role of Continuous Thymus Output

We investigated the role of continuous thymus output in the shaping of mature T cell repertoires by studying in vivo the survival of a single clone of mature Rag2-deficient T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic cells at different stages of activation in the absence or presence of thymus export. In the absence of thymus export, TCR-transgenic lymphocytes survived indefinitely in the peripheral pools. When new lymphocytes were produced in the thymus and migrated to the periphery, resident memory T cells were maintained in constant numbers, whereas naive and self-reactive T cells were replaced by recent thymus migrants. This T cell renewal ensured both the efficiency of recall responses to antigens as memory T cells persisted independently of thymus output, and the capacity of the immune system to respond to new antigen stimulation as the naive T cell pool was continuously renewed. Our results also indicate that thymus export is required to control the number of self-reactive peripheral T cells that may invade the peripheral pools if thymus output fails.
Common Space, Common Time, Common Work

Curt's dilemma is one that any new teacher could have. The end of the school year is approaching, and his 10th grade integrated math students are not doing their homework. Maybe he should have set higher expectations, but it seems a little late now. He looks around the office area for his gradelevel team members, hoping they can help him. Seeing them at their desks in the shared office space, he requests a team meeting during their morning planning time. Instead of waiting, Curt's team members—a master humanities and social studies teacher, a veteran science teacher, a firstyear humanities and English teacher, and a special education teacher—immediately stop what they are doing and congregate in a jagged circle, some sitting and some standing as they focus on Curt.
MRSA Clonal Complex 22 Strains Harboring Toxic Shock Syndrome Toxin (TSST-1) Are Endemic in the Primary Hospital in Gaza, Palestine

Background Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is an important pathogen in both community and healthcare-related settings worldwide. Current knowledge regarding the epidemiology of S. aureus and MRSA in Gaza is based on a single community-based carriage study. Here we describe a cross-sectional analysis of 215 clinical isolates collected from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza during 2008 and 2012. Methods All isolates were characterized by spa typing, SCCmec typing, and detection of genes encoding Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) and toxic shock syndrome toxin (TSST-1). Representative genotypes were also subjected to multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed using VITEK2 and MicroScan. Results MRSA represented 56.3% of all S. aureus strains, and increased in frequency from 2008 (54.8%) to 2012 (58.4%). Aside from beta-lactams, resistance was observed to tetracycline, erythromycin, clindamycin, gentamicin, and fluoroquinolones. Molecular typing identified 35 spa types representing 17 MLST clonal complexes (CC), with spa 998 (Ridom t223, CC22) and spa 70 (Ridom t044, CC80) being the most prevalent. SCCmec types I, III, IV, V and VI were identified among MRSA isolates, while type II was not detected. PVL genes (lukF/S-PV) were detected in 40.0% of all isolates, while the TSST-1 gene (tst) was detected in 27.4% of all isolates, with surprisingly high frequency within CC22 (70.4%). Both PVL and TSST-1 genes were found in several isolates from 2012. Conclusions Molecular typing of clinical isolates from Gaza hospitals revealed unusually high prevalence of TSST-1 genes among CC22 MRSA, which is noteworthy given a recent community study describing widespread carriage of a CC22 MRSA clone known as the ‘Gaza strain’. While the latter did not address TSST-1, tst-positive spa 998 (Ridom t223) has been detected in several neighboring countries, and described as endemic in an Italian NICU, suggesting international spread of a ‘Middle Eastern variant’ of pandemic CC22 strain EMRSA-15.
Enabling Scope-Based Interactions in Sensor Network Macroprogramming

Wireless sensor networks are increasingly employed to develop sophisticated applications where heterogeneous nodes are deployed, and multiple parallel activities must be performed. Therefore, application developers require the ability to partition the system based on the node characteristics, and specify complex interactions among different partitions. Existing programming abstractions for sensor networks tackled this problem by providing a notion of scoping. However, this rarely emerges as a first-class programming construct, hence limiting its applicability. To address this issue, in this paper we present a flexible notion of scoping in the context of a sensor network macroprogramming framework. Our approach enables the specification of complex interactions among system partitions, thus greatly simplifying the development process. Moreover, this is not detrimental to performance: our approach results reasonably close to an optimal solution computed with global system knowledge, while exhibiting a 70% gain w.r. t. baseline solutions.
The moleskin gene product is essential for Caudal‐mediated constitutive antifungal Drosomycin gene expression in Drosophila epithelia

The homeobox gene, Caudal, encodes the DNA‐binding nuclear transcription factor that plays a crucial role during development and innate immune response. The Drosophila homologue of importin‐7 (DIM‐7), encoded by moleskin, was identified as a Caudal‐interacting molecule during yeast two‐hybrid screening. Both mutation of the minimal region of Caudal responsible for moleskin binding and RNA interference (RNAi) of moleskin dramatically inhibited the Caudal nuclear localization. Furthermore, Caudal‐mediated constitutive expression of antifungal Drosomycin gene was severely affected in the moleskin‐RNAi flies, showing a local Drosomycin expression pattern indistinguishable from that of the Caudal‐RNAi flies. These in vivo data suggest that DIM‐7 mediates Caudal nuclear localization, which is important for the proper Caudal function necessary for regulating innate immune genes in Drosophila.
Detection of influenza virus neuraminidase-specific antibodies by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was developed for the titration of antibodies in human sera to influenza virus neuraminidase, employing partially purified N1 neuraminidase. Specificity of the test was demonstrated, and the test was more sensitive than either the conventional neuraminidase inhibition or plaque size reduction tests in detecting anti-neuraminidase antibody.
Meanings and configurations of questions in English

This is a study of the interface between meaning and prosodic structure. Five syntactic types of questions were examined: positive yes/no, negative yes/no, positive declarative, negative declarative and wh-questions. 113 examples of English questions from the CallHome corpus were analyzed with respect to the effect nuclear tunes have on their meaning. We conclude that the direction of the final contour is the fundamental prosodic contributor to interactional pragmatic meaning.
Facial Expression in Alzheimer’s Disease

In Alzheimer’s disease (AD), nonverbal aspects of communication become increasingly important in caregiver–patient interactions when the ability to communicate verbally is fading with progression of the disease. We therefore investigated the impact of cognitive deficits and neuropsychiatric symptoms, particularly apathy, on facial expression in AD. While overall neuropsychiatric symptoms were not associated with facial expression, apathy exhibited substantial correlations, even after controlling for cognitive deficits. Moreover, apathy appeared to moderate the influence of cognitive deficits: without considering apathy, cognitive deficits were associated with less specific facial expressions. After controlling for apathy, cognitive decline was related to increased facial expressiveness. In conclusion, apathetic symptoms appear to be specifically associated with facial expression in AD and thus could contribute to a disregard for patients’ needs in everyday life.
A Hybrid of Bacterial Foraging Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization for Evolutionary Neural Fuzzy Classifier

This study presents a new evolutionary learning algorithm to optimize the parameters of the neural fuzzy classifier (NFC). This new evolutionary learning algorithm is based on a hybrid of bacterial foraging optimization and particle swarm optimization. It is thus called bacterial foraging particle swarm optimization (BFPSO). The proposed BFPSO method performs local search through the chemotactic movement operation of bacterial foraging whereas the global search over the entire search space is accomplished by a particle swarm operator. The NFC model uses functional link neural networks as the consequent part of the fuzzy rules. This study uses orthogonal polynomials and linearly independent functions in a functional expansion of the functional link neural networks. Finally, the proposed neural fuzzy classifier with bacterial foraging particle swarm optimization (NFC-BFPSO) is adopted in several classification applications. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed NFC-BFPSO method can outperform other methods.
The Nuclear Receptor HIZR-1 Uses Zinc as a Ligand to Mediate Homeostasis in Response to High Zinc

Nuclear receptors were originally defined as endocrine sensors in humans, leading to the identification of the nuclear receptor superfamily. Despite intensive efforts, most nuclear receptors have no known ligand, suggesting new ligand classes remain to be discovered. Furthermore, nuclear receptors are encoded in the genomes of primitive organisms that lack endocrine signaling, suggesting the primordial function may have been environmental sensing. Here we describe a novel Caenorhabditis elegans nuclear receptor, HIZR-1, that is a high zinc sensor in an animal and the master regulator of high zinc homeostasis. The essential micronutrient zinc acts as a HIZR-1 ligand, and activated HIZR-1 increases transcription of genes that promote zinc efflux and storage. The results identify zinc as the first inorganic molecule to function as a physiological ligand for a nuclear receptor and direct environmental sensing as a novel function of nuclear receptors.
A combined safety/security approach for co-operative distributed systems

Summary form only given. Actually, there is growing consensus that for many system applications, safety as well as security demands have to be observed in a coherent manner. We describe such an integrated approach to protect the nodes of distributed cooperative systems against malicious attacks and unplanned system failures. The basic strategy is the use of special diagnostic agents for that purpose. This agent concept is supported by means of additional diagnostic units modularly added to the processor/memory interface of each node of the system. These units have their own autonomous control which cannot be altered by their corresponding processor. Each instruction transferred to the processor, and each data word transferred to/from the processor, in a side step can be scanned by the diagnosis unit. In case of a suspicion for malicious or nonmalicious faults, the diagnosis unit can lake over control of the corresponding processor to run diagnostic routines, and can trigger bootstrap or recovery procedures to restore a proper state of the processor of the node. The diagnostic unit also can communicate with the diagnostic units of the other nodes about the slate of the entire system. Thus, after detecting suspicious behaviour in its own node, by alarming the diagnostic units of the other nodes, further spreading of an attack is tried to be hindered. Even in case the attack spreads quicker within the system than the diagnosis can initially assess and confine it, the cooperating diagnostic units remain a functioning distributed hardcore which can start and carry out a recovery of the system. The resulting impact on system reliability is derived; here also a modelling approach is discussed to describe especially malicious intrusion faults in a more refined way, by distinguishing different classes of attackers. The resulting reliability of the presented architecture is sketched.
Secrecy performance of cognitive cooperative industrial radio networks

Although cognitive radio networks (CRNs) were originally intended as a powerful solution to enhance spectrum utilization, it can also be used to improve reliability by avoiding interference in the 2.4 or 5 GHz band. Using multiple relay nodes in CRNs, the outage probability, i.e., the probability that the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio drops below a predefined threshold, can be reduced significantly. This implies that the probability that a message is not delivered within a specific time frame, can be kept below a required threshold, even when there are constraints on energy efficiency in terms of peak transmit power. This is particularly useful for industrial networks with realtime constraints. However, using CRNs may also reveal secret information to eavesdroppers (EAVs). Therefore, guaranteeing secure and reliable communications in CRNs is still a challenging problem. To this end, the secrecy performance of a proactive decode-and-forward relaying scheme in a cognitive cooperative radio network is investigated. More specifically, analytical as well as approximate expressions for the secrecy outage probability and probability of non-zero secrecy capacity are derived to evaluate the system performance. Numerical results show that the approximation tightly match the analytical results and simulations, and thus it can be used to provide a fast evaluation of the security and reliability of communications using a considered assignment of relay nodes in a cognitive cooperative radio network (CCRN). Consequently, our results enable to secure the communication, and increasing the reliability, availability, robustness, and maintainability of wireless industrial network, subject to various constraints from the CRN.
A method for filling n-sided holes in a surface

While parametric surfaces are most conveniently described by rectangular patches, most complex objects require the use of patches with other than four sides. Methods to generate such patches are widely used but all have drawbacks. This paper describes the creation of a surface which covers the original surface and the non-rectangular "hole" with a new, smooth surface. The method employs recursive splines and can be used with a control mesh of arbitrary topology. Control of the shape of the patch covering the "hole" can be achieved by user manipulation of a "controller" point on the patch.
Querying Visible and Invisible Tables in the Presence of Integrity Constraints

We provide a wide-ranging study of the scenario where a subset of the tables in a relational schema are visible to a user (that is, their complete contents are known) while the remaining tables are invisible. The schema also has a set of integrity constraints, which may relate the visible tables to invisible ones but also may constrain both the visible and invisible instances. We want to determine whether information about a user query can be inferred using only the visible information and the constraints. We consider whether positive information about the query can be inferred, and also whether negative information (the query does not hold) can be inferred. We further consider both the instance-level version of the problem (the visible table extensions are given) and the schema-level version, where we want to know whether information can be leaked in some instance of the schema. Our instance-level results classify the complexity of these problems, both as a function of all inputs, and in the size of the instance alone. Our schema-level results exhibit an unusual dividing line between decidable and undecidable cases.
A novel Takagi-Sugeno-based robust adaptive fuzzy sliding-mode controller

In this paper, a nonlinear dynamic system is first approximated by N fuzzy-based linear state-space subsystems. To track a trajectory dominant by a specific frequency, the reference models with desired amplitude and phase features are established by the same fuzzy sets of the system rule. Similarly, the same fuzzy sets of the system rule are employed to design robust fuzzy sliding-mode control (RFSMC) and adaptive fuzzy sliding-mode control (AFSMC). The difference between RFSMC and AFSMC is that AFSMC contains an updating law to learn system uncertainties and then an extra compensation is designed. It is different from the most previous papers to learn the whole nonlinear functions. As the norm of the sliding surface is inside of a defined set, the updating law starts; simultaneously, as it is outside of the other set, the updating law stops. For the purpose of smoothing the possibility of discontinuous control input, a transition between RFSMC and AFSMC is also assigned. Under the circumstances, the proposed control [robust adaptive fuzzy sliding-mode control (RAFSMC)] can automatically tune as a RFSMC or an AFSMC; then the advantages coming from the RFSMC and AFSMC are obtained. Finally, the stabilities of the overall system of RFSMC, AFSMC, and RAFSMC are verified by Lyapunov stability theory. The compared simulations among RFSMC, AFSMC, and RAFSMC are also carried out to confirm the usefulness of the proposed control scheme.
Effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor and LDL receptor-related protein 1 (LRP-1) receptor in locally advanced breast cancer

Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors are overexpressed in most neoplastic cell lines and provide a mechanism for the internalization and concentration of drug-laden nanoemulsions that bind to these receptors. The aim of the present study was to determine whether the administration of standard chemotherapeutic schemes can alter the expression of LDL and LDL receptor-related protein 1 (LRP-1) receptors in breast carcinoma. Fragments of tumoral and normal breast tissue from 16 consecutive volunteer women with breast cancer in stage II or III were obtained from biopsies before the beginning of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and after chemotherapy, from fragments excised during mastectomy. Tissues were analyzed by immunohistochemistry for both receptors. Because complete response to treatment was achieved in 4 patients, only the tumors from 12 were analyzed. Before chemotherapy, there was overexpression of LDL receptor in the tumoral tissue compared to normal breast tissue in 8 of these patients. LRP-1 receptor overexpression was observed in tumors of 4 patients. After chemotherapy, expression of both receptors decreased in the tumors of 6 patients, increased in 4 and was unchanged in 2. Nonetheless, even when chemotherapy reduced receptors expression, the expression was still above normal. The fact that chemotherapy does not impair LDL receptors expression supports the use of drug carrier systems that target neoplastic cells by the LDL receptor endocytic pathway in patients on conventional chemotherapy.
The EHD protein Past1 controls postsynaptic membrane elaboration and synaptic function

The conserved C-terminal EHD protein Past1 is required for postsynaptic membrane remodeling and synaptic transmission at the Drosophila neuromuscular junction. Past1 activity defines distinct synaptic microdomains of the BAR-domain proteins Syndapin and Amphiphysin, suggesting a new mechanism for elaboration of the postsynaptic membrane reticulum.
[Use of a flap composed of skin and breast tissue for repairing a recalcitrant wound resulting from dehiscence of sternotomy in cardiac surgery].

OBJECTIVE: To describe a new technique for repairing recalcitrant wounds resulting from infection and dehiscence in sternotomy of cardiac surgery in 6 women, who had an extensive raw area in the sternal region and had undergone a previous reintervention with relapse. METHODS: The surgical technique used was based on a triangular flap composed of skin and breast tissue with a base in the inframammary crease, which was transposed to the raw area to provide coverage with vascularized tissue. RESULTS: The several treatments of the acute phase are discussed, as are the techniques for reconstructing dehiscences of the sternal region. CONCLUSION: That flap composed of skin and breast tissue fulfills the needs regarding the dimensions of tissue loss in the raw area, in addition to providing greater protection against infection to an area that, due to the dehiscence, remained exposed for a longer period.