Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lagrangian statistics in turbulent channel flow

The Lagrangian dispersion of fluid particles in inhomogeneous turbulence is investigated by a direct numerical simulation of turbulent channel flow. Lagrangian velocity and acceleration along a particle trajectory are computed by employing several interpolation schemes. Among the schemes tested, the four-point Hermite interpolation in the homogeneous directions combined with Chebyshev polynomials in the wall-normal direction seems to produce most reliable Lagrangian statistics. Inhomogeneity of Lagrangian statistics in turbulent boundary layer is investigated by releasing many particles at several different wall-normal locations and tracking those particles. The fluid particle dispersion and Lagrangian structure function of velocity are investigated for the Kolmogorov similarity. The behavior of the Lagrangian integral time scales, Kolmogorov constants a0 and C0 of the velocity structure function near the wall are discussed. The intermittent behavior of the fluid particle acceleration is also examined by .
The fine structure of developing bristles in wild type and mutant Drosophila melanogaster

In an attempt to understand the factors involved in morphogenesis of a complex cell like a scale or bristle, the fine structure of the normal development of bristle cells in Drosophila melanogaster (Oregon R) has been studied and compared with that of the mutants sn3 and Sb. In the development of the normal bristle rounded bundles of longitudinally oriented fibrils lie just beneath the cell surface at regularly spaced intervals. Fiber bundles constitute about 20% of the cross sectional area. The cytoplasmic surface between these bundles is active in enveloping the nerve fiber associated with the bristle and in sending out cytoplasmic processes associated with which the longitudinally oriented bristle ridges form. Singed bristles are bent and twisted and the fiber bundles are present as flattened bands constituting only about 5% of the cross‐sectional area. In Sb mutants the total cross‐sectional area of fiber bundle material is the same as that in Oregon R, but fiber bundles are smaller and more numerous, being distributed over the larger surface of this thicker and shorter bristle. They constitute only 7% of the cross‐sectional area of the bristle. In Sn3Sb mutants characteristics of each gene are exaggerated and an extremely short, wide, and irregular bristle is formed.
LDPC coded MIMO multiple access with iterative joint decoding

An efficient scheme for the multiple-access multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel is proposed, which operates well also in the single user regime, as well as in a direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS-CDMA) setting. The design features scalability and is of limited complexity. The system employs optimized low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes and an efficient iterative (belief propagation-BP) detection which combines linear minimum mean-square error (LMMSE) detection and iterative interference cancellation (IC). This combination is found to be necessary for efficient operation in high system loads /spl alpha/>1. An asymptotic density evolution (DE) is used to optimize the degree polynomials of the underlining LDPC code, and thresholds as close as 0.77 dB to the channel capacity are evident for a system load of 2. Replacing the LMMSE with the complex individually optimal multiuser detector (IO-MUD) further improves the performance up to 0.14 dB from the capacity. Comparing the thresholds of a good single-user LDPC code to the multiuser optimized LDPC code, both over the above multiuser channel, reveals a surprising 8-dB difference, emphasizing thus the necessity of optimizing the code. The asymptotic analysis of the proposed scheme is verified by simulations of finite systems, which reveal meaningful differences between the performances of MIMO systems with single and multiple users and demonstrate performance similar to previously reported techniques, but with higher system loads, and significantly lower receiver complexity.
A Phrase Orientation Model for Hierarchical Machine Translation

We introduce a lexicalized reordering model for hierarchical phrase-based machine translation. The model scores monotone, swap, and discontinuous phrase orientations in the manner of the one presented by Tillmann (2004). While this type of lexicalized reordering model is a valuable and widely-used component of standard phrase-based statistical machine translation systems (Koehn et al., 2007), it is however commonly not employed in hierarchical decoders. We describe how phrase orientation probabilities can be extracted from wordaligned training data for use with hierarchical phrase inventories, and show how orientations can be scored in hierarchical decoding. The model is empirically evaluated on the NIST Chinese! English translation task. We achieve a significant improvement of +1.2 %BLEU over a typical hierarchical baseline setup and an improvement of +0.7 %BLEU over a syntax-augmented hierarchical setup. On a French! German translation task, we obtain a gain of up to +0.4 %BLEU.
A real-time vision system for automatic traffic monitoring based on 2D spatio-temporal images

The authors present a novel approach using 2D spatio-temporal images for automatic traffic monitoring. A TV camera is mounted above the highway to monitor the traffic through two slice windows for each traffic lane. One slice window is along the lane and the other perpendicular to the lane axis. Two types of 2D spatio-temporal (ST) images are used in the system: the panoramic view image (PVI) and the epipolar plane image (EPI). The real-time vision system for automatic traffic monitoring, VISATRAM, an inexpensive system with a PC 486 and an image frame grabber has been tested with real road images. Not only can the system count the vehicles and estimate their speeds, but it can also classify the passing vehicles using 3D measurements (length, width and height). The VISATRAM works robustly under various light conditions including shadows in the day and vehicle lights at night, and automatically copes with the gradual and abrupt changes of the environment.
Automated Verification of Phenotypes using PubMed

In the realm of data driven clinical research, medical concepts, or phenotypes, are used to serve as indicators for patient clusters of interest. Often, studies will use groups of algorithmically generated phenotypes (feature groups) to predict the occurrence of heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions. When these groups are algorithmically generated, the most common method of verification is manual human annotation, which can be time consuming and sometimes inconsistent. In this paper, we propose a supervision-free method of verification that uses co-occurrence in PubMed articles to determine clinical significance. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method by 1) applying it to phenotypes generated through automatic machine learning methods and 2) showing it separates randomly generated groups of phenotypes from curated groups of known, clinical phenotypes.
Increased Inflammation in Atherosclerotic Lesions of Diabetic Akita-LDLr −/− Mice Compared to Nondiabetic LDLr −/− Mice

Background. Diabetes is associated with increased cardiovascular disease, but the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms are poorly understood. One proposed mechanism is that diabetes aggravates atherosclerosis by enhancing plaque inflammation. The Akita mouse has recently been adopted as a relevant model for microvascular complications of diabetes. Here we investigate the development of atherosclerosis and inflammation in vessels of Akita mice on LDLr −/− background. Methods and Results. Akita-LDLr −/− and LDLr −/− mice were fed high-fat diet from 6 to 24 weeks of age. Blood glucose levels were higher in both male and female Akita-LDLr −/− mice (137% and 70%, resp.). Male Akita-LDLr −/− mice had markedly increased plasma cholesterol and triglyceride levels, a three-fold increase in atherosclerosis, and enhanced accumulation of macrophages and T-cells in plaques. In contrast, female Akita-LDLr −/− mice demonstrated a modest 29% increase in plasma cholesterol and no significant increase in triglycerides, atherosclerosis, or inflammatory cells in lesions. Male Akita-LDLr −/− mice had increased levels of plasma IL-1β compared to nondiabetic mice, whereas no such difference was seen between female diabetic and nondiabetic mice. Conclusion. Akita-LDLr −/− mice display considerable gender differences in the development of diabetic atherosclerosis. In addition, the increased atherosclerosis in male Akita-LDLr −/− mice is associated with an increase in inflammatory cells in lesions.
Recovery of SHGCs From a Single Intensity View

Generalized cylinders are a flexible, loosely-defined class of parametric shapes capable of modeling many real-world objects. Straight homogeneous generalized cylinders are an important subclass of generalized cylinders, whose cross-sections are scaled versions of a reference curve. Although there has been considerable research into recovering the shape of SHGCs from their contour, this work has almost exclusively involved methods that couple contour and heuristic constraints. A rigorous approach to the problem of recovering solid parametric shape from a single intensity view should involve at least two stages: (1) deriving the contour constraints, and (2) determining if additional image constraints, e.g., intensity, can be used to uniquely determine the 3D object shape. In this paper, the authors follow the approach just described. This methodology is also important for the recovery of object classes like tubes, where contour and heuristic constraints are shown to be insufficient for shape recovery. First, the authors prove that SHGC contours generated under orthography have exactly two degrees of freedom. Next, the authors show that the remaining free parameters can be resolved using reflectance-based constraints, without knowledge of the number of light sources, their positions, intensities, the amount of ambient light; or the surface albedo. Finally, the reflectance-based recovery algorithm is demonstrated on both synthetic and real SHGC images.
Fast mode decision for adaptive prediction error coding

Adaptive prediction error coding (APEC) in spatial and frequency domain is proposed and significantly improves the coding efficiency of video coders. However, this approach comes with the expense of increased encoding complexity because of the need to perform rate distortion optimization (RDO) for each block, to decide whether the block is coded in spatial or frequency domain. In this work, we propose novel fast mode decision algorithm operating on macroblock and block level to reduce the encoding complexity of APEC. The proposed algorithm estimates the edge orientation of the residual block using spatial domain filtering, and based on the estimated edge orientation, reduces the number of candidates to be checked in RDO. Furthermore, proposed method includes an early termination step that stops searching the best candidate based on the difference between spatial and frequency domain coding. Experimental results show that the proposed fast mode decision algorithm can achieve averagely 90.7% encoding time reduction of APEC with only about 0.06 dB loss in coding efficiency.
Determining an aesthetic inscribed curve

In this work we propose both implicit and parametric curves to represent aesthetic curves inscribed within Voronoi cells in R2. A user survey was conducted to determine, which class of curves are generally accepted as the more aesthetic. We present the curves, the survey results, and the implications for future work on simulating sponge like volumes.
Source connectivity analysis with MEG and EEG

Interactions between functionally specialized brain regions are crucial for normal brain function. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) are techniques suited to capture these interactions, because they provide whole head measurements of brain activity in the millisecond range. More than one sensor picks up the activity of an underlying source. This field spread severely limits the utility of connectivity measures computed directly between sensor recordings. Consequentially, neuronal interactions should be studied on the level of the reconstructed sources. This article reviews several methods that have been applied to investigate interactions between brain regions in source space. We will mainly focus on the different measures used to quantify connectivity, and on the different strategies adopted to identify regions of interest. Despite various successful accounts of MEG and EEG source connectivity, caution with respect to the interpretation of the results is still warranted. This is due to the fact that effects of field spread can never be completely abolished in source space. However, in this very exciting and developing field of research this cautionary note should not discourage researchers from further investigation into the connectivity between neuronal sources. Hum Brain Mapp 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Limit-Cycle Behavior in One-Zone Convective Models

We present the results of a detailed set of one-zone models that account for the coupling between pulsation and convection following the original prescriptions of Stellingwerf. Motivated by the arbitrary nature of the input parameters adopted in this theoretical framework, we computed several sequences of models that cover a substantial fraction of the parameter space and a longer integration time. We found that our models show the same behavior as nonlinear, hydrodynamic models, that is, they approach either the limit-cycle stability (pulsational instability), the fixed point (pulsational stability), or their present vibrational instability. In agreement with Stellingwerf, we find that convection is the main quenching mechanism for pulsational models located across the Cepheid instability strip. Moreover, our one-zone models can mimic the pulsational behavior of both fundamental and first overtone Cepheids. We also included a turbulent pressure term and found that this physical mechanism plays a crucial role in the pulsation characteristics of the models by removing the sharp discontinuities along the light and the velocity curves shown by models that do not account for turbulent pressure. Finally, we investigated the vibrational and pulsational stability of completely convective models. We consider the most important finding of the present work to be the identification of a well-defined region in the parameter space where they approach limit-cycle stability. The inclusion of turbulent pressure widens this region, thus supporting original suggestions based on both linear and nonlinear models of long period variables (LPVs). Several numerical experiments performed by adopting different values of the adiabatic exponent and of the shell thickness indicate that the coupling between pulsation and convection is the key driving mechanism for LPVs, a finding supported by recent theoretical predictions.
Learning Terminological Bayesian Classifiers - A Comparison of Alternative Approaches to Dealing with Unknown Concept-Memberships

Knowledge available through Semantic Web representation formalisms can be missing, i.e. it is not always possible to infer the truth value of an assertion (due to the Open World Assumption). We propose a method for incrementally inducing terminological (tree-augmented) naive Bayesian classifiers, which aim at estimating the probability that an individual belongs to a target concept given its membership to a learned set of Description Logic concepts. We then evaluate the impact of employing different methods of handling assertions whose truth value is unknown, each consistent with a different assumption on the ignorance model.
Suprasegmental duration modelling with elastic constraints in automatic speech recognition

In this paper a method of integrating a model of suprasegmental duration with a HMM-based recogniser at the post-processing level is presented. The N-Best utterance output is rescored using a suitable linear combination of acoustic log-likelihood (provided by a set of tied-state triphone HMMs) and duration log-likelihood (provided by a set of durational models). The durational model used in the post-processing imposes syllable-level elastic constraints on the durational behaviour of speech segments. Results are presented for word accuracy on the Resource Management database after rescoring, using two different syllable-like constraint units, a ﬁxed-size N-phone window and simple (no constraint) phone duration probability scoring.
Software development in Austria: results of an empirical study among small and very small enterprises

In this paper we present the results of an empirical study conducted within small and very small software developing enterprises in Austria. The primary goals of this survey were to find out how they are structured, to learn more about their characteristics, and how they organize software development. Furthermore we evaluate methods, processes, techniques and tools used, persons and roles involved, and finally problems occurring during software development. Additionally we place a special focus on quality management issues and discuss which motivations small and very small enterprises can have to install such a quality management system.
Biochemical evidence for the rapid assembly and disassembly of processed antigen-major histocompatibility complex class II complexes in acidic vesicles of B cells

Helper T cell recognition of antigen requires that it be processed within antigen-presenting cells (APC) to peptide fragments that subsequently bind to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules and are displayed on the APC surface. Heretofore, processed antigen-MHC class II complexes have been detected by functional assays, measuring the activation of specific T cells. We now report direct, biochemical evidence for the assembly of processed antigen-MHC class II complexes within splenic B cells as APC. The I-Ek MHC class II molecules were immunoprecipitated from B cells that had processed the model protein antigen cytochrome c radiolabeled across its entire length by reductive methylation of lysine residues and covalently coupled to Ig-specific antibodies, allowing internalization after binding to surface Ig. Our previous studies showed that I-Ek immunoaffinity purified from B cells that had processed cytochrome c contains functional processed antigen--MHC class II complexes and that approximately 0.2% of the I-Ek molecules are specifically associated with one of two predominant processed antigenic fragments. Here we show that these complexes are rapidly assembled, within 30-60 min after antigen binding to surface Ig on splenic B cells. Maximal numbers of complexes are assembled by 2 h in a process that is sensitive to acidic vesicle inhibitors but not to inhibitors of protein synthesis. The processed antigen-I-Ek complexes have a relatively short half-life of 2- 4 h and are disassembled or degraded within 8 h after antigen is first internalized. The disassembly or degradation of the processed antigen-I- Ek complexes requires acidic vesicle function, and in the presence of an acidic vesicle inhibitor the complexes are long lived. Thus, using a biochemical assay to monitor processed antigen-I-Ek complexes, we find that, in B cells, processed antigen is relatively rapidly associated in acidic vesicles with preexisting MHC class II molecules, and the complexes are disassembled 4-6 h later in processes that also require acid vesicle function.
Physically Secure Code and Data Storage in Autonomously Booting Systems

Today, full disk encryption is a common practice to protect data on desktop computers and notebooks from unauthorized physical access. For embedded systems, however, the situation is different and they often lack physical protection. Usually no user or remotely connected system is involved during the boot phase which requires autonomously booting systems. For this paper an entire software stack for secure code and data storage in embedded systems has been designed, implemented and evaluated regarding security aspects and performance. For the security evaluation, physical attacks on the flash chip and RAM access have been taken into account. The system is a combined hardware and software solution and provides a considerable amount of security without a second party involved that could participate in a trust bootstrapping protocol. A symmetric key hierarchy enables the use of applications from different vendors which are not able to decrypt each others software. For code, a signature chain ensures the authenticity of the code being run. For data, integrity is ensured on a per sector basis such that targeted manipulations are not only mitigated but can be detected as well. This is a novel technique that is currently not known from any publicly available full disk encryption system. We show that the confidentiality, integrity and authenticity of code and data protected with our system can be ensured provided that small parts of the hardware are considered trusted.
Cost and Cost-Effectiveness of the Mediterranean Diet: Results of a Systematic Review

The growing impact of chronic degenerative pathologies (such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease) requires and pushes towards the development of new preventive strategies to reduce the incidence and prevalence of these diseases. Lifestyle changes, especially related to the Mediterranean diet, have the potential to modify disease outcomes and ultimately costs related to their management. The objective of the study was to perform a systematic review of the scientific literature, to gauge the economic performance and the cost-effectiveness of the adherence to the Mediterranean diet as a prevention strategy against degenerative pathologies. We investigated the monetary costs of adopting Mediterranean dietary patterns by determining cost differences between low and high adherence. Research was conducted using the PubMed and Scopus databases. Eight articles met the pre-determined inclusion criteria and were reviewed. Quality assessment and data extraction was performed. The adherence to the Mediterranean diet has been extensively reported to be associated with a favorable health outcome and a better quality of life. The implementation of a Mediterranean dietary pattern may lead to the prevention of degenerative pathologies and to an improvement in life expectancy, a net gain in health and a reduction in total lifetime costs.