Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-extinction virtually imaged phased array-based Brillouin spectroscopy of turbid biological media

Brillouin microscopy has recently emerged as a powerful technique to characterize the mechanical properties of biological tissue, cell, and biomaterials. However, the potential of Brillouin microscopy is currently limited to transparent samples, because Brillouin spectrometers do not have sufficient spectral extinction to reject the predominant non-Brillouin scattered light of turbid media. To overcome this issue, we combined a multi-pass Fabry-Perot interferometer with a two-stage virtually imaged phased array spectrometer. The Fabry-Perot etalon acts as an ultra-narrow band-pass filter for Brillouin light with high spectral extinction and low loss. We report background-free Brillouin spectra from Intralipid solutions and up to 100 μm deep within chicken muscle tissue.
Analysis of Ventricular Activation and Repolarization from Intramural and Epicardial Potential Distributions for Ectopic Beats in the Intact Dog

Ventricular activation and repolarization were examined by measuring intramural and epicardial potential distributions during ectopic sequences in intact dogs. Potential distributions were used because they provided a direct measure of all of repolarization. Ectopic sequences produced almost unidirectional excitation across the heart along with repolarization events that were different from normal. During ectopic repolarization, positive potentials occurred over a broad area surrounding the ectopic focus, and negative potentials occurred over a large area on the opposite side of the heart where excitation terminated. The potentials in the walls of both ventricles were more positive in the outer layers and more negative in the inner layers, a gradient similar to normal. A maximum initially was at the ectopic site with a magnitude greater than that of the minimum, but the maximum subsequently decreased in magnitude and shifted toward the minimum while the minimum increased in magnitude. The steepest gradients were initially around the maximum, and they then shifted toward the minimum. The results show that ventricular repolarization potential distributions during ectopic beats are predominantly influenced by gradients from one side of the heart to the other (transven-tricular gradients) in contrast to normal repolarization distributions which are predominantly influenced by gradients across the wall (transmural gradients).
Changes in C57BL6 Mouse Hippocampal Transcriptome Induced by Hypergravity Mimic Acute Corticosterone-Induced Stress

Centrifugation is a widely used procedure to study the impact of altered gravity on Earth, as observed during spaceflights, allowing us to understand how a long-term physical constraint can condition the mammalian physiology. It is known that mice, placed in classical cages and maintained during 21 days in a centrifuge at 3G gravity level, undergo physiological adaptations due to hypergravity, and/or stress. Indeed, an increase of corticosterone levels has been previously measured in the plasma of 3G-exposed mice. Corticosterone is known to modify neuronal activity during memory processes. Although learning and memory performances cannot be assessed during the centrifugation, literature largely described a large panel of proteins (channels, second messengers, transcription factors, structural proteins) which expressions are modified during memory processing. Thus, we used the Illumina technology to compare the whole hippocampal transcriptome of three groups of C57Bl6/J mice, in order to gain insights into the effects of hypergravity on cerebral functions. Namely, a group of 21 days 3G-centrifuged mice was compared to (1) a group subjected to an acute corticosterone injection, (2) a group receiving a transdermal chronic administration of corticosterone during 21 days, and (3) aged mice because aging could be characterized by a decrease of hippocampus functions and memory impairment. Our results suggest that hypergravity stress induced by corticosterone administration and aging modulate the expression of genes in the hippocampus. However, the modulations of the transcriptome observed in these conditions are not identical. Hypergravity affects per-se the hippocampus transcriptome and probably modifies its activity. Hypergravity induced changes in hippocampal transcriptome were more similar to acute injection than chronic diffusion of corticosterone or aging.
Study on bloody clam population identification based on multi-spectral image

An identification method was proposed for distinguishing the bloody clams from different populations based on multi-spectral image technology. Three populations of bloody clams were collected from Korea, Shandong, and Zhejiang, respectively. The multi-spectral images of bloody clam shells were acquired by CIR MS3100 multi-spectral camera. The graylevel co-occurrence matrixes (GLCM) of the three sub-images were calculated and the texture features of images were calculated according to the GLCM. 3 ratios were extracted after standard deviation filtering and threshold segmentation for each image. Totally, 15 features were obtained for one sample. 3 principal components were selected by using principal component analysis (PCA). Discriminant analysis and least square-support vector machine (LS-SVM) were used to establish the discrimination models. The prediction accuracy of discriminant analysis and LS-SVM were 64.44% and 46.67%, respectively. The prediction accuracy was low, but it provided a new approach for nondestructive identification of bloody clams from different populations.
A Cost Evaluation of the Georgia Stroke and Heart Attack Prevention Program

Introduction Hypertension is a leading cause of stroke, coronary artery disease, heart attack, and heart and kidney failure in the United States, all of which contribute to the rising costs of health care. The Georgia Stroke and Heart Attack Prevention Program is an education and direct service program for low-income patients with hypertension. This project evaluated the cost-effectiveness of the program compared with the following two alternative scenarios: no treatment for high blood pressure and the typical hypertension treatment received in the private sector nationwide (usual care). Methods We estimated the preventive treatment costs and number of adverse health events averted (hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke, heart disease, and kidney failure) associated with the Georgia Stroke and Heart Attack Prevention Program in two Georgia health districts. We used program cost and service usage data obtained from the Georgia Department of Human Resources and probabilities and costs of expected adverse events published in peer-reviewed sources. We compared program costs and number of expected adverse health events averted with those expected from 1) no preventive care and 2) usual care for high blood pressure. Results The Georgia Stroke and Heart Attack Prevention Program was less costly and resulted in better health outcomes than either no preventive care or usual care. Compared with no preventive care in the two districts, the program was estimated to result in 54% fewer expected adverse events; compared with usual care, the program was estimated to result in 46% fewer expected adverse events. Combining the costs of preventive treatment with the costs of expected adverse events, the Georgia Stroke and Heart Attack Prevention Program cost an average of $486 per patient annually, compared with average annual costs of $534 for no care and $624 for usual care. Conclusion Maintaining a publicly financed stroke and heart attack prevention program is more cost-effective and results in greater health benefits than other plausible scenarios. Because the benefits of this program accrue to both the state and federal governments through reduced Medicaid and indigent care expenditures, both the state and federal governments have a financial incentive to support the program.
Two-stage artificial immune system in Grid scheduling problems

This research presents a two-stage AIS approach to solve the Grid scheduling problems. According to the literature survey, most researchers use the clone selection of B cells during the evolving processes and the function of B cells in AIS researches to solve various optimization problems. Instead, we try to implement the T helper cell and T suppressor cell in T cell combining B cell to solve the Grid Scheduling problems. The major differences of our method from other earlier approaches includes: 1. A two-stage approach is applied using B cell as a basis and then T cell is employed next. T helper cell is used to help improving the solution and then T suppressor cell is generated to increase the diversity of the population.2. A new formula is proposed to calculate the affinity of the Antibody. The total difference of completion time of each job is applied instead of the difference of makespan of the schedule. This new AIS method can supplement the flaw of GA using fitness as the basis and a new Lifespan which will keep good diversified chromosomes within the population to extend the searching spaces. The experimental tests show that this novel AIS method is very effective when compared with other Meta-heuristics such as GA and SA.
Concurrent Validity and Reliability of Alternative Computer Game for the Coincidence-Anticipation Timing Task

ABSTRACT The coincidence-anticipation timing (CAT) task assesses one facet of cognitive and motor performance and is used to understand the human visuo-motor system involved in intercepting the moving object. To assess the test–retest reliability and the concurrent validity in the Bridge Games package (Bridge) developed to assess the CAT task, the scores of 224 healthy subjects (M = 52.2, SD = 19.5 years old) were measured using the Bridge and the ‘gold standard’ Bassin Anticipation Timer (Bassin). A mean block of absolute, constant, and variable errors was calculated. Reliability and validity were expressed using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC2,k), standard error of measurement, minimal detectable change, and Pearson’s correlation. Reliability was good to excellent for all blocks (.73 ≤ ICC ≤ .88), and the validity was good to excellent when compared using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, suggesting that the two tests may have similar properties. Bridge is an alternative to existing clinical tests for the CAT task.
Low Complexity CFO Compensation in Uplink OFDMA Systems With Receiver Windowing

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems in the uplink suffer from multiple access interference (MAI) due to their high sensitivity to frequency misalignments between different users. In this paper, we propose the application of time domain receiver windowing methods to confine the leakage caused by multiple carrier frequency offsets (CFOs) to a few neighboring subcarriers with almost no additional computational burden. The CFO effects can be translated into a linear system of equations with a coefficient matrix that is called interference matrix. As a result of receiver windowing, we can approximate the interference matrix with a quasi-banded one by neglecting its small elements outside a certain bandwidth. This allows us to propose a class of low complexity CFO compensation techniques. These techniques are applicable to the generalized subcarrier allocation scheme (G-CAS). The complexity reduction in the proposed solutions is substantial when compared to the existing ones in the literature. It is worth mentioning that this substantial complexity reduction is achieved in expense of some bandwidth efficiency loss. Hence, there exists a tradeoff between bandwidth efficiency and complexity. Solutions based on both zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criteria are proposed and compared. Simulation results demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in approaching the optimal performance are also presented.
Determination of Histamine in Silages Using Nanomaghemite Core (γ-Fe2O3)-Titanium Dioxide Shell Nanoparticles Off-Line Coupled with Ion Exchange Chromatography

The presence of biogenic amines is a hallmark of degraded food and its products. Herein, we focused on the utilization of magnetic nanoparticles off-line coupled with ion exchange chromatography with post-column ninhydrin derivatization and Vis detection for histamine (Him) separation and detection. Primarily, we described the synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles with nanomaghemite core (γ-Fe2O3) functionalized with titanium dioxide and, then, applied these particles to specific isolation of Him. To obtain further insight into interactions between paramagnetic particles’ (PMP) surface and Him, a scanning electron microscope was employed. It was shown that binding of histamine causes an increase of relative current response of deprotonated PMPs, which confirmed formation of Him-PMPs clusters. The recovery of the isolation showed that titanium dioxide-based particles were able to bind and preconcentrate Him with recovery exceeding 90%. Finally, we successfully carried out the analyses of real samples obtained from silage. We can conclude that our modified particles are suitable for Him isolation, and thus may serve as the first isolation step of Him from biological samples, as it is demonstrated on alfalfa seed variety Tereza silage.
NARX neural network model for predicting availability of a heavy duty mining equipment

In this work a neural network NARX model has been developed in order to predict availability of a heavy duty equipment of an important copper mining site in Chile. Four exogenous inputs have been considered (Number of Detentions, Mean Time to Repair, Mean Time between Failures and Use of Physical Availability) while Availability is the autoregressive variable. A 30 days moving average has been performed over the data. Results confirm that availability can be adequately multiple-step-ahead predicted using this arranged data and a NARX model including the 4 above mentioned variables as exogenous inputs.
Mapping collective human activity in an urban environment based on mobile phone data

Identifying and characterizing variations of human activity – specifically changes in intensity and similarity – in urban environments provide insights into the social component of those eminently complex systems. Using large volumes of user-generated mobile phone data, we derive mobile communication profiles that we use as a proxy for the collective human activity. In this article, geocomputational methods and geovisual analytics such as self-organizing maps (SOM) are used to explore the variations of these profiles, and its implications for collective human activity. We evaluate the merits of SOM as a cross-dimensional clustering technique and derived temporal trajectories of variations within the mobile communication profiles. The trajectories’ characteristics such as length are discussed, suggesting spatial variations in intensity and similarity in collective human activity. Trajectories are linked back to the geographic space to map the spatial and temporal variation of trajectory characteristics. Different trajectory lengths suggest that mobile phone activity is correlated with the spatial configuration of the city, and so at different times of the day. Our approach contributes to the understanding of the space-time social dynamics within urban environments.
Failure Mode Analysis of a Proposed Manipulator-based Hazardous Material Retrieval System

Failure mode and reliability analysis is particularly important for robot manipulators to be deployed in remote environments, where inspection and repair are di cult, and reliability is of prime importance. This is particularly true for manipulators involved in hazardous waste management operations, where failure could be both expensive and highly dangerous. In this paper, we describe a Fault Tree Analysis and detailing of the major failure modes of a robot manipulator-based system for tank waste retrieval. The advantages and limitations of this type of analysis for hazardous waste robotics are detailed and discussed.
The Limits of Globalization in the 21st Century: Nationalism, Regionalism and Violence

SPIRIT is an interdisciplinary doctoral school for the systematic study of themes and theoretical issues related to the intertwining of political, transnational and intercultural processes in the contemporary world. It is dedicated to examining - from the combined vantagepoint of both the human and the social sciences - cultural, political and communica tive issues on a spectrum ranging from the local dimension over the national and the regional to the processes of globalisation that increasingly impinge on the organisation of life and the structure and dynamics of the world. The thematic issues range from questions of European identity and integration; over transnational processes of migration, subcultures and international marketing; to transatlantic problems or nationalism and religion in Eastern Europe or the USA What ties them together within the framework of SPIRIT is the school's distinctive features: Analysing themes in the context of the meanings and implications of internationality, and taking cultural/communicative as well as politi cal/sociological aspects into account. Considerable emphasis is placed on Europe - its history, politics, social anthropology, place in the world, relations to global issues, and trajectories for the future. On this background research is conducted within four thematic areas:
Revised instability domains of SPB and β Cephei stars

The excitation of pulsation modes in β Cephei and Slowly Pulsating B stars is known to be very sensitive to opacity changes in the stellar interior where T ∼ 2 × 10 5 K. In this region differences in opacity up to ∼ 50% can be induced by the choice between OPAL and OP opacity tables, and between two different metal mixtures (Grevesse & Noels 1993 and Asplund et al. 2005). We have extended the non-adiabatic computations presented in Miglio et al. (2007) towards models of higher mass and pulsation modes of degree � =3 , and we present here the instability domains in the HR- and log P -log Teff diagrams resulting from different choices of opacity tables, and for three different metallicities.
Combining Lexical Resources with Fuzzy Set Theory for Recognizing Textual Entailment

Textual Entailment (TE) recognition is a task which consists in recognizing if a textual expression, the text T, entails another expression, the hypothesis H. Recently it is treated as a common solution for modeling language variability. Textual entailment captures a broad range of semantic oriented inferences needed for many Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, like Information Retrieval (IR), Question Answering (QA), Information Extraction (IE), text summarization and Machine Translation (MT). Recognizing Textual Entailment (RTE) as one of the fundamental problems in those natural language processing applications has attracted increasing attention in recent years. This paper proposes a new method for textual entailment measure which is based on lexical, shallow syntactic analysis combined with fuzzy set theory. Further we model lexical and semantic features based on this method and perform textual entailment recognition using machine learning algorithm. The performance of our method on RTE challenge data resulted in an accuracy of 56%.
On feature templates for Particle Filter based lane detection

In this work we propose the application of state-of-the-art feature descriptors into a Particle Filter framework for the lane detection task. The key idea lies on the comparison of image features extracted from the actual measurement with a priori calculated descriptors. First, we demonstrate how a feature expectation can be extracted based on a particle hypothesis. We then propose to define the likelihood function in terms of the distance between the expected feature and the features calculated from the current measurement. We select the Histogram of Oriented Gradients as a descriptor and the Battacharyya distance as a metric. We show that this simple approach is powerful in terms of pattern discrimination and that it opens a new set of possibilities for increasing the robustness of lane detectors.
The CASA Approach to Autonomic Applications

In today's world of highly dynamic computing en- vironments, autonomic applications are the need of the hour. By an autonomic application, we mean an application that is able to adapt to changes in its execution environment dynamically and transparently. CASA (Contract-based Adaptive Software Architecture) provides a framework for enabling the develop- ment and operation of autonomic applications. CASA helps in significantly reducing the complexity involved in developing autonomic applications by separating the adaptation concerns of an application from its business concerns. CASA further provides a runtime system for dealing with the adaptation concerns. In order to meet the adaptation needs of a broad and diverse set of applications, CASA supports adaptation at various levels of an application - from lower-level services to application code. In CASA, the adaptation policy of every application is defined in a so-called application contract, which is external to the application and is specified using an XML- based language, thereby facilitating changes in the adaptation policy at runtime.
An algorithm of solving Chinese segmentation overlapping ambiguous

There has been a wide variety of automatic segmentation methods with deepening study of the Chinese information processing, and the ambiguity problem is a challenge which all the methods must face. This paper summarizes the algorithms of Chinese text segmentation. Through the introduction of multiple ambiguities, it analyzes the necessity of the existence of ambiguities. On the basis of Chinese text segmentation, it offers a new overlapping ambiguity elimination algorithm based on segmentation rank. The algorithm can eliminate ambiguities and improve the efficiency and accuracy of the Chinese segmentation overlapping ambiguous.
Primary care screening for peripheral arterial disease: a cross-sectional observational study

Background Early identification of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and subsequent instigation of risk modification strategies could minimise disease progression and reduce overall risk of cardiovascular (CV) mortality. However, the feasibility and value of primary care PAD screening is uncertain. Aim This study (the PIPETTE study — Peripheral arterial disease In Primary carE: Targeted screening and subsequenT managEment) aimed to determine the value of a proposed primary care PAD screening strategy. Outcomes assessed were: prevalence of PAD and agreement of ankle– brachial index (ABI)-defined PAD (ABI ≤0.9) with QRISK®2-defined high CV risk (≥20). Design and setting A cross-sectional observational study was undertaken in a large general practice in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Method In total, 1101 individuals with ≥2 pre-identified CV risk factors but no known CV disease or diabetes were invited to participate. Participants underwent ABI measurement and QRISK2 assessment, and completed Edinburgh Claudication Questionnaires. Results A total of 368 people participated in the study (participation rate: 33%). Prevalence of PAD was 3% (n = 12). The number needed to screen (NNS) to detect one new case of PAD was 31. Refining the study population to those aged ≥50 years with a smoking history reduced the NNS to 14, while still identifying 100% of PAD cases. Of participants with PAD, 33% reported severe lifestyle-limiting symptoms of intermittent claudication that warranted subsequent endovascular intervention, yet had not previously presented to their GP. The QRISK2 score predicted high CV risk in 92% of participants with PAD. Conclusion The low PAD yield and the fact that QRISK2 was largely comparable to the ABI in predicting high CV risk suggests that routine PAD screening may be unwarranted. Instead, strategies to improve public awareness of PAD are needed.