Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of Hollow‐Fiber Ultrafiltration for Microbial Sampling in Groundwater

The goal of this study was to test hollow‐fiber ultrafiltration as a method for concentrating in situ bacteria and viruses in groundwater samples. Water samples from nine wells tapping a shallow sandy aquifer in a densely populated village in Bangladesh were reduced in volume approximately 400‐fold using ultrafiltration. Culture‐based assays for total coliforms and Escherichia coli, as well as molecular‐based assays for E. coli, Bacteroides, and adenovirus, were used as microbial markers before and after ultrafiltration to evaluate performance. Ultrafiltration increased the concentration of the microbial markers in 99% of cases. However, concentration factors (CF = post‐filtration concentration/pre‐filtration concentration) for each marker calculated from geometric means ranged from 52 to 1018 compared to the expected value of 400. The efficiency was difficult to quantify because concentrations of some of the markers, especially E. coli and total coliforms, in the well water (WW) collected before ultrafiltration varied by several orders of magnitude during the period of sampling. The potential influence of colloidal iron oxide precipitates in the groundwater was tested by adding EDTA to the pre‐filtration water in half of the samples to prevent the formation of precipitates. The use of EDTA had no significant effect on the measurement of culturable or molecular markers across the 0.5 to 10 mg/L range of dissolved Fe2+ concentrations observed in the groundwater, indicating that colloidal iron did not hinder or enhance recovery or detection of the microbial markers. Ultrafiltration appears to be effective for concentrating microorganisms in environmental water samples, but additional research is needed to quantify losses during filtration.
Gold like lustre: nanometric surface treatment for decoration of glazed ceramics in ancient Islam, Moresque Spain and Renaissance Italy

Abstract Lustre is one of the most fascinating surface decorative effects produced on glazed ceramics. This technique seems to have been born in the ninth century in factories created by the Arabs during their conquests in the Orient (Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia). Arab potters spread their knowhow all over the Mediterranean basin, especially Spain. Italian Renaissance potters succeeded in applying it to their production. The technique is based on a specific firing of the glazed pottery in a reducing atmosphere in the presence of metallic salts. The result is a surface layer with a metallic appearance, exhibiting various colours, from gold to brown or red. This paper provides the chemical nature and the physical structure of ancient gold like lustre layers and compares them with contemporary lustres produced by a Spanish craftsman reproducing the traditional Islamic techniques. Various analytical investigations (atomic force microscopy, high resolution SEM, particle induced X-ray emission, Rutherford backscattering, TEM, X-ray induced photoelectron spectroscopy, time of flight SIMS and grazing X-ray diffraction) were carried out as well as investigations into the coloured appearance by spectrophotometry. The results show that the lustre layer consists of silver and copper particles of nanometric dimensions dispersed in a glassy matrix. A model of the lustre formation is proposed wherein the development of a new superficial glaze is described. Comparison between ancient and modern production shows how the techniques have varied through the ages.
Improved bound for the union of fat triangles

We show that, for any fixed Δ > 0, the combinatorial complexity of the union of <i>n</i> triangles in the plane, each of whose angles is at least Δ, is <i>O</i>(<i>n</i>2<sup>α(<i>n</i>)</sup> log* <i>n</i>), with the constant of proportionality depending on Δ. This considerably improves the twenty-year-old bound <i>O</i>(<i>n</i> log log <i>n</i>), due to Matoušek <i>et al</i>. [24, 25].
Development of an inverse methodology for crack diagnosis using AI technique

The influence of cracks on the dynamic behaviour of a cracked cantilever beam with rectangular cross section is discussed in this work. Analytical and experimental investigations are carried out to find the relation between the change in natural frequencies and mode shapes for the cracked and un-cracked beam. Finite element analysis is being performed on the cracked structure to measure the vibration signatures, which is subsequently used in the design of smart system based on fuzzy logic for prediction of crack depths and locations following inverse problem approach. The fuzzy system is developed with relative natural frequencies and mode shapes as input parameters based on the triangular membership functions to calculate the deviation in the vibration parameters for the cracked dynamic structure. Results from experimental analysis are very close to the results predicted by the theoretical, finite element and fuzzy analysis.
A Study on the Performance Tests of Polymer Cement Slurry-Coated Steels

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of polymer cement slurry-coated steels such as reinforcing bar and steel plate. Polymer cement slurry-coated steels, which is made from two types of polymer dispersions such as St/BA and EVA are prepared, and tested for viscosity, flow, tensile strength, corrosive resistance, bendability, adhesion, bond strength to cement concrete. From the test results, the workability of polymer cement slurry in the coating process at surface of reinforcing bar or steel plate is slightly improved according to containing of fly ash. The polymer cement slurry-coated steels have good adhesion, corrosive resistance, fairly good bendability and high bond strength. The corrosion resistance of polymer cement slurry-coated steels is improved to a great extent compared to that of plain steel. The thicker the coating, the weaker the bond strength to cement concrete. The bond strength of polymer cement slurry-coated reinforcing bars with coating thickness of 200±50 mm to cement concrete is not less than that of epoxy-coated bar. The coating thickness is very important factor to maintain the acceptable bond mechanism and goes well with the ASTM and those of Korean Concrete Institute. However, it needs a little thick coating thickness for other performances such as corrosion resistance, bendability. Therefore, it is impotance to have optimum mix proportions that get the balance between thickness and performance. The polymer films formed in polymer cement slurry play a great important role in improvement of performance of polymer cement slurry-coated reinforcing bar. In this study, it is apparent that the choice of polymer type, thickness, admixture and curing condition is important to improve the adhesion between polymer cement slurry and reinforcing bar, coated reinforcing bar and cement concrete.
Functional Encryption with Oblivious Helper

Functional encryption is a nice tool that bridges the gap between usability and privacy when providing access to huge databases: while being encrypted, aggregated information is available with a fine-tuned control by the owner of the database who can specify the functions he allows users to compute on the data. Unfortunately, giving access to several functions might leak too much information on the database, since once the decryption capability is given for a specific function, this is for an unlimited number of ciphertexts. In the particular case of the inner-product, if rows or records of the database contain l fields on which one got l independent inner-product capabilities, one can extract all the individual fields. On the other hand, the major applications that make use of inner-products, such as machine-learning, need to compute many of them. This paper deals with a practical trade-off in order to allow the computation of various inner-products, while still protecting the confidentiality of the data. To this aim, we introduce an oblivious helper, that will be required for any decryption-query, in order to control the leakage of information on the database. It should indeed learn just enough information to guarantee the confidentiality of the database, but without endangering the privacy of the queries.
Mechanism of Virulence Attenuation of Glycosaminoglycan-Binding Variants of Japanese Encephalitis Virus and Murray Valley Encephalitis Virus

ABSTRACT The in vivo mechanism for virulence attenuation of laboratory-derived variants of two flaviviruses in the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) serocomplex is described. Host cell adaptation of JEV and Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVE) by serial passage in adenocarcinoma cells selected for variants characterized by (i) a small plaque phenotype, (ii) increased affinity to heparin-Sepharose, (iii) enhanced susceptibility to inhibition of infectivity by heparin, and (iv) loss of neuroinvasiveness in a mouse model for flaviviral encephalitis. We previously suggested that virulence attenuation of the host cell-adapted variants of MVE is a consequence of their increased dependence on cell surface glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) for attachment and entry (E. Lee and M. Lobigs, J. Virol. 74:8867-8875, 2000). In support of this proposition, we find that GAG-binding variants of JEV and MVE were rapidly removed from the bloodstream and failed to spread from extraneural sites of replication into the brain. Thus, the enhanced affinity of the attenuated variants for GAGs ubiquitously present on cells and extracellular matrices most likely prevented viremia of sufficient magnitude and/or duration required for virus entry into the brain parenchyma. This mechanism may also account, in part, for the attenuation of the JEV SA14-14-2 vaccine, given the sensitivity of the virus to heparin inhibition. A pronounced loss of the capacity of the GAG-binding variants to produce disease was also noted in mice defective in the alpha/beta interferon response, a mouse strain shown here to be highly susceptible to infection with JEV serocomplex flaviviruses. Despite the close genetic relatedness of JEV and MVE, the variants selected for the two viruses were altered at different residues in the envelope (E) protein, viz., Glu306 and Asp390 for JEV and MVE, respectively. In both cases the substitutions gave the protein an increased net positive charge. The close spatial proximity of amino acids 306 and 390 in the predicted E protein structure strongly suggests that the two residues define a receptor-binding domain involved in virus attachment to sulfated proteoglycans.
Face recognition with biometric encryption for privacy-enhancing self-exclusion

Face recognition has been employed in various security-related applications such as surveillance, mugshot identification, e-passport, and access control. Despite its recent advancements, privacy concern is one of several issues preventing its wider deployment. In this paper, we address the privacy concern for a self-exclusion scenario of face recognition, through combining face recognition with a simple biometric encryption scheme called helper data system. The combined system is described in detail with focus on the key binding procedure. Experiments are carried out on the CMU PIE face database. The experimental results demonstrate that in the proposed system, the biometric encryption module tends to significantly reduce the false acceptance rate while increasing the false rejection rate.
A framework for integrating IT governance and business/IT alignment principles

Highly information-intensive organisations such as retail banks continuously struggle with the key issues of controlling their IT-value and achieving business-IT alignment. One main reason might be that decision makers in retail banks do not use methods to plan or improve their business-IT alignment. This study provides such a method, combining principles of two well known concepts: IT governance and strategic alignment. The developed framework provides an allocation scheme for dividing strategic IT decisions between the business and IT domain by describing practical concepts to tackle the business-IT alignment enigma. The framework is validated by interviewing a number of experts from Dutch retail banks that are strongly challenged to optimise their IT value through business-IT alignment. The validation study largely supports the applicability of the framework. Furthermore, this study provides a window of opportunities to apply it to other industries, countries or specific IS/IT applications.
I 2-D 14 Formal Policy Analysis Techniques for Comparison and Validation

Policy comparison is useful for a variety of applications, including policy validation and policy-aware service selection. While policy comparison is somewhat natural for policy languages based on description logics, it becomes rather difficult for rule-based policies. When the policy has recursive rules the problem is in general undecidable. Still most policies require some form of recursion to model subject and object hierarchies, and certificate chains. In this paper, we show how policies with recursion can be compared by adapting query optimization techniques developed for the relational algebra. We prove soundness and completeness of our method, discuss the compatibility of the restrictive assumptions we need w.r. t. our reference application scenarios, and report the results of a preliminary set of experiments to prove the practical applicability of our approach. This work will be published in the proceedings of the IEEE POLICY Workshop 2008. Keyword List Rule-based policy comparison, Query containment for recursive logic programs, Containment mappings c © REWERSE 2008. Formal Policy Analysis Techniques for Comparison and Validation P. A. Bonatti, F. Mogavero Università di Napoli Federico II Email: bonatti@na.infn. it
An acoustic segment modeling approach to automatic language identification

We propose a novel acoustic segment modeling approach to automatic language identification (LID). It is assumed that the overall sound characteristics of all spoken languages can be covered by a universal collection of acoustic segment models (ASMs) without imposing any phonetic definitions. These segment models are used to decode spoken utterances into strings of segment units. The statistics of these units and their co-occurrences are used to form ASM-derived feature vectors to discriminate individual spoken languages. We evaluate the proposed approach on the 12-language, 1996 NIST Language Recognition Evaluation (LRE) task. With testing queries of about 30 seconds long, our results show that the proposed ASM framework reduces the LID error rate quite significantly when compared with the prevailing parallel PRLM method. We achieved an accuracy of 86.1% using a set of 128 3-state ASMs, with each state characterized by a mixture Gaussian density with 32 mixture components.
N ε−Lysine Acetylation of a Bacterial Transcription Factor Inhibits Its DNA-Binding Activity

Evidence suggesting that eukaryotes and archaea use reversible N ε-lysine (N ε-Lys) acetylation to modulate gene expression has been reported, but evidence for bacterial use of N ε-Lys acetylation for this purpose is lacking. Here, we report data in support of the notion that bacteria can control gene expression by modulating the acetylation state of transcription factors (TFs). We screened the E. coli proteome for substrates of the bacterial Gcn5-like protein acetyltransferase (Pat). Pat acetylated four TFs, including the RcsB global regulatory protein, which controls cell division, and capsule and flagellum biosynthesis in many bacteria. Pat acetylated residue Lys180 of RcsB, and the NAD+-dependent Sir2 (sirtuin)-like protein deacetylase (CobB) deacetylated acetylated RcsB (RcsBAc), demonstrating that N ε-Lys acetylation of RcsB is reversible. Analysis of RcsBAc and variant RcsB proteins carrying substitutions at Lys180 provided biochemical and physiological evidence implicating Lys180 as a critical residue for RcsB DNA-binding activity. These findings further the likelihood that reversible N ε-Lys acetylation of transcription factors is a mode of regulation of gene expression used by all cells.
Lazy Release Consistency for Software Distributed Shared Memory

Relaxed memory consistency models, such as release consistency, were introduced in order to reduce the impact of re mote memory access latency in both software and hardware distributed shared memory (DSM). However, in a software DSM, it is also important to reduce the number of messages and the amount of data exchanged for remote memory access. Lazy release consistency is a new algorithm for implementing release consistency that lazily pulls modifications across the interconnect only when necessary. Trace- driven simulation using the SPLASH benchmarks indicates that lazy release consistency reduces both the number of messages and the amount of data transferred between processors. These reductions are especially significant for pro- grams that exhibit false sharing and make extensive use of locks.
The Combinator S

The combinator S has the reduction rule Sxyz? xz(yz). We investigate properties of ground terms built from S alone. The first part of the paper shows that this term rewriting system admits no ground loops. This extends the known result of the absence of cycles. In the second part, we give a procedure that decides whether an S-term has a normal form. This algorithm makes use of rational tree languages. Finally we show that the set of normalizing S-terms is in itself a rational tree language, by explicitly giving its grammar. In all, this paper shows the surprisingly rich structures that are implied by a seemingly small rewrite rule.
Carbon-nanotube field-emitter driven compact frequency-scanning THz source

We describe a scanning Orotron Terahertz radiation (THz) source. The operational principle is as follows: a sheet beam of electrons passes near a corrugated metal surface (Smith-Purcell grating) contained in a resonant cavity. The periodic forces on the electrons drive the cavity on its resonances in the THz regime. We describe theoretical predictions for the sheet beam parameters required and the likely performance of the device. We also describe experimental progress towards sheet-beam generation using field-emitted electrons from a carbon-nanotube array. We describe the carbon nanotube growth process and demonstrate sheet-beam current densities which exceed the predicted turn-on current density of the Orotron cavity.
EEG-based motor imagery classification using subject-specific spatio-spectral features

Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology provides a new mode of direct communication between man and machine, replacing human's normal output control pathways of nerves and muscles. It embeds huge potential to be explored in medicine, rehabilitation and entertainment that can be used for the healthy as well as the disabled. In order to thoroughly exploit BCI's capabilities, efficient man-machine interaction has to be established by accurately identifying human intentions from brain waves. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a strong tool in BCI research as it is a cheap and easy non-invasive recording methodology of brain activity encoded with human thoughts. This paper investigates an EEG dataset recorded from 85 healthy subjects performing imagination of motor movements, and highlights the necessity of selecting the subject-specific spatial and spectral features to optimize motor imagery recognition performance. Subject-specific spectral and spatial features associated with right and left hand motor imagery are identified on account of the discriminative weights of EEG signals recorded from motor cortex region. Discriminative capability has been estimated using the Fisher ratio values of each frequency component for each channel. Using the proposed hybrid subject-specific selection of channels and bands, the proposed BCI system is capable of offering comparable classification accuracy with the state of the art methodology which employs more number of channels and frequency bands.
Elofsson programs All are not equal : A benchmark of different homology modeling

Modeling a protein structure based on a homologous structure is a standard method in structural biology today. In this process an alignment of a target protein sequence onto the structure of a template(s) is used as input to a program that constructs a 3D model. It has been shown that the most important factor in this process is the correctness of the alignment and the choice of the best template structure(s), while it is generally believed that there are no major differences between the best modeling programs. Therefore, a large number of studies to benchmark the alignment qualities and the selection process have been performed. However, to our knowledge no large-scale benchmark has been performed to evaluate the programs used to transform the alignment to a 3D model. In this study, a benchmark of six different homology modeling programs— Modeller, SegMod/ENCAD, SWISS-MODEL, 3D-JIGSAW, nest, and Builder—is presented. The performance of these programs is evaluated using physiochemical correctness and structural similarity to the correct structure. From our analysis it can be concluded that no single modeling program outperform the others in all tests. However, it is quite clear that three modeling programs, Modeller, nest, and SegMod/ ENCAD, perform better than the others. Interestingly, the fastest and oldest modeling program, SegMod/ ENCAD, performs very well, although it was written more than 10 years ago and has not undergone any development since. It can also be observed that none of the homology modeling programs builds side chains as well as a specialized program (SCWRL), and therefore there should be room for improvement.
Using diagnostic radiology in human evolutionary studies

This paper reviews the application of medical imaging and associated computer graphics techniques to the study of human evolutionary history, with an emphasis on basic concepts and on the advantages and limitations of each method. Following a short discussion of plain film radiography and pluridirectional tomography, the principles of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and their role in the investigation of extant and fossil morphology are considered in more detail. The second half of the paper deals with techniques of 3‐dimensional visualisation based on CT and MRI and with quantitative analysis of digital images.
A phenomenological modeling of deformation during metal cutting: a modified thick shear zone analysis

In Oxley’s machining theory, efforts have been made to address work hardening and thermal softening effects and allow the material to flow continuously through an opened-up deformation zone. However, the strain, strain rate and temperature were calculated based on the average values. The distributions of these processing parameters, which are essential to describe the continuous flow, were not taken into account. In particular, the hodograph was adopted from the single shear plane model, in which the velocity field allowing for the continuous deformation was not described, and the issue of velocity discontinuity has not been resolved. In the current work, based on the detailed analysis on the boundary conditions of the velocity and shear strain rate fields, the thick ‘equidistant parallel-sided’ shear zone model was revisited. A more realistic nonlinear shear strain rate distribution has been proposed under the frame of non-equidistant primary shear zone configuration, so that all the boundary conditions can be satisfied. The obtained results have been compared with those obtained using the original Oxley analysis and the experimentally measured values. Although there was no significant difference in the force prediction, a clear improvement in the prediction of the deformation zone thickness was obtained.