Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An interface for virtual 3D sculpting via physical proxy

We explore the design space of using direct finger input in conjunction with a deformable physical prop for the creation and manipulation of conceptual 3D geometric models. The user sculpts virtual models by manipulating the space on, into, and around the physical prop, in an extension of the types of manipulations one would perform on traditional modeling media such as clay or foam. The prop acts as a proxy to the virtual model and hence as a frame of reference to the user's fingers. A prototype implementation uses camera-based motion tracking technology to track passive markers on the fingers and prop. The interface supports a variety of clay-like sculpting operations including deforming, smoothing, pasting, and extruding. All operations are performed using the unconstrained fingers, with command input enabled by a small set of finger gestures coupled with on-screen widgets.
Fas-Fas Ligand System Endometrial Apoptosis by Regulating to Maternal Immunotolerance and Human Chorionic Gonadotropin Contributes

The ﬁrst known hormonal signal of the conceptus during implantation is human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Interestingly, increased apoptosis in human endometrium coincides with the implantation window. Factors from the fetal or placental origin as well as maternal hormonal factors are likely to have a potential role in the regulation of apoptotic signaling molecules. We hypothesized that hCG may be a placental link for the development of local maternal immunotolerance. Fas-Fas ligand (FasL) system is one of the apoptotic signaling pathways, shown to be important in the development of local immune tolerance during and after implantation. We report that hCG treatment decreases cell proliferation and increases apoptosis in endometrial cells. Moreover, hCG stimulates FasL mRNA and protein expression without affecting Fas mRNA in these cells. Interestingly, in coculture experiments, hCG-treated endometrial cells induce an increase in T cell apoptosis. Our in vivo results reveal that cells of early pregnancy decidua express strong FasL immunoreactivity, and decidual areas containing interstitial cytotrophoblasts have numerous TUNEL-positive cells. Compared with decidual areas devoid of interstitial cytotrophoblasts, we observed in decidual areas containing interstitial cytotrophoblasts clearly less amount of TUNEL-positive cells. These results suggest that hCG may be a link in the development of peritrophoblastic immune tolerance and may facilitate the trophoblast invasion by regulating proapoptotic molecules such as FasL in endometrial cells. The Journal of Immunology, 2003, 171: 2305–2313.
On the Robustness of Transmit Beamforming

Beamforming is a simple transmit strategy that uses only one eigen-direction in multiple-input multiple-output channels. This simplicity makes beamforming a competitive strategy in practice, but at the same time poses a doubt on the sensitivity of beamforming to the imperfectness of the channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). This paper studies beamforming from the perspective of worst-case robustness. We show that beamforming can achieve the maximum received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or guarantees a given received SNR with the minimum transmit power, in the worst channel within an elliptical uncertainty region defined by the weighted spectral norm. This result further implies that beamforming has the ability to combat against the imperfectness of CSIT, especially for small channel dimensions or small channel uncertainty.
Visual analytics of spatial interaction patterns for pandemic decision support

Population mobility, i.e. the movement and contact of individuals across geographic space, is one of the essential factors that determine the course of a pandemic disease spread. This research views both individual‐based daily activities and a pandemic spread as spatial interaction problems, where locations interact with each other via the visitors that they share or the virus that is transmitted from one place to another. The research proposes a general visual analytic approach to synthesize very large spatial interaction data and discover interesting (and unknown) patterns. The proposed approach involves a suite of visual and computational techniques, including (1) a new graph partitioning method to segment a very large interaction graph into a moderate number of spatially contiguous subgraphs (regions); (2) a reorderable matrix, with regions ‘optimally’ ordered on the diagonal, to effectively present a holistic view of major spatial interaction patterns; and (3) a modified flow map, interactively linked to the reorderable matrix, to enable pattern interpretation in a geographical context. The implemented system is able to visualize both people's daily movements and a disease spread over space in a similar way. The discovered spatial interaction patterns provide valuable insight for designing effective pandemic mitigation strategies and supporting decision‐making in time‐critical situations.
Switching power supplies operating with partially saturated inductors

This paper discusses the inductor-saturation-aware design of switching power supply. A new modeling and analysis method is presented, including thermal dependence of parameters, which allows a reliable prediction of current waveshape and consequent losses for Ferrite Core (FC) inductors. The proposed algorithm can be easily applied to predict the range of the operating conditions sustainable for FC inductors, including saturation. The proposed method is best suited for the identification of optimal high-power-density power supply design solutions.
Development of MQXF: The Nb3Sn Low- $\beta$ Quadrupole for the HiLumi LHC

The High Luminosity (HiLumi) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project has, as the main objective, to increase the LHC peak luminosity by a factor five and the integrated luminosity by a factor ten. This goal will be achieved mainly with a new interaction region layout, which will allow a stronger focusing of the colliding beams. The target will be to reduce the beam size in the interaction points by a factor of two, which requires doubling the aperture of the low-β (or inner triplet) quadrupole magnets. The use of Nb3Sn superconducting material and, as a result, the possibility of operating at magnetic field levels in the windings higher than 11 T will limit the increase in length of these quadrupoles, called MQXF, to acceptable levels. After the initial design phase, where the key parameters were chosen and the magnet's conceptual design finalized, the MQXF project, a joint effort between the U.S. LHC Accelerator Research Program and the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), has now entered the construction and test phase of the short models. Concurrently, the preparation for the development of the full-length prototypes has been initiated. This paper will provide an overview of the project status, describing and reporting on the performance of the superconducting material, the lessons learnt during the fabrication of superconducting coils and support structure, and the fine tuning of the magnet design in view of the start of the prototyping phase.
Polymorphic type inference for machine code

For many compiled languages, source-level types are erased very early in the compilation process. As a result, further compiler passes may convert type-safe source into type-unsafe machine code. Type-unsafe idioms in the original source and type-unsafe optimizations mean that type information in a stripped binary is essentially nonexistent. The problem of recovering high-level types by performing type inference over stripped machine code is called type reconstruction, and offers a useful capability in support of reverse engineering and decompilation. In this paper, we motivate and develop a novel type system and algorithm for machine-code type inference. The features of this type system were developed by surveying a wide collection of common source- and machine-code idioms, building a catalog of challenging cases for type reconstruction. We found that these idioms place a sophisticated set of requirements on the type system, inducing features such as recursively-constrained polymorphic types. Many of the features we identify are often seen only in expressive and powerful type systems used by high-level functional languages. Using these type-system features as a guideline, we have developed Retypd: a novel static type-inference algorithm for machine code that supports recursive types, polymorphism, and subtyping. Retypd yields more accurate inferred types than existing algorithms, while also enabling new capabilities such as reconstruction of pointer const annotations with 98% recall. Retypd can operate on weaker program representations than the current state of the art, removing the need for high-quality points-to information that may be impractical to compute.
REAL OPTIONS AND ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY PROJECT SELECTION AND DEPLOYMENT STRATEGIES

real options applied to technology projects, and quantifying the business value of information technology initiatives. He has more than 30 publications in scientific and technology journals, and three book chapters including a chapter on ROI analysis for e-business projects in the 2003 Wiley Encyclopedia of the Internet. Prof. Jeffery has also developed 14 original case studies that are used in the Kellogg MBA course he teaches on Technology Portfolio and Program Management, and the Kellogg executive program he directs called Driving Strategic Results through IT Portfolio Management. Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management. He has more than ten years of experience in product development and management in technology, telecommunications and wireless industries. Mr. Shah worked as an associate at the Telecommunications Development Fund (TDF), a venture MIS 3604 3 capital firm focused on early-stage telecommunications and technology companies. He holds a BSEE with Honors from the University of Houston and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate Wisconsin. The author of numerous articles on such topics as the small firm effect, option trading strategies, and valuation, Dr. Sweeney has also been recognized as an outstanding teacher as evidenced by the 1995 Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence. The reality of most IT departments is that capital is limited, or rationed, so that positive net present value (NPV) projects are not always funded. In the present work we examine enterprise technology projects that have a positive traditional NPV. Incorporating real option value enables management to more objectively compare and rank projects in a capital rationed information technology portfolio management process, and decide upon the optimal deployment strategy for the project. The present work examines different phase-wise deployment strategies for large enterprise technology projects and incorporates real options into the decision making framework. We focus specifically on multi-stage options embedded in enterprise data warehousing projects (EDW). We also examine the lattice granularity necessary so that discrete time option valuation models more accurately describe large enterprise projects. Different deployment strategies with different underlying NPVs and volatilities are compared. These results show that the traditional NPV of a project combined with additional real option premiums can provide important insight into the selection and deployment strategy for a project. Our results are generalizable to a large class of IT investment decisions where managers may consider single-phase versus multi-phase deployment in the presence of project risk.
Arc-Flags in Dynamic Graphs

Computation of quickest paths has undergoing a rapid development in recent years. It turns out that many high-performance route planning algorithms are made up of several basic ingredients. However, not all of those ingredients have been analyzed in a \emph{dynamic} scenario where edge weights change after preprocessing. In this work, we present how one of those ingredients, i.e., Arc-Flags can be applied in dynamic scenarios
Marked Decrease of Plasma VEGF After Implantation of Autologous Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells in a Patient with Critical Limb Ischemia

The authors performed autologous bone marrow mononuclear cells implantation (BMI) in a 79-year-old man with critical limb ischemia. After BMI, the resting pain of the ischemic leg improved gradually. They measured the plasma concentrations of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), and serum hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) in the blood from bilateral femoral veins. Before BMI, the plasma VEGF and bFGF concentrations were much greater in the ischemic leg than in the other lower limb, but decreased to the same concentrations as those in the contralateral lower extremity after BMI. The large concentrations of the angiogenic factors VEGF and bFGF in plasma indicate the severity and extent of the leg ischemia. BMI resulted in lower levels of VEGF and bFGF, and this fall is the hallmark of the effectiveness of BMI in the treatment of peripheral artery disease.
The Usefulness of Systematic Reviews of Animal Experiments for the Design of Preclinical and Clinical Studies

The question of how animal studies should be designed, conducted, and analyzed remains underexposed in societal debates on animal experimentation. This is not only a scientific but also a moral question. After all, if animal experiments are not appropriately designed, conducted, and analyzed, the results produced are unlikely to be reliable and the animals have in effect been wasted. In this article, we focus on one particular method to address this moral question, namely systematic reviews of previously performed animal experiments. We discuss how the design, conduct, and analysis of future (animal and human) experiments may be optimized through such systematic reviews. In particular, we illustrate how these reviews can help improve the methodological quality of animal experiments, make the choice of an animal model and the translation of animal data to the clinic more evidence-based, and implement the 3Rs. Moreover, we discuss which measures are being taken and which need to be taken in the future to ensure that systematic reviews will actually contribute to optimizing experimental design and thereby to meeting a necessary condition for making the use of animals in these experiments justified.
Modeling and Estimation of Tip Contact Force for Steerable Ablation Catheters

Objective: The efficacy of catheter-based cardiac ablation procedures can be significantly improved if real-time information is available concerning contact forces between the catheter tip and cardiac tissue. However, the widely used ablation catheters are not equipped for force sensing. This paper proposes a technique for estimating the contact forces without direct force measurements by studying the changes in the shape of the deflectable distal section of a conventional 7-Fr catheter (henceforth called the “deflectable distal shaft,” the “deflectable shaft,” or the “shaft” of the catheter) in different loading situations. Method: First, the shaft curvature when the tip is moving in free space is studied and based on that, a kinematic model for the deflectable shaft in free space is proposed. In the next step, the shaft shape is analyzed in the case where the tip is in contact with the environment, and it is shown that the curvature of the deflectable shaft provides useful information about the loading status of the catheter and can be used to define an index for determining the range of contact forces exerted by the ablation tip. Results: Experiments with two different steerable ablation catheters show that the defined index can detect the range of applied contact forces correctly in more than 80% of the cases. Based on the proposed technique, a framework for obtaining contact force information by using the shaft curvature at a limited number of points along the deflectable shaft is constructed. Conclusion: The proposed kinematic model and the force estimation technique can be implemented together to describe the catheter's behavior before contact, detect tip/tissue contact, and determine the range of contact forces. Significance: This study proves that the flexibility of the catheter's distal shaft provides a means of estimating the force exerted on tissue by the ablation tip.
Image-Based Volume Rendering with Opacity Light Fields

While low cost PC graphics hardware has proven valuable for volume rendering, large datasets continue to overwhelm the capabilities of the graphics cards, reducing the interactivity of volume rendering utilizing such hardware. We present a novel, image-based approach to volume rendering that can render arbitrarily large datasets interactively on current graphics hardware. Our method is independent of the volume rendering system and the dataset representation, and allows for exploration of the interior structure of the volume. The process consists of three main steps, each of which can be run independently. In the flrst step, a set of ray slices of the data are produced from multiple viewpoints using a volume render, and a geometric proxy surface bounding the volume is deflned. Next, the ray slices and geometric proxy are processed to compute a set of key views. Finally, the key views and proxy surface are rendered interactively as opacity light flelds on current graphics hardware. The user can change the proxy surface to reveal the interior structure of the volume data. Our method has been tested on a variety of volume datasets and these results are presented in this paper.
Bayesian Networks For Evidence-Based Decision-Making in Software Engineering

Recommendation systems in software engineering (SE) should be designed to integrate evidence into practitioners experience. Bayesian networks (BNs) provide a natural statistical framework for evidence-based decision-making by incorporating an integrated summary of the available evidence and associated uncertainty (of consequences). In this study, we follow the lead of computational biology and healthcare decision-making, and investigate the applications of BNs in SE in terms of 1) main software engineering challenges addressed, 2) techniques used to learn causal relationships among variables, 3) techniques used to infer the parameters, and 4) variable types used as BN nodes. We conduct a systematic mapping study to investigate each of these four facets and compare the current usage of BNs in SE with these two domains. Subsequently, we highlight the main limitations of the usage of BNs in SE and propose a Hybrid BN to improve evidence-based decision-making in SE. In two industrial cases, we build sample hybrid BNs and evaluate their performance. The results of our empirical analyses show that hybrid BNs are powerful frameworks that combine expert knowledge with quantitative data. As researchers in SE become more aware of the underlying dynamics of BNs, the proposed models will also advance and naturally contribute to evidence based-decision-making.
Oligomeric Forms of Insulin Amyloid Aggregation Disrupt Outgrowth and Complexity of Neuron-Like PC12 Cells

Formation of protein amyloid fibrils consists of a series of intermediates including oligomeric aggregates, proto-fibrillar structures, and finally mature fibrils. Recent studies show higher toxicity for oligomeric and proto-fibrillar intermediates of protein relative to their mature fibrils. Here the kinetic of the insulin amyloid fibrillation was evaluated using a variety of techniques including ThT fluorescence, Congo red absorbance, circular dichroism, and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The solution surface tension changes were attributed to hydrophobic changes in insulin structure and were detected by Du Noüy Ring method. Determination of the surface tension of insulin oligomeric, proto-fibrillar and fibrillar forms indicated that the hydrophobicity of solution is enhanced by the formation of the oligomeric forms of insulin compared to other forms. In order to investigate the toxicity of the different forms of insulin we monitored morphological alterations of the differentiated neuron-like PC12 cells following incubation with native, oligomeric aggregates, proto-fibrillar, and fibrillar forms of insulin. The cell body area, average neurite length, neurite width, number of primary neurites, and percent of bipolar cells and node/primary neurite ratios were used to assess the growth and complexity of PC12 cells exposed to different forms of insulin. We observed that the oligomeric form of insulin impaired the growth and complexity of PC12 cells compared to other forms. Together our data suggest that the lower surface tension of oligomers and their perturbation affects the morphology of PC12 cells, mainly due to their enhanced hydrophobicity and detergent-like structures.
Probing of Surface Potential Using Atomic Force Microscopy

Surface electrical properties are being interest for many different applications including solar cell (Coffey & Ginger, 2006; Yoo et al., 2014) and information technologies (Vasudevan et al., 2013). Recently, as decreasing device size, nanoscale surface properties become more significant. In particular, since surface potential is directly relevant to work function of materials and/or surface charge, nanoscale probing of surface potential has paid much attention for understanding various surface phenomena such as photovoltaic phenomena, screening behavior of ferroelectric surfaces, and work function and surface states of semiconducting materials (Takahashi et al., 2000; Kalinin & Bonnell, 2001, 2004; Hong et al., 2009). The nanoscale probing of surface potential is still challengeable. In fact, atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a well know technique which allows exploring nanoscale material properties. Among various AFM modes, electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) allow us probing surface potential in many different types of materials including metal, ceramic, and organic materials at the nanoscale (Ellison et al., 2011). We review operational mechanisms of EFM and KPFM which allow exploring surface potential at the nanoscale. Also, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of each technique and show some of experimental examples of these AFM modes.
Enhanced Fusion Pore Expansion Mediated by the Trans-Acting Endodomain of the Reovirus FAST Proteins

The reovirus fusion-associated small transmembrane (FAST) proteins are virus-encoded membrane fusion proteins that function as dedicated cell–cell fusogens. The topology of these small, single-pass membrane proteins orients the majority of the protein on the distal side of the membrane (i.e., inside the cell). We now show that ectopic expression of the endodomains of the p10, p14, and p15 FAST proteins enhances syncytiogenesis induced by the full-length FAST proteins, both homotypically and heterotypically. Results further indicate that the 68-residue cytoplasmic endodomain of the p14 FAST protein (1) is endogenously generated from full-length p14 protein expressed in virus-infected or transfected cells; (2) enhances syncytiogenesis subsequent to stable pore formation; (3) increases the syncytiogenic activity of heterologous fusion proteins, including the differentiation-dependent fusion of murine myoblasts; (4) exerts its enhancing activity from the cytosol, independent of direct interactions with either the fusogen or the membranes being fused; and (5) contains several regions with protein–protein interaction motifs that influence enhancing activity. We propose that the unique evolution of the FAST proteins as virus-encoded cellular fusogens has allowed them to generate a trans-acting, soluble endodomain peptide to harness a cellular pathway or process involved in the poorly understood process that facilitates the transition from microfusion pores to macrofusion and syncytiogenesis.