Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decentralized State Estimation for Hybrid AC/DC Microgrids

This paper presents a decentralized state estimation (SE) for the newly emerging hybrid ac/dc microgrid. The microgrid consists of an ac and a dc network which are connected via the interlinking ac/dc converter. The proposed SE is able to estimate the state variables of both networks in a decentralized way that the estimation is separately conducted while only limited information is exchanged during the process. The dual decomposition approach is adopted as the decentralized technique in this paper. Simulation results suggest that the proposed decentralized SE performs comparably to the centralized SE for the hybrid ac/dc microgrids in terms of accuracy, convergence, and robustness.
Angiotensin II activates CaV1.2 Ca2+ channels through β‐arrestin2 and casein kinase 2 in mouse immature cardiomyocytes

Angiotensin II (AngII) is crucial in cardiovascular regulation in perinatal mammalians. Here we show that AngII increases twitch Ca2+ transients of mouse immature but not mature cardiomyocytes by robustly activating CaV1.2 L‐type Ca2+ channels through a novel signalling pathway involving angiotensin type 1 (AT1) receptors, β‐arrestin2 and casein kinase 2. A β‐arrestin‐biased AT1 receptor agonist, TRV027, was as effective as AngII in activating L‐type Ca2+ channels. Our results help understand the molecular mechanism by which AngII regulates the perinatal circulation and also suggest that β‐arrestin‐biased AT1 receptor agonists may be valuable therapeutics for paediatric heart failure.
A case study on scene recognition using an ensemble convolution neural network

This paper proposes architecture to recognize scene images based on an ensemble of two convolution neural networks. A convolution neural network is used to train massive scene images, and the other convolution neural network is used to extract objects from the scene images. The object lists are stored according to scene classes, and used as a clue to decide the top-1 and top-5 classes during scene image recognition stage.
Joint Syntacto-Discourse Parsing and the Syntacto-Discourse Treebank

Discourse parsing has long been treated as a stand-alone problem independent from constituency or dependency parsing. Most attempts at this problem rely on annotated text segmentations (Elementary Discourse Units, EDUs) and sophisticated sparse or continuous features to extract syntactic information. In this paper we propose the first end-to-end discourse parser that jointly parses in both syntax and discourse levels, as well as the first syntacto-discourse treebank by integrating the Penn Treebank and the RST Treebank. Built upon our recent span-based constituency parser, this joint syntacto-discourse parser requires no preprocessing efforts such as segmentation or feature extraction, making discourse parsing more convenient. Empirically, our parser achieves the state-of-the-art end-to-end discourse parsing accuracy.
Protective Efficacy of Centralized and Polyvalent Envelope Immunogens in an Attenuated Equine Lentivirus Vaccine

Lentiviral Envelope (Env) antigenic variation and related immune evasion present major hurdles to effective vaccine development. Centralized Env immunogens that minimize the genetic distance between vaccine proteins and circulating viral isolates are an area of increasing study in HIV vaccinology. To date, the efficacy of centralized immunogens has not been evaluated in the context of an animal model that could provide both immunogenicity and protective efficacy data. We previously reported on a live-attenuated (attenuated) equine infectious anemia (EIAV) virus vaccine, which provides 100% protection from disease after virulent, homologous, virus challenge. Further, protective efficacy demonstrated a significant, inverse, linear relationship between EIAV Env divergence and protection from disease when vaccinates were challenged with viral strains of increasing Env divergence from the vaccine strain Env. Here, we sought to comprehensively examine the protective efficacy of centralized immunogens in our attenuated vaccine platform. We developed, constructed, and extensively tested a consensus Env, which in a virulent proviral backbone generated a fully replication-competent pathogenic virus, and compared this consensus Env to an ancestral Env in our attenuated proviral backbone. A polyvalent attenuated vaccine was established for comparison to the centralized vaccines. Additionally, an engineered quasispecies challenge model was created for rigorous assessment of protective efficacy. Twenty-four EIAV-naïve animals were vaccinated and challenged along with six-control animals six months post-second inoculation. Pre-challenge data indicated the consensus Env was more broadly immunogenic than the Env of the other attenuated vaccines. However, challenge data demonstrated a significant increase in protective efficacy of the polyvalent vaccine. These findings reveal, for the first time, a consensus Env immunogen that generated a fully-functional, replication-competent lentivirus, which when experimentally evaluated, demonstrated broader immunogenicity that does not equate to higher protective efficacy.
A supervised learning approach to detect subsumption relations between tags in folksonomies

The lack of hierarchical relations in the tag space of social tagging systems may diminish the ability of users to find relevant resources. Many research works propose to overcome this problem by constructing hierarchies of tags automatically by means of heuristic algorithms. These hierarchies encode subsumption relations between pairs of tags and can be used for improving browsing and retrieval of resources. In this paper, we cast the problem of subsumption detection between pairs of tags as a pairwise classification problem. From the literature, we identified several similarity measures that are good indicators of subsumption, which are used as learning features. Under this setting, we observed severe class imbalance and class overlapping which motivated us to investigate and employ class imbalance techniques to overcome these problems. We conducted a comprehensive set of experiments on a large real-world dataset, showing that our approach outperforms the best performing heuristic-based baseline.
INTERPLANETARY CUBESATS MISSION TO EARTH-SUN LIBRATION POINT FOR SPACE WEATHER EVALUATIONS

The paper deals with an interplanetary CubeSats mission to Earth-Sun Libration point. CubeSats are an interesting alternative to larger science satellites to accomplish both scientific and technological tasks in deep space, as proved by the growing interest in this kind of application within the scientific community and, most of all, at NASA. Indeed such systems allow less costly missions, due to their reduced sizes and volumes, and consequently less demanding launches requirements. The CubeSats mission presented in this paper is aimed at supporting space weather evaluations that represent quite a critical issue especially for what concerns the human exploration of space beyond Earth orbit where the protection of the Earth magnetic field is not available anymore. The mission envisages the deployment of 6U CubeSats system in one of the Earth-Sun Lagrangian Points, where solar observations for in situ measurements of space weather to provide additional warning time to Earth can be carried out. The proposed mission is also intended as a technology validation mission, giving the chance to test advanced technologies, as for example the solar sail, which is envisaged as propulsion system, and specific radiation dosimeters and advanced materials, foreseen to further investigate the space radiation environment and validate them in view of future implementation in human missions. One of the objectives of the work is to identify the required subsystems and equipment, needed to accomplish specific mission objectives and to investigate the most suitable configuration, in order to be compatible with the typical CubeSats (multi units) standards. The paper starts from the definition of the mission, in terms of objectives, requirements and mission analysis. Then it focuses on the CubeSats system, describing its configuration and analysing the subsystems composing it. Finally, the most advanced technologies (e.g. solar sails) implemented in the CubeSats design are discussed
An Exploration of the Role of Subordinate Affect in Leader Evaluations

Leadership research has been encumbered by a proliferation of constructs and measures, despite little evidence that each is sufficiently conceptually and operationally distinct from the others. We draw from research on subordinates’ implicit theories of leader behavior, behaviorally anchored rating scales, and decision making to argue that leader affect (i.e., the degree to which subordinates have positive and negative feelings about their supervisors) underlies the common variance shared by many leadership measures. To explore this possibility, we developed and validated measures of positive and negative leader affect (i.e., the Leader Affect Questionnaires; LAQs). We conducted 10 studies to develop the five-item positive and negative LAQs and to examine their convergent, discriminant, predictive, and criterion-related validity. We conclude that a) the LAQs provide highly reliable and valid tools for assessing subordinates’ evaluations of their leaders; b) there is significant overlap between existing leadership measures, and a large proportion of this overlap is a function of the affect captured by the LAQs; c) when the LAQs are used as control variables, in most cases, they reduce the strength of relationships between leadership measures and other variables; d) the LAQs account for significant variance in outcomes beyond that explained by other leadership measures; and e) there is a considerable amount of unexplained variance between leadership measures that the LAQs do not capture. Research suggestions are provided and the implications of our results are discussed.
Co-Diffused Back-Contact Back-Junction Silicon Solar Cells

In this work first generation Back-Contact Back-Junction (BC-BJ) silicon solar cells with cell efficiencies well above 20 % were fabricated. The process sequence is industrially feasible, requires not more than two high-temperature steps (co-diffusion and drive-in), and implements only industrially available pattering technologies. The silicon-doping is performed from pre-patterned solid diffusion sources, which allow for the precise adjustment of phosphorus and boron doping-levels. Based on the investigated process technologies BC-BJ solar cells without gap between adjacent nand p-doped areas are processed. On the one hand, a strong reduction of the process effort is possible by omitting the gap regions. On the other hand, parasitic tunneling currents through the narrow space charge region may occur. Hence, deep doped areas were realized to avoid tunneling currents in gap-free BC-BJ cells. The paper finishes with a detailed characterization of the manufactured cells including important cell measurements like IV and SunsVOC.
CHARACTERIZATION OF URANIUM SOLIDS PRECIPITATED WITH ALUMINOSILICATES

At the Savannah River Site (SRS), the High-Level Waste (HLW) Tank Farms store and process high-level liquid radioactive wastes from the Canyons and recycle water from the Defense Waste Processing Facility. The waste is concentrated using evaporators to minimize the volume of space required for HLW storage. Recently, the 2H Evaporator was shutdown due to the crystallization of sodium aluminosilicate (NAS) solids (such as cancrinite and sodalite) that contained close to 10 weight percent of elementally-enriched uranium (U). Prior to extensive cleaning,the evaporator deposits resided on the evaporator walls and other exposed internal surfaces within the evaporator pot. Our goal is to support the basis for the continued safe operation of SRS evaporators and to gain more information that could be used to help mitigate U accumulation during evaporator operation.
Generation Rescheduling and Load Shedding in Distribution Systems Under Imprecise Information

Microgrids represent a smart solution to increase power system reliability through the development of self-supplied islands that integrate distributed power generation and other smart technologies. In this paper, we formulate and solve an optimal generation rescheduling and load shedding problem in microgrids to determine a stable equilibrium state following outages. To address this problem, focused on MV distribution systems, we use a new methodology based on the use of fuzzy numbers is proposed. The approach allows representing the sources of uncertainty in the data or approximations made during the computation and considering many possible scenarios in case of outages. In order to demonstrate the performance and the effectiveness of the proposed method, several simulations have been carried out on a 69-bus radial distribution system, and results have been compared with those obtained by using a stochastic optimization approach. The encouraging results are presented and discussed.
Chronic toxicity of selected polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to algae and crustaceans using passive dosing

Because of the large number of possible aromatic hydrocarbon structures, predictive toxicity models are needed to support substance hazard and risk assessments. Calibration and evaluation of such models requires toxicity data with well‐defined exposures. The present study has applied a passive dosing method to generate reliable chronic effects data for 8 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on the green algae Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata and the crustacean Ceriodaphnia dubia. The observed toxicity of these substances on algal growth rate and neonate production were then compared with available literature toxicity data for these species, as well as target lipid model and chemical activity‐based model predictions. The use of passive dosing provided well‐controlled exposures that yielded more consistent data sets than attained by past literature studies. Results from the present study, which were designed to exclude the complicating influence of ultraviolet light, were found to be well described by both target lipid model and chemical activity effect models. The present study also found that the lack of chronic effects for high molecular weight PAHs was consistent with the limited chemical activity that could be achieved for these compounds in the aqueous test media. Findings from this analysis highlight that variability in past literature toxicity data for PAHs may be complicated by both poorly controlled exposures and photochemical processes that can modulate both exposure and toxicity. Environ Toxicol Chem 2016;35:2948–2957. © 2016 SETAC
Correlates of toenail selenium and its cross‐sectional association with metabolic syndrome

BACKGROUND The present study aimed to identify independent correlates of toenail selenium levels and to examine the association between toenail selenium levels and metabolic syndrome in Korean adults. METHODS Cross-sectional analysis was conducted using baseline data from the Trace Element Study of Korean Adults in the Yeungnam area, an ongoing cohort study of Korean adults over the age of 35 years. The baseline survey consisted of questionnaires on demographics, lifestyle characteristics and medical information. Dietary information was obtained through a validated semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Toenail selenium levels were quantified using neutron activation analysis. Biomarkers associated with metabolic syndrome were obtained from biennial medical check-ups. RESULTS In the multivariable-adjusted analyses, independent lifestyle and dietary correlates of higher selenium levels were alcohol drinking (4.62% higher than nondrinking) and egg intake (0.43% higher per weekly serving), whereas current smoking (5.42% lower than nonsmoking) and vegetable consumption (0.05% lower per weekly serving) were associated with lower toenail selenium levels. In the multivariable adjusted logistic regression, no significant association was observed between toenail selenium levels and metabolic syndrome (odds ratio = 1.33, 95% confidence interval = 0.58-3.05). CONCLUSIONS Multiple lifestyle and dietary factors influenced toenail selenium levels, although no meaningful association was observed between toenail selenium levels and metabolic syndrome in Korean adults. Future prospective large-scale cohort studies are required to determine whether there is a causal relationship between selenium levels and metabolic syndrome in Korean adults.
An Assistant Tool for Verse-Making in Basque Based on Two-Level Morphology

In this paper we present a specialized word generator, which has been designed as an assistant tool for Basque troubadours. Such a tool allows verse-writers to generate all the words that match with a given word termination. We deal with some interesting aspects, i.e. the dimension of the generated list and the need to establish an order of relevance among the listed items. This work can be seen as a way of reusing computational linguistic tools in the context of the Basque cultural means of expression. The technical foundations of this tool lie in a two-level morphological processor. The way in which words must be generated (starting from the end of the word) leads us to invert the generation process.
The Anorthite–Diopside System: Structural and Devitrification Study. Part II: Crystallinity Analysis by the Rietveld–RIR Method

The crystallization behavior of 10 binary glasses belonging to the CaO–MgO–Al2O3–SiO2 quaternary system and two glasses corresponding to anorthite and diopside composition was investigated by X-ray diffraction, thermal, and thermomechanical analyses, and scanning electron microscopy. Particular emphasis is laid on the quantitative X-ray diffraction analysis by the Rietveld–reference intensity ratio combined procedure, which seems to be a useful tool to obtain time–temperature–transformation diagrams. Results showed that to obtain glass–ceramics with a significant crystalline phase presence, it is necessary to treat samples at 1000°C for 4 h or at 1100°C for 1 h.
Baby, You Light-Up My Face: Culture-General Physiological Responses to Infants and Culture-Specific Cognitive Judgements of Adults

Infants universally elicit in adults a set of solicitous behaviors that are evolutionarily important for the survival of the species. However, exposure, experience, and prejudice appear to govern adults' social choice and ingroup attitudes towards other adults. In the current study, physiological arousal and behavioral judgments were assessed while adults processed unfamiliar infant and adult faces of ingroup vs. outgroup members in two contrasting cultures, Japan and Italy. Physiological arousal was investigated using the novel technique of infrared thermography and behavioral judgments using ratings. We uncovered a dissociation between physiological and behavioral responses. At the physiological level, both Japanese and Italian adults showed significant activation (increase of facial temperature) for both ingroup and outgroup infant faces. At the behavioral level, both Japanese and Italian adults showed significant preferences for ingroup adults. Arousal responses to infants appear to be mediated by the autonomic nervous system and are not dependent on direct caregiving exposure, but behavioral responses appear to be mediated by higher-order cognitive processing based on social acceptance and cultural exposure.
Agronomic management system and precipitation effects on soybean oil and fatty acid profiles

riginating in East Asia, soybean ( max (L.) Merr. ) has been grown as an essential dietary component because of its high grain protein (25.5-58.9%) and oil (12.0-23.0%) content. It is grown widely throughout the world but primarily in the United States (32%), Brazil (28%), Argentina (21%), China (7%), and India (4%) (soystat, 2008). The oil extracted from soybean is widely used ABSTRACT This study investigated long-term agronomic management systems and precipitation level effects on soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr. ) total oil content and fatty acid composition. Man- agement systems evaluated included conven- tional (CT), no-till (NT), low chemical input (LI), and zero chemical input (ORG). Total oil content and major fatty acids profi les were analyzed by accelerated solvent extractor (ASE 200) and gas chromatography with fl ame ionization detector (FID). The results showed these four manage- ment systems have limited infl uence on soy- bean grain total oil content and oleic acid (O) and linoleic acid (L) compositions. The NT man- agement system signifi cantly improved soy- bean oil yield on a land-area basis as a result of higher annual grain yields. Soybeans grown under the NT management system had as high or higher palmitic acid (P) composition than the other three management systems; similarly, the CT treatments had as low or lower linolenic acid (LN) composition in soybean when compared with the other three management systems. The levels of stearic acid (S), O, L, and LN had a sig- nifi cant quadratic relationship (R 2 = 0.64-0.75) with total (July-September) precipitation. The oil quality ratio of O/(L + LN) had a quadratic rela- tion with precipitation.
Effect of Mould Pressure and Substitution of Quartz by Rice Husk Ash on the Bulk Density and Compressive Strength of Porcelain Body

RHA has become an important competitive material for preparation of silicon compounds due to high surface area, high grade of amorphous form silica and fine particle sizes. The effect of mould pressure (MP) and substitution of quartz by RHA on bulk density and compressive strength of porcelain body is investigated. RHA is used as a substitute for quartz with different replacement levels (0 wt% - 25 wt%). The samples are pressed into pellets at a mould pressure of 31 MPa, 61 MPa, 91 MPa and 121 MPa. All the pellets are sintered at the temperature of 1200 °C for 2 hours soaking time and at a heating rate of 5 °C per minute. The bulk density and compressive strength are measured at the highest value of 2.42 g/cm3 and 39 MPa for the sample pressed at 91 MPa with the substitution of 20 wt% RHA. The improvement in the properties could be attributed to the sharp changes in the microstructural features as a result of an increase in mullite and glassy phase simultaneously.
Extreme-Value Graphical Models With Multiple Covariates

To assess the risk of extreme events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, it is crucial to develop accurate extreme-value statistical models. Extreme events often display heterogeneity (i.e., nonstationarity), varying continuously with a number of covariates. Previous studies have suggested that models considering covariate effects lead to reliable estimates of extreme events distributions. In this paper, we develop a novel statistical model to incorporate the effects of multiple covariates. Specifically, we analyze as an example the extreme sea states in the Gulf of Mexico, where the distribution of extreme wave heights changes systematically with location and storm direction. In the proposed model, the block maximum at each location and sector of wind direction are assumed to follow the Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution. The GEV parameters are coupled across the spatio-directional domain through a graphical model, in particular, a three-dimensional (3D) thin-membrane model. Efficient learning and inference algorithms are developed based on the special characteristics of the thin-membrane model. We further show how to extend the model to incorporate an arbitrary number of covariates in a straightforward manner. Numerical results for both synthetic and real data indicate that the proposed model can accurately describe marginal behaviors of extreme events.