Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nonlinear adaptive control of EPB shield tunneling machine

This paper solves the issue of earth pressure balance (EPB) control in shield tunneling. Keeping earth pressure balanced on cutting head is the key to ground deformation avoidance. However, only a few control methods based on mechanism model are put forward and all the model applied before seldom involved nonlinearity and uncertainty. Thus, a nonlinear model of EPB control in shield tunneling is first established with consideration of particular parametric and multi-unmodeled uncertainties in order to match the actual system more precisely, and a nonlinear adaptive control method is proposed for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems in this paper. The resulting controller guarantees the shield machine system to be globally uniformly ultimately bounded with a satisfactory transient performance and a small steady tracking error as expected to some extent.
Structural characterization of triple transmembrane domain containing fragments of a yeast G protein‐coupled receptor in an organic : aqueous environment by solution‐state NMR spectroscopy

This report summarizes recent biophysical and protein expression experiments on polypeptides containing the N‐terminus, the first, second, and third transmembrane (TM) domains and the contiguous loops of the α‐factor receptor Ste2p, a G protein‐coupled receptor. The 131‐residue polypeptide Ste2p(G31‐R161), TM1–TM3, was investigated by solution NMR in trifluoroethanol/water. TM1–TM3 contains helical TM domains at the predicted locations, supported by continuous sets of medium‐range NOEs. In addition, a short helix N‐terminal to TM1 was detected, as well as a short helical stretch in the first extracellular loop. Two 161‐residue polypeptides, [Ste2p(M1‐R161), NT–TM1–TM3], that contain the entire N‐terminal sequence, one with a single mutation, were directly expressed and isolated from Escherichia coli in yields as high as 30 mg/L. Based on its increased stability, the L11P mutant will be used in future experiments to determine long‐range interactions. The study demonstrated that 3‐TM domains of a yeast G protein‐coupled receptor can be produced in isotopically labeled form suitable for solution NMR studies. The quality of spectra is superior to data recorded in micelles and allows more rapid data analysis. No tertiary contacts have been determined, and if present, they are likely transient. This observation supports earlier studies by us that secondary structure was retained in smaller fragments, both in organic solvents and in detergent micelles, but that stable tertiary contacts may only be present when the protein is imbedded in lipids. Copyright © 2015 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Simultaneous Multiplication of Two Different Rickettsiae in the Same Cell

Summary When mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with a mixture of R. tsutsugamushi and R. typhi it was found that both rickettsiae multiply simultaneously in the cytoplasm of the same cells lining the peritoneal cavity. The significance of this finding with regard to the simultaneous growth of other viruses in the same cell is described.
Synapse‐specific mGluR1‐dependent long‐term potentiation in interneurones regulates mouse hippocampal inhibition

Hippocampal CA1 inhibitory interneurones control the excitability and synchronization of pyramidal cells, and participate in hippocampal synaptic plasticity. Pairing theta‐burst stimulation (TBS) with postsynaptic depolarization, we induced long‐term potentiation (LTP) of putative single‐fibre excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) in stratum oriens/alveus (O/A) interneurones of mouse hippocampal slices. LTP induction was absent in metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 (mGluR1) knockout mice, was correlated with the postsynaptic presence of mGluR1a, and required a postsynaptic Ca2+ rise. Changes in paired‐pulse facilitation and coefficient of variation indicated that LTP expression involved presynaptic mechanisms. LTP was synapse specific, occurring selectively at synapses modulated by presynaptic group II, but not group III, mGluRs. Furthermore, the TBS protocol applied in O/A induced a long‐term increase of polysynaptic inhibitory responses in CA1 pyramidal cells, that was absent in mGluR1 knockout mice. These results uncover the mechanisms of a novel form of interneurone synaptic plasticity that can adaptively regulate inhibition of hippocampal pyramidal cells.
Joint Upload-Download TCP Acceleration over Mobile Data Networks

Upload and download traffic often coexist in mobile networks. However, TCP download throughput could be substantially degraded by upload traffic even if the downlink is not the bottleneck. Previous works such as RSFC and TCP-RRE can substantially improve TCP download throughput in the presence of concurrent TCP upload flows, albeit at the expense of significantly degraded upload throughput performance. This work addresses this limitation by developing a novel Aggregate Transmission Rate Controller with Upload and Download flows aggregations (ATRC-UD) to jointly accelerate concurrent TCP upload and download flows from/to the same mobile device. The insight is that existing TCP as well as other flow-based approaches all suffer from ACK packets delayed by data packets from TCP flows in the opposite direction, resulting in significant errors in bandwidth estimation. By contrast, ATRC-UD exploits data packets of the opposite direction to enable continuously estimation of the downlink bandwidth and queueing delay even when ACK packets are significantly delayed. This allows ATRC-UD to track the bandwidth and delay variations more closely to maintain a shorter queue length at the downlink, thus jointly improve the download-upload throughput. Extensive emulated and real-world experiments showed that ATRC-UD enables TCP to achieve 96% downlink bandwidth utilization while improving uplink bandwidth utilization by over 115% compared to existing approaches, such as TCP-RRE and RSFC.
An efficient multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for energy-aware QoS routing in wireless sensor network

A multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is proposed to solve the routing problem in wireless sensor network. Two performance metrics, which consist of the maximisation of remaining lifetime of the wireless sensor network and the minimisation of transmission delay, are considered. Dominating relationship and similarity between solutions are used to compute the fitness of a solution in a population. An energy-saving combination operator executed independently by sink node is presented to create new solutions. An exploitation operator and exploration operator are investigated to find better solutions at the neighbour of a solution space and to inject new genes into a population, respectively. Simulation experiments show that our multi-objective routing evolutionary algorithm MOREA is better in solution quality and computational efficiency than the up-to-date ant colony optimisation routing algorithm ACOR. The non-dominated solutions of MOREA can totally dominate those of ACOR. Moreover, MOREA is several ten times faster than ACOR.
Two‐Photon Continuous Flow Lithography

A new approach for microfluidics-based production of polymeric particles, namely two-photon continuous flow lithography, is reported. This technique takes advantage of two-photon lithography to create objects with sub-micrometer and 3D features, and overcomes the traditional process limitations of two-photon lithography by using multiple beam production under continuous flow. Polymeric fibers, helical and bow-tie particles with sub-diffraction resolution and surface roughness as low as 10 nm are demonstrated.
Parallel controller design and synthesis

Petri nets provide an adequate means to visualize both sequential and parallel controller behavior. They can be used to model and visualize behavior comprising concurrency and synchronization. Strongly time dependent complex controllers can be modeled using Petri nets by introducing several extensions to the basic formalism. The contribution of the work lies in a novel type of Petri net specification, suitable for control unit design. This Petri net is a kind of Synchronous Interpreted Petri net, extended by multi-layer hierarchy and time dependencies. Moreover, a method of the Petri net transformation into synthesizable VHDL code is proposed. The capabilities of the approach are shown by means of a small example illustrating the Petri net creation and its transformation into VHDL behavioral description. The VHDL code synthesizability is demonstrated by synthesis into Spartans 3E FPGA Family and CoolRunner XPLA3 CPLDs Family.
Multiobjective contaminant response modeling for water distribution systems security

Following the events of 9/11/2001 in the US, the world public awareness to possible terrorist attacks on water supply systems has increased significantly. The security of drinking water distribution systems has become a foremost concern around the globe. Water distribution systems are spatially diverse and thus are inherently vulnerable to intentional contamination intrusions. In this study, a multiobjective optimization evolutionary model for enhancing the response against deliberate contamination intrusions into water distribution systems is developed and demonstrated. Two conflicting objectives are explored: (1) minimization of the contaminant mass consumed following detection, versus (2) minimization of the number of operational activities required to contain and flush the contaminant out of the system (i.e. number of valves closure and hydrants opening). Such a model is aimed at directing quantitative response actions in opposition to the conservative approach of entire shutdown of the system until flushing and cleaning is completed. The developed model employs the multiobjective Non-Dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm–II (NSGA-II) scheme, and is demonstrated using two example applications.
Classification of Temporomandibular disorder from electromyography signals via Directed Transfer Function

A new approach for the detection of Temporomandibular joint disorders (TMDs) from the recorded electromyography (EMG) signals from the muscles around the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) has been presented in this paper. Multivariate Autoregressive (MVAR) modelling has been applied to a six-channel set of EMG signals from the muscles of both sides of the jaw during mouth opening and closing. The MVAR coefficients are then used to define the Directed Transfer Function (DTF), which estimates the strength of the direction of the signals flow between the channels. The DTF energy parameters were chosen as the features for EMG classification using support vector machine (SVM). The method described here has a potential to detect and classify the type and level of muscular disorder from the way the muscle signals interact with each other.
Escaping the 'Evil Avenger' and the 'Supercrip': Images of Disability in Popular Television

This article examines the extent and significance of the under-representation of the disabled community in fictional film and television, arguing that when it is portrayed onscreen, the images are often inaccurate or unfair. Whereas media treatment of women, the gay community, or ethnic minorities has received considerable academic attention, no such priority has been given to the nature of the portrayal of the disabled, or the lack of proportional visibility on our screens.
The Pathophysiology and Management of Acute Traumatic Coagulopathy

Acute traumatic coagulopathy (ATC) is commonly seen among patients with severe injury and will lead to uncontrolled bleeding diathesis, which is an important contributor to trauma death. During the past 10 years, the understanding of the mechanism causing ATC has changed rapidly. The mechanisms for ATC are complicated. To date, the possible mechanisms include activation of protein C, shedding of endothelial glycocalyx, catecholamine release, platelet dysfunction, primary, and secondary fibrinolysis, with tissue injury and hypoperfusion as the triggers. Classic factors such as dilution, acidosis, and hypothermia can further aggravate the coagulopathy. Inflammation may have a potential effect on the onset and prognosis of ATC. With the aid of diagnostic device, the outcome can be improved through early and customized treatment. Antifibrinolytics such as tranexamic acid has some benefits in patients with bleeding trauma, especially in the early time. This review presents the current understanding of ATC mechanisms and management.
Reducing perspective distortion for stereoscopic image stitching

This paper presents a stereoscopic image stitching method, which reduces perspective distortion of stitched stereoscopic image. We propose a hybrid warping model for stereoscopic image stitching by combining derivative half-projective and content-preserving warping. Firstly, a derivative warp model is proposed to pre-warp left and right images, and thus reduce perspective distortions, meantime, ensure the consistent changes. Secondly, a content-preserving warping is introduced to locally refine the alignment and reduce the vertical disparity. At last, we blend the warped input stereoscopic images to a whole stereoscopic image. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively stitch stereoscopic image, which not only reduces the perspective distortion, but also reduces the vertical disparity reasonably.
An Additive Millimeter‐Scale Fabrication Method for Soft Biocompatible Actuators and Sensors

A hybrid manufacturing paradigm is introduced that combines pop‐up book microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) manufacturing with soft‐lithographic techniques to produce millimeter‐scale mechanisms with embedded sensing and user‐defined distributed compliance. This method combines accuracy, flexibility in material selection, scalability, and topological complexity with soft, biocompatible materials and microfluidics, paving the way for applications of soft fluid‐powered biomedical robotics. This paper proposes two classes of fully soft fluidic microactuators and two integration strategies to demonstrate the hybrid soft pop‐up actuators. Fatigue properties, blocked torque, maximum deflection, stiffness, and maximum speed are analyzed and the performance of the hybrid mechanisms is compared to their fully soft counterparts. The manufacturing approach allows integrating capacitive sensing elements in the mechanisms to achieve proprioceptive actuation. Multiple hybrid soft pop‐up actuators are combined into a multiarticulated robotic arm that is integrated with current flexible endoscopes to improve distal dexterity and enable tissue retraction in an ex vivo proof of concept experiment.
Real-Time Reactive Speech Synthesis: Incorporating Interruptions

The ability to be interrupted and react in a realistic manner is a key requirement for interactive speech interfaces. While previous systems have long implemented techniques such as ‘barge in’ where speech output can be halted at word or phrase boundaries, less work has explored how to mimic human speech output responses to real-time events like interruptions which require a reaction from the system. Unlike previous work which has focused on incremental production, here we explore a novel re-planning approach. The proposed system is versatile and offers a large range of possible ways to react. A focus group was used to evaluate the approach, where participants interacted with a system reading out a text. The system would react to audio interruptions, either with no reactions, passive reactions, or active negative reactions (i.e. getting increasingly irritated). Participants preferred a reactive system.
Degradation of the herbicide paraquat by photo-fenton process: optimization by experimental design and toxicity assessment

This study describes the influence and optimization of Fenton's reagent (concentration of Fe2+ and H2O2 ) on the efficiency of mineralization of the herbicide paraquat (PQT, 50 mg L-1) in water, after 60 min (equivalent to 642 kJ L-1 of accumulated UVA radiation) treatment by photo-Fenton process in laboratory scale, using central composite design (CCD). Under optimized conditions, kinetic experiments were done, evaluating the PQT removal, its mineralization and toxicity in laboratory scale, using artificial irradiation, and in a pilot plant under solar irradiation. The same removal efficiency and mineralization of PQT were obtained in both reactors. The toxicity of the samples, estimated in terms of mortality of Artemia salina, decreases simultaneously with the decay of concentration of PQT, suggesting the formation of intermediates of lower toxicity. In this way, the solar photo-Fenton process can be considered as a viable alternative for the treatment of wastewater containing PQT.
Examining Crowd Work and Gig Work Through the Historical Lens of Piecework

The internet is empowering the rise of crowd work, gig work, and other forms of on--demand labor. A large and growing body of scholarship has attempted to predict the socio--technical outcomes of this shift, especially addressing three questions: begin{inlinelist} item What are the complexity limits of on-demand work? , item How far can work be decomposed into smaller microtasks? , and item What will work and the place of work look like for workers' end {inlinelist} In this paper, we look to the historical scholarship on piecework --- a similar trend of work decomposition, distribution, and payment that was popular at the turn of the nth{20} century --- to understand how these questions might play out with modern on--demand work. We identify the mechanisms that enabled and limited piecework historically, and identify whether on--demand work faces the same pitfalls or might differentiate itself. This approach introduces theoretical grounding that can help address some of the most persistent questions in crowd work, and suggests design interventions that learn from history rather than repeat it.
Insight, symptoms and executive functions in schizophrenia

Introduction. We investigated the relationship of insight with executive functions and symptoms in a group of stabilised inpatients with schizophrenia. Methods. Executive functions using an extensive battery constituted of several tests as well as psychopathology were assessed in 38 inpatients with a DSM‐IV diagnosis of schizophrenia. Insight was assessed with the Scale to assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder (SUMD). Results. A principal component analysis of the insight dimensions revealed a three‐factor model which accounted for 98% of the variance. Of particular interest is the finding that a composite factor that accounted for 74% of the variance covered insight dimensions that represent a higher degree of insight (awareness of mental disorder, its social consequences, and attribution of symptoms). Only an association between letter fluency and this composite factor was found, which was weakly mediated by depressive symptoms. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed a relationship between antipsychotic dose and awareness of medication effect. No association of illness duration and insight was found. Conclusions. The findings of partial association between dimensions of insight and measures of executive function supports the growing evidence that insight is a multidimensional phenomenon. Accordingly, they emphasise that in the framework of therapeutic interventions, enhancement of higher levels of insight needs to take into account that patients suffering from schizophrenia have differential impairment in insight dimensions.
On the Factorization of Differential Modules

Differential modules are modules over rings of linear (partial) differential operators which are finite-dimensional vector spaces. We present a generalization of the Beke-Schlesinger algorithm that factors differential modules. The method requires solving only one set of associated equations for each degree d of a potential factor. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000). 13N05; 13N10; 13N15; 16S32; 16S36; 32C38; 33F10; 68W30.
Moving Object Detection and Tracking Algorithm

Moving object detection and tracking play an important role in the intelligent video surveillance system. The traditional moving object detection algorithm seems sensitive to light and shows poor antiinterference performance. Therefore, a new method is proposed combining the inter-frame difference method with improved background subtraction method which makes use of color and texture information and dual-threshold is used to detect moving targets and makes multiple judgments. In addition, Meanshift and Kalman filtering algorithm are used to track the moving object, fast moving objects can be tracked acutely with this method. The experiments show that the algorithm proposed is adopted to detect and the moving target accurately and can resist interferences brought about by the slow slight movements in the scene with better robustness.
Diurnal variations in the cerebral evoked response and EEG. Relations to 17-hydroxycorticosteroid levels.

ALTHOUGH there are many direct effects of 17-hydroxycorticosteroids (170HS) on the central nervous system (CNS), 1 a diurnal change in CNS activity produced by a diurnal change in blood 170HS levels has not been demonstrated. In animals, 170HS increase brain excitability, 1,2 lower seizure thresholds, 1,2 increase behavioral and electrical arousal, 2-4 increase amplitudes and decrease latencies of evoked responses in several multisynaptic pathways, 2,5 and alter free-operant avoidance behavior. 6 Single unit studies are more complex as they demonstrate both excitation and inhibition following cortisol (hydrocortisone). 7,8 In humans, 17OHS often alter the electroencephalogram and increase seizure frequency. 9,10 In adrenal insufficiency, 17OHS normalize the EEG, 11 the low olfactory, 12 gustatory, 13 and auditory detection thresholds, 14 and shorten the latency of the visual evoked response. 15 A significant positive correlation has been reported between urinary 170HS levels and seizures in one case 16 and
Palmitoylation and Intracellular Domain Interactions Both Contribute to Raft Targeting of Linker for Activation of T Cells*

Some transmembrane proteins must associate with lipid rafts to function. However, even if acylated, transmembrane proteins should not pack well with ordered raft lipids, and raft targeting is puzzling. Acylation is necessary for raft targeting of linker for activation of T cells (LAT). To determine whether an acylated transmembrane domain is sufficient, we examined raft association of palmitoylated and nonpalmitoylated LAT transmembrane peptides in lipid vesicles by a fluorescence quenching assay, by microscopic examination, and by association with detergent-resistant membranes (DRMs). All three assays detected very low raft association of the nonacylated LAT peptide. DRM association was the same as a control random transmembrane peptide. Acylation did not measurably enhance raft association by the first two assays but slightly enhanced DRM association. The palmitoylated LAT peptide and a FLAG-tagged LAT transmembrane domain construct expressed in cells showed similar DRM association when both were reconstituted into mixed vesicles (containing cell-derived proteins and lipids and excess artificial raft-forming lipids) before detergent extraction. We conclude that the acylated LAT transmembrane domain has low inherent raft affinity. Full-length LAT in mixed vesicles associated better with DRMs than the peptide. However, cells appeared to contain two pools of LAT, with very different raft affinities. Since some LAT (but not the transmembrane domain construct) was isolated in a protein complex, and the Myc- and FLAG-tagged forms of LAT could be mutually co-immunoprecipitated, oligomerization or interactions with other proteins may enhance raft affinity of one pool of LAT. We conclude that both acylation and other factors, possibly protein-protein interactions, target LAT to rafts.