Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integration of LoRaWAN and 4G/5G for the Industrial Internet of Things

Current forecasts predict that the Industrial Internet of Things will account for about 10 billion devices by 2020. Simultaneously, unlicensed low-power wide area networks are gaining momentum due to their low cost, low power, and long range characteristics, which are suitable for many IIoT applications, in addition to the usage of unlicensed bands. In this article, a solution is proposed to seamlessly integrate LoRaWAN, an open and standardized LPWAN technology, with 4G/5G mobile networks, thus allowing mobile network operators to reutilize their current infrastructures. This proposal is transparent to LoRaWAN end devices and to the EPC, since only the LoRaWAN gateway needs to be modified. The gateway acts as an evolved Node B from the core network perspective, implementing part of the eNB protocol stack. All data packets transported over the core network are both encrypted and integrity protected, hence achieving end-toend security. As a proof of concept, this solution has been implemented and validated with an open source EPC.
Influence of local surface albedo variability and ice crystal shape on passive remote sensing of thin cirrus

Abstract. Airborne measurements of solar spectral radiance reflected by cirrus are performed with the HALO-Solar Radiation (HALO-SR) instrument onboard the High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft (HALO) in November 2010. The data are used to quantify the influence of surface albedo variability on the retrieval of cirrus optical thickness and crystal effective radius. The applied retrieval of cirrus optical properties is based on a standard two-wavelength approach utilizing measured and simulated reflected radiance in the visible and near-infrared spectral region. Frequency distributions of the surface albedos from Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite observations are used to compile surface-albedo-dependent lookup tables of reflected radiance. For each assumed surface albedo the cirrus optical thickness and effective crystal radius are retrieved as a function of the assumed surface albedo. The results for the cirrus optical thickness are compared to measurements from the High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL). The uncertainty in cirrus optical thickness due to local variability of surface albedo in the specific case study investigated here is below 0.1 and thus less than that caused by the measurement uncertainty of both instruments. It is concluded that for the retrieval of cirrus optical thickness the surface albedo variability is negligible. However, for the retrieval of crystal effective radius, the surface albedo variability is of major importance, introducing uncertainties up to 50%. Furthermore, the influence of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) on the retrieval of crystal effective radius was investigated and quantified with uncertainties below 10%, which ranges below the uncertainty caused by the surface albedo variability. The comparison with the independent lidar data allowed for investigation of the role of the crystal shape in the retrieval. It is found that if assuming aggregate ice crystals, the HSRL observations fit best with the retrieved optical thickness from HALO-SR.
Finite Element Implementation of a Multivariant Shape Memory Alloy Model

In this article a finite element implementation of a multivariant constitutive model of shape memory alloys for a mono-dimensional element is presented. The model has been implemented by writing the kinetic law and the equilibrium equation in the rate form and integrating this equation along the thermomechanical load path. The implemented model allows to simulate both the operation in isothermal condition, in full or partial pseudoelastic recover and the behavior of shape memory alloy’s wire in mixed thermal and mechanical load application such as in cyclic activations of a wire against a structure. The developed model is suitable for integration in structural finite element program allowing to simulate the action of SMA wires in integrated in complex structure. A number of numerical cases for the developed model are showed in order to verify the ability to reproduce expected typical SMA behaviors.
Material Response at Tool–Chip Interface and Its Effects on Tool Wear in Turning Inconel718

Because nickel-based alloy Inconel718 has poor thermal conductivity and serious work hardening, it is identified as a difficult-to-process material. The serious tool wear leads to short tool life. In this study, physical vapor deposition-coated carbide tools were used to machine Inconel718. The material response for different cutting speeds at the tool–chip interface and its effect on tool wear were studied. The results showed that at low cutting speed (v c = 20 m/min), cold welding and adhesion occurred at the tool–chip interface under high stress, and then the built-up edge (BUE) formed. The peeling off of BUE led to chipping. When the cutting speed (v c) was 45 m/min, diffusion and oxidation occurred at the tool–chip interface. The new generated material reduced tool hardness and bond strength of Co. The wear debris was generated in tool rake face. Flakes of wear debris fell from the tool substrate, which increased tool wear. When the cutting speed was 32 m/min, the softer oxides generated at the tool–chip interface served as a boundary lubrication layer. They can effectively weaken the adhesion between tool and chip, which made the chemical wear and adhesive wear reach equilibrium. Furthermore, the friction coefficient is reduced. Tool wear is reduced under this cutting condition.
Cache Placement Solutions in Software-Defined Radio Access Networks

In this paper, we present low-complexity algorithms for cache placement problem in software-defined radio access networks. Our key design target is that the packet delay from any cache to its associated users is below a threshold. This feature is a significant improvement compared to conventional approaches relying on the average hop count. We introduce a traffic engineering solution for joint multiserver selection and rate allocation. This algorithm is used to minimize the cache placement cost function, such as delivery cost per bit. Our cache placement method allows prediction of user throughput and thus the network throughput. Extensive simulation results verify that our method can give optimal or near optimal network throughput while guaranteeing packet delay performance.
JKR-DMT transition in the presence of a liquid meniscus

In a previous paper [J. Colloid Interface Sci. 150, 243 (1992)], one of the authors (D.M.) has shown how, for the contact of elastic spheres, fracture mechanics with a Dugdale model of adhesion forces can lead to a general theory with the Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) and Derjaguin-Muller-Toporov (DMT) theories as limiting cases. The main equations are briefly recalled and the theory is applied to the case of a liquid meniscus around the contact. It is shown that the results are similar to those of Fogden and White [J. Colloid Interface Sci. 138, 414 (1990)]. Experiments with a surface force apparatus are described showing this transition in the presence of a liquid meniscus. The measured profiles are in good agreement with the theory.
FRACTURE TOUGHNESS OF FILAMENT WOUND COMPOSITES PART 1. EFFECT OF MATERIAL VARIABLES.

Abstract : The application of the theory of linear fracture mehcanics to quasi-brittle, glass- reinforced-plastic composites is an important first step in understanding the basic mechanisms of failure of these materials. In this study, a simple test technique sensitive to small changes in the material based on fracture mechanics concepts. Six different resin-glass combinations were tested. The results of these tests indicate that (a) there is no difference in the fracture strenght of composites made with either E-glass or S- glass, (b) composites with 5-mil-diam fibers have a lower resistance to crack propagation than those with conventional 0.4 mil-diam fibers, and (c) a filament-wound composite has a much lower fracture toughness in the Bstaged state than in the fully cured state. In water immersion was investigated. These tests demonstrate that with the exception of the composite made with the large-diameter (5-mil) fibers there is no sysematic decline in fracture strength due to water immersion for periods up to 6 months. (Author, modified) FOR PERIODS UP TO 6 MONTHS. (Author, modified-PL)
Surgical Patient Safety Outcomes in Critical Access Hospitals: How Do They Compare?

PURPOSE The aim of the study was to examine whether Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), the predominant type of hospital in small and isolated rural areas, perform better than, the same as, or worse than Prospective Payment System (PPS) hospitals on measures of quality. METHODS The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases and American Hospital Association annual survey data were used for analyses. A total of 35,674 discharges from 136 nonfederal general hospitals with fewer than 50 beds were included in the analyses: 14,296 from 100 CAHs and 21,378 from 36 PPS hospitals. Outcome measures included 6 bivariate indicators of adverse events (including complications) of surgical care developed from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Patient Safety Indicators. Multiple logistic regression models were developed to examine the relationship between hospital adverse events and CAH status. FINDINGS Compared with PPS hospitals, CAHs are significantly less likely to have any observed (unadjusted) adverse event on 4 of the 6 indicators. After adjusting for patient mix and hospital characteristics, CAHs perform better on 3 of the 6 indicators. Accounting for the number of discharges eliminated the differences between CAHs and PPS hospitals in the likelihood of adverse events across all indicators except one. CONCLUSIONS The study suggests there are no differences in surgical patient safety outcomes between CAHs and PPS hospitals of comparable size. This reinforces the central role of CAHs in providing quality surgical care to populations in rural and isolated areas, and underscores the importance of strategies to sustain rural surgery infrastructure.
Free carrier lifetime modification in silicon

We investigate the effects of silicon ion irradiation on free carrier lifetime and propagation loss in silicon rib waveguides, and thus its ability to reduce the density of two-photon-absorption (TPA) generated free carriers, an undesired effect of the Raman process in crystalline silicon. Our experimental results show that free carrier lifetime can be reduced significantly by silicon ion implantation. Associated excess optical absorption from the implanted silicon ions can be kept low if irradiation energy and dose are correctly chosen. Simulations of Raman amplification in silicon rib waveguides suggest that net gain can be achieved in certain cases without the need for an integrated diode in reverse bias to sweep out the photo-generated free carriers.
Critical Appraisal Tools and Reporting Guidelines for Evidence‐Based Practice

BACKGROUND Nurses engaged in evidence-based practice (EBP) have two important sets of tools: Critical appraisal tools and reporting guidelines. Critical appraisal tools facilitate the appraisal process and guide a consumer of evidence through an objective, analytical, evaluation process. Reporting guidelines, checklists of items that should be included in a publication or report, ensure that the project or guidelines are reported on with clarity, completeness, and transparency. PURPOSE The primary purpose of this paper is to help nurses understand the difference between critical appraisal tools and reporting guidelines. A secondary purpose is to help nurses locate the appropriate tool for the appraisal or reporting of evidence. METHODS A systematic search was conducted to find commonly used critical appraisal tools and reporting guidelines for EBP in nursing. RATIONALE This article serves as a resource to help nurse navigate the often-overwhelming terrain of critical appraisal tools and reporting guidelines, and will help both novice and experienced consumers of evidence more easily select the appropriate tool(s) to use for critical appraisal and reporting of evidence. Having the skills to select the appropriate tool or guideline is an essential part of meeting EBP competencies for both practicing registered nurses and advanced practice nurses (Melnyk & Gallagher-Ford, 2015; Melnyk, Gallagher-Ford, & Fineout-Overholt, 2017). RESULTS Nine commonly used critical appraisal tools and eight reporting guidelines were found and are described in this manuscript. Specific steps for selecting an appropriate tool as well as examples of each tool's use in a publication are provided. LINKING EVIDENCE TO ACTION Practicing registered nurses and advance practice nurses must be able to critically appraise and disseminate evidence in order to meet EBP competencies. This article is a resource for understanding the difference between critical appraisal tools and reporting guidelines, and identifying and accessing appropriate tools or guidelines.
Potential cellular signaling mechanisms mediating upregulation of endothelial nitric oxide production by estrogen.

Experimental and clinical studies have provided ample evidence that estrogens exert a significant antiatherosclerotic effect and reduce morbidity and mortality due to cardiovascular diseases. The exact cellular mechanism of this vasculoprotective action of estrogen is not known, but recent work in our and other laboratories suggests that upregulation of endothelial nitric oxide (NO) production may significantly contribute to the mechanism. The vascular endothelium of female animals and humans produces more NO than that of males. Estrogen treatment significantly increases endothelial NO generation in ovariectomized animals and in postmenopausal women. Reduced endothelial NO production in the aorta of estrogen-receptor-deficient mice indicates that the nuclear estrogen receptor mediates the effect of estrogen. The most probable mechanism of estrogen-induced upregulation of endothelial NO production is the transcriptional stimulation of NOS III gene expression. However, the following alternative mechanisms may be involved as well: (1) inhibition of cytokine-induced downregulation of NOS III gene expression, (2) posttranslational modification of NOS III protein, (3) increased cofactor or L-arginine availability, (4) nongenomic activation of second messengers (e.g., Ca2+, cAMP) and tyrosine kinase, and (5) modulation of NO degrading systems (e.g., reactive oxygen radical generation and antioxidants). This paper reviews current data supporting these potential mechanisms.
A comparison of glottal voice source quantification parameters in breathy, normal and pressed phonation of female and male speakers.

This study concerns a comparison of different quantification techniques that have been developed to parameterize a voice source that has been estimated using inverse filtering that applies no flow mask (i.e. absolute flow values are not obtained). The speech material consisted of voices of three different phonation types produced by 5 female and 5 male subjects. Quantification of the voice source was computed using three time-based quotients that were extracted from the glottal flow waveforms, two time-based parameters that were extracted from the flow and its first derivative, one amplitude-domain quotient that was defined using both the flow and its derivative, and one frequency domain parameter that was computed from the flow signal. The results showed that phonation types could be separated from each other most effectively when quantification was based on parameters that were extracted between the instant of the maximal glottal opening and the minimum peak of the flow derivative.
Distributed Algorithm for High-Utility Subgraph Pattern Mining Over Big Data Platforms

Frequent subgraph pattern mining (FSM) finds subgraph patterns that occur in a graph database with a frequency that is more than a given threshold. In FSM, the notion of occurrence captures the presence or absence of a node and an edge in a binary fashion and considers relevance of each edge or node as same. However, an edge or a node may have different relevancy score. Therefore, the utility of a pattern should be defined using the relevance score of participating edges or nodes. This paper defines the utility notion of a pattern using this idea and presents algorithms to mine high-utility patterns from a given graph database. A significant issue in high-utility pattern mining is that the antimonotonic property no longer holds contrary to the FSM. Hence pruning of the search space becomes a daunting task. To address this issue, we incorporate a function to estimate an upper-bound utility of a pattern object that also satisfies the anti-monotonic property. This paper presents three optimization heuristics for the solution on a distributed platform, namely, a novel use of bloom filter to avoid exploration of non-candidates, avoidance of sending database information with each pattern, and avoidance of sending pattern embeddings with each pattern. The experimental study on Apache Spark shows the effectiveness of our proposed optimization strategies.
Use of p53‐Silenced Endothelial Progenitor Cells to Treat Ischemia in Diabetic Peripheral Vascular Disease

Background Peripheral vascular disease is a major diabetes mellitus‐related complication. In this study, we noted that expressions of proapoptotic p53 gene and its downstream cascade gene such as p21 are upregulated in hyperglycemia. Therefore, we investigated whether p53‐ and p21‐silenced endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) were able to survive in hyperglycemic milieu, and whether transplantation of either p53 knockout (KO) or p21KO or p53‐ and p21‐silenced EPCs could improve collateral vessel formation and blood flow in diabetic vaso‐occlusive peripheral vascular disease mouse models. Methods and Results We transplanted p53 and p21KO mouse EPCs (mEPCs) into streptozotocin–induced diabetic (type 1 diabetes mellitus model) C57BL/6J and db/db (B6.BKS(D)‐Leprdb/J) (type 2 model) post–femoral artery occlusion. Similarly, Ad‐p53–silenced and Ad‐p21–silenced human EPCs (CD34+) cells were transplanted into streptozotocin‐induced diabetic NOD.CB17‐Prkdcscid/J mice. We measured blood flow at 3, 7, and 10 days and hindlimb muscles were obtained postsacrifice for mRNA estimation and CD31 staining. Enhanced blood flow was noted with delivery of p53 and p21KO mEPCs in streptozotocin‐induced diabetic C57BL/6J mice. Similar results were obtained when human Ad‐p53shEPCs(CD34+) and Ad‐p21shEPCs(CD34+) were transplanted into streptozotocin‐induced nonobese diabetic severe combined immunodeficiency mice. Gene expression analysis of p53 and p21KO EPCs transplanted hindlimb muscles showed increased expression of endothelial markers such as endothelial nitric oxide synthase, vascular endothelial growth factor A, and platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule 1. Similarly, quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction of human Ad‐p53shEPCs (CD34+)– and Ad‐p21shEPCs (CD34+)–transplanted hindlimb muscles also showed increased expression of endothelial markers such as vascular endothelial growth factor A, noted primarily in the p53‐silenced EPCs group. However, such beneficial effect was not noted in the db/db type 2 diabetic mouse models. Conclusions Transient silencing of p53 using adenoviral vector in EPCs may have a therapeutic role in diabetic peripheral vascular disease.
A Suboptimal Approach for Minimum Transmit Power NOMA Beamforming

In downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), beamforming can be employed to effectively mitigate the multiple access interference (MAI) with beamforming gain. It is well-known that user clustering can play a crucial role in simplifying beamforming in NOMA. In this paper, we find the solution to a minimum transmit power beamforming problem for given pair of users in a cluster and propose a simple, but effective user clustering approach in conjunction with the minimum transmit power beamforming.
Lobelia hongiana (Campanulaceae), a new species from Guangxi, China

Abstract Lobelia hongiana, a new species of Campanulaceae from Guangxi, South China, is described and illustrated here. This new species is most similar to L. chinensis and L. loochooensis, but differs by its elliptic-obovate or oblanceolate leaf, 2.5–3 mm long greenish-carmine hypanthium, 5 or 6 calyx lobes, purplish-white corolla, with yellowish-green blotches at the base of lower lobes, glabrous filaments, 7–8 mm long broadly obconic capsule. Molecular phylogenetic analysis has been conducted based on ITS and two chloroplast sequences (atpB and rbcL) and 14 taxa in Lobelia are included. L. hongiana is well supported as a new species by the evidence from both morphology and molecular phylogeny.
Study on Low-Carbon Catalytic Combustion Furnace of Natural Gas and the Application in Greenhouse

By doing inside catalytic combustion furnace with Pd-based honeycomb monoliths of lean natural gas-air mixtures and measuring temperature field and the composition of flue gas, the exhaust gas of Low-carbon catalytic combustion furnace of natural gas can be analyzed and discussed. In addition, we can also investigate the possibility that we use the flue gas of natural gas in greenhouse.
Two Queue based Round Robin Scheduling Algorithm for CPU Scheduling

Multitasking and multiuser operating system’s performance depends on the efficiency of scheduling algorithm. Most commonly used Round Robin scheduling algorithm may not give optimal result if the burst time of processes is very high as compared to the time quantum of Round Robin algorithm. In this case, context switching and turnaround time of processes is very high. In this paper, a two queue based Round Robin Scheduling Algorithm is proposed. In the proposed approach two queues are used. One queue is exclusively used for CPU intensive processes and other queue is used for I/O intensive processes. This reduces the waiting time and turnaround time when there are less or equal numbers of I/O intensive processes. Performance Analysis depending upon CPU intensive and I/O intensive processes shows that it provides better results.
Context-Aware Middleware for Anytime, Anywhere Social Networks

Anytime, anywhere social computing requires several support mechanisms and tools, including location and proximity systems, expressive representation models of physical place and user characteristics, and effective social-matching algorithms. Anytime, anywhere social-network computing also requires shared and interoperable vocabularies for modeling location and entity characteristics. Current solutions tend to address only a subset of these issues. We believe that the success of anytime, anywhere social computing depends on middleware solutions that separate social-network management concerns from application requirements. Our middleware solution, the socially aware and mobile architecture (SAMOA), integrates a set of common management facilities for personalizing location-dependent social networks, and for propagating social networks' visibility up to the application level.