Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Substrate Adhesion Regulates Sealing Zone Architecture and Dynamics in Cultured Osteoclasts

The bone-degrading activity of osteoclasts depends on the formation of a cytoskeletal-adhesive super-structure known as the sealing zone (SZ). The SZ is a dynamic structure, consisting of a condensed array of podosomes, the elementary adhesion-mediating structures of osteoclasts, interconnected by F-actin filaments. The molecular composition and structure of the SZ were extensively investigated, yet despite its major importance for bone formation and remodelling, the mechanisms underlying its assembly and dynamics are still poorly understood. Here we determine the relations between matrix adhesiveness and the formation, stability and expansion of the SZ. By growing differentiated osteoclasts on micro-patterned glass substrates, where adhesive areas are separated by non-adhesive PLL-g-PEG barriers, we show that SZ growth and fusion strictly depend on the continuity of substrate adhesiveness, at the micrometer scale. We present a possible model for the role of mechanical forces in SZ formation and reorganization, inspired by the current data.
The Local Isometric Embedding in R^3 of Two-Dimensional Riemannian Manifolds With Gaussian Curvature Changing Sign to Finite Order on a Curve

We consider two natural problems arising in geometry which are equivalent to the local solvability of specific equations of Monge-Ampere type. These two problems are: the local isometric embedding problem for two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds, and the problem of locally prescribed Gaussian curvature for surfaces in R^3. We prove a general local existence result for a large class of Monge-Ampere equations in the plane, and obtain as corollaries the existence of regular solutions to both problems, in the case that the Gaussian curvature vanishes to arbitrary finite order on a single smooth curve.
Primary Stability Recognition of the Newly Designed Cementless Femoral Stem Using Digital Signal Processing

Stress shielding and micromotion are two major issues which determine the success of newly designed cementless femoral stems. The correlation of experimental validation with finite element analysis (FEA) is commonly used to evaluate the stress distribution and fixation stability of the stem within the femoral canal. This paper focused on the applications of feature extraction and pattern recognition using support vector machine (SVM) to determine the primary stability of the implant. We measured strain with triaxial rosette at the metaphyseal region and micromotion with linear variable direct transducer proximally and distally using composite femora. The root mean squares technique is used to feed the classifier which provides maximum likelihood estimation of amplitude, and radial basis function is used as the kernel parameter which mapped the datasets into separable hyperplanes. The results showed 100% pattern recognition accuracy using SVM for both strain and micromotion. This indicates that DSP could be applied in determining the femoral stem primary stability with high pattern recognition accuracy in biomechanical testing.
Generalized Spatial Modulation in Indoor Wireless Visible Light Communication

In this paper, we investigate the performance of generalized spatial modulation (GSM) in indoor wireless visible light communication (VLC) systems. GSM uses $N_t$ light emitting diodes (LED), but activates only $N_a$ of them at a given time. Spatial modulation and spatial multiplexing are special cases of GSM with $N_{a}=1$ and $N_{a}=N_t$, respectively. We first derive an analytical upper bound on the bit error rate (BER) for maximum likelihood (ML) detection of GSM in VLC systems. Analysis and simulation results show that the derived upper bound is very tight at medium to high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). The channel gains and channel correlations influence the GSM performance such that the best BER is achieved at an optimum LED spacing. Also, for a fixed transmission efficiency, the performance of GSM in VLC improves as the half-power semi-angle of the LEDs is decreased. We then compare the performance of GSM in VLC systems with those of other MIMO schemes such as spatial multiplexing (SMP), space shift keying (SSK), generalized space shift keying (GSSK), and spatial modulation (SM). Analysis and simulation results show that GSM in VLC outperforms the other considered MIMO schemes at moderate to high SNRs; for example, for 8 bits per channel use, GSM outperforms SMP and GSSK by about 21 dB, and SM by about 10 dB at $10^{-4}$ BER.
Noise suppression based on replacement of zero phase signal

This paper proposes a wide-band noise reduction method using a zero phase (ZP) signal which is defined as IDFT of a spectral amplitude. When a speech signal has periodicity in a short observation, the corresponding ZP signal becomes also periodic. On the other hand, when a noise spectral amplitude is approximately flat, its ZP signal takes nonzero values only around the origin. Hence, when a periodic speech signal is embedded in a flat spectral noise in an analysis frame, its ZP signal becomes a periodic signal except around the origin. In the proposed noise reduction method, we replace the ZP signal around the origin with the ZP signal in the second or latter period. The major advantages of this method are that it can reduce not only stationary wide-band noises but also non-stationary wide-band noises and does not require a prior estimation of the noise spectral amplitude. Simulation results show that the proposed noise reduction method improves the SNR more than 5dB for a tunnel noise and 15dB for a clap noise in a low SNR environment.
T-S Fuzzy-Model-Based Robust  $H_{\infty}$ Design for Networked Control Systems With Uncertainties

This paper concerns a problem of robust Hinfin control for a class of uncertain nonlinear networked control systems (NCSs), which can be represented by a T-S fuzzy model with uncertainties. Both network-induced delay and packet dropout are addressed. The controller design method is presented based on a delay-dependent approach, and the robust Hinfin controller gain matrices are obtain by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Moreover, a general Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional is used, and some slack matrices, which bring much flexibility in solving LMIs, are introduced during the proof. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed method.
ATTENTION! SCHOOL BUS

This study aimed to investigate the conditions of pre-school children’s school buses. Six pre-service senior pre-school teachers interviewed twelve school bus drivers, and then took four bus rides with children from school to home and made observations while on the bus. The researchers identified three themes based on the literature: safety, social and physical environment, and communication with drivers. A content analysis approach was used to analyze the data. The findings of this study revealed that three safety rules—unfastened seat belts, use of the front seat, and use of cell phones while driving the school bus—were broken by the school bus drivers. The general social environment of the buses was positive; no conflict was observed among children during their social interactions with each other. Nevertheless, the physical condition was not as pleasing as the social environment. The buses were dirty, dusty, and had a bad smell due to the lack of fresh air. The communication between children and the drivers was fairly good. Children were eager to talk about their school day to the drivers, and the drivers were willing to listen to them. However, the drivers were not so kind during their private phone calls during the ride. Article visualizations:
Analysis of reproducibility and sensitivity of atraumatic measurements of regional cerebral blood flow in cerebrovascular diseases.

We tested the reproducibility of consecutive measurements of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) made in 13 areas of each hemisphere in patients with cerebrovascular diseases by the atraumatic 133Xe intravenous injection method. The data were analysed by a two-compartment model similar to that used in the Obrist inhalation method. Four parameters derived from the model were tested: Fg (flow of the fast-clearing compartment), FF and W (respectively fractional flow and relative tissue weight of the same compartment), ISI (initial slope index as defined by Risberg et al.). No significant variation was found in these four parameters between two consecutive rest measurements for all the areas studied and whatever the time interval between the measurements. The variances of the differences of Fg and ISI between the two measurements were found to be similar to those found in normal healthy subjects. The variances of FF and, consequently, W were greater than the values determined in healthy volunteers. An attempt to improve the quality of the results, by correcting them for the effects of PaCO2 changes between the measurements, resulted on the contrary in a general increase of the variances of the differences, showing the inadequacy of the correction coefficients used for healthy subjects at least for a proportion of the patients with cerebrovascular diseases. Sensitivity, tested by activation (hand work), shows a positive answer for FG but no significant change in ISI in any area. These findings demonstrate that in cases of cerebrovascular diseases the raw data (uncorrected for the changes in PaCO2) are the most reliable data but the meaning of the values found for FF and W must be regarded with caution since they may be affected by the “slippage” phenomenon. It is suggested that the ISI should only be used when there is evidence of a failure of the compartmental model, but only as a rough estimation of the flow level because of its lack of sensitivity.
Effect of voltage dynamics on response properties in a model of sensory hair cell

Sensory hair cells in auditory and vestibular organs rely on active mechanisms to achieve high sensitivity and frequency selectivity. Recent experimental studies have documented self-sustained oscillations in hair cells of lower vertebrates on two distinct levels. First, the hair bundle can undergo spontaneous mechanical oscillations. Second, somatic electric voltage oscillations across the baso-lateral membrane of the hair cell have been observed. We develop a biophysical model of the bullfrog's saccular hair cell consisting of two compartments, mechanical and electrical, to study how the mechanical and the voltage oscillations interact to produce coherent self-sustained oscillations and how this interaction contributes to the overall sensitivity and selectivity of the hair cell. The model incorporates nonlinear mechanical stochastic hair bundle system coupled bi-directionally to a Hodgkin-Huxley type system describing somatic ionic currents. We isolate regions of coherent spontaneous oscillations in the parameter space of the model and then study how coupling between compartments affect sensitivity of the hair cell to external mechanical perturbations. We show that spontaneous electrical oscillations may enhance significantly the sensitivity and selectivity of the hair cell.
Give Me a Hallelujah! Amen! Institutional reproduction in the presence of moral perturbation and the dynamics of emotional investment

How do actors continue to contribute to the reproduction of extant institutional arrangements, even after they have become morally perturbed by these arrangements? Through ethnographic research in eleven Pentecostal churches in urban Java, we found that when certain church practices morally perturbed church employees and volunteers, they evoked moral emotions of guilt and anger that triggered institutional instability. However, organizational leaders exerted fear- and respect-eliciting systemic power that made these actors discontinue their disrupting activities. Suppressing the impetus for institutional disruption and change, systemic power engendered actors’ feelings of helplessness. Bringing back power into neo-institutionalism, we investigate the boundary conditions to the mobilizing potential of moral emotions. Rather than exiting the field, morally perturbed actors engaged in reconciling activities, enabling them to shift the anchor of their emotional investment. In our case, the shift took place from idealized institutional arrangements to a more spiritual meaning system. We argue that anchor relocation is vital to the sustained reproduction of institutional arrangements of which actors morally disapprove.
Information extraction for counter-terrorism: A survey on link analysis

Information Extraction (IE) is an emerging technology to transform unstructured textual information into a structured knowledge base. With the potential to analyze the structured information, IE significantly improves analysts ability to see underlying trends and to discover the unexpected, in various domains. IE research in counter-terrorism has been mushrooming after the 9/11 attack. A huge data warehouse on surveillance, that is freely available for training and testing, has become the major support to this research. Link Analysis is a topic in IE focusing on possible link detection between concepts across multiple documents. This paper presents some of the recently developed link analysis tools and approaches to detecting potentially interesting links in surveillance data. The related challenges and issues arising within the research are explored and discussed.
Lawmaker Age, Issue Salience, and Senior Representation in Congress

Political scientists have demonstrated the importance of lawmakers’ identities, showing that race, gender, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation affect legislative and representational behavior. Is the same true for age? We argue it is, but the effect is conditioned by the salience of different “senior issues. ” Analyzing the bill introductions by members of Congress during the 109th and 110th Congresses, we show that older lawmakers are more likely to introduce legislation addressing lower salience senior issues than their younger colleagues. In contrast, sizeable senior constituencies in a district influence lawmaker attention to higher salience senior issues, regardless of a lawmaker’s age. These findings have implications for our understanding of senior power and personal roots of representation in the United States.
Exploring EDNS-client-subnet adopters in your free time

The recently proposed DNS extension, EDNS-Client-Subnet (ECS), has been quickly adopted by major Internet companies such as Google to better assign user requests to their servers and improve end-user experience. In this paper, we show that the adoption of ECS also offers unique, but likely unintended, opportunities to uncover details about these companies' operational practices at almost no cost. A key observation is that ECS allows to resolve domain names of ECS adopters on behalf of any arbitrary IP/prefix in the Internet. In fact, by utilizing only a single residential vantage point and relying solely on publicly available information, we are able to (i) uncover the global footprint of ECS adopters with very little effort, (ii) infer the DNS response cacheability and end-user clustering of ECS adopters for an arbitrary network in the Internet, and (iii) capture snapshots of user to server mappings as practiced by major ECS adopters. While pointing out such new measurement opportunities, our work is also intended to make current and future ECS adopters aware of which operational information gets exposed when utilizing this recent DNS extension.
Wind Energy Harvesting for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) provide a powerful combination of distributed sensing, computing and wireless communication that can be useful in various applications (monitoring, health and fitness, environment, automotive, smart building, etc.). However, energy consumption is a critical issue in the deployment of battery-powered wireless sensor networks. Therefore, energy harvesting provides a potential solution to extend the system lifetime. This paper addresses the problematic of using wind as harvesting source, and weather forecast to improve the prediction of wind condition in the near future. The related issues concern the wind behavior in outdoor condition which is irregular and unpredictable. A wind harvester (a small wind turbine) is considered in order to define a model that translates a weather forecast (the wind speed) into a corresponding energy harvesting prediction. The proposed network architecture has therefore to manage the retrieval of weather forecast from Internet and transmit this information to the end devices. Moreover, the renewable energy storage device needs to be properly sized in order to provide power to the end devices when no more energy can be harvested from the ambient environment. For that, it is required to store a part of the harvested energy when it is available, and this is the role of a power manager (PM). In this paper, we propose different PM policies, two of them exploiting the use of weather forecast to improve the prediction accuracy for WSN nodes.
Modeling directional thermal radiance anisotropy for urban canopy

One of the significant factors for improving the accuracy of Land Surface Temperature (LST) retrieval is the correct understanding of the directional anisotropy for thermal radiance. In this paper, the multiple scattering effect between heterogeneous non-isothermal surfaces is described rigorously according to the concept of configuration factor, based on which a directional thermal radiance model is built, and the directional radiant character for urban canopy is analyzed. The model is applied to a simple urban canopy with row structure to simulate the change of Directional Brightness Temperature (DBT). The results show that the DBT is aggrandized because of the multiple scattering effects, whereas the change range of DBT is smoothed. The temperature difference, spatial distribution, emissivity of the components can all lead to the change of DBT. The “hot spot” phenomenon occurs when the proportion of high temperature component in the vision field came to a head. On the other hand, the “cool spot” phenomena occur when low temperature proportion came to the head. The “spot” effect disappears only when the proportion of every component keeps invariability. The model built in this paper can be used for the study of directional effect on emissivity, the LST retrieval over urban areas and the adjacency effect of thermal remote sensing pixels.
Algebra in superextension of groups, II: cancelativity and centers

Given a countable group $X$ we study the algebraic structure of its superextension $\lambda(X)$. This is a right-topological semigroup consisting of all maximal linked systems on $X$ endowed with the operation $$\mathcal A\circ\mathcal B=\{C\subset X:\{x\in X:x^{-1}C\in\mathcal B\}\in\mathcal A\}$$ that extends the group operation of $X$. We show that the subsemigroup $\lambda^\circ(X)$ of free maximal linked systems contains an open dense subset of right cancelable elements. Also we prove that the topological center of $\lambda(X)$ coincides with the subsemigroup $\lambda^\bullet(X)$ of all maximal linked systems with finite support. This result is applied to show that the algebraic center of $\lambda(X)$ coincides with the algebraic center of $X$ provided $X$ is countably infinite. On the other hand, for finite groups $X$ of order $3\le|X|\le5$ the algebraic center of $\lambda(X)$ is strictly larger than the algebraic center of $X$.
Distributed quantitative evaluation of 3D patient specific arterial models

In this paper we describe a new system for the 3D reconstruction and distribution on the Internet of models for vessel structures. The system is specifically designed to support measurements of medical interest. We describe 2D and 3D segmentation methods implemented and the procedure used to build interactive VRML97 models. The experimental section presents a comparison between segmentation methods, and a first application to surgical planning for endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms.
Flexible Japanese Sentence Compression by Relaxing Unit Constraints

Sentence compression is important in a wide range of applications in natural language processing. Previous approaches of Japanese sentence compression can be divided into two groups. Word-based methods extract a subset of words from a sentence to shorten it, while bunsetsubased methods extract a subset of bunsetsu (where a bunsetsu is a text unit that consists of content words and following function words). Basically, bunsetsu-based methods perform better than word-based methods. However, bunsetsu-based methods have the disadvantage that they cannot drop unimportant words from each bunsetsu because they have to follow constraints under which each bunsetsu is treated as a unit. In this paper, we propose a novel compression method to overcome this disadvantage. Our method relaxes the constraints using Lagrangian relaxation and shortens each bunsetsu if it contains unimportant words. Experimental results show that our method effectively compresses a sentence while preserving its important information and grammaticality.
Microstrip diplexers design with common resonator sections for compact size, but high isolation

High isolation and compact size microstrip diplexers designed with common resonator sections have been proposed. By exploiting the variable frequency response of the stepped-impedance resonator, resonators can be shared by the two filter channels of the desired diplexer if their fundamental and the first spurious resonant frequency are properly assigned. Size reduction are, therefore, achieved by introducing a few common resonator sections in the circuit. This concept has been verified by the experimental results of two diplexer circuits. One of the diplexers is composed of two three-pole parallel-coupled bandpass filters and the other is composed of two four-pole cross-coupled bandpass filters, which are formed by only five and six resonators, respectively. Both of them occupy extremely small areas while still keeping good isolations. Good agreements are also achieved between measurement and simulation.
Texture Classification Using Dominant Neighborhood Structure

This paper proposes a new approach to extract global image features for the purpose of texture classification. The proposed texture features are obtained by generating an estimated global map representing the measured intensity similarity between any given image pixel and its surrounding neighbors within a certain window. The intensity similarity map is an average representation of the texture-image dominant neighborhood similarity. The estimated dominant neighborhood similarity is robust to noise and referred to as image dominant neighborhood structure. The global rotation-invariant features are then extracted from the generated image dominant neighborhood structure. Features obtained from the local binary patterns (LBPs) are then extracted in order to supply additional local texture features to the generated features from the dominant neighborhood structure. Both features complement each other. The experimental results on representative texture databases show that the proposed method is robust to noise and can achieve significant improvement in terms of the obtained classification accuracy in comparison to the LBP method. In addition, the method classification accuracy is comparable to the two recent LBP extensions: dominant LBP and completed LBP.