Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modified Krill Herd Optimization Algorithm using Focus Group Idea

Krill Herd algorithm is one of most recently developed nature-inspired optimization algorithms which is inspired by herding behavior of krill individuals. In order to improve the performance of this algorithm to deal more effectively with high dimensional numerical functions, we propose a new method, called Focus Group idea to modify the solutions found by searching agents in group cooperation. In order to evaluate the effect of the proposed method on the performance of the Krill Herd algorithm, we conducted experiments on a set standard benchmark functions. The obtained results demonstrate the ability of the proposed method to improve the performance of the Krill Herd optimization algorithm.
Orphanin FQ: A Neuropeptide That Activates an Opioidlike G Protein-Coupled Receptor

A heptadecapeptide was identified and purified from porcine brain tissue as a ligand for an orphan heterotrimeric GTP- binding protein (G protein)- coupled receptor (LC132) that is similar in sequence to opioid receptors. This peptide, orphanin FQ, has a primary structure reminiscent of that of opioid peptides. Nanomolar concentrations of orphanin FQ inhibited forskolin-stimulated adenylyl cyclase activity in cells transfected with LC132. This inhibitory activity was not affected by the addition of opioid ligands, nor did the peptide activate opioid receptors. Orphanin FQ bound to its receptor in a saturable manner and with high affinity. When injected intracerebroventricularly into mice, orphanin FQ caused a decrease in locomotor activity but did not induce analgesia in the hot-plate test. However, the peptide produced hyperalgesia in the tail-flick assay. Thus, orphanin FQ may act as a transmitter in the brain by modulating nociceptive and locomotor behavior.
Nanostructure shape effects on response of plasmonic aptamer sensors

A localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) sensor surface was fabricated by the deposition of gold nanorods on a glass substrate and subsequent immobilization of the DNA aptamer, which specifically bind to thrombin. This LSPR aptamer sensor showed a response of 6‐nm λmax shift for protein binding with the detection limit of at least 10 pM, indicating one of the highest sensitivities achieved for thrombin detection by optical extinction LSPR. We also tested the LSPR sensor fabricated using gold bipyramid, which showed higher refractive index sensitivity than the gold nanorods, but the overall response of gold bipyramid sensor appears to be 25% less than that of the gold nanorod substrate, despite the approximately twofold higher refractive index sensitivity. XPS analysis showed that this is due to the low surface density of aptamers on the gold bipyramid compared with gold nanorods. The low surface density of the aptamers on the gold bipyramid surface may be due to the effect of shape of the nanostructure on the kinetics of aptamer monolayer formation. The small size of aptamers relative to other bioreceptors is the key to achieving high sensitivity by biosensors on the basis of LSPR, demonstrated here for protein binding. The generality of aptamer sensors for protein detection using gold nanorod and gold nanobipyramid substrates is anticipated to have a large impact in the important development of sensors toward biomarkers, environmental toxins, and warfare agents. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Interactive query expansion: A user-based evaluation in a relevance feedback environment

A user-centered investigation of interactive query expansion within the context of a relevance feedback system is presented in this article. Data were collected from 25 searches using the INSPEC database. The data collection mechanisms included questionnaires, transaction logs, and relevance evaluations. The results discuss issues that relate to query expansion, retrieval effectiveness, the correspondence of the on-line-to-off-line relevance judgments, and the selection of terms for query expansion by users (interactive query expansion). The main conclusions drawn from the results of the study are that: (1) one-third of the terms presented to users in a list of candidate terms for query expansion was identified by the users as potentially useful for query expansion. (2) These terms were mainly judged as either variant expressions (synonyms) or alternative (related) terms to the initial query terms. However, a substantial portion of the selected terms were identified as representing new ideas. (3) The relationships identified between the five best terms selected by the users for query expansion and the initial query terms were that: (a) 34% of the query expansion terms have no relationship or other type of correspondence with a query term; (b) 66% of the remaining query expansion terms have a relationship to the query terms. These relationships were: narrower term (46%), broader term (3%), related term (17%). (4) The results provide evidence for the effectiveness of interactive query expansion. The initial search produced on average three highly relevant documents; the query expansion search produced on average nine further highly relevant documents. The conclusions highlight the need for more research on: interactive query expansion, the comparative evaluation of automatic vs. interactive query expansion, the study of weighted Web-based or Web-accessible retrieval systems in operational environments, and for user studies in searching ranked retrieval systems in general.
Machine vision for timber grading singularities detection and applications

Abstract. This article deals with machine vision techniques applied to timber grading singularities. Timber used for architectural purposes must satisfy certain mechanical requirements, and, therefore, must be mechanically graded to ensure the manufacturer that the product complies with the requirements. However, the timber material has many singularities, such as knots, cracks, and presence of juvenile wood, which influence its mechanical behavior. Thus, identifying those singularities is of great importance. We address the problem of timber defects segmentation and classification and propose a method to detect timber defects such as cracks and knots using a bag-of-words approach. Extensive experimental results show that the proposed methods are efficient and can improve grading machines performances. We also propose an automated method for the detection of transverse knots, which allows the computation of knot depth ratio (KDR) images. Finally, we propose a method for the detection of juvenile wood regions based on tree rings detection and the estimation of the tree’s pith. The experimental results show that the proposed methods achieve excellent results for knots detection, with a recall of 0.94 and 0.95 on two datasets, as well as for KDR image computation and juvenile timber detection.
Ethnicity‐related variations of left ventricular remodeling in adolescent amateur football players

Adult and adolescent elite black athletes display – as compared with their white counterparts – excessively increased left ventricle (LV) wall thickness (LVWT), mass (LVM), and relative wall thickness (RWT). To investigate such ethnicity‐related differences in non‐professional adolescent athletes, 138 male, amateur football players [age 14.0 ± 1.7 years, 42 West‐African blacks (BA) and 96 Italian whites (WA)] underwent an echocardiographic study of LV diameters, LVWT, maximal wall thickness (MWT), LVM, and RWT as remodeling index. BA vs WA exhibited greater thickness of septum and posterior wall, higher MWT (10.3 ± 1.7 vs 8.8 ± 1.1 mm), and higher LVM (117 ± 27 vs 101 ± 20 g/m2) and RWT (0.44 ± 0.07 vs 0.35 ± 0.04). Age, systolic blood pressure, body mass index, and ethnicity predicted MWT and LVM, whereas ethnicity was the sole strong predictor of RWT. The greater MWT, LVWT, and LVM of 14‐year‐old, amateur‐level BA vs WA indicates that ethnicity substantially affects LV structure in adolescent, non‐professional athletes. In contrast with MWT and LVM, elevated RWT was predicted by black ethnicity only. We suggest that concentric‐type LV remodeling is a peculiar LV phenotype in adolescent African athletes.
Feeding Your Feelings: Emotion Regulation Strategies and Emotional Eating

The process by which emotions affect eating behavior emerges as one of the central unresolved questions in the field of emotional eating. The present studies address the hypothesis that the regulation strategies people use to deal with these emotions are responsible for increased eating. Negative emotions were induced and intake of comfort food and non—comfort food was measured by means of taste tests. Emotion induction was preceded by measuring individual differences in emotion regulation strategies (Study 1) or by instructions to regulate emotions in either an adaptive (reappraisal) or maladaptive (suppression) manner (Study 2). Study 3 also entailed a control condition without any regulation instructions. Relative to reappraisal and spontaneous expression, suppression led to increased food intake, but only of the comfort foods. Emotions themselves were not responsible for this effect. These findings provide new evidence that the way in which emotions are regulated affects eating behavior.
Association between angiotensin II type-1 receptor A1166C polymorphism and the presence of angiographically-defined coronary artery disease in an Iranian population

Abstract Background: There are reported associations between a polymorphism of the angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R/A1166C) gene and coronary artery disease (CAD), hypertension, and myocardial infarction in some populations. Objective: Investigate the association between A1166C polymorphism and CAD in an Iranian population. Methods: Four hundred and thirteen patients with suspected CAD were recruited. Based on coronary angiography, the patients were classified into CAD+ (n=315) and CAD- (n=98) groups defined as >50% and <50% stenosis of any major coronary artery, respectively. One hundred and thirty-five healthy subjects were also recruited as the control group. The AT1R polymorphism was assessed using a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) based method. Results: A higher frequency of the AC and CC genotypes and lower frequency of the AA genotype was observed in both CAD+ and CAD- groups, compared with the control group (p <0.05). CAD+ and CAD- groups also had a higher frequency of the C allele than controls (p <0.01). There was no significant difference in genotype and allele frequencies between hypertensive and non-hypertensive patients (p > 0.05). In addition, the AT1R genotype frequencies did not differ significantly among different subgroups of CAD+ patients, based on the number of affected coronary vessels (p >0.05). Conclusion: The frequency AT1R/A1166C polymorphism was higher among patients with some degrees of coronary stenosis who are candidates of coronary angiography.
Speaker-identifying features based on formant tracks.

The formant structure of three diphthongs, four tense vowels, and three retroflex sounds was examined in detail for possible speaker‐identifying features. These sounds were spoken five times each in sentence context by ten speakers of General American on one day and by six of the speakers on a second day at least three weeks later. Formant tracks were computed for each sound under investigation using covariance‐type pitch‐asynchronous linear prediction together with a root‐finding algorithm. The interspeaker variability of about 200 measurements made on these formant tracks was compared initially with intraspeaker variability through the calculation of F ratios. Those with average F ratios greater than 60 were evaluated further with a probability‐of‐error criterion. Features that are potentially most effective in identifying speakers are the minimum second‐formant value in [‐r], the maximum first‐formant value in [‐r], the maximum second‐formant values of [o] and [‐I], and the minimum third‐formant value .
Nosocomial Outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease: Molecular Epidemiology and Disease Control Measures

Abstract Molecular laboratory techniques were used to study the epidemiology of an outbreak of nosocomial Legionnaires' disease. All patient isolates were Legionella pneumophila serogroup 1 and showed identical plasmid profiles and reactions with serogroup-specific monoclonal antibodies. L pneumophila was also cultured from four of five cooling tower water samples; however, the isolate from only one tower was serogroup 1 of the same sub-type as patient isolates. Since the cases were temporally clustered and epidemiologically associated with exposure to cooling tower aerosols, the single cooling tower implicated by molecular analysis was the most likely source of the outbreak. Chlorination of cooling tower ponds has eradicated the epidemic strain. Since potable water also harbored the infecting organism and was the probable source for cooling tower contamination, decontamination of the hospital water system was also undertaken. Superchlorination of hot water holding tanks to 17 ppm on a weekly basis has effectively eradicated L pneumophila from the potable water system and appears to be a reasonable, simple, and relatively inexpensive alternative to previously described methods of control.
Optimal order preconditioners for linear systems arising in the semismooth Newton method solution process of a class of optimal constrained problems

In this article we present a new multigrid preconditioner for the linear systems arising in the semismooth Newton method solution of certain control-constrained, quadratic distributed optimal control problems. Using a piecewise constant discretization of the control space, each semismooth Newton iteration essentially requires inverting a principal submatrix of the matrix entering the normal equations of the associated unconstrained optimal control problem, the rows (and columns) of the submatrix representing the constraints deemed inactive at the current iteration. Previously developed multigrid preconditioners for the aforementioned submatrices were based on constructing a sequence of conforming coarser spaces, and proved to be of suboptimal quality for the class of problems considered. Instead, the multigrid preconditioner introduced in this work uses non-conforming coarse spaces, and it is shown that, under reasonable geometric assumptions on the constraints that are deemed inactive, the preconditioner approximates the inverse of the desired submatrix to optimal order. The preconditioner is tested numerically on a classical elliptic-constrained optimal control problem and further on a constrained image-deblurring problem.
Household Registration , Urban Status Attainment , and Social Stratification in Contemporary Urban China

The household registration system (hukou) leading to the rural-urban divide is crucial to understanding social stratification and mobility in contemporary China. Previous studies have focused either on the selective process of hukou conversion to urban status and its impact on social stratification or on the socioeconomic disadvantages and the assimilation of rural migrant workers in cities. Pooling the data from three national probability surveys in China (2003, 2006, and 2008), we investigate socioeconomic inequality in urban areas and the role played by successful and unsuccessful conversion to urban hukou status for people of rural origin. Specifically, we compare the earnings of three subgroups: those who acquired urban status through their own efforts, those who gained their urban hukou via the incorporation of their villages into cities, and rural migrant workers who have not obtained an urban hukou. Linear regression results show that the commonly observed earnings premium associated with urban hukou status is limited only to a subgroup of ruralorigin people who obtained their urban hukou through a highly selective process. Propensity-score matching analyses further reveal that the effect of urban hukou status on earnings is positively associated with the propensity of hukou conversion to urban status, and that the urban hukou only pays off among people with better education and higher-status occupations within the state sector. These findings shed new light on the relationship between mobility processes and stratification outcomes, and bear important policy implications for the ongoing reform of the hukou system in the process of China’s urbanization. Household Registration, Urban Status Attainment, and Social Stratification in Contemporary Urban China 3
Effect of guinea pig or monkey colonic mucus on Shigella aggregation and invasion of HeLa cells by Shigella flexneri 1b and 2a

The effects of guinea pig and rhesus monkey colonic mucus preparations on Shigella aggregation and invasion of HeLa cell monolayers by Shigella flexneri serotype 1b, 2a, and 5 strains were investigated. Guinea pig mucus caused agglutination of S. flexneri serotype 1b but not of S. flexneri serotype 2a or 5. Guinea pig mucus also inhibited HeLa cell invasion by S. flexneri serotypes 1b and 2a. Monkey mucus neither agglutinated any Shigella strain nor inhibited HeLa cell invasion.
A decision framework for location-allocation problems: A case study in tea industry

This paper propose the use of the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy process (FAHP) and Goal Programming (GP) as an aid in making location-allocation decision and suggest a systematic method for the site selection and product allocation problem. The method can be seen as a decision support framework, which links various objectives, subjective and critical factors in the location-allocation problem to make an optimal decision in which fits best for both operations managers and investors. Important advantages of applying the framework are (1) the ability to decompose the complex problem in smaller problems, (2) the possibility of an efficient and effective contribution of operations managers and investors in decision making process, (3) the detail assessment of the selected location alternative. A demonstration of the application of this methodology in tea industry in Iran is presented.
A forming-free WOx resistive memory using a novel self-aligned field enhancement feature with excellent reliability and scalability

A thorough study of the switching mechanism for WO<inf>x</inf> ReRAM gives clues about how to improve its performance and reliability. Consequently, a 60nm WO<inf>x</inf> ReRAM is achieved with excellent characteristics - 50ns fast switching, 10<sup>6</sup> cycling endurance, large MLC window, low read disturb of > 10<sup>9</sup>, and excellent 150°C/2,000Hrs data retention. Furthermore, the oxidation of the TiN barrier into an insulating TiNO<inf>X</inf> causes the WO<inf>x</inf> to protrude above the remaining TiN and thus creates field enhancement. The boosted electric field eliminates the need for an initial forming step.
Single-Bundle versus Double-Bundle Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial with 6-Year Follow-up

Abstract Single-bundle (SB) anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction is increasingly used in a large number of patients and it allows obtaining very good clinical and subjective results; however, functional tests show a persistent rotational instability. Biomechanical studies seem to indicate that double-bundle (DB) ACL reconstruction allows to obtain increased anterior and rotational stability compared with SB. The aim of this prospective randomized controlled study was to compare the clinical outcome and the possible osteoarthritic evolution of patients treated either with a SB (freehand transtibial femoral tunnel) or with a DB technique (outside-in for posterolateral femoral tunnel/inside-out for anteromedial femoral tunnel) at a final follow-up of 6 years. A total of 60 patients with complete ACL rupture (age, 16–40 years) were prospectively randomized to SB (n = 30) or DB (n = 30) groups. Patients were evaluated preoperatively and after surgery at 6 months, 1, 3, and 6 years with Lysholm score, International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) form, and KT-2000 (Medmetric Corp). The degree of osteoarthritis (OA) based on the Kellgren–Lawrence grade was also assessed. No significant differences in background factors between the two groups were observed. Homogeneity was also found in term of preoperative Lysholm score, IKDC, and KT-2000 between SB and DB groups. After 6 months from surgery, both groups showed significant improvements for Lysholm, IKDC, and KT-2000 score with respect to preoperative observations (p < 0.001); however, no significant differences have been observed in term of postoperative values between SB and DB groups at each time point (6-year evaluation: Lysholm score 98.14 ± 10.03 and 97.22 ± 12.82; IKDC normal + nearly normal 95 and 100%; KT-2000 1.68 ± 1.26 and 1.03 ± 1.92 for SB and DB, respectively; all p > 0.05). At the final follow-up, three patients (11.11%) in the DB group and two patients (7.69%) in the SB group presented signs of OA progression. Our study did not reveal any advantages in using DB ACL reconstruction in mid- to long-term follow-up in term of clinical outcome and knee stability, as well as in term of OA progression.
Development of Cross Moving Median Filter for Denoising and Data Reconstruction in Nuclear Reactor

For the sake of developing any reliable data processing model, signals should be presented in a clear waveform by preprocessing cleanup algorithm that can reduce noise and outliers effect, and reconstruct any missing data that would present in the entire sample range. Bad and missing data should be removed and replaced by the most probable data value [1]. In nuclear reactors, monitoring system can generate huge data that can explain the operability and safety of the reactor, this data always accompanied with random noise that can create a signal perturbation and, as a consequence, it would show unusual condition of the reactor parameters behavior. Random noise in sensors consist of; process noise which is a natural parameter’s fluctuation around its true value, measurement noise which is the inherent noise in the sensor, and electronic noise which is developed during data transfer by cables from the sensor to the central processor. If noise level is high in a sensor reading, the developed model performance would be low reliable, and if this noise is unavoidable, a denoising technique is important to be implemented before processing with the proposed averaging method [2]. Many empirical methods are available for freeing signals from noise and outlier such as; Discrete Wavelet transform (DTW) which includes both frequency and time domain analysis using consecutive filters and decimators, Adaptive filtering which minimize the error using iterative computation to model the relationship between two signals, methods based on least-squares polynomial approximation like the Savity-Golay filtering, and other statistical data driven models like the Moving average and Moving Median filters. Data-driven techniques can widely simulate system behavior while being implemented quickly and cheaply. These models have ability to decrease the noise dimensions and transform it into lower dimensional information to be suitable for decision making [3]. In this paper, a new filter called Cross Moving Median (CMM) is proposed as to tackle three main problems attached with sensors data; noise, outliers, and missing data. This filter is based on the running median that was improved to account for prior estimate as to update the moving median result. The CMM filter was validated using HANARO Cold Neutron Source data that was generated from a hydrogen transmitter. 2. Methodology