Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Precipitation behaviour of TiN in Nb-Ti containing alloyed steel during the solidification process

A transverse crack on the slab corner became a severe defect for Nb-containing steel due to precipitation of NbN particles along the prior austenite grain boundary. By adding Ti, the TiN particles were in priority precipitation than NbN which kept more Nb as solution condition in steel. In the present research, the formation mechanism of TiN was investigated by thermodynamics calculation and experiments. It came to the following conclusions. With an increase in the cooling rate of molten steel, the precipitation location of TiN particles moves from the γ grains boundary into the matrix. Based on the Ohnaka micro-segregation model, the precipitation behaviour of [Ti] and [N] was investigated under various solid fractions during the solidification process. As the solid fraction is larger than 0.95, the [Ti][N] value was higher than equilibrium value. Furthermore, inclusion of a high melting material such as Al2O3 played an important role in decreasing the nucleation potential barrier of TiN, which enhanced the formation of TiN particles in the molten steel. For micro-segregation models, according to the segregation degree at the solidification front, they can be sorted in the following sequence, Scheil > Ohnaka(2α) > B–F > C–K > Ohnaka(4α) > V–B > Lever.
Two-Photon Functional Imaging of the Auditory Cortex in Behaving Mice: From Neural Networks to Single Spines

In vivo two-photon Ca2+ imaging is a powerful tool for recording neuronal activities during perceptual tasks and has been increasingly applied to behaving animals for acute or chronic experiments. However, the auditory cortex is not easily accessible to imaging because of the abundant temporal muscles, arteries around the ears and their lateral locations. Here, we report a protocol for two-photon Ca2+ imaging in the auditory cortex of head-fixed behaving mice. By using a custom-made head fixation apparatus and a head-rotated fixation procedure, we achieved two-photon imaging and in combination with targeted cell-attached recordings of auditory cortical neurons in behaving mice. Using synthetic Ca2+ indicators, we recorded the Ca2+ transients at multiple scales, including neuronal populations, single neurons, dendrites and single spines, in auditory cortex during behavior. Furthermore, using genetically encoded Ca2+ indicators (GECIs), we monitored the neuronal dynamics over days throughout the process of associative learning. Therefore, we achieved two-photon functional imaging at multiple scales in auditory cortex of behaving mice, which extends the tool box for investigating the neural basis of audition-related behaviors.
The Auxological and Biochemical Continuum of Short Children Born Small for Gestational Age (SGA) or with Normal Birth Size (Idiopathic Short Stature)

Objective. Retrospective single-centre analysis of growth characteristics in 182 healthy short children born small for gestational age (SGA) or appropriate for gestational age (idiopathic short stature, ISS). Methods. Birth size references from the USA and Sweden were compared, and for the classification as SGA or ISS the Swedish reference was chosen. Height, target height (TH), bone age (BA), predicted adult height (PAH), IGF-I and IGFBP-3 values were compared between SGA and ISS. Results. In the combined group, birth weight and length showed a symmetric Gaussian distribution. The American reference overestimates the percentage of short birth length and underestimates that of low birth weight. In childhood, SGA children were shorter than ISS (−3.1 versus −2.6 SDS, ), also in comparison to TH (−2.6 versus −1.9 SDS, ). TH, height SDS change over time, BA delay, and PAH were similar. IGF-I and IGFBP-3 were lower in ISS ( and .09). Conclusions. SGA children represent the left tail of the Gaussian distribution of birth size in short children. The distinction between SGA and ISS depends on birth size reference. Childhood height of SGA is lower than of ISS, but the other auxological features are similar.
ffects of ( − )-6 , 6 ′-dinitrohinokinin on adult worms of Schistosoma ansoni : a proteomic analyses

Schistosomiasis, a chronic disease that affects million people worldwide, is caused by trematode flukes of the genus Schistosoma. The lack of an anti-schistosomiasis vaccine and massive monotherapy with praziquantel reinforces the need for search and development of new therapeutic drugs. Recently, we demonstrated that the essential oil of Piper cubeba L. , Piperaceae, and their derivative dibenzylbutyrolactolic (−)-6,6′-dinitrohinokinin, presents in vitro and in vivo activities against Schistosoma mansoni. Here, we identified changes in the protein expression after exposure to dibenzylbutyrolactolic (−)-6,6′-dinitrohinokinin. We applied two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) to S. mansoni soluble protein extracts and observed at least 38 spots to be affected by dibenzylbutyrolactolic (−)6,6′-dinitrohinokinin. We further identified 25 differentially expressed proteins by mass spectrometry. Enrichment for biological processes and predictive analyses of protein-protein interactions suggest that chistosoma mansoni wo-dimensional gel electrophoresis dibenzylbutyrolactolic (−)-6,6′-dinitrohinokinin targets proteins involved mainly in metabolic processes, especially carbohydrate metabolism. In summary, this study provides an interesting approach to understand the anti-parasitic activity of semi-synthetic (−)-6,6′-dinitrohinokinin a derivative compound from lignan and for the development of new therapy strategies. © 2016 Sociedade Brasileira de Farmacognosia. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.
RACOS: Transparent access and virtualization of reconfigurable hardware accelerators

Crafting accelerators using reconfigurable hardware is a promising way to achieve improved performance and power/energy efficiency. However, deploying reconfigurable accelerators is still cumbersome as it involves overall system integration issues and and runtime reconfigurable resource management. We describe the design and implementation of RACOS, a Reconfigurable ACcelerator OS, that provides a simple and intuitive software interface to load/unload reconfigurable hardware accelerators and perform data I/Os transparently to the user. Multiple partially reconfigurable regions are supported, and each region can host either single- or dual-threaded accelerators, effectively virtualizing the reconfigurable resources. RACOS allows multiple applications to use one or more accelerators each, and schedules accelerators for execution according to four policies: simple and inorder that respect the order of request, and out of order and forced that aim to reduce the number of reconfigurations. We evaluate our proposed system varying the number of instances of an accelerated application and show that, despite its generality, RACOS can achieve both high reconfiguration and data communication throughput, close to the maximum reported in bibliography, with a very small resource cost comparable or better than the current state of the art.
Physical Acoustics Session 5 aPA : Chemical and Non-Medical Biological Effects of Ultrasound 5 aPA 2 . Sonochemical synthesis of nano-cocrystals

Cocrystals are multicomponent solids with organic molecules assembled in combination to form a crystalline solid with properties different than the individual components. A cocrystal typically consists of a target molecule crystallized with a second molecule, or cocrystal former, employed to influence properties of the target (e.g. solubility). The conformer interacts with the target via intermolecular forces (e.g. hydrogen bonds) that hold the components together. The modularity of a cocrystal makes such solids attractive for applications where fine-tuning of properties is important (e.g. optical). In this presentation, we describe the use of sonochemistry to form cocrystals of nanoscale dimensions. In contrast to single-component solids, cocrystals present a fundamentally different challenge with respect to those reprecipitation methods used to form nanocrystals since the components of a cocrystal will tend to exhibit different solubilities. We show that sonochemistry affords nanococrystals with properties (e.g. reactivity) that contrast solids of macroscale dimensions. Related applications of sonochemistry to afford singlecomponent nanocrystals will also be presented.
“Is More Better?”: Impact of Multiple Photos on Perception of Persona Profiles

In this research, we investigate if and how more photos than a single headshot can heighten the level of information provided by persona profiles. We conduct eye-tracking experiments and qualitative interviews with variations in the photos: a single headshot, a headshot and images of the persona in different contexts, and a headshot with pictures of different people representing key persona attributes. The results show that more contextual photos significantly improve the information end users derive from a persona profile; however, showing images of different people creates confusion and lowers the informativeness. Moreover, we discover that choice of pictures results in various interpretations of the persona that are biased by the end users' experiences and preconceptions. The results imply that persona creators should consider the design power of photos when creating persona profiles.
BrainSlug: Transparent Acceleration of Deep Learning Through Depth-First Parallelism

Neural network frameworks such as PyTorch and TensorFlow are the workhorses of numerous machine learning applications ranging from object recognition to machine translation. While these frameworks are versatile and straightforward to use, the training of and inference in deep neural networks is resource (energy, compute, and memory) intensive. In contrast to recent works focusing on algorithmic enhancements, we introduce BrainSlug, a framework that transparently accelerates neural network workloads by changing the default layer-by-layer processing to a depth-first approach, reducing the amount of data required by the computations and thus improving the performance of the available hardware caches. BrainSlug achieves performance improvements of up to 41.1% on CPUs and 35.7% on GPUs. These optimizations come at zero cost to the user as they do not require hardware changes and only need tiny adjustments to the software.
Synthesis, screening and nanocrystals preparation of rhein amide derivatives

Abstract Rhein (RH) has many bioactivities, but the application was limited of its poor solubility. The present study aimed to establish an efficient method for the synthesis of rhein amide derivatives (RAD) to increase the solubility and anti-tumour activity. RAD exhibited stronger anti-tumour activity than RH in MTT assay. The solubility and oil/water partition coefficient results indicated that rhein-phenylalanine and rhein-isoleucine have better absorption effect, which was consolidated in pharmacokinetic study. Then, rhein-phenylalanine and rhein-isoleucine were prepared into nanocrystals via the precipitation high-pressure homogenisation method. Additionally, the nanocrystals both displayed much higher dissolution profiles than the bulk drugs. Pharmacokinetics study indicated that the AUC0–∞ and Cmax of nanocrystals increased markedly (p < 0.01). However, the concentration of RH-Phe-NC was far less than RH-Ile-NC in plasma. Consequently, RH-Ile-NC was validated to be an applicable way to improve the bioavailability of RH, which owns a promising future in clinical application.
MABLE: Mediating Young Children's Smart Media Usage with Augmented Reality

There has been a growing concern over the huge increase in use of smart media by young children. This study explores the possibility of using augmented-reality(AR) for regulat-ing preschoolers' media usage behavior. With MABLE (mobile application for behavioral learning and education), parents can provide AR-assisted feedback by changing facial expressions and sound effects. When overlaying a smart media, which has MABLE running, in front of a QR marker on a puppet, a facial expression is displayed on top of the puppet's face. A two-week long experiment with 36 parent-child pairs showed that compared to using just the puppet, using MABLE showed higher amount of engage-ment among preschoolers. For the effectiveness of parental mediation in terms of self-control, our data showed mixed results. MABLE had positive effects in that the amount of rule-compliance increased and problematic behaviors de-creased, whereas the level of behavioral dependency on smart media was not influenced.
WrisText: One-handed Text Entry on Smartwatch using Wrist Gestures

We present WrisText - a one-handed text entry technique for smartwatches using the joystick-like motion of the wrist. A user enters text by whirling the wrist of the watch hand, towards six directions which each represent a key in a circular keyboard, and where the letters are distributed in an alphabetical order. The design of WrisText was an iterative process, where we first conducted a study to investigate optimal key size, and found that keys needed to be 55º or wider to achieve over 90% striking accuracy. We then computed an optimal keyboard layout, considering a joint optimization problem of striking accuracy, striking comfort, word disambiguation. We evaluated the performance of WrisText through a five-day study with 10 participants in two text entry scenarios: hand-up and hand-down. On average, participants achieved a text entry speed of 9.9 WPM across all sessions, and were able to type as fast as 15.2 WPM by the end of the last day.
A Fully Secure Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-Based Encryption With A Tree-Based Access Structure *

A new fully secure ciphertext-policy attributed based encryption (CP-ABE) scheme with high expressibity access policy is presented. Our CP-ABE scheme uses tree-based access structure which includes AND, OR, threshold and NOT gates which granted high degree of expressibility for encryptor to make an access policy. Moreover, our scheme achieves full security CP-ABE definition where any access structure can be chosen as the challenge ciphertext. The proposed CP-ABE uses composite bilinear groups and dual encryption paradigm to achieve full security CP-ABE definition. We argue that our CP-ABE scheme is secure and feasible.
Cloud-Based Secure Logger for Medical Devices

A logger in the cloud capable of keeping a secure, time-synchronized and tamper-evident log of medical device and patient information allows efficient forensic analysis in cases of adverse events or attacks on interoperable medical devices. A secure logger as such must meet requirements of confidentiality and integrity of message logs and provide tamper-detection and tamper-evidence. In this paper, we propose a design for such a cloud-based secure logger using the Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and the Trusted Platform Module (TPM). The proposed logger receives medical device information from a dongle attached to a medical device. The logger relies on SGX, TPM and standard encryption to maintain a secure communication channel even on an untrusted network and operating system. We also show that the logger is resilient against different kinds of attacks such as Replay attacks, Injection attacks and Eavesdropping attacks.
Bral1: Its Role in Diffusion Barrier Formation and Conduction Velocity in the CNS

At the nodes of Ranvier, excitable axon membranes are exposed directly to the extracellular fluid. Cations are accumulated and depleted in the local extracellular nodal region during action potential propagation, but the impact of the extranodal micromilieu on signal propagation still remains unclear. Brain-specific hyaluronan-binding link protein, Bral1, colocalizes and forms complexes with negatively charged extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, such as versican V2 and brevican, at the nodes of Ranvier in the myelinated white matter. The link protein family, including Bral1, appears to be the linchpin of these hyaluronan-bound ECM complexes. Here we report that the hyaluronan-associated ECM no longer shows a nodal pattern and that CNS nerve conduction is markedly decreased in Bral1-deficient mice even though there were no differences between wild-type and mutant mice in the clustering or transition of ion channels at the nodes or in the tissue morphology around the nodes of Ranvier. However, changes in the extracellular space diffusion parameters, measured by the real-time iontophoretic method and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), suggest a reduction in the diffusion hindrances in the white matter of mutant mice. These findings provide a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the accumulation of cations due to diffusion barriers around the nodes during saltatory conduction, which further implies the importance of the Bral1-based extramilieu for neuronal conductivity.
Efficacy and safety of tiotropium in school‐age children with moderate‐to‐severe symptomatic asthma: A systematic review

Recently published data support the benefits and safety of the once‐daily (OD) long‐acting anticholinergic tiotropium bromide bronchodilator for the treatment of uncontrolled moderate‐to‐severe asthma in adults and adolescents. However, its role for the treatment of school‐age asthmatics has not yet been clearly defined. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the efficacy and safety of tiotropium Respimat® in children aged 6‐11 years with moderate‐to‐severe symptomatic asthma.
Analysis of mixing performances in microchannel with obstacles of different aspect ratios

In this study, the mixing performance and pressure drop characteristics have been numerically analyzed for flow through rectangular microchannel with obstacles in the walls arranged in a staggered manner. Three different aspect ratios (AR) of the obstacles are considered, namely 4:1, 1:1, and 1:4. The effects of aspect ratio of the obstacles on the mixing efficiency and the pressure drop are analyzed and compared with that of the channel without obstacle. The results are presented in terms of Reynolds number (Re) and Schmidt number (Sc) in the following range: 0.2 ≤ Re ≤ 1 and 500 ≤ Sc ≤ 1500. Enhanced mixing efficiency is achieved for the case of microchannel with obstacles and the corresponding pressure drop is also found to be higher. The mixing efficiency as well as the pressure drop is maximum for AR = 1:4 among all the geometries considered in the analysis in same flow condition. Furthermore, for a given configuration of the microchannel the mixing efficiency is governed by the mass Peclet number and, accordingly, the mixing efficiency increases with the decrease in Schmidt number for a given Reynolds number.
Wavelet Tree Support Detection for Compressed Sensing MRI Reconstruction

A priori knowledge of the signal/image support based on its statistical and structural information in the transformed domain improves the quality of compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction. Hidden Markov tree models the wavelet domain support of magnetic resonance images obtained from undersampled k-space data very well. With the support information, parent–child pairs in the wavelet tree are detected accurately, and hence, iterative regularization problems for CS-based magnetic resonance imaging reconstruction are solved with high throughputs. Simulation results with artificial and real MRI datasets show significant improvements over existing methods in terms of just noticeable difference scanning besides other objective and subjective metrics.
Veracity Computing from Lexical Cues and Perceived Certainty Trends

We present a data-driven method for determining the veracity of a set of rumorous claims on social media data. Tweets from different sources pertaining to a rumor are processed on three levels: first, factuality values are assigned to each tweet based on four textual cue categories relevant for our journalism use case; these amalgamate speaker support in terms of polarity and commitment in terms of certainty and speculation. Next, the proportions of these lexical cues are utilized as predictors for tweet certainty in a generalized linear regression model. Subsequently, lexical cue proportions, predicted certainty, as well as their time course characteristics are used to compute veracity for each rumor in terms of the identity of the rumor-resolving tweet and its binary resolution value judgment. The system operates without access to extralinguistic resources. Evaluated on the data portion for which hand-labeled examples were available, it achieves . 74 F1-score on identifying rumor resolving tweets and . 76 F1-score on predicting if a rumor is resolved as true or false.
Modeling the spread of infectious disease using genetic information within a marked branching process

Accurate assessment of disease dynamics requires a quantification of many unknown parameters governing disease transmission processes. While infection control strategies within hospital settings are stringent, some disease will be propagated due to human interactions (patient‐to‐patient or patient‐to‐caregiver‐to‐patient). In order to understand infectious transmission rates within the hospital, it is necessary to isolate the amount of disease that is endemic to the outside environment. While discerning the origins of disease is difficult when using ordinary spatio‐temporal data (locations and time of disease detection), genotypes that are common to pathogens, with common sources, aid in distinguishing nosocomial infections from independent arrivals of the disease. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate a Bayesian modeling procedure for identifying nosocomial infections, and quantify the rate of these transmissions. We will demonstrate our method using a 10‐year history of Morexella catarhallis. Results will show the degree to which pathogen‐specific, genotypic information impacts inferences about the nosocomial rate of infection. Published in 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Volumetric modeling with implicit functions: a cloud is born

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