Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Petri Automata

Kleene algebra axioms are complete with respect to both language models and binary relation models. In particular, two regular expressions recognise the same language if and only if they are universally equivalent in the model of binary relations. We consider Kleene allegories, i.e., Kleene algebras with two additional operations and a constant which are natural in binary relation models: intersection, converse, and the full relation. While regular languages are closed under those operations, the above characterisation breaks. Putting together a few results from the literature, we give a characterisation in terms of languages of directed and labelled graphs. By taking inspiration from Petri nets, we design a finite automata model, Petri automata, allowing to recognise such graphs. We prove a Kleene theorem for this automata model: the sets of graphs recognisable by Petri automata are precisely the sets of graphs definable through the extended regular expressions we consider. Petri automata allow us to obtain decidability of identity-free relational Kleene lattices, i.e., the equational theory generated by binary relations on the signature of regular expressions with intersection, but where one forbids unit. This restriction is used to ensure that the corresponding graphs are acyclic. We actually show that this decision problem is EXPSPACE-complete.
Using deep belief networks for vector-based speaker recognition

Deep belief networks (DBNs) have become a successful approach for acoustic modeling in speech recognition. DBNs exhibit strong approximation properties, improved performance, and are parameter efficient. In this work, we propose methods for applying DBNs to speaker recognition. In contrast to prior work, our approach to DBNs for speaker recognition starts at the acoustic modeling layer. We use sparse-output DBNs trained with both unsupervised and supervised methods to generate statistics for use in standard vector-based speaker recognition methods. We show that a DBN can replace a GMM UBM in this processing. Methods, qualitative analysis, and results are given on a NIST SRE 2012 task. Overall, our results show that DBNs show competitive performance to modern approaches in an initial implementation of our framework.
Microscopic brain structure revisited in genetic epilepsy

There are usually no structural changes detectable on an individual MRI scan of a patient with idiopathic/genetic generalized epilepsy (IGE/GGE) or simple febrile seizures. This observation is also used as a diagnostic criterion for this type of epilepsy, and more broadly also for other types of genetic epilepsies.1 However, slight morphologic changes can be detected as group effects in comparison to normal controls, using, for example, postmortem histologic investigations2 and in vivo MRI scans of human brains.3,4 In this issue of Neurology®, Wimmer et al.5 add a new aspect to this long-term ongoing discussion by reporting changes in the number of GABAergic inhibitory neurons in different cortical layers in a mouse model of genetic epilepsy.
Heart rate indication using musical data

Heart rate data reflects various physiological states such as biological workload, stress at work and concentration on tasks, drowsiness and the active state of the autonomic nervous system. This paper proposes a system to indicate heart rate using musical data. Music changes physiological states for the better by relaxing people, or contributing to patient treatment through music therapy. Information in the form of music is advantageous because it does not hinder work as does verbal information and it contains more information than warning noises. We introduce and evaluate a prototype heart rate indication system and describe evaluation results of biofeedback effects on the worker during mental workload. The prototype system sequentially inputs the instantaneous heart rate into the computer, converts the data into a musical instrument digital interface, the digital music format, and outputs it from the sound source. The system uses an ECG which can be measured easily.
Pathways for Theoretical Advances in Visualization

There is little doubt that having a theoretic foundation will benefit the field of visualization, including its main subfields. Because there has been a substantial amount of work on taxonomies and conceptual models in the visualization literature and some recent work on theoretic frameworks, such a theoretic foundation is not a foolish or impractical ambition. This article asks, “How can we build a theoretic foundation for visualization collectively as a community? ” The authors envision the pathways for four different aspects of a theoretic foundation: taxonomies and ontologies, principles and guidelines, conceptual models and theoretic frameworks, and quantitative laws and theoretic systems.
Human dendritic cell line models for DC differentiation and clinical DC vaccination studies

Dendritic cells (DC) are increasingly applied in the immunotherapy of cancer. As the development of a standardized DC vaccine product is often hampered by the limited availability of DC precursors and inter‐ and intra‐donor variability, and the preparation of individual vaccines is labor‐intensive, it would be preferable to use DC from a readily available and unlimited source, such as cell lines can provide. It has been described that leukemia‐derived cell lines are able to differentiate into functional DC, creating possibilities for the development of highly reproducible DC vaccines and providing in vitro model systems for in‐depth studies about DC physiology. This review discusses the different human DC cell line differentiation models described so far. Based on the available data, characteristics that determine the ability of leukemia cells to differentiate along the different precursor stages into functional DC will be formulated. In addition, evidence will be provided that the human CD34+ acute myeloid leukemia cell line MUTZ‐3 provides DC that exhibit the functional properties that are crucial for the in vivo generation of CTL‐mediated immunity and thus, currently, represents the most valuable, sustainable model system for myeloid DC differentiation and clinical DC vaccination studies.
Development of a Stretchable Conductor Array With Embedded Metal Nanowires

In this paper, we presented the design, fabrication, and testing of a new type of stretchable conductor array with embedded nanowires. The conductor array could serve as the interconnect for skin-like, conformal circuits, which is one of the key components in a stretchable tactile sensor for minimally invasive surgery (MIS) devices and robots to measure the contact force, where both stretchability and conductivity are required. One example of such applications is to measure the contact force between a colonoscope and the colonic wall during colonoscopy. The proposed conductor array was fabricated by embedding several parallel silver-nanowires (AgNWs) strips (one strip is in the dimension of 3 mm wide, 360 mm long, and less than 0.01 mm thick) into the surface of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) thin film (50 mm wide, 360 mm long 1 mm thick). The conductor array was then wrapped around the surface of a colonoscope for bending tests. The results from the bending tests have demonstrated that the conductor strip has a stable resistance (around 50 Ω) when the bending radius changes from 150 to 25 mm. Multitime bending tests have shown no conductivity change. Moreover, wiping tests have shown that the AgNWs/PDMS conductor array could survive external damage from its working environment. With the good repeatability and unchanged conductivity during stretching, the conductor array developed in this paper is applicable to a stretchable tactile sensor.
Exploring symmetry in wireless propagation channels

Wireless communications literature is very rich with empirical studies and measurement campaigns that study the nature of the wireless propagation channel. However, despite their undoubted usefulness, many of these studies have omitted a fundamental yet key feature of the physical signal propagation, that is, wireless propagation asymmetry. This feature does not agree with the electromagnetic reciprocity theorem, and the many research papers that adopt wireless channel symmetry, and hence rendering their modeling, unexpectedly, inaccurate. Besides, asymmetry is unquestionably an important characteristic of wireless channels, which needs to be accurately characterized for vehicular/mobile communications, 5G networks, and associated applications such as indoor/outdoor localization. This paper presents a modest and a preliminary study that reports potential causes of propagation asymmetry. Measurements conducted on Khalifa University campus in UAE show that wireless channels are symmetric in the absence of symmetry impairments. Therefore, care should be taken when considering some practical wireless propagation scenarios. Key conclusions and recommendation are summarized. We believe that this study will be inspiring for the academic community and will trigger further investigations within wireless propagation assumptions.
A heuristic digital control method for optimal capacitor charging

A digital control method for optimal capacitor charging was developed and tested by simulations and experimentally. The control algorithm follows the concept of first searching for the optimal charging conditions of the given power stage and then using the collected data in the free running operation. The major advantage of this control approach is that it eliminates the uncertainty due to parameters variations and that it can be applied to any type of capacitor charger configuration by setting the desired charging profile objectives. The method is demonstrated on a piezoelectric transformer based power stage that behaves like a resonant converter. To further increase the accuracy of the control for this resonant converter case, we applied a frequency resolution enhancement algorithm that allows fine tuning of the drive. Excellent agreement was obtained between the analytical derivations, simulations and experimental results.
Doctoral Symposium: Large-Scale Stream Graph Processing

Dynamically changing graphs are a powerful abstraction used to represent temporal relationships and connections occurring be-tween data entities in various real-world organizations, such as social and telecommunication networks. The increasing volume, variety and velocity of graph-structured data in many application domains have led to a development of large-scale graph processing systems. However, current state-of-the-art graph processing systems do not provide efficient support for streaming graph scenarios. In this report, we describe and discuss stream graph processing , which narrows the problem of traditional graph processing by focusing on near real-time analysis of dynamic graph data constructed and maintained from stream sources, as opposed to processing of historical graph datasets loaded from a disk storage. We provide an outline of challenges in stream graph processing and present our preliminary approach to designing a stream graph processing system done as a part of early PhD work.
"Possible TRALI" developed during bilateral total knee arthroplasty replacement -A case report-

Transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) is one of the leading causes of transfusion-related morbidity and mortality. However, it is frequently not diagnosed and under-reported, which could result in inappropriate treatment. Diagnostic definition for TRALI consists of hypoxia and bilateral pulmonary edema occurring during or within 6 hours of a transfusion in the absence of cardiac failure or intravascular volume overload. Here, we report a fatal case, which resulted from under-recognition and misdiagnosis of TRALI occurring during transfusion with packed red blood cells during a bilateral total knee replacement.
Anatomy of and patterns of water currents through the mantle cavities of pleurotomariid gastropods

The paired pallial organs of pleurotomariids (slit shells) are generally interpreted as representing the primitive gastropod condition. Relatively few individual pleurotomariids have been observed alive; most anatomical descriptions have been based on retracted, preserved material. In this study, live animals were observed in still and moving water, videotaped, photographed, and relaxed prior to anatomical description. The pleurotomariid Perotrochus maureri formed a siphon with its mantle at the posterior end of the slit in the shell. As expected, water was expelled from the mantle cavity through this siphon. Dye released along the aperture, the area traditionally considered to be the incurrent window, was never observed to enter the mantle cavity. Instead, water entered through the slit just anterior to the siphon. A similar pattern was observed in the deep‐slit pleurotomariid Entemnotrochus adansonianus. Thus the “anal” slit provided the sites for the incurrent as well as the excurrent windows. This surprising flow pattern is inconsistent with the traditional scenario of early gastropod evolution. J. Morphol. 262:659–666, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Formation of silicides in annealed periodic multilayers

Periodic multilayers of nanometric period are widely used as optical components for the X-ray and extreme UV (EUV) ranges, in X-ray space telescopes, X-ray microscopes, EUV photolithography or synchrotron beamlines for example. Their optical performances depend on the quality of the interfaces between the various layers: chemical interdiffusion or mechanical roughness shifts the application wavelength and can drastically decrease the reflectance. Since under high thermal charge interdiffusion is known to get enhanced, the study of the thermal stability of such structures is essential to understand how interfacial compounds develop. We have characterized X-ray and EUV siliconcontaining multilayers (Mo/Si, Sc/Si and Mg/SiC) as a function of the annealing temperature (up to 600°C) using two non-destructive methods. X-ray emission from the silicon atoms, describing the Si valence states, is used to determine the chemical nature of the compounds present in the interphases while X-ray reflectivity in the hard and soft X-ray ranges can be related to the optical properties. In the three cases, interfacial metallic (Mo, Sc, Mg) silicides are evidenced and the thickness of the interphase increases with the annealing temperature. For Mo/Si and Sc/Si multilayers, silicides are even present in the as-prepared multilayers. Characteristic parameters of the stacks are determined: composition of the interphases, thickness and roughness of the layers and interphases if any. Finally, we have evidenced the maximum temperature of application of these multilayers to minimize interdiffusion.
Planar Dipole Input Resistance vs. Trace Thickness for Different Materials

Abstract : This report details a numerical study on the impact of trace thickness on the antenna s input resistance when using the conductivities of the following materials: copper trace, copper paint, silver-loaded ink, indium tin oxide (ITO), poly-ethylenedioxythiophe (PEDOT), carbon fiber composite, and carbon fiber. An antipodal planar dipole, measuring 305 mm x 4 mm and resonant at 450 MHz, is used for simulating the different materials. The antipodal planar model is constructed, measured, and compared to simulation results from commercial electromagnetic (EM) solvers to validate the structure. The results show that the antipodal structure performs as it should. The simulation results show that the ohmic resistance increases over the frequency band and decreases as trace thickness is increased. The efficiency is also improved as the trace thickness is increased.
Protein arginine methyltransferase I: Substrate specificity and role in hnRNP assembly

Prmt1, the major protein arginine methyltransferase in mammalian cells, has been implicated in signal transduction, transcriptional control, and protein trafficking. In the present study, mouse embryonic stem cells homozygous for an essentially null mutation in the Prmt1 gene were used to examine Prmt1 activity and substrate specificity, which by several criteria appeared to be highly specific. First, other methyltransferases did not substitute for the loss of Prmt1 activity. Second, almost all proteins modified by recombinant Prmt1 in vitro were authentic substrates, i.e., proteins rendered hypomethylated by Prmt1 gene disruption. Finally, Prmt1 did not modify the substrates of other methyltransferases from cells treated with methyltransferase inhibitors. Recombinant proteins corresponding to two splice‐variants, Prmt1353 and Prmt1371, methylated different, proteins in vitro, providing the first evidence for functional differences between the two isoforms. However, the differences in substrate specificity were lost by the addition of an N‐terminal His6 tag. Loss of Prmt1 activity (and hypomethylation of hnRNPs) has no obvious effect on the formation or composition of hnRNP complexes. Finally, methylation of the most abundant Prmt1 substrates appeared to be extensive and constitutive throughout the cell cycle, suggesting the modification does not modulate protein function under normal growth conditions. J. Cell. Biochem. 87: 394–407, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Kinetics of γ‐H2AX focus formation upon treatment of cells with UV light and alkylating agents

Histone H2AX is rapidly phosphorylated in response to DNA double‐strand breaks (DSBs) induced by ionizing radiation (IR). Here we show that DNA damage induced by alkylating agents [methyl methanesulfonate (MMS) and N‐methyl‐N′‐nitro‐N‐nitrosoguanidine (MNNG)] and ultraviolet light (UV‐C) leads to a dose and time dependent accumulation of phosphorylated H2AX (γ‐H2AX). Time course experiments revealed that the number of γ‐H2AX foci reached peak levels 8 hr after MMS or MNNG treatment and declined to almost control values within 24 hr after exposure. Upon UV‐C treatment, a biphasic response was observed with a maximum 12 hr after treatment. In 43‐3B cells deficient in nucleotide excision repair (NER) the number of γ‐H2AX foci increased steadily. γ‐H2AX foci were preferentially formed in BrdU labeled cells. In proliferation compromised cells, the γ‐H2AX level was significantly reduced, indicating that most of the γ‐H2AX foci induced by UV‐C and alkylating agent treatments were replication dependent. The data are in line with the view that DNA damage induced by UV‐C light and simple alkylating agents, leads to the formation of DSBs during DNA replication giving rise to H2AX phosphorylation. In replicating NER defective cells, DSBs accumulate due to nonrepaired primary DNA lesions that produce a high level of DSBs during replication. The data support that γ‐H2AX foci are a useful marker of DSBs that are induced by S‐phase dependent genotoxins during replication. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. , 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Fairness vs. Efficiency: Comparison of Game Theoretic Criteria for OFDMA Scheduling

The four most important game theoretic solutions for cooperative bargaining are applied as OFDMA schedulers and simulatively compared in two scenarios with respect to sum throughput, per user throughput, frequency band sharing and scaling with the number of users. Scheduling according to the Kalai-Smorodinsky solution turns out to be an alternative to proportional fairness (Nash solution), both offer a compromise between efficiency and fairness.
DIFFERENTIAL IN VIVO EFFECTS OF WHOLE CIGARETTE SMOKE EXPOSURE VERSUS CIGARETTE SMOKE EXTRACT ON MOUSE CILIATED TRACHEAL EPITHELIUM

In this study the authors compared the affect of vapor phase cigarette smoke (CS) versus cigarette smoke extract (CSE) on the lungs and upper airway of C57BL/6 mice. The authors found that CSE treatment significantly increased neutrophil influx (P < .001), baseline ciliary beat frequency (CBF) (P < .05), and protein kinase C activity compared to CS and controls. Isoproterenol increased CBF with CS exposure, but decreased CBF with CSE (P < .01). Isoproterenol increased protein kinase A (PKA) activity in all groups except CSE. CSE exposure induced inflammatory cell bronchiolitis. These data indicate that CSE exposure has differential effects on the lungs and tracheal epithelium compared to CS exposure.
Mitigating sync overhead in single-level store systems

Emerging non-volatile memory technologies offer the durability of disk and the byte-addressability of DRAM, which makes it feasible to build up single-level store systems. However, due to extremely low latency of persistent writes to non-volatile memory, software stack accounts for the majority of the overall performance overhead, one of which comes from crash consistency guarantees. In order to let persistent data structures survive power failures or system crashes, some measures, such as write-ahead logging or copy-on-write, along with frequent cacheline flushes, must be taken to ensure the consistency of durable data, thereby incurring non-trivial sync overhead. In this paper, we propose two techniques to mitigate the sync overhead. First, we leverage write-optimized non-volatile memory to store log entries on chip instead of off chip, thereby eliminating sync overhead. Second, we present an adaptive caching mode policy in terms of data access patterns to eliminate unnecessary sync overhead. Evaluation results indicate that the two techniques help improve the overall performance from 5.88x to 6.77x compared to conventional transactional persistent memory.
An Msh2 conditional knockout mouse for studying intestinal cancer and testing anticancer agents.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Mutations in the DNA mismatch repair (MMR) gene MSH2 cause Lynch syndromes I and II and sporadic colorectal cancers. Msh2(null) mice predominantly develop lymphoma and do not accurately recapitulate the colorectal cancer phenotype. METHODS We generated and examined mice with a conditional Msh2 disruption (Msh2(LoxP)), permitting tissue-specific gene inactivation. ECMsh2(LoxP/LoxP) mice carried an EIIa-Cre transgene, and VCMsh2(LoxP/LoxP) mice carried a Villin-Cre transgene. We combined the VCMsh2(LoxP) allele with either Msh2(Delta7null) (VCMsh2(LoxP/null)) or Msh2(G674D) mutations (VCMsh2(LoxP/G674D)) to create allelic phase mutants. These mice were given cisplatin or 5-fluorouracil/leucovorin and oxaliplatin (FOLFOX), and their tumors were measured by magnetic resonance imaging. RESULTS Embryonic fibroblasts from ECMsh2(LoxP/LoxP) mice do not express MSH2 and are MMR deficient. Reverse transcription, polymerase chain reaction, and immunohistochemistry from VCMsh2(LoxP/LoxP) mice demonstrated specific loss of Msh2 messenger RNA and protein from epithelial cells of the intestinal tract. Microsatellite instability was observed in all VCMsh2 strains and limited to the intestinal mucosa. Resulting adenomas and adenocarcinomas had somatic truncation mutations to the adenomatous polyposis coli (Apc) gene. VCMsh2(LoxP/LoxP) mice did not develop lymphoma. Comparison of allelic phase tumors revealed significant differences in multiplicity and size. When treated with cisplatin or FOLFOX, tumor size was reduced in VCMsh2(LoxP/G674D) but not VCMsh2(LoxP/null) tumors. The apoptotic response to FOLFOX was partially sustained in the intestinal mucosa of VCMsh2(LoxP/G674D) animals. CONCLUSIONS Msh2(LoxP/LoxP) mice in combination with appropriate Cre recombinase transgenes have excellent potential for preclinical modeling of Lynch syndrome, MMR-deficient tumors of other tissue types, and use in drug development.