Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fracture Mechanics Fatigue of Double-Network Hydrogels

The discovery of tough hydrogels of many chemical compositions, and their emerging applications in medicine, clothing, and engineering, has raised a fundamental question: How do hydrogels behave under many cycles of stretch? This paper initiates the study of the fatigue behavior of the classic PAMPS/PAAM double network hydrogels discovered by Gong and her co-workers (Advanced Materials 15, 1155, 2003). We reproduce the hydrogels, and prepare samples of two types, with or without a crack cut before the test. When an uncut sample is subject to cyclic stretches, internal damage accumulates over thousands of cycles until a steady state is reached. When a cut sample is subject to cyclic stretches, the crack extends cycle by cycle if the amplitude of stretch is above a certain value. A threshold of energy release rate exists, below which the crack remains stationary as the sample is cycled. We find a threshold around 400 J/m2 for hydrogels containing PAAM networks of a low density of crosslinkers, and around 200 J/m2 for hydrogels containing PAAM networks of a high density of crosslinkers. The experimental findings are compared to the Lake-Thomas model adapted to the double-network hydrogels. keywords: double-network hydrogel, fatigue fracture, threshold, shakedown *E-mail: tongqinglu@mail.xjtu. edu.cn; suo@seas.harvard. edu
Spoofing and countermeasures for speaker verification: A review

Although automatic speaker verification has advanced significantly, performance of most speaker verification systems still can be affected due to spoofing attacks. This paper provides an overview of some specific vulnerabilities of speaker verification system to different spoofing attacks. To detect such attacks, some devoted countermeasures are also reviewed. Finally, the paper is concluded with potential issues in the existing methodologies that are needed to be addressed.
Definition and characterization of novel HLA-*A02-restricted CD8+ T cell epitopes derived from JCV polyomavirus with clinical relevance

Human JC and BK polyomaviruses (JCV/BKV) can establish a latent infection without any clinical symptoms in healthy individuals. In immunocompromised hosts infection or reactivation of JCV and BKV can cause lethal progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) and hemorrhagic cystitis, respectively. Vaccination with JCV/BKV derived antigen epitope peptides or adoptive transfer of virus-specific T cells would constitute an elegant approach to clear virus-infected cells. Furthermore, donor leukocyte infusion (DLI) is another therapeutic approach which could be helpful for patients with JCV/BKV infections. So far, only few immunodominant T cell epitopes of JCV and BKV have been described and therefore is a fervent need for the definition of novel epitopes. In this study, we identified novel T cell epitopes by screening libraries of overlapping peptides derived from the major capsid protein VP1 of JCV. Virus like particles (VLPs) were used to confirm naturally processing. Two human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-A*02-restricted epitopes were characterized by fine mapping with overlapping peptides and nonamer peptide sequences were identified. Cytokine release profile of the epitope-specific T cells was analyzed by enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assays and by flow cytometry. We demonstrated that T cell responses were of polyfunctional nature with the potential of epitope-specific killing and cross-reactivity between JCV and BKV. These novel epitopes might constitute a new potential tool to design effective diagnostic and therapeutic approaches against both polyomaviruses.
Tribological Investigation of Piston Ring Coatings Operating in an Alternative Fuel and Engine Oil Blend

The tribological performance of piston ring coatings, including Mo, CrN and physical vapor deposited Diamond-Like-Carbon, sliding against cast iron cylinder segments was studied using a reciprocating bench friction and wear machine. The surface interaction of ring coatings with the blend of 85% ethanol I 15% unleaded gasoline (ethanol 85) fuel and energy-conserving engine oil containing molybdenum dialkyldithiocarbamate (MoDTC) was compared and analyzed. The results show that the DLC coating has the lowest coefficient of friction among all the coatings when running in a blend of engine oil and E85 fuel. The CrN coating has the lowest ring wear but produces the highest wear on the mating cylinder segment. With MoDTC in the engine oil, the wear volumes for all ring coatings are higher while the wear volumes of the cylinder segment are lower than those operating without MoDTC. Based on the surface profile and roughness measurements, the surface roughness becomes smoother and the skewness becomes more negative after the running-in process. Presented at the 57th Annual Meeting in Houston, Texas May 19–23, 2002
Optimal power allocation for full-duplex D2D communications over wireless cellular networks

By enabling two mobile devices, which are far away from the base station (BS) and very close to each other, to establish a direct link, device-to-device (D2D) communications can significantly increase the system throughput for wireless cellular networks. Traditional D2D schemes are mainly based on the half-duplex transmission mode. However, the short distance between the two D2D mobile devices can not only increase the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) but also increase the signal-to-self-interference-plus-noise ratio (SSINR), which motivates us to apply the wireless full-duplex transmission based D2D communications into wireless cellular networks. To further increase the ergodic capacity of the wireless cellular networks, in the paper we propose the full-duplex D2D communications framework for wireless cellular networks. In particular, we formulate the ergodic capacity optimization problem for full-duplex D2D communications based wireless cellular networks. To solve this optimization problem, we develop the optimal full-duplex power allocation schemes to maximize the ergodic capacity of the wireless cellular networks. Also conducted is a set of numerical and simulation results to evaluate the ergodic capacity gain of our proposed full-duplex power allocation schemes as compared with the traditional half-duplex transmission based D2D communications.
Analysis of an ABE Scheme with Verifiable Outsourced Decryption

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) is a popular cryptographic technology to protect the security of users’ data in cloud computing. In order to reduce its decryption cost, outsourcing the decryption of ciphertexts is an available method, which enables users to outsource a large number of decryption operations to the cloud service provider. To guarantee the correctness of transformed ciphertexts computed by the cloud server via the outsourced decryption, it is necessary to check the correctness of the outsourced decryption to ensure security for the data of users. Recently, Li et al. proposed a full verifiability of the outsourced decryption of ABE scheme (ABE-VOD) for the authorized users and unauthorized users, which can simultaneously check the correctness of the transformed ciphertext for both them. However, in this paper we show that their ABE-VOD scheme cannot obtain the results which they had shown, such as finding out all invalid ciphertexts, and checking the correctness of the transformed ciphertext for the authorized user via checking it for the unauthorized user. We first construct some invalid ciphertexts which can pass the validity checking in the decryption algorithm. That means their “verify-then-decrypt” skill is unavailable. Next, we show that the method to check the validity of the outsourced decryption for the authorized users via checking it for the unauthorized users is not always correct. That is to say, there exist some invalid ciphertexts which can pass the validity checking for the unauthorized user, but cannot pass the validity checking for the authorized user.
Analysis of serum IL-38 in juvenile-onset systemic lupus erythematosus

Yusuke Takeuchi, Tomoko Seki, Norimoto Kobayashi, Kenji Sano, Tomonari Shigemura, Hisashi Shimojo, Kazuhiko Matsumoto and Kazunaga Agematsu Department of Pediatrics, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan; Department of Dermatology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan; Department of Laboratory Medicine, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan; Department of Pathology, Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan; Department of Infection and Host Defense, Graduate School of Medicine, Shinshu University, Matsumoto, Japan
Fatigue Damage Evaluation of Short Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics Based on Phase Information of Thermoelastic Temperature Change

Carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) is widely used for structural members of transportation vehicles such as automobile, aircraft, or spacecraft, utilizing its excellent specific strength and specific rigidity in contrast with the metal. Short carbon fiber composite materials are receiving a lot of attentions because of their excellent moldability and productivity, however they show complicated behaviors in fatigue fracture due to the random fibers orientation. In this study, thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) using an infrared thermography was applied to evaluate fatigue damage in short carbon fiber composites. The distribution of the thermoelastic temperature change was measured during the fatigue test, as well as the phase difference between the thermoelastic temperature change and applied loading signal. Evolution of fatigue damage was detected from the distribution of thermoelastic temperature change according to the thermoelastic damage analysis (TDA) procedure. It was also found that fatigue damage evolution was more clearly detected than before by the newly developed thermoelastic phase damage analysis (TPDA) in which damaged area was emphasized in the differential phase delay images utilizing the property that carbon fiber shows opposite phase thermoelastic temperature change.
Video Semantic Clustering with Sparse and Incomplete Tags

Clustering tagged videos into semantic groups is importantbut challenging due to the need for jointly learning correlations between heterogeneous visual and tag data. The taskis made more difficult by inherently sparse and incompletetag labels. In this work, we develop a method for accuratelyclustering tagged videos based on a novel Hierarchical-MultiLabel Random Forest model capable of correlating structured visual and tag information. Specifically, our model exploits hierarchically structured tags of different abstractnessof semantics and multiple tag statistical correlations, thus discovers more accurate semantic correlations among differentvideo data, even with highly sparse/incomplete tags.
Automating the maintenance of photovoltaic power plants

Photovoltaic (PV) plants experience aging over a time span that can lead to faults, consequently reducing the overall power production of PV plants. Thermo-diagnosis is one of the most effective methods for inspecting the photovoltaic plants for faults, such as hotspots. The inspection of individual PV panels for hotspots can be time consuming and expensive. Either the panels are located at a height on the rooftop of buildings or over a larger area, thus making the inspection process significantly complicated. This paper presents a solution to automate the process of PV plant maintenance by employing a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) equipped with a custom-designed payload that includes a thermal camera and a low-cost GNSS RTK receiver. The RPAS performs a flying mission over a PV plant to collect thermal images accurately geo-referenced by GNSS RTK receiver that allows to identify and locate the defective PV module without immediate human intervention. The paper presents end-to-end system design of the proposed solution and preliminary results of the proof-of-concept.
TCP Wrapper: Network Monitoring, Access Control, and Booby Traps

This paper presents a simple tool to monitor and control incoming network traffic. The tool has been successfully used for shielding off systems and for detection of cracker activity. It has no impact on legal computer users, and does not require any change to existing systems software or configuration files. The tool has been installed world-wide on numerous UNIX systems without any source code change.
Evaluating the use of PCR for diagnosing invasive aspergillosis

ABSTRACT Introduction: Aspergillus species, primarily Aspergillus fumigatus, are still the most emerging fungal pathogens. Within recent years, novel molecular methods have been developed to improve the diagnosis of life-threatening invasive aspergillosis in high risk patients. Especially patients with malignant hematological diseases undergoing intensive chemotherapy are at risk and mortality rates are exceptionally high, in part due to difficulties and delays in establishing a microbiologic diagnosis. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial for an adequate therapeutical management, but, however, are hardly achieved in the clinical setting because most of the current conventional diagnostic tools either lack specificity or acceptable sensitivity at the critical early phase of the infection. Areas covered: To review the clinical value, advantages and problems as well as drawbacks of molecular approaches, especially polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based assays to detect genomic DNA of Aspergillus species in clinical samples of immunocompromised, especially hematological patients at high risk for IA, a comprehensive review of the literature was performed and expert opinion was expressed. Expert commentary: The results of numerous attempts to diagnose invasive aspergillosis by PCR-based detection of fungal genome in clinical samples highlight the potential of the PCR technique to improve early diagnosis of invasive aspergillosis in patients with hematological malignancies during intensive antineoplastic treatment, combined with imaging surveillance and serologic diagnostic tools. Further comparative validation of reliable assays in prospective multicenter studies is mandatory and urgently needed in order to establish a harmonization and standardization, so that ‘gold standard assays’ may be incorporated into diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms that improve the prognosis of patients with life-threatening infections caused by Aspergillus species.
Popularity-guided top-k extraction of entity attributes

Recent progress in information extraction technology has enabled a vast array of applications that rely on structured data that is embedded in natural-language text. In particular, the extraction of concepts from the Web---with their desired attributes---is important to provide applications with rich, structured access to information. In this paper, we focus on an important family of concepts, namely, entities (e.g., people or organizations) and their attributes, and study how to efficiently and effectively extract them from Web-accessible text documents. Unfortunately, information extraction over the Web is challenging for both quality and efficiency reasons. Regarding quality, many sources on the Web contain misleading or invalid information; furthermore, extraction systems often return incorrect data. Regarding efficiency, information extraction is a time-consuming process, often involving expensive text-processing steps. We present a top-k extraction processing approach that addresses both the quality and efficiency challenges: for each entity and attribute of interest, we return the top-k values of the attribute for the entity according to a scoring function for extracted attribute values. This scoring function weighs the extraction confidence from individual documents, as well as the "importance" of the documents where the information originates. We define the document importance in terms of entity-specific document "popularity" statistics from a major search engine. Overall, our top-k extraction processing approach manages to identify the top attribute values for the entities of interest efficiently, as we demonstrate with a large-scale experimental evaluation over real-life data.
Tetraspanin microdomains control localized protein kinase C signaling in B cells

The tetraspanin protein CD53 recruits the kinase PKCβ to the plasma membrane to activate signaling in B cells. Kinase recruiting by a tetraspanin The protein kinase C (PKC) family member PKCβ mediates antigen-dependent B cell receptor (BCR) signaling to activate B cells. Mice deficient in the PKCβ isoform have defective antibody responses, whereas PKCβ-specific inhibitors are under investigation for the treatment of B cell malignancies. Using live-cell imaging of mouse and human B cells, Zuidscherwoude et al. showed that, in response to BCR stimulation, PKCβ was specifically and transiently recruited to plasma membrane microdomains enriched in the tetraspanin protein CD53. Mouse or human B cells deficient in CD53, but not other tetraspanins, showed impaired PKCβ activation and reduced phosphorylation of its targets, suggesting that CD53-containing membrane regions act as platforms for the activation of PKCβ in these cells. Activation of B cells by the binding of antigens to the B cell receptor (BCR) requires the protein kinase C (PKC) family member PKCβ. Because PKCs must translocate to the plasma membrane to become activated, we investigated the mechanisms regulating their spatial distribution in mouse and human B cells. Through live-cell imaging, we showed that BCR-stimulated production of the second messenger diacylglycerol (DAG) resulted in the translocation of PKCβ from the cytosol to plasma membrane regions containing the tetraspanin protein CD53. CD53 was specifically enriched at sites of BCR signaling, suggesting that BCR-dependent PKC signaling was initiated at these tetraspanin microdomains. Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy studies confirmed the molecular recruitment of PKC to CD53-containing microdomains, which required the amino terminus of CD53. Furthermore, we showed that Cd53-deficient B cells were defective in the phosphorylation of PKC substrates. Consistent with this finding, PKC recruitment to the plasma membrane was impaired in both mouse and human CD53-deficient B cells compared to that in their wild-type counterparts. These data suggest that CD53 promotes BCR-dependent PKC signaling by recruiting PKC to the plasma membrane so that it can phosphorylate its substrates and that tetraspanin-containing microdomains can act as signaling hotspots in the plasma membrane.
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease in Children

Abstract Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, a progressive form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), is one of the most common hepatic diseases in children who present with particular risk factors including obesity, sedentary lifestyle, and/or a predisposing genetic background. The worldwide prevalence of NAFLD in children is a worrying phenomenon because this disease is closely associated with the development of both cirrhosis and cardiometabolic syndrome in adulthood. To date, the etiopathogenesis of primary NAFLD in children is unknown. Understanding the pathogenetic mechanisms provides the basis to characterize early predictors of the disease and noninvasive diagnostic tools and to design novel specific treatments and possible management strategies. Despite a few clinical trials on the use of antioxidants combined with lifestyle intervention for NAFLD, no treatment exists for children with NAFLD. In this review, the authors provide an overview of current concepts in epidemiology, histological features, etiopathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of NAFLD in pediatric population.
Cultural Values Predict Coping Using Culture as an Individual Difference Variable in Multicultural Samples

Three studies establish the relations between cultural values and coping using multicultural samples of international students. Study 1 established the cross-cultural measurement invariance of subscales of the Cope inventory Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub, 1989) used in the article. The cultural value dimensions of embeddedness versus autonomy and hierarchy versus egalitarianism predicted how international students from 28 (Study 2) and 38 (Study 3) countries coped with adapting to living in a new country. Cultural values predicted coping by religion, and this relation was only partly mediated by personally valuing tradition, cultural norms, and perceived difficulty of adapting. Cultural values predicted emotion-focused/avoidant coping beyond neuroticism and seeking social support beyond extraversion. Mediators to the relations between cultural values and these coping strategies were also found. The results demonstrate the power of cultural values to predict coping and bring to the forefront the use of multicultural samples as an important method in cross-cultural research.
Reliability of autonomic and vascular components of baroreflex sensitivity in adolescents

Improvements in the autonomic and vascular systems are implicated in cardiovascular disease risk reduction. Baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) is composed of vascular and autonomic components. This study aimed to investigate between‐ and within‐day reliability of BRS and its autonomic and vascular determinants in adolescents. Thirteen male adolescents (14·1 ± 0·5 y) participated in this study. For between‐day reliability, participants completed four experimental visits separated by a minimum of 48‐h. For within‐day reliability, participants repeated BRS assessments three times in the morning with one hour between the measures. BRS was evaluated using the cross‐spectral gain (LFgain) between blood pressure and heart rate interval. BRS was further divided into: 1) vascular component using arterial compliance (AC); and 2) autonomic component measured as LFgain divided by AC (LFgain/AC). LFgain, AC and LFgain/AC presented between‐day coefficient of variation (CV) of 20%, 17%, and 20%, respectively. Similarly, variables associated with blood pressure control, such as cardiac output, mean arterial pressure, heart rate and total peripheral resistance, presented CVs ranging from 6% to 15%. Within‐day reliability was poorer compared to between‐day for LFgain (25%), AC (25%), and LFgain/AC (31%), as well as all hemodynamic variables (CVs from 11% to 22%, except heart rate with presented CV of 6%). This study indicates suitable between‐ and within‐reliability of BRS and its autonomic and vascular determinants, as well as hemodynamic variables associated with BRS, in adolescents.
Manifold Regularized Distribution Adaptation for Classification of Remote Sensing Images

We perform unsupervised domain adaptation for the classification of remote sensing data by learning a shared subspace in this paper. Maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) is applied to each class, making the approach able to minimize the domain shift on a per-class basis. Furthermore, manifold regularization is employed to constrain the data manifold of both the source and target data to be preserved in the subspace. The manifold regularization in conjunction with the per-class MMD strategy is called manifold regularized distribution adaptation (MRDA) algorithm. Since the class mean of target data should be estimated by the predicted labels, we integrate spatial information and overall mean coincidence (OMC) method to improve the prediction accuracy, resulting in Spa_OMC_MRDA approach. Experimental results on both multispectral and hyperspectral remote sensing data indicated the good performances of the proposed approach.