Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tapered Hollow‐Core Fiber Air‐Microbubble Fabry–Perot Interferometer for High Sensitivity Strain Measurement

A highly sensitive and ultracompact (12.5 µm) optic‐fiber strain sensor based on air‐microbubble Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) formed in a tapered hollow core fiber (HCF) is proposed. The sensor is fabricated by fusion splicing the lead‐in and lead‐out single‐mode fibers (SMFs) with a HCF, and then the HCF is tapered at the center to construct an air‐microbubble FPI. The application of the tapered operation not only provides an ultrasmall FPI preparation method, but also increases the strain sensitivity of the proposed FPI sensor. The simulation model is established based on the COMSOL to study the response to axial strain, and the results show that the existence of tapered area can effectively improve the strain sensitivity. Accordingly, the high strain sensitivity of 8.62 pm µε−1 is achieved with a good linear response (R‐square: 0.996) in the wide strain range of 0–3200 µε, which is almost four times larger than that of the all‐fiber FPI strain sensors without the tapered area (about 2 pm µε−1). In addition, the sensor has a negligible temperature sensitivity of 0.32 pm °C−1. Therefore, the highly sensitive, lower temperature crosstalk, low‐cost, and ultracompact optic‐fiber strain sensor would have a broad prospect of application in practice.
Cytoprotective and antioxidant effects of phenolic compounds from Haberlea rhodopensis Friv. (Gesneriaceae)

Background: Haberlea rhodopensis Friv. (Gesneriaceae) is a rare poikilohydric endemic and preglacial relict growing in Balkan Peninsula. Previous investigations demonstrated strong antioxidant, antimicrobial and antimutagenic potential of alcoholic extract from the plant. Objective: The isolation of known caffeoyl phenylethanoid glucoside – myconoside and flavone-C-glycosides hispidulin 8-C-(2-O-syringoyl-β-glucopyranoside), hispidulin 8-C-(6-O-acetyl-2-O-syringoyl-β-glucopyranoside), and hispidulin 8-C-(6-O-acetyl-β-glucopyranoside) from the leaves of H. rhodopensis was carried out. The aim of this study was to investigate cyto-protective and antioxidant effects of isolated compounds. Materials and Methods: Antioxidant activity of isolated substances was examined using 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2’-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) radicals; ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay and inhibition of lipid peroxidation (LPO) in linoleic acid system by ferric thyocianate method. The compounds were investigated for their possible protective and antioxidant effects against tert-butyl hydroperoxide-induced oxidative stress in isolated rat hepatocytes. The levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances were assayed as an index of LPO. Lactate dehydrogenase leakage, cell viability, and reduced glutathione depletion were used as signs of cytotoxicity. Results: Myconoside demonstrated the highest DPPH radical scavenging, ABTS, FRAP, and antioxidant activity in linoleic acid system as well as the highest and statistically most significant protection and antioxidant activity against the toxic agent. Conclusion: Phenolic compounds isolated from H. rhodopensis demonstrated significant cytoprotective, radical scavenging potential, and inhibit lipid peroxidation, moreover, myconoside was found to be a new powerful natural antioxidant.
Occurrence of toxigenic fungi in ochratoxin A contaminated liquorice root

Fungi associated with ochratoxin A (OTA)-contaminated liquorice root and their capabilities for OTA production were investigated. Medicinal materials of mouldy liquorice root were collected from herbal markets located in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Henan provinces and Beijing, China, respectively. Sixteen fungal species belonging to Penicillium, Aspergillus, Eurotium, Fusarium, Mucor and Scopulariopsis were isolated; the fungal composition was different in each liquorice root sample. Penicillium polonicum was predominant, comprising 54% of the total isolates in the liquorice root sample from Jiangxi province, which was contaminated with OTA at the highest level. In other samples with lower OTA contents, species of Aspergillus and Eurotium were predominant. OTA production of representative strains on rice media was detected by LC-MS/MS; all Penicillium polonicum isolates and a P. chrysogenum were ochratoxigenic; OTA concentrations ranged from 6.94 to 217.37 ng g−1. This is the first study to report P. polonicum as an OTA-producing fungus. OTA contamination of mouldy liquorice root constitutes a major health hazard in consumption. This situation demands urgent and undivided attention.
Collapse Therapy in Pulmonary Tuberculosis

mends Cura stoves, but if these are to function properly they must be put in by an expert. A most successful heating installation was seen at Liverpool in the shape of a concrete box or cover containing a heating element. Another good type of heater was a thermostatically controlled heating bar seen in several places. In no case was gas-heating seen, and the few oil stoves are gradually being replaced by electrical appliances. Some officials argued that so long as the shelter is dry the people will keep themselves warm, but in some basement shelters the draughts in cold weather must create an arctic-like atmosphere. The actual construction of shelters is not primarily a medical problem, but from all aspects of health, physical and psychological, the narrow trench shelters and adapted tunnels and tube station platforms are not satisfactory, because in these passages there is not enough room for movement. The best kind of shelters are those which can be bayed off into approximately square compartments, with a section for medical aid post, canteen, and recreative facilities. The keystone of shelter life is the warden. If there is a good warden there is a good shelter. Women wardens, especially the motherly type not younger than 40, are in most instances more suitable than men. In its recent memorandum the Ministry of Health has recommended the employment of women wardens in the proportion of one to four or five men. It would be advantageous if the proportion in the large shelters-that is, those holding 500 and over-were at least one woman to two men and in smaller shelters one woman to one man. Two large provincial authorities prefer women wardens to men as they find they are more conscientious and have a better influence in the shelters. No doubt shelters will be developed and improved still further. The shelter problem is by no means solved. Perhaps when the solution is reached and the perfect shelter makes its appearance the need for it will have passed away.
Scope of practice decision making: findings from a national survey of Irish nurses and midwives.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The aim was to examine and describe aspects of the current scope of practice among nurses and midwives in Ireland. The objective was to describe practitioners' decision making associated with the scope of practice. BACKGROUND Regulatory frameworks on the scope of practice describe the roles and activities an individual registrant is permitted to undertake in the course of professional practice. Research into the scope of practice has examined practitioners' perspectives on particular frameworks or their experiences of practice expansion, and suggests that frameworks are helpful in guiding practitioners; however, local circumstances and practitioner competence often determine scope of practice. DESIGN A national postal survey of registered nurses and midwives was conducted to elicit self-reports of current scope of practice. METHODS A stratified random sample of 2354 registered nurses and midwives in Ireland were surveyed using the Scope-Q, a 64-item self-report questionnaire. RESULTS While over half of the respondents consulted others when making scope of practice decisions, the majority relied on their own professional judgement, acted only when they believed that they were competent to act, and recognised the limitations of their own competence. Although a small number of statistically significant associations were observed between respondents' age and self-reported scope of practice, respondents' current scope of practice was independent of either grade or gender. CONCLUSIONS When making a decision about scope of practice, practitioners may consult other resources, including published frameworks, professional colleagues and line managers; however, most particularly, older, more experienced practitioners, rely on their own professional judgement when making scope of practice decisions. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE While published scope of practice frameworks guide practitioners on how they may act in circumstances of uncertainty, regulatory authorities should continue to emphasise individual accountability and self-reliance in everyday decision making, so that practitioners' actions are grounded in local circumstances and self-assessed practitioner competence.
Toward self-organizing linear search

We consider techniques for adapting linear lists so that the more frequently accessed elements are found near the front, even though we are not told the probabilities of various elements being accessed. The main results are discussed in two sections. Perhaps the most interesting deals with techniques which move an element toward the front only after it has been requested k times in a row. The other, technically more difficult, section deals with the analysis of the heuristic which moves an element to the head of the list each time it is accessed. The behaviour of this scheme under a number of interesting probability distributions is discussed. Two basic approaches to the technique of moving an element forward after it has been accessed k times in a row are discussed. The first performs the transformation after any k identical requests. The second essentially groups requests into batches of at least k, and performs the action only if the last k requests of a batch are the same. Adopting as the transformation, the moving of the requested element to the front of the list, the second approach is shown to lead to faster average search time under all nontrivial probability distributions for k ≥2. It is also shown that the "periodic" approach, with k = 2, never leads to an average search time greater than 1.21. times that of the optimal ordering. For the more direct approach, a ratio of 1.36. is shown under the same constraints. In studying the simple move to front heuristic (i.e. k = 1), it is shown that for a particular distribution this scheme can lead to an average number of probes π/2 times that of the optimal order. Within an interesting class of distributions, this is shown to be the worst average behaviour.
Measuring the Cosmic-Ray Acceleration Efficiency of a Supernova Remnant

Cosmic Shock Waves Cosmic rays are high-energy charged particles that bombard Earth from all directions in the sky; those originating from within our Galaxy are thought to be accelerated in the shockwaves produced by supernova explosions. Helder et al. (p. 719, published online 25 June; see the Perspective by Raymond) measured the velocity of a section of the blast wave created by supernova RCW 86, an exploding star believed to have been witnessed by Chinese astronomers in 185 A.D., and the post-shock proton temperature. The post-shock proton temperature was much lower than would be expected without any cosmic ray acceleration, which implies that the pressure induced by cosmic ray exceeds the thermal pressure behind the shock. The pressure induced by cosmic rays produced by the explosion of a star exceeds the thermal pressure behind the shock wave. Cosmic rays are the most energetic particles arriving at Earth. Although most of them are thought to be accelerated by supernova remnants, the details of the acceleration process and its efficiency are not well determined. Here we show that the pressure induced by cosmic rays exceeds the thermal pressure behind the northeast shock of the supernova remnant RCW 86, where the x-ray emission is dominated by synchrotron radiation from ultrarelativistic electrons. We determined the cosmic-ray content from the thermal Doppler broadening measured with optical spectroscopy, combined with a proper-motion study in x-rays. The measured postshock proton temperature, in combination with the shock velocity, does not agree with standard shock heating, implying that >50% of the postshock pressure is produced by cosmic rays.
PbI2 band gap engineering by gel incorporation

Incorporation of guest materials into semiconducting single crystalline hosts leads to the formation of semiconducting single-crystal composites. However, limited efforts have been made to comprehensively investigate the property of these potential functionalized single-crystal composites. Herein, PbI2/gel single-crystal composites have been successfully prepared. Diffuse reflectance spectra show a clear increase in the band gap of PbI2 after gel incorporation. The band gap is further increased through expanding the area of host/guest interfaces or enhancing the interatomic forces at the interfaces. The interatomic forces (electrostatic interaction) at the host/guest interfaces are attributed to this band gap shift. As such, this study provides a novel and facile way for band gap engineering by gel incorporation.
PADP: A parallel data possession audit model for cloud storage

Data security and integrity problems are the most important issues that customers of cloud storage need to concern. In this paper, we propose a parallel audit model for data possession (PADP) in distributed cloud storage environment. The model utilizes the virtues of both a provable data possession (PDP) model and a data possession audit (DPA) model, and adopts a third-party auditor to separate users from storage service providers(SSP). Through adding the audit log mechanism, it can significantly reduce the storage and computation overhead of data possession audit(DPA) on the basis of fully ensuring the safety of audit process. Moreover, according to the characteristics of parallel computing in cloud storage environment, we propose a data possession prove algorithm called MapReduce-based Parallel Challenge Proof Generation Algorithm(MR_PCPGA) by improving the data possession prove algorithm based on homomorphic label in PDP model. Extensive security analysis and experimental results show the proposed schemes are provably secure and highly efficient in distributed cloud storage environment.
Review of high-performance three-phase power-factor correction circuits

This paper reviews progress in topology, control, and design aspects in three-phase power-factor correction (PFC) techniques. Different switching rectifier topologies are presented for various applications. Representative soft-switching schemes, including zero-voltage and zero-current switched pulsewidth modulated (PWM) techniques, are investigated. Merits and limitations of these techniques are discussed and illustrated by experimental results obtained on prototype converters. Control and input filter design issues are also discussed.
Weigh feeder using steady state input

The present paper proposes a new method for designing a weigh feeder control system. The model of a weigh feeder cannot be obtained accurately because its dynamic characteristics are time varying and its high frequency vibration modes are not easily identified. In the present paper, a weigh feeder is approximated as a first-order plus integrator system, and a self-tuning controller is designed on the basis of the approximated model to estimate its gain recursively. The purpose of this study is to design a controller to be actually employed in industry. To this end, a controller is assumed to consist of proportional gain for control error and steady state control input. As a result, the proposed controller has a simple structure and its controller parameters can be understood intuitively. Consequently, the proposed design method can be easily adopted in industry. Numerical and experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness.
From Bilingual Dictionaries to Interlingual Document Representations

Mapping documents into an interlingual representation can help bridge the language barrier of a cross-lingual corpus. Previous approaches use aligned documents as training data to learn an interlingual representation, making them sensitive to the domain of the training data. In this paper, we learn an interlingual representation in an unsupervised manner using only a bilingual dictionary. We first use the bilingual dictionary to find candidate document alignments and then use them to find an interlingual representation. Since the candidate alignments are noisy, we develop a robust learning algorithm to learn the interlingual representation. We show that bilingual dictionaries generalize to different domains better: our approach gives better performance than either a word by word translation method or Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) trained on a different domain.
T Cell Costimulation through CD28 Depends on Induction of the Bcl-xγ Isoform

The molecular basis of CD28-dependent costimulation of T cells is poorly understood. Bcl-xγ is a member of the Bcl-x family whose expression is restricted to activated T cells and requires CD28-dependent ligation for full expression. We report that Bcl-xγ–deficient (Bcl-xγ−/−) T cells display defective proliferative and cytokine responses to CD28-dependent costimulatory signals, impaired memory responses to proteolipid protein peptide (PLP), and do not develop PLP-induced experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). In contrast, enforced expression of Bcl-xγ largely replaces the requirement for B7-dependent ligation of CD28. These findings identify the Bcl-xγ cytosolic protein as an essential downstream link in the CD28-dependent signaling pathway that underlies T cell costimulation.
The longitudinal development of social and executive functions in late adolescence and early adulthood

Our earlier work suggests that, executive functions and social cognition show protracted development into late adolescence and early adulthood (Taylor et al., 2013). However, it remains unknown whether these functions develop linearly or non-linearly corresponding to dynamic changes to white matter density at these age ranges. Executive functions are particularly in demand during the transition to independence and autonomy associated with this age range (Ahmed and Miller, 2011). Previous research examining executive function (Romine and Reynolds, 2005) and social cognition (Dumontheil et al., 2010a) in late adolescence has utilized a cross sectional design. The current study employed a longitudinal design with 58 participants aged 17, 18, and 19 years completing social cognition and executive function tasks, Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (Wechsler, 1999), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson et al., 1988), and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (Zigmond and Snaith, 1983) at Time 1 with follow up testing 12–16 months later. Inhibition, rule detection, strategy generation and planning executive functions and emotion recognition with dynamic stimuli showed longitudinal development between time points. Self-report empathy and emotion recognition functions using visual static and auditory stimuli were stable by age 17 whereas concept formation declined between time points. The protracted development of some functions may reflect continued brain maturation into late adolescence and early adulthood including synaptic pruning (Sowell et al., 2001) and changes to functional connectivity (Stevens et al., 2007) and/or environmental change. Clinical implications, such as assessing the effectiveness of rehabilitation following Head Injury, are discussed.
Low-temperature-grown RS virus in adult volunteers.

A respiratory syncytial (RS) virus strain grown in bovine embryonic kidney tissue culture at 34 C or at 28 C infected the majority of inoculated adult volunteers. An acute mild upper-respiratory tract illness developed in most infected individuals. Subsequent cultivation of the virus strain in bovine embryonic kidney tissue culture at 26 C was associated with a decrease in infectivity for adult volunteers. The response of the infected volunteers suggested that the virus grown at 26 C had also lost virulence for adults. The results of the study were considered sufficiently encouraging to recommend a cautious stepwise evaluation of the RS virus grown at 26 C in progressively younger age groups.
Effect of milling time on microwave absorption ability on barium-hexaferrite nanoparticles

In this study, Ba0.6Sr0. 4Fe10MnTiO19 nanoparticles were prepared using solid state reaction method with three milling time variations, 25 hours, 50 hours and 75 hours. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), vibration sample magnetometer (VSM) and vector network analyzer (VNA) were used to analyze the crystal phases, structure, morphology, static magnetic and microwave absorption properties respectively. The results obtained after three variations of milling time for each sample were a single phase with the hexagonal crystal structure. Grain size decreased with increasing milling time, about 100-150 nm for 25 hours milling time, 75-100 nm for 50 hours and 20-30 nm for milling time of 75 hours. The magnetization saturation Ms reached a maximum of 52.0 emu/g, and the minimum Hc coercivity was 0.32 T for 75 hours milling time. As for 50 hours milling time, Ms = 50.0 emu/g, Hc = 0.34 T and 25 hours, Ms = 44.0 emu/g, Hc = 0.37 T Maximum Reflection Loss (RL) was approximately -49 dB at a frequency 10.8 GHz with bandwidth 1.7 GHz for 75 hours milling time. For a 50 hours milling time the RL value was approximately -33 dB at a frequency of about 11.2 GHz with bandwidth 1.5 GHz and 25 hours milling time the RL value was approximately -20 dB at a frequency 10.9 GHz with bandwidth 1.3 GHz. The average particle size was about 200-350 nm for 20 hours milling time, and RL reflection loss was about - 29 dB at a frequency 12.2 GHz, while for 10 hours milling time, the particle size was about 460 nm, RL reflection loss was about 12 dB at a frequency 9.5 GHz [1].
Efficient inclusion of receptor flexibility in grid‐based protein–ligand docking*

Accounting for receptor flexibility is an essential component of successful protein–ligand docking but still marks a major computational challenge. For many target molecules of pharmaceutical relevance, global backbone conformational changes are relevant during the ligand binding process. However, popular methods that represent the protein receptor molecule as a potential grid typically assume a rigid receptor structure during ligand–receptor docking. A new approach has been developed that combines inclusion of global receptor flexibility with the efficient potential grid representation of the receptor molecule. This is achieved using interpolation between grid representations of the receptor protein deformed in selected collective degrees of freedom. The method was tested on the docking of three ligands to apo protein kinase A (PKA), an enzyme that undergoes global structural changes upon inhibitor binding. Structural variants of PKA were generated along the softest normal mode of an elastic network representation of apo PKA. Inclusion of receptor deformability during docking resulted in a significantly improved docking performance compared with rigid PKA docking, thus allowing for systematic virtual screening applications at small additional computational cost. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2011