Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Vestibular Hair Cell Bundle Mechanics Using Finite Element Modeling

(ABSTRACT) The vestibular system of vertebrates consists of the utricle, saccule, and the semicircular canals. Head movement causes deformation of hair cell bundles in these organs, which translate this mechanical stimulus into an electrical response sent to the nervous system. This study consisted of two sections, both utilizing a Fortran-based finite element program to study hair cell bundle response. In the first part, the effects of variations in geometry and material properties on bundle mechanical response were studied. Six real cells from the red eared slider turtle utricle were modeled and their response to a gradually increased point load was analyzed. Bundle stiffness and tip link tension distributions were the primary data examined. The cells fell into two groups based on stiffness. All cells exhibited an increase in stiffness as the applied load was increased, but cells in the stiffer group showed a greater increase. Tip link tensions in the compliant group were approximately 3 times as high as those in the stiffer group. Cells in the stiffer group were larger, with more cilia, and also had a higher stereocilia/kinocilium height ratio than the cells in the other group. The stereocilia/kinocilium height ratio was the most important geometric factor in influencing bundle stiffness. Modeling a bundle as just its middle row of stereocilia resulted in some decrease in stiffness, but more significantly, a stiffness that was virtually constant as applied load increased. Tip link tension distributions showed serial behavior in the core rows of stereocilia and parallel behavior in the outer rows; this trend intensified if the tip link elastic modulus was increased. It was demonstrated that full three-dimensional modeling of bundles is critical for obtaining complete and accurate results. In the second part of the study, tip link ion gates were modeled. Sufficient tension in a tip link caused that link's ion gate to open, increasing the length of the link and causing its tension to decrease or the link to go slack. The two parameters that were varied were tip link elastic modulus and tip link gating distance d (change in length of the link). Bundle stiffness drops of up to 25% were obtained, but only when tip links went slack after gate opening; tip link slackening was dependent on tip link gating distance. Higher tip link modulus resulted in higher stiffness drops. Variable tip link modulus and tip link pre-tensioning were modeled. Variable tip link modulus resulted …
DEADS: Depth and Energy Aware Dominating Set Based Algorithm for Cooperative Routing along with Sink Mobility in Underwater WSNs

Performance enhancement of Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) in terms of throughput maximization, energy conservation and Bit Error Rate (BER) minimization is a potential research area. However, limited available bandwidth, high propagation delay, highly dynamic network topology, and high error probability leads to performance degradation in these networks. In this regard, many cooperative communication protocols have been developed that either investigate the physical layer or the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, however, the network layer is still unexplored. More specifically, cooperative routing has not yet been jointly considered with sink mobility. Therefore, this paper aims to enhance the network reliability and efficiency via dominating set based cooperative routing and sink mobility. The proposed work is validated via simulations which show relatively improved performance of our proposed work in terms the selected performance metrics.
Lightweight Modular Staging and Embedded Compilers - Abstraction without Regret for High-Level High-Performance Programming

Abstract Programs expressed in a high-level programming language need to be translated to a low-levelmachine dialect for execution. This translation is usually accomplished by a compiler, whichis able to translate any legal program to equivalent low-level code. But for individual sourceprograms, automatic translation does not always deliver good results: Software engineeringpractice demands generalization and abstraction, whereas high performance demands spe-cialization and concretization. These goals are at odds, and compilers can only rarely translateexpressive high-level programs to modern hardware platforms in a way that makes best use ofthe available resources.Explicit program generation is a promising alternative to fully automatic translation.Instead of writing down the program and relying on a compiler for translation, developerswrite a program generator, which produces a specialized, efﬁcient, low-level program as itsoutput. However, developing high-quality program generators requires a very large effort thatis often hard to amortize.In this thesis, we propose a hybrid design: Integrate compilers into programs so thatprograms can take control of the translation process, but rely on libraries of common compilerfunctionality for help.We present
The feasibility of improving discourse in people with aphasia through AAC: clinical and functional MRI correlates

ABSTRACT Background:The theory of intersystemic reorganization, along with the ability of people with chronic aphasia to recover language function, suggests that a high-tech augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device could be employed as a dual-purpose tool that simultaneously facilitates language recovery and compensates for deficits. To date, treatments based on intersystemic reorganization have focused on writing, drawing, and gesturing. Further, despite a movement to identify neural mechanisms that support intervention-related recovery, the neurobiological markers of AAC-induced changes have not been established. Aims: The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to examine the feasibility of providing a high-tech AAC treatment to people with chronic aphasia, with the goal of evoking changes in spoken language; and (2) to identify evidence of AAC-induced changes in brain activation. Method and Procedures: We employed a pre- and post-treatment design with a control (usual care) group to observe the impact of an AAC treatment on aphasia severity and spoken discourse. Further, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine associated neural reorganization. Outcomes and Results: Compared to the usual care group, the AAC intervention trended toward larger treatment effects and resulted in a higher number of responders on behavioral outcomes. Both groups demonstrated a trend toward greater leftward lateralization of language functions via fMRI. Secondary analyses of responders to treatment revealed increased activation in visual processing regions, primarily for the AAC group. Conclusions: This study provides preliminary guidance regarding how to implement AAC treatment in a manner that simultaneously facilitates language recovery across a variety of aphasia types and severity levels while compensating for residual deficits in people with chronic aphasia. Further, this work motivates continued efforts to unveil the role of AAC-based interventions in the aphasia recovery process and provides insight regarding the neurobiological mechanisms supporting AAC-induced language changes.
Hypothermia and Rewarming Induce Gene Expression and Multiplication of Cells in Healthy Rat Prostate Tissue

Prostate cancer has been extensively studied, but cellular stress responses in healthy prostate tissue are rarely investigated. Hypothermia is known to cause alterations in mRNA and protein expressions and stability. The aim of this study was to use normal rat prostate as a model in order to find out consequences of cold exposure and rewarming on the expressions of genes which are either members or functionally/structurally related to erythroblastic leukemia viral oncogene B (ErbB) signaling pathway. Relative mRNA expressions of amphiregulin (AMR), cyclin D1 (CyD1), cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 1A (p21), transmembrane form of the prostatic acid phosphatase (PAcP), thrombomodulin (TM) and heat shock transcription factor 1 (HSF1) in rat ventral prostate were quantified in mild (2 or 4.5 h at room temperature) and severe (2 or 4.5 h at +10°C) hypothermia and in rewarming after cold exposure (2 h at +10°C followed by 2 h at room temperature or 3 h at +28°C). AMR protein level, apoptotic Bcl-2 associated X protein to B-cell CLL/lymphoma 2 (Bax/Bcl-2) mRNA ratio and proliferative index Ki-67 were determined. 4.5-h mild hypothermia, 2-h severe hypothermia and rewarming increased expression of all these genes. Elevated proliferation index Ki-67 could be seen in 2-h severe hypothermia, and the proliferation index had its highest value in longer rewarming with totally recovered normal body temperature. Pro-apoptotic tendency could be seen in 2-h mild hypothermia while anti-apoptosis was predominant in 4.5-h mild hypothermia and in shorter rewarming with only partly recovered body temperature. Hypothermia and following rewarming promote the proliferation of cells in healthy rat prostate tissue possibly via ErbB signaling pathway.
REAL – TIME IMAGE ENCODER WITH DCT COMPRESSION ALGORITHM

The main focus of the paper is to compress an image through Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) technique; this can be accomplished by reducing the chrominance value of the image. To discard such things, the compressor divides each DCT output value by Co efficient of quantization and rounds to integer. Thus the JPEG lossy is more frugal to grey scale and more frivolous to color. The experiment shows that this new scheme of image compression tremendously reduces the image size upto 18 – 22 times of the original size, which is a quite important feature required by real time system.
KSwSVR: A New Load Forecasting Method for Efficient Resources Provisioning in Cloud

Cloud provider should ensure QoS while maximizing resources utilization. One optimal strategy is to timely allocate resources in a fine-grained mode according to the actual resources demand of applications. The necessary precondition of this strategy is obtaining future load information in advance. We propose a multi-step-ahead load forecasting method, KSwSVR, based on statistical learning theory which is suitable for the complex and dynamic characteristics of the cloud computing environment. It integrates an improved support vector regression algorithm and Kalman smoother. Public trace data taken from multi-types of resources were used to verify its prediction accuracy, stability and adaptability, comparing with AR, BPNN and standard SVR. CPU allocation experiment indicated that KSwSVR can effectively reduce resources consumption while meeting Service Level Agreements requirement.
Both Isochronous and Non-Isochronous Metrical Subdivision Afford Precise and Stable Ensemble Entrainment: A Corpus Study of Malian Jembe Drumming

Most approaches to musical rhythm, whether in music theory, music psychology, or musical neuroscience, presume that musical rhythms are based on isochronous (temporally equidistant) beats and/or beat subdivisions. However, rhythms that are based on non-isochronous, or unequal patterns of time are prominent in the music of Southeast Europe, the Near East and Southern Asia, and in the music of Africa and the African diaspora. The present study examines one such style found in contemporary Malian jembe percussion music. A corpus of 15 representative performances of three different pieces (“Manjanin,” “Maraka,” and “Woloso”) containing ~43,000 data points was analyzed. Manjanin and Woloso are characterized by non-isochronous beat subdivisions (a short IOI followed by two longer IOIs), while Maraka subdivisions are quasi-isochronous. Analyses of onsets and asynchronies show no significant differences in timing precision and coordination between the isochronously timed Maraka vs. the non-isochronously timed Woloso performances, though both pieces were slightly less variable than non-isochronous Manjanin. Thus, the precision and stability of rhythm and entrainment in human music does not necessarily depend on metric isochrony, consistent with the hypothesis that isochrony is not a biologically-based constraint on human rhythmic behavior. Rather, it may represent a historically popular option within a variety of culturally contingent options for metric organization.
Follow-Up Observations of Pulsating Subdwarf B Stars: Multisite Campaigns on PG 1618+563B and PG 0048+091

We present follow-up observations of pulsating subdwarf B (sdB) stars as part of our efforts to resolve the pulsation spectra for use in asteroseismological analyses. This paper reports on multisite campaigns of the pulsating sdB stars PG 1618+563B and PG 0048+091. Data were obtained from observatories placed around the globe for coverage from all longitudes. For PG 1618+563B, our five-site campaign uncovered a dichotomy of pulsation states. Early during the campaign the amplitudes and phases (and perhaps frequencies) were quite variable, while data obtained late in the campaign were able to fully resolve five stable pulsation frequencies. For PG 0048+091, our five-site campaign uncovered a plethora of frequencies with short pulsation lifetimes. We find them to have observed properties consistent with stochastically excited oscillations, an unexpected result for subdwarf B stars. We discuss our findings and their impact on subdwarf B asteroseismology.
A graph-based approach to commonsense concept extraction and semantic similarity detection

Commonsense knowledge representation and reasoning support a wide variety of potential applications in fields such as document auto-categorization, Web search enhancement, topic gisting, social process modeling, and concept-level opinion and sentiment analysis. Solutions to these problems, however, demand robust knowledge bases capable of supporting flexible, nuanced reasoning. Populating such knowledge bases is highly time-consuming, making it necessary to develop techniques for deconstructing natural language texts into commonsense concepts. In this work, we propose an approach for effective multi-word commonsense expression extraction from unrestricted English text, in addition to a semantic similarity detection technique allowing additional matches to be found for specific concepts not already present in knowledge bases.
The Effects of Pre-Fermentative Addition of Oenological Tannins on Wine Components and Sensorial Qualities of Red Wine

Today in the wine industry, oenological tannins are widely used to improve wine quality and prevent oxidation in wine aging. With the development of tannin products, new oenological tannins are developed with many specific functions, such as modifying antioxidant effect, colour stabilization and aroma modifications. The aim of this work is to investigate effects of pre-fermentative addition of oenological tannins on wine colour, anthocyanins, volatile compounds and sensorial properties. In this case, Syrah juice was extracted with classic flash thermovinification from fresh must in order to release more colour and tannins. Three types of oenological tannins, which are, respectively, derived from grape skin, seed (Vitis vinifera) and French oak (Quercus robur and Querrus petraea), were selected to carry out the experiments with seven treatments. Results indicated that tannin treatments significantly improved wine aroma complexity and sensorial properties. However, the concentration of some stable pigments such as Vitisin A, Vitisin A-Ac and Vitisin B was negatively affected by tannin additions. Nevertheless, by means of cluster analysis and principal component analysis, it was observed that higher alcohols were significantly promoted by grape seed tannin while most anthocyanins can be improved by addition of grape tannins. In conclusion, low amount of oenological tannin derived from grape seed is a promising method to be applied especially for young red wine making.
High-yield synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes by gravity-free arc discharge

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have been produced in high yield by the dc arc discharge technique under gravity-free conditions. Gravity-free conditions can reduce the convection flow of the buffer gas during the arc discharge, which results in the increase of high thermostatic volume around the arc flame. The yields of both the total soot and SWNTs in soot are significantly increased. Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy analyses reveal that the diameter distribution of SWNTs has shifted to a larger diameter region under the gravity-free condition. The annealing process in high-thermostatic atmosphere is a crucial experimental factor to selectively synthesize a certain diameter SWNT in high yield.
Improving similar document retrieval using a recursive pseudo relevance feedback strategy

We present a recursive pseudo relevance feedback strategy for improving retrieval performance in similarity search. The strategy recursively searches on search results returned for a given query and produces a tree that is used for ranking. Experiments on the Reuters 21578 and WebKB datasets show how the strategy leads to a significant improvement in similarity search performance.
Analysis of Kernel Effects on Optimisation Mismatch in Cache Reconfiguration

The effect of kernel operations on cache optimisations in a soft-core reconfigurable system is important for dynamic cache switching design. Considering kernel operations changes the subset of cache configurations that would be chosen for dynamic cache switching and also the decisions on when to cache switch. The results show that kernel operations can skew the effectiveness of application driven cache optimisations up to 20% over the original execution time. This skew is shown by mapping the performance of the applications both with and without kernel operations. The majority of the kernel operations is due to trap events generated by system calls like memory allocation or file reading. A cache configuration analysis methodology for fast searching of the design space is also explained and was used to find relevant changes due to kernel interference.
L’exploitation de la saillance de mortalité dans les communications sur le changement climatique

Cette recherche s’intéresse à l’efficacité de la communication anxiogène dans une perspective de mobilisation des consommateurs contre le changement climatique. Prenant appui sur la théorie du management de la terreur (TMT), nous montrons que ce registre peut s’avérer contre-productif en générant des choix de consommation à rebours des logiques pro-environnementales. Nous rapportons notamment les résultats d’une expérimentation (N = 132) testant l’influence du type de communication (anxiogène vs. informative) sur les choix de consommation (pro-matérialistes vs. pro-environnementaux). Les résultats révèlent que les choix de consommation des individus dépendent de leurs visions culturelles du monde (i.e. matérialistes vs. environnementalistes) et du type de communication employé. L’efficacité des stratégies de communication sur le changement climatique est au final discutée au regard de la vision culturelle du monde des individus.
Hybrid Distributed Coordination Function for Next-Generation High-Bandwidth WLANs

IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol in distributed coordination function (DCF) mode is not scalable as the number of contending users increases. In this paper, we propose two new contention resolution schemes to reduce the number of collisions due to a large number of contending users. The first scheme, hybrid DCF (H-DCF), splits the monolithic contention resolution into two phases to enhance scalability. The other scheme, enhanced hybrid DCF (EH-DCF), provides fairness with the current IEEE 802.11 MAC and yet improves the efficiency of contention resolution. The major contribution of our work is to provide inter-operability with the IEEE 802.11 DCF as well as an efficient channel access, unlike the previous works. We conduct comprehensive simulation experiments by using an ns-2 simulator to demonstrate the advantages of these two schemes. The results show that they improve network performance by up to 10~30%, compared to the original IEEE 802.11 DCF. Therefore, H-DCF and EH-DCF can be good candidates for MAC protocols for hotspots where numerous users access wireless LANs intensively
Monetary Policy Rule in Transitional China: A Selection Based on the Result of Simulation

Abstract: By using the quarterly data of 1996-2005 in China, this paper evaluates the usefulness of a monetary policy rule designed for developed economies. Drawing on our econometric analysis, we argue that the model comes closer to the data of China ,it is an ideal framework for chinese monetary policy analysis. The paper also suggests to make modifications of the typical policy rule to explain Chinese economy better.
Advancing Integrated and Personalized Healthcare Services, the AEGLE Approach

The AEGLE project aims to advance integrated and personalized healthcare services, by innovatively handling big-biodata both at the cloud and at local healthcare sites. At the local level, AEGLE will focus on real-time processing of large volumes of raw data originating from patient monitoring services. Then at the cloud level, AEGLE will offer an experimental big data research platform to data scientists, workers and data professionals across Europe. This paper presents the AEGLE's approach to healthcare, along with the medical test cases and underlying technologies used in the project.
Reusable object-oriented model

This paper analysis approaches and possibilities of executive model aimed to MDA approach. The second part of the article proposes guideline to create executive model, describes basic interactions to object oriented approach and shows possibilities of creating a core of executable model in Java programming language. Annotations are used for executive model object extension. Reflection concept is used for model execution and synchronization provides extended Petri net formalism defined in [1]. The model has been tested on LFLC software package developed by IRAFM, University of Ostrava to prove the whole concept.