Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Precision enhancement of MALDI‐TOF MS using high resolution peak detection and label‐free alignment

We have developed an automated procedure for aligning peaks in multiple TOF spectra that eliminates common timing errors and small variations in spectrometer output. Our method incorporates high‐resolution peak detection, re‐binning, and robust linear data fitting in the time domain. This procedure aligns label‐free (uncalibrated) peaks to minimize the variation in each peak's location from one spectrum to the next, while maintaining a high number of degrees of freedom. We apply our method to replicate pooled‐serum spectra from multiple laboratories and increase peak precision (t/σt) to values limited only by small random errors (with σt less than one time count in 89 out of 91 instances, 13 peaks in seven datasets). The resulting high precision allowed for an order of magnitude improvement in peak m/z reproducibility. We show that the CV for m/z is 0.01% (100 ppm) for 12 out of the 13 peaks that were observed in all datasets between 2995 and 9297 Da.
Investigating Subspace Distances in Semantic Spaces

Semantic space models of word meaning derived from co- occurrence statistics within a corpus of documents, such as the Hyper- space Analogous to Language (HAL) model, have been proposed in the past.While word similarity can be computed using these models, it is not clear how semantic spaces derived from different sets of documents can be compared. In this paper, we focus on this problem, and we revisit the proposal of using semantic subspace distance measurements [1]. In particular, we outline the research questions that still need to be addressed to investigate and validate these distance measures. Then, we describe our plans for future research.
Male immunity to the chlamydial 60 kDa heat shock protein (HSP 60) – associated with semen quality?

The role of Chlamydia trachomatis for male infertility is a matter of constant debate. It is assumed that in its persistent form this pathogen may produce high levels of 60 kD heat shock protein (Chlam HSP60). Cross‐reactivity between epitopes of the bacterial and human HSPs, involved in many steps of the reproductive process, might induce an autoimmune response with potential impairment of semen quality and sperm fertilising capacity. This prospective study included asymptomatic males of a total of 128 unselected subfertile couples (median duration of infertility 3 years) to determine the clinical relevance of male immunity to Chlam HSP60 during infertility investigation. After medical history and clinical examination of both partners, serum antibodies (Ab) to Chlam HSP60 were determined. Same day semen quality evaluation included microscopical standard sperm analysis, determination of seminal white blood cells (WBC) and of antisperm Ab (ASA) of the Ig G‐ and Ig‐A class (mixed antiglobulin reaction, MAR), microbial screening and examination of sperm functional capacity. Sperm/mucus interaction was tested in vitro and in vivo. Simultaneously, patients′ female partners were tested for Chlam HSP60 Ab and results were compared with a standard serology evaluation for antichlamydial IgG Ab. The presence of ChlamHSP60 Ab (positive in 24% of males) was not significantly associated with semen quality, seminal WBC and antisperm AB of the IgG‐ or Ig A‐class, the outcome of the microbial screening nor with sperm functional capacity and results of sperm/mucus interaction testing in vitro and in vivo. Chlam HSP60 Ab were significantly more frequent in female partners of Chlam HSP60 Ab‐positive men, and results correlated with the outcome of standard chlamydial serology evaluation. In conclusion, when serum Chlam HSP60 Ab are used as marker, male immunity to the chlamydial 60 kD heat shock protein is not associated with semen quality, sperm functional capacity and other clinically relevant parameters of male fertility.
Enhancing the Inside-Outside Recursive Neural Network Reranker for Dependency Parsing

We propose solutions to enhance the Inside-Outside Recursive Neural Network (IORNN) reranker of Le and Zuidema (2014). Replacing the original softmax function with a hierarchical softmax using a binary tree constructed by combining output of the Brown clustering algorithm and frequency-based Huffman codes, we significantly reduce the reranker’s computational complexity. In addition, enriching contexts used in the reranker by adding subtrees rooted at (ancestors’) cousin nodes, the accuracy is increased.
Maximum likelihood Linear Dimension Reduction of heteroscedastic feature for robust Speaker Recognition

This paper analyzes heteroscedasticity in i-vector for robust forensics and surveillance speaker recognition system. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), a widely-used linear dimension reduction technique, assumes that classes are homoscedastic within a same covariance. In this paper it is assumed that general speech utterances contain both homoscedastic and heteroscedastic elements. We show the validity of this assumption by employing several analyses and also demonstrate that dimension reduction using principal components is feasible. To effectively handle the presence of heteroscedastic and homoscedastic elements, we propose a fusion approach of applying both LDA and Heteroscedastic-LDA (HLDA). The experiments are conducted to show its effectiveness and compare to other methods using the telephone database of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE) 2010 extended.
Friction and wear characteristics of copper nanocomposites reinforced with uncoated and nickel coated carbon nanotubes

In the present work we report the development of carbon nanotube having multi-walls reinforced copper nanocomposites. The carbon nanotubes were used in both uncoated and nickel coated conditions to reinforce copper matrix. The nanocomposites with different carbon nanotubes (0.25 to 1.0) weight percentage were developed using a combination of ultrasonication, ball milling, sintering and upsetting forging processes. The developed nanocomposites were subjected to microstructural characterization using scanning and transmission electron microscopes to observe the dispersion of carbon nanotubes. The effect of carbon nanotubes on friction and wear properties of copper nanocomposites were studied using pin on disc testing rig as per ASTM G99 standard. The coefficient of friction of both 1 wt% uncoated and nickel coated carbon nanotubes reinforced nanocomposites was found to drop by 60.41% and 70.83% respectively when compared to copper. Similarly the wear rate of nanocomposites were found to decrease with the incoporation of carbon nanotubes. The low coefficient of friction and wear rate were attributed to uniform dispersion of carbon nanotubes and formation of carbonaceous layer on the surface of nanocomposites during dry sliding wear.
Nonlinear Integral Type Observer Design for State Estimation and Unknown Input Reconstruction

This paper is concerned with model-based robust observer designs for state observation and its application for unknown input reconstruction. Firstly, a sliding mode observer (SMO), which provides exponential convergence of estimation error, is designed for a class of multivariable perturbed systems. Observer gain matrices subject to specific structures are going to be imposed such that the unknown perturbation will not affect estimate precision during the sliding modes; Secondly, to improve discontinuous control induced in the SMO as well as pursue asymptotic estimate precision, a proportional-integral type observer (PIO) is further developed. Both the design procedures of the SMO and PIO algorithms are characterized as feasibility issues of linear matrix inequality (LMI) and thus the computations of the control parameters can be efficiently solved. Compared with the SMO, it will be demonstrated that the PIO is capable of achieving better estimation precision as long as the unknown inputs are continuous. Finally, a servo-drive flexible robot arm is selected as an example to demonstrate the applications of the robust observer designs.
Bernstein ’ s theory of pedagogic discourse : Linguistics , educational policy and practice in the UK English / literacy classroom

In “The English Patient: English Grammar and teaching in the Twentieth Century”, Hudson and Walmsley (2005) contend that the decline of grammar in schools was linked to a similar decline in English universities, where no serious research or teaching on English grammar took place. This article argues that such a decline was due not only to a lack of research, but also because it suited educational policies of the time. It applies Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse (1990 & 1996) to the case study of the debate surrounding the introduction of a national curriculum in English in England in the late 1980s and the National Literacy Strategy in the 1990s, to demonstrate the links between academic theory and educational policy.
Uniform Random Generation of Strings in a Context-Free Language

Let S be the set of all strings of length n generated by a given context-free grammar. A uniform random generator is one which produces strings from S with equal probability. In generating these strings, care must be taken in choosing the disjuncts that form the right-hand side of a grammar rule so that the produced string will have the specified length. Uniform random generators have applications in studying the complexity of parsers, in estimating the average efficiency of theorem provers for the propositional calculus, in establishing a measure of ambiguity of a grammar, etc. Two methods are presented for generating uniform random strings in an unambiguous context-free language. The first method will generate a random string of length n in linear time, but must use a precomputed table of size $O(n^{r + 1} )$, where r is the number of nonterminals in the grammar used to specify the language. The second method precomputes part of the table and calculates the other entries as they are called for. It requi.
A New Multithreaded Architecture Supporting Direct Execution of Esterel

We propose a fully pipelined, multithreaded, reactive processor called STARPro for direct execution of Esterel. STARPro provides native support for Esterel threads and their scheduling. In addition, it also natively supports Esterel's preemption constructs, instructions for signal manipulation, and a notion of logical ticks for synchronous execution. In addition to the reactive processors, we propose a new intermediate format called unrolled concurrent control-flow graph with surface and depth () that closely resembles the Esterel source. A compiler, based on , has been developed for code generation. We have synthesized STARPro and have carried out a range of benchmarking experiments. Experimental results reveal substantial improvement in performance and code size compared to software compilers. We also excel in comparison to recent reactive architectures, by achieving an average speed-up of 37% in worst-case reaction times and a speed-up of 38% in average-case reaction times. This has been achieved by utilizing fewer hardware resources, while incurring an average code size increase of 40%.
Thermoplastic electroactive gels for 3D-printable artificial muscles

3D-printable artificial muscles have only recently garnered interest, and few 3D-printed artificial muscles have been demonstrated. In this article, we introduce the concept of thermoplastic electroactive gels, new smart materials that can be fabricated simply and rapidly by heating, overcoming the limitations of previous dangerous and time-consuming solvent-based manufacturing methods, and enabling hot-pressing, melt-recycling, extrusion and 3D-printing. We present and characterise a new example material, PVC-DIDA (polyvinyl chloride and diisodecyl adipate) gel and demonstrate multi-layer PVC-DIDA gel artificial muscles. Finally, the extrudability of PVC-DIDA gel is confirmed, and an artificial muscle made from extruded electroactive gel is presented. The electroactivity and extrudability of these thermoplastic gels highlights them as excellent candidate materials for 3D-printing artificial muscle structures.
Voices of disability on the radio.

BACKGROUND While much commentary exists in relation to the portrayal of disabled people in the media, very little research examines the talk itself in any detail. This paper examines the how people with communication disabilities and disabled people are dealt with in the talk of a radio programme about disability. AIMS To show how the voices of disabled people, and in particular people with communication difficulties, are dealt with on a radio programme titled For and About People with Disability (http://www.rte.ie). METHODS & PROCEDURES Analysis of 15 episodes of an Irish radio programme for and about people with disability called Outside the Box to identify frames governing the discourse. OUTCOMES & RESULTS Three frames are identified: radio programme frame; presenter frame; and interview frame. Communication disability never appears as a topic in the radio programme frame. In the presenter and interview frames the presenter foregrounds medical aspects of experiences, asks questions that only seek factual information, and fails to respond to subjective aspects of disabled people's experiences. Analysis of the interviewees' responses show how they hold the floor and introduce subjective accounts of living with disability. CONCLUSIONS Frame analysis reveals how disability (including communication disability) is dealt with in the talk of a radio programme for and about people with disability. There is an overemphasis on medical aspects of disability and a view of disability as a primarily physical phenomenon is broadcast. In spite of mainly medical/factual questions, interviewees manage to include rich accounts of their experience. People with communication disability are not included, possibly due to issues of intelligibility or lack of awareness. Speech and language therapists have a valuable role to play in terms of 'learning to listen' and 'helping to tell'.
A stochastic-Lagrangian particle system for the Navier–Stokes equations

This paper is based on a formulation of the Navier–Stokes equations developed by Constantin and the first author (Commun. Pure Appl. Math. at press, arXiv:math.PR/0511067), where the velocity field of a viscous incompressible fluid is written as the expected value of a stochastic process. In this paper, we take N copies of the above process (each based on independent Wiener processes), and replace the expected value with 1/N times the sum over these N copies. (We note that our formulation requires one to keep track of N stochastic flows of diffeomorphisms, and not just the motion of N particles.) We prove that in two dimensions, this system of interacting diffeomorphisms has (time) global solutions with initial data in the space C1,α which consists of differentiable functions whose first derivative is α Hölder continuous (see section 3 for the precise definition). Further, we show that as N → ∞ the system converges to the solution of Navier–Stokes equations on any finite interval [0, T]. However for fixed N, we prove that this system retains roughly O(1/N) times its original energy as t → ∞. Hence the limit N → ∞ and T → ∞ do not commute. For general flows, we only provide a lower bound to this effect. In the special case of shear flows, we compute the behaviour as t → ∞ explicitly.
Ovarian lymphoma

The involvement of the ovary in lymphomatous processes is rare. Such an involvement can occur in 2 ways, either primary or secondary, which usually presents with abdominal or pelvic complaints. We present a case of secondary involvement of the ovary with occult extra-ovarian nodal disease and discuss the histogenesis of ovarian lymphomas with criteria for diagnosis and differential diagnosis.
Visualization for high-dimensional data: VisHD

This paper presents a visualization tool, VisHD, that can visualize the spatial distribution of vector points in high dimensional feature space. It is important to handle high dimensional information in many areas of computer science. VisHD provides several methods for dimension reduction in order to map the data from high dimensional space to low dimensional one. Next, this system builds intuitive visualization for observing the characteristics of the data set, whether these data are pre-defined labels or not. In addition, some useful functions have been implemented to facilitate the information visualization. This paper, finally, gives some experiments and discussions for showing the abilities of VisHD for visualizing high-dimensional data.
Measuring polarity-based distributions (SARA) of bitumen using simplified chromatographic techniques

ABSTRACT Among the different attributes that can be used to describe the chemistry of any given bitumen, the distribution of its constituent molecules based on polarity is strongly related to the bitumen’s microstructure and engineering properties. Generally, bitumen is subdivided into asphaltenes and maltenes. The latter is further divided into three more fractions: saturates, aromatics and resins. This paper reviews the basic principles of liquid chromatography and presents a simplified technique for asphaltene–maltene separation and two new methods for maltene fractionation. The two methods for maltene fractionation are based on chromatographic principles. The first method applies the thin-layer chromatographic technique combined with optical fluorescent densitometry for separation and quantification. The second method utilises solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, which are commercially available in pre-packed standard units and allow rapid and repeatable testing when used as a mini liquid chromatography column. Both methods are scalable to quantify more than three maltene fractions. The proposed methods were semi-quantitatively validated using 10 binders with known polar fractions. The simplicity, the minimal requirement of capital equipment and the monitoring time makes the proposed method an attractive option for use as a routine test to create a sizable database of bitumen fingerprints based on their polarity.
A Limited-Domain English to Japanese Medical Speech Translator Built Using REGULUS 2

We argue that verbal patient diagnosis is a promising application for limited-domain speech translation, and describe an architecture designed for this type of task which represents a compromise between principled linguistics-based processing on the one hand and efficient phrasal translation on the other. We propose to demonstrate a prototype system instantiating this architecture, which has been built on top of the Open Source REGULUS 2 platform. The prototype translates spoken yes-no questions about headache symptoms from English to Japanese, using a vocabulary of about 200 words.
OLEDs in Transition

The OLED industry is in the midst of change – from passive to active matrix and from small to larger sizes. This change is being driven by a significant amount of investment in active‐matrix OLED manufacturing facilities – with the ultimate goal being to compete in the TV market. While the industry attempted to commercialize OLED TV in the past, the cost structure and productive capacity were not ready. This time, the pieces are coming together for a successful market entry.
Study on the effect of titanium-based surface coatings on stainless steel 316L for hip prosthesis

Bone implant materials are selected considering their mechanical properties, their adaptability to the human body and their ability to inhibit inflammation or the manifestation of harmful effects beyond standard tolerance limits in the human body. This study aims at investigating and comparing the mechanical and tribological properties of the commercial Stainless Steel 316L implant, which has a multilayered coating of Titanium Aluminium Nitride and a distinct single layer coating of Titanium Nitride by Physical Vapour Deposition technique. Different experimental characterization techniques that involve electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction helped in appropriate characterization of materials. A pH resistance test was conducted to study the effects of corrosion on the material before and after coating. A cytotoxicity text ensured the biocompatibility factor of the material. The result of this study helps one to infer that the Stainless Steel 316L coated with Titanium Nitride yields relatively better results than Titanium Aluminium Nitride.
An efficient fault tolerant distributed path recommendation protocol for next generation of vehicular networks

Several research studies have introduced an efficient and intelligent path recommendation protocols for vehicular networks. Communications among traveling vehicles and located roadside units (RSUs) have been utilized to investigate the traffic distribution over the road network. This helps construct the optimal path towards each targeted destination located on the road network. However, none of the previous proposed protocols in this field have specifically considered potential faults among the nodes of the vehicular networks or potential link failures. In this paper, we present a fault tolerant distributed-based path recommendation (TD-PR) protocol. Our protocol detects and tolerates faults occur among nodes and/or communication links. We present TD-PR protocol in this paper and report on its performance evaluation. Our simulation experiments show that TD-PR improves the success rate significantly over our previously proposed path recommendation protocol (ICOD). The success ratio is improved in roadside failure and link failure scenarios. In general TD-PR has better performance in terms of decreasing the traveling time and traveling distance compared to ICOD in these scenarios.
Towards a wireless optical stimulation system for long term in-vivo experiments

This paper presents our recent progresses towards the development of a wirelessly powered head mountable optical stimulator for enabling long-term optogenetic experiments with small freely moving transgenic models. The proposed system includes a wireless power transmission chamber with uniform power distribution in 3D and a wireless head mountable optical stimulator prototype with power recovery. The wireless power link, which includes the inductive chamber and power recovery circuits, is robust against subject movements in all directions, and against angular misalignment. Such link provides uniform power distribution without the need for a closed-loop control system, and can localize the transmitted power towards the receiver, without using additional detection and control circuitry compared to other systems. Additionally, the chamber is equipped with a camera for capturing the animal motion and behavior after applying optical stimulation patterns. A low-power microcontroller unit is embedded with the stimulator prototype to generate arbitrary light stimulation patterns. Measurement results show that the inductive chamber can continuously deliver 70 mW to the stimulator prototype with a power efficiency of 59%.
Image enhancement and parameter estimation for time-of-flight cameras

The determination of the spatial depth of a scene, which supplies important information for a number of applications, was a very complex matter with previous technologies like stereo cameras or laser scanners and sometimes problematic. With Time-of-Flight cameras there is a technology at hand today, that facilitates the acquisition of these data tremendously. With the Microsoft Kinect 2 Sensor ToF cameras have recently made the jump into the consumer market. Unfortunately these cameras still exhibit different statistical and systematic errors. This thesis shows how the statistical errors can be fixed with the help of methods from 2D image processing and gives for the first time explanations of previously not understood systematic errors by means of an exact analysis of the sensor data. With newly introduced approaches and methods these errors can be reduced notably with little effort and lead to a significant improvement in the accuracy of the measurements.