Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rectorite/thermoplastic polyurethane nanocomposites: Preparation, characterization, and properties

A newly developed kind of layered clay, rectorite (REC), has been used to yield intercalated or exfoliated thermoplastic polyurethane rubber (TPUR) nanocomposites by melt-processing intercalation. Because of the swollen layered structure of REC, similar to that of montmorillonite, organic rectorites (OREC) can also be obtained through ion-exchange reaction with two different quaternary ammonium salts (QAS1, QAS2) and benzidine (QAS3). The microstructure and dispersibility of OREC layers in TPUR matrix were examined by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, which revealed not only that the composites with lower amounts of clay are intercalation or part exfoliation nanocomposites, but also that the mechanical properties of the composites were substantially enhanced. The maximum ultimate tensile strength for TPUR/ OREC nanocomposites appeared at 2 wt % OREC loading. With increasing OREC contents, the tear strength of the composites increased significantly.
Semiotics and the philosophy of language

Introduction 1. Signs 1.1. Crisis of a concept 1.2. The signs of an obstinacy 1.3. Intension and extension 1.4. Elusive solutions 1.5. The deconstruction of the linguistic sign 1.6. Signs vs. words 1.7. The stoics 1.8. Unification of the theories and the predominance of linguistics 1.9. The 'instructional' model 1.10. Strong codes and weak codes 1.11. Abduction and inferential nature of signs 1.12. The criterion of interpretability 1.13. Sign and subject 2. Dictionary vs. Encyclopedia 2.1. Porphyry strikes back 2.2 Critique of the Porphyrian tree 2.3. Encyclopedias 3. Metaphor 3.1. The metaphoric nexus 3.2. Traditional definitions 3.3. Aristotle: synecdoche and Porphyrian tree 3.4. Aristotle: metaphors of three terms 3.5. Aristotle: the proportional scheme 3.6. Proportion and condensation 3.7. Dictionary and encyclopedia 3.8. The cognitive function 3.9. The semiosic background: the system of content 3.10. The limits of formalization 3.11. Componential representation and the pragmatics of the text 3.12. Conclusions 4. Symbol 4.1. Genus and species 4.2. Expressions by ratio facilis 4.3. Expressions produced by ratio difficilis 4.4. The symbolic mode 4.5. Semiotics of the symbolic mode 4.6. Conclusions 5. Code 5.1. The rise of new category 5.2. The landslide effect 5.3. Codes and communication 5.4. Codes as s-codes 5.5. Cryptography and natural languages 5.6. S-codes and signification 5.7 The genetic code 5.8. Toward a provisonal conclusion 6. Isotopy 6.1. Discursive isotopies within sentences with paradigmatic disjunction 6.2. Discursive isotopies within sentences with syntagmatic disjunction 6.3. Discursive isotopies between sentences with paradigmatic disjunction 6.4. Discursive isotopies between sentences with syntagmatic disjunction 6.5. Narrative isotopies connected with isotopic discursive disjunctions generating mutually exlusive stories 6.6 Narrative isotopies connected with isotopic discursive disjunctions that generate complementary stories 6.7. Narrative isotopies connected with discursive isotopic disjunctions that generate complementary stoies in each case 6.8. Extensional isotopies 6.9. Provisional conclusions 7. Mirrors 7.1. Is the mirror image a sign? 7.2. The imaginary and the symbolic 7.3. Getting in through the Mirror 7.4. A phenomenology of the mirror: the mirror does not invert 7.5. A pragmatics of the mirror 7.6. The mirror as a prosthesis and a channel 7.7. Absolute icons 7.8. Mirrors as rigid designators 7.9. On signs 7.10. Why mirrors do not produce signs 7.11. Freaks: distorting mirrors 7.12. Procatoptric staging 7.13. Rainbows and Fata Morganas 7.14. Catoptric theaters 7.15. Mirrors that 'freeze' images 7.16. The experimentum crucis References Index of authors Index of subjects
Multimodal options for materials research to advance the basis for fusion energy in the ITER era

Well-coordinated international fusion materials research on multiple fundamental feasibility issues can serve an important role during the next ten years. Due to differences in national timelines and fusion device concepts, a parallel-track (multimodal) approach is currently being used for developing fusion energy. An overview is given of the current state-of-the-art of major candidate materials systems for next-step fusion reactors, including a summary of existing knowledge regarding operating temperature and neutron irradiation fluence limits due to high-temperature strength and radiation damage considerations, coolant compatibility information, and current industrial manufacturing capabilities. There are two inter-related overarching objectives of fusion materials research to be performed in the next decade: (1) understanding materials science phenomena in the demanding DT fusion energy environment, and (2) application of this knowledge to develop and qualify materials to provide the basis for next-step facility construction authorization by funding agencies and public safety licensing authorities. The critical issues and prospects for development of high-performance fusion materials are discussed along with recent research results and planned activities of the international materials research community.
Detecting Malicious Activity with DNS Backscatter

Network-wide activity is when one computer (the originator) touches many others (the targets). Motives for activity may be benign (mailing lists, CDNs, and research scanning), malicious (spammers and scanners for security vulnerabilities), or perhaps indeterminate (ad trackers). Knowledge of malicious activity may help anticipate attacks, and understanding benign activity may set a baseline or characterize growth. This paper identifies DNS backscatter as a new source of information about network-wide activity. Backscatter is the reverse DNS queries caused when targets or middleboxes automatically look up the domain name of the originator. Queries are visible to the authoritative DNS servers that handle reverse DNS. While the fraction of backscatter they see depends on the server's location in the DNS hierarchy, we show that activity that touches many targets appear even in sampled observations. We use information about the queriers to classify originator activity using machine-learning. Our algorithm has reasonable precision (70-80%) as shown by data from three different organizations operating DNS servers at the root or country-level. Using this technique we examine nine months of activity from one authority to identify trends in scanning, identifying bursts corresponding to Heartbleed and broad and continuous scanning of ssh.
Relations of Stroke Volume and Cardiac Output to Body Composition: The Strong Heart Study

Background —Although cardiac output (CO) plays the vital role of delivering nutrients to body tissues, few data are available concerning the relations of stroke volume (SV) and CO to body composition in large population samples. Methods and Results —Doppler and 2D echocardiography and bioelectric impedance in 2744 Strong Heart Study participants were used to calculate SV and CO and to relate them to fat-free body mass (FFM), adipose mass, and demographic variables. Both SV and CO were higher in men than women and in overweight than normal-weight individuals, but these differences were diminished or even reversed by normalization for FFM or body surface area. In both sexes, SV and CO were more strongly related to FFM than adipose mass, other body habitus measures, arterial pressure, diabetes, or age. In multivariate analyses using the average of Doppler and left ventricular SV to minimize measurement variability, FFM was the strongest correlate of SV and CO; other independent correlates were adipose mass, systolic pressure, diabetes, age, and use of digoxin and calcium channel and &bgr;-blockers. Conclusions —In a population-based sample, SV and CO are more strongly related to FFM than other variables; increased FFM may be the primary determinant of increased SV and CO in obesity.
Bromocriptine in traumatic brain injury

The authors report the case of a 63-year-old patient with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) associated with Parkinson's syndrome, whose performances were dramatically improved by bromocriptine therapy, with an improvement of the scores, not only on tests evaluating motor functions but also on tests evaluating the patient's cognitive functions. However, no improvement was observed with levodopa.
Customizable pervasive applications

Human behavior and housing resist every standardization effort. Many aspects such as different technical equipment, furniture, and usage patterns make our surroundings as individual as ourselves. Thus, the personalization of pervasive applications is a fundamental requirement. To enable the development of custom pervasive applications, we propose a software development process. This process is based on the successful process for modern desktop applications. There, developers create extensible applications and components. Customizers use the resulting artifacts to develop custom applications. Finally, users configure applications to their individual needs by adjusting predefined settings. To adopt this process for pervasive computing, we present a component system for developers, a graphical toolkit for customizers, and self-configuration algorithms to ease the deployment
An Internal Model Architecture for Novelty Detection: Implications for Cerebellar and Collicular Roles in Sensory Processing

The cerebellum is thought to implement internal models for sensory prediction, but details of the underlying circuitry are currently obscure. We therefore investigated a specific example of internal-model based sensory prediction, namely detection of whisker contacts during whisking. Inputs from the vibrissae in rats can be affected by signals generated by whisker movement, a phenomenon also observable in whisking robots. Robot novelty-detection can be improved by adaptive noise-cancellation, in which an adaptive filter learns a forward model of the whisker plant that allows the sensory effects of whisking to be predicted and thus subtracted from the noisy sensory input. However, the forward model only uses information from an efference copy of the whisking commands. Here we show that the addition of sensory information from the whiskers allows the adaptive filter to learn a more complex internal model that performs more robustly than the forward model, particularly when the whisking-induced interference has a periodic structure. We then propose a neural equivalent of the circuitry required for adaptive novelty-detection in the robot, in which the role of the adaptive filter is carried out by the cerebellum, with the comparison of its output (an estimate of the self-induced interference) and the original vibrissal signal occurring in the superior colliculus, a structure noted for its central role in novelty detection. This proposal makes a specific prediction concerning the whisker-related functions of a region in cerebellar cortical zone A2 that in rats receives climbing fibre input from the superior colliculus (via the inferior olive). This region has not been observed in non-whisking animals such as cats and primates, and its functional role in vibrissal processing has hitherto remained mysterious. Further investigation of this system may throw light on how cerebellar-based internal models could be used in broader sensory, motor and cognitive contexts.
Monolithic Integration of a Folded Dipole Antenna With a 24-GHz Receiver in SiGe HBT Technology

The integration of an on-chip folded dipole antenna with a monolithic 24-GHz receiver manufactured in a 0.8-mum SiGe HBT process is presented. A high-resistivity silicon substrate (1000 Omega ldr cm) is used for the implemented circuit to improve the efficiency of the integrated antenna. Crosstalk between the antenna and spiral inductors is analyzed and isolation techniques are described. The receiver, including the receive and an optional transmit antenna, requires a chip area of 4.5 mm2 and provides 30-dB conversion gain at 24 GHz with a power consumption of 960 mW.
Enhancing Feature Selection Using Statistical Data with Unigrams and Bigrams

Feature selection is an essential preprocessing step for classifiers with high dimensional training corpus. Features for text categorization include words, phrases, sentences or distribution of words. The complexity of classifying documents to related categories is on higher scale in comparison with unrelated categories. A feature selection algorithm based on chi-square statistics, have been proposed for Naive Bayes classifier. The proposed feature selection method identifies the related features for a class and determines the type of dependency between the feature and category. In this paper, the proposed method ascertains related phrases and words as features. A comparison of the conventional chi-square method is made with the proposed method. Experiments were conducted with randomly chosen training documents from one unrelated and five closely related categories of 20Newsgroup Benchmarks. It is observed that the proposed method has better precision and recall.
Fluorescence polarization assays in high-throughput screening and drug discovery: a review

The sensitivity of fluorescence polarization (FP) and fluorescence anisotropy (FA) to molecular weight changes has enabled the interrogation of diverse biological mechanisms, ranging from molecular interactions to enzymatic activity. Assays based on FP/FA technology have been widely utilized in high-throughput screening (HTS) and drug discovery due to the homogenous format, robust performance and relative insensitivity to some types of interferences, such as inner filter effects. Advancements in assay design, fluorescent probes, and technology have enabled the application of FP assays to increasingly complex biological processes. Herein we discuss different types of FP/FA assays developed for HTS, with examples to emphasize the diversity of applicable targets. Furthermore, trends in target and fluorophore selection, as well as assay type and format, are examined using annotated HTS assays within the PubChem database. Finally, practical considerations for the successful development and implementation of FP/FA assays for HTS are provided based on experience at our center and examples from the literature, including strategies for flagging interference compounds among a list of hits.
Information Geometry of-Projection inMean Field

Information geometry is applied to mean eld approximation for elucidating its properties in the spin glass model or the Boltzmann machine. The-divergence is used for approximation, where-geodesic projection plays an important role. The naive mean eld approximation and TAP approximation are studied from the point of view of information geometry, which treats the intrinsic geometric structures of a family of probability distributions. The bifurcation of the-projection is studied, at which the uniqueness of the-approximation is broken.
Filtering data from high-throughput experiments based on measurement reliability

In the context of the plethora of data currently generated in molecular biology, the paper by Bourgon et al. in PNAS (1) is pivotal, because it shows that an initial data filter can appropriately increase the detection power of a high-throughput experiment. Bourgon et al. (1) showed that filtering on overall variance outperforms filtering on overall mean, but they do not address two weaknesses of the methodology. First, because filtering is done on the overall variance, it does not disentangle the biological variation (containing the potentially interesting signals) from the technical variation (i.e., the measurement noise). Second, the threshold choice when the overall variation should be considered too low is very arbitrary and makes the method … 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: wtalloen{at}its.jnj. com.
Linear Precoding and Equalization for Network MIMO With Partial Cooperation

A cellular multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink system is studied, in which each base station (BS) transmits to some of the users so that each user receives its intended signal from a subset of the BSs. This scenario is referred to as network MIMO with partial cooperation since only a subset of the BSs is able to coordinate their transmission toward any user. The focus of this paper is on the optimization of linear beamforming strategies at the BSs and at the users for network MIMO with partial cooperation. Individual power constraints at the BSs are enforced, along with constraints on the number of streams per user. It is first shown that the system is equivalent to a MIMO interference channel with generalized linear constraints (MIMO-IFC-GC). The problems of maximizing the sum rate (SR) and minimizing the weighted sum mean square error (WSMSE) of the data estimates are nonconvex, and suboptimal solutions with reasonable complexity need to be devised. Based on this, suboptimal techniques that aim at maximizing the SR for the MIMO-IFC-GC are reviewed from recent literature and extended to the MIMO-IFC-GC where necessary. Novel designs that aim at minimizing the WSMSE are then proposed. Extensive numerical simulations are provided to compare the performance of the considered schemes for realistic cellular systems.
University of Wisconsin — Madison Department of Statistics Quantitative Population Ethology

Since the advent of theoretical population biology, there have been a number of attempts to simulate the dynamics of biological systems using any number of individual-based modeling techniques. In some cases such techniques have been successful, while in other applications the same approaches have failed miserably. We present some of the properties that an individual within a small population may exhibit and discuss general properties a modeling approach must possess to account for the dynamics of individuals within a population. We offer a possible modeling technique that is uniquely dependent on the information that the biologist observes.
Genetic Structures at the Origin of Acquisition and Expression of the Carbapenem-Hydrolyzing Oxacillinase Gene blaOXA-58 in Acinetobacter baumannii

ABSTRACT Genetic structures surrounding the carbapenem-hydrolyzing oxacillinase gene blaOXA-58 were characterized in a series of OXA-58-positive Acinetobacter baumannii strains isolated from different countries. We showed that in most of the cases, acquisitions of the blaOXA-58-containing overall structure, including insertion sequence elements, may be likely the results of recombination events. In type strain A. baumannii MAD, the genetic structure surrounding the blaOXA-58 gene was bracketed by two 27-bp repeated sequences. The isolation of a clonally related OXA-58-negative A. baumannii isolate that possessed the same plasmid backbone as A. baumannii MAD but lacked this genetic structure indicated that the mechanism of acquisition could be reversible. Parts of the structure identified in A. baumannii MAD were conserved in other blaOXA-58-positive isolates from various European countries. Primer extension experiments showed that blaOXA-58 expression was related to promoter sequences brought by different insertion sequence elements, such as an ISAba3-like element, ISAba1, ISAba2, and IS18. This work identified novel structures at the origin of acquisition and expression of a carbapenem-hydrolyzing β-lactamase identified in non-clonally related A. baumannii isolates.
Traffic Anomaly Detection Using K-Means Clustering

(cid:151)Data mining techniques make it possible to search large amounts of data for characteristic rules and patterns. If applied to network monitoring data recorded on a host or in a network, they can be used to detect intrusions, attacks and/or anomalies. This paper gives an introduction to Network Data Mining, i.e. the application of data mining methods to packet and (cid:3)ow data captured in a network, including a comparative overview of existing approaches. Furthermore, we present a novel (cid:3)ow-based anomaly detection scheme based on the K-mean clus- tering algorithm. Training data containing unlabeled (cid:3)ow records are separated into clusters of normal and anomalous traf(cid:2)c. The corresponding cluster centroids are used as patterns for computationally ef(cid:2)cient distance-based detection of anomalies in new monitoring data. We provide a detailed description of the data mining and the anomaly detection processes, and present (cid:2)rst experimental results.
The Araucaria Project: The Distance to the Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822 from Cepheid Variables Discovered in a Wide-Field Imaging Survey

We have obtained mosaic images of NGC 6822 in the V and I bands on 77 nights. From these data, we have conducted an extensive search for Cepheid variables over the entire field of the galaxy, and we have found 116 such variables with periods ranging from 1.7 to 124 days. We used the long-period (>5.6 days) Cepheids to establish the period-luminosity (PL) relations in V, I, and in the reddening-independent Wesenheit index, which are all very tightly defined. Fitting the OGLE LMC slopes in the various bands to our data, we have derived distance values for NGC 6822 in V, I, and WI, which agree very well among themselves. Our adopted best distance value from the reddening-free Wesenheit index is 23.34 ± 0.04 (statistical) ±0.05 (systematic) mag. This value agrees within the combined 1 σ uncertainties with a previous distance value derived for NGC 6822 by McAlary and coworkers from near-IR photometry of nine Cepheids, but our new value is significantly more accurate. We compare the slopes of the Cepheid PL relation in V and I as determined in the five best-observed nearby galaxies, which span a metallicity range from -1.0 to -0.3 dex, and find the data consistent with no metallicity dependence of the PL relation slope in this range. Comparing the magnitudes of 10 day Cepheids with the I-band magnitudes of the tip of the red giant branch in the same set of galaxies, there is no evidence either for a significant variation of the PL zero points in V and I. The available data limit such a zero-point variation to less than 0.03 mag in the considered low-metallicity regime.
Super Resolution Reconstruction of Brain MR Image Based on Convolution Sparse Network

In order to recover high resolution image from their corresponding low-resolution counterparts for MR Images, this paper has proposed a super resolution reconstruction method to recover the low-resolution MR images based on convolution neural network. Based on the proposed network, the convolution operation and non-linear mapping are employed to adapt MR images naturally and leaning the end-to-end mapping from low/high-resolution images. On one hand, convolution operation is natural for image processing; on the other hand, non-linear mapping is helpful to explore the non-linear mapping relationship between low resolution and high resolution images and enhance the sparsity of feature representation. The experiments have demonstrated that the proposed convolution sparse network has the ability to restore the detail information from low resolution MR images and achieve better performance for super resolution reconstruction.