Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thermal conductivity of cubic and hexagonal mesoporous silica thin films

This paper reports the cross-plane thermal conductivity of highly ordered cubic and hexagonal templated mesoporous amorphous silica thin films synthesized by evaporation-induced self-assembly process. Cubic and hexagonal films featured spherical and cylindrical pores and average porosities of 25% and 45%, respectively. The pore diameters ranged from 3 to 18 nm and film thickness from 80 to 540 nm, while the average wall thickness varied from 3 to 12 nm. The thermal conductivity was measured at room temperature using the 3ω method. The experimental setup and the associated analysis were validated by comparing the thermal conductivity measurements with the data reported in literature for the silicon substrate and for high quality thermal oxide thin films with thicknesses ranging from 100 to 500 nm. The cross-plane thermal conductivity of the synthesized mesoporous silica thin films does not show strong dependence on pore size, wall thickness, or film thickness. This is due to the fact that heat is mainly ca.
Interdisciplinary study on pottery experimentally impregnated with wine

Experimentally developed ceramic pots, with two different sizes of grain, were half-filled with wine and subjected to thermal alteration at constant elevated temperature ((60 ± 2)°C) in darkness for 12 weeks. This work sought to characterise the samples thereby obtained from chemical and mineralogical perspectives using scanning electron microscopy and an energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis system (SEM-EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) with UV detection as an alternative to chromatographic methods, due to its good resolution, automation, simplicity, high speed, low consumption of chemicals and short time required for sample preparation. The capillary electrophoresis method was used for the detection of five wine biomarkers: succinic acid, malic acid, tartaric acid, citric acid and lactic acid. In general, it was noted that the fine-grained ceramic assortment retained the organic material better than the coarser-grained ceramics. An interesting observation derived from this study was that not only could tartaric acid be considered as a biomarker for wine residues in archaeological pottery, but malic acid could also act similarly for white wine and lactic acid for red wine.
Blind deconvolution/equalization using state-space models

We propose extension of multichannel blind equalization problem assuming that both mixing and demixing models are described by stable linear state-space systems. The problem is formulated as an optimization task. New learning algorithms are developed which can be considered as extension of existing algorithms. By applying demixing state-space model we are able to reduce the complexity of separating systems in some practical implementations.
Co‐ordinated regulation of amino sugar biosynthesis and degradation: the NagC repressor acts as both an activator and a repressor for the transcription of the glmUS operon and requires two separated NagC binding sites.

The NagC repressor controls the expression of the divergently transcribed nagE‐nagBACD operons involved in the uptake and degradation of the amino sugars, N‐acetyl‐D‐glucosamine (GlcNAc) and glucosamine (GlcN). The glmUS operon, encoding proteins necessary for the synthesis of GlcN (glmS) and the formation of UDP‐GlcNAc (glmU), is transcribed from two promoters located upstream of glmU. In the absence of amino sugars both promoters are active. However, in the presence of GlcNAc, the glmU proximal promoter, P1, is inactive while the upstream promoter, P2, is subject to weak induction. Two binding sites for the NagC repressor are located at −200 and −47 bp upstream of P1. Mutations which prevent NagC binding to either of these sites eliminate expression from the P1 promoter. This shows that binding of NagC is necessary for expression of the glmU P1 promoter and implies that NagC is playing the role of activator for this promoter. Moreover, the location of the distal NagC site suggests that this site is behaving like an upstream activating sequence (UAS).
Wearable, energy-opportunistic vision sensing for walking speed estimation

State-of-the-art wearable systems are typically performance-constrained, battery-based devices which can, at most, reach self-sustainability using energy harvesting and aggressive duty-cycling. In this work, we present a wearable vision sensor node which can reliably execute computationally-intensive computer-vision algorithms in an energy-opportunistic fashion. By leveraging a burst-generation scheme, the proposed system can efficiently provide the energy guarantees required for tasks with temporal dependencies, even under highly variable harvesting conditions. By mounting the node on a user's glasses, the node is able to acquire a sequence of images and determine the user's walking speed, requiring only a small solar panel and capacitor. Both hardware and software have been fully optimized for ultra-low power consumption and high performance. Extensive experimental results show the energy node's energy proportionality and the accuracy of its walking speed estimation.
Using WordNet and Semantic Similarity for Bilingual Terminology Mining from Comparable Corpora

This paper presents an extension of the standard approach used for bilingual lexicon extraction from comparable corpora. We study of the ambiguity problem revealed by the seed bilingual dictionary used to translate context vectors. For this purpose, we augment the standard approach by a Word Sense Disambiguation process relying on a WordNet-based semantic similarity measure. The aim of this process is to identify the translations that are more likely to give the best representation of words in the target language. On two specialized French-English comparable corpora, empirical experimental results show that the proposed method consistently outperforms the standard approach.
Comparison of Three Czech Speech Databases from the Standpoint of Lombard Effect Appearance

This paper focuses on three Czech speech databases recorded in actual and simulated noisy conditions and explores their suitability for LE analysis and modeling. Parameters of Czech SPEECON, CZKCC car database and newly established Czech Lombard Speech Database (CLSD) are compared. All three databases comprise speech recorded in neutral conditions and speech uttered in noise of the moving car. SNR distribution of the recorded channels, speech fundamental frequency, formant positions and bandwidths, phoneme and word length variations and their overall impact on small vocabulary recognizer’s performance are analyzed. It is shown that all three databases display speech feature changes across the recording conditions. In SPEECON database these variations do not affect simple recognition task performance much, in CZKCC and CLSD significant recognition degradation has been observed. Due to results of the feature analyses, CZKCC recognition seems to be corrupted rather by background noise than by LE, while in CLSD only LE affects the recognition as the overall SNR is high.
Mechanics of fracture in nanometer-scale components

Nanometer-scale components (nano-components) often exhibit characteristic mechanical behavior different from those of bulk counterparts. In this paper, we review a series of experimental studies on the mechanics of their fracture focusing especially on the interfacial strength in the nano-components, which consist of dissimilar nano-layers. Since the stress concentrated region is proportionally scaled down for shrinkage of component size, it becomes a few nanometers or at most a few tens of nanometers in the nano-components. We particularly pay attention to the availability of "stress" as the governing quantity of cracking, which is on the basis of the concept of continuum mechanics. We also investigate the effect of nano-scale stress concentration on the fatigue behavior of metals in nano-components. Finally, we discuss future directions on the further experimental exploration on the fracture mechanics in nano-components; the tensile testing of nano-rod and the fracture due to the stress concentration in the single nanometer scale.
WFPC2 Observations of NGC 454: An Interacting Pair of Galaxies

We present Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images in the F450W, F606W, and F814W filters of the interacting pair of galaxies NGC 454. Our data indicate that the system is in the early stages of interaction. A population of young star clusters has formed around the late component, and substantial amounts of gas have sunk into the center of the earlier component, where it has not yet produced significant visible star formation or nuclear activity. We have photometric evidence that the star clusters have strong line emission, which indicates the presence of a substantial component of hot, massive stars that formed less than 5-10 Myr ago.
Safety of ERCP in patients with liver cirrhosis: a national database study

Abstract Background and aims Given the limited data on the safety of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) in patients with liver cirrhosis, we attempted to evaluate this question using a large national database. Methods We conducted a matched case – control study using the 2010 National Inpatient Sample database in which four non-cirrhotic controls were matched randomly for every cirrhotic patient from the same 10-year age group. We compared adverse events and safety of inpatient ERCP between patients with (n = 3228) and without liver cirrhosis (controls, n = 12 912). Results Of the 3228 cirrhotic patients, 2603 (80.6 %) had decompensated and 625 (19.4 %) had compensated disease. Post-procedure bleeding (2.1 % vs. 1.2 %, P < 0.01) was higher in patients compared to controls. On multivariable analysis, decompensated cirrhosis (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.7; 95 % confidence interval [CI], 2.2 – 3.2), compensated cirrhosis (aOR 2.2; 95 %CI 1.2 – 3.9), therapeutic ERCPs (aOR 1.4; 95 % CI 1.2 – 2.1), and biliary sphincterotomy (aOR 1.6; 95 %CI 1.1 – 2.1) were independently associated with increased risk of post-procedure bleeding. Performing ERCPs in large (aOR 0.5; 95 %CI 0.4 – 0.6) and medium (aOR 0.7; 95 %CI 0.6 – 0.9) sized hospitals was associated with a decreased risk of post-procedure bleeding. Biliary sphincterotomy (aOR 1.7; 95 %CI 1.2 – 2.3) and therapeutic ERCPs (aOR 1.1; 95 %CI 1.1 – 1.3) increased the risk of post-ERCP pancreatitis, and pancreatic stent placement was associated with a decreased risk of post-ERCP pancreatitis (aOR 0.8; 95 %CI 0.7 – 0.9). Conclusions Cirrhosis (both compensated and decompensated), performing therapeutic ERCPs and biliary sphincterotomy increase the risk of post-procedure bleeding. Performing ERCPs in large and medium sized hospitals may improve outcomes.
Emotion Detection through Speech and Facial Expressions

Human machine interaction is one of the most burgeoning area of research in the field of information technology. To date a majority of research in this field has been conducted using unimodal and multimodal systems with asynchronous data. Because of the above, the improper synchronization, which has become a common problem, due to that, the system complexity increases and the system response time decreases. To counter this problem, a novel approach has been introduced to predict human emotions using human speech and facial expressions. The approach uses two feature vectors, namely, relative bin frequency coefficient (RBFC) and relative sub-image based coefficient (RSB) for speech and visual data respectively. Support vector machine with radial basis kernel is used for feature level classification based fusion technique between two modalities. The proposed novel approach has resulted in galvanizing results for a myriad of inputs and can be adapted to asynchronous data.
Exploring the Combination of Dempster-Shafer Theory and Neural Network for Predicting Trust and Distrust

In social media, trust and distrust among users are important factors in helping users make decisions, dissect information, and receive recommendations. However, the sparsity and imbalance of social relations bring great difficulties and challenges in predicting trust and distrust. Meanwhile, there are numerous inducing factors to determine trust and distrust relations. The relationship among inducing factors may be dependency, independence, and conflicting. Dempster-Shafer theory and neural network are effective and efficient strategies to deal with these difficulties and challenges. In this paper, we study trust and distrust prediction based on the combination of Dempster-Shafer theory and neural network. We firstly analyze the inducing factors about trust and distrust, namely, homophily, status theory, and emotion tendency. Then, we quantify inducing factors of trust and distrust, take these features as evidences, and construct evidence prototype as input nodes of multilayer neural network. Finally, we propose a framework of predicting trust and distrust which uses multilayer neural network to model the implementing process of Dempster-Shafer theory in different hidden layers, aiming to overcome the disadvantage of Dempster-Shafer theory without optimization method. Experimental results on a real-world dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.
The adenovirus E1A-regulated transcription factor E4F is generated from the human homolog of nuclear factor phiAP3

A 50-kDa cellular factor, E4F, has been implicated in mediating trans activation of the adenovirus E4 gene by the 289R E1A(13S) protein. Previous experiments demonstrated an E1A-dependent increase in E4F DNA binding activity, dependent on phosphorylation, that correlated with the activation of E4 transcription. Using expression screening, we isolated a cDNA clone encoding the E4F protein, as judged by DNA binding characteristics, transcriptional activation, and immunological criteria. The E4F-1 cDNA encodes a 783-amino-acid polypeptide that has 86% sequence identity with the murine nuclear factor phiAP3, a GLI-krüppel-related protein. E4F DNA binding activity is encoded within an amino-terminal region of E4F-1 that contains a zinc finger domain and, as with endogenous E4F, is phosphatase sensitive. We found that E4F was generated from the full-length E4F-1-encoded protein as a 50-kDa amino-terminal fragment. Moreover, E1A(13S) expression induced the phosphorylation of both forms of E4F-1 but differentially regulated their DNA binding activities, stimulating the 50-kDa fragment while reducing the activity of the full-length protein. In transient-transfection assays, the E4F-1 amino-terminal fragment stimulated the adenovirus E4 promoter in the presence of E1A(13S), whereas the full-length protein repressed the promoter in the absence, but not the presence, of E1A. The results indicate that the 50-kDa polypeptide responsible for E4F DNA binding activity is a fragment generated from the human homolog of phiAP3 and that the two forms of the E4F-1 protein are differentially regulated by E1A through phosphorylation.
Approximating Graph Pattern Queries Using Views

This paper studies approximation of graph pattern queries using views. Given a pattern query Q and a set V of views, we propose to find a pair of queries Qu and Ql, referred to as the upper and lower approximations of Q w.r. t. V, such that (a) for any data graph G, answers to (part of) Q in G are contained in Qu(G) and contain Ql(G); and (b) both Qu and Ql can be answered by using views in V. We consider pattern queries based on both graph simulation and subgraph isomorphism. We study fundamental problems about approximation using views. Given Q and V, (1) we study whether there exist upper and lower approximations of Q w.r. t. V. (2) How to find approximations that are closest to Q w.r. t. V if exist? (3) How to answer upper and lower approximations using views in V? We give characterizations of the problems, study their complexity and approximation-hardness, and develop algorithms with provable bounds. Using real-life datasets, we verify the effectiveness and efficiency of approximating simulation and subgraph queries using views.
Heme binding to albuminoid proteins is the result of recent evolution

We hypothesize that the structure of the heme binding site of paralogous albuminoids alpha‐fetoprotein and serum albumin has evolved from the ancestor vitamin D binding protein through the 'phylogenetic intermediate' afamin, the most recently discovered albuminoid. Heme binding to plasma proteins should serve not only as a buffer for heme homeostasis, avoiding heme binding to lipoproteins with the consequent oxidative stress, but also for heme transfer to the liver, complementing the function of hemopexin. iubmb Life, 59: 436‐440, 2007
Partial Training for a Lexicalized-Grammar Parser

We propose a solution to the annotation bottleneck for statistical parsing, by exploiting the lexicalized nature of Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG). The parsing model uses predicate-argument dependencies for training, which are derived from sequences of CCG lexical categories rather than full derivations. A simple method is used for extracting dependencies from lexical category sequences, resulting in high precision, yet incomplete and noisy data. The dependency parsing model of Clark and Curran (2004b) is extended to exploit this partial training data. Remarkably, the accuracy of the parser trained on data derived from category sequences alone is only 1.3% worse in terms of F-score than the parser trained on complete dependency structures.
Sound Absorption Property of Carbonized Medium Density Fiberboards at Different Carbonizing Temperatures

This study was carried out to use carbonized medium density fiberboard (MDF) for the replacement of sound absorbing material. Carbonization treatment was performed to improve sound absorption property for MDF at carbonizing temperatures of 500 ℃ , 700 ℃ , 900 ℃ and 1100 ℃ . As the carbonization temperature increased, the results of the observation by scanning electron microscope (SEM) demonstrated that the fibers exhibited a more compressed morphology within the surface section of the MDF than those within the middle section of MDF. As the carbonizing temperature increased, the cavity increased. The sound absorption coefficient increased between the temperatures of 500 ℃ and 900 ℃ , but decreased at a temperature of 1100 ℃ . The sound absorption properties of the carbonized MDF and the non-carbonized MDF were compared. The maximum sound absorption coefficient of the carbonized MDF was 12.38%. This was almost double of the value of the non-carbonized MDF.
Accounting for interactions and complex inter‐subject dependency in estimating treatment effect in cluster‐randomized trials with missing outcomes

Semi‐parametric methods are often used for the estimation of intervention effects on correlated outcomes in cluster‐randomized trials (CRTs). When outcomes are missing at random (MAR), Inverse Probability Weighted (IPW) methods incorporating baseline covariates can be used to deal with informative missingness. Also, augmented generalized estimating equations (AUG) correct for imbalance in baseline covariates but need to be extended for MAR outcomes. However, in the presence of interactions between treatment and baseline covariates, neither method alone produces consistent estimates for the marginal treatment effect if the model for interaction is not correctly specified. We propose an AUG–IPW estimator that weights by the inverse of the probability of being a complete case and allows different outcome models in each intervention arm. This estimator is doubly robust (DR); it gives correct estimates whether the missing data process or the outcome model is correctly specified. We consider the problem of covariate interference which arises when the outcome of an individual may depend on covariates of other individuals. When interfering covariates are not modeled, the DR property prevents bias as long as covariate interference is not present simultaneously for the outcome and the missingness. An R package is developed implementing the proposed method. An extensive simulation study and an application to a CRT of HIV risk reduction‐intervention in South Africa illustrate the method.
Exploiting query reformulations for web search result diversification

When a Web user's underlying information need is not clearly specified from the initial query, an effective approach is to diversify the results retrieved for this query. In this paper, we introduce a novel probabilistic framework for Web search result diversification, which explicitly accounts for the various aspects associated to an underspecified query. In particular, we diversify a document ranking by estimating how well a given document satisfies each uncovered aspect and the extent to which different aspects are satisfied by the ranking as a whole. We thoroughly evaluate our framework in the context of the diversity task of the TREC 2009 Web track. Moreover, we exploit query reformulations provided by three major Web search engines (WSEs) as a means to uncover different query aspects. The results attest the effectiveness of our framework when compared to state-of-the-art diversification approaches in the literature. Additionally, by simulating an upper-bound query reformulation mechanism from official TREC data, we draw useful insights regarding the effectiveness of the query reformulations generated by the different WSEs in promoting diversity.
A More Efficient Approach to Large Scale Matrix Completion Problems

This paper investigates a scalable optimization procedure to the low-rank matrix completion problem posed by Candes and Recht [2]. We identify the singular value decomposition as a computational bottleneck for large problem instances, and propose utilizing an approximately computed SVD borne out of recent advances in random linear algebra. We then use this approximately computed SVD to implement some popular first order methods for solving the matrix completion problem. Our results indicate that these modified routines can easily handle very large data sets. In particular, we are able to recover 35 million entries from a 10 × 10 matrix in a matter of minutes.
A method for estimation of urea using ammonia electrode and its applicability to milk samples

A method for the estimation of urea in milk using ammonia electrode is described. Urea is first degraded by urease enzyme into ammonium ion and carbon dioxide at neutral pH. The ammonium ion is then converted into ammonia at alkaline pH. A linear inverse relationship was observed between logarithmic concentration of ammonia or urea and electrode response. Repeatability, expressed as a coefficient of variation, was 1·77% at a level of 8·92 mm-urea in milk. The method was validated in milk samples spiked with between 2×10−3 and 10×10−3 m-urea and recovery of added urea was quantitative. Whereas, preservative sodium azide at 0·5 g/l or 2 g/l level did not affect results, lower values of urea concentration in presence of Bronopol at 0·5 g/l were observed. Urea levels in milk samples estimated by this method were comparable to standard enzymatic method. The method is simple, fast and is not prone to interference from other milk constituents.