Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Propagation of Sound in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Sound propagation has been studied in a magnetically trapped dilute Bose-Einstein condensate. Localized excitations were induced by suddenly modifying the trapping potential using the optical dipole force of a focused laser beam. The resulting propagation of sound was observed using a novel technique, rapid sequencing of nondestructive phase-contrast images. The speed of sound was determined as a function of density and found to be consistent with Bogoliubov theory. This method may generally be used to observe high-lying modes and perhaps second sound. {copyright} {ital 1997} {ital The American Physical Society}
Genomic scale sub-family assignment of protein domains

Many classification schemes for proteins and domains are either hierarchical or semi-hierarchical yet most databases, especially those offering genome-wide analysis, only provide assignments to sequences at one level of their hierarchy. Given an established hierarchy, the problem of assigning new sequences to lower levels of that existing hierarchy is less hard (but no less important) than the initial top level assignment which requires the detection of the most distant relationships. A solution to this problem is described here in the form of a new procedure which can be thought of as a hybrid between pairwise and profile methods. The hybrid method is a general procedure that can be applied to any pre-defined hierarchy, at any level, including in principle multiple sub-levels. It has been tested on the SCOP classification via the SUPERFAMILY database and performs significantly better than either pairwise or profile methods alone. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the hybrid method over other possible approaches to the problem is that within the framework of an existing profile library, the assignments are fully automatic and come at almost no additional computational cost. Hence it has already been applied at the SCOP family level to all genomes in the SUPERFAMILY database, providing a wealth of new data to the biological and bioinformatics communities.
Co-evolving predator and prey robots

In this article I briefly discuss the role that artificial (robotic) models can play in the study of competing co-evolutionary dynamics, the main results obtained in the research works addressing the evolution of predator and prey robots, and the implications of these studies for robotics. In particular I discuss the factors that cause the convergence toward a cyclical dynamic and the factors that enable prolonged innovation phases eventually leading to open-ended processes.
Wireless sensors for monitoring corrosion in reinforced concrete members

This paper summarizes the ongoing work at the University of Texas to develop a class of passive, wireless sensors to detect corrosion in reinforced concrete structures. Two prototype sensors have been developed that are designed to be attached to the reinforcing cage before the concrete is placed. The basic and improved sensors are inexpensive to fabricate, sufficiently durable to survive the construction process, can be interrogated through concrete, and provide reliable information about the initiation of corrosion in the adjacent reinforcement. Because the sensors do not contain an internal battery, the expected life of the sensors is expected to be essentially the same as the design life of the structure in which they are embedded.
Multitemporal classification without new labels: A solution with optimal transport

Re-using models trained on a specific image acquisition to classify landcover in another image is no easy task. Illumination effects, specific angular configurations, abrupt and simple seasonal changes make that the spectra observed, even though representing the same kind of surface, drift in a way that prevents a non-adapted model to perform well. In this paper we propose a relative normalization technique to perform domain adaptation, i.e. to make the data distribution in the images more similar before classification. We study optimal transport as a way to match the image-specific distributions and propose two regularization schemes, one unsupervised and one semi-supervised, to obtain more robust and semantic matchings. Code is available at http://remi.flamary. com/soft/soft-transp.html. Experiments on a challenging triplet of WorldView2 images, comparing three neighborhoods of the city of Zurich at different time instants, confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method that can perform adaptation in these non-coregistered and very different urban case studies.
On the High-SNR Capacity of the Gaussian Interference Channel and New Capacity Bounds

The best outer bound on the capacity region of the two-user Gaussian interference channel (GIC) is known to be the intersection of regions of various bounds, including genie-aided outer bounds, in which a genie provides noisy input signals to the intended receiver. The Han and Kobayashi (HK) scheme provides the best known inner bound. The rate difference between the best known lower and upper bounds on the sum capacity remains as large as 1 b/channel use, especially around <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g^{2}=P^{-1/3}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the symmetric power constraint and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the symmetric real cross-channel coefficient. In this paper, we pay attention to the <italic>moderate interference regime</italic> where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g^{2}\in ~(\max (0.086, P^{-1/3}),1)$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. We propose a new upper-bounding technique that utilizes noisy observation of interfering signals as genie signals and applies time sharing to the genie signals at the receivers. A conditional version of the worst additive noise lemma is also introduced to derive new capacity bounds. The resulting upper (outer) bounds on the sum capacity (capacity region) are shown to be tighter than the existing bounds in a certain range of the moderate interference regime. Using the new upper bounds and the HK lower bound, we show that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$R_{\text {sym}}^{*}=\frac {1}{2}\log \big (|g|P+|g|^{-1}(P+1)\big )$ </tex-math></inline-formula> characterizes the capacity of the symmetric real GIC to within 0.104 b/channel use in the moderate interference regime at any signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We further establish a high-SNR characterization of the symmetric real GIC, where the proposed upper bound is at most 0.1 b far from a certain HK achievable scheme with Gaussian signalling and time sharing for <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g^{2}\in ~(0,1]$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. In particular, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$R_{\text {sym}}^{*}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is achievable at high SNR by the proposed HK scheme and turns out to be the high-SNR capacity at least at <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g^{2}=0.25, 0.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. We finally point out that there are two subregimes at high SNR in the weak interference regime, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$g^{2}\in (0,1]$ </tex-math></inline-formula>.
A novel coding strategy for device-to-device communications

Device-to-device communication is currently an active research topic in the cellular industry. D2D communication enables two mobile users in vicinity to directly communicate over a dynamically assigned, licensed spectrum without going through the base station. D2D offers tremendous benefits such as increase in spectral and energy efficiency, offload traffic of the base station and reduce transmission delay. In this paper, we first present an overview of 3GPP proximity services. Then, we propose a new coding strategy that considerably increases the efficiency of the channel in the multicast setting. Specifically, we study the scenario where three mobile devices are nearby and want to exchange their messages via a relay. Performance evaluation of the proposed scheme using Raptor codes shows that this scheme approaches the theoretical limits at moderate to high signal-to-noise ratio.
Using Human and Model Performance to Compare MRI Reconstructions

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction techniques are often validated with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio, and mean-to-standard-deviation ratio measured on example images. We present human and model observers as a novel approach to evaluating reconstructions for low-SNR magnetic resonance (MR) images. We measured human and channelized Hotelling observers in a two-alternative forced-choice signal-known-exactly detection task on synthetic MR images. We compared three reconstructions: magnitude, wavelet-based denoising, and phase-corrected real. Human observers performed approximately equally using all three reconstructions. The model observer showed very close agreement with the humans over the range of images. These results contradict previous predictions in the literature based on SNR. Thus, we propose that human observer studies are important for validating MRI reconstructions. The model's performance indicates that it may provide an alternative to human studies
Estimating Hedonic Functions for Rents and Values in the Presence of Unobserved Heterogeneity in the Quality for Housing ∗

A central challenge in estimating models with heterogeneous housing is separating quality from price. We provide a new method for estimating hedonic functions for rental rates and housing values treating housing quality as unobserved by the econometrician. Our method also deals with the problem that rental prices and housing values are partially latent showing that the rent-to-value ratio is non-parameterically identified. We, thus provide an integrated treatment of non-linear pricing rental and asset markets. Our new method can be used to gain some new insights into the causes and effects of the recent housing market crisis in the U.S. Our main application focuses on the housing markets of Miami (Fl) which experienced an average real appreciation of housing values of 65 percent during the period from 2002 to 2007. Our findings are broadly consistent with the view that changes in credit market conditions for low income houses together with changes in investor expectations about future housing prices may have accounted for the large run-up in housing values.
pH-responsive nutraceutical-mesoporous silica nanoconjugates with enhanced colloidal stability.

An innovative platform for targeted oral drug delivery is proposed based on the functionalization of drug/dye-loaded mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) with a biodegradable nutraceutical (β-lactoglobulin). The attachment of the nutraceutical not only protects the drug/dye from leaching in acidic environment, but also effectively allows their release in desired basic sites (pH 7.4).
PWM Control for a micro-robot moving on a discrete curvature trajectory set

In this paper we study the problem of controlling a micro robot which moves either on a line or on circle of predetermined radius. Locomotion constraints of this type are usual in micro robots, and therefore, it is important to have efficient and easy to implement ways of coping with these constraints. To solve the problem we present a multilevel motion controller that can be easily implemented on a robot with scarce computational resources as it does not rely on complex logical operations. It reduces the kinematics of the micro robot to the kinematics of a unicycle, screening in effect the micro behavior from the high level planner. Simulated results are provided to verify the proposed methodology.
LEPA: A Lightweight and Efficient Public Auditing Scheme for Cloud-Assisted Wireless Body Sensor Networks

From smart watch to remote healthcare system, wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) play an important role in modern healthcare system. However, the weak capacity of devices has limited WBSNs development. Considering the huge processing and storage capacity of the cloud, it can be merged with WBSNs to make up for the deficiencies of weak capacity. Based on this consideration, the concept of cloud-assisted WBSNs has been proposed recently. In contrast to generic data, the data in cloud-assisted WBSNs will be used for providing medical diagnosis, so the integrity of data is very important because any modification will result in severe consequences such as misdiagnosis. The public auditing scheme could provide an efficient solution to check the data integrity remotely without downloading them. However, the traditional public auditing scheme for cloud cannot be used directly due to the high data density and weak processing capacity in WBSNs. So, in this paper, we proposed a lightweight and efficient public auditing scheme, LEPA, for cloud-assisted WBSNs. Compared with similar schemes, the WBSNs’ client only needs to do one symmetrical encryption with low computational cost in LEPA. Security proof shows that LEPA can resist two types of adversaries in random oracle model. The efficiency evaluation also shows that LEPA outperforms previous proposals.
Untypable human papillomavirus infection and risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia among women with abnormal cervical cytology

The risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and/or invasive cervical cancer associated with untypable human papillomavirus (HPV) infections has been not investigated fully. HPV infection caused by 18 high‐risk and 7 low‐risk genotypes as detected by the INNO‐LIPA genotyping system, was investigated in 4,258 women with abnormal Pap smear referred to a colposcopic service. The prevalence of HPV infection was 76.1%. Rates of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3+ were 0.88% (9/1,017) in HPV‐negative subjects, 1.8% (7/380) in subjects with untypable HPV infection, 3.2% (11/343) in subjects with single/multiple low‐risk types, 28.3% (201/709) in subjects with multiple low and high‐risk types, 15.2% (162/1,069) in subjects with single high‐risk types, and 31.2% (229/733) in those with multiple high‐risk types. Compared to women without any HPV infection, the odds ratios of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2+ or grade 3+ in subjects with untypable or low‐risk HPV genotypes were 5.73 (95% CI = 2.79–11.78) and 12.4 (95% CI = 6.31–24.5, P = 0.014 compared to untypable) and 3.1 (95% CI = 1.11–8.16) and 7.1 (95% CI = 2.9–17.2, P = 0.07 compared to untypable), respectively. In the subgroup of subjects with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 1 or negative colposcopy/biopsy, the progression to cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2+ at follow‐up (median 25 months, range 6–70) was 2% (14/684), 3.4% (7/205), and 5.6% (11/195, P = 0.04 compared to negative) among negative, untypable, and low‐risk HPV infection, respectively. The risk of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia associated with untypable HPV infection was higher than that recorded among uninfected women, but lower than the risk associated with low‐ or high‐risk HPV genotypes. J. Med. Virol. 86:1145–1152, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Improving the quality of extracted endmembers

Endmember extraction for spectral mixture analysis is a necessary step when endmember information is unknown. If endmembers are assumed to be pure pixels present in an image scene, endmember extraction is to search the most distinctive pixels. Popular algorithms using the criteria of simplex volume maximization (e.g., N-FINDR) and spectral signature similarity (e.g., Vertex Component Analysis) belong to this type. If pure pixel assumption is not imposed, endmember extraction usually is conducted by searching the signatures that can circumscribe the data cloud with the minimum volume. Both types of algorithms are affected by anomalous pixels since such outliers are very different from other pixels and act as interferers during simplex volume evaluation. In this paper, we propose a new approach that separates the endmember searching in normal and anomalous pixels. Real data experiments show that it can improve the quality of extracted endmembers.
Components in Real-Time Systems

Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE) is a promising approach to improve quality, achieve shorter time to market and to manage the increasing complexity of software. Still there are a number of unsolved problems that hinder wide use of it. This is especially true for real-time systems, not only because of more rigorous requirements and demanding constraints, but also because of lack of knowledge how to implement the component-based techniques on real-time development. In this paper we present a method for development of real-time systems using the component-based approach. The development process is analysed with respect to both temporal and functional constraints of real-time components. Furthermore, we propose what information is needed from the component providers to successfully reuse binary real-time components. Finally, we discuss a possibility of managing compositions of components and suggest how an existing real-time development environment can be extended to support our design method.
Numerical Simulation of Spinodal Deposition in Cu–6at.%Ni–3at.%Si Ternary Alloy Using of Phase Field Method

Based on Cahn-Hilliard nonlinear diffusion equation, the phase field model has been established for ternary alloy spinodal decomposition, which directly couples with Calphad thermodynamics and dynamics calculation and takes into account the effect of the coherent elastic energy. The simulated microstructures of spinodal decomposition were carried out in the isothermally-aged of Cu-6at. %Ni-3at. %Si alloy. The results indicate that the spinodal decomposition takes place at the early stage of Cu-6at. %Ni-3at. %Si alloy aging at temperatures of 723K, forming two-phases mixture of Cu-rich and Ni/Si-rich, and the decomposition microstructures are distributed in a semi-interconnected labyrinth-like form. Under the effect of the coherent elastic energy, the decomposition microstructures demonstrate the obvious anisotropic characteristics, and present interconnected rectangular stripes aligned along [10] and [01] directions. The growth of the decomposition microstructures is in accordance with the growth law of growth exponent n≈0.29, slightly less than the LSW’s prediction.
Deformable 3D Volume Registration Using Efficient MRFs Model with Decomposed Nodes

An efficient registration algorithm working on non-rigid 3D objects is presented. We formulate the registration as a discrete labe ling problem on MRFs model whose energy can be minimized by optimization techniques in the literature. Due to the huge search range in three-dimensional space, previous approaches produces a vast amount of labels for a node in the MRFs graph. To reduce the number of labels, we decompose a node into three nodes so that the labels in each node represent just one-dimensional displacement. This procedure introduces a factor node with a clique potential of size three, defining ternary interaction between the decomposed nodes. We convert the factor node into pairwise interactions and adopt the tree-r eweighted message passing technique, which guarantees the convergence of lower bound of the energy function. In experiments we use clinical and synthetically deformed 3D medical images. Result shows the proposed method enhances computational efficiency without loss of accuracy.
Galactose transfer to endogenous acceptors within Golgi fractions of rat liver

The distribution of galactosyl transferase was studied using trans and cis Golgi fractions isolated by a modification of the Ehrenreich et al. procedure (1973. J. Cell Biol. 59:45-72) as well as an intact Golgi fraction isolated by a new one-step procedure. Two methods of assay were used. The first method analyzed the ability of Golgi fractions to transfer galactose (from uridine diphosphogalactose [UDP-gal] substrate) to the defined exogenous acceptor ovomucoid. The second method assessed the transfer of galactose from UDP-gal substrate to endogenous acceptors (endogenous glycosylation). The trans Golgi fraction (Golgi light) was highly active by the first method but revealed only low activity by the second method. Golgi fractions enriched in central and cis elements (the Golgi intermediate, heavy and especially the intact Golgi fraction) were highly active in both methods of assay. The endogenous glycosylation approach was validated by gel fluorography of the endogenous acceptors. For all Golgi fractions, transfer of galactose was revealed to secretory glycopeptides. It is concluded that galactosyl transferase activity in vivo occurs primarily in central and cis Golgi elements but not trans Golgi vesicles.
In vitro assessment of anti-proliferative effect induced by α-mangostin from Cratoxylum arborescens on HeLa cells

Natural medicinal products possess diverse chemical structures and have been an essential source for drug discovery. Therefore, in this study, α-mangostin (AM) is a plant-derived compound was investigated for the apoptotic effect on human cervical cancer cells (HeLa). The cytotoxic effects of AM on the viability of HeLa and human normal ovarian cell line (SV40) were evaluated by using MTT assay. Results showed that AM inhibited HeLa cells viability at concentration- and time-dependent manner with IC50 value of 24.53 ± 1.48 µM at 24 h. The apoptogenic effects of AM on HeLa were assessed using fluorescence microscopy analysis. The effect of AM on cell proliferation was also studied through clonogenic assay. ROS production evaluation, flow cytometry (cell cycle) analysis, caspases 3/7, 8, and 9 assessment and multiple cytotoxicity assays were conducted to determine the mechanism of cell apoptosis. This was associated with G2/M phase cell cycle arrest and elevation in ROS production. AM induced mitochondrial apoptosis which was confirmed based on the significant increase in the levels of caspases 3/7 and 9 in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, the MMP disruption and increased cell permeability, concurrent with cytochrome c release from the mitochondria to the cytosol provided evidence that AM can induce apoptosis via mitochondrial-dependent pathway. AM exerted a remarkable antitumor effect and induced characteristic apoptogenic morphological changes on HeLa cells, which indicates the occurrence of cell death. This study reveals that AM could be a potential antitumor compound on cervical cancer in vitro and can be considered for further cervical cancer preclinical and in vivo testing.