Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
VISIR-I: small vessels – least-time nautical routes using wave forecasts

Abstract. A new numerical model for the on-demand computation of optimal ship routes based on sea-state forecasts has been developed. The model, named VISIR (discoVerIng Safe and effIcient Routes) is designed to support decision-makers when planning a marine voyage. The first version of the system, VISIR-I, considers medium and small motor vessels with lengths of up to a few tens of metres and a displacement hull. The model is comprised of three components: a route optimization algorithm, a mechanical model of the ship, and a processor of the environmental fields. The optimization algorithm is based on a graph-search method with time-dependent edge weights. The algorithm is also able to compute a voluntary ship speed reduction. The ship model accounts for calm water and added wave resistance by making use of just the principal particulars of the vessel as input parameters. It also checks the optimal route for parametric roll, pure loss of stability, and surfriding/broaching-to hazard conditions. The processor of the environmental fields employs significant wave height, wave spectrum peak period, and wave direction forecast fields as input. The topological issues of coastal navigation (islands, peninsulas, narrow passages) are addressed. Examples of VISIR-I routes in the Mediterranean Sea are provided. The optimal route may be longer in terms of miles sailed and yet it is faster and safer than the geodetic route between the same departure and arrival locations. Time savings up to 2.7 % and route lengthening up to 3.2 % are found for the case studies analysed. However, there is no upper bound for the magnitude of the changes of such route metrics, which especially in case of extreme sea states can be much greater. Route diversions result from the safety constraints and the fact that the algorithm takes into account the full temporal evolution and spatial variability of the environmental fields.
miR-214 promotes periodontal ligament stem cell osteoblastic differentiation by modulating Wnt/β-catenin signaling

The canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling is important in the differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells into osteoblasts. Accumulating evidence suggests that the expression of β-catenin is, in part, regulated by specific microRNAs (miRNAs). The aim of the present study was to investigate the putative roles of miRNAs in osteoblast differentiation. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) arrays were used to identify miRNAs that were differentially expressed between differentiated and non-differentiated periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs), and reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) was used for validation. Since miR-214 was revealed to be significantly downregulated during PDLSC differentiation, its function was further investigated via silencing and overexpression. In addition, osteogenic differentiation of PDLSCs was evaluated at 10 and 21 days following induction, using Alizarin red staining and RT-qPCR analysis for mRNA expression levels of the osteogenic differentiation markers alkaline phosphatase (ALP), osteocalcin and bone sialoprotein. Furthermore, the potential target genes of miR-214 were investigated using a dual-luciferase reporter assay, RT-qPCR and western blot analysis, whereas a TOPflash/FOPflash reporter plasmid system followed by a luciferase assay was used to examine the effects of miR-214 on Wnt/β-catenin signaling. The present results demonstrated that miR-214 was significantly downregulated during the osteoblastic differentiation of PDLSCs. Notably, its overexpression inhibited PDLSC differentiation, whereas its knockdown promoted PDLSC differentiation, as revealed by alterations in mRNA expression of osteoblast-specific genes and ALP. In addition, miR-214 was demonstrated to directly interact with the 3′-untranslated region of the β-catenin gene CTNNB1, and suppressed Wnt/β-catenin signaling through the inhibition of β-catenin. The results of the present study suggested that miR-214 may participate in the regulation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, and may have potential as a candidate target for the development of preventive or therapeutic agents for the treatment of patients with osteogenic disorders.
Scaling up the Automatic Statistician: Scalable Structure Discovery using Gaussian Processes

Automating statistical modelling is a challenging problem in artificial intelligence. The Automatic Statistician takes a first step in this direction, by employing a kernel search algorithm with Gaussian Processes (GP) to provide interpretable statistical models for regression problems. However this does not scale due to its $O(N^3)$ running time for the model selection. We propose Scalable Kernel Composition (SKC), a scalable kernel search algorithm that extends the Automatic Statistician to bigger data sets. In doing so, we derive a cheap upper bound on the GP marginal likelihood that sandwiches the marginal likelihood with the variational lower bound . We show that the upper bound is significantly tighter than the lower bound and thus useful for model selection.
Mitochondrial genome of the Mackerel scad Decapterus macarellus (Perciformes: Carangidae)

Abstract The complete mitochondrial genome sequence was determined for the Mackerel scad Decapterus macarellus, one species of the economically important fish in Carangidae. The entire sequence of the genome was 16,544 bp in length, including the typical structure of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes and 1 non-coding control region. Overall base compositions of the sequence were 27.3% of A, 30.4% of C, 25.3% of T and 17.0% of G, showing an obvious anti-G bias commonly observed in teleosts. The mitogenome of Decapterus macarellus had a quite high-sequence similarity (92.5%) with D. macrosoma, which was morphologically close to D. macarellus. The complete mitogenome sequence data of D. macarellus could provide useful information for taxonomic and phylogenetics studies.
Continuous Fabrication of Sound Semi-Solid Slurry for Rheoforming

An alternative method has been proposed for the continuous and sample production of SSM slurry for the rheo-forming process. The process named “Low Superheat Pouring with a Shear Field (LSPSF)” dose not use the conventional stirring process, instead, it uses solidification conditions to control nucleation, nuclei survival and grain growth by means of low superheat pouring, vigorous mixing and rapid cooling during the initial stage of solidification combined with thereafter a much slower cooling. The method has been applied to A356, 201 and A380 Al-alloys. The primary phases present in average equivalent diameter of 40-70μm, 35-50μm and 50-70μm for A356, 201 and A380, respectively. The morphology of primary phases is nearly spherical with shape factor of 0.78-0.86, 0.71-0.83 and 0.85-0.96 for A356, 201 and A380, respectively. For each of those alloys, there is no eutectic entrapped within the primary phase. The advantages of the LSPSF include process simplicity with high efficiency, easy incorporation into existing metal forming installation without infrastructure changes and a wide process window for pouring temperature.
Design, synthesis and biological evaluation of novel nicotinamide derivatives bearing a substituted pyrazole moiety as potential SDH inhibitors.

BACKGROUND Succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) plays an important role in the Krebs cycle, which is considered as an attractive target for development of succinate dehydrogenase inhibitors (SDHIs) based on antifungal agents. Thus, in order to discover novel molecules with high antifungal activities, SDH as the target for a series of novel nicotinamide derivatives bearing substituted pyrazole moieties were designed and synthesised via a one-pot reaction. RESULTS The biological assay data showed that compound 3 l displayed the most potent antifungal activity with EC50 values of 33.5 and 21.4 µm against Helminthosporium maydis and Rhizoctonia cerealis, respectively. Moreover, 3 l exhibited the best inhibitory ability against SDH enzymes. The results of docking simulation showed that 3 l was deeply embedded into the SDH binding pocket, and the binding model was stabilised by a cation-π interaction with Arg 43, Tyr 58 and an H-bond with Trp 173. CONCLUSION The study suggests that the pyrazole nicotinamide derivative 3 l may serve as a potential SDHI that can be used as a novel antifungal agent, and provides valuable clues for the further design and optimisation of SDH inhibitors. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.
Analysis of Broadcast Signaling for Millimeter Wave Cell Discovery

Millimeter wave (mm-wave) communication is essential for the next generation cellular networks. To exploit mm-wave frequencies, directional transmissions have to be applied to compensate the high propagation loss. Due to directional transmissions, initial access procedure of mm-wave communication systems needs specific design compared to conventional networks operating at sub-6 GHz. This paper focuses on an important step in the initial access procedure, namely broadcast signaling design for cell discovery. An analysis of such design is conducted based on an information theoretical approach, where four fundamental beam patterns, which cover most of the design options, are compared. Their performances in terms of cell discovery latency and signaling overhead are analyzed. The analysis reveals three key findings: (i) the average cell discovery latency depends only on beam duration and frame length, if the entire beacon interval can be accommodated in one frame; (ii) for low latency, single beam exhaustive scanning provides the best performance, but results in high signaling overhead; (iii) simultaneous multi-beam scanning can significantly reduce the overhead, and provide the flexibility to achieve trade-off between latency and overhead. The analytical results are verified by extensive simulations.
Promiximab-duocarmycin, a new CD56 antibody-drug conjugates, is highly efficacious in small cell lung cancer xenograft models

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is of a highly invasive and metastatic lung cancer subtype and there had not been effective targeted therapies. CD56, a cell surface marker highly expressed on most SCLC, is a promising therapeutic target for treatment of this aggressive cancer. In this study, we generated a novel anti-CD56 antibody named promiximab, characterized by high affinity, internalization and tumor specificity. Then, the promiximab was conjugated with a potent DNA alkylating agent duocarmycin via reduced interchain disulfides to yield the promiximab-Duocarmycin (promiximab-DUBA) conjugates. Mass spectrometry analysis showed promiximab-DUBA had an average DAR (Drug-to-Antibody Ratio) of about 2.04. In vitro, promiximab-DUBA exerted strong inhibitory effects on SCLC cell lines NCI-H526, NCI-H524 and NCI-H69, with IC50 values of 0.07 nmol/L, 0.18 nmol/L and 0.29 nmol/L, respectively. In vivo antitumor activity, promiximab-DUBA at the dose of 5 mg/kg and 10 mg/kg every three days with a total of three times were sufficient to induce sustained regression of NCI-H526 tumors over control treatment with promiximab. Mostly, no recurrence was observed until 65 days post treatment with promiximab-DUBA. In the NCI-H69 subcutaneous xenograft model, significant inhibition of tumor growth was also observed following administration of promiximab-DUBA at the dose of 5 mg/kg or 10 mg/kg. Moreover, body weight and histopathology of major organs (liver, spleen, heart, lung and kidney) showed no significant changes after treatment of promiximab-DUBA. In conclusion, promiximab-DUBA is highly efficacious in small cell lung cancer xenograft models, and provides a new immunotherapy approach for SCLC.
Editors' note: Diagnosis and management of dementia with Lewy bodies: Fourth consensus report of the DLB Consortium

“Diagnosis and management of dementia with Lewy bodies: Fourth consensus report of the DLB Consortium” proposed new criteria for the diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), helping to distinguish DLB from Parkinson disease with dementia. Dr. Abe agrees with the need for new criteria and discusses how the hypothesis of Braak et al. of the rostral progression of brainstem synucleinopathy is not observed in DLB.
Chemical mechanical polishing of thermal oxide films using silica particles coated with ceria

Thermal oxide covered silicon wafers were polished with slurries containing either nano-sized ceria (CeO_2) or newly prepared uniform colloidal silica particles coated with ceria. The polish rate of the latter was significantly higher than that of pure ceria. The experiments were carried out using different concentrations of the abrasives at pH 4 and 10. Little effect on the polishing rates was noted when the conditions of the slurries were varied, which was explained by the compensation of two opposite polishing mechanisms.
Atomic force microscopy wear characterization of biomedical polymer coatings

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has become established as a powerful and versatile tool for investigating local mechanical properties. In addition, through the AFM tip–sample interaction, it has become possible to study the effects of perturbations and modifications to the surface of soft samples, such as polymers. The accurate knowledge of their response to continuous AFM scanning could help to design new materials having desirable mechanical properties. In this paper, we present the results obtained by applying a new methodology to investigate wear properties on two different type of polymer, poly(methyl-methacrylate) and poly(l-lactic acid). These polymers have been widely employed in biomedical applications and have recently been considered as good candidates for coronary metallic stent coatings. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Electronic Characterization of Organic Thin Films by Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy

This review highlights the potential of Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) beyond imaging to simultaneously study structural and electronic properties of functional surfaces and interfaces. This is of paramount importance since it is well established that a solid surface possesses different properties than the bulk material. The versatility of the technique allows one to carry out investigations in a non‐invasive way for different environmental conditions and sample types with resolutions of a few nanometers and some millivolts. KPFM can be used to acquire a wide knowledge of the overall electronic and electrical behavior of a sample surface. Moreover, by KPFM it is possible to study complex electronic phenomena in supramolecular engineered systems and devices. The combination of such a methodology with external stimuli, e.g., light irradiation, opens new doors to the exploration of processes occurring in nature or in artificial complex architectures. Therefore, KPFM is an extremely powerful technique that permits the unraveling of electronic (dynamic) properties of materials, enabling the optimization of the design and performance of new devices based on organic‐semiconductor nanoarchitectures.
Characteristic of the equivalent impedance for an m×n RLC network with an arbitrary boundary

Considerable progress has been made recently in the development of techniques to determine exactly two-point resistances in networks of various topologies. In particular, a general resistance formula of a non-regular m×n resistor network with an arbitrary boundary is determined by the recursion-transform (RT) method. However, research on the complex impedance network is more difficult than that on the resistor network, and it is a problem worthy of study since the equivalent impedance has many different properties from equivalent resistance. In this study, the equivalent impedance of a non-regular m×n RLC network with an arbitrary boundary is studied based on the resistance formula, and the oscillation characteristics and resonance properties of the equivalent impedance are discovered. In the RLC network, it is found that our formula leads to the occurrence of resonances at the boundary condition holding a series of specific values with an external alternating current source. This curious result suggests the possibility of practical applications of our formula to resonant circuits.
An approach based on phonemes to large vocabulary Chinese sign language recognition

Hitherto, the major challenge to sign language recognition is how to develop approaches that scale well with increasing vocabulary size. We present an approach to large vocabulary, continuous Chinese sign language (CSL) recognition that uses phonemes instead of whole signs as the basic units. Since the number of phonemes is limited, HMM-based training and recognition of the CSL signal becomes more tractable and has the potential to recognize enlarged vocabularies. Furthermore, the proposed method facilitates the CSL recognition when the finger-alphabet is blended with gestures. About 2400 phonemes are defined for CSL. One HMM is built for each phoneme, and then the signs are encoded based on these phonemes. A decoder that uses a tree-structured network is presented. Clustering of the Gaussians on the states, the language model and N-best-pass is used to improve the performance of the system. Experiments on a 5119 sign vocabulary are carried out, and the result is exciting.
A Static Code and Dynamic Data Attestation based Intrusion Detection System for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have applications typically in ubiquitous and pervasive environments that make ensuring the security therein critical. Despite deployment with utmost stringent security measures, the intrusions and the adversarial attacks like node compromise and node tampering cannot be prevented. Hence, there is a need for devising an intrusion detection and prevention system that can withstand the resource constraints and work feasibly within the same. One such intrusion detection technique is code attestation which is useful for verifying the program integrity of nodes in such networks. Our focus here is on software based remote code attestation. The static code attestation techniques published in the literature only check the integrity of the static code embedded within sensor nodes whereas the dynamic data attestation techniques check the structural integrity of dynamically created data. We believe that an integrated approach that uses both the static and dynamic code attestation techniques can leverage the effectiveness of an intrusion detection system. In this paper, we propose our integrated approach for countering attacks based on code attestation. As we demonstrate using our experimental simulation studies, with the marginal increase in memory and computational overhead, our approach ensures improved overall security. To the best of our knowledge ours is the first attempt in following such an approach.
The Overcomplete Dictionary-Based Directional Estimation Model and Nonconvex Reconstruction Methods

In this paper, it is proposed the directional estimation model on the overcomplete dictionary, which bridges the compressed measurements of the image blocks and the directional structures of the dictionary. In the model, it is established the analytical method to estimate the structure type of a block as either smooth, single-oriented, or multioriented. Furthermore, the structures of each type of blocks are described by the structured subdictionaries. Then based on the obtained estimations and the constrains on the sparse dictionaries, the original image will be estimated. To verify the model, the nonconvex methods are designed for compressed sensing. Specifically, the greedy pursuit-based methods are established to search the subdictionaries obtained by the model, which achieve better local structural estimation than the methods without the directional estimation. More importantly, it is proposed the nonconvex image reconstruction method with direction-guided dictionaries and evolutionary searching strategies (NR_DG), where the evolutionary searching strategies are delicately designed for each type of the blocks based on the directional estimation. By the experimental results, it is shown that the NR_DG method performs better than the available two-stage evolutionary reconstruction method.
Mechanical properties characterisation of silicon carbide layers in simulated coated particles

In the TRISO (tristructural isotropic) coated fuel particle used in the High Temperature Reactor, the most important layer is a silicon carbide layer which acts as a pressure vessel. In this study, we have focused our study on the investigation of the Young? s modulus, hardness, residual stress, and fracture toughness of the SiC layer. Moreover, microstructures and impurities in silicon carbide were characterised and then related to both Young? s modulus and hardness of the SiC layer. Both nanoindentation and micro-indentation were used to determine Young? s modulus and hardness of the SiC. Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electron microscopy techniques were used to examine impurities, phases and microstructure of silicon carbide layers, respectively. Young? s modulus was measured at different positions of a polished surface of the SiC with different CVD growth and crystal orientations. With help from the finite element modelling, it has been found that Young? s modulus of the SiC is dependent on the grain orientation of the SiC. Mechanical properties of silicon carbide are affected by the presence of excess silicon, excess carbon, stacking faults, texture, grain size, property of grain boundary. The effect of these factors on Young? s modulus and hardness, are investigated with the orthogonal analysis. The analysis concludes that the most important factor on Young? s modulus is texture while the most significant factor on hardness is grain boundary. Grain size is secondarily important factor to affect hardness. Stacking faults and impurities almost have no influence on Young? s modulus and hardness. The residual stress in the silicon carbide layer was measured based on the peak shift in Raman spectra of the SiC and is in a range of 150-300 MPa. Fracture resistance in the radial direction of the SiC layer is larger than those in the circumferential direction. The difference is controlled by the layer-like structure of the SiC coating.
Conditions on abruptness in a gradient-ascent Maximum Entropy learner

When does a gradual learning rule translate into gradual learning performance? This paper studies a gradient-ascent Maximum Entropy phonotactic learner, as applied to twoalternative forced-choice performance expressed as log-odds. The main result is that slow initial performance cannot accelerate later if the initial weights are near zero, but can if they are not. Stated another way, abruptness in this learner is an effect of transfer, either from Universal Grammar in the form of an initial weighting, or from previous learning in the form of an acquired weighting.