Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulation of foaming process of polyurethane integral skin foams

This paper deals with a procedure to simulate the foaming process of polyurethane integral skin foams. The process involves heat generation by chemical reaction, heat loss through the mold, and local vaporization and condensation of the solvent. To simulate this dynamic process, a boundary mobile cell model was proposed. Each cell contains a certain mass of the solvent. The volume, temperature, and pressure of each cell call be estinlated by the quantity of heat which is generated and/or transferred in the cell, assuming that no pressure gradient exists and the total volume of each cell is constant. For a typical polyurethane system, apparent density profiles were predicted theoretically, as well as chemical conversion, temperature, and pressure profiles. Experimental results were compared with the theoretical values. Rather good agreement between them was obtained, though no adjusting parameter was introduced.
WaaP of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Is a Novel Eukaryotic Type Protein-tyrosine Kinase as Well as a Sugar Kinase Essential for the Biosynthesis of Core Lipopolysaccharide*

WaaP of P. aeruginosa is a crucial sugar kinase that phosphorylates HepI in the inner core region of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). WaaP shares homology with eukaryotic protein kinases in the conserved functional motifs (I–IX), indicating that it is also a protein kinase. This interpretation is substantiated by several lines of evidence including the following: (i) site-directed mutagenesis on catalytic domain residues abrogated the protein kinase activity; (ii) positive reaction in immunoblotting with anti-phosphotyrosine monoclonal antibody PY20; (iii) matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry and proteolytic peptide mapping showing excess mass equivalent to eight phosphate substituents on the tyrosine residues in WaaP; and (iv) WaaP is capable of catalyzing tyrosine self-phosphorylation as well as phosphorylating an exogenous synthetic co-polymer poly(Glu, Tyr). Thus, WaaP possesses dual kinase functions, and it utilizes a catalytic mechanism similar to that of the eukaryotic protein kinases. WaaP was localized to the cytoplasm, suggesting that phosphorylation of the LPS core occurred prior to translocation to the periplasm and attachment of O-antigen. A chemiluminescence-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed to measure the kinetics of the WaaP sugar kinase activity, and the results showed that the K m was 0.22 mm for ATP and 14.4 μm for hydrofluoric acid-treated LPS,V max was 408.24 pmol min−1, andk cat was 27.23 min−1.
Efficacy of multi-micronutrient fortified biscuits on urinary iodine levels of adolescent girls from Jaipur, India.

INTRODUCTION Iodine deficiency disorders are a public health problem in India. The aim of the study was to examine the effect of multi-micronutrient-fortified biscuits on urinary iodine levels of adolescent girls (n = 51, 10-16 years) studying in a government school in Jaipur city, India. METHODS The study was designed as an intervention study. Biscuits fortified with 150 mcg iodine, 30 mg iron, 100 mcg folic acid, 600 mcg vitamin A and 40 mg vitamin C were provided daily to the subjects on all working days over a 4-month period. The iodine status of the adolescent girls was determined through urinary iodine levels. RESULTS Supplementation with biscuits resulted in a significant increase in the mean urinary iodine level from 118.2 to 157.2 mcg/l and in the median value from 121 to 149 mcg/l. Prior to the intervention, 21.6% of the subjects had mild iodine deficiency but at the end of the intervention period, all the girls were iodine sufficient. Hence, iodine supplementation using biscuits resulted in improved iodine status of Indian adolescent girls. CONCLUSION It is, therefore, recommended that the school system be used for micronutrient supplementation interventions to improve the nutritional status of children and adolescents as there is more regimentation in a school setting for distribution of nutrient fortified food products to students.
Improving Within-Network Classification with Local Attributes

This paper is about using multiple types of information for c lassification of networked data in the transductive setting: given a network with some nodes label ed, predict the labels of the remaining nodes. One method recently developed for doing such inferen c is a guilt-by-association model. This method has been independently developed in two differe nt s ttings. One setting assumes that the networked data has explicit links such as hyperlink s between web-pages or citations between research papers. The second setting assumes a corpu s of non-relational data and creates links based on similarity measures between the instances. B oth use only the known labels in the network to predict the remaining labels but use very differe nt information sources. The thesis of of this paper is that if we were to combine the two types of link s, the resulting network would carry more information than either type of link by itself. Th is thesis is tested on six benchmark data sets where we show that this is indeed correct. We furthe r do a sensitivity study on how many links should be created, showing that the combined netw ork gets most of its immediate gain using only a few extra links.
Frontier example in experimental charge density research: Experimental electrostatics of proteins

The experimental charge density methodology is extended to macromolecular structure and biocrystallography. Ultrahigh-resolution diffraction data now can be collected at third-generation synchrotron sources for well-ordered protein crystals; the data can be refined with a more sophisticated model than the independent atom model (IAM), such as the multipolar atom. A new crystallographic program MoPro combining small molecules and macromolecular refinement method has been developed; first applications are described. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem 101: 624 - 634, 2005
A survey of small-scale sugarcane farmers in South Africa and Mauritius: introducing project methodology, investigating new technology and presenting the data.

This paper outlines the procedure followed, technology used and preliminary results derived from an extensive and comprehensive survey of small-scale sugarcane farmers conducted in Mauritius and South Africa. Mauritius and South Africa were concerned about the yield gap between small and large-scale farmers as well as their international non competitiveness within the diminishing preferential markets and rapidly increasing costs of production. A further concern was the apparent lack of adoption of improved technology and practices recommended by the research institutes. This paper reports on some of the preliminary findings of the survey carried out in South Africa. Methodology and appropriate innovative technology was identified to undertake such a complex task capturing data relating to social information, agronomic practices, skills and knowledge. Data was collected, captured and made available for further analysis. More than 900 farmers in South Africa (SA) and 800 in Mauritius (MU) were surveyed using the ‘logitech smart pen’ technology. Gaps in knowledge and skills as well as possible areas for further research needs for smallscale farmers were identified. This project has produced extensive data on an important industry client group that will better inform decision-makers on points which were previously largely assumed. It has also firmly asserted the South African Sugarcane Research Institute (SASRI) and the Mauritian Sugar Industry Research Institute (MSIRI) as leaders in this largely unexplored and novel area of extension empathy. This project was made possible through a European Union (EU) competitive grant fund to conduct agricultural research that would benefit the small-scale farmers of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
An aCGH classifier derived from BRCA1-mutated breast cancer and benefit of high-dose platinum-based chemotherapy in HER2-negative breast cancer patients

Background: Breast cancer cells deficient for BRCA1 are hypersensitive to agents inducing DNA double-strand breaks (DSB), such as bifunctional alkylators and platinum agents. Earlier, we had developed a comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH) classifier based on BRCA1-mutated breast cancers. We hypothesised that this BRCA1-likeCGH classifier could also detect loss of function of BRCA1 due to other causes besides mutations and, consequently, might predict sensitivity to DSB-inducing agents. Patients and methods: We evaluated this classifier in stage III breast cancer patients, who had been randomly assigned between adjuvant high-dose platinum-based (HD-PB) chemotherapy, a DSB-inducing regimen, and conventional anthracycline-based chemotherapy. Additionally, we assessed BRCA1 loss through mutation or promoter methylation and immunohistochemical basal-like status in the triple-negative subgroup (TN subgroup). Results: We observed greater benefit from HD-PB chemotherapy versus conventional chemotherapy among patients with BRCA1-likeCGH tumours [41/230 = 18%, multivariate hazard ratio (HR) = 0.12, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.04–0.43] compared with patients with non-BRCA1-likeCGH tumours (189/230 = 82%, HR = 0.78, 95% CI 0.50–1.20), with a significant difference (test for interaction P = 0.006). Similar results were obtained for overall survival (P interaction = 0.04) and when analyses were restricted to the TN subgroup. Sixty-three percent (20/32) of assessable BRCA1-likeCGH tumours harboured either a BRCA1 mutation (n = 8) or BRCA1 methylation (n = 12). Conclusion: BRCA1 loss as assessed by CGH analysis can identify patients with substantially improved outcome after adjuvant DSB-inducing chemotherapy when compared with standard anthracycline-based chemotherapy in our series.
Congestion-aware scalable video streaming

Real-time media applications often ignore ongoing congestion if there is no option to reduce the rate. These applications pose a threat to themselves and other traffic. Reducing the transmission rate requires reducing the amount of packets rather than spreading the transmission over a longer interval. Loss-based congestion control mechanisms are unsuitable for this requirement. Also this rate reduction with popular video codecs, e.g. MPEG4, is often problematic. This paper investigates the problems associated with real-time video transmission over the Internet. We investigate a rate control method minimizing delay and losses and report preliminary but promising results.
Managing GPU Concurrency in Heterogeneous Architectures

Heterogeneous architectures consisting of general-purpose CPUs and throughput-optimized GPUs are projected to be the dominant computing platforms for many classes of applications. The design of such systems is more complex than that of homogeneous architectures because maximizing resource utilization while minimizing shared resource interference between CPU and GPU applications is difficult. We show that GPU applications tend to monopolize the shared hardware resources, such as memory and network, because of their high thread-level parallelism (TLP), and discuss the limitations of existing GPU-based concurrency management techniques when employed in heterogeneous systems. To solve this problem, we propose an integrated concurrency management strategy that modulates the TLP in GPUs to control the performance of both CPU and GPU applications. This mechanism considers both GPU core state and system-wide memory and network congestion information to dynamically decide on the level of GPU concurrency to maximize system performance. We propose and evaluate two schemes: one (CM-CPU) for boosting CPU performance in the presence of GPU interference, the other (CM-BAL) for improving both CPU and GPU performance in a balanced manner and thus overall system performance. Our evaluations show that the first scheme improves average CPU performance by 24%, while reducing average GPU performance by 11%. The second scheme provides 7% average performance improvement for both CPU and GPU applications. We also show that our solution allows the user to control performance trade-offs between CPUs and GPUs.
Finite-Level Quantized Feedback Control for Linear Systems

Studies have shown that a logarithmic quantizer can provide the coarsest quantization for quadratic stabilization of linear systems using quantized feedback. However, the coarsest quantizer has an infinite number of quantization levels, which is not implemented in practice. In this paper, we investigate the quantized feedback control problem for discrete-time linear systems using a finite-level logarithmic quantizer. We introduce a dynamic scaling method for the logarithmic quantizer and show that asymptotic stabilization can be achieved with a moderate number of quantization levels. Our approach is easily implemented. We also study the quantized feedback stabilization problem for systems with bounded stochastic noise inputs and show that the system state can converge to a bounded region using a finite-level logarithmic quantizer in conjunction with a proper dynamic scaling scheme
Innovation-Related Enterprise Semantic Search: The INSEARCH Experience

Innovation is a crucial process for enterprizes and pushes for strict requirements towards semantic technologies. Large scale and timely search processes on the Web are here often involved in different business analytics tasks. In the European project INSEARCH, an advanced information retrieval system has been developed integrating robust semantic technologies and industry-standard software architectures for Web monitoring and alerting, proactive search as well as personalized domain-specific classification and ranking functionalities.
Inappropriately low hepcidin levels in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome carrying a somatic mutation of SF3B1

Somatic mutations of the RNA splicing machinery have been recently identified in myelodysplastic syndromes. In particular, a strong association has been found between SF3B1 mutation and refractory anemia with ring sider-oblasts, a condition characterized by ineffective erythropoiesis and parenchymal iron overload. We studied the relationship between SF3B1 mutation, erythroid activity and hepcidin levels in myelodysplastic syndrome patients. Erythroid activity was evaluated through the proportion of marrow erythroblasts, soluble transferrin receptor and serum growth differentiation factor 15. Significant relationships were found between SF3B1 mutation and marrow erythroblasts (P=0.001), soluble transferrin receptor (P=0.003) and serum growth differentiation factor 15 (P=0.033). Serum hepcidin varied considerably, and multivariable analysis showed that the hepcidin to ferritin ratio, a measure of adequacy of hepcidin levels relative to body iron stores, was inversely related to the SF3B1 mutation (P=0.013). These observations suggest that patients with SF3B1 mutation have inappropriately low hepcidin levels, which may explain their propensity to parenchymal iron loading.
Edinburgh Research Explorer Estrogen-related receptor beta interacts with Oct4 to positively regulate Nanog gene expression

Embryonic stem (ES) cell self-renewal is regulated by transcription factors, including Oct4, Sox2, and Nanog. A number of additional transcriptional regulators of ES cell self-renewal have recently been identiﬁed, including the orphan nuclear receptor estrogen-related receptor beta (Esrrb). However, the mode of action of Esrrb in ES cells is unknown. Here, using an Oct4 afﬁnity screen, we identify Esrrb as an Oct4 partner protein. Esrrb can interact with Oct4 independently of DNA. Esrrb is recruited near the Oct-Sox element in the Nanog proximal promoter, where it positively regulates Nanog expression. Esrrb recruitment to the Nanog promoter requires both the presence of Oct4 and a degenerate estrogen-related receptor DNA element. Consistent with its role in Nanog regulation, expression of the Esrrb protein within the Oct4-positive ES cell population is mosaic and correlates with the mosaic expression of
Ferrous (Fe-based) shape memory alloys (SMAs): properties, processing and applications

Abstract: Many ferrous (Fe)-based shape memory alloys (SMAs) have been discovered, such as Fe–Pt, Fe–Pd and Fe–Co–Ni–Ti. The Fe–Mn–Si system is one of the most distinctive SMAs in the sense that it is the only Fe–based SMA that has successfully been applied in the industrial field. The shape memory effect of the Fe–Mn–Si system was approved in 1982. The memory effect is associated with the strain field established by the formation of the hexagonal close packed (hcp) phase in the parent g phase. Various efforts have been made to develop these materials with an aim of producing high performance of the shape memory effect, high strength, high corrosion resistance, weldability and sufficient plasticity for industrial processing. It is currently possible to attain ~ 4% shape recovery or 180 MPa stress in the Fe–Mn–Si–Cr SMA by heating the ferrous material up to 350 °C after 5 ~ 8% deformation for martensite formation. The Fe–Mn–Si–Cr SMA has been applied in the industrial field as the material of a joint for pipes and rails. In this chapter, we will review the fundamental character of the Fe–Mn–Si–Cr SMA and report on the latest industrial applications of the steel pipe joints and the rail joint bar (fishplate) of heavy–duty crane rails.
The management of border disputes in African regional sub- systems: comparing West Africa

In Africa, the management of border disputes varies from sub-region to subregion. Most puzzling is the difference between West Africa and the Horn of Africa. In the latter, border disputes are much more likely to escalate into war than in the former. Seeking to solve this puzzle, this study focuses on the territorial integrity norm. It departs from existing accounts of this norm in two ways: first, it does not choose the region but the sub-region as the level of analysis. Second, it does not isolate the territorial integrity norm from its social context but analyses the interplay of the norm with the social structure in which it is embedded. It concludes that the territorial integrity norm in West Africa is part of a social structure different from that in the Horn of Africa. It is this difference that explains the different patterns of conflict management in the two sub-regions.
Shortest node-disjoint path using dual-network topology in optical switched networks

This paper presents a new method for finding shortest node#disjoint paths in optical#switched network s with no wavelength conversion. The proposed method is based on a modified version of Dijkstra algorithm that works on an expanded so#called dual#network topology with n×n# nodes and 2×m×n links, where n is the number of nodes and m is the number of links in the original network. Despite the larger network size, the execution time of the algorithm is in polynomial order (mn+n 2 log n). Considering that the problem is NP#complete, the presented algorithm takes much less time than using Integer
Abnormal cortical synaptic transmission in CaV2.1 knockin mice with the S218L missense mutation which causes a severe familial hemiplegic migraine syndrome in humans

Familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 (FHM1) is caused by gain-of-function mutations in CaV2.1 (P/Q-type) Ca2+ channels. Knockin (KI) mice carrying the FHM1 R192Q missense mutation show enhanced cortical excitatory synaptic transmission at pyramidal cell synapses but unaltered cortical inhibitory neurotransmission at fast-spiking interneuron synapses. Enhanced cortical glutamate release was shown to cause the facilitation of cortical spreading depression (CSD) in R192Q KI mice. It, however, remains unknown how other FHM1 mutations affect cortical synaptic transmission. Here, we studied neurotransmission in cortical neurons in microculture from KI mice carrying the S218L mutation, which causes a severe FHM syndrome in humans and an allele-dosage dependent facilitation of experimental CSD in KI mice, which is larger than that caused by the R192Q mutation. We show gain-of-function of excitatory neurotransmission, due to increased action-potential evoked Ca2+ influx and increased probability of glutamate release at pyramidal cell synapses, but unaltered inhibitory neurotransmission at multipolar interneuron synapses in S218L KI mice. In contrast with the larger gain-of-function of neuronal CaV2.1 current in homozygous than heterozygous S218L KI mice, the gain-of-function of evoked glutamate release, the paired-pulse ratio and the Ca2+ dependence of the excitatory postsynaptic current were similar in homozygous and heterozygous S218L KI mice, suggesting compensatory changes in the homozygous mice. Furthermore, we reveal a unique feature of S218L KI cortical synapses which is the presence of a fraction of mutant CaV2.1 channels being open at resting potential. Our data suggest that, while the gain-of-function of evoked glutamate release may explain the facilitation of CSD in heterozygous S218L KI mice, the further facilitation of CSD in homozygous S218L KI mice is due to other CaV2.1-dependent mechanisms, that likely include Ca2+ influx at voltages sub-threshold for action potential generation.
Cogging force analysis of tubular linear permanent magnet motors

In the design of precise linear moving system, the electromagnetic force fluctuation must be controlled strictly to avoid damage to the load. This paper analyzes the cogging force of tubular linear permanent magnet motor, and presents methods to reduce it. The end component cogging force, which is the special character of linear motor, is reduced by optimizing the mover length. This method is verified by experimental tests.
Towards a new set of tools for a collaborative design environment

Collaborative design is a major industrial issue, where people from different expertise fields strongly need to cooperate. New Internet Collaboration Tools (ICT) possibilities now allow design processes to be hold over distributed teams. Our goal is to define a collaborative environment based on Internet technologies: Techniques, methods, and tools for CSCW in design. From the design experiment of an electromechanical plunger hold over Internet and involving mechanical and electrical engineers, this paper looks at their collaborative design activity. This leads us to present now communication tools, dedicated to specific tasks that are actually not supported, especially shared concept formalization among technical experts.