Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of Ultrasonic Waves in Enhancing Oil Recovery in Secondary Recovery Phase

Recoverable oil may often remain trapped after secondary recovery processes due to capillary forces, inapt mobility ratio & heterogeneity in the reservoir. To optimize oil recovery, more oil has to be mobilized using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques that are not always so economical. Use of ultrasonic stimulation in the reservoir is a recent innovation that is scarce in literature. It is less risky and it helps to overcome interfacial tension between oil & water, reduce capillary pressure & aid oil mobilization. This paper presents the use of ultrasonic waves in enhancing oil recovery in the tertiary recovery phase using Niger Delta crude oil. Laboratory experiments were carried out and a 3D model of a reservoir created using the Schlumberger eclipse 2010 simulator to predict the performance of the base (water flooding) was employed. The experimental work was in two folds termed test A and B. The former was performed without ultrasound while the latter involves the use of ultrasound (up to a frequency of 54kHz) in the designed flooding system. The resulting relative permeability data from both approaches were obtained and comparatively analyzed. Using MATLAB, results showed that the use of ultrasound waves in reservoirs (permeability> 20 mD, porosity > 15%) leads to increase in recovery by up to 50%. This increase is due to the ability of the waves to unblock the pores, thus creating larger path for the reservoir fluid to flow. The flooding scheme shows that the use of ultrasonic waves in the porous medium yielded a reduction in the critical oil saturation of 0.09 which represents 25.4% of the residual oil saturation obtained with water flooding scheme. Critical oil saturation values of 0.28 and 0.37 were obtained for the wave stimulation and water flooding schemes respectively. The results also shows connate water saturation of 0.27 at relative permeability to oil of 1 which is typical of the results from a well performed imbibition process.
Homocysteine, glutathione and related thiols affect fertility parameters in the (sub)fertile couple.

BACKGROUND Thiols are scavengers of reactive oxygen species (ROS). We aim to investigate associations between thiols in various fluids in (sub)fertile couples and fertility outcome parameters. METHODS In 156 couples undergoing assisted reproduction techniques (ART), we measured the concentrations of glutathione (GSH), cysteine (Cys), homocysteine (Hcy) and cysteinylglycine (CGS) and fertility outcome parameters in the ejaculate, purified spermatozoa and follicular fluid. RESULTS All thiols were detectable in most ejaculates, spermatozoa and follicular fluids, of which Cys concentrations were highest. Thiol concentrations in the ejaculate were similar in fertile and subfertile men. However, Hcy in follicular fluid was higher in women with endometriosis compared with women in the idiopathic subfertile group (P=0.04). The GSH, Cys, Hcy and CGS concentrations in spermatozoa of subfertile men were significantly higher compared with men in the idiopathic subfertile group and fertile men (P<0.001). Most notably, Hcy concentrations in both the ejaculate and follicular fluid were negatively associated with embryo quality on culture day 3 in the IVF/ICSI procedure. CONCLUSIONS Spermatozoa of subfertile men contain significantly higher thiol concentrations as compared with those of fertile men. The detrimental effect on embryo quality of a high Hcy concentration in the ejaculate and in follicular fluid is intriguing and may suggest that Hcy is inversely associated with fertility outcome.
EXIT functions for binary input memoryless symmetric channels

Use of extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) functions, characterizing the amplification of mutual information between the input and output of the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoder, significantly facilitates analysis of iterative coding schemes. Previously, EXIT functions derived for binary erasure channels (BECs) were used as an approximation for other channels. Here, we improve on this approach by introducing more accurate methods to construct EXIT functions for binary-input memoryless symmetric (BMS) channels. By defining an alternative pseudo-MAP decoder coinciding with the MAP decoder over BEC, we provide an expression for the EXIT functions of block codes over BEC. Furthermore, we draw a connection between the EXIT function over BEC and the EXIT function over the BMS channel under certain conditions. This is used for deriving accurate or approximate expressions of EXIT functions over BMS channels in certain scenarios
Gastric ulcer healing in the rat: kinetics and localisation of de novo procollagen synthesis

Background and aims—To gain further insight into the role of the extracellular matrix during healing of peptic ulcers, sequential changes of procollagen expression were studied over 30 days of ulcer healing. Materials and methods—Procollagens α1(I), α1(III), and α1(IV) RNA and their polypeptides were assessed in acetic acid induced rat gastric ulcers by in situ hybridisation and immunohistochemistry. Results—Three days after ulcer induction, intense hybridisation signals were obtained with all probes, with procollagen α1(I) showing the highest transcript levels. Procollagen gene expression remained elevated up to day 15, but was reduced to initial low levels on day 30. Immunohistochemical staining documented increased deposition of the three procollagen types parallel to their respective transcript levels, again with type I showing the earliest and the most prominent deposits. The highest procollagen transcript levels were found in the intact submucosa surrounding the ulcer margins, followed by the muscularis propria and the serosa, with the lamina propria exhibiting the lowest transcript levels. Conclusion—The procollagens studied are regulated differentially at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. The early onset and long duration of procollagen expression as well as the involvement of all layers of the gastric wall points to their central structural and functional role in gastric ulcer healing.
Virtual Reality Meets Smartwatch: Intuitive, Natural, and Multi-Modal Interaction

Despite the fact of increasing popularity virtual environments still lack useful and natural interaction techniques. We present a multi-modal interaction interface, designed for smartwatches and smartphones for fully immersive environments. Our approach enhances the efficiency of interaction in virtual worlds in a natural and intuitive way. We have designed and implemented methods for handling seven gestures and compare our approach with common VR input technology, namely body tracking using a 3D camera. The findings suggest our approach to be very encouraging for further developments.
Spaceborne Differential SAR Interferometry: Data Analysis Tools for Deformation Measurement

This paper is focused on spaceborne Differential Interferometric SAR (DInSAR) for land deformation measurement and monitoring. In the last two decades several DInSAR data analysis procedures have been proposed. The objective of this paper is to describe the DInSAR data processing and analysis tools developed at the Institute of Geomatics in almost ten years of research activities. Four main DInSAR analysis procedures are described, which range from the standard DInSAR analysis based on a single interferogram to more advanced Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) approaches. These different procedures guarantee a sufficient flexibility in DInSAR data processing. In order to provide a technical insight into these analysis procedures, a whole section discusses their main data processing and analysis steps, especially those needed in PSI analyses. A specific section is devoted to the core of our PSI analysis tools: the so-called 2+1D phase unwrapping procedure, which couples a 2D phase unwrapping, performed interferogram-wise, with a kind of 1D phase unwrapping along time, performed pixel-wise. In the last part of the paper, some examples of DInSAR results are discussed, which were derived by standard DInSAR or PSI analyses. Most of these results were derived from X-band SAR data coming from the TerraSAR-X and CosmoSkyMed sensors.
TLA Based Face Tracking

Human face tracking (HFT) is one of several technologies useful in vision-based interaction (VBI), which is one of several technologies useful in the broader area of perceptual user interfaces (PUI). In this paper we motivate our interests in PUI and VBI, and describe our recent efforts in various aspects of face tracking in the Interaction Lab at UCSB. The HFT methods (GWN, EHT, and CFD), in the context of VBI and PUI, are part of an overall “TLA approach” to face tracking. TLA /T-L-A/ n. [Three-Letter Acronym] 1. Selfdescribing abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is infested. 2. Any confusing acronym. (From the Jargon File v. 4.3.1)
Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension: An Underdiagnosed Entity?

Abstract Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is the only cause of pulmonary hypertension for which there is a potential cure, which is in the form of pulmonary endarterectomy. There is a strong link between pulmonary embolism (PE) and the development of CTEPH. Although CTEPH was initially believed to be a rare complication, this belief has been reconsidered following several studies suggesting that up to 8.8% of patients develop CTEPH within the 2 years after PE. However, considering the incidence of PE, there is a significant discrepancy in the number of patients who are diagnosed, referred, and treated for CTEPH. Potential reasons for this include its often vague clinical presentation, the variable association of CTEPH with PE, and discrepancies when interpreting imaging studies. Underdiagnosis of CTEPH is preventing patients from accessing potentially curative therapy. Increased awareness about this condition is an important initial step to improving diagnostic rates and treatment.
Dislocation Cross-Slip in Face-Centered Cubic Solid Solution Alloys

The mechanical strength of metals depends on their resistance against various microscopic deformation processes. In ductile metals, the most important process is shearing of the crystal lattice by dislocations. One of the fundamental aspects of dislocation motion is cross-slip of screw dislocations, the process by which they change their glide plane. In Face-Centered Cubic (FCC) metals, cross-slip is supposed to play a role in dislocation structuring, work hardening, recovery, fatigue, etc. Most prior studies on cross-slip in FCC metals focused on pure metals. There have been few studies of solute effects on cross-slip, which are important for engineering alloys. Here, the effects of substitutional solutes are studied using atomistic simulations and statistical modeling. In the first part of the thesis, the mechanism and energy of cross-slip of short (40 Burgers vectors long) dislocations in Ni-Al, Al-Mg and Cu-Ni alloys are determined using atomistic calculations. These calculations are carried out with real random alloys and with “average” alloys, where the real atom types are replaced by a single average type. By comparison, it is shown that cross-slip is controlled by fluctuations in the solute concentration, i.e. the activation energy for cross-slip is a distributed variable with a large variance around the mean value. The latter changes only little with concentration. Most importantly, activation energies that are significantly lower than the mean value can be observed in random alloys. A linear correlation between the activation energy and the energy difference between the state of the dislocation before and after cross-slip is observed. An analytical, parameter-free model of this energy difference is developed, which takes random changes in solute-dislocation and solute-solute binding energies into account. Thus, it is possible to predict the distribution of activation energies for nucleation of cross-slip. In the second part, cross-slip of long (102–103 Burgers vectors) dislocations is studied using a random walk model. Cross-slip is seen as a discrete process, where one Burgers vector long subsegments of the dislocation cross-slip one after another. Associated with each step is a random energy due to random changes in solute binding energies, as well as a deterministic energy change due to constriction formation and stress effects. The random walk model allows the calculation of the activation energy distribution for arbitrary dislocation lengths and stresses. Cross-slip of long dislocations is unlikely at zero stress, due to increasing frequency of high activation energies with increasing length. However, an external stress eliminates these high barriers. Cross-slip then becomes a weakest-link problem. Like in the case of short dislocations, activation energies that are significantly lower than average-alloy estimates can be observed in real random alloys.
Simulation and Investigation of Humidity Sensor based on Fiber Grating Fabry-Perot

In this article we have discussed the relative humidity sensor based on fiber grating Fabry-Perot (FBG-FP) coated with polyimide (PI) as a moisture sensitive film in theory. The moisture expansion coefficient of PI film as moisture strain on the FBG-FP sensor, which will result the change of the fiber core effective refractive index, the length of the F-P cavity and the period and effective refractive index of FBG. For that reason, the interference fringes of the reflection spectrum will be changed also. The shift of peak wavelength of the spectrum is traced by the simulation of Matlab. We discuss three situations: the coating on the FBG, FP cavity and the both, and regardless of the temperature changes, the simulation results show that the RH sensitivity can reach to 3.77pm/%RH, 2.12 pm/%RH, 4.05 pm/%RH, respectively.
Effect of Dietary Substitution of Groundnut Oil on Blood Glucose, Lipid Profile, and Redox Status in Streptozotocin-diabetic Rats

The effect of groundnut oil on blood glucose, lipid profile, lipid peroxidation, and antioxidant status in streptozotocin-diabetic rats was investigated and compared with diabetic and drug-treated rats. Diabetes was induced in adult female Wistar rats by intraperitoneal administration of streptozotocin (40 mg/kg b-wt). Normal and diabetic rats were fed an oil-free diet containing 2 percent oil supplemented with groundnut oil (6g per 94g diet), to give 8 percent oil content, for 42 days. Diabetic rats had elevated levels of glucose (322.61 ± 9.49), glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), vitamin E, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS), and lipid hydroperoxides (HP) and decreased levels of hemoglobin (Hb), vitamin C, and reduced glutathione (GSH). An increase in the activities of glucose-6-phosphatase and fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase and a decrease in hexokinase activity also were observed in the liver and kidney. When diabetic rats were fed groundnut oil, a significant reduction in glucose (244.04 ± 11.66), HbA1c, TBARS, HP levels, and glucose-6-phosphatase and fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase activities and an elevation in Hb, vitamin E, GSH levels, and hexokinase activity were observed. Diabetic rats had elevated total cholesterol (TC), VLDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, and triglycerides (TG) and decreased HDL-cholesterol. Diabetic rats fed groundnut oil showed a small but significant reduction in TC, VLDL-C, LDL-C, and TG and an elevation in HDL-C. Groundnut oil consumption slightly but significantly decreases the blood glucose, HbA1c, lipid peroxidation, and lipid profile and increases antioxidant levels in diabetic rats.
On contention resolution protocols and associated probabilistic phenomena

Consider an on-line scheduling problem in which a set of abstract processes are competing for the use of a number of resources. Further assume that it is either prohibitively expensive or impossible for any two of the processes to directly communicate with one another. If several processes simultaneously attempt to allocate a particular resource (as may be expected to occur, since the processes cannot easily coordinate their allocations), then none succeed. In such a framework, it is a challenge to design efficient contention resolution protocols. Two recently-proposed approaches to the problem of PRAM emulation give rise to scheduling problems of the above kind. In one approach, the resources (in this case, the shared memory cells) are duplicated and distributed randomly. We analyze a simple and efficient deterministic algorithm for accessing some subset of the duplicated resources. In the other approach, we analyze how quickly we can access the given (nonduplicated) resource using a simple randomized strategy. We obtain precise bounds on the performance of both strategies. We anticipate that our results with find other applications.
Matrix Sketching Over Sliding Windows

Large-scale matrix computation becomes essential for many data data applications, and hence the problem of sketching matrix with small space and high precision has received extensive study for the past few years. This problem is often considered in the row-update streaming model, where the data set is a matrix A -- Rn x d, and the processor receives a row (1 x d) of A at each timestamp. The goal is to maintain a smaller matrix (termed approximation matrix, or simply approximation) B -- Rl x d as an approximation to A, such that the covariance error |AT A - BTB| is small and l ll n. This paper studies continuous tracking approximations to the matrix defined by a sliding window of most recent rows. We consider both sequence-based and time-based window. We show that maintaining ATA exactly requires linear space in the sliding window model, as opposed to O(d2) space in the streaming model. With this observation, we present three general frameworks for matrix sketching on sliding windows. The sampling techniques give random samples of the rows in the window according to their squared norms. The Logarithmic Method converts a mergeable streaming matrix sketch into a matrix sketch on time-based sliding windows. The Dyadic Interval framework converts arbitrary streaming matrix sketch into a matrix sketch on sequence-based sliding windows. In addition to proving all algorithmic properties theoretically, we also conduct extensive empirical study with real data sets to demonstrate the efficiency of these algorithms.
Using AgreementMaker to align Ontologies for OAEI 2009: Overview, Results, and Outlook

This paper describes our participation in the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) 2009 with the AgreementMaker system for ontology matching, in which we obtained excellent results. In particular, we participated in the benchmarks, anatomy, and conference tracks. In the anatomy track, we competed against nine other systems in all four subtracks obtaining the best result in subtrack 3 and the second best result in subtracks 1 and 2. We were also first in finding the highest number of non-trivial correspondences. Furthermore, AgreementMaker came in first place among seven participants in the conference track and achieved the highest precision among all thirteeen participating systems in the benchmarks track. In addition to presenting this year's results, we give an overview of the AgreementMaker system, discuss ways in which we plan to further improve it in the future, and present suggestions for future editions of the OAEI competition.
Constraint-driven synthesis and tool-support for FlexRay-based automotive control systems

Emerging bus protocols such as FlexRay provide an expedient platform for the design of automotive control systems due to its high bandwidth and deterministic temporal behavior. However, the choice of suitable platform parameters such as task and message schedules becomes a challenging design problem as the protocol is complex in nature and enforces a tight coupling between local task schedules on ECUs and global bus schedules. Although there exist several commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) design tools for FlexRay and control systems, current tools do not provide any mechanism for automatically synthesizing the platform parameters from the controller specifications. In this work we synthesize controllers subject to specified control goals while taking into account platform-specific properties. In particular, we translate the timing constraints derived from the control design into platform constraints that need to be satisfied by the control-related tasks and messages. For this purpose, we formulate and solve a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) to synthesize feasible platform parameters that can be realized by the underlying operating systems and the FlexRay bus. Our design flow may be easily integrated with existing FlexRay design tools and will significantly ease (and automate) the existing design process. We show the applicability of our results by implementing two automotive control systems on a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) setup and study how different bus configurations affect the controller synthesis and the choice of platform parameters.
Is Appreciative Inquiry Thinking Training Also Effective in Virtual Environment?

the purpose of this study was to probe how Appreciative Inquiry (AI) thinking training affects individual's performance in virtual environment. Sixty eight students of a university in Taiwan participated in the study. Thirty four of them received six hours of training courses. The remaining subjects serve as the control. All subjects were administrated the Emotion index before and after the AI thinking training. We adopted ideas number, and project rating of individual performance in virtual team. Exclude the disturbance of positive and negative emotion, the ideas number and project rating in AI thinking training are higher than in the other. It also showed that AI thinking training is effective to the training of creativity in the virtual environment.
TactileVR: Integrating Physical Toys into Learn and Play Virtual Reality Experiences

We present TactileVR, a proof-of-concept virtual reality system in which a user is free to move around and interact with physical objects and toys, which are represented in the virtual world. By integrating tracking information from the head, hands and feet of the user, as well as the objects, we infer complex gestures and interactions such as shaking a toy, rotating a steering wheel, or clapping your hands. We create educational and recreational experiences for kids, which promote exploration and discovery, while feeling intuitive and safe. In each experience objects have a unique appearance and behavior e.g. in an electric circuits lab toy blocks serve as switches, batteries and light bulbs.We conducted a user study with children ages 5-11, who experienced TactileVR and interacted with virtual proxies of physical objects. Children took instantly to the TactileVR environment, intuitively discovered a variety of interactions, and completed tasks faster than with non-tactile virtual objects. Moreover, the presence of physical toys created the opportunity for collaborative play, even when only some of the kids were using a VR headset.