Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Innovative Strategy for Counterfeit Analysis

Currently, counterfeit medicine is a significant issue for the pharmaceutical world, and it targets all types of therapeutic areas. The health consequences are appalling, since counterfeit medicines can contain impurities and the wrong chemical composition, and can be manufactured and/or stored in dreadful conditions. The provision of fast and reliable analytical tools can contribute to an efficient fight against this phenomenon. In this paper, an analytical strategy based on mobile and forensic laboratories is presented. The mobile equipment, composed of handheld x-ray fluorescence, Raman, infrared, and near-infrared spectrometers, and a handheld microscope, can be used as a first screening tool to detect counterfeits. The counterfeits can then be confirmed in a forensic-dedicated lab in which the chemical composition of the counterfeits is determined to evaluate the danger encountered by the patients. Relevant links with former counterfeit cases then can be revealed based on the analytical data, and can be interpreted from a forensic intelligence perspective in order to provide additional information for law enforcement.
Edible pickering emulsion technology: fabrication of edible particle stabilised double emulsions

Water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) double emulsion systems provide an innovative approach for the development of low-fat healthier foods. By replacing a proportion of the oil phase of a simple oil-in-water (O/W) emulsion with an internal water phase, the overall oil volume within the emulsion system can be decreased, with potentially negligible changes to its organoleptic properties. However, double emulsions are notoriously unstable for adequate periods of time, largely due to the existence of two oppositely curved water-oil (W/O) and oil-water (O/W) interfaces in close proximity. The present study investigates the use of Pickering stabilisation in order to enhance the stability of double emulsions. Pickering stabilisation mechanisms are reputed for superior, longer term stabilisation capacities when compared to conventional surfactant stabilised emulsions, but edible particles with Pickering functionality are scarce. The work in this thesis explores the impact of introducing Pickering stabilisation to a double emulsion structure, initially at only one of the two water/oil interfaces (either W/O or O/W) and ultimately across the entire interfacial areas. Initial work conducted centred on investigating the role of a range of edible particulates as potential Pickering stabilisers in simple emulsions (both W/O and O/W emulsion types). Based on the knowledge gained from these studies, a range of Pickering-Surfactant stabilised double emulsions (with particles or surfactant stabilising alternate interfaces), using a range of surfactants, and Pickering only stabilised double emulsion systems were prepared and analysed in terms of their microstructure, stability and encapsulation efficiencies.
Applying autonomic principles for workload management in multi-core systems on chip

This paper explores various possibilities for autonomic enhancements to a multi-core network processor system on chip. Based on the autonomic system on chip paradigm, it is shown how monitors can be added to quantify the operating state of a typical processor core, whereupon a learning classifier system evaluator can determine appropriate actions to be performed in order to optimize the frequency and task distribution across the system. A hardware prototype is used to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomic concepts for dynamic component parameterization and task management at run time.
Diversified and Summarized Video Search System

This paper presents a novel video search system that can provide users with diversified and summarized results automatically. Users frequently confront the dilemmas of specifying conditions for video search because too many or few conditions would lead to either insufficient or redundant results. We solve this problem by introducing novel definitions to explore hidden knowledge inherent in underlying datasets. We demonstrate our methods by implementing a prototype system with real-world surveillance videos.
Force tracking control for motion synchronization in human-robot collaboration

SUMMARY In this paper, motion synchronization is investigated for human–robot collaboration such that the robot is able to “actively” follow its human partner. Force tracking is achieved with the proposed method under the impedance control framework, subject to uncertain human limb dynamics. Adaptive control is developed to deal with point-to-point movement, and learning control and neural networks control are developed to generate periodic and arbitrary continuous trajectories, respectively. Stability and tracking performance of the closed-loop system are discussed through rigorous analysis. The validity of the proposed method is verified through simulation and experiment studies.
A comparative study of planar waveforms for propulsion of a joined artificial bacterial flagella swimming robot

Artificial bacterial flagella (ABF) is one of the more interesting alternatives for the design of swimming nano and microrobots moving in life environments. In this paper the propulsion of an ABF swimming robot is studied by considering four different travelling waves: harmonic (from Eukaryotic cells), linear and quadratic amplitude modulation (from Carangiform swimmers), and a novel fractional order amplitude growing. The last one, proposed in this paper, allows to preserve, in a different way, two important propulsion properties: 1) the flagellum head is always maintained at zero amplitude (boundary condition), and 2) the wave amplitude along the flagellum can be modulated. A comparison of the propulsion performance obtained with each wave, in terms of the mechanical power developed by the robot and the electrical power supplied to actuators, is given in order to demonstrate that the fractional travelling wave seems to be the most effective for propulsion. For simulation purposes, the robot is modeled by using Simscape, a physical modeling tool included in the Matlab/Simulink package.
Coarse‐to‐Fine Isometric Shape Correspondence by Tracking Symmetric Flips

We address the symmetric flip problem that is inherent to multi‐resolution isometric shape matching algorithms. To this effect, we extend our previous work which handles the dense isometric correspondence problem in the original 3D Euclidean space via coarse‐to‐fine combinatorial matching. The key idea is based on keeping track of all optimal solutions, which may be more than one due to symmetry especially at coarse levels, throughout denser levels of the shape matching process. We compare the resulting dense correspondence algorithm with state‐of‐the‐art techniques over several 3D shape benchmark datasets. The experiments show that our method, which is fast and scalable, is performance‐wise better than or on a par with the best performant algorithms existing in the literature for isometric (or nearly isometric) shape correspondence. Our key idea of tracking symmetric flips can be considered as a meta‐approach that can be applied to other multi‐resolution shape matching algorithms, as we also demonstrate by experiments.
On Bias-free Crawling and Representative Web Corpora

In this paper, I present a specialized open-source crawler that can be used to obtain bias-reduced samples from the web. First, I brieﬂy discuss the relevance of bias-reduced web corpus sampling for corpus linguistics. Then, I summarize theoretical results that show how commonly used crawling methods obtain highly biased samples from the web. The theoretical part of the paper is followed by a description my feature-complete and stable ClaraX crawler which performs so-called Random Walks, a form of crawling that allows for bias-reduced sampling if combined with methods of post-crawl rejection sampling. Finally, results from two large crawling experiments in the German web are reported. I show that bias reduction is feasible if certain technical and practical hurdles are overcome.
Measurement of Cardiac Output with Indocyanine Green Transcutaneous Fluorescence Dilution Technique

Background: Cardiac output is an essential parameter for the hemodynamic assessment of patients with cardiovascular disease. The authors tested in an animal model the feasibility of measuring cardiac output by transcutaneous fluorescence monitoring of an intravenous bolus injection of indocyanine green. Methods: Fluorescence dilution cardiac output was measured in 10 anesthetized rabbits and compared with cardiac output measured with a pulmonary thermodilution catheter and to aortic velocity measured by Doppler ultrasound. Indocyanine green fluorescence was excited with a near-infrared laser and measured with an optical probe positioned on the central ear artery. Measurements were obtained during baseline conditions as well as during short-term decreases and increases of the cardiac output. Results: The fluorescence of circulating indocyanine green detected transcutaneously varied proportionally to that of arterial blood samples, which allowed for calibration in terms of blood concentration of indocyanine green. Average values of fluorescence dilution cardiac output and thermodilution cardiac output measured in baseline conditions were 412 (± 13) and 366 (± 11) ml/min, respectively. Fluorescence dilution cardiac output showed a close, one-to-one linear relation with thermodilution cardiac output in each animal and in the pooled data from all animals (slope = 0.95 × 0.03; R = 0.94). Fluorescence dilution cardiac output overestimated thermodilution cardiac output by an average of 46 (± 6) ml/min during baseline conditions. Fluorescence dilution cardiac output was tightly correlated with aortic velocity. Conclusions: The proposed technique yielded accurate estimates of the cardiac output in experimental animals. This study should provide an initial framework for clinical testing of this new minimally invasive method for measuring cardiac output.
Network Inversion Based Controller Design for Discrete T-S Fuzzy Model

Abstract This paper presents an elegant method for controlling nonlinear systems by modeling them in terms of a Takagi-Sugeno(T-S) fuzzy model. The concept of network inversion is used to design the controller for such a system. The proposed controller is shown to make the closed loop system stable in the sense of Lyapunov. The existing controller design techniques for T-S fuzzy model, like LMI techniques, robust control techniques are based on a sufficient or prerequisite condition for closed loop stability whereas in the present scheme no such sufficient condition is necessary. Moreover the present approach greatly simplifies the process of controller design compared to the earlier techniques. Simulation results on three nonlinear systems show the efficacy of the proposed control scheme. The proposed controller has also been implemented on the cart pole system in real time and the results are provided with a qualitative comparison with the well established LQR control.
RLC Effects on Throughput in a Mobile System

Today wireless data communication is growing rapidly. In particular, multimedia and Internet communication by wireless systems are the most popular services. Also, the architecture of wireless networks is varying to provide such services better. In this paper, we review UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network) focusing on the RLC (Radio Link Control) sub-layer, its error recovery mechanisms and transport channels when connected to Internet. Besides, we consider data flows based on the acknowledgement mode RLC, the transparent mode MAC and simulate the effects of RLC protocol and erroneous MAC PDUs and delays, on the throughput. Finally, we evaluate the throughput versus MAC PDU retransmission times as well as the throughput efficiency versus MAC PDU retransmission times and data block lengths.
Ontologies as Theories

This position paper argues that certain familiar ontology design problems are profitably addressed by treating ontologies as theories and by defining a set of operations that create new ontologies, including their constraints, out of other ontologies. The paper first illustrates how to use the operations in the context of ontology reuse. It goes further and shows how to take advantage of the operations to compare different ontologies, or different versions of an ontology, and to design mediated schemas in a bottom up fashion. The discussion in this position paper is backed up by a tool that implements the operations and that offers other facilities to manipulate ontologies.
Conceptualization - A Novel Intensional-based Model

A formal treatment of conceptualization is essential and a fundamental aspect of knowledge representation, Ontologies and information engineering. Several approaches have been proposed based on extensional logic and extensional reduction model. However, in this paper we highlight several limitations of their applicability for modelling conceptualizations in dynamic and open environments, due to several strong assumptions that are not adequate for dynamic and open environments. To this end we argue that intension based model is a natural and adequate model. We present a model based on the theory of Properties Relations and Propositions. This description takes the concepts and relations as primitives and, as such, irreducible. The proposed description is then extended to describe the world in more details by capturing the properties of the domain concepts.
Ascending cholangitis after successful surgical repair of biliary atresia

Since the introduction of hepatic porto-enterostomy, encouraging results have been obtained in treating extrahepatic biliary atresia, particularly in the case of infants with atresia or agenesis of the extrahepatic ducts, who would not previously have been considered amenable to surgery. Out of 17 successfully repaired cases who had shown good bile excretion after surgery and who had no jaundice, 8 (47%) developed ascending cholangitis 3½ to 8½ months after surgery. Cholangitis of this type formed a recognizable picture, with repeated attacks of fever, reappearance of obstructive jaundice, raised erythrocyte sedimentation rate, leucocytosis with shift to the left, and anaemia. The condition was often resistant to antibiotic therapy, and was fatal in 3 cases.
Anandamide activity and degradation are regulated by early postnatal aging and follicle-stimulating hormone in mouse Sertoli cells.

Anandamide (AEA), a prominent member of the endogenous ligands of cannabinoid receptors (endocannabinoids), is known to adversely affect female fertility. However, a potential role of AEA in male reproductive functions is unknown. Here we report evidence that immature mouse Sertoli cells have the biochemical tools to bind and inactivate AEA, i.e. a functional type-2 cannabinoid receptor (CB2R), a selective AEA membrane transporter, and an AEA-degrading enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase. We show that, unlike CB2R, the activity of AEA membrane transporter and the activity and expression of FAAH decrease, whereas the apoptosis-inducing activity of AEA increases with age during the neonatal period. We also show that FSH reduces the apoptotic potential of AEA, but not that of its nonhydrolyzable analog methanandamide. Concomitantly, FSH enhances FAAH activity in a manner dependent on mRNA transcription and protein synthesis and apparently involving cAMP. These data demonstrate that Sertoli cells partake in the peripheral endocannabinoid system, and that FSH reduces the apoptotic potential of AEA by activating FAAH. Taken together, it can be suggested that the endocannabinoid network plays a role in the hormonal regulation of male fertility.
Improved Depth Recovery In Consumer Depth Cameras via Disparity Space Fusion within Cross-spectral Stereo

We address the issue of improving depth coverage in consumer depth cameras based on the combined use of cross-spectral stereo and near infra-red structured light sensing. Specifically we show that fusion of disparity over these modalities, within the disparity space image, prior to disparity optimization facilitates the recovery of scene depth information in regions where structured light sensing fails. We show that this joint approach, leveraging disparity information from both structured light and cross-spectral sensing, facilitates the joint recovery of global scene depth comprising both texture-less object depth, where conventional stereo otherwise fails, and highly reflective object depth, where structured light (and similar) active sensing commonly fails. The proposed solution is illustrated using dense gradient feature matching and shown to outperform prior approaches that use late-stage fused cross-spectral stereo depth as a facet of improved sensing for consumer depth cameras.
Performance analysis of diffusion LMS in multitask networks

Diffusion LMS algorithm has been extensively studied during the last few years. This efficient approach allows to address distributed optimization problems over sensor networks in the case where the nodes have to collaboratively estimate a single parameter vector. Nevertheless, real-life problems are often multitask-oriented in the sense that the optimum parameter vector may not be the same for every node. In this paper, we conduct a theoretical analysis on the stochastic behavior of diffusion LMS when, either intentionally or unintentionally, applied to multitask problems, that is, in a situation where the founding hypothesis of this algorithm is violated. Simulation results validate our theoretical model. Theoretical analysis and simulation show that collaboration can be still beneficial, and depends on antagonistic effects of the estimation bias-variance trade-off. This work provides a theoretical justification for the need to derive new cooperative algorithms specifically dedicated to multitask problems.
Conductance steps and quantization in atomic-size contacts.

The conductance of metallic contacts of atomic size has been studied using a scanning tunneling microscope at low temperature. As the contact area is changed by pressing the tip into the sample, a series of reproducible features and jumps in the conductance at integer multiples of 2e 2 /h is observed. The jumps are interpreted as atomic rearrangements, while the underlying conductance structure strongly suggests quantum-size effects
Multistable phase regulation for robust steady and transitional legged gaits

We develop robust methods that allow the specification, control, and transition of a multi-legged robot’s stepping pattern, its ‘gait’, during active locomotion over natural terrain. Resulting gaits emerge through the introduction of controllers that impose appropriately placed repellors within the space of gaits, the torus of relative leg phases, thereby mitigating against dangerous patterns of leg timing. Moreover, these repellors are organized with respect to a natural cellular decomposition of gait space and result in limit cycles with associated basins that are well characterized by these cells, thus conferring a symbolic character upon the overall behavioral repertoire. These ideas are particularly applicable to four- and six-legged robots, for which a large variety of interesting and useful (and, in many cases, familiar) gaits exist, and whose tradeoffs between speed and reliability motivate the desire for transitioning between them during active locomotion. We provide an empirical instance of this gait regulation scheme by application to a climbing hexapod, whose ‘physical layer’ sensor-feedback control requires adequate grasp of a climbing surface but whose closed-loop control perturbs the robot from its desired gait. We document how the regulation scheme secures the desired gait and permits operator selection of different gaits as required during active climbing on challenging surfaces.
Defiance, compliance, or alliance? How we developed a medical professionalism curriculum that deliberately connects to cultural context

Background: In the age of globalization, non-Western medical educators seem too eager to conform to Western educational approaches and may, thereby, undermine the pursuit of local curricular needs. Aims: To develop a medical professionalism curriculum that explicitly considered local cultural needs and social expectations. Method: We used a systematic six-step approach to develop the curriculum. Results: We engaged local stakeholders (physicians, allied health professionals, and members of the public) in a nominal group process to identify professionalism competencies. Students and faculty participated in a survey and/or focus groups to determine learner/faculty needs. Teachers drafted goals and objectives related to locally valued competencies. We designed and implemented educational strategies to develop students’ competencies that meet local societal expectations, such as involving family members in decision making. We plan to use multi-source feedback and a portfolio to assess students, which reinforces a definition of integrity that encompasses not only congruence between individual values and behaviors, but also achieving harmony among all stakeholders. We plan to reinforce the formal curriculum with faculty development and attention to the hidden curriculum. Conclusions: Based upon our experience and reflection, we offer some practical methods for integrating local cultural values and societal needs in professionalism education.
Face detection and landmark localization using Bilayer Tree Structured Model

Although the Tree Structured Model (TSM) is proven effective for face detection, pose estimation and landmark localization, its sluggish runtime makes it unfavorable in practical applications. We propose the Bilayer Tree Structure Model (BTSM) to improve the run-time speed while keeping the performance unchanged or slightly better. The BTSM is composed of two component TSMs, the coarse c-TSM and the refined r-TSM. The c-TSM is trained on low-resolution samples so that it can provide coarse but fast detection, The r-TSM is trained on mid-resolution samples so that it can locate precise part locations. The performance of the BTSM is validated on three benchmark databases, the Multi-PIE, LFPW and AFW, and compared with the latest TSM to demonstrate its efficacy.
Autoproteolysis and Intramolecular Dissociation of Yersinia YscU Precedes Secretion of Its C-Terminal Polypeptide YscUCC

Type III secretion system mediated secretion and translocation of Yop-effector proteins across the eukaryotic target cell membrane by pathogenic Yersinia is highly organized and is dependent on a switching event from secretion of early structural substrates to late effector substrates (Yops). Substrate switching can be mimicked in vitro by modulating the calcium levels in the growth medium. YscU that is essential for regulation of this switch undergoes autoproteolysis at a conserved N↑PTH motif, resulting in a 10 kDa C-terminal polypeptide fragment denoted YscUCC. Here we show that depletion of calcium induces intramolecular dissociation of YscUCC from YscU followed by secretion of the YscUCC polypeptide. Thus, YscUCC behaved in vivo as a Yop protein with respect to secretion properties. Further, destabilized yscU mutants displayed increased rates of dissociation of YscUCC in vitro resulting in enhanced Yop secretion in vivo at 30°C relative to the wild-type strain.These findings provide strong support to the relevance of YscUCC dissociation for Yop secretion. We propose that YscUCC orchestrates a block in the secretion channel that is eliminated by calcium depletion. Further, the striking homology between different members of the YscU/FlhB family suggests that this protein family possess regulatory functions also in other bacteria using comparable mechanisms.