Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human resources ranking in a cloud-based knowledge sharing framework using the quality control criteria

This paper aims to propose a new method for evaluating the quality and prioritizing of the human resources (HRs) based on trust, reputation, agility, expertise and cost criteria in the expert cloud. To evaluate some quality control (QC) factors, a model based on the SERVQUAL is used. ,The aim of this paper is to offer a fast and simple method for selecting the HRs by the customers. To achieve this goal, the ranking diagram of different HRs based on the different criteria of QC is provided. By means of this method, the customer can rapidly decide on the selection of the required HRs. By using the proposed method, the scores for various criteria are evaluated. These criteria are used in the ranking of each HR which is obtained based on the evaluation conducted by previous customers and their colleagues. First, customers were asked to select their needed criteria and then by constructing a hierarchical structure, the ranking diagram of different HRs is achieved. Using a ranking system based on evaluating the quality of the model, satisfy the customer needs to be based on the properties of HRs. Also, an analytical hierarchical process-based ranking mechanism is proposed to solve the problem of assigning weights to features for considering the interdependence between them to rank the HRs in the expert cloud. ,The obtained results showed the applicability of the radar graph using a case study and also numerically obtained results showed that a hierarchical structure increases the quality and speed rating of HR ranking than the previous works. ,The suggested ranking method in this paper allows the optimal selection due to the special needs of any given customer in the expert cloud.
Detecting state coding conflicts in STG unfoldings using SAT

The behaviour of asynchronous circuits is often described by signal transition graphs (STGs), which are Petri nets whose transitions are interpreted as rising and falling edges of signals. One of the crucial problems in the synthesis of such circuits is that of identifying whether an STG satisfies the complete state coding (CSC) requirement, e.g., by using model checking based on the state graph of an STG. We avoid constructing the state graph of an STG, which can lead to state space explosion, and instead use only the information about causality and structural conflicts between the events involved in a finite and complete prefix of its unfolding. The algorithm is derived by adopting the boolean satisfiability (SAT) approach. This technique leads not only to huge memory savings when compared to methods based on state graphs, but also to significant speedups.
The microstructure and mechanical properties of hot-extruded Mg-5Sn-4Al-2Ce rapidly solidified alloy

ABSTRACT The microstructure and mechanical properties of hot-extruded Mg-5Sn-4Al-2Ce alloy in the form of rapid solidification ribbons (RS-extruded TAE542) are investigated. The results show that rapid solidification causes ultra-fine a-Mg grains (250 nm) and massive dispersive Mg2Sn and Al11Ce3 particles (80–400 nm) in the rapidly solidified (RS)-extruded alloy. As a result, the yield strength and elongation of RS-extruded TAE542 alloy reached 366 MPa and 15.2%, increasing by 72 and 26%, respectively, when compared with that of hot-extruded TAE542 alloy made from a homogenised ingot (HI-extruded TAE542). This paper is part of a thematic issue on Light Alloys.
Proteomic analysis of changes in mitochondrial protein expression during fruit senescence

Fruit senescence has been reported to be an oxidative phenomenon, but the detailed mechanisms by which ROS regulate this process remain largely unknown. Here we show that senescence process of apple fruit was concomitant with the dynamic alterations in the mitochondrial proteome. Mitochondrial proteins involved in tricarboxylic acid cycle, electron transport chain, carbon metabolism, and stress response were found to be differentially expressed during fruit senescence. Alleviating oxidative stress by lowering the ambient oxygen concentration noticeably decreased the number of changed proteins and delayed fruit senescence, indicating the involvement of ROS in this process. To further investigate the regulatory effect of ROS on senescence process, we analyzed the mitochondrial proteome variations upon exposure to high oxygen (100%), which induces oxidative stress and accelerates fruit senescence. High oxygen treatment led to a further identification of differentially expressed proteins such as mitochondrial manganese superoxide dismutase, an antioxidant scavenging superoxide radicals produced in the mitochondria. Activity of manganese superoxide dismutase was reduced after high oxygen exposure, accompanied by an increase in oxidative protein carbonylation (damaged proteins). These data suggest that ROS may regulate fruit senescence by changing expression profiles of specific mitochondrial proteins and impairing the biological function of these proteins.
In Amnio MRI of Mouse Embryos

Mouse embryo imaging is conventionally carried out on ex vivo embryos excised from the amniotic sac, omitting vital structures and abnormalities external to the body. Here, we present an in amnio MR imaging methodology in which the mouse embryo is retained in the amniotic sac and demonstrate how important embryonic structures can be visualised in 3D with high spatial resolution (100 µm/px). To illustrate the utility of in amnio imaging, we subsequently apply the technique to examine abnormal mouse embryos with abdominal wall defects. Mouse embryos at E17.5 were imaged and compared, including three normal phenotype embryos, an abnormal embryo with a clear exomphalos defect, and one with a suspected gastroschisis phenotype. Embryos were excised from the mother ensuring the amnion remained intact and stereo microscopy was performed. Embryos were next embedded in agarose for 3D, high resolution MRI on a 9.4T scanner. Identification of the abnormal embryo phenotypes was not possible using stereo microscopy or conventional ex vivo MRI. Using in amnio MRI, we determined that the abnormal embryos had an exomphalos phenotype with varying severities. In amnio MRI is ideally suited to investigate the complex relationship between embryo and amnion, together with screening for other abnormalities located outside of the mouse embryo, providing a valuable complement to histology and existing imaging methods available to the phenotyping community.
Large Step Path-Following Methods for Linear Programming, Part II: Potential Reduction Method

The algorithm proposed in this paper is the affine polynomial potential reduction method, with new procedures for updating the lower bounds for an optimal solution of the linear programming problem. A method is developed for updating the lower bounds by large steps, with strict control over the duality gaps associated with each iterate. Two algorithms are obtained by this approach: the first one has complexity $O(nL)$ iterations, and a very simple updating procedure; the second one updates the lower bounds at points very near the central trajectory and achieves a complexity of $O(\sqrt{n} L)$ iterations.
Uniaxial Tensile Testing Device for Measuring Mechanical Properties of Biological Tissue with Stress-Relaxation Test under a Confocal Microscope

Biological soft tissue is a non-linear and viscoelastic material and its mechanical properties can greatly affect quality of life. Many external mechanical factors can alter the tissue, for example the tissue of talipes equinovarus congenitus, also known as clubfoot, which is the most frequent congenital deformity affecting lower extremities with pathological changes of connective tissue. In clubfoot, the presence of disc-like mass of fibrous tissue, resembling intervertebral disc tissue, is described to be between the medial malleolus and the medial side of the navicular bone. The clubfoot tissue is often referred to be stiffer or rigid by clinicians, or it is referred to as contracted and less contracted tissue, however relevant evidence about mechanical properties is missing. Therefore, the description "disc-like" is informing only about relative mechanical properties of clubfoot tissue. We aim to prepare methodical approach to quantify mechanical properties of biological tissue with uniaxial tensile stress-relaxation test, in order to help clinicians and scientist to identify precisely the mechanical properties of normal and pathological tissue and their structural behaviour during mechanical testing. In this study, we test and tune the uniaxial tensile stress-relaxation test on biological tissue with high content of connective tissue such as collagen. The model tissue is porcine pericardium. The tissue has clear collagen fibres aligning parallel to the force applied. Modulus of elasticity measured here is comparable to other studies.
Fungal Metabolites for the Control of Biofilm Infections

Many microbes attach to surfaces and produce a complex matrix of polymers surrounding their cells, forming a biofilm. In biofilms, microbes are much better protected against hostile environments, impairing the action of most antibiotics. A pressing demand exists for novel therapeutic strategies against biofilm infections, which are a grave health wise on mucosal surfaces and medical devices. From fungi, a large number of secondary metabolites with antimicrobial activity have been characterized. This review discusses natural compounds from fungi which are effective against fungal and bacterial biofilms. Some molecules are able to block the cell communication process essential for biofilm formation (known as quorum sensing), others can penetrate and kill cells within the structure. Several targets have been identified, ranging from the inhibition of quorum sensing receptors and virulence factors, to cell wall synthesizing enzymes. Only one group of these fungal metabolites has been optimized and made it to the market, but more preclinical studies are ongoing to expand the biofilm-fighting arsenal. The broad diversity of bioactive compounds from fungi, their activities against various pathogens, and the multi-target trait of some molecules are promising aspects of fungal secondary metabolites. Future screenings for biofilm-controlling compounds will contribute to several novel clinical applications.
Evaluating the Benefits of Adaptation of Critical Infrastructures to Hydrometeorological Risks

Infrastructure adaptation measures provide a practical way to reduce the risk from extreme hydrometeorological hazards, such as floods and windstorms. The benefit of adapting infrastructure assets is evaluated as the reduction in risk relative to the “do nothing” case. However, evaluating the full benefits of risk reduction is challenging because of the complexity of the systems, the scarcity of data, and the uncertainty of future climatic changes. We address this challenge by integrating methods from the study of climate adaptation, infrastructure systems, and complex networks. In doing so, we outline an infrastructure risk assessment that incorporates interdependence, user demands, and potential failure‐related economic losses. Individual infrastructure assets are intersected with probabilistic hazard maps to calculate expected annual damages. Protection measure costs are integrated to calculate risk reduction and associated discounted benefits, which are used to explore the business case for investment in adaptation. A demonstration of the methodology is provided for flood protection of major electricity substations in England and Wales. We conclude that the ongoing adaptation program for major electricity assets is highly cost beneficial.
Performance comparisons of the kicking of stationary and rolling balls in a futsal context

Angular kinematics of the hip, knee, and ankle joints, as well as ball velocity and accuracy for stationary and rolling balls were compared in a futsal (Five-a-Side Indoor soccer) context. Ten futsal athletes performed five kicks each on stationary and rolling futsal balls. Six digital cameras (120 Hz) recorded the kicks. For both kick types, angles for hip, knee, and ankle joints were calculated using Euler angle conventions. Angular velocity, ball velocity, foot linear velocity, relative velocity, and accuracy also were analyzed. The kicking of both stationary and rolling balls showed similarities for ball velocity (24.2 ± 2.2 m/s and 23.8 ± 2.7 m/s, respectively), foot velocity (17.6 ± 1.8 m/s and 17.2 ± 2.2 m/s, respectively), and accuracy (26% and 24% target hits, respectively). We observed few differences in angular kinematics and angular joint velocities between kick types. Elite players can make online adjustments in the preparatory phase so that kicking a rolling ball is almost exactly like kicking a stationary ball.
Determinants of incubation period: do reptilian embryos hatch after a fixed total number of heart beats?

SUMMARY The eggs of birds typically hatch after a fixed (but lineage-specific) cumulative number of heart beats since the initiation of incubation. Is the same true for non-avian reptiles, despite wide intraspecific variation in incubation period generated by variable nest temperatures? Non-invasive monitoring of embryo heart beat rates in one turtle species (Pelodiscus sinensis) and two lizards (Bassiana duperreyi and Takydromus septentrionalis) show that the total number of heart beats during embryogenesis is relatively constant over a wide range of warm incubation conditions. However, incubation at low temperatures increases the total number of heart beats required to complete embryogenesis, because the embryo spends much of its time at temperatures that require maintenance functions but that do not allow embryonic growth or differentiation. Thus, cool-incubated embryos allocate additional metabolic effort to maintenance costs. Under warm conditions, total number of heart beats thus predicts incubation period in non-avian reptiles as well as in birds (the total number of heart beats are also similar); however, under the colder nest conditions often experienced by non-avian reptiles, maintenance costs add significantly to total embryonic metabolic expenditure.
Surface characteristics and machining performance of TiAlN-, TiN- and AlCrN-coated tungsten carbide drills

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of surface characteristics and drilling performance of uncoated and coated tungsten carbide drills. The single- and double-layer coatings of TiN, TiAlN and AlCrN were examined in terms of surface roughness, microhardness and crack resistance. In addition, drilling torque and thrust force were experimentally measured and compared to the developed models based on the drilling mechanics and drill geometries. Tool wear and hole surface roughness were also considered to assess the machining performance of different coated tools. The results revealed that all coated drills can offer better cut surface quality, 28% lower cutting loads and longer tool life than the uncoated drills. Although AlCrN was found to be the hardest coating material among the others, it caused large wear on the cutting edges and poor surface roughness of produced holes. The lowest torque and thrust force were achievable using TiN-coated drill, while the use of TiAlN coating resulted in the lowest surface roughness and smallest tool wear. Furthermore, the drilling torque and thrust force model developed in this study were found to correspond to the experimental measures with the average error of 8.4%. The findings of this work could facilitate the selection of coating materials to advance the machining performance.
NewHope without reconciliation

In this paper we introduce NewHope-Simple, a variant of the NewHope RingLWE-based key exchange that is using a straight-forward transformation from Ring-LWE encryption to a passively secure KEM (or key-exchange scheme). The main advantage of NewHopeSimple over NewHope is simplicity. In particular, it avoids the error-reconciliation mechanism originally proposed by Ding. The explanation of his method, combined with other tricks, like unbiasing the key following Peikert’s tweak and using the quantizer D4 to extract one key bit from multiple coefficients, takes more than three pages in the NewHope paper. The price for that simplicity is small: one of the exchanged messages increases in size by 6.25% from 2048 bytes to 2176 bytes. The security of NewHope-Simple is the same as the security of NewHope; the performance is very similar.
Algorithmic Self-Assembly of DNA Sierpinski Triangles

Algorithms and information, fundamental to technological and biological organization, are also an essential aspect of many elementary physical phenomena, such as molecular self-assembly. Here we report the molecular realization, using two-dimensional self-assembly of DNA tiles, of a cellular automaton whose update rule computes the binary function XOR and thus fabricates a fractal pattern—a Sierpinski triangle—as it grows. To achieve this, abstract tiles were translated into DNA tiles based on double-crossover motifs. Serving as input for the computation, long single-stranded DNA molecules were used to nucleate growth of tiles into algorithmic crystals. For both of two independent molecular realizations, atomic force microscopy revealed recognizable Sierpinski triangles containing 100–200 correct tiles. Error rates during assembly appear to range from 1% to 10%. Although imperfect, the growth of Sierpinski triangles demonstrates all the necessary mechanisms for the molecular implementation of arbitrary cellular automata. This shows that engineered DNA self-assembly can be treated as a Turing-universal biomolecular system, capable of implementing any desired algorithm for computation or construction tasks.
Technology Mapping of Reversible Circuits to Clifford+T Quantum Circuits

The Clifford+T quantum gate library has attracted much interest in the design of quantum circuits, particularly since the contained operations can be implemented in a fault-tolerant manner. Since fault tolerant implementations of the T gate have very high latency, synthesis and optimization are aiming at minimizing the number of T stages, referred to as the T-depth. In this paper, we present an approach to map mixed polarity multiple controlled Toffoli gates into Clifford+T quantum circuits. Our approach is based on the multiple control Toffoli mapping algorithms proposed by Barenco et al., which are given T-depth optimized Clifford+T translations. Experiments show that our approach leads to a significant T-depth reduction of 54% on average.
Oxidative stress and total antioxidant capacity in human plasma

Abstract While several tools are already available for the separate measurement of the oxidant and antioxidant pools, a single, quick and easy method for determining total oxidative stress would be advantageous. In the present study, we compare the plasma of untreated patients with leukemia/solid gynecological tumors (n = 50) and current regular smokers (n = 50) with a smoking history of ≥10 cigarettes per day to the plasma of healthy blood donors. Standard tools were used to measure total oxidant status, ceruloplasmin activity, total antioxidant capacity, uric acid content and oxidative stress index. Oxidative stress was also evaluated using the controversial d-ROMs test, a commercial method of reactive oxygen species detection. Statistically significant differences between the smokers and the control group were detected for all of the biochemical parameters. Conversely, the differences in the cancer patients were not statistically significant for oxidative stress.
Sampling of Alternatives in Random Regret Minimization Models

Sampling of alternatives is often required in discrete choice models to reduce the computational burden and to avoid describing a large number of attributes. This approach has been used in many areas, including modeling of route choice, vehicle ownership, trip destination, residential location, and activity scheduling. The need for sampling of alternatives is accentuated for random regret minimization RRM models because, unlike random utility models, the regret function for each alternative depends on all of the alternatives in the choice-set. In this paper we develop and test a method to achieve consistency, asymptotic normality, and relative efficiency of the estimators while sampling alternatives in a class of models that includes RRM. The proposed method can be seen as an extension of the approach used to address sampling of alternatives in multivariate extreme value models. We illustrate the methodology using Monte Carlo experimentation and a case study with real data. Experiments show that the proposed method is practical, performs better than a truncated model, and results in finite-sample estimates that provide a good approximation of those obtained with a model considering all of the alternatives.
Access-aware DRAM failure-rate estimation under relaxed refresh operations

In recent years, there has been a growing interest on relaxing the pessimistic DRAM refresh rate due to the incurred power and throughput loss. Undeniably, a critical factor in determining the refresh rate relaxation that can be achieved lies on the degree of the DRAM error-rate deterioration that is incurred and on the amount of estimated errors that can be handled by system mitigation schemes which are mainly being evaluated in simulators. To estimate the DRAM faults under relaxed refresh, the majority of the existing works rely on estimated DRAM failure probability models using only the spatial distribution of the DRAM retention time across the memory cells. We observe that such failure models have neglected the intricate dependence on the memory accesses, which inherently refresh the accessed rows. In this paper, we propose that the intervals between consecutive accesses must also be considered during DRAM simulation. We show that the estimation of the distribution of accesses poses a lot of challenges mainly due to the time consuming full system simulations that are required. To address such challenges, this paper presents one of the first efforts to model the access time-dependent DRAM retention time by developing a fast simulation infrastructure based on binary instrumentation. The basic idea behind the proposed approach lies on the quantification of the time elapsed between consecutive memory accesses on the same row and its relation to the DRAM failure probability, which is then being used for a more accurate fault injection. The introduced overheads of the instrumentation functions are measured during native execution allowing accurate corrections of the time elapsed between consecutive accesses. The efficacy of our framework is being evaluated using various artificial benchmarks. Results show that our scheme helps to limit the misprediction of estimated errors of current error-injection models.
On the imaging of reflectors in the earth

In this paper, I present a modification of the Beylkin inversion operator. This modification accounts for the band‐limited nature of the data and makes the role of discontinuities in the sound speed more precise. The inversion presented here partially dispenses with the small‐parameter constraint of the Born approximation. This is shown by applying the proposed inversion operator to upward scattered data represented by the Kirchhoff approximation, using the angularly dependent geometrical‐optics reflection coefficient. A fully nonlinear estimate of the jump in sound speed may be extracted from the output of this algorithm interpreted in the context of these Kirchhoff‐approximate data for the forward problem. The inversion of these data involves integration over the source‐receiver surface, the reflecting surface, and frequency. The spatial integrals are computed by the method of stationary phase. The output is asymptotically a scaled singular function of the reflecting surface. The singular function of a .