Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low Cycle Fatigue and Creep-Fatigue Behavior of Alloy 617 at High Temperature

Alloy 617 is the leading candidate material for an intermediate heat exchanger (IHX) application of the Very High Temperature Nuclear Reactor (VHTR), expected to have an outlet temperature as high as 950 degrees C. Acceptance of Alloy 617 in Section III of the ASME Code for nuclear construction requires a detailed understanding of the creep-fatigue behavior. Initial creep-fatigue work on Alloy 617 suggests a more dominant role of environment with increasing temperature and/or hold times evidenced through changes in creep-fatigue crack growth mechanism/s and failure life. Continuous cycle fatigue and creep-fatigue testing of Alloy 617 was conducted at 950 degrees C and 0.3% and 0.6% total strain in air to simulate damage modes expected in a VHTR application. Continuous cycle specimens exhibited transgranular cracking. Intergranular cracking was observed in the creep-fatigue specimens, although evidence of grain boundary cavitation was not observed. Despite the absence of grain boundary cavitation to accelerate crack propagation, the addition of a hold time at peak tensile strain was detrimental to cycle life. This suggests that creepfatigue interaction may occur by a different mechanism or that the environment may be partially responsible for accelerating failure.
SALL4 ‐ KHDRBS3 network enhances stemness by modulating CD44 splicing in basal‐like breast cancer

Understanding the mechanism by which cancer cells enhance stemness facilitates cancer therapies. Here, we revealed that a stem cell transcription factor, SALL4, functions to enhance stemness in basal‐like breast cancer cells. We used shRNA‐mediated knockdown and gene overexpression systems to analyze gene functions. To evaluate stemness, we performed a sphere formation assay. In SALL4 knockdown cells, the sphere formation ability was reduced, indicating that SALL4 enhances stemness. CD44 is a membrane protein and is known as a stemness factor in cancer. CD44 splicing variants are involved in cancer stemness. We discovered that SALL4 modulates CD44 alternative splicing through the upregulation of KHDRBS3, a splicing factor for CD44. We cloned the KHDRBS3‐regulated CD44 splicing isoform (CD44v), which lacks exons 8 and 9. CD44v overexpression prevented a reduction in the sphere formation ability by KHDRBS3 knockdown, indicating that CD44v is positively involved in cancer stemness. In addition, CD44v enhanced anoikis resistance under the control of the SALL4 ‐ KHDRBS3 network. Basal‐like breast cancer is an aggressive subtype among breast cancers, and there is no effective therapy so far. Our findings provide molecular targets for basal‐like breast cancer therapy. In the future, this study may contribute to the establishment of drugs targeting cancer stemness.
Estimating Live Fuel Moisture from MODIS Satellite Data for Wildfire Danger Assessment in Southern California USA

The goal of the research reported here is to assess the capability of satellite vegetation indices from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer onboard both Terra and Aqua satellites, in order to replicate live fuel moisture content of Southern California chaparral ecosystems. We compared seasonal and interannual characteristics of in-situ live fuel moisture with satellite vegetation indices that were averaged over different radial extents around each live fuel moisture observation site. The highest correlations are found using the Aqua Enhanced Vegetation Index for a radius of 10 km, independently verifying the validity of in-situ live fuel moisture measurements over a large extent around each in-situ site. With this optimally averaged Enhanced Vegetation Index, we developed an empirical model function of live fuel moisture. Trends in the wet-to-dry phase of vegetation are well captured by the empirical model function on interannual time-scales, indicating a promising method to monitor fire danger levels by combining satellite, in-situ, and model results during the transition before active fire seasons. An example map of Enhanced Vegetation Index-derived live fuel moisture for the Colby Fire shows a complex spatial pattern of significant live fuel moisture reduction along an extensive wildland-urban interface, and illustrates a key advantage in using satellites across the large extent of wildland areas in Southern California.
An approach to decision-making with triangular fuzzy reciprocal preference relations and its application

ABSTRACT Triangular fuzzy reciprocal preference relations (TFRPRs) are powerful tools to denoting decision-makers’ fuzzy judgments, which permit the decision-makers to apply triangular fuzzy ratio rather than real numbers to express their judgements. Consistency analysis is one of the most crucial issues in preference relations that can guarantee the reasonable ranking order. However, all previous consistency concepts cannot well address this type of preference relations. Based on the operational laws on triangular fuzzy numbers, this paper introduces an additive consistency concept for TFRPRs by using quasi TFRPRs, which can be seen as a natural extension of the crisp case. Using this consistency concept, models to judging the additive consistency of TFRPRs and to estimating missing values in complete TFRPRs are constructed. Then, an algorithm to decision-making with TFRPRs is developed. Finally, two numerical examples are offered to illustrate the application of the proposed procedure, and comparison analysis is performed.
Microblog sentiment analysis using social and topic context

Analyzing massive user-generated microblogs is very crucial in many fields, attracting many researchers to study. However, it is very challenging to process such noisy and short microblogs. Most prior works only use texts to identify sentiment polarity and assume that microblogs are independent and identically distributed, which ignore microblogs are networked data. Therefore, their performance is not usually satisfactory. Inspired by two sociological theories (sentimental consistency and emotional contagion), in this paper, we propose a new method combining social context and topic context to analyze microblog sentiment. In particular, different from previous work using direct user relations, we introduce structure similarity context into social contexts and propose a method to measure structure similarity. In addition, we also introduce topic context to model the semantic relations between microblogs. Social context and topic context are combined by the Laplacian matrix of the graph built by these contexts and Laplacian regularization are added into the microblog sentiment analysis model. Experimental results on two real Twitter datasets demonstrate that our proposed model can outperform baseline methods consistently and significantly.
Single-Domain Antibodies and the Promise of Modular Targeting in Cancer Imaging and Treatment

Monoclonal antibodies and their fragments have significantly changed the outcome of cancer in the clinic, effectively inhibiting tumor cell proliferation, triggering antibody-dependent immune effector cell activation and complement mediated cell death. Along with a continued expansion in number, diversity, and complexity of validated tumor targets there is an increasing focus on engineering recombinant antibody fragments for lead development. Single-domain antibodies (sdAbs), in particular those engineered from the variable heavy-chain fragment (VHH gene) found in Camelidae heavy-chain antibodies (or IgG2 and IgG3), are the smallest fragments that retain the full antigen-binding capacity of the antibody with advantageous properties as drugs. For similar reasons, growing attention is being paid to the yet smaller variable heavy chain new antigen receptor (VNAR) fragments found in Squalidae. sdAbs have been selected, mostly from immune VHH libraries, to inhibit or modulate enzyme activity, bind soluble factors, internalize cell membrane receptors, or block cytoplasmic targets. This succinct review is a compilation of recent data documenting the application of engineered, recombinant sdAb in the clinic as epitope recognition “modules” to build monomeric, dimeric and multimeric ligands that target, tag and stall solid tumor growth in vivo. Size, affinity, specificity, and the development profile of sdAbs drugs are seemingly consistent with desirable clinical efficacy and safety requirements. But the hepatotoxicity of the tetrameric anti-DR5-VHH drug in patients with pre-existing anti-drug antibodies halted the phase I clinical trial and called for a thorough pre-screening of the immune and poly-specific reactivities of the sdAb leads.
A Review on Ethnopharmacological Applications, Pharmacological Activities, and Bioactive Compounds of Mangifera indica (Mango)

Mangifera indica (family Anacardiaceae), commonly known as mango, is a pharmacologically, ethnomedically, and phytochemically diverse plant. Various parts of M. indica tree have been used in traditional medicine for the treatment of different ailments, and a number of bioactive phytochemical constituents of M. indica have been reported, namely, polyphenols, terpenes, sterols, carotenoids, vitamins, and amino acids, and so forth. Several studies have proven the pharmacological potential of different parts of mango trees such as leaves, bark, fruit peel and flesh, roots, and flowers as anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungal, anthelmintic, gastroprotective, hepatoprotective, immunomodulatory, antiplasmodial, and antihyperlipemic. In the present review, a comprehensive study on ethnopharmacological applications, pharmacological activities, and bioactive compounds of M. indica has been described.
Persuading Teammates to Give

Dual processing theories in psychology suggest that people process persuasive requests by assessing the quality of arguments (systematic processing) or by relying on heuristic rules (heuristic processing). However, the factors that act as systematic and heuristic processing cues and affect the success of persuasion have not been adequately described in social lending contexts. This research examines the effectiveness of systematic and heuristic cues in persuasive requests in Kiva lending teams intended to convince members to donate. An analysis of 88,596 requests exchanged in 1,610 teams shows that certain heuristic processing cues (e.g., liking between requesters and potential lenders, advocates low authority in their teams and the importance of the team to the lender) strongly predicted whether lenders would contribute to a loan request. In contrast, cues that required systematic processing are less influential. We also found that behavioral cues are more important than verbal ones. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our work.
Synthesis, Rheological Behavior and Mechanical Characterization of Structural Fast-Setting Geopolymers

Geopolymers are inorganic materials with ceramic characteristics that can be synthesized at room temperature from the setting of slurries. Their structure consists of aluminosilicate units that polymerize in alkaline environment. The setting rate and mechanical behavior of geopolymers strongly depends on the SiO2:Al2O3 molar ratio, polymeric precursor and polymerization cation. The present work reports the synthesis and characterization of 3.5:1 (SiO2:Al2O3) structural geopolymers prepared using either metakaolin (GPMK) or kaolin (GPK) as geopolymeric precursor in potassium hydroxide solution. GPMK depicted quick setting whereas GPK set only after 4 hours. The rheological characterization of the slurries revealed that plastic viscosity and yield point of GPK were 0.40 Pa.s and 14.2 Pa, respectively, whereas GPMK set instantly. The compressive strength of both geopolymers were measured after 24 hours and resulted in similar results, i.e., 4.6 MPa for GPMK and 4.4 MPa for GPK. The strength of both geopolymers was compatible to values typical of structural materials.
Lactobacillus gasseri CRISPR-Cas9 characterization In Vitro reveals a flexible mode of protospacer-adjacent motif recognition

While the CRISPR-Cas9 system from S. pyogenes is a powerful genome engineering tool, additional programmed nucleases would enable added flexibility in targeting space and multiplexing. Here, we characterized a CRISPR-Cas9 system from L. gasseri and found that it has modest activity in a cell-free lysate assay but no activity in mammalian cells even when altering promoter, position of tag sequences and NLS, and length of crRNA:tracrRNA. In the lysate assay we tested over 400 sequential crRNA target sequences and found that the Lga Cas9 PAM is NNGA/NDRA, different than NTAA predicted from the native bacterial host. In addition, we found multiple instances of consecutive crRNA target sites, indicating flexibility in either PAM sequence or distance from the crRNA target site. This work highlights the need for characterization of new CRISPR systems and highlights the non-triviality of porting them into eukaryotes as gene editing tools.
Analysis of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites as new smart materials for active control of flexible structures

This paper deals with the prediction of the effective piezoelectric coefficient of piezoelectric fiber reinforced composites (PFRC) which measures the induced stress in the fiber direction due to the applied electric field in the direction transverse to the fiber. It has been found that when the fiber volume fraction exceeds a critical value, this effective piezoelectric coefficient becomes significantly greater than the corresponding coefficient of the piezoelectric material of the fiber. In order to assess the performance of the proposed PFRC as a new actuator material, the active constrained layer damping (ACLD) of laminated beam has been investigated. The constraining layer of the ACLD treatment is a layer of the proposed PFRC. The controlled response of the beam is compared with that when the constraining layer of the ACLD treatment is made of piezoelectric material of the fiber. It has been observed that the PFRC performs better than the piezoelectric material alone.
Synthesis of Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Arrays and Their Application in Single Molecular electronics

Synthesis of Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Arrays and Their Application in Single Molecular electronics Yuyao Shan Molecular electronics utilize molecular as building blocks to fabricate electronic components. Due to the advantage of its size, molecular electronics has been an attractive candidate for future electronics for a long time. However, there are major challenges to be solved before single molecular electronic device could be used widely. One of these challenges is the lack of high yield, low cost fabrication technique. Carbon nanotubes are new materials with great electronic conductivity and small diameter, etc. They are great candidate for the electrode of single molecular electronic devices. A great effort of this thesis has been devoted into the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of carbon nanotube, especially the surface aligned carbon nanotube array on miscut quartz surface. A state of art recipe to synthesize carbon nanotube array on quartz with promising cleanliness, density, alignment and nanotube length has been developed. Two novel fabrication processes were proposed and tested to fabricate electrode for single molecule electronic devices with carbon nanotube array. In addition, a fabrication process to create large amount of identical length of carbon nanotubes was introduced and studied.
Long-Term Stability and Heritability of Telephone Interview Measures of Alcohol Consumption and Dependence

Abstract Alcohol dependence symptoms and consumption measures were examined for stability and heritability. Data were collected from 12,045 individuals (5376 twin pairs, 1293 single twins) aged 19 to 90 years in telephone interviews conducted in three collection phases. Phases 1 and 2 were independent samples, but Phase 3 targeted families of smokers and drinkers from the Phase 1 and 2 samples. The stability of dependence symptoms and consumption was examined for 1158 individuals interviewed in both Phases 1 and 3 (mean interval = 11.0 years). For 1818 individuals interviewed in Phases 2 and 3 (mean interval = 5.5 years) the stability of consumption was examined. Heritability was examined for each collection phase and retest samples from the selected Phase 3 collection. The measures examined were a dependence score, based on DSM-IIIR and DSM-IV criteria for substance dependence, and a quantity × frequency measure. Measures were moderately stable, with test–retest correlations ranging from . 58 to . 61 for dependence and from . 55 to . 64 for consumption. However, the pattern of changes over time for dependence suggested that the measure may more strongly reflect recent than lifetime experience. Similar to previous findings, heritabilities ranged from . 42 to . 51 for dependence and from . 31 to . 51 for consumption. Consumption was significantly less heritable in the younger Phase 2 cohort (23–39 years) compared to the older Phase 1 cohort (28–90 years).
A Vehicle Steering Recognition System Based on Low-Cost Smartphone Sensors

Recognizing how a vehicle is steered and then alerting drivers in real time is of utmost importance to the vehicle and driver’s safety, since fatal accidents are often caused by dangerous vehicle maneuvers, such as rapid turns, fast lane-changes, etc. Existing solutions using video or in-vehicle sensors have been employed to identify dangerous vehicle maneuvers, but these methods are subject to the effects of the environmental elements or the hardware is very costly. In the mobile computing era, smartphones have become key tools to develop innovative mobile context-aware systems. In this paper, we present a recognition system for dangerous vehicle steering based on the low-cost sensors found in a smartphone: i.e., the gyroscope and the accelerometer. To identify vehicle steering maneuvers, we focus on the vehicle’s angular velocity, which is characterized by gyroscope data from a smartphone mounted in the vehicle. Three steering maneuvers including turns, lane-changes and U-turns are defined, and a vehicle angular velocity matching algorithm based on Fast Dynamic Time Warping (FastDTW) is adopted to recognize the vehicle steering. The results of extensive experiments show that the average accuracy rate of the presented recognition reaches 95%, which implies that the proposed smartphone-based method is suitable for recognizing dangerous vehicle steering maneuvers.
High Performance Si‐SiC Composite Coating for C/C Composites Prepared by a Two‐Step Pack Cementation Process

final coatings. The other operations in the second process were as same as the first step. Coated C/C composites were heated at 1773 K in air in an electrical furnace to research the isothermal thermal cycling oxidation behavior. The surface crystalline structures and microstructures of the coatings were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Cooperative Position Aware Mobility Pattern of AUVs for Avoiding Void Zones in Underwater WSNs

In this paper, we propose two schemes; position-aware mobility pattern (PAMP) and cooperative PAMP (Co PAMP). The first one is an optimization scheme that avoids void hole occurrence and minimizes the uncertainty in the position estimation of glider’s. The second one is a cooperative routing scheme that reduces the packet drop ratio by using the relay cooperation. Both techniques use gliders that stay at sojourn positions for a predefined time, at sojourn position self-confidence (s-confidence) and neighbor-confidence (n-confidence) regions that are estimated for balanced energy consumption. The transmission power of a glider is adjusted according to those confidence regions. Simulation results show that our proposed schemes outperform the compared existing one in terms of packet delivery ratio, void zones and energy consumption.
Close genetic relationships between a spousal pair with autism-affected children and high minor allele content in cases in autism-associated SNPs

Parents of children affected with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have mild forms of autistic-like characteristics. Past studies have focused on searching for individual genetic risk loci of ASD. Here we studied the overall properties of the genomes of ASD trios by using previously published genome-wide data for common SNPs. The pairwise genetic distance (PGD) between a spousal pair with ASD-affected children was found smaller than that of a random pair selected among the spouses in the ASD trios, and spousal relatedness correlated with severe forms of ASD. Furthermore, for a set of 970 ASD associated SNPs, cases showed higher homozygous minor allele content than parents. These results indicate new genetic elements in the broad phenotypes of parents with ASD-affected offspring and in ASD pathogenesis. Highlights The overall properties of the genomes of ASD trios show ASD specific features. A spousal pair with ASD-affected children showed smaller genetic distance than that of a randomly selected pair among the spouses in the ASD trios. Minor allele contents in ASD-associated SNPs in ASD cases were greater than those in the parents of cases.
Focused Depth-first Proof Number Search using Convolutional Neural Networks for the Game of Hex

Proof Number search (PNS) is an effective algo-rithm for searching theoretical values on games with non-uniform branching factors. Focused depth-ﬁrst proof number search (FDFPN) with dynamic widening was proposed for Hex where the branching factor is nearly uniform. However, FDFPN is fragile to its heuristic move ordering function. The recent advances of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have led to considerable progress in game playing. We investigate how to incorporate the strength of CNNs into solving, with application to the game of Hex. We describe FDFPN-CNN, a new focused DFPN search that uses convolutional neural networks. FDFPN-CNN integrates two CNNs trained from games played by expert players. The value approximation CNN provides reliable information for deﬁning the widening size by estimating the value of the node to expand, while the policy CNN selects promising children nodes to the search. On 8x8 Hex, experimental results show FDFPN-CNN performs notably better than FDFPN, suggesting a promising direction for better solving Hex positions where learning from strong players is possible.
Indigenous Wildlife Rabies in Taiwan: Ferret Badgers, a Long Term Terrestrial Reservoir

The emerging disease of rabies was confirmed in Taiwan ferret badgers (FBs) and reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) on July 17, 2013. The spread of wildlife rabies can be related to neighborhood countries in Asia. The phylogenetic analysis was conducted by maximum likelihood (ML) methods and the Bayesian coalescent approach based on the glycoprotein (G) and nucleoprotein (N) genes. The phylogeographic and spatial temporal dynamics of viral transmission were determined by using SPREAD, QGIS. Therefore, the origin and the change with time of the viruses can be identified. Results showed the rabies virus of FB strains in Taiwan is a unique clade among other strains in Asia. According to the phylogeographic coalescent tree, three major genotypes of the FB rabies virus have circulated in three different geographical areas in Taiwan. Two genotypes have distributed into central and southern Taiwan between two ecological river barriers. The third genotype has been limited in southeastern Taiwan by the natural mountain barrier. The diversity of FB rabies viruses indicates that the biological profile of FBs could vary in different geographical areas in Taiwan. An enhanced surveillance system needs to be established near the currently identified natural barriers for early warnings of the rabies virus outbreak in Taiwan.