Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Encapsulated Islet Transplantation: Strategies and Clinical Trials

Encapsulation of tissue has been an area of intense research with a myriad number of therapeutic applications as diverse as cancer, tissue regeneration, and diabetes. In the case of diabetes, transplantation of pancreatic islets of Langerhans containing insulin-producing beta cells has shown promise toward a cure. However, anti-rejection therapy that is needed to sustain the transplanted tissue has numerous adverse effects, and the islets might still be damaged by immune processes. Furthermore, the profound scarcity of healthy human donor organs restricts the availability of islets for transplant. Islet encapsulation allows the protection of this tissue without the use of toxic medications, while also expanding the donor pool to include animal sources. Before the widespread application of this therapy, there are still issues that need to be resolved. There are many materials that can be used, differing shapes and sizes of capsules, and varied sources of islets to name a few variables that need to be considered. In this review, the current options for capsule generation, past animal and human studies, and future directions in this area of research are discussed.
The Ethical Dilemmas and Social Scientific Trade-offs of Masking in Ethnography

Masking, the practice of hiding or distorting identifying information about people, places, and organizations, is usually considered a requisite feature of ethnographic research and writing. This is justified both as an ethical obligation to one’s subjects and as a scientifically neutral position (as readers are enjoined to treat a case’s idiosyncrasies as sociologically insignificant). We question both justifications, highlighting potential ethical dilemmas and obstacles to constructing cumulative social science that can arise through masking. Regarding ethics, we show, on the one hand, how masking may give subjects a false sense of security because it implies a promise of confidentiality that it often cannot guarantee and, on the other hand, how naming may sometimes be what subjects want and expect. Regarding scientific tradeoffs, we argue that masking can reify ethnographic authority, exaggerate the universality of the case (e.g., “Middletown”), and inhibit replicability (or “revisits”) and sociological comparison. While some degree of masking is ethically and practically warranted in many cases and the value of disclosure varies across ethnographies, we conclude that masking should no longer be the default option that ethnographers unquestioningly choose.
Ieee Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 1 Sentence Directed Video Object Codetection

—We tackle the problem of video object codetection by leveraging the weak semantic constraint implied by sentences that describe the video content. Unlike most existing work that focuses on codetecting large objects which are usually salient both in size and appearance, we can codetect objects that are small or medium sized. Our method assumes no human pose or depth information such as is required by the most recent state-of-the-art method. We employ weak semantic constraint on the codetection process by pairing the video with sentences. Although the semantic information is usually simple and weak, it can greatly boost the performance of our codetection framework by reducing the search space of the hypothesized object detections. Our experiment demonstrates an average IoU score of 0.423 on a new challenging dataset which contains 15 object classes and 150 videos with 12,509 frames in total, and an average IoU score of 0.373 on a subset of an existing dataset, originally intended for activity recognition, which contains 5 object classes and 75 videos with 8,854 frames in total.
An empirical comparison of monitoring algorithms for access anomaly detection

One of the major disadvantages of parallel programming with shared memory is the nondeterministic behavior caused by uncoordinated access to shared variables, known as <italic>access anomalies</italic>. Monitoring program execution to detect access anomalies is a promising and relatively unexplored approach to this problem. We present a new algorithm, referred to as <italic>task recycling</italic>, for detecting anomalies, and compare it to an existing algorithm. Empirical results indicate several significant conclusions: (i) While space requirements are bounded by &Ogr;(<italic>T</italic> × <italic>V</italic>), where <italic>T</italic> is the maximum number of threads that may potentially execute in parallel and <italic>V</italic> is the number of variable monitored, for typical programs space requirements are on average &Ogr;(<italic>V</italic>). (ii) Task recycling is more efficient in terms of space requirements and often in performance. (iii) The general approach of monitoring to detect access anomalies is practical.
Assessment of Fracture Integrity for Trawl Impact of the Ormen Lange SFD Pipelines

Ormen Lange Southern Field Development (SFD) is part of the phase 2 development of the Ormen Lange gas field located about 120 km offshore the coast of Norway. The SFD includes an 8 slot template, two 16 inch infield flowlines, one 6 5/8 inch MEG line and one umbilical located at about 850 m water depth. Although there are presently no fishing activities at the development area, the pipeline design has included a design case with evaluation of the structural integrity and potential for failure caused by future interaction with fishing gear such as trawl impact/pull-over and hooking. In contrast to the MEG line and the umbilical, which will be trenched and buried along the whole pipeline route, the 16 inch production flowlines will be left exposed on the seabed and may therefore be subjected to interference with trawl equipment in the future. It was therefore decided that pipeline engineering shall document that impact from trawl equipment during operation will not cause detrimental damage to the exposed flowlines, resulting in leakage of hydrocarbons to the environment and/or high cost of repair. In the event of impact from trawl equipment, it is likely that the pipe will be operating and thus be in a state of internal overpressure. Recent research has shown that the effect of internal pressure can be detrimental to the fracture response of pipelines with circumferential flaws subjected to bending or tensile loading. Today’s analytical equations that are the basis for most engineering critical assessments (ECA) are not capable of accounting for the effect of internal pressure when elastic-plastic fracture mechanics is considered. LINKpipe, which is a special purpose finite element program for assessing the fracture integrity of pipelines, is capable of accounting for the effect of internal pressure and was therefore chosen for the fracture integrity assessment. The flowline was analyzed for a range of defect sizes and material stress-strain behaviors. The finite element model was subjected to bending while under internal pressure, and both surface breaking defects and embedded defects have been assessed to ensure that the Ormen Lange SFD flowlines are capable of withstanding impact from trawl equipment during operation. The analyses were used to determine safe operational windows regarding acceptable defect sizes for both surface breaking and embedded defects for the parameters analyzed.Copyright © 2009 by ASME
Leptonic Pion Decay And Physics Beyond The Electroweak Standard Model

The ratio of branching ratios in leptonic pion decay $R_{\pi} \equiv (\Gamma(\pi^- \to e \nu_e))/(\Gamma(\pi^- \to \mu \nu_\mu))$ is a powerfully sensitive probe of new interactions beyond the electroweak standard model. This is due to the chirality suppression of the standard model amplitude for the decay, which results in a precise prediction for the ratio, and suppressed amplitudes for new contributions to interfere with. We calculate, including QCD corrections, the contributions to $R_{\pi}$ arising from a broad selection of standard model extensions to which it is sensitive, including: R-parity violating interactions in supersymmetric theories, theories with light (electroweak scale) leptoquark degrees of freedom, non-minimal models of extra doublet Higgs bosons, models in which the quarks and leptons are composite both with and without supersymmetry, and models with strong TeV scale gravitational interactions. Comparing with existing measurements of $R_{\pi}$ we provide limits on each of these classes of models; our calculations also represent state of the art theoretical benchmarks against which the results from the upcoming round of leptonic pion decay experiments may be compared.
Modelling Languages, Bml, Sbvr

These phenomena allowed companies and organisations to grow globally, reacting to the climate of uncertainty through the decentralisation of production and innovation. Shifting activities to the electronic dimension allowed an increase in efficiency and the reduction of coordination costs. At the same time, organisations geographically distributed start to interact and trade globally, enhancing the growth of networks of distributed companies. Transient networks and organisations as portfolios constitute new organisational forms, which exhibit unmatched connectivity, flexibility and adaptability.
Scheduling of real-time traffic in IEEE 802.11 networks

Real-time applications require the provision of time-bounded services from the network, however, the scheduling algorithms used in wired networks are not suitable for wireless networks because they assume that the channel is error free. Besides, the scheduler has only a limited knowledge of the arrival processes of the uplink traffic. In this paper, we propose scheduling algorithms for the transport of real-time traffic in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs which deal with channel errors. We also present the simulation results obtained with these algorithms.
CLUSTERING OF WEB QUERY RESULTS USING ENHANCED K-MEANS ALGORITHM

Clustering of web search results is an attempt to organize the web sites into a number of relevant groups. For this process, only documents that match the query are considered while forming the topical groups. Clustering is preformed after the searching process into the resulting documents of the user query. Consequently, the set of related categories is not fixed and they are created dynamically depending on the type of the documents found in the web search results. Also the clustering interface is part of a search engines and it must be done in online. In this paper, we present an efficient clustering algorithm approach and it is enhanced from the k-mean algorithm. In this approach algebraic transformations of the termdocument matrix and frequent phrase extraction using suffix arrays are used for clustering the results. Our enhanced K-means algorithm minimizes the processing time and maximizes the cluster count in web search.
A framework of classifying maintenance requests based on learning techniques

Classify maintenance request is one of the processes in the large software system to support maintainers in doing their daily maintenance tasks more effectively. Categorizing these maintenance requests are an essential requirement in managing the maintenance request for software maintainer and need a great effort as well as determining classification. Hence, this paper presents the framework from the use of three different classification approaches, namely Bayesian model Decision Tree and Logistic regression. We show that naïve Bayesian classifier, Decision Tree and Logistic regression can be used to accurately classify issues into maintenance type.
An Accurate and Practical Small-Signal Model for Current-Mode Control

Past models of current-mode control have sufferered from either insufficient accuracy to properly predict the effects of current-mode control, or from analytical complexity that renders them inaccessible to the power supply designer. This paper combines the accuracy of sampled-data modeling with the simplicity of conventional pole-zero representation. As a result, it offers a current-mode control model which is accurate to half the switching frequency, and practical for everyday use. All of the small-signal characteristics of current-mode control are predicted, including low-frequency effects, and high-frequency subharmonic oscillation which can occur even at duty cycles of less than 0.5. In addition to the conventional dominant pole response of other current-mode models, a pair of poles is produced at half the switching frequency, the Q of which determines the amount of subharmonic oscillation.
Comparative Transcript Profiling of a Male Sterile Cybrid Pummelo and Its Fertile Type Revealed Altered Gene Expression Related to Flower Development

Male sterile and seedless characters are highly desired for citrus cultivar improvement. In our breeding program, a male sterile cybrid pummelo, which could be considered as a variant of male fertile pummelo, was produced by protoplast fusion. Herein, ecotopic stamen primordia initiation and development were detected in this male sterile cybrid pummelo. Histological studies revealed that the cybrid showed reduced petal development in size and width, and retarded stamen primordia development. Additionally, disorganized cell proliferation was also detected in stamen-like structures (fused to petals and/or carpel). To gain new insight into the underlying mechanism, we compared, by RNA-Seq analysis, the nuclear gene expression profiles of floral buds of the cybrid with that of fertile pummelo. Gene expression profiles which identified a large number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two lines were captured at both petal primordia and stamen primordia distinguishable stages. For example, nuclear genes involved in nucleic acid binding and response to hormone synthesis and metabolism, genes required for floral bud identification and expressed in particular floral whorls. Furthermore, in accordance with flower morphology of the cybrid, expression of PISTILLATA (PI) was reduced in stamen-like structures, even though it was restricted to correct floral whorls. Down-regulated expression of APETALA3 (AP3) coincided with that of PI. These finding indicated that, due to their whorl specific effects in flower development, citrus class-B MADS-box genes likely constituted ‘perfect targets’ for CMS retrograde signaling, and that dysfunctional mitochondria seemed to cause male sterile phenotype in the cybrid pummelo.
A modified thinning algorithm for fingerprint identification systems

A critical step in fingerprint identification system is the thinning of the input fingerprint image. The performance of a minutiae extraction algorithm relies heavily on the quality of the thinning algorithm. In this paper, a fast fingerprint thinning algorithm is introduced. The algorithm works directly on the gray-scale image not the binarized one where binarization of fingerprint causes many spurious minutiae and also removes many important features. The performance of the thinning algorithm is evaluated using many fingerprint images. Experimental results show that the proposed thinning algorithm is both fast and accurate.
An Agent-Based Approach for Dynamic Manufacturing Scheduling

Manufacturing scheduling is a difficult problem, particularly when it takes place in an open, dynamic environment. Agent-based technology has recently been used in attempts to resolve this problem. A bidding mechanism based on Contract Net protocol is often proposed as a key solution component. Our approach is to combine a bidding mechanism based on Contract Net protocol with a mediation mechanism based on Mediator architecture, for dynamic manufacturing scheduling and rescheduling. A machine-centered scheduling mechanism and related concepts and mechanisms are also described.
Stress buildup in the Himalaya

The seismic cycle on a major fault involves long periods of elastic strain and stress accumulation, driven by aseismic ductile deformation at depth, ultimately released by sudden fault slip events. Coseismic slip distributions are generally heterogeneous with most of the energy being released in the rupture of asperities. Since, on the long term, the fault's walls generally do not accumulate any significant permanent deformation, interseismic deformation might be heterogeneous, revealing zones of focused stress buildup. The pattern of current deformation along the Himalayan arc, which is known to produce recurring devastating earthquakes, and where several seismic gaps have long been recognized, might accordingly show significant lateral variations, providing a possible explanation for the uneven microseismic activity along the Himalayan arc. By contrast, the geodetic measurements show a rather uniform pattern of interseismic strain, oriented consistently with long-term geological deformation, as indicated from stretching lineation. We show that the geodetic data and seismicity distribution are reconciled from a model in which microseismicity is interpreted as driven by stress buildup increase in the interseismic period. The uneven seismicity pattern is shown to reflect the impact of the topography on the stress field, indicating low deviatoric stresses (<35 MPa) and a low friction (<0.3) on the Main Himalayan Thrust. Arc-normal thrusting along the Himalayan front and east-west extension in southern Tibet are quantitatively reconciled by the model.
Learning urban users' choices to improve trip recommendations

We analyze the work of urban trip planners and the relevance of trips they recommend upon user queries. We propose to improve the planner recommendations by learning from choices made by travelers who use the transportation network on the daily basis. We analyze a large collection of individual travelers' trips collected from the automated fare collection systems; we convert the trips into pair-wise preferences for traveling from a given origin to a destination at a given time point. We model passenger preferences with a number of smoothed time-dependent latent variables which are used to learn a ranking function for trips. This function can be used to re-rank the top planner's recommendations. Results of tests for cities of Nancy, France and Adelaide, Australia show a considerable increase of the recommendation relevance.
Parallel simulation of queueing petri nets

Queueing Petri Nets (QPNs) are a powerful formalism to model the performance of software systems. Such models can be solved using analytical or simulation techniques. Analytical techniques suffer from scalability issues, whereas simulation techniques often require very long simulation runs. Existing simulation techniques for QPNs are strictly sequential and cannot exploit the parallelism provided by modern multi-core processors. In this paper, we present an approach to parallel discrete-event simulation of QPNs using a conservative synchronization algorithm. We consider the spatial decomposition of QPNs as well as the lookahead calculation for different scheduling strategies. Additionally, we propose techniques to reduce the synchronization overhead when simulating performance models describing systems with open workloads. The approach is evaluated in three case studies using performance models of real-world software systems. We observe speedups between 1.9 and 2.5 for these case studies. We also assessed the maximum speedup that can be achieved with our approach using synthetic models.
Performance Analysis of High-Resolution Robust Localization and Secure Range Independent Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

In the field of computing, Wireless Sensor network has got interest of researchers due to its applications. WSN is a resource constrained network. Recent advances in wireless sensor network have led to many applications like health care, environment monitoring, target tracking and many others. In many applications node localization is one of the system parameter that is required to report event, the location of the event, routing and some network coverage information. In this paper two approaches of localization, High-resolution Robust Localization (HiRLoc) and Secure Range Independent Localization (SeRLoc) are discussed and then simulated. The results are compared to come up with the best approach keeping network parameters constant. The main focus of this paper is on Localization Error (distance between the actual position and estimated position of a sensor node). The algorithm having less localization error is considered to be the best.
An Emergency Demand Response Mechanism for Cloud Computing

We study emergency demand response (EDR) mechanisms from data centers' perspective, where a cloud data center participates in a mandatory EDR program while receiving online computing job bids. We target a realistic EDR mechanism where: i) The cloud provider dynamically packs different types of resources on servers into requested VMs and computes job schedules to meet users' requirements; ii) The power consumption of servers in the cloud is limited by the grid through the EDR program; iii) The operating cost of the cloud is considered in the calculation of social welfare, measured by electricity cost. We propose an online auction for dynamic cloud resource provisioning under the EDR program, which runs in polynomial time, achieves truthfulness and close-to-optimal social welfare for the cloud ecosystem.
Kidney function during and after withdrawal of long-term irbesartan treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes and microalbuminuria.

OBJECTIVE Irbesartan is renoprotective in patients with type 2 diabetes and microalbuminuria. Whether the observed reduction in microalbuminuria is reversible (hemodynamic) or persistent (glomerular structural/biochemical normalization) after prolonged antihypertensive treatment is unknown. Therefore, the present substudy of the Irbesartan in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Microalbuminuria Study (IRMA-2) investigated the reversibility of kidney function changes after withdrawal of 2 years' antihypertensive treatment. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The substudy included 133 hypertensive type 2 diabetic patients with persistent microalbuminuria in IRMA-2, randomized to double-masked treatment with either placebo, irbesartan 150 mg, or irbesartan 300 mg o.d. for 2 years. Arterial blood pressure, overnight urinary albumin excretion rate, and glomerular filtration rate (GFR) were determined repeatedly. RESULTS Baseline characteristics were similar in the placebo, irbesartan 150-mg, and irbesartan 300-mg groups. At the end of the study, mean arterial blood pressure (MABP) was similarly lowered to 105 +/- 2 (mean +/- SE), 103 +/- 2, and 102 +/- 2 mmHg, respectively (P < 0.05 versus baseline), and urinary albumin excretion rate reduced by 8% (-16 to 27) (NS), 34% (95% CI 8-53), and 60% (46-70) (P < 0.05). Rates of decline in GFR were 1.3 +/- 0.7, 1.2 +/- 0.7, and 1.0 +/- 0.8 ml. min(-1). 1.73 m(-2) per month, respectively, during the initial 3 months of the study and 0.3 +/- 0.1, 0.3 +/- 0.1, and 0.4 +/- 0.1 ml. min(-1). 1.73 m(-2) per month in the remaining study period. One month after withdrawal of all antihypertensive medication, MABP remained unchanged in the placebo group, 105 +/- 2 mmHg, but increased significantly in the irbesartan groups, to 109 +/- 2 and 108 +/- 2 mmHg, respectively. Compared with baseline, urinary albumin excretion rate was increased by 14% (-17 to 54) in the placebo group and by 11% (-26 to 65) in the irbesartan 150-mg group but was persistently reduced by 47% (24-73) in the irbesartan 300-mg group (P < 0.05). GFR levels increased to baseline values in the placebo group and approached initial levels in irbesartan groups. CONCLUSIONS Persistent reduction of microalbuminuria after withdrawal of all antihypertensive treatment suggests that high-dose irbesartan treatment confers long-term renoprotective effects.