Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multi-criteria-based design approach of multi-phase permanent magnet low-speed synchronous machines

A design methodology dedicated to multi-phase permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) supplied by pulse width modulation voltage source inverters (PWM VSIs) is presented. First, opportunities for increasing torque density using the harmonics are considered. The specific constraints caused by the PWM supply of multi-phase machines are also taken into account during the design phase. All the defined constraints are expressed in a simple manner by using a multi-machine modelling of the multi-phase machines. This multi-machine design is then applied to meet the specifications of a marine propeller: verifying simultaneously four design constraints, an initial 60-pole three-phase machine is converted into a 58-pole five-phase machine without changing the geometry and the active volume (iron, copper and magnet). First, a specific fractional-slot winding, which yields to good characteristics for PWM supply and winding factors, is chosen. Then, using this winding, the magnet layer is designed to improve the flux focussing. According to analytical and numerical calculations, the five-phase machine provides a higher torque (about 15%) and less pulsating torque (71% lower) than the initial three-phase machine with the same copper losses.
Scalable flow-based networking with DIFANE

Ideally, enterprise administrators could specify fine-grain policies that drive how the underlying switches forward, drop, and measure traffic. However, existing techniques for flow-based networking rely too heavily on centralized controller software that installs rules reactively, based on the first packet of each flow. In this paper, we propose DIFANE, a scalable and efficient solution that keeps all traffic in the data plane by selectively directing packets through intermediate switches that store the necessary rules. DIFANE relegates the controller to the simpler task of partitioning these rules over the switches. DIFANE can be readily implemented with commodity switch hardware, since all data-plane functions can be expressed in terms of wildcard rules that perform simple actions on matching packets. Experiments with our prototype on Click-based OpenFlow switches show that DIFANE scales to larger networks with richer policies.
Kantian fractionalization predicts the conflict propensity of the international system

Significance Many studies in international relations have investigated relationships between pairs of countries and the likelihood of conflict, yet none have connected the overall structure of the network of relationships between countries with the total level of international conflict. Here, we blaze a new path in the study of international conflict by introducing a measure of the overall fractionalization in the network of international relationships which we call Kantian fractionalization and demonstrating that this measure has been closely correlated with the number of new international conflicts in the following year. Moreover, we show that jointly democratic pairs of countries contribute negligibly to Kantian fractionalization, casting doubt on one of the most prominent concepts in international relations and policy prescriptions in Washington. Network science has spurred a reexamination of relational phenomena in political science, including the study of international conflict. We introduce a new direction to the study of conflict by showing that the multiplex fractionalization of the international system along three key dimensions is a powerful predictor of the propensity for violent interstate conflict. Even after controlling for well-established conflict indicators, our new measure contributes more to model fit for interstate conflict than all of the previously established measures combined. Moreover, joint democracy plays little, if any, role in predicting system stability, thus challenging perhaps the major empirical finding of the international relations literature. Lastly, the temporal variability of our measure with conflict is consistent with a causal relationship. Our results have real-world policy implications as changes in our fractionalization measure substantially aid the prediction of conflict up to 10 years into the future, allowing it to serve as an early warning sign of international instability.
WormBase 2014: new views of curated biology

WormBase (http://www.wormbase.org/) is a highly curated resource dedicated to supporting research using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. With an electronic history predating the World Wide Web, WormBase contains information ranging from the sequence and phenotype of individual alleles to genome-wide studies generated using next-generation sequencing technologies. In recent years, we have expanded the contents to include data on additional nematodes of agricultural and medical significance, bringing the knowledge of C. elegans to bear on these systems and providing support for underserved research communities. Manual curation of the primary literature remains a central focus of the WormBase project, providing users with reliable, up-to-date and highly cross-linked information. In this update, we describe efforts to organize the original atomized and highly contextualized curated data into integrated syntheses of discrete biological topics. Next, we discuss our experiences coping with the vast increase in available genome sequences made possible through next-generation sequencing platforms. Finally, we describe some of the features and tools of the new WormBase Web site that help users better find and explore data of interest.
Human action recognition system using good features and multilayer perceptron network

Human action recognition involves the characterization of human actions through the automated analysis of video data and is integral in the development of smart computer vision systems. However, several challenges like dynamic backgrounds, camera stabilization, complex actions, occlusions etc. make action recognition in a real time and robust fashion difficult. Several complex approaches exist but are computationally intensive. This paper presents a novel approach of using a combination of good features along with iterative optical flow algorithm to compute feature vectors which are classified using a multilayer perceptron (MLP) network. The use of multiple features for motion descriptors enhances the quality of tracking. Resilient backpropagation algorithm is used for training the feedforward neural network reducing the learning time. The overall system accuracy is improved by optimizing the various parameters of the multilayer perceptron network.
IntelligenTester - Test Sequence Optimization Framework using Multi-Agents

Our paper focuses on the generation of optimal test sequences and test cases using Intelligent Agents for highly reliable systems. Test sequences support test case generation for these types of systems. Our system is modeled through UML state charts. Conventional test generation techniques do not worry about optimization and dynamic nature of such systems. In the case of highly reliable Software Testing, we can implement agents with sophisticated intellectual capabilities such as the ability to reason, learn, or plan. In our proposed approach, we developed agents namely Intelligent Search Agent (ISA) for optimal test sequence generation and Intelligent Test Case Optimization Agent (ITOA) based on HGA for optimal test case generation. Finally, we compared our results against existing algorithms. We registered our tool “IntelligenTester” under Java Research License (JRL) under the URL name https://intelligentester.dev. java.net.
Redundancy Elimination Within Large Collections of Files

Ongoing advancements in technology lead to ever-increasing storage capacities. In spite of this, optimizing storage usage can still provide rich dividends. Several techniques based on delta-encoding and duplicate block suppression have been shown to reduce storage overheads, with varying requirements for resources such as computation and memory. We propose a new scheme for storage reduction that reduces data sizes with an effectiveness comparable to the more expensive techniques, but at a cost comparable to the faster but less effective ones. The scheme, called Redundancy Elimination at the Block Level (REBL), leverages the benefits of compression, duplicate block suppression, and delta-encoding to eliminate a broad spectrum of redundant data in a scalable and efficient manner. REBL generally encodes more compactly than compression (up to a factor of 14) and a combination of compression and duplicate suppression (up to a factor of 6.7). REBL also encodes similarly to a technique based on delta-encoding, reducing overall space significantly in one case. Furthermore, REBL uses super-fingerprints, a technique that reduces the data needed to identify similar blocks while dramatically reducing the computational requirements of matching the blocks: it turns O(n2) comparisons into hash table lookups. As a result, using super-fingerprints to avoid enumerating matching data objects decreases computation in the resemblance detection phase of REBL by up to a couple orders of magnitude.
Chronically Injured Supraspinal Neurons Exhibit Only Modest Axonal Dieback in Response to a Cervical Hemisection Lesion

This study examined the extent of axon retraction (dieback) exhibited by injured brain stem neurons in a chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) condition. Adult female rats subjected to a cervical (C3) hemisection lesion were sacrificed 1, 4, 8, or 14 weeks after injury and the spinal cord from C1 to the lesion cavity was removed. One week prior to sacrifice, a microinjection of biotinylated dextran amine (BDA, 0.5 microliter) was made into the red nucleus, lateral vestibular nucleus, or medullary reticular formation of each animal. Horizontal cryostat sections were processed with avidin-HRP to detect supraspinal axons anterogradely labeled with BDA. Terminal end bulbs of axons were identified and their distance from the lesion site was measured by a computerized image analysis program. At all postinjury intervals, numerous rubrospinal, vestibulospinal, and reticulospinal tract axons were found immediately adjacent to the lesion site and over 60% of all terminals were within 500 micrometer at 1 and 4 weeks. The mean axonal distance of 450-500 micrometer from the lesion indicated that many injured axons had retracted farther than 500 micrometer from the lesion site; however, long-term maintenance of the mean axonal distance from the lesion at less than 500 micrometer indicated the absence of progressive dieback after SCI. While some modest changes occur in specific supraspinal pathways following SCI, axonal retraction does not appear to be a contributing factor to the diminished regenerative effort by certain brain stem neurons that has been observed at long postinjury intervals.
Improving the Confidence of Machine Translation Quality Estimates

We investigate the problem of estimating the quality of the output of machine translation systems at the sentence level when reference translations are not available. The focus is on automatically identifying a threshold to map a continuous predicted score into “good” / “bad” categories for filtering out bad-quality cases in a translation post-edition task. We use the theory of Inductive Confidence Machines (ICM) to identify this threshold according to a confidence level that is expected for a given task. Experiments show that this approach gives improved estimates when compared to those based on classification or regression algorithms without ICM.
Effects of annealing silicon ion irradiated rib waveguides with respect to free carrier lifetime

Previously we have reported the effects of silicon ion irradiation on free carrier lifetime and propagation loss in silicon rib waveguides, and simulated net Raman gain based on experimental results. We further extend this work by reporting the effects of thermally treating a silicon irradiated sample with a higher dose and energy than previously reported, which produced a poor trade-off between free carrier lifetime and excess optical absorption prior to thermal treatment. Excess losses greater than 80dB/cm were recorded prior to annealing. After thermal treatment, the sample demonstrated characteristics of excess loss and free carrier lifetime recorded previously in much lower energy and dose silicon ion irradiated samples, suggesting that thermally treating samples could enhance the trade-off between free carrier lifetime and excess loss introduced to the rib waveguides. Raman gain simulations based on the new experimental data are reported and show an increase in net gain over previously reported data, suggesting that higher dose, shallow silicon ion implantation is the most efficient way of optimising the trade-off between lifetime reduction and excess optical absorption in silicon rib waveguides, a proposal in our earlier work. The effects of thermally treating low temperature oxide clad waveguides with respect to free carrier lifetime are also reported. Results show that thermally treating a low temperature oxide clad waveguide can vary the intrinsic lifetime. The results of this investigation as well as a discussion into the possible origin of the lifetime change are given.
Influence of Neighboring Base Sequence on the Distribution and Repair of TV-Ethyl-Af-nitrosourea-induced Lesions in EscherÃ¬chiacoli1

V-Kiliyl-. V-nitrtisouroll-induced mutations occurring within a ISO-base pair target in the lad gene of EscherÃ¬chiacoli were characterized by DNA sequencing. In total, 109 mutations were characterized in a wildtype background and 100 in an excision-repair-deficient (UvrB~) back ground. The majority of mutations induced in the two backgrounds (77 and 85%, respectively) were (.:( = >A:T transitions, presumably result ing from miscoding O'-ethylguanine lesions. A significant proportion of the mutations (17 and 15%, respectively) were A:T = >G:C transitions, which probably result from miscoding O4-ethylthymine lesions. An analy sis of the distribution of both types of mutation in the two backgrounds reveals two distinct influences of neighboring base sequence. These effects apply equally to both the G:C = >A:T and A:T = >G:C transitions. Firstly, miscoding lesions are most likely to occur at 5'-purine-G-3' or 5'-purine-T-3' sites. Secondly, the excision-repair machinery is less efficient at removing both 06-ethylguanine and O'-ethylthymine lesions which are flanked on both sides by G:C base pairs. Thus, in the wildtype spectrum an overabundance of transitions occurs at a 5'-G-G-G/C3' or 5'-G-T-G/C-3' sequence (where the mutated base is underlined).
Repopulation of cochlear macrophages in murine hematopoietic progenitor cell chimeras: The role of CX3CR1

Cochlear macrophages have been shown to accumulate in the murine cochlea following acoustic trauma. This investigation was performed to determine whether cochlear macrophages could be replaced by donor transplantation of bone marrow precursors. Lethally irradiated C57BL/6 mice were transplanted with hematopoietic precursors from CX3CR1GFP/GFP fetal mice. CX3CR1GFP/GFP mice express green fluorescent protein (GFP) in monocytes and macrophages and possess no functional CX3CR1. Donor monocytes and macrophages can be easily traced in the wild‐type recipient with fluorescent microscopy. We studied mice at 2–16 weeks after transplantation to assess repopulation of cochlear macrophages. A separate group of chimeras was exposed to octave band noise (8–16 kHz for 2 hours) 2 weeks after transplantation to evaluate the migration properties of donor hematopoietic precursors. We found that macrophages derived from donor hematopoietic precursors appeared in cochlea 3–4 weeks after transplantation and increased week by week. Noise exposure induced a massive accumulation of leukocytes, particularly in the spiral ligament of the basal turn. There was no difference between CX3CR1GFP/GFP donor/wild‐type recipient chimeras and the wild‐type donor/wild‐type recipient chimeras in hearing thresholds, accumulation of cochlear macrophages, or tissue injury after noise exposure. These data indicate that cochlear macrophages are derived from bone marrow precursors and that they are an exchanging and migratory population. Furthermore, CX3CR1 in hematopoietic precursors is not necessary for macrophage migration into cochlea and when deleted in this cell population, the absence of CX3CR1 does not substantially effect the outcomes after noise. J. Comp. Neurol. 506:930–942, 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Downregulation of activation factors of endothelia and fibroblasts via lysophosphatidic acid signaling in a mouse lung cancer LL/2 cell line

Abstract Angiogenesis stimulates the invasive and metastatic process of cancer cells. It is also known that activated fibroblasts promote cancer cell growth and enhance invasive and metastatic potential. Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is a biological mediator and interacts with G protein-coupled transmembrane LPA receptors (LPA1 to LPA6). In this study, to assess an involvement of LPA3 on angiogenesis and fibroblast activation, the Lpar3-expressing cells were generated from mouse lung cancer LL/2 cells, which unexpressed LPA3. The Lpar3-expressing cells were maintained in serum-free Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium for 48 h, and cell motility assay was performed with a cell culture Insert. When endothelial F-2 cells and 3T3 fibroblasts were cultured with conditioned medium from the Lpar3-expressing cells, their cell motile activities were significantly lower than the Lpar3-unexpressing (control) cells. Expression levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (Vegf) and fibroblast growth factor (Fgf) genes in the Lpar3-expressing cells were measured by quantitative real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis. The expressions of Vegf-A. Fgfa and Fgfb genes in the Lpar3-expressing cells were significantly lower than those in control cells, correlating with the effects on cell motile activities of F-2 and 3T3 cells. These results suggest that LPA signaling through LPA3 may inhibit angiogenesis and fibroblast activation in mouse lung cancer cells.
Nitrosylated Hemoglobin Levels in Human Venous Erythrocytes Correlate with Vascular Endothelial Function Measured by Digital Reactive Hyperemia

Impaired nitric oxide (NO)–dependent endothelial function is associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases. We hypothesized that erythrocyte levels of nitrosylated hemoglobin (HbNO-heme) may reflect vascular endothelial function in vivo. We developed a modified subtraction method using Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to identify the 5-coordinate α-HbNO (HbNO) concentration in human erythrocytes and examined its correlation with endothelial function assessed by peripheral arterial tonometry (PAT). Changes in digital pulse amplitude were measured by PAT during reactive hyperemia following brachial arterial occlusion in a group of healthy volunteers (50 subjects). Erythrocyte HbNO levels were measured at baseline and at the peak of hyperemia. We digitally subtracted an individual model EPR signal of erythrocyte free radicals from the whole EPR spectrum to unmask and quantitate the HbNO EPR signals. Results Mean erythrocyte HbNO concentration at baseline was 219+/−12 nmol/L (n = 50). HbNO levels and reactive hyperemia (RH) indexes were higher in female (free of contraceptive pills) than male subjects. We observed a dynamic increase of HbNO levels in erythrocytes isolated at 1–2 min of post-occlusion hyperemia (120+/−8% of basal levels); post-occlusion HbNO levels were correlated with basal levels. Both basal and post-occlusion HbNO levels were significantly correlated with reactive hyperemia (RH) indexes (r = 0.58; P<0.0001 for basal HbNO). Conclusion The study demonstrates quantitative measurements of 5-coordinate α-HbNO in human venous erythrocytes, its dynamic physiologic regulation and correlation with endothelial function measured by tonometry during hyperemia. This opens the way to further understanding of in vivo determinants of NO bioavailability in human circulation.
3D scanning using spatiotemporal orientation

We present a new approach to volumetric scene reconstruction which can produce accurate models from turntable image sequences. Instead of an epipolar plane image (EPI) volume, we consider a function on the 4D spatiotemporal volume valued with the intensity back projection of the camera (time) to the particular voxel. Using an optical flow technique we compute the local orientation of this spatiotemporal image and decide on occupancy based on the relative orientation between the viewing ray of the voxel at the particular time and the local image structure. Our method does not require a background compensation like the silhouette-based methods and is comparable in performance with space carving.
SVD Stabilized Block Preconditioning for Large Dense Linear Systems from Electromagnetic Applications

In computational electromagnetics, we consider preconditioning techniques combined with the Krylov iterative methods to solve large dense linear systems, where the coefficient matrix are complex-valued matrix arising from discretizd hybrid integral equations. Due to its easy implementation, the block diagonal preconditioner has been used to accelerate the convergence rate of Krylov iterative methods. Previous studies indicate that, in some cases, the block diagonal preconditioner makes the convergence more slowly or even diverges. In this paper, we propose a new block preconditioner based on the singular value decomposition (SVD) to stabilize the inverse of the diagonal blocks. We construct the SVD stabilized block preconditioner by applying SVD to each individual block generated from the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA). Our experimental results show that the SVD stabilized block preconditioner reduces the number of iterations compared with the block diagonal preconditioner and reduce the overall CPU time.
Contrast-Enhanced Ultrasound Assessment of Impaired Adipose Tissue and Muscle Perfusion in Insulin-Resistant Mice

Background—In diabetes mellitus, reduced perfusion and capillary surface area in skeletal muscle, which is a major glucose storage site, contribute to abnormal glucose homeostasis. Using contrast-enhanced ultrasound, we investigated whether abdominal adipose tissue perfusion is abnormal in insulin resistance and correlates with glycemic control. Methods and Results—Contrast-enhanced ultrasound perfusion imaging of abdominal adipose tissue and skeletal muscle was performed in obese insulin resistance (db/db) mice at 11 to 12 or 14 to 16 weeks of age and in control lean mice. Time–intensity data were analyzed to quantify microvascular blood flow (MBF) and capillary blood volume (CBV). Blood glucose response for 1 hour was measured after insulin challenge (1 U/kg, IP). Compared with control mice, db/db mice at 11 to 12 and 14 to 16 weeks had a higher glucose concentration area under the curve after insulin (11.8±2.8, 20.6±4.3, and 28.4±5.9 mg·min/dL [×1000], respectively; P=0.0002) and also had lower adipose MBF (0.094±0.038, 0.035±0.010, and 0.023±0.01 mL/min per gram; P=0.0002) and CBV (1.6±0.6, 1.0±0.3, and 0.5±0.1 mL/100 g; P=0.0017). The glucose area under the curve correlated in a nonlinear fashion with both adipose and skeletal muscle MBF and CBV. There were significant linear correlations between adipose and muscle MBF (r=0.81) and CBV (r=0.66). Adipocyte cell volume on histology was 25-fold higher in 14- to 16-week db/db versus control mice. Conclusions—Abnormal adipose MBF and CBV in insulin resistance can be detected by contrast-enhanced ultrasound and correlates with the degree of impairment in glucose storage. Abnormalities in adipose tissue and muscle seem to be coupled. Impaired adipose tissue perfusion is in part explained by an increase in adipocyte size without proportional vascular response.