Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High-efficiency Voltage-clamped DC-DC converter with reduced reverse-recovery current and switch-Voltage stress

This paper investigates a high-efficiency clamped-voltage dc-dc converter with reduced reverse-recovery current and switch-voltage stress. In the circuit topology, it is designed by way of the combination of inductor and transformer to increase the corresponding voltage gain. Moreover, one additional inductor provides the reverse-current path of the transformer to enhance the utility rate of magnetic core. In addition, the voltage-clamped technology is used to reduce the switch-voltage stress so that it can select the Schottky diode in the output terminal for alleviating the reverse-recovery current and decreasing the switching and conduction losses. Furthermore, the closed-loop control methodology is utilized in the proposed scheme to overcome the voltage-drift problem of power source under the variation of loads. Thus, the proposed converter topology has a favorable voltage-clamped effect and superior conversion efficiency. Some experimental results via an example of a proton-exchange-membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) power source with a 250-W nominal rating are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed power-conversion strategy.
Disulfiram Suppresses Growth of the Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma Cells in Part by Inducing Apoptosis

Dithiocarbamate compound Disulfiram (DSF) that binds with copper and functions as an inhibitor of aldehyde dehydrogenase is a Food and Drug Administration approved agent for treatment of alcoholism. Copper complexed DSF (DSF-Cu) also possesses anti-tumor and chemosensitizing properties; however, its molecular mechanisms of action remain unclear. Here we investigated malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) suppressive effects of DSF-Cu and the molecular mechanisms involved. DSF-Cu inhibited growth of the murine as well as human MPM cells in part by increasing levels of ubiquitinated proteins. DSF-Cu exposure stimulated apoptosis in MPM cells that involved activation of stress-activated protein kinases (SAPKs) p38 and JNK1/2, caspase-3, and cleavage of poly-(ADP-ribose)-polymerase, as well as increased expression of sulfatase 1 and apoptosis transducing CARP-1/CCAR1 protein. Gene-array based analyses revealed that DSF-Cu suppressed cell growth and metastasis-promoting genes including matrix metallopeptidase 3 and 10. DSF inhibited MPM cell growth and survival by upregulating cell cycle inhibitor p27Kip1, IGFBP7, and inhibitors of NF-κB such as ABIN 1 and 2 and Inhibitory κB (IκB)α and β proteins. DSF-Cu promoted cleavage of vimentin, as well as serine-phosphorylation and lysine-63 linked ubiquitination of podoplanin. Administration of 50 mg/kg DSF-Cu by daily i.p injections inhibited growth of murine MPM cell-derived tumors in vivo. Although podoplanin expression often correlates with metastatic disease and poor prognosis, phosphorylation of serines in cytoplasmic domain of podoplanin has recently been shown to interfere with cellular motility and migration signaling. Post-translational modification of podoplanin and cleavage of vimentin by DSF-Cu underscore a metastasis inhibitory property of this agent and together with our in vivo studies underscore its potential as an anti-MPM agent.
Throughput of ARQ Protocols Over Nakagami and MIMO Block Fading Channels

Block fading is a popular channel model that approximates the behavior of different wireless communication systems. Automatic-repeat request (ARQ) protocols are used to provide reliable communication in wireless networks. In this paper the throughput of the basic selective-repeat (SR) ARQ in block fading environments is derived. Single-antenna ARQ systems employing both coherent BPSK and QPSK and noncoherent orthogonal BFSK are analyzed over block fading channels characterized by Rician and Nakagami fading distributions. Moreover, the performance of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) ARQ systems employing space-time block codes (STBCs) is derived. The effect of antenna correlation in MIMO ARQ systems is investigated analytically. Results show that longer block lengths improve the performance of basic ARQ protocols. Furthermore, the throughput gain obtained by increasing the block length is a decreasing function of the block length. As the fading severity of the channel increases, the performance improvement resulting from increasing the block length increases.
Probabilistic key distribution in vehicular networks with infrastructure support

We propose a probabilistic key distribution protocol for vehicular network that alleviates the burden of traditional public-key infrastructures. Roadside units act as trusted nodes and are used for secret-sharing among vehicles in their vicinity. Secure communication is immediately possible between these vehicles with high probability. Our performance evaluation, which uses both analysis and simulation, shows that high reliability and short dissemination time can be achieved with low complexity.
Why Some are More Equal: Family Firm Heterogeneity and the Effect on Management's Attention to CSR

Research at the family firm&#8211;Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) nexus lacks agreement about whether family firms are more or less socially responsible than their non&#8208;family counterparts, which leads discussion relating to the bright and dark side of socioemotional wealth (SEW). We add to this ongoing debate in two different ways. First, we build on family firm heterogeneity and argue for a gray side to SEW, located between the bright and dark sides that is dependent upon the kind of family firm ownership. Second, we assume that prior research on a diverse set of CSR behaviors may, to some extent, explain the contradicting results; thus, we propose going back a step and focusing on management&#8217;s attention to CSR as an important antecedent of CSR behavior. By analyzing the letters to the shareholders of German HDAX firms from 2003 to 2012, this study finds that family ownership positively affects management&#8217;s attention to CSR, mainly driven by founders and family foundations. The research adds to our understanding of the family firm&#8211;CSR nexus by scrutinizing the role SEW plays in management&#8217;s attention to CSR when it comes to family firm heterogeneity.
The Role of Teaching and Learning in Systemic Reform: A Focus on Professional Development.

The purpose of this study was to discern high school teachers’ perceptions of, and commitment to, the contemporary goals of science education. Findings suggested that a minority of teachers hold past goal orientations as strongly as the majority who hold contemporary views, and resist the introduction of moral and ethical issues, integration among subjects and heterogeneous grouping practices. Resultsalso revealedashift insecondary science teachers embracing more contemporary orientations. Finally, analyses indicated that professional development factors, familiarity with science education journals, and years of teaching science were predictive of contemporary goal orientations. Implications related to reform issues and research are discussed.
A Step Closer to Membrane Protein Multiplexed Nanoarrays Using Biotin-Doped Polypyrrole

Whether for fundamental biological research or for diagnostic and drug discovery applications, protein micro- and nanoarrays are attractive technologies because of their low sample consumption, high-throughput, and multiplexing capabilities. However, the arraying platforms developed so far are still not able to handle membrane proteins, and specific methods to selectively immobilize these hydrophobic and fragile molecules are needed to understand their function and structural complexity. Here we integrate two technologies, electropolymerization and amphipols, to demonstrate the electrically addressable functionalization of micro- and nanosurfaces with membrane proteins. Gold surfaces are selectively modified by electrogeneration of a polymeric film in the presence of biotin, where avidin conjugates can then be selectively immobilized. The method is successfully applied to the preparation of protein-multiplexed arrays by sequential electropolymerization and biomolecular functionalization steps. The surface density of the proteins bound to the electrodes can be easily tuned by adjusting the amount of biotin deposited during electropolymerization. Amphipols are specially designed amphipathic polymers that provide a straightforward method to stabilize and add functionalities to membrane proteins. Exploiting the strong affinity of biotin for streptavidin, we anchor distinct membrane proteins onto different electrodes via a biotin-tagged amphipol. Antibody-recognition events demonstrate that the proteins are stably immobilized and that the electrodeposition of polypyrrole films bearing biotin units is compatible with the protein-binding activity. Since polypyrrole films show good conductivity properties, the platform described here is particularly well suited to prepare electronically transduced bionanosensors.
Less Destructive Cleaning of Web Documents by Using Standoff Annotation

Standoff annotation, that is, the separation of primary data and markup, can be an interesting option to annotate web pages since it does not demand the removal of annotations already present in web pages. We will present a standoff serialization that allows for annotating wellformed web pages with multiple annotation layers in a single instance, easing processing and analyzing of the data.
Four Weeks of Inspiratory Muscle Training Improves Self-Paced Walking Performance in Overweight and Obese Adults: A Randomised Controlled Trial

Objective. To examine whether a programme of inspiratory muscle training (IMT) improves accumulative distance of self-paced walking in overweight and obese adults. Methods. A total of 15 overweight and obese adults were randomized into experimental (EXP: n = 8) and placebo (PLA: n = 7) groups. Lung function, inspiratory muscle performance, 6-minute walking test, and predicted V˙O2 max were assessed prior to and following the 4-week IMT intervention. Both groups performed 30 inspiratory breaths, twice daily using a proprietary inspiratory resistance device set to 55% of baseline maximal effort (EXP), or performing the same inspiratory training procedure at the minimum resistive setting (PLA). Results. Lung function was unchanged in both groups after-training; however inspiratory muscle strength was significantly improved in EXP (19 ± 25.2 cm H2O gain; P < 0.01) but did not significantly change in PLA. Additionally, the posttraining distance covered in the 6-minute walking test was significantly extended for EXP (62.5 ± 37.7 m gain; P < 0.01), but not for PLA. A positive association was observed between the change (%) of performance gain in the 6-minute walking test and body mass index (r = 0.736; P < 0.05) for EXP. Conclusion. The present study suggests that IMT provides a practical, minimally intrusive intervention to significantly augment both inspiratory muscle performance and walking distance covered by overweight and obese adults in a clinically relevant 6-minute walk test. This indicates that IMT may provide a useful priming (preparatory) strategy prior to entry in a physical training programme for overweight and obese adults.
Efficient Degree Optimization for High-Rate Structured QC-LDPC

In order to efficiently optimize degree distribution of high-rate structured QC-LDPC (SQC-LDPC), based on analysis to the special structure of SQC-LDPC, this paper modifies previous degree distribution optimization method. At first, it proposes a new set of global optimization constraints for Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm. Furthermore, when Gaussian Approximate (GA) is used to compute the threshold of a given degree distribution pair, binary search rather than usually used fixed step search is adopted to speed up degree distribution optimization. Simulation results indicate that proposed degree distribution optimization method can obtain good degree distribution pairs of high-rate SQC-LDPC with less iteration times, and that high-rate SQC-LDPC designed by good degree distribution pairs embraces good performance.
Physical modelling of energy consumption of industrial articulated robots

The paper deals with a modelling of the energy consumption of industrial articulated robots. The proposed modelling way is based on graphically-oriented computer-aided concept that exploits CAD software Solidworks and simulation environment MATLAB/Simulink with SimMechanics and SimPowerSystems libraries. These software tools are used for the composition of a dynamical simulation model that represents both mechanical robot structure and robot drives during robot motions. The paper addresses mathematical analysis and interpretation of the considered simulation model. Here, equations of the motion for the mechanical robot structure and appropriate dynamical equations of the robot drives are introduced. Using these equations, the energy consumption equation is defined. The proposed way is demonstrated by simulation experiments for several different velocities of the robot motion along a selected trajectory. For the experiments, industrial articulated robot KUKA KR 5 arc driven by PMSM drives is considered.
General Purpose Textual Sentiment Analysis and Emotion Detection Tools

Textual sentiment analysis and emotion detection consists in retrieving the sentiment or emotion carried by a text or document. This task can be useful in many domains: opinion mining, prediction, feedbacks, etc. However, building a general purpose tool for doing sentiment analysis and emotion detection raises a number of issues, theoretical issues like the dependence to the domain or to the language but also pratical issues like the emotion representation for interoperability. In this paper we present our sentiment/emotion analysis tools, the way we propose to circumvent the di culties and the applications they are used for.
Classification of multichannel uterine EMG signals by using unsupervised competitive learning

Multichannel analysis is an innovative technique used for the analysis of bioelectrical signals. In this paper, we analyzed uterine Electromyogram (EMG) signals recorded by means of a 4×4 electrode matrix positioned on the woman's abdomen by using a multichannel approach. Relevant features were extracted from each channel and fed to a competitive neural network (CNN). First, we evaluated the classification performance of each channel. Then, we compared these performances to see which channel ranks better than the others. Finally, a decision fusion method based on the weighted sum of the individual decision of each channel was tested. The results showed that data can be grouped into 2 different groups. Furthermore, they showed that the classification performance varies according to the position of the electrode. Therefore, when a decision fusion rule was applied, the network yielded better classification accuracy than any individual channel could provide. These encouraging results prove that multichannel analysis can improve the classification of uterine EMG signals.
A numbering algorithm for finite element on extruded meshes which avoids the unstructured mesh penalty

We present a generic algorithm for numbering and then efficiently iterating over the data values attached to an extruded mesh. An extruded mesh is formed by replicating an existing mesh, assumed to be unstructured, to form layers of prismatic cells. Applications of extruded meshes include, but are not limited to, the representation of 3D high aspect ratio domains employed by geophysical finite element simulations. These meshes are structured in the extruded direction. The algo- rithm presented here exploits this structure to avoid the performance penalty traditionally associated with unstructured meshes. 5 We evaluate our algorithm on a range of low compute intensity operations which constitute worst cases for data layout perfor- mance exploration. The experiments show that having structure along the extruded direction enables the cost of the indirect data accesses to be amortized after 10-20 layers as long as the underlying mesh is well-ordered. We characterise the resulting spatial and temporal reuse in a representative set of both continuous-Galerkin and discontinuous-Galerkin discretisations. On meshes with realistic numbers of layers the performance achieved is between 70% and 90% of a theoretical hardware-specific 10 limit.
A Mode Based Approach for Characterizing RF Propagation in Conduits

We propose a mode based approach for developing a parametric model to characterize RF propagation in conduits. The model considers a conduit as a lossy waveguide and deflnes the total received power as the sum of powers excited in propagating modes. The model's parameters are estimated from both the physical properties of the conduit material and an empirical data set. Underground conduits have signiflcant value as wireless communication channels for condition based monitoring within the conduit. An enabler for this wireless sensor network application is based on characterizing the expected coverage range of wireless transceivers operating in the 2.4GHz ISM band. Previous studies on modeling RF propagation in underground conduits have focused on conduits with diameters larger than 1.05m. This motivated our measurement campaign to collect empirical data from underground conduits with varying diameters from 0.30m to 1.37m. The empirical data is used to predict the mode coupled powers which are model parameters that are analytically intractable. We observe that the proposed model provides a good estimate of received power in terms of contribution from dominant propagating modes.
AROUND 200 NEW X-RAY BINARY IDs FROM 13 YR OF CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE M31 CENTER

We have created 0.3–10 keV, 13 yr, unabsorbed luminosity lightcurves for 528 X-ray sources in the central 20′ of M31. We have 174 Chandra observations spaced at ∼1 month intervals due to our transient monitoring program, deeper observations of the M31 nucleus, and some public data from other surveys. We created 0.5–4.5 keV structure functions (SFs) for each source for comparison with the ensemble SF of active galactic nuclei (AGN). We find 220 X-ray sources with luminosities ≳1035 erg s−1 that have SFs with significantly more variability than the ensemble AGN SF, and which are likely X-ray binaries (XBs). A further 30 X-ray sources were identified as XBs using other methods. We therefore have 250 probable XBs in total, including ∼200 new identifications. This result represents great progress over the ∼50 XBs and ∼40 XB candidates previously identified out of the ∼2000 X-ray sources within the D25 region of M31; it also demonstrates the power of SF analysis for identifying XBs in external galaxies. We also identify a new transient black hole candidate, associated with the M31 globular cluster B128.
Isolation and Molecular Evolutionary Analysis of a Cytochrome c Gene from Ovyza sativa ( Rice ) ’

A cytochrome c gene, OsCc1, from rice (Oryza saliva) has been isolated and analyzed. The OsCc1 gene encodes a cytochrome c protein that is typical of higherplant cytochrome c proteins. OsCc1 consists of three exons separated by two introns that are 8 17 and 747 bp in length, respectively. From genomic DNA hybridization analysis, OsCc-1 appears to be one of possibly two cytochrome c genes in several Asian, American, and Indian rice species and varieties surveyed. A single, unique cytochrome c gene appears to be present in one African cultivated rice species. We performed comparative molecular evolutionary analyses of OsCc1 and other cytochrome c genes. We calculated a unit evolutionary period of 19.4 Myr for cytochrome c DNA sequences, which agrees closely with previous estimates based on protein sequence comparisons.
ALIGNMENT-FREE PHYLOGENETIC OUTLINE OF A RANDOM-SEQUENCE LIBRARY OF NON-BIOLOGICAL PROTEINS

To asses the degree of randomness and complexity of randomly generated sequences, in an in vitro selection experiment by Keefe and Szostack [1], we calculated the Kolmogorov complexity, the algorithmic redundancy, and the Shannon entropy of the sequences. We built an alignment-free phylogenetic tree, employing the algorithmic information distance between each pair of sequences to construct the distance-matrix. The tree represents the history of the set of molecular sequences, and allows us to follow in more detail how chemical function improves with respect to the original sequence. We remark the fact that in directed evolution, the highly predominant changes are between neighboring codons. Thus, the amino acid changes in the protein are not arbitrary, but dictated by the amino acid assignments in the code.
Developing a Benchmark Suite for Semantic Web Data from Existing Workflows

This paper presents work in progress towards developing a new benchmark for federated query processing systems. Unlike other popular benchmarks, our queryset is not driven by technical evaluation, but is derived from workflows established by the pharmacology community. The value of this queryset is that it is realistic but at the same time it comprises complex queries that test all features of modern query processing systems.
Chromosome 8p Deletions and 8q Gains are Associated with Tumor Progression and Poor Prognosis in Prostate Cancer

Purpose: Deletions of 8p and gains of 8q belong to the most frequent cytogenetic alterations in prostate cancer. The target genes of these alterations and their biological significance are unknown. Experimental Design: To determine the relationship between chromosome 8 changes, and prostate cancer phenotype and prognosis, a set of 1.954 fully annotated prostate cancers were analyzed in a tissue microarray format by fluorescence in situ hybridization. Results: Both 8p deletions and 8q gains increased in number during different stages of prostate cancer progression. 8p deletions/8q gains were found in 26.1%/4.8% of 1,239 pT2 cancers, 38.5%/9.8% of 379 pT3a cancers, 43.5%/8.9% of 237 pT3b cancers, 40.7%/14.8% of 27 pT4 cancers, 39.1%/34.8% of 23 nodal metastases, 51.9%/33.3% of 27 bone metastases, and 45.5%/59.9% of 22 hormone refractory cancers (P < 0.0001 each). Both 8p deletions and 8q gains were also significantly associated with high Gleason grade and with each other (P < 0.0001 each). In primary tumors, 8p deletions were seen in only 27.3% of 1,882 cancers without 8q gain but in 57.4% of 122 tumors with 8q gain (P < 0.0001). Among cancers treated with radical prostatectomy, 8p deletions (P = 0.003) and 8q gains (P = 0.02) were associated with biochemical tumor recurrence. However, multivariate analysis (including prostate-specific antigen, pT/pN stage, Gleason score, and surgical margin status) did not reveal any statistically independent effect of 8p or 8q alterations on biochemical tumor recurrence. Conclusions: 8p deletions and 8q gains are relatively rare in early stage prostate cancer but often develop during tumor progression. The prognostic effect does not seem to be strong enough to warrant clinical application. Clin Cancer Res; 16(1); 56–64