Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Méthode numérique lagrangienne pour la simulation d'écoulements à surface libre : application aux turbines Pelton

La methode SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) est une methode numerique sans maillage utilisee dans cette etude pour la discretisation spatiale des equations de la mecanique des fluides (essentiellement les equations d 'Euler). La methode SPH rencontre depuis quelques annees un certain succes dans la simulation d’ecoulements a surface libre car son formalisme lagrangien facilite le traitement et le suivi des interfaces. Cette etude a pour but d’appliquer cette methode pour la simulation des ecoulements â surface libre se produisant dans les turbines Pelton. Le formalisme SPH standard est tout d’abord teste, il permet de valider la faisabilite de ce choix mais montre egalement les limites de la methode SPH standard, en terme de precision et de fiabilite notamment. Le choix s'est alors porte vers une formulation hybride SPH-ALE (Arbitrary Lagrange Euler) qui entretient une certaine filiation avec le formalisme des volumes finis. SPH-ALE utilise en effet une formulation conservative des equations du mouvement et est capable theoriquement de decrire l'ecoulement quelque soit le deplacement des points de discretisation. Par ailleurs, sur un plan purement numerique, ce formalisme permet l'utilisation de schemas numeriques decentres, en particulier les schemas de type Godunov et leurs variantes d’ordre superieur. Cette methode hybride se revele en pratique nettement superieure A la methode standard pour les applications visees. La stabilite des simulations est largement renforcee, et la precision des resultats est fortement amelioree. En particulier le champ de pression retrouve une forme satisfaisante sans lissage numerique particulier. La methode hybride facilite egalement le traitement des conditions limites. Alors que ce point constitue une difficulte majeure pour la methode SPH standard, la methode SPH-ALE permet de traiter les conditions limites a travers des flux aux frontieres qui peuvent etre eux-aussi decentres. La mise en place d’un traitement coherent et rigoureux des conditions limites constitue la principale contribution de ce travail de these. La methode SPH-ALE est finalement testee sur des cas representatifs des applications visees et fournit des resultats satisfaisants. En particulier le champ de pression en paroi solide est predit correctement. En conclusion, les developpements effectues dans cette etude ont ete guides par l'application en turbine Pelton qui etait visee. La necessite de manipuler des geometries complexes et d'obtenir un niveau de precision correct ont conduit a privilegier et a developper la methode hybride SPH-ALE. Ce travail ouvre des perspectives prometteuses de developpement rapide grâce au lien existant entre SPH-ALE et la methode des volumes finis.
Risk Factors for Surgical Site Infection in the Patient With Spinal Injury

Study Design. A retrospective chart review of 1561 patients with spinal injury was conducted over a 4-year period. Objectives. To determine the rate of surgical site infection in the spinal trauma population, to compare infection rates after spinal operations for elective and traumatic indications, and to identify risk factors for postoperative wound infections in the traumatic subpopulation. Summary of Background Data. Surgical site infection after spinal operations is a dreaded complication. Risk factors have been investigated previously, but the subset of patients with acute traumatic spinal injury may be distinct. Methods. The hospital’s infection control program was used to identify surgical site infections after spinal operations, and infection rates were calculated. Data including patient characteristics, severity of injury indicators, surgical factors, and perioperative management factors were collected for the patients presenting with acute spinal injury over a 4-year period. Results. Postoperative wound infections developed in 24 of 256 patients. This infection rate of 9.4% was significantly (P < 0.001) higher than for elective spinal operations during the same period (3.7%). Risk factors found to be independently significant included delay until operation, increased postoperative intensive care unit stay, single (neurosurgical or orthopedic) versus combined operative team. Conclusions. Risk factors for surgical site infection in the acute trauma setting are identified. Two surgical teams may be involved without causing a higher rate of infection.
Transparency in a replicated network file system

File servers acting as centralized data sharing and storage stations are very crucial in modern network environments. Failure and inefficiency of a file server would be unacceptable and thus data replication is necessary to provide fault-tolerant and high-performance services. In this article, we present a replicated network file service that follows the Sun NFS protocol. Replication transparency and failure transparency are emphasized in the design. Any NFS client implemented on existing systems can use our fault-tolerant service without any modifications. In the current prototype, the simple primary-backup model is used to ensure data consistency between servers. Two distributed algorithms were designed to monitor and maintain the server modes. Performance analysis shows that the prototype system is sufficient to support a mostly-read environment, and it is possible that a high-performance file service can be accomplish in future developments.
Programmable voltage multipliers for pacemaker output pulse generation in CMOS 0.8 &#181;m technology

This work proposes two different solutions of a voltage multiplier suitable for a pacemaker pulse generator in a sub-micron CMOS technology. In particular high voltage and standard CMOS 0.8 µm implementations are compared. In both the proposed solutions the circuit can operate within a supply voltage range of 2.8V to 2V. Fine programmability of the output has been achieved, thus allowing the choice of the optimum trade-off between stimulation efficacy and battery longevity.
Low-complexity energy disaggregation using appliance load modelling

Large-scale smart metering deployments and energy saving targets across the world have ignited renewed interest in residential non-intrusive appliance load monitoring (NALM), that is, disaggregating total household’s energy consumption down to individual appliances, using purely analytical tools. Despite increased research efforts, NALM techniques that can disaggregate power loads at low sampling rates are still not accurate and/or practical enough, requiring substantial customer input and long training periods. In this paper, we address these challenges via a practical low-complexity lowrate NALM, by proposing two approaches based on a combination of the following machine learning techniques: k-means clustering and Support Vector Machine, exploiting their strengths and addressing their individual weaknesses. The first proposed supervised approach is a low-complexity method that requires very short training period and is fairly accurate even in the presence of labelling errors. The second approach relies on a database of appliance signatures that we designed using publicly available datasets. The database compactly represents over 200 appliances using statistical modelling of measured active power. Experimental results on three datasets from US, Italy, Austria and UK, demonstrate the reliability and practicality.
Conference on 'Childhood nutrition and obesity: current status and future challenges' Symposium 4: Strategies for reducing childhood obesity Modifying the food environment for childhood obesity prevention: challenges and opportunities

The prevention of childhood obesity is a global priority. However, a range of complex social and environmental influences is implicated in the development of obesity and chronic disease that goes beyond the notion of individual choice. A population-level approach recognises the importance of access to and availability of healthy foods outside the home. These external food environments, in restaurants, supermarkets, and in school, or recreation and sports settings, are often characterised by energy dense, nutrient-poor food items that do not reflect the current nutritional guidelines for health. In addition, our understanding of these broader influences on nutritional intake is still limited. Particularly, lacking is a clear understanding of what constitutes the food environment, as well as robust measures of components of the food environment across different contexts. Therefore, this review summarises the literature on food environments of relevance to childhood obesity prevention, with a focus on places where children live, learn and play. Specifically, the paper highlights the approaches and challenges related to defining and measuring the food environment, discusses the aspects of the food environment unique to children and reports on environmental characteristics that are being modified within community, school and recreational settings. Results of the review show the need for a continued focus on understanding the intersection between individual behaviour and external factors; improved instrument development, especially regarding validity and reliability; clearer reported methodology including protocols for instrument use and data management; and considering novel study design approaches that are targeted at measuring the relationship between the individual and their food environment. Food environment: Childhood obesity: Socio-ecological model: Measurement: Intervention
Autocrine expression and ontogenetic functions of the PACAP ligand/receptor system during sympathetic development.

The superior cervical ganglion (SCG) is a well-characterized model of neural development, in which several regulatory signals have been identified. Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) has been found to regulate diverse ontogenetic processes in sympathetics, though functional requirements for high peptide concentrations suggest that other ligands are involved. We now describe expression and functions of pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) during SCG ontogeny, suggesting that the peptide plays critical roles in neurogenesis. PACAP and PACAP receptor (PAC(1)) mRNA's were detected at embryonic days 14.5 (E14.5) through E17.5 in vivo and virtually all precursors exhibited ligand and receptor, indicating that the system is expressed as neuroblasts proliferate. Exposure of cultured precursors to PACAP peptides, containing 27 or 38 residues, increased mitogenic activity 4-fold. Significantly, PACAP was 1000-fold more potent than VIP and a highly potent and selective antagonist entirely blocked effects of micromolar VIP, consistent with both peptides acting via PAC(1) receptors. Moreover, PACAP potently enhanced precursor survival more than 2-fold, suggesting that previously defined VIP effects were mediated via PAC(1) receptors and that PACAP is the more significant developmental signal. In addition to neurogenesis, PACAP promoted neuronal differentiation, increasing neurite outgrowth 4-fold and enhancing expression of neurotrophin receptors trkC and trkA. Since PACAP potently activated cAMP and PI pathways and increased intracellular Ca(2+), the peptide may interact with other developmental signals. PACAP stimulation of precursor mitosis, survival, and trk receptor expression suggests that the signaling system plays a critical autocrine role during sympathetic neurogenesis.
Rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system estimating a rotation angle

A rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system, which can recognize a rotated pattern and estimate its rotation angle, is considered. It is well-known that humans sometimes recognize a rotated form by means of mental rotation. The occurrence of mental rotation can be explained in terms of the theory of information types. Therefore, we first examine the applicability of the theory to a rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system. Next, we present a rotation-invariant neural network which can estimate a rotation angle. The neural network consists of a preprocessing network to detect the edge features of input patterns and a trainable multilayered network. Furthermore, a rotation-invariant neural pattern recognition system which includes the rotation-invariant neural network is proposed. This system is constructed on the basis of the above-mentioned theory. Finally, it is shown that, by means of computer simulations of a binary pattern and a coin recognition problem, the system is able to recognize rotated patterns and estimate their rotation angle.
Quality based bidirectional reliability protocol for wireless sensor networks

Many applications in wireless sensor networks require quality of service in terms of bidirectional reliability which consists of event reliability and query reliability. Event detection is made possible by collective information received from sensor nodes. But this may introduce congestion in the network since the information about the same event is transmitted by many nodes. This also decreases the network life time. So we go for quality based event detection by classifying the sensor nodes as essential and non-essential nodes based on contribution degree and residual energy. Essential nodes are selected so as to cover the entire sensing field. The critical events are detected by essential nodes and only the essential nodes communicate with the sink. Non essential nodes will not report the event information to the sink node. The query messages transmitted by the sink node are received by essential nodes. The required bidirectional reliability is achieved among the sink node and the essential nodes. This type of classification conserves the energy efficiently and increases the network lifetime.
Thesaurus federations: a framework for the flexible integration of heterogeneous, autonomous thesauri

Modern information systems such as the World Wide Web and digital libraries contain more data than ever before, are globally distributed, are easy to use, and therefore become accessible to huge, heterogeneous user groups. On the other hand, the potentially enormously large amount of heterogeneous information requires powerful tools to allow the user to find relevant pieces of data. One such tool is thesauri. They are a proven means to provide a uniform and consistent vocabulary for the indexing and retrieval of information-bearing objects (IBOs). Modern multi-lingual and multi-subject information systems require more than the traditional single-language, narrow-focus thesauri. The broad clientele of information systems demands thesauri that can be used by non-specialists. To achieve this goal, we introduce the framework of thesaurus federations, i.e. loose compounds of distributed, multi- or mono-lingual thesauri that go beyond the already-known concepts of multi-thesaurus systems. We classify multi-thesaurus systems into multi-thesaurus environments, thesaurus switching systems and thesaurus compounds. Our architecture is based on a mediation layer and wrappers for the integration of heterogeneous, distributed thesauri. We present a Java-based prototype system which enables integrated access to several thesauri, which is available through a SQL or HTML interface via a comfortable thesaurus federation browser. This system has been used for the retrieval of metadata records managed by the Catalogue of Data Sources of the European Environment Agency (EEA).
Hopelessness, depression, substance disorder, and suicidality--a 13-year community-based study.

BACKGROUND Most earlier studies of hopelessness as a risk factor for suicidal behavior were based on either clinical or restricted samples. Using a longitudinal study design with a community sample of more than 3,000 participants, we aimed to examine if hopelessness was a long-term predictor of suicidal behaviors. METHODS Using longitudinal data from the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) Program, we assessed the association of hopelessness at baseline and incident suicidal behaviors in the 13-year follow-up period, adjusting for the presence of depression and substance use disorders. Suicide behaviors studied included completed suicide, self-reported attempted suicide, and suicide ideation. RESULTS Hopelessness was predictive of all three types of suicidal behaviors in the follow-up period, even after adjustment. Persons who expressed hopelessness in 1981 were 11.2 times as likely to have completed suicide over the 13-year follow-up interval (95% confidence interval [1.8, 69.1]). The association between suicidality and hopelessness was stronger and more stable than the association of suicidality with the presence of depression and substance use disorders. CONCLUSION Hopelessness was an independent risk factor for completed suicide, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation. Intervention strategies that lower hopelessness may be effective for suicide prevention.
High efficiency quasi-two-stage converter with current balancing for multi-channel LED drive based on AC bus

In this paper, a novel hybrid current balancing method for multi-channel LED drive based on quasi-two-stage converter is proposed. In presented structure, each output modules includes two LED strings and can achieve internal current balancing easily through its current balancing capacitor. The current regulators are used to balance the currents among the output modules. By applying the partial power control, the current regulator can obtain higher efficiency and lower cost due to higher switching frequency. Furthermore, by adopting the active method, the device has better load adaptability and lower voltage stress. Additionally, hybrid structure utilizes the advantages of passive and active method with simpler control. Performance of the proposed scheme is validated by the simulation and experimental results from a 120W prototype with four LED strings.
N‐acetylcysteine prevents nitric oxide‐induced chondrocyte apoptosis and cartilage degeneration in an experimental model of osteoarthritis

We investigated whether N‐acetylcysteine (NAC), a precursor of glutathione, could protect rabbit articular chondrocytes against nitric oxide (NO)‐induced apoptosis and could prevent cartilage destruction in an experimental model of osteoarthritis (OA) in rats. Isolated chondrocytes were treated with various concentrations of NAC (0–2 mM). Apoptosis was induced by 0.75 mM sodium nitroprusside (SNP) dehydrate, which produces NO. Cell viability was assessed by MTT assay, while apoptosis was evaluated by Hoechst 33342 and TUNEL staining. Intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and glutathione levels were measured, and expression of p53 and caspase‐3 were determined by Western blotting. To determine whether intraarticular injection of NAC prevents cartilage destruction in vivo, cartilage samples of an OA model were subjected to H&E, Safranin O, and TUNEL staining. NAC prevented NO‐induced apoptosis, ROS overproduction, p53 up‐regulation, and caspase‐3 activation. The protective effects of NAC were significantly blocked by buthionine sulfoximine, a glutathione synthetase inhibitor, indicating that the apoptosis‐preventing activity of NAC was mediated by glutathione. Using a rat model of experimentally induced OA, we found that NAC also significantly prevented cartilage destruction and chondrocyte apoptosis in vivo. These results indicate that NAC inhibits NO‐induced apoptosis of chondrocytes through glutathione in vitro, and inhibits chondrocyte apoptosis and articular cartilage degeneration in vivo. © 2009 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 28:156–163, 2010
Visual masking

1. A history of visual masking 2. Methods, applications, and findings in visual pattern masking 3. Neurobiological correlates of visual pattern masking 4. Models and mechanisms of visual masking: a selective review and comparison 5. The sustained-transient approach to visual masking: an updated model 6. Metacontrast and motion perception 7. Figural context and attention in visual masking 8. Unconscious processing revealed by visual masking 9. Visual masking in select subject populations 10. Epilogue
Music Recommender Adapting Implicit Context Using 'renso' Relation among Linked Data

The existing music recommendation systems rely on user’s contexts or content analysis to satisfy the users’ music playing needs. They achieved a certain degree of success and inspired future researches to get more progress. However, a cold start problem and the limitation to the similar music have been pointed out. Therefore, this paper proposes a unique recommendation method using a ‘renso’ alignment among Linked Data, aiming to realize the music recommendation agent in smartphone. We first collect data from Last.fm, Yahoo! Local, Twitter and LyricWiki, and create a large scale of Linked Open Data (LOD), then create the ‘renso’ relation on the LOD and select the music according to the context. Finally, we confirmed an evaluation result demonstrating its accuracy and serendipity.
Harmonic Radar Systems for Near-Ground In-Foliage Nonlinear Scatterers

The radar transmission equation for a harmonic radar operating over a planar, finite dielectric Earth through foliage is derived for an interesting class of nonlinear scatterers. The received power can typically depend on range to the (-14) power for small objects near the ground. The maximum detection range of a ground-based system is related to all major system parameters: it is most sensitive to polarization, transmit antenna height, and transmit wavelength; moderately sensitive to transmit power and transmit antenna area; and least sensitive to receive antenna area, harmonic scattering cross section, and mode of data processing. For example, there is seen to be a best apportionment of total available aperture area into disjoint transmit and receive apertures which can be well approximated by the equal gain condition. Also, there is seen to be a critical path distance through foliage; at distances less than this, small wavelengths are desirable and, conversely, the upper transmit frequency limit may be set by nonlinear scatterer response. Airborne synthetic aperture radar systems are discussed and quantification of harmonic noise and effects of scatterer fluctuation are made. A useful phenomenological model of a nonlinear scatterer is given that is consistent with some observations and predicts a frequency dependence. Nonlinear scatterer effects on range resolution are discussed.
Fuzzy reactive navigation for autonomous mobile robot with an offline adaptive neuro fuzzy system

This paper presents the conception, realization and fuzzy reactive navigation of mobile robot. We have proposed a reactive navigation system based on the fuzzy logic, this system allows the robot to navigate in a terrain and reach its target and avoiding the obstacles. Also we have adjusted this system by an offline neuro-fuzzy algorithm. And we have achieved a 3D platform of simulation for the validation of our approach. Also we have realized a real differential mobile robot (called ARP), equipped with two odometers and three infrared sensors and one radio module for the communication between the robot and computer. And finally we have realized a software application that permits to send a target punctual coordinates toward the robot.
Dynamics of Water Molecules in Aqueous Solvation Shells

We report on the direct measurement of the dynamics of water molecules in the solvation shell of an ion in aqueous solution. The hydrogen-bond dynamics of water molecules solvating a Cl−, Br−, or I− anion is slow compared with neat liquid water, indicating that the aqueous solvation shells of these ions are rigid. This rigidity can play an important role in the overall dynamics of chemical reactions in aqueous solution. The experiments were performed with femtosecond midinfrared nonlinear spectroscopy, because this technique allows the spectral response of the water molecules in the solvation shell to be distinguished clearly from that of the other water molecules in the solution.