Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Water Shedding Angle: A New Technique to Evaluate the Water-Repellent Properties of Superhydrophobic Surfaces

A new technique is introduced to evaluate the wetting properties of superhydrophobic textiles which are not accessible by classical contact angle measurement techniques. The principle behind the new water shedding angle technique is the ability of a superhydrophobic surface to repel drops of water upon impact. In this sense it shows a strong reference to application and its results are easily understood in terms of water protection. The procedure is simple and straightforward and the experimental setup can be easily built or adapted to most available contact angle measurement systems. In view of the significant potential of superhydrophobic coatings for textile applications, the water shedding angle provides a reliable and comparable measure to judge the quality of a superhydrophobic textile in terms of water repellency. It constitutes a useful addition to existing techniques and has proven to be better suited to evaluate the wetting properties of superhydrophobic textiles than the contemporary methods presently in use.
Application of Neural Network in Corrosion Property of High Speed Steel

The article is dedicated to the application of neural network in corrosion property of high Speed Steel. The corrosion properties of high speed steel with about 9wt% vanadium content and different carbon content were tested under different H3PO4 medium concentration conditions. Using back-propagation (BP) neural network, the non-linear relationship model among the corrosion weight losses (W), corrosion parameters (corrosion time, H3PO4 concentration) and alloy composition (carbon content) is established according to the tested experimental data. The results show that the neural network model can predict the corrosion weight loss precisely according to corrosion conditions and alloy composition. The prediction results reveal that the corrosion resistance of high speed steel decrease with the increase of H3PO4 concentration or carbon content in high speed steel. It is suggested that the corrosion condition and alloy composition should be considered synthetically to estimate the corrosion property of high speed steel.
Multiple sequence alignment based bootstrapping for improved incremental word learning

We investigate incremental word learning with few training examples in a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) framework suitable for an interactive learning scenario with little prior knowledge. When using only a few training examples the initialization of the models is a crucial step. In the bootstrapping approach proposed, an unsupervised initialization of the parameters is performed, followed by the retraining and construction of a new HMM using multiple sequence alignment (MSA). Finally we analyze discriminative training techniques to increase the separability of the classes using minimum classification error (MCE). Recognition results are reported on isolated digits taken from the TIDIGITS database.
Client gender as a process variable in marriage and family therapy : Are women clients interrupted more than men clients ?

Influenced by language and therapeutic discourse as well as the feminist critique of marriage and family therapy, the authors conducted research to evaluate conversational power in marriage and family therapy. Research on interruptions has received the most empirical attention, so the authors examined videotaped therapy sessions to see if women clients were interrupted more than men clients. This strategy integrated scholarship on gender and conversation into research on marriage and family therapy process. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine the different treatment of women and men clients; gender of therapist was used as a control variable. Results indicated that marriage and family doctoral students interrupted women clients three times more than men clients.
Effects of an Osteoporosis Prevention Program Based on Health Belief Model Among Females

Background: Several studies reported the efficacy of osteoporosis prevention interventions in improvement of people’s preventive behaviors. However, there are reports that the interventions were not successful in altering osteoporosis health beliefs and preventive behaviors. Objectives: The current study aimed to assess the effect of a program based on health beliefs model (HBM) on females’ health beliefs and performances about osteoporosis preventive behaviors. Patients and Methods: This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 120 patients registered in two healthcare centers of Fasa, Fars Province, Iran in 2014. A questionnaire including demographic information and HBM constructs was employed to measure the females’ beliefs regarding nutrition and walking performance in prevention of osteoporosis bone mineral density (BMD) measured at the lumbar spine and femur before, immediately after the intervention, and six months after the intervention. Data were analyzed using Chi-square, independent samples t-, Mann-Whitney U tests and repeated measures ANOVA. Results: Immediately and six months after the intervention, a significant increase was found in the intervention group’s health beliefs, nutrition, and walking performances to prevent osteoporosis. Six months after the intervention, lumbar spine BMD T-score increased to 0.127 ± 0.061 in the intervention group but reduced to -0.043 ± 0.059 in the control group. Also, hip BMD T-score increased to 0.125 ± 0.088 in the intervention group, but decreased to -0.028 ± 0.052 in control group. Conclusions: The current study showed the effectiveness of HBM in adoption of nutrition and walking behaviors as well as the increase of bone density to prevent osteoporosis.
FoleyAutomatic: physically-based sound effects for interactive simulation and animation

We describe algorithms for real-time synthesis of realistic sound effects for interactive simulations (e.g., games) and animation. These sound effects are produced automatically, from 3D models using dynamic simulation and user interaction. We develop algorithms that are efficient, physically-based, and can be controlled by users in natural ways. We develop effective techniques for producing high quality continuous contact sounds from dynamic simulations running at video rates which are slow relative to audio synthesis. We accomplish this using modal models driven by contact forces modeled at audio rates, which are much higher than the graphics frame rate. The contact forces can be computed from simulations or can be custom designed. We demonstrate the effectiveness with complex realistic simulations.
Simulation of Earthquake Rupture Dynamics in Complex Geometries Using Coupled Finite Difference and Finite Volume Methods

We couple a node-centered finite volume method to a high order finite dif- ference method to simulate dynamic earthquake ruptures along nonplanar faults in two dimensions. The finite volume method is implemented on an unstructured mesh, providing the ability to handle complex geometries. The geometric complexities are limited to a small portion of the overall domain and elsewhere the high orderfinite dif- ference method is used, enhancing efficiency. Both the finite volume and finite differ- ence methods are in summation-by-parts form. Interface conditions coupling the nu- merical solution across physical interfaces like faults, and computational ones between structured and unstructured meshes, are enforced weakly using the simultaneous- approximation-term technique. The fault interface condition, or friction law, provides a nonlinear relation between fields on the two sides of the fault, and allows for the par- ticle velocity field to be discontinuous across it. Stability is proved by deriving energy estimates; stability, accuracy, and efficiency of the hybrid method are confirmed with several computational experiments. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated by simulating anearthquakerupture propagatingalong the margins of a volcanic plug. AMS subject classifications: 35L05, 35L65, 35Q35, 65M06, 65M08, 65M12, 65Z05
A Comparison and Integration of MiSeq and MinION Platforms for Sequencing Single Source and Mixed Mitochondrial Genomes

Single source and multiple donor (mixed) samples of human mitochondrial DNA were analyzed and compared using the MinION and the MiSeq platforms. A generalized variant detection strategy was employed to provide a cursory framework for evaluating the reliability and accuracy of mitochondrial sequences produced by the MinION. The feasibility of long-read phasing was investigated to establish its efficacy in quantitatively distinguishing and deconvolving individuals in a mixture. Finally, a proof-of-concept was demonstrated by integrating both platforms in a hybrid assembly that leverages solely mixture data to accurately reconstruct full mitochondrial genomes.
Optical micromanipulation of microscopic particles using axicon tipped fiber

Trapping and manipulation of microscopic objects using fiber optical traps is gaining considerable interest, as these objects can be manipulated inside complex environments, thus removing the limitation of short working distance of the conventional optical tweezers. We show that an axicon like structure built on the tip of a single mode optical fiber produces a focused beam shape with a central hole, implying a very small fraction of the power traveling with rays nearly parallels to the optical axis. Interesting transportation behavior of polystyrene particles using the scattering forces from such an axicon tip fiber was observed. As the distance of the particle from the fiber tip increased, since almost no rays interact with the particle, the scattering forces decreased substantially. Therefore, velocity of the particle at different distances was found to depend much more critically on the particle size in contrast to the beam generated by the bare fiber. While the speed of transport could be increased linearly by increasing the laser power in both axicon tipped fiber and bare fiber, increased speed was observed for particles of larger sizes for both the fiber types. However, the fractional increase in speed for increased size of particles was found to be quite large for axicon tipped fiber as compared to the bare fiber. Use of the observed differences in speed of transportation of microscopic objects could be used to sort them based upon their size.
Timing Analysis of Computer Hardware

Timing Analysis is a design automation program that assists computer design engineers in locating problem timing in a clocked, sequential machine. The program is effective for large machines because, in part, the running time is proportional to the number of circuits. This is in contrast to alternative techniques such as delay simulation, which requires large numbers of test patterns, and path tracing, which requires tracing of all paths. The output of Timing Analysis includes "Slack" at each block to provide a measure of the severity of any timing problem. The program also generates standard deviations for the times so that a statistical timing design can be produced rather than a worst case approach. This system has successfully detected all but a few timing problems for the IBM 3081 Processor Unit (consisting of almost 800 000 circuits) prior to the hardware debugging of timing. The 3081 is characterized by a tight statistical timing design.
On DNA Numerical Representations for Period-3 Based Exon Prediction

Processing of DNA sequences using traditional digital signal processing methods requires their conversion from a character string into numerical sequences as a first step. Many representations introduced previously assign values to indicate the four DNA nucleotides A, C, G, and T that impose mathematical structures not present in the actual DNA sequence. In this paper, almost all existing methods are compared for the purpose of identifying protein coding regions, using the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based spectral content measure to exploit period-3 behaviour in the exonic regions for the GENSCAN test set. False positive vs. sensitivity, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and exonic nucleotides detected as false positive results all show that the two newly proposed numerical of DNA representations perform better than the well-known Z-curve, tetrahedron, and Voss representations, with 66-75% less processing. By comparison with Voss representation, the proposed paired numeric method can produce relative improvements of up to 12% in terms of prediction accuracy of exonic nucleotides at a 10% false positive rate using the GENSCAN test set.
Register allocation for free: The C machine stack cache

The Bell Labs C Machine project is investigating computer architectures to support the C programming language.1 One of the goals is to match an efficient architecture to the language and the compiler technology available. Measurements of different C programs show that roughly one out of every twenty instructions executed is either a procedure call or return.2 Procedure call overhead is therefore a very important consideration in the overall machine design. A second and related area of primary concern in overall machine efficiency is the register allocation strategy. While use of additional registers can offer considerable improvement in execution times, adding registers usually has the adverse effects of increasing the procedure call overhead due to register saving and creating an undue burden on the compiler. In this paper we describe a piece of the C Machine architecture which effectively eliminates the register allocation problem, and improves procedure calling by drastically reducing storage references required by traditional register saving. The technique can be generalized for other languages and architectures, though we will only directly address those issues involving the C language.
Satellite Multimedia Networks and Technical Challenges

The next generation global communication network infrastructure is designed to be all IP based supporting various heterogeneous core and access technologies for broadband and mobile user applications. In this paper, we discuss the trends of broadband satellite communication networks to meet the emerging aeronautical and fast train applications, and mobile users in providing ubiquitous global coverage. Mobile satellite systems will be fully integrated with wireless networks and terrestrial segments. The technical challenges for future broadband satellite systems will be to insure seamless integration between satellite and wireless systems and without compromising Quality of Service (QoS). We discuss briefly the technical challenges and possible solutions, including a QoS reference model, traffic management, dynamic bandwidth allocation, cross-layer protocol design, Satellite TCP, mobility management, satellite IP security, internetworking and standardization issues to realize heterogeneous networks.
An indelible lineage marker for Xenopus using a mutated green fluorescent protein.

We describe the use of a DNA construct (named GFP.RN3) encoding green fluorescent protein as a lineage marker for Xenopus embryos. This offers the following advantages over other lineage markers so far used in Xenopus. When injected as synthetic mRNA, its protein emits intense fluorescence in living embryos. It is non-toxic, and the fluorescence does not bleach when viewed under 480 nm light. It is surprisingly stable, being strongly visible up to the feeding tadpole stage (5 days), and in some tissues for several weeks after mRNA injection. We also describe a construct that encodes a blue fluorescent protein. We exemplify the use of this GFP.RN3 construct for marking the lineage of individual blastomeres at the 32- to 64-cell stage, and as a marker for single transplanted blastula cells. Both procedures have revealed that the descendants of one embryonic cell can contribute single muscle cells to nearly all segmental myotomes rather than predominantly to any one myotome. An independent aim of our work has been to follow the fate of cells in which an early regulatory gene has been temporarily overexpressed. For this purpose, we co-injected GFP.RN3 mRNA and mRNA for the early Xenopus gene Eomes, and found that a high concentration of Eomes results in ectopic muscle gene activation in only the injected cells. This marker may therefore be of general value in providing long term identification of those cells in which an early gene with ephemeral expression has been overexpressed.
Nuclear Chk1 prevents premature mitotic entry

Chk1 inhibits the premature activation of the cyclin-B1–Cdk1. However, it remains controversial whether Chk1 inhibits Cdk1 in the centrosome or in the nucleus before the G2–M transition. In this study, we examined the specificity of the mouse monoclonal anti-Chk1 antibody DCS-310, with which the centrosome was stained. Conditional Chk1 knockout in mouse embryonic fibroblasts reduced nuclear but not centrosomal staining with DCS-310. In Chk1+/myc human colon adenocarcinoma (DLD-1) cells, Chk1 was detected in the nucleus but not in the centrosome using an anti-Myc antibody. Through the combination of protein array and RNAi technologies, we identified Ccdc-151 as a protein that crossreacted with DCS-310 on the centrosome. Mitotic entry was delayed by expression of the Chk1 mutant that localized in the nucleus, although forced immobilization of Chk1 to the centrosome had little impact on the timing of mitotic entry. These results suggest that nuclear but not centrosomal Chk1 contributes to correct timing of mitotic entry.
Bank Card Usage Prediction Exploiting Geolocation Information

We describe the solution of team ISMLL for the ECML-PKDD 2016 Discovery Challenge on Bank Card Usage for both tasks. Our solution is based on three pillars. Gradient boosted decision trees as a strong regression and classification model, an intensive search for good hyperparameter configurations and strong features that exploit geolocation information. This approach achieved the best performance on the public leaderboard for the first task and a decent fourth position for the second task.
Information Assurance: Dependability and Security in Networked Systems

Protecting networks from computer security attacks is an important concern of computer security. Within this, intrusion prevention and intrusion detection systems have been the subject of much study and have been covered in several excellent survey papers. However, the actions that need to follow the steps of prevention and detection, namely response, have received less attention from researchers or practitioners. It was traditionally thought of as an offline process, with humans in the loop, such as system administrators performing forensics by going through the system logs and determining which services or components need to be recovered. Our systems today have reached a level of complexity and the attacks directed at them a level of sophistication that manual responses are no longer adequate. So far there has been limited work in autonomous intrusion response systems, especially work that provides rigorous analysis or generalizable system building techniques. The work that exists has not been surveyed previously. In this survey paper, we lay out the design challenges in building autonomous intrusion response systems. Then we provide a classification of existing work on the topic into four categories – response through static decision tables, response through dynamic decision process, intrusion tolerance through diverse replicas, and intrusion response for specific classes of attacks. We
HDAC4 promotes Pax7‐dependent satellite cell activation and muscle regeneration

During muscle regeneration, the transcription factor Pax7 stimulates the differentiation of satellite cells (SCs) toward the muscle lineage but restricts adipogenesis. Here, we identify HDAC4 as a regulator of Pax7‐dependent muscle regeneration. In HDAC4‐deficient SCs, the expression of Pax7 and its target genes is reduced. We identify HDAC4‐regulated Lix1 as a Pax7 target gene required for SC proliferation. HDAC4 inactivation leads to defective SC proliferation, muscle regeneration, and aberrant lipid accumulation. Further, expression of the brown adipose master regulator Prdm16 and its inhibitory microRNA‐133 are also deregulated. Thus, HDAC4 is a novel regulator of Pax7‐dependent SC proliferation and potentially fate determination in regenerating muscle.
URS DataBase: universe of RNA structures and their motifs

The Universe of RNA Structures DataBase (URSDB) stores information obtained from all RNA-containing PDB entries (2935 entries in October 2015). The content of the database is updated regularly. The database consists of 51 tables containing indexed data on various elements of the RNA structures. The database provides a web interface allowing user to select a subset of structures with desired features and to obtain various statistical data for a selected subset of structures or for all structures. In particular, one can easily obtain statistics on geometric parameters of base pairs, on structural motifs (stems, loops, etc.) or on different types of pseudoknots. The user can also view and get information on an individual structure or its selected parts, e.g. RNA–protein hydrogen bonds. URSDB employs a new original definition of loops in RNA structures. That definition fits both pseudoknot-free and pseudoknotted secondary structures and coincides with the classical definition in case of pseudoknot-free structures. To our knowledge, URSDB is the first database supporting searches based on topological classification of pseudoknots and on extended loop classification. Database URL: http://server3.lpm. org.ru/urs/
Fuzzy random fields and unsupervised image segmentation

Statistical unsupervised image segmentation using fuzzy random fields is treated. A fuzzy model containing a hard component, which describes pure pixels, and a fuzzy component which describes mixed pixels, is introduced. A procedure for simulating, a fuzzy field based on a Gibbs sampler step followed by a second step involving white or correlated Gaussian noises is given. Then the different steps of unsupervised image segmentation are studied. Four different blind segmentation methods are performed: the conditional expectation, two variants of the maximum likelihood, and the least squares approach. The parameters required are estimated by the stochastic estimation maximization (SEM) algorithm, a stochastic variant of the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. These fuzzy segmentation methods are compared with a classical hard segmentation method, without taking the fuzzy class into account. The study shows that the fuzzy SEM algorithm provides reliables estimators. Furthermore, fuzzy segmentation always improves upon the hard segmentation results. >