Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Micromechanics and Modelling of Adaptive Shape Memory Composites

The present work investigates the micromechanics approaches to model the thermomechanical behaviours of shape memory alloy composites. The research is primarily focussed on modelling the pseudoelastic and shape memory behaviours of smart composites, which are inherent in multifunctional materials like shape memory alloys and polymers. In the study, non- adaptive and adaptive matrix materials are used to address the adaptive fibre non-adaptive matrix, and adaptive fibre adaptive matrix concepts, respectively. Nickel-Titanium shape memory alloy wire is used as an adaptive shape memory fibre. Similarly, epoxy matrix that does not exhibit shape memory behaviours is considered as non-adaptive, while matrix possessing such behaviours has been employed as an adaptive matrix. The importance of the present research is to develop the modelling procedures for shape memory composites useful in high performance applications. The first and the foremost requirements are to propose the constitutive relations, which should be simpler in computation and at the same time address the fundamental mechanics of constituent materials. Therefore, simple analytical approaches are streamlined and the exist
A simple distributed relay-assignment algorithm for multi-antenna relay networks

In multi-antenna relay networks, how to assign source-relay pairs is still a challenge. In this paper, we propose a simple distributed relay-assignment algorithm for multi-antenna relay networks, which exploits the ability of AOA (angle of arrival) estimating in a multi-antenna terminal. The proposed algorithm based on an opportunistic relaying model uses RTS packet to estimate AOA of the source and CTS packet to estimate AOA of the destination in potential relays, and then calculates the interval angle of each node. The best relay is chosen to be with the maximum interval angle between source-relay link and relay-destination link. An outage analysis for the proposed algorithm is provided within a limited area where available relaying nodes are uniformly distributed. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed algorithm offers great improvement on the reliability of the relaying links and is more suitable for multi-antenna relay networks than existing relay-assignment algorithms. The outage analysis is also verified.
Questioning the questions that have been asked about the infant brain using near-infrared spectroscopy

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a noninvasive diffuse optical-imaging technique that can measure local metabolic demand in the surface of the cortex due to differential absorption of light by oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. Over the past decade, NIRS has become increasingly used as a complement to other neuroimaging techniques, such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), particularly in paediatric populations who cannot easily be tested using fMRI and MEG. In this review of empirical findings from human infants, ranging in age from birth to 12 months of age, a number of interpretive concerns are raised about what can be concluded from NIRS data. In addition, inconsistencies across studies are highlighted, and strategies are proposed for enhancing the reliability of NIRS data gathered from infants. Finally, a variety of new and promising advances in NIRS techniques are highlighted.
TETRA observation of gamma-rays at ground level associated with nearby thunderstorms

Terrestrial gamma‐ray flashes (TGFs)—very short, intense bursts of electrons, positrons, and energetic photons originating from terrestrial thunderstorms—have been detected with satellite instruments. TGF and Energetic Thunderstorm Rooftop Array (TETRA), an array of NaI(Tl) scintillators at Louisiana State University, has now been used to detect similar bursts of 50 keV to over 2 MeV gamma‐rays at ground level. After 2.6 years of observation, 24 events with durations 0.02–4.2 ms have been detected associated with nearby lightning, three of them coincident events observed by detectors separated by ~1000 m. Nine of the events occurred within 6 ms and 5 km of negative polarity cloud‐to‐ground lightning strokes with measured currents in excess of 20 kA. The events reported here constitute the first catalog of TGFs observed at ground level in close proximity to the acceleration site.
Resistive-open defects in embedded-SRAM core cells: analysis and march test solution

In this paper we present an exhaustive analysis of resistive-open defect in core-cell of SRAM memories. These defects that appear more frequently in VDSM technologies induce a modification of the timing within the memory (delay faults). Among the faults induce by such resistive-open defects there are static and dynamic read destructive fault (RDF), deceptive read destructive fault (DRDF), incorrect read fault (IRF) and transition fault (TF). Each of them requires specific test conditions and different kind of March tests are needed to cover all these faults (TF, RDF, DRDF and IRF). In this paper, we show that a unique March test solution can ensure the complete coverage of all the faults induced by the resistive-open defects in the SRAM core-cells. This solution simplifies considerably the problem of delay fault testing in this part of SRAM memories.
A Fuzzy Human Detection for Security System Using Infrared Laser Camera

This paper describes an object classification method using infrared laser camera. The method detects moving objects from a distance distribution data. We classify the object to adults, children and other objects. The objects are extracted and clustered by fuzzy c-means clustering method. To classify the object, we calculate the height, thickness, aspect ratio and occupancy of the object as features from a sampling time. Fuzzy if-then rules and fuzzy membership functions are derived from knowledge of human and object. The system classifies the object based on fuzzy logic. In our experiment, we employed seven volunteers, two dogs and a box, and the system successfully classified them.
Study of Structured Root-LDPC Codes and PEG Techniques for Block-Fading Channels

In this work, we propose structured Root-Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes and design techniques for block-fading channels. In particular, Quasi-Cyclic Root-LDPC codes, Irregular repeat-accumulate Root-LDPC codes and Controlled Doping Root-LDPC codes based on Progressive Edge Growth (PEG) techniques for block-fading channels are proposed. The proposed Root-LDPC codes are both suitable for channels under $F = 2, 3$ and $4$ independent fading per codeword. The performance of the proposed codes is investigated in terms of Frame Error Rate (FER). The proposed Root-LDPC codes are capable of achieving the channel diversity and outperform standard LDPC codes. For block-fading channel with $F = 2$ our proposed PEG-based Root-LDPC codes outperform PEG-based LDPC codes by $7.5$dB at a FER close to $10^{-3}$.
How Much Will Firms Pay for Earnings that Do Not Exist? Evidence of Taxes Paid on Allegedly Fraudulent Earnings

We analyze a sample of firms accused of fraudulently overstating their earnings and examine the extent, if any, to which they paid additional income taxes on the allegedly fraudulent earnings. Based on restatements of current tax expense adjusted for the tax benefits of stock options, the evidence indicates that many firms included the overstated financial accounting income on their tax returns, thus over- paying their taxes in the process of inflating their accounting earnings. We estimate that the median firm sacrificed eight cents in additional income taxes per dollar of inflated pretax earnings. In aggregate, we estimate that the firms in our sample paid $320 million in taxes on overstated earnings of about $3.36 billion. These results in- dicate how far managers of firms are willing to go when allegedly inflating earnings.
Fabrication and microstructural investigations of porous ceramic particle/polymer matrix composites

Abstract Well defined porous ceramic particle/polymer matrix composites consisting of Si and nanosized ZrO2 particles have been fabricated by the pyrolysis of phenolic resin at 1123 K in vacuum. Electron probe microanalyser analysis showed that the pyrolysis of the starting materials led to the agglomeration of ZrO2 particles and the uniformly distribution of Si particles in the matrix. Scanning electron microscopy images showed the formation of spherical pores ranging from 10 μm to several 100 μm in diameter in the composite, resulting in the flexural strength of ∼14 MPa. X-ray diffraction analysis suggested that β-SiC might be formed in the composite; and the matrix of porous polymer matrix ceramic composite was amorphous carbon.
Spatial coding of visual and somatic sensory information in body‐centred coordinates

Because sensory systems use different spatial coordinate frames, cross‐modal sensory integration and sensory–motor coordinate transformations must occur to build integrated spatial representations. Multimodal neurons using non‐retinal body‐centred reference frames are found in the posterior parietal and frontal cortices of monkeys. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to reveal regions of the human brain using body‐centred coordinates to code the spatial position of both visual and somatic sensory stimuli. Participants determined whether a visible vertical bar (visual modality) or a location touched by the right index finger (somatic sensory modality) lay to the left or to the right of their body mid‐sagittal plane. This task was compared to a spatial control task having the same stimuli and motor responses and comparable difficulty, but not requiring body‐centred coding of stimulus position. In both sensory modalities, the body‐centred coding task activated a bilateral fronto‐parietal network, though more extensively in the right hemisphere, to include posterior parietal regions around the intraparietal sulcus and frontal regions around the precentral and superior frontal sulci, the inferior frontal gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus on the medial wall. The occipito‐temporal junction and other extrastriate regions exhibited bilateral activation enhancement related to body‐centred coding when driven by visual stimuli. We conclude that posterior parietal and frontal regions of humans, as in monkeys, appear to provide multimodal integrated spatial representations in body‐centred coordinates, and these data furnish the first indication of such processing networks in the human brain.
A human detection method for residential smart energy systems based on Zigbee RSSI changes

In this article, the device-free human presence detection method based on radio signal strength variations is proposed. The method exploits the known fact that human body interferes with radio signals by causing fading and shadowing effects. Introduced irregularities in the radio propagation pattern indicate possible presence of a human. The proposed method is incorporated into the existing platform for intelligent residential energy management. As opposed to conventional solutions which utilize a complex set of sensors for human detection, the proposed approach achieves the same only by analyzing and quantifying radio signal strength variations incorporated in messages exchanged between 2.4 GHz radio transceivers. One of the key benefits of the proposed solution is the integration of the detection algorithm into the smart power outlets and smart light switches. Such an approach improves interactions in smart home systems, enables intelligent power consumption management and low installation cost.
A new keyphrases extraction method based on suffix tree data structure for arabic documents clustering

Document Clustering is a branch of a larger area of scientific study known as data mining . which is an unsupervised classification using to find a structure in a collection of unlabeled data. The useful information in the documents can be accompanied by a large amount of noise words when using Full Text Representation, and therefore will affect negatively the result of the clustering process. So it is with great need to eliminate the noise words and keeping just the useful information in order to enhance the quality of the clustering results. This problem occurs with different degree for any language such as English, European, Hindi, Chinese, and Arabic Language. To overcome this problem, in this paper, we propose a new and efficient Keyphrases extraction method based on the Suffix Tree data structure (KpST), the extracted Keyphrases are then used in the clustering process instead of Full Text Representation. The proposed method for Keyphrases extraction is language independent and therefore it may be applied to any language. In this investigation, we are interested to deal with the Arabic language which is one of the most complex languages. To evaluate our method, we conduct an experimental study on Arabic Documents using the most popular Clustering approach of Hierarchical algorithms: Agglomerative Hierarchical algorithm with seven linkage techniques and a variety of distance functions and similarity measures to perform Arabic Document Clustering task. The obtained results show that our method for extracting Keyphrases increases the quality of the clustering results. We propose also to study the effect of using the stemming for the testing dataset to cluster it with the same documents clustering techniques and similarity/distance measures.
Algorithms for Designing Pop-Up Cards

We prove that every simple polygon can be made as a (2D) pop-up card/book that opens to any desired angle between 0 and 360°. More precisely, given a simple polygon attached to the two walls of the open pop-up, our polynomial-time algorithm subdivides the polygon into a single-degree-of-freedom linkage structure, such that closing the pop-up flattens the linkage without collision. This result solves an open problem of Hara and Sugihara from 2009. We also show how to obtain a more efficient construction for the special case of orthogonal polygons, and how to make 3D orthogonal polyhedra, from pop-ups that open to 90°, 180°, 270°, or 360°.
Modeling of transmittance degradation caused by optical surface contamination by atomic oxygen reaction with adsorbed silicones

A numerical procedure is presented to calculate transmittance degradation caused by contaminant films on spacecraft surfaces produced through the interaction of orbital atomic oxygen (AO) with volatile silicones and hydrocarbons from spacecraft components. In the model, contaminant accretion is dependent on the adsorption of species, depletion reactions due to gas-surface collisions, desorption, and surface reactions between AO and silicon producing SiOx (where x is near 2). A detailed description of the procedure used to calculate the constituents of the contaminant layer is presented, including the equations that govern the evolution of fractional coverage by specie type. As an illustrative example of film growth, calculation results using a prototype code that calculates the evolution of surface coverage by specie type is presented and discussed. An example of the transmittance degradation caused by surface interaction of AO with deposited contaminant is presented for the case of exponentially decaying contaminant flux. These examples are performed using hypothetical values for the process parameters.
Random forest for gene selection and microarray data classification

A random forest method has been selected to perform both gene selection and classification of the microarray data. In this embedded method, the selection of smallest possible sets of genes with lowest error rates is the key factor in achieving highest classification accuracy. Hence, improved gene selection method using random forest has been proposed to obtain the smallest subset of genes as well as biggest subset of genes prior to classification. The option for biggest subset selection is done to assist researchers who intend to use the informative genes for further research. Enhanced random forest gene selection has performed better in terms of selecting the smallest subset as well as biggest subset of informative genes with lowest out of bag error rates through gene selection. Furthermore, the classification performed on the selected subset of genes using random forest has lead to lower prediction error rates compared to existing method and other similar available methods.
Complex rearrangements within the human J delta‐C delta/J alpha‐C alpha locus and aberrant recombination between J alpha segments.

We have examined DNA rearrangements within a 120 kb cloned region of the human T cell receptor J delta‐C delta/J alpha‐C alpha locus. Three types of pattern emerge from an analysis of T cell lines and clones. Firstly, cells with two rearrangements within J delta‐C delta; secondly, cells with one rearrangement within J delta‐C delta and one or more J alpha rearrangements, and finally, cells with rearrangements within J alpha and consequential deletion of the delta locus. Further analysis by cloning of rearrangements within the J alpha locus show that, in addition to V alpha‐J alpha joins, J alpha‐J alpha aberrant recombinations occur and rearrangement data indicate that such events are frequent. A model is presented to account for such recombinations.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

This research examined whether mothers' and fathers' beliefs about their children's alcohol use had cumulative self-fulfilling effects on their children's future drinking behavior. Analyses of longitudinal data acquired from 115 seventh-grade children and their mothers and fathers were consistent with synergistic accumulation effects for negative beliefs: Parents' beliefs predicted the greatest degree of confirmatory behavior from children when both mothers and fathers overestimated their children's alcohol use. Results did not support synergistic accumulation effects for positive beliefs: Children's predicted future alcohol use was similar regardless of whether one parent or both underestimated their child's alcohol use. These findings suggest that the generally small self-fulfilling effects reported in the literature may underestimate the power of negative self-fulfilling prophecies to harm targets because studies have not taken into consideration the possibility that negative self-fulfilling prophecies may be more likely than positive ones to accumulate across multiple perceivers.
Trinetra: Assistive Technologies for the Blind

Trinetra aims for cost-effective, assistive technologies to provide blind people with a greater degree of independence in their daily activities. The overall objective is to improve the quality of life for the blind by harnessing the collective capability of diverse networked embedded devices to support grocery shopping, transportation, etc. This paper describes our research and development of the Trinetra system, a barcode-based solution comprising COTS components, such as an Internetand Bluetooth-enabled cell phone, text-to-speech software and a portable barcode reader. We describe our experiences with the first deployment of Trinetra at the Carnegie Mellon University’s campus store, Entropy.
Regulatory T-Cells Support Stem Cell Therapy in Safe Minimization of Immunosuppression in Living Donor Renal Transplantation

Background: Stem cell therapy (SCT) has encouraging results in tolerance induction in living-donor renal transplantation (LDRT). T-regulatory cells [CD4+CD25highCD127neg/low] promote tolerogenicity. We report initial experience of LDRT using SCT with Tregs. Material and methods: In this prospective study of demographically well-balanced 3 groups of 30 LDRT patients each, group-1 underwent donor hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) and adipose-tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cell (AD-MSC) infusion in thymic and portal circulation under non-myeloablative conditioning pre-transplant, and Treg infusion posttransplant, group-2 received SCT alone, and group-3 were transplanted with standard triple immunosuppression. Tregs were derived from co-cultured donor AD-MSC and recipient peripheral mononuclear cells. Maintenance immunosuppression was low dose Tacrolimus + prednisone in groups-1 and 2. Results: Mean infused CD34+ (N x106/kgBW) were 2.7 in group-1, 2.2 in group-2, ADMSC (N x104/kgBW), 1.37 in group-1 and 1.34 in group-2, and Tregs (N x104/kgBW) were 2.21. There were no untoward effects of SCT. Over mean follow-up of 19.34 months in group-1 and 20.6 months in group-2 there was 100% patient + graft survival. In group-3 over a mean follow-up of 20.55 months, there was 100% patient survival and 93.3% graft survival. Their mean serum creatinine (mg/dL) was 1.35, 1.4 and 1.3 respectively. There were 2 acute rejection episodes in group-1, 5 in group-2 and 7 in group-3, and 1 chronic rejection in group-3. Severity was more in group-3. Tregs in periphery were 3.63% in group-1, 3 % in group-2 and 1.9% in group-3. Conclusion: Tregs support SCT in safe minimization of immunosuppression in LDRT.
WOLAP : Wavelet-Based Range Aggregate Query Processing

The Discrete Wavelet Transform has emerged as an elegant tool for data analysis queries. It was not until the time we proposed a new wavelet technique, ProPolyne, for fast exact, approximate, or progressive polynomial aggregate query processing that data did not have to be compressed, unlike most of the prior studies in this area. In this paper, after reviewing our ProPolyne technique in more depth with more intuitive and practical discussions, we address its inefficiency in dealing with scientific datasets due to the cube sparseness, subsequently, we propose a new cube model, CFM, to enhance ProPolyne’s both space and query efficiency. While ProPolyne assumed storing the data as large data frequency distribution cubes, CFM organizes the data as a collection of smaller fixed measure cubes to reduce the overall query and storage costs. We combine both cube models in an integrated framework, called WOLAP, for efficient polynomial aggregate query processing. We further enhance WOLAP by proposing practical solutions for real-world deployment in scientific applications. In particular, we show how to incorporate data approximation, how to improve wavelet filter selection, and how to work on datacubes with arbitrary domain sizes.
DAVVI: a prototype for the next generation multimedia entertainment platform

In this demo, we present DAVVI, a prototype of the next generation multimedia entertainment platform. It delivers multi-quality video content in a torrent-similar way like known systems from Move Networks, Microsoft and Apple do. However, it also provides a brand new, personalized user experience. Through applied search, personalization and recommendation technologies, end-users can efficiently search and retrieve highlights and combine arbitrary events in a customized manner using drag and drop. The created playlists of video segments are then delivered back to the system to improve future search and recommendation results. Here, we demonstrate this system using a soccer example.