Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Apparent Contact Angle of Liquids on Finely-Grooved Solid Surfaces-A SEM Study

Abstract A finely parallel-grooved nitrocellulose surface has been employed as a model to study by scanning electron microscopy the influence of roughness on the spreading equilibrium of liquid drops. The Cassie and Baxter equation for spherical drops on a composite interface was experimentally confirmed with mercury and a similar equation derived for a cylindrical drop has also been shown to be approximately valid for liquid polyphenylether. The observed drop shapes have been explained and the importance of groove edges demonstrated. Direct measurements of the microscopic contact angle of mercury locally on the grooved surfaces were found to be approximately the same for the smooth ungrooved surface.
STAT3 Activities and Energy Metabolism: Dangerous Liaisons

STAT3 mediates cytokine and growth factor receptor signalling, becoming transcriptionally active upon tyrosine 705 phosphorylation (Y-P). Constitutively Y-P STAT3 is observed in many tumors that become addicted to its activity, and STAT3 transcriptional activation is required for tumor transformation downstream of several oncogenes. We have recently demonstrated that constitutively active STAT3 drives a metabolic switch towards aerobic glycolysis through the transcriptional induction of Hif-1α and the down-regulation of mitochondrial activity, in both MEF cells expressing constitutively active STAT3 (Stat3C/C) and STAT3-addicted tumor cells. This novel metabolic function is likely involved in mediating pre-oncogenic features in the primary Stat3C/C MEFs such as resistance to apoptosis and senescence and rapid proliferation. Moreover, it strongly contributes to the ability of primary Stat3C/C MEFs to undergo malignant transformation upon spontaneous immortalization, a feature that may explain the well known causative link between STAT3 constitutive activity and tumor transformation under chronic inflammatory conditions. Taken together with the recently uncovered role of STAT3 in regulating energy metabolism from within the mitochondrion when phosphorylated on Ser 727, these data place STAT3 at the center of a hub regulating energy metabolism under different conditions, in most cases promoting cell survival, proliferation and malignant transformation even though with distinct mechanisms.
Prospective Evaluation of Intra operative Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implant Radiographs

To investigate the clinical utility of intra operative plain radiographs in cochlear implant surgery. Eighty consecutive adult and pediatric cochlear implant operations at a facility capable of intra operative radiographs were evaluated over 06 months. A carefully designed study to evaluate the performance of individuals who received the Nucleus 22-channel cochlear implant. All patients were profound-totally deaf, adults with a post lingual onset of impairment. The preoperative evaluation, prosthesis fitting, training, and postoperative testing were consistent across clinics . Singlesubject studies, where each patient acted as his/her own control, revealed that of the 80 subjects, 16–24 obtained significant improvement (P~0 .001) on unpracticed, unfamiliar recorded speech tests from the Minimal Auditory Capabilities (MAC) Battery, when using hearing alone (no lip-reading). In addition, virtually all patients showed improvement in recognition of speech material with lip-reading. The data support the efficacy of a feature extraction coding system where specific formant and amplitude information are transmitted via direct electrical stimulation to the cochlea.
Opening the black box of trust: reasoning about trust models in a BDI agent

Trust models as thus far described in the literature can be seen as a monolithic structure: a trust model is provided with a variety of inputs and the model performs calculations, resulting in a trust evaluation as output. The agent has no direct method of adapting its trust model to its needs in a given context. In this article, we propose a first step in allowing an agent to reason about its trust model, by providing a method for incorporating a computational trust model into the cognitive architecture of the agent. By reasoning about the factors that influence the trust calculation the agent can effect changes in the computational process, thus proactively adapting its trust model. We give a declarative formalization of this system using a multi-context system and we show that three contemporary trust models, BRS, ReGReT and ForTrust can be incorporated into a BDI reasoning system using our framework.
Experimental and numerical studies of selected types of batteries - state-of-the-art

The purpose of this article is to provide—on the basis of the literature review—the current state of knowledge concerning the experimental and numerical studies of selected types of batteries. The authors focused their actions on batteries that could to be the base for an energy storage system possible to apply in hybrid shunting locomotive. Following standards, e.g. IEEE 1625, IEEE 1725, UL 1973 and UL 2271 were taken into consideration within the context of the experimental research. Numerical analysis based mostly on the original solutions proposed by research teams. In recent times, the significant growth of interest in hybrid vehicles can be observed. Therefore, appropriate design of the energy storage system for each case is necessary. Moreover, the battery working process in hybrid vehicles is very specific, hence determination of their working conditions depending on the vehicle application is required. Very often, the experimental studies related with the batteries are based on the parameters recorded during the test conducted during the regular operation of the vehicle. Furthermore, research teams also carry out numerical analysis based on e.g. the finite element method (FEM). Such analyses can be focused on the thermal analyses of single cell or cells, analyses of the electrochemical effects as well as a coupled electro-thermal analyses.
Protein Aggregation

Abstract Protein aggregation occurs in vivo as a result of improper folding or misfolding. Diverse diseases arise from protein misfolding and are now grouped under the term “protein conformational diseases”, including most of the neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, the prion encephalopathies and Huntington's disease, as well as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and other less common conditions. The hallmark event in these diseases is a change in the secondary and/or tertiary structure of a normal, functional protein, leading to the formation of protein aggregates with various supramolecular organizations. In most cases the aggregates are organized in structurally well-defined fibrils forming amyloid deposits. The crucial feature of the amyloidogenic proteins is their structural instability induced either by mutations, post-translational modifications, or local conditions, such as pH, temperature, and co-solutes. The conformational change may promote the disease either by gain of a toxic activity or by the lack of biological function of the natively folded protein. As different molecular mechanisms are involved in the formation of the various forms of protein aggregates, the laboratory diagnostic approach remains frequently elusive.
53.2: Distinguished Paper: Novel Laser Transfer Technology for Manufacturing Large‐Sized OLED Displays

A novel laser transfer technology has been developed for manufacturing large‐Sized organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays. OLED materials are transferred from glass donors to a substrate by laser‐induced pattern‐wise sublimation (LIPS). RGB pixels are precisely patterned by LIPS. The LIPS OLED device performance has been examined in comparison with conventional evaporated device. Using this technology, we have fabricated a 27.3‐inch active matrix OLED display.
Stator-Current Spectrum Signature of Healthy Cage Rotor Induction Machines

Before applying current-signature-analysis-based monitoring methods, it is necessary to thoroughly analyze the existence of the various harmonics on healthy machines. As such an analysis is only done in very few papers, the objective of this paper is to make a clear and rigorous characterization and classification of the harmonics present in a healthy cage rotor induction motor spectrum as a starting point for diagnosis. Magnetomotive force space harmonics, slot permeance harmonics, and saturation of main magnetic flux path through the virtual air-gap permeance variation are taken into analytical consideration. General rules are introduced giving a connection between the number of stator slots, rotor bars, and pole pairs and the existence of rotor slot harmonics as well as saturation-related harmonics in the current spectrum. For certain combinations of stator and rotor slots, saturation-related harmonics are shown to be most prominent in motors with a pole pair number of two or more. A comparison of predicted and measured current harmonics is given for several motors with different numbers of pole pairs, stator slots, and rotor bars.
Single trial recognition of error-related potentials during observation of robot operation

Recent works suggest that several human cognitive processes elicited during the observation and monitoring of tasks developed by others can be detected in real time. These works have also demonstrated that human brain activity can be used to recover from machine errors, and as reward signals to teach a simulated robot how to perform given tasks. This paper studies the elicitation of this activity during the operation of a real robot. Experimental results have been obtained with 4 participants observing the operation of a 5 d.o. f. robotic arm performing correct/incorrect reaching tasks, while an EEG system recorded their brain activity. The results give evidence that the brain areas that play a role in detection and monitoring of errors also play a role when observing the operation of a real robot, that a brain discriminative response is elicited during the observation of a correct/incorrect operation of a real robot, and that it is possible to learn a classifier that provides online categorization with high accuracy (80%).
Truthful incentives in crowdsourcing tasks using regret minimization mechanisms

What price should be offered to a worker for a task in an online labor market? How can one enable workers to express the amount they desire to receive for the task completion? Designing optimal pricing policies and determining the right monetary incentives is central to maximizing requester's utility and workers' profits. Yet, current crowdsourcing platforms only offer a limited capability to the requester in designing the pricing policies and often rules of thumb are used to price tasks. This limitation could result in inefficient use of the requester's budget or workers becoming disinterested in the task. In this paper, we address these questions and present mechanisms using the approach of regret minimization in online learning. We exploit a link between procurement auctions and multi-armed bandits to design mechanisms that are budget feasible, achieve near-optimal utility for the requester, are incentive compatible (truthful) for workers and make minimal assumptions about the distribution of workers' true costs. Our main contribution is a novel, no-regret posted price mechanism, BP-UCB, for budgeted procurement in stochastic online settings. We prove strong theoretical guarantees about our mechanism, and extensively evaluate it in simulations as well as on real data from the Mechanical Turk platform. Compared to the state of the art, our approach leads to a 180% increase in utility.
Two-year clinical outcomes after coronary drug-eluting stent placement in Chinese men and women: a multicenter, prospective registry study

Background Previous studies have reported a discrepancy in baseline characteristics and outcomes after percutaneous coronary intervention between men and women. However, this finding has never been verified in the Chinese population. The present study analyzed two-year clinical outcomes after placement of coronary drug-eluting stents in Chinese men and women. Methods From January 2005 to December 2010, a total of 3804 Chinese patients (2776 men, 1028 women) who underwent drug-eluting stent implantation were studied prospectively. The primary endpoint was the composite major adverse cardiac event (MACE) rate, including myocardial infarction, cardiac death, and target vessel revascularization at two years. Stent thrombosis served as the safety endpoint. Propensity score matching was used to compare the adjusted MACE rate between the two groups. Results At two-year follow-up, unadjusted rates of myocardial infarction, non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction, target vessel revascularization, and MACE were significantly different between men (6.84%, 4.6%, 13.1%, and 21.7%, respectively) and women (3.8% [P = 0.001], 2.0% [P < 0.001] 10.3% [P = 0.025], and 16.3% [P < 0.001], respectively). After propensity score matching, there were no significant differences in composite MACE and individual endpoints at two years between the genders. Conclusion Despite all the unfavorable risk factor clustering in women and complex coronary disease in men, the two-year clinical outcomes after coronary stent placement were comparable between Chinese women and men.
A combination therapy of whole lung lavage and GM‐CSF inhalation in pulmonary alveolar proteinosis

Systemic and inhalation therapy of granulocyte‐macrophage colony‐stimulating factor (GM‐CSF) is usually effective in controlling autoimmune pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP), but some cases are refractory to GM‐CSF therapy and subjected to whole lung lavage (WLL). A 9‐year‐old girl developed severe respiratory failure due to autoimmune PAP was treated with inhalational 250 µg of GM‐CSF daily, however, it was ineffective. Unilateral WLL was performed three times and subsequent GM‐CSF inhalation therapy yielded marked physiological and radiological improvement and was continued for 1 year. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2008; 43:828–830. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Prospective targeting and control of end‐tidal CO2 and O2 concentrations

Current methods of forcing end‐tidal PCO2 (PETCO2) and PO2 (PETO2) rely on breath‐by‐breath adjustment of inspired gas concentrations using feedback loop algorithms. Such servo‐control mechanisms are complex because they have to anticipate and compensate for the respiratory response to a given inspiratory gas concentration on a breath‐by‐breath basis. In this paper, we introduce a low gas flow method to prospectively target and control PETCO2 and PETO2 independent of each other and of minute ventilation in spontaneously breathing humans. We used the method to change PETCO2 from control (40 mmHg for PETCO2 and 100 mmHg for PETO2) to two target PETCO2 values (45 and 50 mmHg) at iso‐oxia (100 mmHg), PETO2 to two target values (200 and 300 mmHg) at normocapnia (40 mmHg), and PETCO2 with PETO2 simultaneously to the same targets (45 with 200 mmHg and 50 with 300 mmHg). After each targeted value, PETCO2 and PETO2 were returned to control values. Each state was maintained for 30 s. The average difference between target and measured values for PETCO2 was ± 1 mmHg, and for PETO2 was ± 4 mmHg. PETCO2 varied by ± 1 mmHg and PETO2 by ± 5.6 mmHg (s.d.) over the 30 s stages. This degree of control was obtained despite considerable variability in minute ventilation between subjects (± 7.6 l min−1). We conclude that targeted end‐tidal gas concentrations can be attained in spontaneously breathing subjects using this prospective, feed‐forward, low gas flow system.
IEEE 802.11s - Mesh Deterministic Access

In 2003, interests in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 Working Group (WG) led to formation of Task Group (TG) ldquoSrdquo. 802.11s develops an amendment for wireless local area network (WLAN) mesh. Unlike existing WLAN mesh products, 802.11s forms a transparent 802 broadcast domain that supports any higher layer protocols. Therefore, 802.11s provides frame forwarding and path selection at layer-2. While traditional WLANs are access point (AP) centered, the WLAN mesh is fully distributed. Hence, 802.11s considers extensions to the medium access control (MAC) too. The current draft 2.0 of 802.11s denotes the optional MAC as mesh deterministic access (MDA). Due to the high amount of indirect neighbors in a WLAN mesh, the current single-hop medium access control mechanisms cannot operate efficiently. In contrast, unlike traditional listen-before-talk scheme MDApsilas advanced medium reservation scheme allows for operation free of collisions. Therefore, MDA enables support for quality of service (QoS) and provides more capacity in the WLAN mesh. In this paper, the authors, who have contributed to the standardization of 802.11s since 2003, give insight to the basics of draft 2.0 of 802.11s and its principles. Furthermore, we provide detailed simulation results of 802.11psilas first WLAN mesh aware MAC: MDA. Our simulation results show that unlike the traditional enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA), MDA does not stall when the offered traffic is high. Due to its planned medium access, limited packet delay can be achieved.
Efficacy of Fetal Stem Cells Use in Complex Treatment of Patients WithInsulin-resistant Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Objective: To identify efficacy of fetal stem cells in treatment of the patients suffering from Type 2 diabetes mellitus in presence of insulin resistance and to summarize all characteristics of post-transplantation disease course. Materials and methods: 42 patients suffering from Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in presence of insulin resistance were examined including 27 men and 15 women. Glycaemia ranges were controlled by diet therapy in 7 patients (16.7%), whereas the rest of the patients were recommended antihyperglycemic medicines (biguanides, thiazolidinediones, sulfonylurea derivatives and α-reductase inhibitors). Fetal stem cells (FSCs) were administered in complex therapy for the patients with T2DM and the data of clinical, laboratory and anthropometric investigations were analyzed over the study period. Results: Positive effects to values of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, as well as arterial blood pressure (ABP) in T2DM have been justified. FSCs capacity to decreasing insulin resistance (in accordance with the HOMA-IR scale) which results in stable continuous diabetes mellitus compensation was established. Conclusion: FSCs use in complex treatment of patients with T2DM stabilizes disease compensation and leads to decrease in hyperinsulinemia and lower insulin resistance.
Collapsed Variational Bayesian Inference for Hidden Markov Models

Approximate inference for Bayesian models is dominated by two approaches, variational Bayesian inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo. Both approaches have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they can complement each other. Recently researchers have proposed collapsed variational Bayesian inference to combine the advantages of both. Such inference methods have been successful in several models whose hidden variables are conditionally independent given the parameters. In this paper we propose two collapsed variational Bayesian inference algorithms for hidden Markov models, a popular framework for representing time series data. We validate our algorithms on the natural language processing task of unsupervised part-of-speech induction, showing that they are both more computationally efficient than sampling, and more accurate than standard variational Bayesian inference for HMMs.
Combinatorial semi-bandit with known covariance

The combinatorial stochastic semi-bandit problem is an extension of the classical multi-armed bandit problem in which an algorithm pulls more than one arm at each stage and the rewards of all pulled arms are revealed. One difference with the single arm variant is that the dependency structure of the arms is crucial. Previous works on this setting either used a worst-case approach or imposed independence of the arms. We introduce a way to quantify the dependency structure of the problem and design an algorithm that adapts to it. The algorithm is based on linear regression and the analysis uses techniques from the linear bandit literature. By comparing its performance to a new lower bound, we prove that it is optimal, up to a poly-logarithmic factor in the number of arms pulled.
Bioinformatics visualization and integration with open standards: the Bluejay genomic browser

We have created a new Java-based integrated computational environment for the exploration of genomic data, called Bluejay. The system is capable of using almost any XML file related to genomic data. Non-XML data sources can be accessed via a proxy server. Bluejay has several features, which are new to Bioinformatics, including an unlimited semantic zoom capability, coupled with Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) outputs; an implementation of the XLink standard, which features access to MAGPIE Genecards as well as any BioMOBY service accessible over the Internet; and the integration of gene chip analysis tools with the functional assignments. The system can be used as a signed web applet, Web Start, and a local stand-alone application, with or without connection to the Internet. It is available free of charge and as open source via http://bluejay.ucalgary. ca.
Expanding the Research Area of Behavior Change Support Systems

The First International Workshop on Behavior Change Support Systems attracted a great research interest. The selected papers focused on abstraction, implementation and evaluation of Behavior Change Support Systems. The workshop is an evidence of how researchers from around the globe have their own perspective of behavior change interventions. In this abstract, we have attempted to outline core issues that can enhance persuasiveness of such support systems. Finally, we highlight important research questions relating to the development of effective Behavior Change Support Systems
Automatic generation of database instances for white-box testing

Testing is a critical activity for database application programs as faults if undetected could lead to unrecoverable data loss. Database application programs typically contain statements written in an imperative programming language with embedded data manipulation commands, such as SQL. However relatively little study has been made in the testing of database application programs. In particular, few testing techniques explicitly consider the inclusion of database instances in the selection of test cases and the generation of test data input. In this paper, we study the generation of database instances that respect the semantics of SQL statements embedded in a database application program. The paper also describes a supporting tool which generates a set of constraints. These constraints collectively represent a property against which the program is tested. Database instances for program testing can be derived by solving the set of constraints using existing constraint solvers.
THE CLUSTERING OF MASSIVE GALAXIES AT z ∼ 0.5 FROM THE FIRST SEMESTER OF BOSS DATA

We calculate the real- and redshift-space clustering of massive galaxies at z ∼ 0.5 using the first semester of data by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). We study the correlation functions of a sample of 44,000 massive galaxies in the redshift range 0.4 < z < 0.7. We present a halo-occupation distribution modeling of the clustering results and discuss the implications for the manner in which massive galaxies at z ∼ 0.5 occupy dark matter halos. The majority of our galaxies are central galaxies living in halos of mass 1013 h−1 M☉, but 10% are satellites living in halos 10 times more massive. These results are broadly in agreement with earlier investigations of massive galaxies at z ∼ 0.5. The inferred large-scale bias (b ≃ 2) and relatively high number density () imply that BOSS galaxies are excellent tracers of large-scale structure, suggesting BOSS will enable a wide range of investigations on the distance scale, the growth of large-scale structure, massive galaxy evolution, and other topics.