Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Convergence analysis of high gain disturbance observer based backstepping control: A contraction theory approach

Backstepping design is a powerful method for stabilization and tracking of strict feedback nonlinear systems which find applications in practical fields like robotics, aerospace, process control, etc. However the presence of uncertainties in system dynamics complicates the control design procedure. In recent past, high gain disturbance observer based backstepping design has received considerable attention. Due to the use of large observer gains, the closed loop system possess a time scale separation between the system dynamics and the observer dynamics. This paper analyzes the performance of high gain disturbance observer based backstepping controller using contraction framework. In doing so the steady state error bounds are obtained in terms of design parameters which can be exploited to tune the closed loop system performance. Unlike the quadratic Lyapunov based methods, the stability analysis does not require any interconnection conditions. Furthermore the convergence results are shown to hold for less conservative choice of observer gain. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is verified through simulation example.
Recent Variations of Snowpack Depth in the Central Spanish Pyrenees

Abstract The evolution of snow depth in the central Spanish Pyrenees was analyzed using measurements from 106 snow stakes over a period of 14 yr (1985–1999). Relationships were considered between the regional series of snow depths at the end of winter and in the middle of spring with respect to precipitation and temperature in previous months. Both variables explained a large percentage of the interannual variability in snowpack. The high correlation between climate parameters and snow depth series may help to better understanding snow evolution at different times of the year and to obtain a predicted series of snow depths for the period 1950–1999 from longer climate series. Snow depth decreased significantly during the second half of 20th century, probably because there was less precipitation from January to March. The decrease in winter precipitation seemed to be related with the positive trend of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index during the same period.
35 nm metamorphic HEMT MMIC technology

A metamorphic high electron mobility transistor (mHEMT) technology featuring 35 nm gate length has been developed. The optimized MBE grown layer sequence has a channel mobility and a channel electron density as high as 9800 cm2/Vs and 6.1times1012 cm-2, respectively. To enable a maximum extrinsic transconductance gm, max of 2500 mS/mm the source resistance has been reduced to 0.1 Omegamiddotmm. An ft of 515 GHz was achieved for a 2 times 10 mum device. Based on this advanced 35 nm mHEMT technology very compact single-stage H-band amplifiers circuits have been realized demonstrating a high small-signal gain of more than 7 dB at 270 GHz.
Cholesteryl ester storage disease: Hepatopathology and effects of therapy with lovastatin

We describe three patients with cholesteryl ester storage disease. Diagnosis was confirmed by demonstrating a deficiency in lysosomal acid cholesteryl hydrolase activity in cultured skin fibroblasts from each of these patients. All had hepatomegaly, elevated serum aminotransferase activities and hyperlipoproteinemia. Histological examination of liver biopsy specimens before treatment revealed accumulation of fat within hepatocytes, bile duct epithelium and endothelial and Kupffer cells. Cholesterol crystals were recognized by their birefringence in frozen sections. A striking feature was the presence of markedly hypertrophied Kupffer cells and portal macrophages with foamy, tan‐colored cytoplasm that stained readily with the periodic acid‐Schiff reagent and aldehyde fuchsin. Periportal fibrosis was noted in all cases; incomplete cirrhosis was present in one case. Distinctive and hitherto undescribed lysosomal accumulations of triglyceride and cholesterol crystals were noted.
Mise en œuvre et évaluation d'outils de fusion d'image en radiothérapie

Le cancer est un probleme majeur de sante publique. Les traitements peuvent etre a visee systemique ou loco-regionale, dans ce dernier cas l'imagerie medicale joue un role important en permettant de preciser la localisation de la tumeur. L'objectif de la radiotherapie est de delivrer une dose curatrice de radiation au volume cible tout en epargnant les organes a risques (OAR) avoisinants. La determination de la localisation precise de ce volume cible ainsi que des OAR permet de definir la position et la puissance des faisceaux d'irradiation. Apres le rappel des principes de la radiotherapie et du traitement des cancers, nous precisons les enjeux cliniques des tumeurs oculaires, cerebrales et prostatiques. Nous effectuerons une mise au point sur le recalage d'images, les differentes techniques sont passees en revue dans le but d'etre didactique vis-a-vis de la communaute medicale. Les resultats du recalage sont presentes dans le cadre de la planification de la radiotherapie cerebrale et prostatique afin de preciser les types de recalage applicables en oncologie et plus particulierement a la radiotherapie. Ensuite, nous presentons les perspectives de ce type d'application selon differentes regions anatomiques. Les applications de la segmentation automatiques et l'evaluation des resultats dans le cadre des tumeur de l'encephale sont decrits apres avoir passe en revue les differentes methodes de segmentation utilisables selon les localisations anatomiques. Nous verrons une application originale : la simulation numerique de la croissance tumorale virtuelle et la comparaison avec la croissance reelle d'une tumeur cerebrale presentee par un patient. Enfin, nous exposerons les futurs developpements possibles des outils de traitement de l'image en radiotherapie ainsi que les pistes des recherche a explorer en oncologie.
Encapsulation of equine ECFCs in highly uniform, injectable hydrogel microspheres for local cell delivery

Th is pa pe r h as b ee n pe er ‐r ev ie w ed a nd a cc ep te d fo r p ub lic at io n, b ut h as y et to u nd er go c op ye di tin g an d pr oo f c or re ct io n. T he fi na l p ub lis he d ve rs io n m ay d iff er fr om th is pr oo f. Encapsulation of equine ECFCs in highly uniform, injectable hydrogel microspheres for local cell delivery Wen J. Seeto PhD, Yuan Tian, Randolph L. Winter DVM, Fred Caldwell DVM, MS, Anne A. Wooldridge DVM, MS, PhD, Elizabeth A. Lipke PhD 1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Auburn University, AL 36849 2. Department of Clinical Sciences, Auburn University, AL 36849 Contact information tel:334‐844‐4827, fax: 334‐844‐2063; seetowj@auburn.edu tel:334‐844‐4827, fax: 334‐844‐2063; yzt0028@auburn.edu tel: 334‐844‐4690; fax: 334‐844‐4368; rlw0041@auburn.edu tel: 334‐844‐4490, fax: 334‐844‐4368; caldwfj@auburn.edu tel: 334‐844‐4490, fax: 334‐844‐4368; aaw0002@auburn.edu * Corresponding author; tel: 334‐844‐2003, fax: 334‐844‐2063; eal0003@auburn.edu
Evaluating engagement in digital narratives from facial data

Engagement researchers indicate that the engagement level of people in a narrative has an influence on people's subsequent story-related attitudes and beliefs, which helps psychologists understand people's social behaviours and personal experience. With the arrival of multimedia, the digital narrative combines multimedia features (e.g. varying images, music and voiceover) with traditional storytelling. Research on digital narratives has been widely used in helping students gain problem-solving and presentation skills as well as supporting child psychologists investigating children's social understanding such as family/peer relationships through completing their digital narratives. However, there is little study on the effect of multimedia features in digital narratives on the engagement level of people. This research focuses on measuring the levels of engagement of people in digital narratives and specifically on understanding the media effect of digital narratives on people's engagement levels. Measurement tools are developed and validated through analyses of facial data from different age groups (children and young adults) in watching stories with different media features of digital narratives. Data sources used in this research include a questionnaire with Smileyometer scale and the observation of each participant's facial behaviours.
The endemic and non-endemic vascular flora of Madagascar updated

Background and aims - The Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Madagascar project aims to evaluate and enumerate the native and naturalized vascular plant flora of Madagascar. In light of the past two decades of intensive collecting and taxonomic work, all relevant published literature and available specimens are being reassessed in order to evaluate the taxonomic status and distribution of the native and naturalized taxa of vascular plants. Here we provide current figures for the total numbers of vascular plants and levels of endemism at the order, family, genus and species levels, comparing them to previous historical counts and analyzing the distribution of the non-endemic element of the flora. Key Results - At the time of writing (April 2010), more than a century after Baron first counted 4,100 species of vascular plants in Madagascar, the Madagascar Catalogue database had registered a total of 14,883 accepted names at all taxonomic levels (64 orders, 243 families, 1,730 genera, 11,220 species and 1,626 infraspecific taxa). Of the 11,220 species of vascular plants in Madagascar, 10,650 (95%) are angiosperms, of which 331 are naturalized introduced species. The remaining accepted indigenous angiosperm species total 10,319, of which 8,621 (84%) are endemic to Madagascar (82% endemism for all indigenous vascular plants). Among the 1,698 non-endemic species of indigenous angiosperms, a total of 1,372 (81%) also occur in Africa, of these 654 (39%) are present only in Africa and Madagascar.
Human visual system modulation transfer function measured by evoked potentials.

Visual potentials evoked by checkerboard pattern reversal were studied using temporal frequencies between 3 and 12 Hz (i.e. 6 and 24 reversal per sec, with sinusoidal or square wave modulation). Sinusoidal modulation evoked lower amplitude potentials than square wave modulation, at all frequencies used. Evoked potential amplitude vs temporal stimulation frequency curves for both modulations showed a maximum at approximately 4 Hz, with a slight decrease for lower frequencies, and a steep fall-off for higher frequencies starting at 7 Hz (values beyond 12 Hz were not measurable), unlike de Lange's psychophysical data. Accordingly, different brain generators are hypothesized for evoked potentials and psychophysical functions.
Multivariable Dynamic Ankle Mechanical Impedance With Active Muscles

Multivariable dynamic ankle mechanical impedance in two coupled degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) was quantified when muscles were active. Measurements were performed at five different target activation levels of tibialis anterior and soleus, from 10% to 30% of maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) with increments of 5% MVC. Interestingly, several ankle behaviors characterized in our previous study of the relaxed ankle were observed with muscles active: ankle mechanical impedance in joint coordinates showed responses largely consistent with a second-order system consisting of inertia, viscosity, and stiffness; stiffness was greater in the sagittal plane than in the frontal plane at all activation conditions for all subjects; and the coupling between dorsiflexion-plantarflexion and inversion-eversion was small - the two DOF measurements were well explained by a strictly diagonal impedance matrix. In general, ankle stiffness increased linearly with muscle activation in all directions in the 2-D space formed by the sagittal and frontal planes, but more in the sagittal than in the frontal plane, resulting in an accentuated “peanut shape. ” This characterization of young healthy subjects' ankle mechanical impedance with active muscles will serve as a baseline to investigate pathophysiological ankle behaviors of biomechanically and/or neurologically impaired patients.
Promises and Pitfalls of Stem Cell Therapy for Promotion of Bone Healing

There is promise in combining stem cells with allogeneic bone matrix to promote bone healing. Murine bone marrow, peripheral blood, and compact bone cells were transplanted ectopically under the kidney capsule in mice, alone or in combination with allogeneic matrix products: powder and putty to determine their bone forming potential in comparison to transplanted femoral bone fragments and long-term cultured bone marrow cells. The end point was the amount of bone formed as determined by quantitative histology. Mononuclear cells from marrow, peripheral blood, or bone alone transplanted under the kidney capsule did not form bone. Mononuclear cell populations did not combine readily with matrix products and there was in vivo migration of the transplanted combinations. Kidney subcapsular transplanted cultured bone marrow cells formed bone in proportion to the culture period, but after 9 weeks, the extent was only 20% by area of that of similarly transplanted femoral bone fragments. An inductive stimulus for bone formation seemed necessary. Osteoprogenitor cells were not detected in significant numbers in blood unless high doses of cytokines were administered. A better definition of the optimal cell populations and manipulations required for promotion of bone healing is needed along with new (transplant) models that allow for cell tracking. Much work remains to overcome current pitfalls in the use of stem cells to promote allograft integration and bone healing. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic study, Level V (expert opinion). See the Guidelines for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
EVALUACION DE ENSILAJE A PARTIR DE DOS SUBPRODUCTOS AGROINDUSTRIALES (CASCARA DE NARANJA Y PLÁTANO DE RECHAZO) PARA ALIMENTACIÓN DE GANADO BOVINO

Se realizo una investigacion aplicada y de caracter experimental, puesto que se evaluaron dos subproductos agroindustriales: cascara de naranja y platano de rechazo, sometiendolos a un bioproceso para la obtencion de ensilados mediante inoculacion del microorganismo Lactobacillus bucheneri, proveniente del lactosuero. Se comprobo la eficiencia de los sustratos y del inoculante en la reduccion del tiempo de fermentacion, estabilizacion de las variables temperatura, pH, incremento del porcentaje de acido lactico, crecimiento de bacterias acido lacticas y determinacion de calidad microbiologica y palatabilidad.
A spatio-temporal model to predict visual fixation : description and assessment

To what extent can a computational model of the bottom-up visual attention predict what an observer is looking at? What is the contribution of the low-level visual features in the attention deployment? To answer these questions, a new spatio-temporal computational model is proposed. This model incorporates several visual features; therefore, a fusion algorithm is required to combine the different saliency maps (achromatic, chromatic and temporal). To quantitatively assess the model performances, eye movements were recorded while naive observers viewed natural dynamic scenes. Four completing metrics have been used. In addition, predictions from the proposed model are compared to the predictions from a state of the art model (Itti’s model (Itti et al., 1998)) and from three non-biologically plausible models (uniform, flicker and centered models). Regardless of the metric used, the proposed model shows significant improvement over the selected benchmarking models (except the centered model). Conclusions are drawn regarding both the influence of low-level visual features over time and the central bias in an eye tracking experiment.
Se los por se lo

El sistema de la conjugación "objetiva" plantea interesantesproblemas que fueron tratados en parte por K. Heger (1966) en suestudio comparativo del francés y del español. De la comparaciónse desprende, por ejemplo, que en español hay un cierto número deambigüedades que no permiten establecer un "paradigma tan completo y unívoco" como en el caso del francés. Dentro de estas ambigüedades se encuentran las que propicia el gramema se: "El morfema [gramema] se funciona no sólo como pronombre reflexivo, sinotambién como variante combinatoria del pronombre personal complemento indirecto de la tercera persona.
Temperature during embryonic development has persistent effects on metabolic enzymes in the muscle of zebrafish

Global warming is intensifying interest in the physiological consequences of temperature change in ectotherms, but we still have a relatively poor understanding of the effects of temperature on early life stages. This study determined how embryonic temperature (TE) affects development and the activity of metabolic enzymes in the swimming muscle of zebrafish. Embryos developed successfully to hatching (survival ≥88%) from 22 to 32°C, but suffered sharp increases in mortality outside of this range. Embryos that were incubated until hatching at a control TE (27°C) or near the extremes for successful development (22 or 32°C) were next raised to adulthood under control conditions at 27°C. Growth trajectories after hatching were altered in the 22°C and 32°C TE groups compared with 27°C TE controls, but growth slowed after 3 months of age in all groups. Maximal enzyme activities of cytochrome c oxidase (COX), citrate synthase (CS), hydroxyacyl-coA dehydrogenase (HOAD), pyruvate kinase (PK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) were measured across a range of assay temperatures (22, 27, 32 and 36°C) in adults from each TE group that were acclimated to 27 or 32°C. Substrate affinities (Km) were also determined for COX and LDH. In adult fish acclimated to 27°C, COX and PK activities were higher in 22°C and 32°C TE groups than in 27°C TE controls, and the temperature optimum for COX activity was higher in the 32°C TE group than in the 22°C TE group. Warm acclimation reduced COX, CS and/or PK activities in the 22 and 32°C TE groups, possibly to compensate for thermal effects on molecular activity. This response did not occur in the 27°C TE controls, which instead increased LDH and HOAD activities. Warm acclimation also increased thermal sensitivity (Q10) of HOAD to cool temperatures across all TE groups. We conclude that the temperature experienced during early development can have a persistent impact on energy metabolism pathways and acclimation capacity in later life.
Gene Duplication and RNA Silencing in Soybean

Soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr. , is considered to be a typical paleopolyploid species with a complex genome [1-3]. Approximately 70 to 80% of angiosperm species have undergone polyploidization at some point in their evolutionary history, which is a well-known mecha‐ nism of gene duplication in plants [4]. The soybean genome actually possesses a high level of duplicate sequences, and furthermore, possesses homoeologous duplicated regions, which are scattered across different linkage groups [5-8]. Based on the genetic distances esti‐ mated by synonymous substitution measurements for the pairs of duplicated transcripts from expressed sequence tag (EST) collections of soybean and Medicago truncatula, Schlueter et al. estimated that soybean probably underwent two major genome duplication events: one that took place 15 million years ago (MYA) and another 44 MYA [9].
A Simplified LED Converter Design and Implement

High power LED converter combined with switching power supply and current adjustment device for is presented. The switching power supply provides one stabilized voltage source, and the current adjustment device controls the output currents with a desired constant current and the over-load protection. The experiment results shows the circuit can work well and pass the load test and the electromagnetic interference test.
Lung cysts, spontaneous pneumothorax, and genetic associations in 89 families with Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome.

RATIONALE Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome (BHDS) is an autosomal, dominantly inherited genodermatosis that predisposes to fibrofolliculomas, kidney neoplasms, lung cysts, and spontaneous pneumothorax. OBJECTIVES We evaluated 198 patients from 89 families with BHDS to characterize the risk factors for pneumothorax and genotype-pulmonary associations. METHODS Helical computed tomography scans of the chest were used to screen for pulmonary abnormalities. BHD mutation data were used for genotype-pulmonary associations. We examined the relationship of pneumothorax with categorical parameters (sex, smoking history, and lung cysts) and continuous parameters (number of cysts, lung cyst volume, and largest cyst diameter and volume). Logistic regression analyses were used to identify the risk factors associated with pneumothorax. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Twenty-four percent (48/198) of patients with BHDS had a history of pneumothorax. The presence of lung cysts was significantly associated with pneumothorax (p = 0.006). Total lung cyst volume, largest cyst diameter and volume, and every parameter related to the number of lung cysts were significantly associated (p < 0.0001) with pneumothorax. A logistic regression analysis showed that only the total number of cysts in the right parenchymal lower lobe and the total number of cysts located on the pleural surface in the right middle lobe were needed to classify a patient as to whether or not he or she was likely to have a pneumothorax. Exon location of the BHD mutation was associated with the numbers of cysts (p = 0.0002). CONCLUSIONS This study indicates that patients with BHDS have a significant association between lung cysts and spontaneous pneumothorax.
DNA instability in postmitotic neurons

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a CAG repeat expansion that is unstable upon germ-line transmission and exhibits mosaicism in somatic tissues. We show that region-specific CAG repeat mosaicism profiles are conserved between several mouse models of HD and therefore develop in a predetermined manner. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these synchronous, radical changes in CAG repeat size occur in terminally differentiated neurons. In HD this ongoing mutation of the repeat continuously generates genetically distinct neuronal populations in the adult brain of mouse models and HD patients. The neuronal population of the striatum is particularly distinguished by a high rate of CAG repeat allele instability and expression driving the repeat upwards and would be expected to enhance its toxicity. In both mice and humans, neurons are distinguished from nonneuronal cells by expression of MSH3, which provides a permissive environment for genetic instability independent of pathology. The neuronal mutations described here accumulate to generate genetically discrete populations of cells in the absence of selection. This is in contrast to the traditional view in which genetically discrete cellular populations are generated by the sequence of random variation, selection, and clonal proliferation. We are unaware of any previous demonstration that mutations can occur in terminally differentiated neurons and provide a proof of principle that, dependent on a specific set of conditions, functional DNA polymorphisms can be produced in adult neurons.