Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of a novel silicon stripixel detector for RHIC-PHENIX detector upgrade

A new single-sided silicon strip detector has been developed for the silicon vertex tracker of the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). The novel "stripixel" detector concept developed by the BNL Instrumentation Division was applied to the first prototype silicon sensor. The novel feature of the stripixel concept is two-dimensional (2-D) position sensitivity with single-sided processing achieved by charge sharing between two interleaved electrodes in one pixel. Signals are read out projectively by double layers of aluminum strips. The first prototype stripixel sensors with the size of 34.3 /spl times/ 64.6 mm and thickness of 250 and 400 /spl mu/m were fabricated. The detector with readout electronics was constructed to evaluate the prototype sensor performance by using an analog multiplexer chip with charge sensitive preamplifier-shaper circuits (VA2 chip of IDEAS). The sensor performance on charge sharing, detection efficiency, signal-to-noise ratio, and position resolution has been tested with a radioactive source and a GeV particle beam at KEK-PS. The stripixel detector concept, the specification of the first prototype stripixel sensor, and the test results are presented.
Order-Picking in a Rectangular Warehouse: A Solvable Case of the Traveling Salesman Problem

This paper addresses the problem of order-picking in a rectangular warehouse that contains crossovers only at the ends of aisles. An algorithm is presented for picking an order in minimum time. The computational effort required is linear in the number of aisles. The procedure has been implemented on a microcomputer A 50-aisle problem requires only about 1 minute to solve.
Network service description model for VNF orchestration leveraging intent-based SDN interfaces

Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networking promise to radically innovate the way network services are provisioned, especially in terms of dynamic and flexible service delivery. Although the problem of NFV/SDN orchestration is recently gaining increasing interest, the problem of how effectively realizing the as-a-service exposure of network functions and services remains essentially uninvestigated. Leveraging service-oriented principles and best practices, in this paper we propose a two-layer service-oriented description model and a logical architecture for network service provisioning distinguishing business and orchestration scopes. Our proposal takes into account ETSI specifications for NFV orchestration and intent-based abstractions for the SDN controller northbound interface. We present a preliminary validation of the proposed approach focusing on the orchestration layer, based on a Proof of Concept development and testing. Finally, we discuss future work.
An Algorithm for Evaluation of Throughput in Multihop Packet Radio Networks with Complex Topologies

The problem of analyzing the thoughput of packet radio networks with realistic topologies is considered. We present an algorithm for the solution of this problem and show that both the memory requirements and running time of this algorithm in practice grow polynomially with the size of the problem. Although in theory both can grow exponentially in the worst case, we offer computational experience with the procedure and show that for realistic topologies where connectivity is related to distance, the rate of growth is quadratic in the number of links. Even for regular grids, which are pathological in their symmetry, the rate of growth is only cubic in the number of links. We thus conclude that the procedure is effective for realistic topologies with up to several hundred nodes.
Lp Based Cell Selection With Constraints Of Timing, Area, And Power Consumption

This paper presents a new LP based optimal cell selection method. Optimal cell selection is a useful tool for final tuning of LSI designs. It replaces drivabilities of cells, adjusting timing, area, and power constraints. Using the latest and earliest arrival times, it can handle both setup and hold time constraints. We also make an efficient initial basis, which speeds up a simplex LP solver by 5 times without any relaxations nor approximations. From experimental results, it reduces the clock cycle of a manual designed 13k-transistor chip by 17% without any increase of area.
Fibrinogen induces adhesion, spreading, and microfilament organization of human endothelial cells in vitro

Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (ECs) have been shown to attach to a substratum of fibrinogen (fg). Later, ECs undergo spreading, organization of thick microfilament bundles of the stress fiber type, and formation of focal contacts (adhesion plaques) that correspond to accumulation of vinculin at the cytoplasmic aspect of the ventral membrane. The rate of attachment to fg and the type of spreading is virtually identical to that obtained on substrata coated with fibronectin (FN). Antibodies to fg, but not to FN, prevent EC adhesion to fg; conversely, antibodies to FN, but not to fg, prevent adhesion of ECs to a FN-coated substratum. The removal of residual FN contamination from fg preparations by means of DEAE-cellulose chromatography does not result in any difference in EC adhesion on fg. Moreover, pretreatment of cells with inhibitors of synthesis and release of proteins does not impair their adhesion capacity on an fg-coated substratum. In contrast, human arterial smooth muscle cells do not adhere and spread on fg substrata but do so on FN. The synthetic peptides (Gly-Arg-Gly- Asp[GRGD] and Gly-Arg-Gly-Asp-Ser-Pro[GRGDSP]) containing the tripeptide Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD), originally found to be responsible for the cell binding activity of FN, have been found to inhibit EC spreading and the redistribution of their cytoskeleton, including the formation of stress fibers and the localization of vinculin either on fg or on FN. Conversely, the synthetic peptide Arg-Gly-Gly (RGG) was completely uneffective in inhibiting the adhesion and the sequence of events leading to spreading and cytoskeletal organization. These results indicate that ECs, but not smooth muscle cells, specifically adhere and spread on an fg substratum and this occurs by recognition mechanisms similar to those reported for FN.
CENP-A drives asymmetric cell division and maintains stem identity

Centromeres, chromosomal loci essential for genome integrity, are epigenetically defined by CENP-A-containing chromatin. Recent studies suggest that parental CENP-A is asymmetrically distributed upon stem cell asymmetric division. However, a direct link between centromeres and stem cell identity has not been demonstrated. We show that Drosophila female germline stem cells (GSCs) and neuroblasts assemble centromeres between G2-phase and prophase, requiring CYCLIN A. Intriguingly, chromosomes that will be inherited by GSCs incorporate more CENP-A and capture more spindle fibers at pro-metaphase. Furthermore, over-expression of CAL1 (Drosophila CENP-A assembly factor) causes GSC-like tumours, while over-expression of both CENP-A and CAL1 promotes stem cell self-renewal. Finally, once centromeres have been assembled in GSCs, continued CENP-A assembly is not required in differentiating cells outside of the niche and CAL1 becomes dispensable. According to our results CENP-A regulates stem cell identity/maintenance. Moreover, crucial centromere assembly occurs in the niche prior to oocyte meiosis.
Parameter estimation and performance optimization of voltage controlled oscillators

The paper is focused on a useful application related to our optimization technique of the arrays of coupled oscillators at millimeter-wave frequencies, a pair of voltage-controlled oscillators coupled through a two-port passive network being treated. A distinct section of the paper is focused on a method to estimate unknown circuit parameters starting from measurements performed on the real system, the method being based on a minimization technique. Other part of the paper treats the optimization of certain performances of the system; we have chosen as objective function the phase shift of the oscillator pair, which is difficult to be adjusted in practice. We used an appropriate frequency space representation by means of the desired network function generated in full symbolic form for a linearized circuit model. This is combined with some measurements performed on the real system and a minimization algorithm for some scalar functions of multiple variables provided by Matlab Optimization Toolbox. The algorithm is suitable to compute optimal circuit parameters which guarantee the minimum respectively maximum values of the performance quantity. Linear or small-signal nonlinear circuits can be treated in this manner. The proposed optimization techniques was tested and validated with simulation data on an illustrative example.
The small sample size problem in gene expression tasks

Charles University in Prague Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Biophysics and Physical Chemistry Candidate: Savvas Athanasiadis Supervisor: Jurjen Duintjer Tebbens Title of diploma thesis: The small sample size problem in gene expression tasks The thesis addresses classification of genes to tumor types based on their gene expression signatures. The number of variables (amino acids) to be investigated is typically very high (in the thousands) while it is expensive and timeconsuming to analyze a high number of genes; usually at most tens of them are available. The combination of a small sample size with a large number of variables makes standard statistical classification methods inappropriate. The thesis focuses on a modification of a standard classification method, Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis, for the case where the number of samples is smaller than the number of variables. It proposes an improved strategy to test this modified method with leave-one-out cross validation. Using socalled low rank updates of the involved covariance matrices, the computational costs of the cross validation process can be reduced by an order of magnitude. Memory demands are reduced as well.
Two sides of the same coin : assessing translation quality in two steps through adequacy and acceptability error analysis

We propose facilitating the error annotation task of translation quality assessment by introducing an annotation process which consists of two separate steps that are similar to the ones required in the European Standard for translation companies EN 15038: an error analysis for errors relating to acceptability (where the target text as a whole is taken into account, as well as the target text in context), and one for errors relating to adequacy (where source segments are compared to target segments). We present a fine-grained error taxonomy suitable for a diagnostic and comparative analysis of machine translated texts, post-edited texts and human translations. Categories missing in existing metrics have been added, such as lexical issues, coherence issues, and text type-specific issues.
High‐grade atypical epithelial cells in pancreatic mucinous cysts are a more accurate predictor of malignancy than “positive” cytology

The Sendai guidelines for risk assessment of malignancy in patients with mucinous cysts lists “positive” cytology as a high‐risk feature. In the current study, the authors hypothesized that a cytological threshold of high‐grade atypical epithelial cells (AEC) is a more accurate predictor of malignancy.
Acute melioidosis outbreak in Western Australia

A cluster of acute melioidosis cases occurred in a remote, coastal community in tropical Western Australia. Molecular typing of Burkholderia pseudomallei isolates from culture-confirmed cases and suspected environmental sources by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of XbaI chromosomal DNA digests showed that a single PFGE type was responsible for five cases of acute infection in a community of around 300 during a 5 week period. This temporal and geographical clustering of acute melioidosis cases provided a unique opportunity to investigate the environmental factors contributing to this disease. B. pseudomallei isolated from a domestic tap at the home of an asymptomatic seroconverter was indistinguishable by PFGE. Possible contributing environmental factors included an unusually acid communal water supply, unrecordable chlorine levels during the probable exposure period, a nearby earth tremor, and gusting winds during the installation of new water and electricity supplies. The possible role of the potable water supply as a source of B. pseudomallei was investigated further.
Analysis of discordant test results among five second-generation assays for anti-hepatitis C virus antibodies also tested by polymerase chain reaction-RNA assay and other laboratory and clinical tests for hepatitis

The diagnostic performances of five commercially available second-generation assays for anti-hepatitis C virus antibody, two enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, one enzyme immunoassay, and two particle agglutination assays (passive hemagglutination assay and particle agglutination assay), were evaluated. Among 104 samples from healthy subjects and 300 consecutive samples from patient ordered for routine determinations of anti-hepatitis C virus antibody in serum, assay results showed variable degrees of discordance for 17 samples (4.2%). These 17 samples were further tested by an immunoblot assay, the polymerase chain reaction-RNA assay, and the hemagglutination inhibition assay. Four of the 17 samples were regarded as true positive, since all supplementary assays and clinical data indicated active hepatitis C virus infection. Another five samples were considered false positive because no confirmatory evidence was obtained from the laboratory analysis or clinical data. The remaining eight samples were negative for hepatitis C virus RNA, but the results of the other supplementary tests were indeterminate. Some of these samples with indeterminate results may have been from patients with subclinical cases of disease who spontaneously recovered from hepatitis with persistent anti-hepatitis C virus antibody in their sera.
A novel routing paradigm for mobile ad hoc networks multihop hello guided routing (MHGR)

Multihop hello guided routing (MHGR) is a novel routing concept and paradigm for mobile ad hoc networks. The concept of MHGR has been applied both to proactive and reactive routing protocol paradigm to realize MHGR-based proactive protocol (MHGR-P) and MHGR-based reactive protocol (MHGR-R). In this paper, we present a unified MHGR architecture (MHGR-U), where each node can select whether to proactively originate multihop hellos (P-mode) or only reactively does so (R-mode). As the results, routes to nodes with P-mode are proactively created and maintained, while those to nodes with R-mode are reactively done. We also present the method for a source to efficiently send hello requests to the destination with R-mode. Both schemes effectively decrease the control overhead. We compare performance of MHGR-U with OLSR and AODV based on simulation. It is verified that MHGR-U have unique and beneficial performance characteristics in comparison with AODV and OLSR.
An integrated environment for the modeling and simulation of mechatronics devices

One of the most common sources of performance limitation in the control of mechatronic systems is associated to the coupling dynamics of the different degrees of freedom, induced by the elasticity in some components. Indeed, in industrial environments, they must perform tasks with rapidity and accuracy in order to produce goods and services with minimal production time. These procedures require the use of flexible robots which can act in a large workspace, thus subject to important parameters variations. The design of the control system should guarantee a damped behavior of the load position, both in the set point response and in the rejection of the disturbances arising from the joints operation. This paper presents an application of generalized predictive control (GPC) to a robot trajectory control using an integrated virtual environment for the modeling and simulation of mechatronics devices
Assessment of plasma amino acid profile in autism using cation-exchange chromatography with postcolumn derivatization by ninhydrin.

BACKGROUND/AIM Autism is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder. This study aimed to assess the clinical significance of amino acid profile assay in autism using cation-exchange chromatography with ninhydrin postcolumn derivatization. MATERIALS AND METHODS This study included 42 autistic children and 26 apparently healthy children. All participants were subjected to the assay of plasma amino acids (essential, nonessential, and nonstandard) using cation-exchange chromatography with postcolumn derivatization by ninhydrin. RESULTS The levels of most of the essential amino acids were significantly lower in autistic children than controls. As regards nonessential amino acids, significantly lower levels for plasma cysteine, tyrosine, and serine and significantly higher levels for plasma glutamic acid were recorded in autistic children than controls. Finally, the autistic group demonstrated significantly lower levels of α-aminoadipic acid, carnosine, and β-alanine and significantly higher levels of hydroxyproline, phosphoserine, β-amino-isobutyric acid, and ammonia as compared to controls. CONCLUSION The study revealed that autistic children exhibit distinct alterations in the plasma levels of some amino acids, which can in turn participate in the disease etiology and can be applied as a diagnostic tool for early detection of autism.
Learning and Using Hand Abstraction Values for Parameterized Poker Squares

We describe the experimental development of an AI player that adapts to different point systems for Parameterized Poker Squares. After introducing the game and research competition challenge, we describe our static board evaluation utilizing learned evaluations of abstract partial Poker hands. Next, we evaluate various time management strategies and search algorithms. Finally, we show experimentally which of our design decisions most signicantly accounted for observed performance.
Human Motion Recognition from 3D Pose Information - Trisarea: A New Pose-based Feature

The use of pose-based features has demonstrated to be a promising approach for human motion recognition. Encouraged by the results achieved, a new relational pose-based feature, Trisarea, based on geometric relationship between human joints, is proposed and analysed. This feature is defined as the area of the triangle formed by connecting three joints. The paper shows how the variation of a selected set of Trisarea features over time constitutes a descriptor of human motion. It also demonstrates how this motion descriptor based on Trisarea features can provide useful information in terms of human motion for its application to action
Solid state transformer for wind power interfacing

This paper proposes a simple and reliable Solid state transformer circuit for interfacing the wind power to the load. Three stage SST based on single active bridge (SAB) converter is capable of providing the voltage regulation under varying input and load with the help of simple voltage control loop and tuned PI controller by high frequency converter phase shift control. Circuit contains limited number of controlled devices switches at zero voltage enables to operate at high frequencies and has easy control strategy. The performance of circuit is verified through simulation studies.
Robust Unit Commitment with Dispatchable Wind

The increasing penetration of uncertain generation such as wind and solar in power systems imposes new challenge s to the Unit Commitment (UC) problem, one of the most critical tasks in power systems operations. The two most common approaches to address these challenges — stochastic and rob ust optimization — have drawbacks that prevent or restrict their application to real-world systems. This paper demonstrate s that an adaptive robust UC in which, by considering wind dispatch flexibility, the second-stage problem, usually being non-c onvex, can be represented with an equivalent linear program (LP). Consequently, the full two-stage robust UC formulation, which is typically a bi-level problem, can be translated into an equi valent single-level mixed-integer program. Experiments on the IE E 118-bus test system show that the computation time, and the number of scenarios and violations can be significantly redu ced in the unified stochastic and robust approach compared to a pu re stochastic approach. In this paper, the formulation is eval uated considering dispatchable wind (i.e., allowing wind curtai lment), but it can be applied to any uncertain source with the possibi l ty of being curtailed.
Clinical Validation of the HPV-Risk Assay, a Novel Real-Time PCR Assay for Detection of High-Risk Human Papillomavirus DNA by Targeting the E7 Region

ABSTRACT The HPV-Risk assay is a novel real-time PCR assay targeting the E7 region of 15 high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) types (i.e., HPV16, -18, -31, -33, -35, -39, -45, -51, -52, -56, -58, -59, -66, -67, and −68), and provides additional genotype information for HPV16 and HPV18. This study evaluated the clinical performance and reproducibility of the HPV-Risk assay with cervical scraping specimens and its utility with self-collected (cervico)vaginal specimens. The clinical performance of the HPV-Risk assay for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia of grade 2 or worse (CIN2+) with cervical scraping specimens was evaluated by a noninferiority analysis, relative to high-risk HPV GP5+/6+ PCR, following international guidelines for HPV test requirements for cervical cancer screening. The HPV-Risk assay showed clinical sensitivity for CIN2+ of 97.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 89.1 to 99.3%; 67/69 samples) and a clinical specificity for CIN2+ of 94.3% (95% CI, 92.5 to 95.7%; 777/824 samples). The clinical sensitivity and specificity were noninferior to those of GP5+/6+ PCR (noninferiority score test, P = 0.006 and 0.0003, respectively). Intralaboratory reproducibility over time (99.5% [95% CI, 98.6 to 99.8%]; 544/547 samples, kappa = 0.99) and interlaboratory agreement (99.2% [95% CI, 98.6 to 99.8%]; 527/531 samples, kappa = 0.98) for the HPV-Risk assay with cervical scraping specimens were high. The agreement of the HPV-Risk assay results for self-collected (cervico)vaginal specimens and clinician-obtained cervical scraping specimens was also high, i.e., 95.9% (95% CI, 85.1 to 99.0%; 47/49 samples, kappa = 0.90) for self-collected lavage samples and 91.6% (95% CI, 84.6 to 95.6%; 98/107 samples, kappa = 0.82) for self-collected brush samples. In conclusion, the HPV-Risk assay meets the cross-sectional clinical and reproducibility criteria of the international guidelines for HPV test requirements and can be considered clinically validated for cervical screening purposes. The compatibility of the HPV-Risk assay with self-collected specimens supports its utility for HPV self-sampling.