Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Localized fire tests on steel beams with different end restraints | NIST

Two 6.2-m span I-shaped structural steel beams were tested under combined structural and open flame localized fire loads. Two different support conditions for the beam ends were considered: (i) simple support, and (ii) double-angles bolted to laterally braced support columns. A four-point flexural loading scheme was used such that two concentrated forces were applied 2.44 m apart around midspan. The beam specimens were laterally braced at the location of concentrated forces. The midspan of each specimen, i.e. expected plastic hinge zone, was exposed to an open-flame fire using natural gas burners. The measurements included heat release rate and applied forces as well as thermal and structural responses to fire. Since the thermal gradients developed in the fire-exposed cross sections induced thermal bowing, both beam specimens exhibited similar deformational behavior and failure mode regardless of their end conditions. However, the presence of end restraint, provided through the double-angles on the second specimen, decreased its fire resistance (i.e. the failure time and failure temperature).
Machine Learning for Thermal Transport Analysis of Aluminum Alloys with Precipitate Morphology

A large number of microstructural parameters and a wide range of transport physics impose challenges on thermal transport analysis of alloy. Herein, modern data science techniques are employed to overcome the challenges, pursuing effective calculation of thermal transport properties. This emerging approach is tested for precipitate‐hardened aluminum (Al) alloy with consideration of precipitate morphology. The finite element method (FEM) is employed to create a database of effective thermal conductivity of hypothetical Al alloys with varying precipitate morphological and thermal transport features. Using the FEM‐generated data sets, the correlation analysis is conducted to qualitatively evaluate the importance of various precipitate features. The correlation analysis identifies the surface area, average diameter, and volume fraction of precipitates as the most descriptive features for determining the thermal conductivity of alloys. Afterward machine learning (ML) models are trained to accurately predict the effective thermal conductivity. Comparing the ML predictions with effective thermal conductivity and microstructural information from experiments, precipitate thermal transport properties can be calculated, such as interfacial conductance between Al matrix and precipitate, without atomistic simulations. This research demonstrates the feasibility of data‐driven approaches for effective thermal transport calculation and the promise of the FEM‐generated data analysis for more comprehensive evaluation of metallic alloys.
SPR Biosensor Probing the Interactions between TIMP-3 and Heparin/GAGs

Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-3 (TIMP-3) belongs to a family of proteins that regulate the activity of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which can process various bioactive molecules such as cell surface receptors, chemokines, and cytokines. Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) interact with a number of proteins, thereby playing an essential role in the regulation of many physiological/patho-physiological processes. Both GAGs and TIMP/MMPs play a major role in many cell biological processes, including cell proliferation, migration, differentiation, angiogenesis, apoptosis, and host defense. In this report, a heparin biosensor was used to map the interaction between TIMP-3 and heparin and other GAGs by surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy. These studies show that TIMP-3 is a heparin-binding protein with an affinity of ~59 nM. Competition surface plasmon resonance analysis indicates that the interaction between TIMP-3 and heparin is chain-length dependent, and N-sulfo and 6-O-sulfo groups (rather than the 2-O-sulfo groups) in heparin are important in the interaction of heparin with TIMP-3. Other GAGs (including chondroitin sulfate (CS) type E (CS-E)and CS type B (CS-B)demonstrated strong binding to TIMP-3, while heparan sulfate (HS), CS type A (CSA), CS type C (CSC), and CS type D (CSD) displayed only weak binding affinity.
Finite Element Analysis of Bi-Metallic Structures with Adhesive Delamination

ii Acknowledgments. v Vita . vi Fields of Study . vi List of Tables . xi List of Figures . xii Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review . 6 2.1 Aluminum to Steel Dissimilar Metal Joining . 6 2.1. 1 Fusion Welding of Aluminum to Steel . 7 2.1. 2 Bonded Aluminum/Steel Microstructure. 8 2.2 Solid State Welding . 10 2.2.1 Friction Stir Welding . 11 2.2.2 Friction Bit Joining . 15 viii 2.3 Epoxy Adhesive . 17 2.3.1 Thermosetting Polymers . 21 2.3.2 Fracture Mechanics Theory and Adhesive . 23 2.3.3 Epoxy and Adhesion . 35 2.3. 4 Curing of Epoxy Adhesive . 43 2.4 Modeling Adhesives . 51 2.4.1 Adhesive Curing Modeling . 51 2.4.2 Plasticity of Cured Epoxy . 56 2.4. 3 Adhesive Delamination Modeling . 58 2.4. 4 Traction vs Separation Approach . 61 Chapter 3: Objectives . 68 3.1 Model Aluminum/Steel Structures and their Resulting Distortion . 68 3.2 Model Cured Adhesive Delamination . 69 3.3 Fracture Toughness Testing of Adhesive . 69 Chapter 4: Modeling of Thermo-Mechanical Buckling . 71 4.1 Materials . 71 4.2 Approach . 71 4.2.1 Oven Experiment . 72
qnrB, Another Plasmid-Mediated Gene for Quinolone Resistance

ABSTRACT A novel plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance gene, qnrB, has been discovered in a plasmid encoding the CTX-M-15 β-lactamase from a Klebsiella pneumoniae strain isolated in South India. It has less than 40% amino acid identity with the original qnr (now qnrA) gene or with the recently described qnrS but, like them, codes for a protein belonging to the pentapeptide repeat family. Strains with qnrB demonstrated low-level resistance to all quinolones tested. The gene has been cloned in an expression vector attaching a polyhistidine tag, which facilitated purification to ≥95% homogeneity. As little as 5 pM of QnrB-His6 protected purified DNA gyrase against inhibition by 2 μg/ml (6 μM) ciprofloxacin. With a PCR assay qnrB has been detected in Citrobacter koseri, Enterobacter cloacae, and Escherichia coli isolates from the United States, linked to SHV-12 β-lactamase and coding for a product differing in five amino acids from the Indian (now QnrB1) variety. The qnrB gene has been found near Orf1005 in some, but not all, plasmids and in association with open reading frames matching known chromosomal genes, suggesting that it too was acquired by plasmids from an as-yet-unknown bacterial source.
iBundle: an efficient ascending price bundle auction

Standard auction mechanisms often break down in important e-commerce applications, where agents demand bundles of complementary resources, i.e. “I only want B if I also get A”. This paper describes zBundle, an ascending-price auction that is guaranteed to compute optimal bundle allocations with agents that follow a best-response bidding strategy. The auction prices bundles directly and allows agents to place additive or exclusive-or bids over collections of bundles. Empirical results confirm that iBundle generates efficient allocations for hard resource allocation problems. Furthermore, we show that iBundle generates solutions without complete revelation (or computation) of agent preferences.
Micromechanical Characterization of Polysilicon Films through On-Chip Tests

When the dimensions of polycrystalline structures become comparable to the average grain size, some reliability issues can be reported for the moving parts of inertial microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Not only the overall behavior of the device turns out to be affected by a large scattering, but also the sensitivity to imperfections gets enhanced. In this work, through on-chip tests, we experimentally investigate the behavior of thin polysilicon samples using standard electrostatic actuation/sensing. The discrepancy between the target and actual responses of each sample has then been exploited to identify: (i) the overall stiffness of the film and, according to standard continuum elasticity, a morphology-based value of its Young’s modulus; (ii) the relevant over-etch induced by the fabrication process. To properly account for the aforementioned stochastic features at the micro-scale, the identification procedure has been based on particle filtering. A simple analytical reduced-order model of the moving structure has been also developed to account for the nonlinearities in the electrical field, up to pull-in. Results are reported for a set of ten film samples of constant slenderness, and the effects of different actuation mechanisms on the identified micromechanical features are thoroughly discussed.
Architectural Styles for Information Systems: An Organizational Perspective

Enterprise information systems such as ERP, Knowledge Management or e-business systems need to deploy information system architectures which match the organization of the enterprise within which they operate. This calls for system architectures which adopt models from research in organization theory. With this idea in mind, we offer a set of organization–oriented architectural styles for information systems. Our approach complements well proposals for multi-agent architectures which are becoming increasingly important for business information systems. In this paper, we adopt an e-business example to illustrate how to design an organizational architecture for a business-to-consumer application. The research is conducted in the context of a comprehensive information system development methodology called Tropos.
Enhancement of Hybrid Tagger by using Rule Based Approach

Public opinions, reviews and open discussion are the best source of getting the feedback for the products and services to the developer for further improvement. Advance development of the world has brought the people close to each other and the feedbacks are carried out electronically via different medium. The feedback or opinions are mostly in the form of free textual form. People express their views and feelings in their own language. The natural language processing is required for the analysis of this data. The pos tagging is the important step in NLP for carrying out the processing. In this paper, we have developed hybrid tagger for the English language that uses the rule based approach in combination with oxford and WordNet dictionary. The proposed tagger is compared with different tagger available for English language. The Performance of the proposed tagger compare with the other tagger in terms of precision, recall and accuracy provide efficient accuracy and satisfactory result.
Confocal microwave imaging and artifact removal algorithms for the early detection of breast cancer

Microwave imaging is an emerging imaging modality for the early detection of breast cancer. Early-time artifact removal and imaging algorithm are the two most important signal processing components of any Confocal Microwave Imaging (CMI) system. The artifact removal algorithm reduces the large undesired early-time reflections from the breast skin that could potentially mask the tumour response. The imaging algorithm generates images of the breast such that the tumour is a strong scatterer and clutter due to healthy breast tissues is suppressed. In this thesis, artifact removal and imaging algorithms have been investigated. Several artifact removal algorithms for CMI along with an algorithm adapted from the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) have been evaluated in terms of their ability to reduce the artifact, while preserving the tumour response. The results from a comparative study have led to the development of a novel hybrid artifact removal algorithm that combines the best features of two existing artifact removal algorithms. The Hybrid Artifact Removal (HAR) algorithm has been shown to effectively reduce the early-time artifact while preserving the tumour response in 3D numerical breast phantoms. The HAR algorithm is then extended to a multistatic data acquisition approach. The proposed Multistatic Artifact Removal (MAR) algorithm has been shown to reduce the early-time artifact in selective multistatic signals, which improves the overall imaging quality compared to monostatic-only imaging. Since different CMI prototypes use different scan configurations, the HAR algorithm, along with the Neighbourhood-based Skin Subtraction (NSS) algorithm, have been applied to the most common scan configurations used in CMI prototypes. Both algorithms have been shown to successfully reduce artifacts and produce similar quality images across all scan configurations examined. The NSS algorithm demonstrated better artifact suppression than the HAR. However, the HAR algorithm demonstrated better tumour response preservation particularly in experimental breast phantoms that were scanned with the patient-specific scan configuration of the second-generation TSAR prototype. Finally, a variety of imaging algorithms have been compared across patient data obtained from a small-scale patient study at the University of Calgary. The Delay Multiply and Sum (DMAS) imaging algorithm has been shown to provide the best quality images, with correct detection and localisation of breast lesions in most cases. List of Publications
Chapter I Agent-Oriented Methodologies : An Introduction

As an introduction to agent-oriented (AO) methodologies, we first describe the characteristics of both agents and multi-agent systems (MASs). This leads to a discussion of what makes an AO methodology that can be used to build an MAS. Finally, we briefly introduce the ten methodologies that are described in the remaining chapters in this book.
Reverse latitudinal trends in species richness of pitcher-plant food webs

Latitudinal patterns in species richness have been well documented for guilds and individual trophic groups, but comparable patterns for entire, multitrophic communities have not been described. We studied the entire food web that inhabits the water-filled leaves of the pitcher plant Sarracenia purpurea across North America at two spatial scales: among sites and among leaves within sites. Contrary to the expectation, total species richness at both scales increased with latitude, because of increasing species richness at the lower trophic levels. This latitudinal pattern may be driven by a top-down effect. The abundance of the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii, a ubiquitous top predator in this system, decreases from south to north and may permit greater species richness of prey trophic levels at higher latitudes.
Genetically engineered Newcastle disease virus expressing interleukin-2 and TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand for cancer therapy

Recombinant Newcastle disease virus (rNDV) have shown oncolytic therapeutic efficacy in preclinical studies and are currently in clinical trials. In this study, we have evaluated the possibility to enhance the cancer therapeutic potential of NDV by means of inserting both interleukin-2 (IL-2) and tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis inducing ligand (TRAIL) delivered by rNDV. We demonstrated that rNDV expressing TRAIL (rNDV-TRAIL) or both human IL-2 and TRAIL (rNDV-IL-2-TRAIL) significantly enhanced inherent anti-neoplastic of rNDV by inducing apoptosis. And we showed that apoptosis-related genes mRNA expression was increased after treated with rNDV-TRAIL or rNDV-IL-2-TRAIL compared with rNDV and rNDV-IL-2. We also demonstrated that both rNDV-IL-2 and rNDV-IL-2-TRAIL induced proliferation of the CD4+ and CD8+ in treated mice and elicited expression of TNF-α and IFN-γ antitumor cytokines. These mice treated with oncolytic agents exhibited significant reduction in tumor development compared with mice treated with the parental virus. In addition, experiments in both hepatocellular carcinoma and melanoma-bearing mice demonstrated that the genetically engineered rNDV-IL-2-TRAIL exhibited prolonged animals’ survival compared with rNDV, rNDV-IL-2, and rNDV-TRAIL. In conclusion, the immunotherapy and oncolytic virotherapy properties of NDV can be enhanced by the introduction of IL-2 and TRAIL genes, whose products initiated a broad cascade of immunological affects and induced tumor cells apoptosis in the microenvironment of the immune system.
Refractive index detection of nanolitre samples in a microfluidic chip with a Michelson interferometer

A Michelson interferometer is designed for the refractive index detection of nanolitre samples in a microfluidic chip. A He-Ne laser beam (power of 0.5mW) is divided into a detection beam and a reference beam by a beam splitter. Equal inclination interference patterns (circular fringes) formed by the reference beam and the detection beam passing through the chip channel (width of 65μm and depth of 50μm) are observed clearly. The intensity of the central part of the interference pattern changes while rotating the chip. Signals of the light intensity versus the rotation angle are collected by a detector (consisted of a fiber and a photomultiplier) and recorded by a computer. By rotating the chip from 0° to +17°, signals are measured when the chip channel is filled with air, water and sodium hydroxide solution NaOH (with a refractive index of 1.3450). Fitting the signal curves with Origin program in a theoretical equation, the refractive indices of air, water and NaOH solution in the chip channel are derived. The results coincided basically with those measured by an Abbe refractometer.
Components of Nitrogenous Excreta in the Earthworms Lumbricus Terrestris, L. and Eisenia Foetida (Savigny)

1. Up to one-half of the nitrogen excreted by both Eisenia and Lumbricus is protein, probably mucus. A high percentage of the remainder is urea and ammonia. 2. Leaf as food spares body nitrogen and reduces the total output of nitrogen, in three species of earthworm examined. A nitrogen-free diet of filter paper has little nitrogen-sparing action in Lumbricus . 3. The pattern of excretion of nitrogen compounds by Lumbricus , and especially the ratio ammonia/urea, varies with food-intake and this is the major factor found to affect the pattern. 4. Food causes an increased acid production by Eisenia and Lumbricus . The latter neutralizes this by increasing its output of ammonia, and decreasing that of urea. 5. The decrease in urea output is much greater than the increase in ammonia output, indicating some degree of independence between the two mechanisms. 6. When Lumbricus and Eisenia are kept in water, changes in volume, or in frequency of renewal, of the medium have little effect on the rate of output of ammonia or of urea, though the worms are affected by the accumulation of excreta in the medium. 7. By contrast to the nitrogen compounds, acid is liberated in proportion to the volume of the medium. 8. Eisenia differs from Lumbricus in the following respects: ( a ) it has a much higher specific output of total nitrogen and of the ammonia fraction; ( b ) ammonia constitutes a higher percentage of the total; ( c ) ammonia output does not decrease but increases when fasting; ( d ) it excretes considerable amino nitrogen; ( e ) it excretes more uric acid; ( f ) it has a higher specific output of acid and uses a non-nitrogenous base, possibly CaCO 3 from the calciferous glands, to neutralize much of this; (g) it makes little use of urea in the control of pH, or as a form of nitrogen excreted; ( h ) filter paper causes a considerable reduction in nitrogen output. 9. Allolobophora caliginosa has the Lumbricus pattern of output, with values of specific output much lower than those of Lumbricus itself. 10. Isolated posterior pieces of Lumbricus and Eisenia have a pattern of nitrogen output similar to that of feeding worms, but those of Allolobophora have the pattern of fasting worms of the species.
Inhibitory control and decision making under risk in bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder.

OBJECTIVE To investigate neuropsychological mechanisms of impulsivity in patients with bulimia nervosa (BN) and binge-eating disorder (BED). METHOD Nineteen BN patients and 31 age- and body-mass-index (BMI)-matched healthy controls (c-BN) as well as 54 overweight and obese BED patients and 43 age- and BMI-matched healthy controls (c-BED) were investigated using an inhibitory control task (stop signal task, SST) and a decision-making under risk task (game of dice task, GDT). RESULTS Compared to c-BN, BN patients demonstrated significant greater stop signal reaction times in the SST, but no differences for the frequency of risky decisions in the GDT. BED patients did not differ from c-BED in the SST or the GDT. DISCUSSION BN but not BED patients differed from their respective control groups concerning the "stopping" component of impulsivity. These differences in motor inhibition may contribute to the behavioral distinctions in binge-eating behavior between BN and BED.
Bioabsorbable Stent Quo Vadis: A Case for Nano-Theranostics

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is one of the most commonly performed invasive medical procedures in medicine today. Since the first coronary balloon angioplasty in 1977, interventional cardiology has seen a wide array of developments in PCI. Bare metal stents (BMS) were soon superseded by the revolutionary drug-eluting stents (DES), which aimed to address the issue of restenosis found with BMS. However, evidence began to mount against DES, with late-stent thrombosis (ST) rates being higher than that of BMS. The bioabsorbable stent may be a promising alternative, providing vessel patency and support for the necessary time required and thereafter degrade into safe non-toxic compounds which are reabsorbed by the body. This temporary presence provides no triggers for ST, which is brought about by non-endothelialized stent struts and drug polymers remaining in vivo for extended periods of time. Likewise, nano-theranostics incorporated into a bioabsorbable stent of the future may provide an incredibly valuable single platform offering both therapeutic and diagnostic capabilities. Such a stent may allow delivery of therapeutic particles to specific sites thus keeping potential toxicity to a minimum, improved ease of tracking delivery in vivo by embedding imaging agents, controlled rate of therapy release and protection of the implanted therapy. Indeed, nanocarriers may allow an increased therapeutic index as well as offer novel post-stent implantation imaging and diagnostic methods for atherosclerosis, restenosis and thrombosis. It is envisioned that a nano-theranostic stent may well form the cornerstone of future stent designs in clinical practice.
A new discrete-time sliding-mode control with neural identification

In this paper, we present a new sliding mode controller for a class of unknown nonlinear discrete-time systems. We make the following two modifications: 1) the neural identifier which is used to estimate the unknown nonlinear system, applies new learning algorithms. The stability and non-zero properties are proved by dead-zone and projection technique. 2) We propose a new sliding surface and give a necessary condition to assure exponential decrease of the sliding surface. The time-varying gain in the sliding mode produces a low-chattering control signal. The closed-loop system with sliding mode controller and neural identifier is proved to be stable by Lyapunov method