Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Introducing Bluetooth Smart: Part 1: A look at both classic and new technologies.

In 2010, the bluetooth special interest group (sig) published their Core Specification 4.0, including Bluetooth low-energy (BLE) technology, or Bluetooth Smart. This short-range radio breaks technical ground as it can run for years on batteries or scavenged power. Bluetooth Smart is a leading candidate to connect the Internet of Things.
Displacements in Oil Storage Tanks Caused by Localized Differential Settlement

This paper presents design charts for predicting the maximum radial distortion of open-topped storage tanks caused by localized differential settlement of the tank foundations. It is well known that differential settlement can produce radial deflection of the tank shell sufficient to cause jamming of the floating roof. Predictions of shell deflections have often assumed the shell to be inextensional, and assumption which may not always be valid, particularly where the settlement is localized. Consequently, the authors have recently completed a more refined analysis of the deflections and stresses in the shell and the primary wind girder in which the shell is considered to act as a membrane. They concluded that this membrane analysis is valid for all practical applications and proposed a procedure for predicting shell displacements caused by any general differential settlement profile using Fourier analysis.
Computing the M Most Probable Modes of a Graphical Model

We introduce the M-Modes problem for graphical models: predicting the M label configurations of highest probability that are at the same time local maxima of the probability landscape. M-Modes have multiple possible applications: because they are intrinsically diverse, they provide a principled alternative to non-maximum suppression techniques for structured prediction, they can act as codebook vectors for quantizing the configuration space, or they can form component centers for mixture model approximation. We present two algorithms for solving the MModes problem. The first algorithm solves the problem in polynomial time when the underlying graphical model is a simple chain. The second algorithm solves the problem for junction chains. In synthetic and real dataset, we demonstrate how M-Modes can improve the performance of prediction. We also use the generated modes as a tool to understand the topography of the probability distribution of configurations, for example with relation to the training set size and amount of noise in the data.
Cellulose-Reinforced nylon-reaction injection molded composites

The properties of cellulose-reinforced nylon-6 block copolymers were studied. Composites were prepared by Reaction Injection Molding (RIM) of a nylon system in which one of the reactants contained cellulose fibers. Incorporation of cellulose fibers into the liquid reactant of the nylon-RIM system resulted in increased viscosity, depending on the amount and the aspect ratio of cellulose fibers. After proper drying, cellulose did not disturb the polymerization of the nylon-RIM system. The cellulose fibers increased the stiffness of the nylon-6 block copolymer. The stiffening effect depended on the aspect ratio and surface treatment. The tensile strength of cellulose-nylon composites was slightly decreased. Elongation at break and impact strength were reduced compared to glass fiber-reinforced nylon. Dynamic mechanical measurements (DMA) showed that the cellulose improved the elastic modulus of the nylon, especially at elevated temperatures. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) on fractured surfaces showed improved adhesion between fiber and matrix when a surface treated cellulose was used.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.org Dynamic Investigation of an Ancient Masonry Bell Tower with Operational Modal Analysis a Non-destructive Experimental Technique to Obtain the Dynamic Characteristics of a Structure

This paper shows the results of an experimental analysis on the bell tower of " Chiesa della Maddalena " (Mola di Bari, Italy), to better understand the structural behavior of slender masonry structures. The research aims to calibrate a numerical model by means of the Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) method. In this way realistic conclusions about the dynamic behavior of the structure are obtained. The choice of using an OMA derives from the necessity to know the modal parameters of a structure with a non-destructive testing, especially in case of cultural-historical value structures. Therefore by means of an easy and accurate process, it is possible to acquire in-situ environmental vibrations. The data collected are very important to estimate the mode shapes, the natural frequencies and the damping ratios of the structure. To analyze the data obtained from the monitoring, the Peak Picking method has been applied to the Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) of the signals in order to identify the values of the effective natural frequencies and damping factors of the structure. The main frequencies and the damping ratios have been determined from measurements at some relevant locations. The responses have been then extrapolated and extended to the entire tower through a 3-D Finite Element Model. In this way, knowing the modes of vibration, it has been possible to understand the overall dynamic behavior of the structure .
A Distributed Algorithm to Achieve Transparent Coexistence for a Secondary Multi-Hop MIMO Network

The transparent coexistence (TC) paradigm allows simultaneous activation of the secondary users with the primary users as long as their interference to the primary users can be properly canceled. This paradigm has the potential to offer much more efficient spectrum sharing than the traditional interweave paradigm. In this paper, we design a distributed algorithm to achieve this paradigm for a secondary multi-hop network. For interference cancelation (IC), we employ MIMO at secondary nodes. We present a distributed iterative algorithm to maximize each secondary session's throughput while meeting all IC requirements under TC. By maintaining two local sets for each node, we can keep track of the node's IC responsibility. Although no explicit node ordering is maintained in our distributed algorithm, we prove that our distributed data structure at each node (with the use of two local sets) can be mapped to an explicit global node ordering for IC among all nodes in the network. This guarantees that each active node's degree-of-freedoms allocated for IC is feasible at the physical layer. Our algorithm is iterative in nature and all steps can be accomplished based on local information exchange among the neighboring nodes. We present the simulation results to show that the performance of our distributed algorithm is highly competitive when compared with an upper bound solution from the corresponding centralized problem.
Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 detaches cells from extracellular matrices by inactivating integrins

The binding of urokinase plaminogen activator (uPA) to its cell surface receptor (uPAR; CD87) promotes cell adhesion by increasing the affinity of the receptor for both vitronectin (VN) and integrins. We provide evidence that plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI)-1 can detach cells by disrupting uPAR–VN and integrin–VN interactions and that it does so by binding to the uPA present in uPA–uPAR–integrin complexes on the cell surface. The detached cells cannot reattach to VN unless their surface integrins are first activated by treatment with MnCl2. Immunoprecipitation and subcellular fractionation experiments reveal that PAI-1 treatment triggers deactivation and disengagement of uPA–uPAR–integrin complexes and their endocytic clearance by the low density lipoprotein receptor–related protein. Transfection experiments demonstrate that efficient cell detachment by PAI-1 requires an excess of matrix-engaged uPA–uPAR–integrin complexes over free engaged integrins and that changes in this ratio alter the efficacy of PAI-1. Together, these results suggest a VN-independent, uPA–uPAR-dependent mechanism by which PAI-1 induces cell detachment. This pathway may represent a general mechanism, since PAI-1 also can detach cells from fibronectin and type-1 collagen. This novel “deadhesive” activity of PAI-1 toward a variety of cells growing on different extracellular matrices may begin to explain why high PAI-1 levels often are associated with a poor prognosis in human metastatic disease.
Evaluation of the Influence of Formulation and Process Variables on Mechanical Properties of Oral Mucoadhesive Films Using Multivariate Data Analysis

Oral mucosa is an attractive region for the local and systemic application of many drugs. Oral mucoadhesive films are preferred for their prolonged time of residence, the improved bioavailability of the drug they contain, their painless application, their protection against lesions, and their nonirritating properties. This work was focused on preparation of nonmedicated carmellose-based films using both solvent casting and impregnation methods, respectively. Moreover, a modern approach to evaluation of mucoadhesive films applying analysis of texture and subsequent multivariate data analysis was used. In this experiment, puncture strength strongly correlated with tensile strength and could be used to obtain necessary information about the mechanical film characteristics in films prepared using both methods. Puncture work and tensile work were not correlated in films prepared using the solvent casting method, as increasing the amount of glycerol led to an increase in the puncture work in thinner films. All measured texture parameters in films prepared by impregnation were significantly smaller compared to films prepared by solvent casting. Moreover, a relationship between the amount of glycerol and film thickness was observed, and a greater recalculated tensile/puncture strength was needed for an increased thickness in films prepared by impregnation.
Streamcatcher: Integrated Visualization of Music Clips and Online Audio Streams

We propose a content-based approach to explorative visualization of online audio streams (e.g., web radio streams). The visualization space is defined by prototypical instances of musical concepts taken from personal music collections. Our system shows the relation of prototypes to each other and generates an animated visualization that places representations of audio streams in the vicinity of their most similar prototypes. Both computation of music similarity and visualization are formulated for online real time performance. A software implementation of these ideas is presented and evaluated.
Shape matching based on diffusion embedding and on mutual isometric consistency

In this paper we address the problem of matching two 3D shapes by representing them using the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the discrete diffusion operator. This provides representation framework useful for scale-space local shape descriptors and shape comparisons. We formally introduce diffusion embedding and we propose unit hypersphere normalizations of this embedding. We also propose a method to find compatible time scale while matching two different shapes with varying size and sampling. We propose a practical algorithm that seeks the largest set of mutually consistent point-to-point matches between two shapes based on isometric consistency between the two embedded shapes. We illustrate our method with several examples of matching shapes at various scales.
An Integrated Inductor for Parallel Interleaved VSCs and PWM Schemes for Flux Minimization

The interleaving of the carrier signals of the parallel voltage-source converters can reduce the harmonic content in the resultant switched output voltages. As a result, the size of the line filter inductor can be reduced. However, in addition to the line filter, an inductive filter is often required to suppress the circulating current. The size of the system can be reduced by integrating these two inductors in a single magnetic component. An integrated inductor, which combines the functionality of both the line filter inductor and the circulating current filter inductor, is presented. The pulsewidth modulation (PWM) schemes to reduce the flux in some parts of the integrated inductor are also analyzed. The flux reduction achieved by using these schemes is demonstrated by comparing these schemes with the conventional space vector modulation and the 60° clamped discontinuous PWM scheme. The impact of these PWM schemes on the harmonic performance is also discussed. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the analysis.
Object-Based Greenhouse Classification from GeoEye-1 and WorldView-2 Stereo Imagery

Remote sensing technologies have been commonly used to perform greenhouse detection and mapping. In this research, stereo pairs acquired by very high-resolution optical satellites GeoEye-1 (GE1) and WorldView-2 (WV2) have been utilized to carry out the land cover classification of an agricultural area through an object-based image analysis approach, paying special attention to greenhouses extraction. The main novelty of this work lies in the joint use of single-source stereo-photogrammetrically derived heights and multispectral information from both panchromatic and pan-sharpened orthoimages. The main features tested in this research can be grouped into different categories, such as basic spectral information, elevation data (normalized digital surface model; nDSM), band indexes and ratios, texture and shape geometry. Furthermore, spectral information was based on both single orthoimages and multiangle orthoimages. The overall accuracy attained by applying nearest neighbor and support vector machine classifiers to the four multispectral bands of GE1 were very similar to those computed from WV2, for either four or eight multispectral bands. Height data, in the form of nDSM, were the most important feature for greenhouse classification. The best overall accuracy values were close to 90%, and they were not improved by using multiangle orthoimages.
Notice of RetractionDoes Adding Wheat Straw Biochar Improve Rape Growth?

Biochar addition to soil has been shown to enhance soil quality and crop production. However, little is known about the effect of biochar pyrolysed at different temperatures and added at different rates on soil properties and crop yields. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of different rates (1%, 5% and 10%) of biochar, produced with wheat straw under different temperatures (200°C, 300°C, 500°C), on soil properties and rape yield in a greenhouse pot experiment. Wheat straw biochar characteristics changed with increasing pyrolysing temperatures. High temperature biochar had high pH and electrical conductivity (EC), and contained more carbon and water-soluble potassium, but less hydrogen, water-soluble nitrogen and phosphorus. Biochar addition to soil resulted in an increase of rape dry matter by 34.0% on average. Rape nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations decreased, and potassium concentrations increased, with increasing rates of biochar addition. Meanwhile, higher rates of added biochar usually resulted in larger increases in soil pH, soil organic matter, soil total nitrogen, soil available phosphorus and soil available potassium. It is concluded that the impact of biochar on either soil or rape plants mainly depends upon the added rate rather than pyrolysis temperature of production.
Workload characterization for an E-commerce web site

Electronic commerce servers have a significant presence in today's Internet. Corporations require good performance for their business processes. To date, little empirical evidence has been discovered which identifies the types requests that users make of E-commerce systems. In this papers we examine the request level characteristics of the web site of a multinational car-rental company based on a 24 hour web server log. Our main conclusions are: i) An E-commerce web page typically contains many small image files and some popular image files are always requested together; ii) The percentage of requests for each service tends to be stable throughout the day when the time scale is large enough (10 minutes in this case); iii) Significant proportions of the requests are for dynamic pages and require the Secure Socket Layer protocol (SSL); and iv) most web objects are either requested primarily through SSL or primarily through non-SSL.One of the performance implications with respect to the image request patterns is that these image files should be bundled to reduce the number of requests a client issues as well as the server overhead to transfer these small image files separately. The server should arrange its resource allocation taking the request mix into account in order to improve performance. Finally, the use of SSL with respect to the various objects suggests that further study is needed to determine for which pages it is appropriate to use these security measures as they have both performance and security implications.
Innovization: innovating design principles through optimization

This paper introduces a new design methodology (we call it "innovization") in the context of finding new and innovative design principles by means of optimization techniques. Although optimization algorithms are routinely used to find an optimal solution corresponding to an optimization problem, the task of innovization stretches the scope beyond an optimization task and attempts to unveil new, innovative, and important design principles relating to decision variables and objectives, so that a deeper understanding of the problem can be obtained. The variety of problems chosen in the paper and the resulting innovations obtained for each problem amply demonstrate the usefulness of the innovization task. The results should encourage a wide spread applicability of the proposed innovization procedure (which is not simply an optimization procedure) to other problem-solving tasks.
Inapproximability Results for Sparsest Cut, Optimal Linear Arrangement, and Precedence Constrained Scheduling

We consider (uniform) sparsest cut, optimal linear arrangement and the precedence constrained scheduling problem 1 |prec| SigmawjCj-So far, these three notorious NP-hard problems have resisted all attempts to prove inapproximability results. We show that they have no polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS), unless NP-complete pmblems can be solved in randomized subexponential time. Furthermore, we prove that the scheduling problem is as-hard to approximate as vertex cover when the so-called fixed cost, that is present in all feasible solutions, is subtracted from the objective function.
Conditional-Replication, Integration, Excision, and Retrieval Plasmid-Host Systems for Gene Structure-Function Studies of Bacteria

ABSTRACT We have developed a series of powerful and versatile conditional-replication, integration, and modular (CRIM) plasmids. CRIM plasmids can be replicated at medium or high copy numbers in different hosts for making gene (or mutant) libraries. They can be integrated in single copies into the chromosomes of Escherichia coliand related bacteria to study gene function under normal physiological conditions. They can be excised from the chromosome, e.g., to verify that phenotypes are caused by their presence. Furthermore, they can be retrieved singly or en masse for subsequent molecular analyses. CRIM plasmids are integrated into the chromosome by site-specific recombination at one of five different phage attachment sites. Integrants are selected as antibiotic-resistant transformations. Since CRIM plasmids encode different forms of resistance, several can be used together in the same cell for stable expression of complex metabolic or regulatory pathways from diverse sources. Following integration, integrants are stably maintained in the absence of antibiotic selection. Each CRIM plasmid has a polylinker or one of several promoters for ectopic expression of the inserted DNA. Their modular design allows easy construction of new variants with different combinations of features. We also report a series of easily curable, low-copy-number helper plasmids encoding all the requisite Int proteins alone or with the respective Xis protein. These helper plasmids facilitate integration, excision (“curing”), or retrieval of the CRIM plasmids.
Leveraging Light-Weight Analyses to Aid Software Maintenance

We will evaluate our techniques and tools on large, real-world systems, comprising tens of millions of lines of code and thousands of defects. The proposed work will attempt to reduce the cost of three specific maintenance tasks: triaging automatically-generated defect reports, automatically synthesizing defect repairs, and automatically identifying out-of-date or incomplete system documentation. We hope to address bottlenecks in each of these three areas and show concrete time and effort savings for each process. The rest of this section describes each maintenance process and our proposed improvements in each case.
The Complete Genome Sequence of Natrinema sp. J7-2, a Haloarchaeon Capable of Growth on Synthetic Media without Amino Acid Supplements

Natrinema sp. J7-2 is an extreme haloarchaeon capable of growing on synthetic media without amino acid supplements. Here we report the complete genome sequence of Natrinema sp. J7-2 which is composed of a 3,697,626-bp chromosome and a 95,989-bp plasmid pJ7-I. This is the first complete genome sequence of a member of the genus Natrinema. We demonstrate that Natrinema sp. J7-2 can use gluconate, glycerol, or acetate as the sole carbon source and that its genome encodes complete metabolic pathways for assimilating these substrates. The biosynthetic pathways for all 20 amino acids have been reconstructed, and we discuss a possible evolutionary relationship between the haloarchaeal arginine synthetic pathway and the bacterial lysine synthetic pathway. The genome harbors the genes for assimilation of ammonium and nitrite, but not nitrate, and has a denitrification pathway to reduce nitrite to N2O. Comparative genomic analysis suggests that most sequenced haloarchaea employ the TrkAH system, rather than the Kdp system, to actively uptake potassium. The genomic analysis also reveals that one of the three CRISPR loci in the Natrinema sp. J7-2 chromosome is located in an integrative genetic element and is probably propagated via horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Finally, our phylogenetic analysis of haloarchaeal genomes provides clues about evolutionary relationships of haloarchaea.
Censorship Resistant Peer-to-Peer Networks Amos Fiat ∗

We present a censorship resistant peer-to-peer network for accessing n data items in a network ofn nodes. Each search for a data item in the network takes O(logn) time and requires at most O(log2n) messages. Our network is censorship resistant in the sense that even after adversarial removal of an arbitrarily large constant fraction of the nodes in the network, all but an arbitrarily small fraction of the remaining nodes can obtain all but an arbitrarily small fraction of the original data items. The network can be created in a fully distributed fashion. It requires only O(logn) memory in each node. We also give a variant of our scheme that has the property that it is highly spam resistant: an adversary can take over complete control of a constant fraction of the nodes in the network and yet will still be unable to generate spam. ACM Classification: F.2. 2 AMS Classification: 68W15
Maximal Margin Labeling for Multi-Topic Text Categorization

In this paper, we address the problem of statistical learning for multi-topic text categorization (MTC), whose goal is to choose all relevant topics (a label) from a given set of topics. The proposed algorithm, Maximal Margin Labeling (MML), treats all possible labels as independent classes and learns a multi-class classifier on the induced multi-class categorization problem. To cope with the data sparseness caused by the huge number of possible labels, MML combines some prior knowledge about label prototypes and a maximal margin criterion in a novel way. Experiments with multi-topic Web pages show that MML outperforms existing learning algorithms including Support Vector Machines.