Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF AN INSTALLED SINGLE DWELLING SEASONAL THERMAL ENERGY STORE WITH VARYING demand: Eurosun 2014

The financial viability of a domestic sized solar Seasonal Thermal Energy Store (STES) installed in a lowenergy house located in a Temperate Maritime Climate was investigated. Using the figures for the recorded performance in combination with the installation costs, a financial Life Cycle Analysis was undertaken to establish the cost effectiveness of this. Three Domestic Hot Water (DHW) usage scenarios were considered on the impact of DHW consumption on the solar energy available for space heating and the STES surplus (or deficit) heat.
Interoperability of multi-frequency SAR data for forest information extraction in support of national MRV systems

Continuity of earth observation data is paramount to operational forest information monitoring in support of national accountability of forest and carbon stocks. Following the loss of ALOS PALSAR in May 2011, the minimum 2 year gap before PALSAR-2 comes online, and the superiority of L-band data for forest monitoring, this paper addresses the issue of interoperability of SAR data through comparison of forest/non-forest, land cover and deforestation derived from independent and combined classifications of PALSAR and RADARSAT-2 data. Forest/non-forest mapping accuracies were highest using PALSAR data alone. The combined use of C- and L-band data resulted in higher forest/non-forest mapping accuracies compared to using C-band data alone. Attributed largely to an increased capacity for penetration of the vegetation canopy and interaction with woody structures, L-band SAR is most suited to forest cover mapping. Without a dense time-series, the separation of cleared or deforested land and regrowth areas is more difficult using C-band alone.
AIXIjs: A Software Demo for General Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning is a general and powerful framework with which to study and implement artificial intelligence. Recent advances in deep learning have enabled RL algorithms to achieve impressive performance in restricted domains such as playing Atari video games (Mnih et al., 2015) and, recently, the board game Go (Silver et al., 2016). However, we are still far from constructing a generally intelligent agent. Many of the obstacles and open questions are conceptual: What does it mean to be intelligent? How does one explore and learn optimally in general, unknown environments? What, in fact, does it mean to be optimal in the general sense? The universal Bayesian agent AIXI (Hutter, 2005) is a model of a maximally intelligent agent, and plays a central role in the sub-field of general reinforcement learning (GRL). Recently, AIXI has been shown to be flawed in important ways; it doesn't explore enough to be asymptotically optimal (Orseau, 2010), and it can perform poorly with certain priors (Leike and Hutter, 2015). Several variants of AIXI have been proposed to attempt to address these shortfalls: among them are entropy-seeking agents (Orseau, 2011), knowledge-seeking agents (Orseau et al., 2013), Bayes with bursts of exploration (Lattimore, 2013), MDL agents (Leike, 2016a), Thompson sampling (Leike et al., 2016), and optimism (Sunehag and Hutter, 2015). We present AIXIjs, a JavaScript implementation of these GRL agents. This implementation is accompanied by a framework for running experiments against various environments, similar to OpenAI Gym (Brockman et al., 2016), and a suite of interactive demos that explore different properties of the agents, similar to REINFORCEjs (Karpathy, 2015). We use AIXIjs to present numerous experiments illustrating fundamental properties of, and differences between, these agents.
Magnetic Targeting Enhances Engraftment and Functional Benefit of Iron-Labeled Cardiosphere-Derived Cells in Myocardial Infarction

Rationale: The success of cardiac stem cell therapies is limited by low cell retention, due at least in part to washout via coronary veins. Objective: We sought to counter the efflux of transplanted cells by rendering them magnetically responsive and imposing an external magnetic field on the heart during and immediately after injection. Methods and Results: Cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) were labeled with superparamagnetic microspheres (SPMs). In vitro studies revealed that cell viability and function were minimally affected by SPM labeling. SPM-labeled rat CDCs were injected intramyocardially, with and without a superimposed magnet. With magnetic targeting, cells were visibly attracted toward the magnet and accumulated around the ischemic zone. In contrast, the majority of nontargeted cells washed out immediately after injection. Fluorescence imaging revealed more retention of transplanted cells in the heart, and less migration into other organs, in the magnetically targeted group. Quantitative PCR confirmed that magnetic targeting enhanced cell retention (at 24 hours) and engraftment (at 3 weeks) in the recipient hearts by ≈3-fold compared to nontargeted cells. Morphometric analysis revealed maximal attenuation of left ventricular remodeling, and echocardiography showed the greatest functional improvement, in the magnetic targeting group. Histologically, more engrafted cells were evident with magnetic targeting, but there was no incremental inflammation. Conclusions: Magnetic targeting enhances cell retention, engraftment and functional benefit. This novel method to improve cell therapy outcomes offers the potential for rapid translation into clinical applications.
Investigation of the effects of storage and freezing on mixes of heavy-labeled metabolite and amino acid standards.

RATIONALE High-throughput metabolomics has now made it possible for small/medium-sized laboratories to analyze thousands of samples/year from the most diverse biological matrices including biofluids, cell and tissue extracts. In large-scale metabolomics studies, stable-isotope-labeled standards are increasingly used to normalize for matrix effects and control for technical reproducibility (e.g. extraction efficiency, chromatographic retention times and mass spectrometry signal stability). However, it is currently unknown how stable mixes of commercially available standards are following repeated freeze/thaw cycles or prolonged storage of aliquots. METHODS Standard mixes for 13 C, 15 N or deuterated isotopologues of amino acids and key metabolites from the central carbon and nitrogen pathways (e.g. glycolysis, Krebs cycle, redox homeostasis, purines) were either repeatedly frozen/thawed for up to 10 cycles or diluted into aliquots prior to frozen storage for up to 42 days. Samples were characterized by ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry to determine the stability of the aliquoted standards upon freezing/thawing or prolonged storage. RESULTS Metabolite standards were stable over up to 10 freeze/thaw cycles, with the exception of adenosine and glutathione, showing technical variability across aliquots in a freeze/thaw-cycle-independent fashion. Storage for up to 42 days of mixes of commercially available standards did not significantly affect the stability of amino acid or metabolite standards for the first 2 weeks, while progressive degradation (statistically significant for fumarate) was observed after 3 weeks. CONCLUSIONS Refrigerated or frozen preservation for at least 2 weeks of aliquoted heavy-labeled standard mixes for metabolomics analysis is a feasible and time-/resource-saving strategy for standard metabolomics laboratories.
Probabilistic Neural Network with Memristive Crossbar Circuits

The scalability and non-ideality issues of the memristor circuits poses several challenges to the implementation of analog memristive probabilistic neural networks in hardware. To meet the emerging challenges of faster edge AI computing devices, the integration of neural networks within or near to the sensor can improve the data processing times, reduce bandwidth requirements, and reduce data transfer errors. The fast learning in probabilistic neural network (PNN) make it an attractive solution for energy efficient computing in edge devices. The PNN estimates the density function of the categories and classifies the input based on the Bayes decision rule. It avoids backpropagation, since weights are derived from training samples directly and set in the first initialization stage. The proposed hardware realization of the PNN is based on a memristor crosssbar architecture. The simulations demonstrate that the accuracy of the hardware realization of the PNN can be as high as 93.3% for the MNIST dataset if a proper smoothing parameter is selected.
How gender and career concepts impact Global Talent Management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to further develop Global Talent Management (GTM) and the career literature by conceptualizing a model that uses widely discussed contemporary career concepts such as boundaryless career, protean career and kaleidoscope career, with a special focus on gender issues and contextual impact factors. This model contributes to the understanding of how GTM in multinational enterprises (MNEs) can be designed to fit lifelong career courses and to reduce talent scarcity by increasing the deployment of female talent. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop a theoretical model of a talent’s lifelong development of career orientations, and draw insights from many discreet literature bases. Through a review of the relevant literature, this paper synthesizes a holistic approach to understand why MNEs need a tailor-made GTM with a particular focus on gender and a life phase-specific career orientation with strong local responsiveness. Findings – The Dynamic Career Cube is a hermeneutic model that helps to visualize the individual career course of talented employees and the fit of talent’s career orientations and GTM. Research limitations/implications – A research agenda that includes a retrospective analysis of biographies, especially considering contextual factors such as culture and role stereotypes, is proposed as a starting point for research in this field. Practical implications – The design and implementation of current GTM must be questioned to fit the contextual factors and to currently match the needs of talented male and female employees throughout their lifelong career course. Tailor-made GTM measures depending on the career phase are proposed. Originality/value – The paper provides a novel synthesis of the existing research and literature on GTM, gender and careers. By showing the complexity of individual career decisions that are influenced by internal and contextual factors, the paper emphasizes the importance of flexible, locally responsive and gender-inclusive GTM. The paper is useful for academics who seek insight into a talent’s decision-making process and practitioners who manage talent globally.
in Surgery

Applications of deep learning models and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) have been achieving good performance in 3D medical image analysis. In this study, we present a fast and efficient 3D femur segmentation method based on V-net with a gradient pre-processor. Instead of feeding CT data into a standard V-net model, our proposed model is fed with gradient data based on CT scans using a gradient pre-processor, which forces the network to learn from the gradient field. Adopting an objective function based on dice similarity coefficient, the imbalance between the numbers of femur voxels against that of background could be addressed. A dataset of lower limb CT data with 60 samples was trained and tested on a pure V-net model and the proposed V-net model separately. Experimental results show that our proposed method could achieve better segmentation results (1.4% improvement in dice similarity coefficient) and a higher robustness as compared with the pure V-net model, which allows faster training speed and higher segmentation accuracy.
Effects of Reduced Oxygen and Glucose Levels on Ocular Cells in vitro: Implications for Tissue Models

An important goal of tissue engineering is the development of better in vitro tissue models for the study and treatment of diseases, especially those that are difficult to model in animals, such as glaucoma. In order to properly interpret experimental results designed to mimic in vivo conditions, it is necessary to characterize the metabolic state of the in vitro culture. The goal of this study was to determine how porcine lamina cribrosa cells (PLC), porcine scleral fibroblasts (PSC) and rat astrocytes (RAS) respond metabolically to reduced glucose and oxygen levels compared to normal in vitro culture conditions. Throughout the culture period, cell number and the levels of glucose, lactate, pyruvate and glutamate were characterized. Cell number in the PLC and PSC was more sensitive to glucose level than oxygen, while the RAS exhibited sensitivities to both variables. While the pyruvate and glutamate levels did not vary substantially between groups, glucose consumption and lactate production were dependent on culture condition. In addition, the ΔL/ΔG ratio was dependent on glucose and oxygen levels, but not cell type at early time points. By day 7, however, the RAS exhibited ratios consistently lower than the other cell types. The results of this study serve as a basis for future studies into the degenerative matrix remodeling in the glaucomatous optic nerve head, and may prove insightful for other tissue engineering applications.
Microglial HO-1 induction by curcumin provides antioxidant, antineuroinflammatory, and glioprotective effects.

SCOPE We have studied if curcumin can protect glial cells under an oxidative stress and inflammatory environment, which is known to be deleterious in neurodegeneration. METHODS AND RESULTS Primary rat glial cultures exposed to the combination of an oxidative (rotenone/oligomycin A) and a proinflammatory LPS stimuli reduced by 50% glial viability. Under these experimental conditions, curcumin afforded significant glial protection and reduction of reactive oxygen species; these effects were blocked by the HO-1 inhibitor tin protoporphyrin-IX (SnPP). These findings correlate with the observation that curcumin induced the antioxidative protein HO-1. Most interesting was the observation that the glial protective effects related to HO-1 induction were microglial specific as shown in glial cultures from LysM(Cre) Hmox(∆/∆) mice where curcumin lost its protective effect. Under LPS conditions, curcumin reduced the microglial proinflammatory markers iNOS and tumor necrosis factor, but increased the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL4. Analysis of the microglial phenotype showed that curcumin favored a ramified morphology toward a microglial alternative activated state against LPS insult also by a HO-1-dependent mechanism. CONCLUSION The curry constituent curcumin protects glial cells and promotes a microglial anti-inflammatory phenotype by a mechanism that implicates HO-1 induction; these effects may have impact on brain protection under oxidative and inflammatory conditions.
Variability-Tolerant Binary Content Addressable Memory Cells

Within-chip variability has become a serious problem in modern nano-scale technologies, which is particular true for semiconductor memory designs. This paper proposes fourtypes of variability-tolerant (VT) binary content addressable memory (BCAM) cells. The VT-BCAM cells are designed by separating the read port from the write port such that the sizing for read static noise margin (SNM) and write trip voltage (WTV) is decoupled. By reusing the comparison logic of a BCAM cell as the read port, moreover, only an additional transistor and a read wordline are needed. Experimental results show that in comparison with the typical BCAM cell the proposed variability-tolerant BCAM cells can provide about 0.655V increment of read SNM by paying about 13% additional cell area.
The Value of Personal Information: Evidence from Empirical Economic Studies

EC data protection policy is promoted with reference to economic benefits. However, the value of personal information in legitimate business models is rarely discussed. Various economic studies have tried to measure individuals' valuation of different kinds of personal data. We review empirical papers from the last 10 years and find evidence that more disclosure is associated with higher valuations. We find that the current research efforts can be extended to yield insights into the pricing of personal information, taking into account the actual value such information creates in legitimate business applications.
Experimental Study of Informal Rewards in Peer Production

We test the effects of informal rewards in online peer production. Using a randomized, experimental design, we assigned editing awards or “barnstars” to a subset of the 1% most productive Wikipedia contributors. Comparison with the control group shows that receiving a barnstar increases productivity by 60% and makes contributors six times more likely to receive additional barnstars from other community members, revealing that informal rewards significantly impact individual effort.
Acoustic environment identification using blind de-reverberation

Apart from the actual signal content, a digital audio recording has various artifacts and distortions due to multiple reflection of sound and other activities in the environment which produce background noise. One such parameter which results in artifacts in the audio recording is the acoustic reverberation. This reverberation depends on the room geometry. This paper describes a methodology to extract the reverberation from the audio recording which can assist in identifying the environment in which the recording was done. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients are used as features while the multi-class Support vector machine (SVM) is used for classification of different environments. The Hand-Clap impulsive model was used to find the room impulse response of each environment. The performance was evaluated with six different environment and with five recordings in each environment.
Photoactivated Photofrin II: Astrocytic Swelling Precedes Endothelial Injury in Rat Brain

Light activation of circulating hematoporphyrin derivatives has been used in the treatment of selected brain tumors. The effects of this photodynamic therapy on the non-neoplastic, adjacent brain tissue are incompletely characterized. We studied in adult Fisher rats the time-dependent (1 hour to 7 days) effects of photoactivated Photofrin II. Our protocol was comparable to that used in the treatment of human brain tumors. Structural and functional changes spread from the treatment surface and from the center to the periphery to involve the entire cerebral cortex exposed under a 5 mm craniectomy. The sequential changes spreading from the surface to the deepest cortical layer involve first astrocytes (1 hour), then endothelial cells and, ultimately, neurons. Thrombi were first noted in the microvasculature after 18 hours and coagulation necrosis of the entire areaat risk occurred only after 48 hours. The results suggest that the photosensitizing agent crosses the intact blood-brain barrier and enters the astrocytic compartment where it becomes cytotoxic upon light activation. A comparison between the focal brain lesions of photodynamic therapy and those induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion suggests that cell damage evolves along different paths in these two forms of brain injury.
INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY AND TRADE IN SELECTED COUNTRIES: THE DYNAMIC PANEL DATA APPROACH

The purpose of this article was to investigate the effectiveness of institutional quality on the volume of trade in middle-income and high-income groups in selected countries using panel data. The Results of the estimation using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) in selected countries for the period 2002-2010 shows that the institutional quality has positive and significant effect on the openness in high-income selected countries. As well, the results confirm that institutional quality has negative and significant effect on the openness in selected middle-income countries
Knowledge Representation for Computer-Aided Planning of Controlled Clinical Trials: the PATriCIa Project

The main thesis of the PATriCIa project is that a knowledge-based system can provide efficient and reliable support for biometricians as well as physicians involved in planning of controlled clinical trials, resulting in a higher quality of medical research. Structure and contents of study protocols are analyzed, and an object-oriented method for formally representing biometric knowledge is proposed. A study protocol can be generated from this formal representation. The programming language Prolog is used to realize the system based on a blackboard architecture. It is concluded that the knowledge representation method developed in the PATriCIa project is well suited for the purpose of generating study protocols for controlled clinical trials.
Chitinophaga qingshengii sp. nov., isolated from weathered rock surface.

A novel mineral-weathering bacterium was isolated from weathered rock (potassic trachyte) surfaces collected from Nanjing (Jiangsu, PR China). Cells of strain JN246(T) were Gram-stain-negative, rod-shaped and non-motile. Strain JN246(T) was aerobic, catalase- and oxidase-positive, and grew optimally at 28 °C and pH 7.0. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, strain JN246(T) belonged to the genus Chitinophaga and the closest phylogenetic relatives were Chitinophaga eiseniae YC6729(T) (98.5% 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity), Chitinophaga terrae KP01(T) (96.8%), and Chitinophaga jiangningensis JN53(T) (96.3 %). The major respiratory quinone was MK-7 and the major polyamine was homospermidine. The major fatty acids were iso-C15:0, C16:1ω5c, C16:0 and iso-C17:0 3-OH. The polar lipid profile of strain JN246(T) consisted of phosphatidylethanolamine, unknown aminolipids and unknown lipids. The genomic DNA G+C content of strain JN246(T) was 48.8 mol%. Based on the low level of DNA-DNA relatedness of strain JN246(T) (ranging from 22.6% to 42.4%) to the type strains of other species of the genus Chitinophaga and unique phenotypic characteristics, strain JN246(T) represents a novel species of the genus Chitinophaga, for which the name Chitinophaga qingshengii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JN246(T) ( = CCTCC AB 2014201(T) = JCM 30026(T)).
Are Two Heads Better than One: The Multi-Authority Form and Organizational Adaptation

The multi-authority form is a type of organization where subordinates report to multiple superiors and superiors share authority over their subordinates. While those forms are quite common among modern organizations, research on such forms offers conflicting findings. These conflicting findings, in turn, suggest the need for greater understanding of the mechanisms through which these complex hierarchies operate. We create an explicit agent-based model where organizational adaptation is guided by a coupled search, with superiors integrating efforts of interdependent organizational units and their subordinates pursuing specialization within those units. We identify the specific mechanisms which make the multi-authority form the preferred option when specialization and integration are both important. The traditional hierarchy is, in turn, shown to be superior at integrating interdependent units, but at a cost of local specialization.