Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Century-scale simulations of the response of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to a warming climate

We use the BISICLES adaptive mesh ice sheet model to carry out one, two, and three century simulations of the fast-flowing ice streams of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, deploying sub-kilometer resolution around the grounding line since coarser resolution results in substantial underestimation of the response. Each of the simulations begins with a geometry and velocity close to present-day observations, and evolves according to variation in meteoric ice accumulation rates and oceanic ice shelf melt rates. Future changes in accumulation and melt rates range from no change, through anomalies computed by atmosphere and ocean models driven by the E1 and A1B emissions scenarios, to spatially uniform melt rate anomalies that remove most of the ice shelves over a few centuries. We find that variation in the resulting ice dynamics is dominated by the choice of initial conditions and ice shelf melt rate and mesh resolution, although ice accumulation affects the net change in volume above flotation to a similar degree. Given sufficient melt rates, we compute grounding line retreat over hundreds of kilometers in every major ice stream, but the ocean models do not predict such melt rates outside of the Amundsen Sea Embayment until after 2100. Within the Amundsen Sea Embayment the largest single source of variability is the onset of sustained retreat in Thwaites Glacier, which can triple the rate of eustatic sea level rise.
Adaptive Threshold Control for Energy Detection Based Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radios

We study energy detection based spectrum sensing of SU (Secondary User) in cognitive radios. Due to the time varying nature of wireless channels and PU (Primary User) activities, the SINR (Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio) at the SU receiver changes from slot to slot in a time-slotted system. Unlike the conventional energy detector which uses a fixed energy threshold for spectrum sensing, we dynamically adjust the energy threshold according to the SINR. By limiting the average interference to the PU within a target level, the objective is to maximize the SU's average rate using an optimized policy function, which formulates the threshold as a linear increasing function of the SINR. Simulation results show that the SU's average rate can be significantly improved using the optimized function for dynamic threshold control.
How INRIA/IRISA identifies Geographic Location of Videos

In this paper, we describe our approaches and their results as part of the MediaEval 2012 Placing Task evaluation. We present two dierent tag-based techniques. Both rst preselect one or several geographic area of interest and then perform a deeper analysis inside the selected area(s) to return the coordinates more likely to be related with the input tags. In addition, we also implement a content-based method that uses aggregated local images descriptors (VLAD) to nd the video’s visual nearest neighbors and infer its coordinates. In this work we do not use gazetteers or any other external information.
Squirrel: architecture driven resource management

Resource management is critical to guarantee Quality of Service when various stakeholders share the execution environment, such as cloud or mobile environments. In this context, providing management techniques compatible with standard practices, such as component models, is essential. Resource management is often realized through monitoring or process isolation (using virtual machines or system containers). These techniques (i) impose varying levels of overhead depending on the managed resource, and (ii) are applied at different abstraction levels, such as processes, threads or objects. Thus, mapping components to system-level abstractions in the presence of resource management requirements can lead to sub-optimal systems. We propose Squirrel, an approach to tune component deployment and resource management in order to reduce management overhead. At runtime, Squirrel uses an architectural model annotated with resource requirements to guide the mapping of components to system abstractions, providing different resource management capabilities and overhead. We present an implementation of Squirrel, using a Java component framework, and a set of experiments to validate its feasibility and overhead. We show that choosing the right component-to-system mappings at deployment-time reduces performance penalty and/or volatile main memory use.
IFN Regulatory Factor 4 and 8 Promote Ig Light Chain κ Locus Activation in Pre-B Cell Development1

Previous studies have shown that B cell development is blocked at the pre-B cell stage in IFN regulatory factor (IRF)4 (pip) and IRF8 (IFN consensus sequence binding protein) double mutant mice (IRF4,8−/−). In this study, the molecular mechanism by which IRF4,8 regulate pre-B cell development was further investigated. We show that IRF4,8 function in a B cell intrinsic manner to control pre-B cell development. IRF4,8−/− mice expressing a Bcl-2 transgene fail to rescue pre-B cell development, suggesting that the defect in B cell development in IRF4,8−/− mice is not due to a lack of survival signal. IRF4,8−/− pre-B cells display a high proliferation index that may indirectly inhibit the L chain rearrangement. However, forced cell cycle exit induced by IL-7 withdrawal fails to rescue the development of IRF4,8−/− pre-B cells, suggesting that cell cycle exit by itself is not sufficient to rescue the development of IRF4,8−/− pre-B cells and that IRF4,8 may directly regulate the activation of L chain loci. Using retroviral mediated gene transduction, we show that IRF4 and IRF8 function redundantly to promote pre-B cell maturation and the generation of IgM+ B cells. Molecular analysis indicates that IRF4, when expressed in IRF4,8−/− pre-B cells, induces κ germline transcription, enhances V(D)J rearrangement activity at the κ locus, and promotes L chain rearrangement and transcription. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay further reveals that IRF4 expression leads to histone modifications and enhanced chromatin accessibility at the κ locus. Thus, IRF4,8 control pre-B cell development, at least in part, by promoting the activation of the κ locus.
Will climate change increase hybridization risk between potential plant invaders and their congeners in Europe?

Interspecific hybridization can promote invasiveness of alien species. In many regions of the world, public and domestic gardens contain a huge pool of non‐native plants. Climate change may relax constraints on their naturalization and hence facilitate hybridization with related species in the resident flora. Here, we evaluate this possible increase in hybridization risk by predicting changes in the overlap of climatically suitable ranges between a set of garden plants and their congeners in the resident flora.
DECOR: A distributed coordinated resource monitoring system

Network resources are often limited, so how to use them efficiently is an issue that arises in many important scenarios. Many recent proposals rely on a central controller to carefully orchestrate resources across multiple network locations. The central controller gathers network information and relative levels of usage of different resources and calculates optimized task allocation arrangements to maximize some global benefit. Examples of architectures that use this framework include coordinated sampling (cSamp [1]) and redundancy elimination (SmartRE [2]). However, a centralized solution creates practical problems as it is susceptible to overload, and the controller is a single point of failure. In this paper, we present a distributed solution called decor that achieves global optimization based on local information that closes to centralized approaches in terms of performance. In decor, the responsibility of resource monitoring and information gathering is spread among multiple nodes; thus, no single point is overloaded. Allocation of tasks is also done in a similar distributed fashion. decor can easily scale up to large networks, and the partial network failures do not affect DECOR's functioning in other parts of the network. decor can be applied to most of path-based applications. We describe in detail how to apply it to distributed SmartRE and implement it in the Click software router.
Effect of testosterone replacement therapy on vitamin D and FGF-23 levels in congenital hypogonadism.

INTRODUCTION Patients with hypogonadism are at increased risk of cardiac and metabolic diseases and osteoporosis. Vitamin D and Fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF-23) play role in the regulation of bone mineral metabolism and endothelial functions. Low vitamin D levels are reported in hypogonadism, while there is no data about the effect of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). We investigated the effect of TRT on vitamin D and FGF-23 levels along with endothelial functions and insulin resistance in hypogonadal patients. MATERIAL AND METHODS Patients with congenital hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism (CHH) (n=32, age 20.6 ±1.58 years) were enrolled. TRT was implemented in transdermal form. The demographic parameters, FGF-23, 25(OH)D3, Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) levels were measured both before and after TRT. RESULTS After a follow-up period of 3.63±1.33 months, ADMA and FGF-23 levels were significantly increased (p=0.03 and p=0.005 respectively), while the 25(OH)D3 and HOMA-IR index were not significantly changed. The body mass index and waist circumference levels of the patients were also increased (p<0.001 and p=0.02) along with a significant decrease in the HDL cholesterol levels (p=0.006). CONCLUSIONS The results show that a short term TRT increases plasma FGF-23 and ADMA levels, in young, treatment naive patients with CHH. Whether this is an early implication of TRT related adverse effects in this very young and treatment naïve population of CHH is not clear. Future prospective studies are required to find out the long-term effects of TRT on cardio-metabolic morbidity and mortality in this specific population.
Shannon entropy estimation from convergence results in the countable alphabet case

In this paper new results for the Shannon entropy estimation and estimation of distributions, consistently in information divergence, are presented in the countable alphabet case. Sufficient conditions for the entropy convergence are adopted, including scenarios with both finitely and infinitely supported distributions. From this approach, new estimates, strong consistency results and rate of convergences are derived for various plug-in histogram-based schemes.
Robust model predictive control for nonlinear discrete‐time systems

This paper describes a model predictive control (MPC) algorithm for the solution of a state‐feedback robust control problem for discrete‐time nonlinear systems. The control law is obtained through the solution of a finite‐horizon dynamic game and guarantees robust stability in the face of a class of bounded disturbances and/or parameter uncertainties. A simulation example is reported to show the applicability of the method. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nonuniform Changes in MRI Measurements of the Thigh Muscles After Two Hamstring Strengthening Exercises

Abstract Mendiguchia, J, Garrues, MA, Cronin, JB, Contreras, B, Los Arcos, A, Malliaropoulos, N, Maffulli, N, and Idoate, F. Nonuniform changes in MRI measurements of the thigh muscles after two hamstring strengthening exercises. J Strength Cond Res 27(3): 574–581, 2013. Although many different hamstring strengthening exercises exist, the effect on site specific activation of these exercises on different muscles of the leg is unclear. This study investigated the effects of the eccentric leg curl (LC) and lunge (L) exercises on the biceps femoris long head (BFl), biceps femoris short head (BFs), semitendinosus (ST), semimembranosus (SM), and adductor magnus (AM). Each leg of 11 male professional soccer players was randomly assigned to an LC or L exercise protocol (3 sets of 6 repetitions). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of the subjects' thighs were performed before and 48 hours after the intervention. Fifteen axial scans of the thigh interspaced by a distance of 1/15 right femur length (Lf) were obtained. The fMRI data were analyzed for signal intensity changes. No significant changes were observed in absolute short tau inversion recovery values for the SM and BFs. Significant changes for the ST (∼21–45%) from sections 4 to 10, AM (∼2–13%) at section 4, and BFl (∼ −3 vs. 8%) at section 7 were noted. LC exercises load all the regions of the ST muscle. The L exercises load the proximal regions of the BFl and AM. These findings may have relevance when designing protocols for prevention and rehabilitation of hamstring injuries.
Fatigue and Damage in Structural Materials Studied by X-Ray Tomography

This paper reviews progress using X-ray computed tomography to study damage accumulation. Since its introduction, X-ray microtomography has been used to diagnose the presence of damage. In this review, a wide range of damage-accumulation mechanisms are covered including cavitation, fracture, microcracking, fatigue cracking, and stress corrosion cracking. In this regard, the advantages of attenuation and phase contrast imaging are discussed. This review includes both measurements of damage accumulation, taken postmortem, and the incremental monitoring of damage-accumulation processes during life (sometimes termed four-dimensional tomography). In addition to the qualitative diagnostic studies, the quantitative analysis of tomography images to extract key failure parameters is examined.
Casablanca: designing social communication devices for the home

The Casablanca project explored how media space concepts could be incorporated into households and family life. This effort included prototypes built for the researchers' own home use, field studies of households, and consumer testing of design concepts. A number of previously unreported consumer preferences and concerns were uncovered and incorporated into several original prototypes, most notably ScanBoard and the Intentional Presence Lamp. Casablanca also resulted in conclusions about designing household social communication devices.
Intelligent Data Mining for TurboGenerator Predictive Maintenance : An Approach in Real-World

This paper presents the development of a supervision system for predictive maintenance and diagnosis of turbo-generators. The aim of the developed system is to verify the degradation conditions of TermoNorte generators. Initially, a system for extracting features of the turbo-generator operational database has been developed to detect possible problems that cause premature fails. The system has been divided in two parts. The first one is a data acquisition system directly connected to the generator in order to sample some operational variables. The second part concerns an intelligent data mining, based on Rough Sets Theory, into the database involving the supervision system variables, to use the existing historic data to perform analysis of the problems and possible causes.
Ultrasonic methods for measuring liquid viscosity and volume percent of solids

This report describes two ultrasonic techniques under development at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in support of the tank-waste transport effort undertaken by the U.S. Department of Energy in treating low-level nuclear waste. The techniques are intended to provide continuous on-line measurements of waste viscosity and volume percent of solids in a waste transport line. The ultrasonic technique being developed for waste-viscosity measurement is based on the patented ANL viscometer. Focus of the viscometer development in this project is on improving measurement accuracy, stability, and range, particularly in the low-viscosity range (<30 cP). A prototype instrument has been designed and tested in the laboratory. Better than 1% accuracy in liquid density measurement can be obtained by using either a polyetherimide or polystyrene wedge. To measure low viscosities, a thin-wedge design has been developed and shows good sensitivity down to 5 cP. The technique for measuring volume percent of solids is based on ultrasonic wave scattering and phase velocity variation. This report covers a survey of multiple scattering theories and other phenomenological approaches. A theoretical model leading to development of an ultrasonic instrument for measuring volume percent of solids is proposed, and preliminary measurement data are presented.
Urochordate serpins are Classified into Six Groups Encoded by Exon-Intron Structures, Microsynteny and Bayesian Phylogenetic Analyses

Members of serpin superfamily are involved in wide array of cellular processes to control proteolytic activities of eukaryotic organisms. Vertebrate serpins are extensively studied and reported to be classified into six groups (V1-V6) based on gene structures. However, there is no study conducted for serpins in urochordates (the closest living invertebrates related to vertebrates) to date. To unravel further the phylogenetic history of serpin genes, we characterized serpin genes from two urochordates (Ciona intestinalis and Ciona savignyi). There are 11 and 5 serpins in the C. intestinalis and C. savignyi, respectively. The exon/intron structures and genomic locus comparisons together with sequence phylogenetic analysis, suggested that urochordate serpins are classified into six groups (U1-U6), different from six groups (V1-V6) of vertebrate serpins. Human α1-antitrypsin shared lower sequence identities and similarities with urochordates serpins ranged from 14-29% and 30-49%, respectively. Based on protein sequences, genes and genomic architectures, we conclude that these two urochordates do not contain a single copy of genuine ortholog of the vertebrate serpins.
User-assisted mesh simplification

During the last decade, many simplification methods have been proposed to generate multi-resolution meshes for real-time applications. Practitioners have found that these methods alone usually fail to produce satisfactory result when models of very low polygon count are desired. This is due to the fact that the existing methods take no semantic or functional metric into account, and moreover, each error metric has its own strength and weakness. In this paper, we propose a user-assisted mesh simplification framework that allows users to improve the quality of simplified meshes derived by any error metric. The framework consists of two stages. The first stage employs a weighting scheme that allows users to refine a unsatisfactory region to achieve a user-specified resolution. The second stage is a local refinement scheme aiming to provide a user-guided fine-tune to recover local sharp features. The proposed weighting scheme differs from the previous approaches in that the weights are used to directly reorder the edge collapsing sequence rather than weighting the collapsing cost. Such a direct reordering mechanism ensures a predictable increase of resolution in the selected region, and is both error-metric and resolution independent.
Fatigue Life Evaluation of ERW Joint in the Pipe Using Monte-Carlo Simulation

The optimum welding condition for the input power was experimentally determined using the ERW simulator. The optimum condition derived from the nondestructive defect inspection and impact energy was the heat input power of 250kW with normalizing treatment at 900oC. In order to evaluate the fatigue life of ERW pipes, fatigue crack growth test for base metal and weld joint with the optimum condition were performed. As stress intensity factor range ( DKS) increased, the fatigue crack propagation rate (da/dN) of the weld joint became slower than that of the base metal. The fatigue life of ERW pipe was statistically estimated using Monte-Carlo simulation with the standard deviation of material constants (C and m) of the Paris law in the specimen. The fatigue life at failure probability PF = 50% is 2.3×105 cycle. Since the fatigue test of pipe in field has a lot of difficulties due to cost, equipment and time, the life derived from the simulation was identified using the common durability simulation software.
Design and fabrication of Mems-based, vibration powered energy harvesting device using electrostatic transduction

Due to size effects, the microtechnologies that are used to manufacture micro-sensors, allowed a drastic reduction of electrical power consumption. This feature contributed to the emergence of the concept of autonomous sensors, which have the ability to take the energy needed for their operation from the environment where they are located. Among the different energy sources, our choice was made on ambient mechanical vibrations. The electromechanical conversion is done within a transducer integrated with a micromechanical structure. In this work, we have designed and fabricated an electrostatic transducer based on silicon-glass technology, which required the development of a dedicated deep etching process. The device was tested experimentally and we have obtained a conversion of mechanical energy into electrical energy, corresponding to a power of 61 nW, with a device whose surface area is only 66 mm². This device is the first miniaturized silicon converter based on electrostatic transduction which does not use an electret
Minimally invasive surgery for pneumothorax: The evidence, changing practice and current opinion

Spontaneous pneumothorax is a common problem and in patients at risk of recurrence, excision of the source of the air leak and pleurodesis is very effective in reducing further episodes. In the 15 years since the introduction of video assisted thoracic surgery (VATS), practice has changed towards this much less invasive procedure and away from thoracotomy. The evidence from randomized trials, non-randomized comparative studies, the consensus of surgeons and the documented change in practice from registry data are concordant. Unless there are specific clinical indications for more invasive surgery, it would seem reasonable for VATS to become the recommended approach.
A Cloud collaborative approach for managing patients wellness

Patients with chronic diseases or people with special health care needs are typically monitored by various health experts that address the problem from several perspectives. These experts usually do not interact directly between them; therefore, the instructions given to the patient by one of them are provided disregarding advices and instructions provided by the others. The collaboration between different health experts in a real context is mandatory to ensure the proper monitoring of the patient. This kind of collaboration, supported by technology, benefits the users' health condition and helps the patient achieve their goals in terms of wellbeing. This paper presents an approach for collaborative management of events related to activity supervisions and monitoring of these patients types. It also introduces a model and a mobile application to support this collaborative work.
On the Capacity and Scalability of Wireless Mesh Networks

Typical wireless mesh networks (WMNs) represent a hybrid solution between infrastructure networks and ad-hoc meshing, and are often regarded as a low-cost alternative technology for last-mile broadband Internet access. In the WMNs each node potentially acts as a relay, forwarding traffic generated by other nodes. However, the theoretical framework that determines the performance of WMN is still illegible. Derived from the existing results, this paper investigates the capacity bottlenecks on WMNs and then provides mathematical models for the cumulative capacity with the user sending probability and the number of forward nodes that correspond to the payload, the density of nodes and the number of nodes. The models are the very accurate and reliable in predicting the scalability and the cumulative throughput capacity.