Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of commercial superplasticizers on Cl − ion partitioning in OPC mortar and its implications for the corrosion of steel embedded in concrete

The concentrations of soluble Cl− ions and commercial superplasticizers in ordinary Portland cement mortar have been determined from pore fluid extractions. Samples were cured at 40°C for up to 180 days. During the curing the superplasticizer levels fall to around 10% of their initial concentrations within 90 days. Chloride ions react weakly with the cement; however, the addition of superplasticizer produces a marked decrease in Cl ion concentrations in pore fluid, suggesting that chlorination of the superplasticizer (or its degradation products) is occurring, accompanied by precipitation or adsorption of the organic admixture by cement hydration products. Partial chloride removal from the aqueous phase is accompanied by a decrease in the corrosion rates of embedded mild steel, suggesting that chemical factors within superplasticized cement paste may play a useful role in controlling chloride-induced corrosion.
Properties and Implementation of Jeffreys’s Prior in Binomial Regression Models

We study several theoretical properties of Jeffreys’s prior for binomial regression models. We show that Jeffreys’s prior is symmetric and unimodal for a class of binomial regression models. We characterize the tail behavior of Jeffreys’s prior by comparing it with the multivariate t and normal distributions under the commonly used logistic, probit, and complementary log–log regression models. We also show that the prior and posterior normalizing constants under Jeffreys’s prior are linear transformation-invariant in the covariates. We further establish an interesting theoretical connection between the Bayes information criterion and the induced dimension penalty term using Jeffreys’s prior for binomial regression models with general links in variable selection problems. Moreover, we develop an importance sampling algorithm for carrying out prior and posterior computations under Jeffreys’s prior. We analyze a real data set to illustrate the proposed methodology.
Modification of Proteins In Vitro by Physiological Levels of Glucose

Hyperglycemic conditions of diabetes accelerate protein modifications by glucose leading to the accumulation of advanced glycation end-products (AGEs). We have investigated the conversion of protein-Amadori intermediate to protein-AGE and the mechanism of its inhibition by pyridoxamine (PM), a potent AGE inhibitor that has been shown to prevent diabetic complications in animal models. During incubation of proteins with physiological diabetic concentrations of glucose, PM prevented the degradation of the protein glycation intermediate identified as fructosyllysine (Amadori) by 13C NMR using [2-13C]-enriched glucose. Subsequent removal of glucose and PM led to conversion of protein-Amadori to AGE Nϵ-carboxymethyllysine (CML). We utilized this inhibition of post-Amadori reactions by PM to isolate protein-Amadori intermediate and to study the inhibitory effect of PM on its degradation to protein-CML. We first tested the hypothesis that PM blocks Amadori-to-CML conversion by interfering with the catalytic role of redox metal ions that are required for this glycoxidative reaction. Support for this hypothesis was obtained by examining structural analogs of PM in which its known bidentate metal ion binding sites were modified and by determining the effect of endogenous metal ions on PM inhibition. We also tested the alternative hypothesis that the inhibitory mechanism involves formation of covalent adducts between PM and protein-Amadori. However, our 13C NMR studies demonstrated that PM does not react with the Amadori. Because the mechanism of interference with redox metal catalysis is operative under the conditions closely mimicking the diabetic state, it may contribute significantly to PM efficacy in preventing diabetic complications in vivo. Inhibition of protein-Amadori degradation by PM also provides a simple procedure for the isolation of protein-Amadori intermediate, prepared at physiological levels of glucose for relevancy, to study both the biological effects and the chemistry of post-Amadori pathways of AGE formation.
Estimation of Three- and Four-Element Windkessel Parameters Using Subspace Model Identification

A windkessel model is widely used to operationalize vascular characteristics. In this paper, we employ a noniterative subspace model identification (SMI) algorithm to estimate parameters in a three- and four-element windkessel model by application of physical foreknowledge. Simulation data of the systemic circulation were used to investigate systematic and random errors in the parameter estimations. Results were compared with different methods as proposed in the literature: one closed-loop and two iterative methods for the three-element model, and one iterative method for the four-element model. For the three-element model, no significant systematic errors were observed using SMI. Concerning random errors, SMI appeared more robust in parameter estimations compared with the other methods ( P <; 0.05 for a signal-to-noise ratio of 18 dB). For the four-element model, a significant systematic error in the estimate of the arterial inertance L was observed (P = 0.011). However, for all methods, an increasing number of outliers in parameter estimates were observed at increased noise levels. These outliers were almost exclusive due to errors in estimates of L. In conclusion, with SMI physical parameters can mathematically be derived by application of physiological foreknowledge. For a three-element windkessel model, SMI appeared a very robust method to estimate parameters. However, application to a four-element windkessel model was less accurate because of low identifiability of L. Therefore, based on the simulation results, the use of the four-element windkessel model is questionable.
A Study on Rotary Expanding Process of Large-Diameter Hot-Rolled Seamless Gas Cylinder with Finite Element Analysis

This paper expounds the application of rotary expanding process to manufacture the large-diameter hot-rolled seamless gas cylinder. 3D drawing software CATIA-V5 is applied to build 3d models of steel tube and rolling tools. Deformation feature of rotary expanding process is analyzed by using MSC.Marc FEA (finite element analysis) software to simulate the rolling process. As a result, it provides a scientific theory for optimizing the rotary expanding process and improving the quality of steel tube. It proposes a novel method to calculate the wall thickness uniformity after finite element analysis. Marc’s second development function and FORTRAN software’s extracting finite element node coordinates function are applied to calculate the wall thickness uniformity. The rotary expanding process can control the wall thickness uniformity well. The wall thickness uniformity of steel tube after rolling is simulated well by using MSC.Marc FEA software, which can help the technologist to predict the influence of wall thickness uniformity owing to the change of process design, and to provide guidance for production.
A new scheme for touchless fingerprint recognition system

Fingerprint-based recognition systems are widely used in the field of biometrics. Most of the fingerprint sensors developed so far acquire fingerprint images through the surface of a solid plate, which degrades the recognition performance due to deformations. These deformations are caused by the pressure of the physical contact that is costly and hard to estimate. A touchless fingerprint recognition system is devised using a camera sensor to resolve this problem. However, this system raises some new problems, such as defocusing, low ridge-valley contrast, 3D-to-2D mapping, and so forth. Adequate solutions are discussed by introducing modified steps to the algorithm. Our proposed system is compared with a primitive touchless sensor with no manipulation and the algorithm of the preceding touch-based system. Future work is suggested.
A robust sensor-selection method for P300 brain–computer interfaces

A brain–computer interface (BCI) is a specific type of human–computer interface that enables direct communication between human and computer through decoding of brain activity. As such, event-related potentials like the P300 can be obtained with an oddball paradigm whose targets are selected by the user. This paper deals with methods to reduce the needed set of EEG sensors in the P300 speller application. A reduced number of sensors yields more comfort for the user, decreases installation time duration, may substantially reduce the financial cost of the BCI setup and may reduce the power consumption for wireless EEG caps. Our new approach to select relevant sensors is based on backward elimination using a cost function based on the signal to signal-plus-noise ratio, after some spatial filtering. We show that this cost function selects sensors' subsets that provide a better accuracy in the speller recognition rate during the test sessions than selected subsets based on classification accuracy. We validate our selection strategy on data from 20 healthy subjects.
Magneto-dieletric properties of bismuth substituted barium hexaferrite

The work contained within this thesis seeks to address the dielectric and magnetic properties of bismuth substituted barium hexaferrite (composition BaBixFe12-xO19 where x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8, 1.0 and 1.5) across a broad frequency spectrum. This material is potentially of interest in antenna applications (specifically a dielectric resonator antenna) where high permittivity and permeability materials can be exploited to physically minimize the size of antenna devices. At low frequencies (20Hz - 3MHz) LCR meter based analysis was used to investigate the capacitance and inductance of the materials. The highest measured permittivity at 1MHz was Er = 86.18 - 9.910j, tanδ = 0.11. High frequency (45MHz - 20GHz) permittivity was investigated using a vector network analyser (VNA) and coaxial probe. The highest recorded permittivity at 2.45GHz was Er = 14.69 - 1.664j, tanδ = 0:08. A link between substitution level and permittivity and substitution level and inductance was made at either 1MHz or 2.45GHz. The homogeneity of the samples was explored using a near- field permittivity sensor. This showed small localized variations of permittivity across the surface but not significant enough to adversely effect bulk measurements. A dielectric resonator antenna was fabricated using a bismuth substituted barium hexaferrite sample. Resonant frequencies were identified at 6.6, 9.55 and 13.6GHz and radiation patterns for the system showed agreement with published theoretical results. This confirmed the suitability of the material in this application as a high permittivity material with relatively low loss. This thesis contributes to scientific knowledge by characterising a broad range of bismuth composition materials across a wide frequency range, investigating the link between permittivity/inductance and doping level and presenting full results. The material has also been characterised using a near-field permittivity technique and used to fabricated a dielectric resonator antenna which have not previously been undertaken.
P‐129: Fast Switching of a Vertically‐Aligned Liquid Crystal Cell by Forming Polymer Networks at a Low Temperature

We propose a method for fast switching of a vertical alignment (VA) liquid crystal (LC) cell by forming polymer networks at a low temperature. We found by experiment that the response time of a VA cell can be reduced by low-temperature curing. The turn-off time of the fabricated VA cell was reduced by 54% when the polymers were cured at -20°C.
Enhanced Differentiation of Isolates of Candida Albicans using a Modified Resistogram Method

Summary: The method described is based on differences in the resistance of C. albicans isolates to five chemicals (sodium selenite, boric acid, cetrimide, sodium periodate, silver nitrate) used at critical concentrations. Of 66 isolates tested on two occasions, 61 were assigned to the same strain on re‐testing. Five isolates differed in their resistance to one chemical. Of the 32 potential strains that can be distinguished, 16 were found among 198 oral isolates from 22 normal subjects sampled at 1 month intervals for 12 months. Particular strains were found to persist in individual subjects and strains with identical resistograms were found in related subjects.
Combined and independent cytotoxicity of sodium hypochlorite, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and chlorhexidine.

AIM To evaluate the capacity of commonly used root canal irrigants to induce cytotoxic effects, when applied singly or in combination. The hypothesis tested was that the irrigants were less cytotoxic when applied in combination than independently. METHODOLOGY MRC5 cells were grown as monolayer cultures at 37 °C in an atmosphere containing 5% CO2 in air and 100% relative humidity. Cells were exposed to sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl), ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), chlorhexidine (CHX) and their combinations (NaOCl/EDTA, NaOCl/CHX, EDTA/CHX) in serial dilutions. Growth medium was Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium supplemented with 10% foetal bovine serum and antibiotics and was used as control. The effect on cell survival was estimated after 6 and 24 h of exposure by means of the sulforhodamine B assay, in reference to controls. Dose-response curves were plotted, and 50% inhibitory doses (IC50 ) were subjected to statistical analysis (anova and post hoc comparison test; P < 0.05). Analysis of cell survival and interaction of the irrigants was performed using CalcuSyn dose effect analyzer software to calculate a combination index (CI). RESULTS The tested irrigants were cytotoxic in dose- and time-dependent manner. CHX was the most cytotoxic irrigant tested, followed by NaOCl, whilst EDTA was the least cytotoxic irrigant tested. The difference between CHX and NaOCl was significant (P < 0.05) as well as between NaOCl and EDTA (P < 0.05). Based on CalcuSyn modelling, a mainly antagonistic effect was recorded with NaOCl/CHX and NaOCl/EDTA combinations. The combination EDTA/CHX had an additive to antagonistic effect. CONCLUSIONS CHX was significantly more cytotoxic than NaOCl and EDTA. NaOCl was significantly more cytotoxic than EDTA. The combined action of irrigants did not produce a significant increase in their cytotoxicity.
Akt/PKB-mediated phosphorylation of Twist1 promotes tumor metastasis via mediating cross-talk between PI3K/Akt and TGF-β signaling axes.

UNLABELLED Metastatic breast tumor cells display an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) that increases cell motility, invasion, and dissemination. Although the transcription factor Twist1 has been shown to contribute to EMT and cancer metastasis, the signaling pathways regulating Twist1 activity are poorly understood. Here, we show that Twist1 is ubiquitously phosphorylated in 90% of 1,532 invasive human breast tumors. Akt/protein kinase B (PKB)-mediated Twist1 phosphorylation promotes EMT and breast cancer metastasis by modulating its transcriptional target TGF-β2, leading to enhanced TGF-β receptor signaling, which in turn maintains hyperactive phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt signaling. Preventing phosphorylation of Twist1, as well as depletion of TGF-β2, significantly impaired the metastatic potential of cancer cells in vivo, indicating a key role of phosphorylated Twist1 (phospho-Twist1) in mediating cross-talk between the PI3K/Akt and TGF-β/Smad signaling axes that supports metastatic tumor development. Our results describe a novel signaling event linking PI3K/Akt hyperactivation in tumor cells to direct regulation of Twist1 activation and tumor metastasis. SIGNIFICANCE We identified the first phospho-Twist1 transcriptional target TGF-β2, which mediates cross-talk between PI3K/Akt and TGF-β signaling and promotes tumor metastasis. Our results thus illustrate a direct role of PI3K/Akt signaling in metastatic cancer development and suggest that Twist1 phosphorylation could be a potential therapeutic target in clinical cancer treatment.
Data-driven PMC and Bayesian learning integration for fast model adaptation in noisy conditions

In this paper, we present an integration of Data Driven Parallel Model Combination (DPMC) and Bayesian Learning into a fast and accurate framework which can be easily integrated in standard training and recognition systems. The original DPMC technique has been enhanced to avoid any modi(cid:12)cation of the acoustic models, as required by the original method. The Bayesian Learning estimation has been used in order to specialize a general noisy speech model (the a priori model) to the target acoustic environment, where the DPMC-generated observations are used as adaptation data. Thanks to these innovations, the proposed method can achieve better performance than the original DPMC, while consuming far less computational resources.
On exponential consensus for time-varying non-cooperative nonlinear networks

In this paper we present new results on asymptotic consensus for continuous-time nonlinear time varying networks. A key feature in the following is that the monotonicity property (i.e. cooperativity) is not required, unlike most of existing literature on the subject. Additionally, we extend the use of a “State Frozen” concept [16] and integral connectivity to this non-trivial scenario, and give condition for consensus with the additional merit to be frozen in state variables and therefore of simpler verification. Finally, we give an estimate of the exponential rate of convergence towards the agreement manifold.
Thermal insulation properties of multifunctional metal composite fabrics

The thermal properties of metal composite fabrics (MCFs) are governed by the high thermal conductivity and low emissivity of the metal component. Metal type, metal yarn density, metal mesh openness and layering arrangement of the MCFs were varied to study how they affect the thermal insulation properties of the fabrics. Three types of thermal resistance (solid to solid, solid to convective air, and stagnant air to convective air) were measured. All MCFs tested showed higher solid to air thermal resistance compared to non-metal fabric. The solid to air thermal resistance of the MCFs showed either higher or lower values than those predicted from the metal content of the MCFs, depending on the openness aspect ratio of the metal mesh. The solid to air thermal resistance of stainless steel composite fabric was greatly enhanced by proper layering with non-metal fabrics. The results showed that the thermal insulation properties of MCFs can be improved by modifying the metal content, metal mesh openness and layering arrangement of MCFs with other fabrics.
Genetic Immunisation by Liver Stage Antigen 3 Protects Chimpanzees against Malaria despite Low Immune Responses

Background The true interest of genetic immunisation might have been hastily underestimated based on overall immunogenicity data in humans and lack of parallelism with other, more classical immunisation methods. Principal Findings Using malaria Liver Stage Antigen-3 (LSA-3), we report that genetic immunization induces in chimpanzees, the closest relative of humans, immune responses which are as scarce as those reported using other DNA vaccines in humans, but which nonetheless confer strong, sterile and reproducible protection. The pattern was consistent in 3/4 immunized apes against two high dose sporozoite challenges performed as late as 98 and 238 days post-immunization and by a heterologous strain. Conclusions These results should, in our opinion, lead to a revisiting of the value of this unusual means of immunisation, using as a model a disease, malaria, in which virulent challenges of volunteers are ethically acceptable.
Application Layer Multicast for Efficient Grid File Transfer

Multicast communication model can be e(cid:14)ciently exploited by grid systems to improve the performance of many basic operations, like (cid:12)le transmission, replica management or resource discovery. However, IP multicast presents important limitations to be adopted in grid environments, since it is not fully supported in the Internet and is incompatible with TCP-based applications. In the last few years, Application Layer Multicast (ALM) have emerged as an alternative technology to develop one-to-many and many-to-many applications, where multicast functionality is handled by the end hosts, instead of by the network routers. While ALM has been proved to be e(cid:14)cient for streaming audio/video, content distribution, or videoconferencing applications, its utilization in grid environments has not been deeply explored. In this paper we analyze the application of ALM techniques to improve the e(cid:14)ciency of (cid:12)le transfer operations in computational grids. Results will prove that ALM can obtain an important reduction of overall transmission time, in comparison with unicast transmission, and a better balance of network tra(cid:14)c among participants.
Functional Characterization of the Bari1 Transposition System

The transposons of the Bari family are mobile genetic elements widespread in the Drosophila genus. However, despite a broad diffusion, virtually no information is available on the mechanisms underlying their mobility. In this paper we report the functional characterization of the Bari elements transposition system. Using the Bari1 element as a model, we investigated the subcellular localization of the transposase, its physical interaction with the transposon, and its catalytic activity. The Bari1 transposase localized in the nucleus and interacted with the terminal sequences of the transposon both in vitro and in vivo, however, no transposition activity was detected in transposition assays. Profiling of mRNAs expressed by the transposase gene revealed the expression of abnormal, internally processed transposase transcripts encoding truncated, catalytically inactive transposase polypeptides. We hypothesize that a post-transcriptional control mechanism produces transposase-derived polypeptides that effectively repress transposition. Our findings suggest further clues towards understanding the mechanisms that control transposition of an important class of mobile elements, which are both an endogenous source of genomic variability and widely used as transformation vectors/biotechnological tools.
A Proposed Framework for Analysing Security Ceremonies

The concept of a ceremony as an extension of network and security protocols was introduced by Ellison. There are no currently available methods or tools to check correctness of the properties in such ceremonies. The potential application for security ceremonies are vast and fill gaps left by strong assumptions in security protocols. Assumptions include the provision of cryptographic keys and correct human interaction. Moreover, no tools are available to check how knowledge is distributed among human peers nor their interaction with other humans and computers in these scenarios. The key component of this position paper is the formalisation of human knowledge distribution in security ceremonies. By properly enlisting human expectations and interactions in security protocols, we can minimise the ill-described assumptions we usually see failing. Taking such issues into account when designing or verifying protocols can help us to better understand where protocols are more prone to break due to human constraints.