Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Moving towards Sustainability: Road Grades and On-Road Emissions of Heavy-Duty Vehicles—A Case Study

On-road vehicle emissions are one of the major sources of transport emissions. As a key design factor, road grades (or road slopes) have significant effects on on-road vehicle emissions, particularly on Heavy-Duty Vehicles (HDVs). However, the research into the relationship between road grades and on-road vehicle emissions is very rare in China. Taking a road network in Taiyuan, China, as a study area, this paper explored the influences of road grades on carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbon (HC), and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions of HDVs. Combining emissions data collected by Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS) with Vehicle Specific Power (VSP), we developed an emission rate model of HDVs. Then, we integrated it with the traffic simulation model VISSIM to attain the emissions of HDVs on nine scenarios differentiated by road grades. The results showed that the three emissions are found to be highly correlated to road grades, among which the CO emissions are most sensitive to the change of road grades and the HC emissions least. Compared to the emissions at 0% grade, the emissions at 4% grade will be boosted from 39.0% to 60.6%. The CO and NOx emissions increase with the road grades in all nine scenarios, while the variations of HC emissions in different scenarios were complicated. The findings of this research will provide insights for policy-makers, scholars, and practitioners into strategies for improving road design to reduce traffic emissions and develop sustainable transportation in China.
Preparation of surface enhanced Raman substrate and its characterization

Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) is a fast, convenient and highly sensitive detection technique, and preparing the good effect and repeatable substrate is the key to realize the trace amount and quantitative detection in the field of food safety detection. In this paper, a surface enhanced Raman substrate based on submicrometer silver particles structure was prepared by chemical deposition method, and characterized its structure and optical properties.
High molecular weight adiponectin is not associated with incident coronary heart disease in older women: a nested prospective case-control study.

CONTEXT Adiponectin levels appear weakly linked to incident vascular disease, but the high molecular weight (HMW) fraction may be more relevant. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to test whether HMW adiponectin, the key biologically active fraction, is linked to incident coronary heart disease (CHD) events. DESIGN, PARTICIPANTS, AND MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We assessed the association between HMW adiponectin (measured by ELISA) and CHD risk in a prospective (4-yr) case-control study nested within the British Women's Heart and Health Study. All women were postmenopausal. SETTING Women were seen in a primary care setting. RESULTS Among both cases (n = 167) and controls (n = 333), HMW adiponectin positively correlated with age and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and inversely correlated with waist to hip ratio, fasting insulin, fasting glucose, homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance scores, C-reactive protein, and triglycerides, in similar fashion to total adiponectin. The age-adjusted relative risk ratio for a doubling of HMW adiponectin was 0.96 (95% confidence interval, 0.78-1.18), and adjustment for any of the potential confounding or mediating variables did not substantively alter this. Additional adjustments for childhood social class, alcohol consumption, hormone replacement therapy use, statin, aspirin, or blood pressure medication did not alter the null association. When we examined the effect of HMW adiponectin by quarters of its distribution, there was no evidence of any associations (P trend = 0.71). There was also no association of the ratio of HMW adiponectin to total adiponectin with CHD risk; age-adjusted relative risk per doubling of the ratio was 1.10 (95% confidence interval, 0.80-1.50). CONCLUSIONS Despite associations with total adiponectin and insulin resistance, our data go against any apparent association between HMW adiponectin levels and incident CHD events.
Stereo Matching by Joint Energy Minimization

In [18], Mozerov et al. propose to perform stereo matching as a two-step energy minimization problem. For the first step they solve a fully connected MRF model. And in the next step the marginal output is employed as the unary cost for a locally connected MRF model. In this paper we intend to combine the two steps of energy minimization in order to improve stereo matching results. We observe that the fully connected MRF leads to smoother disparity maps, while the locally connected MRF achieves superior results in fine-structured regions. Thus we propose to jointly solve the fully connected and locally connected models, taking both their advantages into account. The joint model is solved by mean field approximations. While remaining efficient, our joint model outperforms the two-step energy minimization approach in both time and estimation error on the Middlebury stereo benchmark v3.
The power of statistical learning: No need for algebraic rules

Traditionally, it has been assumed that rules are necessary to explain language acquisition. Recently, Marcus, Vijayan, Rao, & Vishton (1999) have provided behavioral evidence which they claim can only be explained by invoking algebraic rules. In the first part of this paper, we show that contrary to these claims an existing simple recurrent network model of word segmentation can fit the relevant data without invoking any rules. Importantly, the model closely replicates the experimental conditions, and no changes are made to the model to accommodate the data. The second part provides a corpus analysis inspired by this model, demonstrating that lexical stress changes the basic representational landscape over which statistical learning takes place. This change makes the task of word segmentation easier for statistical learning models, and further obviates the need for lexical stress rules to explain the bias towards trochaic stress patterns in English. Together the connectionist simulations and the corpus analysis show that statistical learning devices are sufficiently powerful to eliminate the need for rules in an important part of language acquisition.
The role of hyaluronan in wound healing

The polysaccharide hyaluronan (HA) (synonyms – hyaluronic acid, hyaluronate) is a versatile, polymorphic, glycosoaminoglycan with vast biological functions. HA is found throughout the body, primarily residing in skin, thus playing an important role in wound healing. Research regarding HA's function has changed over the years, primarily focussing on a particular aspect or function. The contribution of HA in each stage of normal wound healing as well as its clinical wound dressing applications will be examined.
Microstructure versus size: nano/microscale deformation of solute-strengthening Al alloys via pillar compression tests

ABSTRACT Effect of solutes, crystal orientation, sample’s size, and dislocation density on the nano/microscale deformation of solute-strengthening Al alloys has been investigated via pillar compression tests. The Mg-solute-strengthening pillar with dislocation density of 1012 m−2 shows size- and orientation-dependent strength, while the strength of Si-Mg-solute-strengthening pillar with dislocation density of 1013 m−2 is size- and orientation- independent. With increasing the dislocation density, the strength of pillars increased and become size-independent. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT IMPACT STATEMENT Links between the microstructure, sample’s size and nano/microscale plasticity of solute-strengthening Al alloys were made via pillar compression testing. Deformation mechanism at nano/microscale was quantitatively explored.
Full Color Cartoon Image Lossless Compression Based on Region Segment

In accordance with the two-dimensional structural dependence of color cartoon image and the entropy coding theory in data compression, a method of color cartoon image lossless compression by eliminating the structural redundancy is presented. At first it is proved that the entropy of image can be reduced by way of removing the solid region. Then the method of removing the structural redundancy is discussed. The color image is divided into three kinds of region background, solid region and gradient color region. In order to effectively recover data, the improved Freeman chain code and color seed are used to save the removed solid region information. We apply in sequence this method and the entropy coding method to eliminate the structural redundancy and the statistical redundancy for full color cartoon images. Experiments show that the proposed method results in reduction of bit rate by 25% compared to using directly universal methods of image lossless compression.
Ultra-Wideband FSS-Based Antennas

As antennas are indispensable elements in wireless systems, it is necessary to provide UWB antennas suitable for UWB systems. The most proposed UWB antennas have omnidirectional radiation, which provides the wide coverage area that is highly demanded by many conventional UWB applications. However, directional radiation is more beneficial for other UWB applications and it may even be beneficial for the conventional UWB omnidirectional applications in some environments that contain many sources of interference and distorting objects, where the omnidirectional radiation leads to high interference and loss of power in undesirable directions. Consequently, an immense research has addressed the issue of realizing UWB planar antennas with unidirectional radiation characteristics. Basically, the main technique used to create unidirectional radiation patterns is employing cavity-baking reflectors to redirect the back radiation, hence increasing the gain of the radiators. In addition, these reflectors can decouple the mounted radiator from the surroundings that can damage its characteristics. Therefore, we suggest the employment of UWB reflectors to achieve UWB planar antennas with directional radiation. Our research for designing optimal UWB reflectors has led to the investigation in the field of frequency selective surfaces (FSSs), which are valuable struc tures and can be of great interest to a wide range of applications especially UWB applica- tions. Subsequently, the main aim of this chapter is to give a review of the fundamental uses of FSSs in antenna engineering and the basic physical concepts that have been employed to serve the purpose of enhancing antennas’ performances using FSSs with a variety of features and characteristics. Furthermore, it is geared toward the presentation of our proposed UWB FSS-based antennas. First, we use basic FSSs such as the capacitive and its complementary inductive FSSs to design UWB reflectors that can serve improving and stabilizing the gain of UWB antennas. Thereafter, a proposed UWB single-layer FSS is used to serve the same purpose. Then, the FSS is integrated and designed together with UWB radiator, which resulted in lower profile along with good performance.
HPSG-DOP: Towards Exemplar-based HPSG

Data Oriented Parsing (DOP) is an exemplar-based model of language use that processes new input based on past experience by combining structural fragments extracted from a given treebank. In the simplest case these fragments are subparts of simple phrase structure trees (Tree-DOP), each associated with some probability. The approach is attractive in many ways but the impoverished representational basis is a serious drawback from a linguistic point of view. This paper describes the theoretical characteristics of a novel linguistically richer version of DOP based on the Headdriven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) formalism.
Association between cognitive impairments and obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentations following traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT This study examined the association between self-reported obsessive-compulsive spectrum symptomatology and cognitive performance in a sample of patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Twenty-four adults with a moderate-severe TBI accessing a community brain injury rehabilitation service were recruited. Age ranged between 19 and 69 years. Participants completed a battery of neuropsychological tasks assessing memory, executive functioning, and speed of information processing. Self-report questionnaires assessing obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) traits were also completed. Correlational analyses revealed that deficits in cognitive flexibility were associated with greater self-reported OC symptomatology and severity. Greater OC symptom severity was significantly related to poorer performance on a visual memory task. Verbal memory and speed of information processing impairments were unrelated to OC symptoms. Performance on tasks of memory, executive functioning, and speed of information processing were not associated with OCPD traits. Overall, results indicate that greater OC symptomatology and severity were associated with specific neuropsychological functions (i.e., cognitive flexibility, visual memory). OCPD personality traits were unrelated to cognitive performance. Further research is needed to examine the potential causal relationship and longer-term interactions between cognitive sequelae and obsessive-compulsive spectrum presentations post-TBI.
Design and development of an ancient Chinese document recognition system

The digitization of ancient Chinese documents presents new challenges to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) research field due to the large character set of ancient Chinese characters, variant font types, and versatile document layout styles, as these documents are historical reflections to the thousands of years of Chinese civilization. After analyzing the general characteristics of ancient Chinese documents, we present a solution for recognition of ancient Chinese documents with regular font-types and layout-styles. Based on the previous work on multilingual OCR in TH-OCR system, we focus on the design and development of two key technologies which include character recognition and page segmentation. Experimental results show that the developed character recognition kernel of 19,635 Chinese characters outperforms our original traditional Chinese recognition kernel; Benchmarked test on printed ancient Chinese books proves that the proposed system is effective for regular ancient Chinese documents.
Nuclear translocation of PKM2 modulates astrocyte proliferation via p27 and β-catenin pathway after spinal cord injury

Aberrant functionality of the cell cycle has been implicated in the pathology of traumatic SCI. Although it has been reported that the expressions of various cell cycle related proteins were altered significantly following SCI, detailed information on the subject remains largely unclear. The embryonic pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) is an important metabolic kinase in aerobic glycolysis or the warburg effect, however, its functions in central nervous system (CNS) injury remains elusive. Here we demonstrate that PKM2 was not only significantly upregulated by western blot and immunohistochemistry but certain traumatic stimuli also induced translocation of PKM2 into the nucleus in astrocytes following spinal cord injury (SCI). Furthermore, the expression levels and localization of p-β-catenin, p27, cyclin D1 and PCNA were correlated with PKM2 after SCI. In vitro, we also found that PKM2 co-immunoprecipitation with p-β-catenin and p27 respectively. Knockdown of PKM2 apparently decreased the level of PCNA, cyclinD1, p27 in primary astrocyte cells. Taken together, our findings indicate that nuclear translocation of PKM2 promotes astrocytes proliferation after SCI through modulating cell cycle signaling. These discoveries firstly uncovered the role of PKM2 in spinal cord injury and provided a potential therapeutic target for CNS injury and repair.
METEO: An Operational Translation System

Contact pieces for vacuum switchgear comprise a base material with additives of readily vaporizable components to produce a sufficiently conductive switch path in the switch-off process. It is desired to have an overvoltage-free switching behavior for the vacuum switchgear. The additives are concentrated in a firmly adhering layer covering the switching surface of the contact piece. Such contact pieces can be manufactured in particular by direct fusing of the additives on the surface, by fusing a separate application of the additives in powder form, in granulate form or as foil or sheet on the surface or alternatively by vapor deposition of the additives on the switching surface of a given contact piece body of base material. Advantageously, a CuCr contact piece base material is used.
PRELIMINARY STUDY ON PEROXIDE VULCANIZATION WITH GAMMA IRRADIATION

Peroxide pre-vulcanized natural rubber latex prepared by using gamma irradiation technique is an alternative over the conventionally prepared peroxide pre-vulcanized that used activator to promote the peroxide decomposition in natural rubber latex. Through this technique the problems aroused by some activators such as tends to darken the natural rubber latex film during the drying process can also be overcome. For this preliminary study, data obtained from crosslink density and mechanical measurements were used to evaluate the effectiveness of gamma irradiation in the vulcanization process. Increasing the quantity of tert-butyl hydroperoxide (t-BHPO) from 0.1 pphr to 0.3 pphr while the irradiation dose maintain at 12 kGy has successfully delivered peroxide vulcanized natural rubber latex films with average tensile strength, modulus @ 500% and modulus @ 700% around 15.33, 1.01 and 3.42 MPa, respectively. The effective pre-vulcanization irradiation dose with respect to maximum crosslinking density (85.8 %) was observed on film prepared at 0.1 pphr t-BHPO.
Imaging atomic orbital polarization in photodissociation.

In the late 1980s, Dixon, Hall, Houston, Simons, and others recognized that experiments that probe the angular distribution of photofragments with spectroscopic techniques could be used to obtain the angular distribution of angular momentum polarization. These were generalized as “vector correlation” experiments, wherein one examines the correlations among the angular momentum polarization vector, the product recoil direction, the transition moment in the parent molecule, the laser polarization, the fluorescence polarization, or in scattering experiments, the relative velocity vector. Virtually all of the early studies were based on Doppler spectroscopy and emphasized rotational angular momentum polarization. Semiclassical models were used to interpret the experiments, largely, based on the bipolar harmonics approach introduced by Dixon. Around the same time, Chandler and Houston introduced the ion-imaging technique, in which the full recoil velocity distribution of stateresolved photofragments could be detected in a highly multiplexed approach. Soon thereafter, large orbital alignment effects in atoms were seen in imaging experiments, and it was immediately recognized that the semiclassical picture, developed to describe high-J rotational polarization, would not be suitable for interpretation of angular momentum polarization in atoms, and a new, fully quantum theory was required. The foundation for this theory was established in a paper in 1994 by Siebbeles et al. (see also the earlier paper by Vasyutinskii). The development of the theory is described fully in section 2.
Temperature and strain rate dependent mechanical properties of ultrathin metallic nanowires: A molecular dynamics study

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been applied in this study to investigate the mechanical properties of metallic nanowires at two different strain rates (1x109 s−1 and 1x1010 s−1). Silver, gold, platinum and nickel nanowires of varying diameters have been chosen. To carry out the MD simulation Embedded Atom Method (EAM) potentials have been used. The mechanisms behind the observations of distinct deformation modes are analyzed and explained. Also tensile deformation has been done at three different temperatures: 300K, 600K and 900K. Simulation results show that the yield strengths are gradually decreasing with the increase of temperature, while with the increase of the strain rate, the stress—strain curves fluctuate more intensely and the ultrathin nanowires rupture at smaller strain. The effects of size on the tensile properties of these ultrathin nanowires are briefly evaluated.Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been applied in this study to investigate the mechanical properties of metallic nanowires at two different strain rates (1x109 s−1 and 1x1010 s−1). Silver, gold, platinum and nickel nanowires of varying diameters have been chosen. To carry out the MD simulation Embedded Atom Method (EAM) potentials have been used. The mechanisms behind the observations of distinct deformation modes are analyzed and explained. Also tensile deformation has been done at three different temperatures: 300K, 600K and 900K. Simulation results show that the yield strengths are gradually decreasing with the increase of temperature, while with the increase of the strain rate, the stress—strain curves fluctuate more intensely and the ultrathin nanowires rupture at smaller strain. The effects of size on the tensile properties of these ultrathin nanowires are briefly evaluated.
SeeMon: scalable and energy-efficient context monitoring framework for sensor-rich mobile environments

Proactively providing services to mobile individuals is essential for emerging ubiquitous applications. The major challenge in providing users with proactive services lies in continuously monitoring their contexts based on numerous sensors. The context monitoring with rich sensors imposes heavy workloads on mobile devices with limited computing and battery power. We present SeeMon, a scalable and energy-efficient context monitoring framework for sensor-rich, resource-limited mobile environments. Running on a personal mobile device, SeeMon effectively performs context monitoring involving numerous sensors and applications. On top of SeeMon, multiple applications on the device can proactively understand users' contexts and react appropriately. This paper proposes a novel context monitoring approach that provides efficient processing and sensor control mechanisms. We implement and test a prototype system on two mobile devices: a UMPC and a wearable device with a diverse set of sensors. Example applications are also developed based on the implemented system. Experimental results show that SeeMon achieves a high level of scalability and energy efficiency.
The miniaturization technologies: past, present, and future

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), micro systems technologies (MST, primarily in Europe) and micromanufacturing are relatively recent phrases that have become synonymous with the design, development and manufacture of very small devices and systems. This paper overviews the history of the major technologies that are utilized in this field. After this brief historical overview of the technologies, a short description of MEMS technologies, is presented. The current status of the MEMS effort worldwide is reviewed with emphasis on the United States, Japan and in the European community with particular emphasis on Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The future for the technology along with technology transfer and management is discussed from the standpoint of market pull. Bulk and surface micromachining of silicon, X-ray micromachining using the LTCA process, and the complementary processes such as laser and focussed ion beam micromachining are reviewed. <<ETX>>