Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Peridynamics‐Based Fracture Animation for Elastoplastic Solids

In this paper, we exploit the use of peridynamics theory for graphical animation of material deformation and fracture. We present a new meshless framework for elastoplastic constitutive modelling that contrasts with previous approaches in graphics. Our peridynamics‐based elastoplasticity model represents deformation behaviours of materials with high realism. We validate the model by varying the material properties and performing comparisons with finite element method (FEM) simulations. The integral‐based nature of peridynamics makes it trivial to model material discontinuities, which outweighs differential‐based methods in both accuracy and ease of implementation. We propose a simple strategy to model fracture in the setting of peridynamics discretization. We demonstrate that the fracture criterion combined with our elastoplasticity model could realistically produce ductile fracture as well as brittle fracture. Our work is the first application of peridynamics in graphics that could create a wide range of material phenomena including elasticity, plasticity, and fracture. The complete framework provides an attractive alternative to existing methods for producing modern visual effects.
Feeding value of field beans (Vicia faba L. var. minor) with and without enzyme containing tannase, pectinase and xylanase activities for broilers

ABSTRACT Effects of field beans with various tannin content and exogenous enzyme mixture containing tannase, pectinase and xylanase activities on N-corrected dietary apparent metabolisable energy (AMEn), coefficients of dry matter (DMR) and nitrogen retention (NR), fat digestibility, gastrointestinal tract (GIT) development, jejunal villus morphometry, ileal digesta viscosity and sialic acid were examined. Birds’ growth performance and energy conversion ratio (ECR) were also measured. Birds were fed one of eight mash diets. The Control diet contained as major ingredients wheat (400 g/kg) and soybean meal (SBM) (127 g/kg and 221 g crude protein/kg and 12.83 MJ AMEn/kg. To reduce nutrient density, the Control diet also contained washed sand at 119 g/kg. Another three diets containing 300 g/kg of each of three experimental field bean cultivar samples in replacement for SBM and sand were also mixed. Each diet was fed to nine pens with two male Ross 308 broilers. Diets high in tannin had low AMEn, ECR, DMR and NR (p < 0.001). Feeding field beans increased (p < 0.001) the weights of the pancreas and the proventriculus and gizzard (PG) of the birds. Supplementing diets with the enzyme mixture improved (p < 0.001) feed conversion efficiency, AMEn and all nutrient utilisation coefficients despite the tannins in diets. The enzyme mixture reduced ileal digesta viscosity (p < 0.001) and the weight of pancreas, total GIT and PG (p < 0.05) of the birds. It can be concluded that the feeding value of field beans with different tannin contents may vary when fed to broilers. The supplementation of the enzyme mixture improved the feeding value of diets for broilers. The beneficial effect of the addition of the enzyme mixture seems to be mediated through reduced ileal digesta viscosity and improved nutrient availability.
Deceptive intent: physiological reactions in different interpersonal contexts

This dissertation advanced the deception field by examining the psychological processes associated with deceptive intent. The main focus forms the intention to deceive and more specifically, whether cues to deception already can be measured during truth telling with the mere intention to lie. In order to test this prediction, we examined truth telling with the intention to lie on a crucial aspect later on and compared this with ‘sincere’ truth telling and lying across four empirical studies. In order to deliver a theoretical as well as practical contribution to the deception field, these studies ranged from controlled to more realistic experiments and varied in interpersonal context as well as stakes for the deceiver. Cues to deception were measured in form of electrodermal activity (EDA), a direct indicator for sympathetic nervous system activity and most frequently used physiological measure in the lie detection context. Across all studies, constant lying evoked higher EDA than constant truth telling. But deceptive accounts, which consists of truth telling with the intention to lie, did not necessarily induce an increase in EDA. Rather, elevated EDA levels during the mere intention to deceive seem to depend highly on the degree of interpersonal contact. Particularly, we could not measure the intention to deceive in situations involving direct face-to-face interaction. However, in situations where the deceiver did not have access to the interviewer’s reactions we did found elevated EDA levels during deceptive intentions. These results may be explained from an impression-management perspective. We propose that deceptive intentions may especially increase cognitive and emotional load when deceivers are deprived from social feedback of the interviewer. In order to measure the intention to deceive, it thus may be beneficial to withhold deceivers from target’s (non)verbal reactions.
The Effects of Sevoflurane Anesthesia on Rat Brain Proteins: A Proteomic Time-Course Analysis

BACKGROUND: Recent studies showed changes in cerebral protein expression up to 3 days after desflurane anesthesia in rats. In the present study, we investigated the existence of persisting changes on the proteome level after sevoflurane anesthesia that persisted for as long as 28 days after anesthesia. METHODS: Rats were anesthetized by spontaneous inhalation of 2.4% sevoflurane in air for 3 h. Animals (n = 6 for each group) were killed either directly, 72 h, or 28 days after anesthesia. Brains were removed and subjected to global protein expression profiling based on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. Expression factors were compared to results from untreated conscious animals at each time point. Data were statistically analyzed by ANOVA (P < 0.01) and a cut of more than two-fold change in the expression factor. RESULTS: We found 11 protein spots differentially regulated directly after anesthesia. Seventeen proteins were differentially expressed 72 h after the anesthesia. Only one spot was differentially regulated 28 days after anesthesia. The plausible targets of these differentially regulated proteins can be attributed to synaptic vesicle handling and cell–cell communication. CONCLUSIONS: Sevoflurane induced relevant changes in protein expression profiles directly and 72 h after an anesthesia with 1 MAC. Twenty-eight days after the anesthesia, all proteins except one had returned to baseline levels of abundance.
The Impact of Heterogeneous Spreading Abilities of Network Ties on Information Spreading

Understanding the dynamics of information spreading over social networks has been of great interest for a long time. It has been convincingly demonstrated that the topology of a network can significantly affect information spreading over it. Information spreading is often compared on small-world networks and random networks. In this paper, we find that the heterogeneity of spreading abilities of network ties can lead to completely different spreading results over small-world and random networks. In more detail, the more heterogeneous the spreading abilities of network ties, the lower the efficiency of information spreading over small-world networks. Moreover, such heterogeneity not only slows down the spreading pace, but also lengthens the life span of the information spread over small-world networks. On the contrary, if the spreading abilities of network ties are similar or equal, small-world networks are much better than random networks for information spreading.
Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Indian Golden Silkmoth (Antheraea assama)

Background The Indian golden saturniid silkmoth (Antheraea assama), popularly known as muga silkmoth, is a semi-domesticated silk producing insect confined to a narrow habitat range of the northeastern region of India. Owing to the prevailing socio-political problems, the muga silkworm habitats in the northeastern region have not been accessible hampering the phylogeography studies of this rare silkmoth. Recently, we have been successful in our attempt to collect muga cocoon samples, although to a limited extent, from their natural habitats. Out of 87 microsatellite markers developed previously for A. assama, 13 informative markers were employed to genotype 97 individuals from six populations and analyzed their population structure and genetic variation. Methodology/Principal Findings We observed highly significant genetic diversity in one of the populations (WWS-1, a population derived from West Garo Hills region of Meghalaya state). Further analysis with and without WWS-1 population revealed that dramatic genetic differentiation (global FST = 0.301) was due to high genetic diversity contributed by WWS-1 population. Analysis of the remaining five populations (excluding WWS-1) showed a marked reduction in the number of alleles at all the employed loci. Structure analysis showed the presence of only two clusters: one formed by WWS-1 population and the other included the remaining five populations, inferring that there is no significant genetic diversity within and between these five populations, and suggesting that these five populations are probably derived from a single population. Patterns of recent population bottlenecks were not evident in any of the six populations studied. Conclusions/Significance A. assama inhabiting the WWS-1 region revealed very high genetic diversity, and was genetically divergent from the five populations studied. The efforts should be continued to identify and study such populations from this region as well as other muga silkworm habitats. The information generated will be very useful in conservation of dwindling muga culture in Northeast India.
Causal Empiricism in Quantitative Research

Quantitative analysis of causal effects in political science has trended toward the adoption of “causal empiricist” approaches. Such approaches place heavy emphasis on causal identification through experimental and natural experimental designs and on characterizing the specific subpopulations for which effects are identified. This trend is eroding the position of traditional regression studies as the prevailing convention for quantitative causal research in political science. This essay clarifies what is at stake. I provide a causal empiricist critique of conventional regression studies, a statement of core pillars of causal empiricism, and a discussion of how causal empiricism and theory interact. I propose that the trend toward causal empiricism should be welcomed by a broad array of political scientists. The trend fits into a broader push to reimagine our discipline in terms of collective research programs with high standards for evidence and a research division of labor.
Semantic similarity based web document classification using support vector machine

With the rapid growth of information on the World Wide Web (WWW), classification of web documents has become important for efficient information retrieval. Relevancy of information retrieved can also be improved by considering semantic relatedness between words which is a basic research area in fields of natural language processing, intelligent retrieval, document clustering and classification, word sense disambiguation etc. The web search engine based semantic relationship from huge web corpus can improve classification of documents. This paper proposes an approach for web document classification that exploits information, including both page count and snippets. To identify the semantic relations between the query words, a lexical pattern extraction algorithm is applied on snippets. A sequential pattern clustering algorithm is used to form clusters of different patterns. The page count based measures are combined with the clustered patterns to define the features extracted from the word-pairs. These features are used to train the Support Vector Machine (SVM), in order to classify the web documents. Experimental results demonstrate 5% and 9% improvement in F1 measure for Reuters 21578 and 20 Newsgroup datasets in the classifier performance.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Tone‐affect Compatibility with Affective Stimuli and Affective Responses

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Accurate Distance Estimation between Things: A Self-correcting Approach

This paper suggests a method to measure the physical distance between an IoT device (a Thing) and a mobile device (also a Thing) using BLE (Bluetooth Low-Energy profile) interfaces with smaller distance errors. BLE is a well-known technology for the low-power connectivity and suitable for IoT devices as well as for the proximity with the range of several meters. Apple has already adopted the technique and enhanced it to provide subdivided proximity range levels. However, as it is also a variation of RSS-based distance estimation, Apple's iBeacon could only provide immediate, near or far status but not a real and accurate distance. To provide more accurate distance using BLE, this paper introduces additional self-correcting beacon to calibrate the reference distance and mitigate errors from environmental factors. By adopting self-correcting beacon for measuring the distance, the average distance error shows less than 10% within the range of 1.5 meters. Some considerations are presented to extend the range to be able to get more accurate distances.
Removal of Reflection from Nightscape Parallel Stereo Images of Distant View through Window

Camera images taken through window glass sometimes have a problem of reflection from the glass surface. It is conspicuous in night scenes because reflection intensity is considerable compared to the outside objects. This paper proposes a removing method of reflections of a planar object from night scene images taken through a window glass. Two different view point images are taken with parallel stereo camera. In the acquired images, the disparity of night scene is considered to be zero if the scene is of a distant view. In this paper, we treat the case that the relative positions of reflection and night scene in stereo images are known and the disparity appears only in the reflection as a predictable value. By calculating the pixel values of the relative position, the reflection is removed. Experimental results showed the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Calcium-Binding Capacity of Centrin2 Is Required for Linear POC5 Assembly but Not for Nucleotide Excision Repair

Centrosomes, the principal microtubule-organising centres in animal cells, contain centrins, small, conserved calcium-binding proteins unique to eukaryotes. Centrin2 binds to xeroderma pigmentosum group C protein (XPC), stabilising it, and its presence slightly increases nucleotide excision repair (NER) activity in vitro. In previous work, we deleted all three centrin isoforms present in chicken DT40 cells and observed delayed repair of UV-induced DNA lesions, but no centrosome abnormalities. Here, we explore how centrin2 controls NER. In the centrin null cells, we expressed centrin2 mutants that cannot bind calcium or that lack sites for phosphorylation by regulatory kinases. Expression of any of these mutants restored the UV sensitivity of centrin null cells to normal as effectively as expression of wild-type centrin. However, calcium-binding-deficient and T118A mutants showed greatly compromised localisation to centrosomes. XPC recruitment to laser-induced UV-like lesions was only slightly slower in centrin-deficient cells than in controls, and levels of XPC and its partner HRAD23B were unaffected by centrin deficiency. Interestingly, we found that overexpression of the centrin interactor POC5 leads to the assembly of linear, centrin-dependent structures that recruit other centrosomal proteins such as PCM-1 and NEDD1. Together, these observations suggest that assembly of centrins into complex structures requires calcium binding capacity, but that such assembly is not required for centrin activity in NER.
Laparoscopic ureterolithotomy; which is better: Transperitoneal or retroperitoneal approach?

OBJECTIVE This was a prospective study to compare the outcome of laparoscopic transperitoneal ureterolithotomy (LTU) with laparoscopic retroperitoneal ureterolithotomy (LRU) as a primary treatment for a large stone in the proximal ureter. MATERIAL AND METHODS A total of 24 patients with a solitary, large (>1.5 cm), and impacted stone in the proximal ureter was selected and randomly divided into two groups. The first group included 13 patients who were treated by LTU, and the second group included 11 patients who were treated by LRU. Patient demographics and stone characteristics as well as the operative and postoperative data of both groups were compared and statistically analyzed. RESULTS There was no significant difference between the two groups regarding patient demographics and stone characteristics. The mean operative time was significantly shorter in the LTU group than in the LRU group [116.2±21.8 min vs 137.3±17.9 min, respectively (p=0.02)]. The mean time to oral intake was significantly longer in the LTU group than in the LRU group [21.2±4.9 h vs 15.5±2.8 h, respectively (p=0.002)]. There was significant higher rate (27.3%) of changing to open surgery in LRU (p=0.04). The stone-free rate was significantly higher in the LTU group than in the LRU group [100% vs. 72.8%, respectively (p=0.03)]. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups regarding the mean blood loss, mean hospital stay, mean analgesia dose, blood transfusion rate, postoperative fever, and stone migration during surgery. CONCLUSION Both approaches of laparoscopic ureterolithotomy are effective in treating large impacted stones in the proximal ureter. LTU has significantly shorter operative time and lower rate of open conversion but has a significantly longer time to oral intake.
Object Discovery: Soft Attributed Graph Mining

We categorize this research in terms of its contribution to both graph theory and computer vision. From the theoretical perspective, this study can be considered as the first attempt to formulate the idea of mining maximal frequent subgraphs in the challenging domain of messy visual data, and as a conceptual extension to the unsupervised learning of graph matching. We define a soft attributed pattern (SAP) to represent the common subgraph pattern among a set of attributed relational graphs (ARGs), considering both their structure and attributes. Regarding the differences between ARGs with fuzzy attributes and conventional labeled graphs, we propose a new mining strategy that directly extracts the SAP with the maximal graph size without applying node enumeration. Given an initial graph template and a number of ARGs, we develop an unsupervised method to modify the graph template into the maximal-size SAP. From a practical perspective, this research develops a general platform for learning the category model (i.e., the SAP) from cluttered visual data (i.e., the ARGs) without labeling “what is where,” thereby opening the possibility for a series of applications in the era of big visual data. Experiments demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method on RGB/RGB-D images and videos.
Methodology for process improvement through basic components and focusing on the resistance to change

This paper describes a multi‐model methodology that implements a smooth and continuous process improvement, depending on the organization's business goals and allowing users to establish their improvement implementation pace. The methodology focuses on basic process components known as ‘best practices’. Besides, it covers following the topics: knowledge management and change management. The methodology description and the results of a case study on project management process are included. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Using Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique to Map Beneficiaries’ Experiences and Values

Using a case example of an innovative sanitation solution in a slum setting, this study explores the usefulness of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique in a program planning and evaluation context. Using a qualitative image-based method to map people’s mental models of ill-structured problems such as sanitation can aid program planners and evaluators in understanding how a program can fit the reality of beneficiaries. The technique is a tool for investigating what beneficiaries think about specific problems a program is aimed at solving and their underlying beliefs. The results offer a comprehensive hierarchical value map of different types and levels of insights into parents’ thoughts and feelings about school sanitation and their child’s well-being, often expressed as desired values, goals, or end states. Based on the results, a discussion is provided about the usefulness of the technique in the given context.
DSA-Mesh: a distributed security architecture for wireless mesh networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have emerged recently as a technology for next-generation wireless networking. They consist of mesh routers and clients, where mesh routers are almost static and form the backbone of WMNs. WMNs provide network access for both mesh and conventional clients. In this paper, we propose DSA-Mesh, a fully distributed security architecture that provides access control for mesh routers as well as a key distribution scheme that supports layer-2 encryption to ensure security and data confidentiality of all communications that occur in the backbone of the WMN. DSA-Mesh exploits the routing capabilities of mesh routers: after connecting to the access network as generic wireless clients, new mesh routers authenticate to a key management service (consisting of several servers) implemented using threshold cryptography, and obtain a temporary key that is used both to prove their credentials to neighbor nodes and to encrypt all the traffic transmitted on wireless backbone links. A key feature in the design of DSA-Mesh is its independence from the underlying wireless technology used by network nodes to form the backbone. Furthermore, DSA-Mesh enables seamless mobility of mesh routers. Since it is completely distributed, DSA-Mesh permits to deploy automatically and incrementally large WMNs, while increasing, at the same time, the robustness of the system by eliminating the single point of failure typical of centralized architectures. DSA-Mesh has been implemented in Network Simulator, and extensive simulations have been performed in large-scale network scenarios, comparing it to a static key approach and to a centralized architecture where a single key server is deployed. Numerical results show that our proposed architecture considerably increases the WMN security and reliability, with a negligible impact on the network performance, thus representing an effective solution for wireless mesh networking. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.