Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of scaling of earthquake excitations on dynamic response of reinforced concrete frame buildings

The effects of the scaling of earthquake excitations were investigated by analysing the nonlinear dynamic responses of three reinforced concrete frame buildings. This paper presents results for one of the buildings. It is a six-storey ductile moment-resisting frame building located in Vancouver. Artificial accelerograms compatible with the design spectrum, simulated stochastic accelerograms, and real accelerograms scaled with respect to the design spectrum according to three types of scaling were used as excitation motions. The responses of the building resulting from the artificial accelerograms compatible with the design spectrum, and from the scaled real records were found to be quite similar. The responses from the majority of the simulated stochastic accelerograms were much larger than those from the other excitations. Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that the analyses in the design of irregular reinforced concrete buildings be conducted using either artificial accelerograms compatible with the design spectrum, or real accelerograms scaled according to any method such that the 5% damped spectra of these accelerograms are close to the design spectrum over the period range of interest for the structure.
Cardiac Magnetic Resonance in Sports Medicine

With numerous cardiovascular imaging modalities today, it is important that physicians understand the advantages/disadvantages and the complementary/overlapping abilities of each technique and apply them appropriately. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) has been in use for more than 25 yr, and leaps in technology have made this form of imaging a robust, highly accurate technique to evaluate the cardiovascular system. Appropriate application of this technology can aid in the management and care of individuals exercising and participating in sports.
Influence of graphene oxide concentration and dipping cycles on electrical conductivity of coated cotton textiles

Abstract The electrical conductivity of cotton fabrics is enhanced by coating with graphene in aqueous phase by a suitable process. Two different types of fabrics viz. woven and knitted structures of same GSM are used as substrate. The fabrics are dipped in dispersed graphene oxide (GO) solution and then GO-enriched fabric samples are subjected to a reduction process for in-situ conversion of the added GO to electro-conductive graphene. The concentration of GO solution and number of dipping cycles influence the graphene add-on and electrical resistivity of the fabrics. The change in surface resistivity, thickness, air permeability, porosity and water vapour permeability of the fabrics after the treatment has been evaluated. Comparisons have been made between the woven and knitted fabrics for all these properties to understand the effect of fabric structure.
Lack of Physiological Depth Patterns in Conspecifics of Endemic Antarctic Brown Algae: A Trade-Off between UV Stress Tolerance and Shade Adaptation?

A striking characteristic of endemic Antarctic brown algae is their broad vertical distribution. This feature is largely determined by the shade adaptation in order to cope with the seasonal variation in light availability. However, during spring-summer months, when light penetrates deep in the water column these organisms have to withstand high levels of solar radiation, including UV. In the present study we examine the light use characteristics in parallel to a potential for UV tolerance (measured as content of phenolic compounds, antioxidant activity and maximum quantum yield of fluorescence) in conspecific populations of four Antarctic brown algae (Ascoseira mirabilis, Desmarestia menziesii, D. anceps and Himantothallus grandifolius) distributed over a depth gradient between 5 and 30 m. The main results indicated that a) photosynthetic efficiency was uniform along the depth gradient in all the studied species, and b) short-term (6 h) exposure to UV radiation revealed a high tolerance measured as chlorophyll fluorescence, phlorotannin content and antioxidant capacity. Multivariate analysis of similarity indicated that light requirements for photosynthesis, soluble phlorotannins and antioxidant capacity are the variables determining the responses along the depth gradient in all the studied species. The suite of physiological responses of algae with a shallower distribution (A. mirabilis and D. menziesii) differed from those with deeper vertical range (D. anceps and H. grandifolius). These patterns are consistent with the underwater light penetration that defines two zones: 0–15 m, with influence of UV radiation (1% of UV-B and UV-A at 9 m and 15 m respectively) and a zone below 15 m marked by PAR incidence (1% up to 30 m). These results support the prediction that algae show a UV stress tolerance capacity along a broad depth range according to their marked shade adaptation. The high contents of phlorotannins and antioxidant potential appear to be strongly responsible for the lack of clear depth patterns in light demand characteristics and UV tolerance.
Testing system-in-package wirelessly

The paper shows a new concept for testing a system-in-package (SiP) using a wireless communication. Trends of the SiP technology put more economic and technical constraints onto the test, while the contactless test techniques represent an opportunity to overcome the inherent problems. In this paper, we introduce a new test concept based on a wireless communication, a specific test access mechanism (TAM), and an optimised architecture. Although this approach is dedicated to an intermediate test of SiP, we explore other potential applications of this technology
Post-translational modification of Ngn2 differentially affects transcription of distinct targets to regulate the balance between progenitor maintenance and differentiation

Neurogenin 2 (Ngn2) controls neuronal differentiation cell-autonomously by transcriptional activation of targets such as NeuroD, while simultaneously controlling progenitor maintenance non-cell-autonomously by upregulating Delta expression and Notch signalling. Reduction in Cdk-dependent multisite phosphorylation of Ngn2 enhances its promoter binding affinity. This leads specifically to an increase in neuronal differentiation without an apparent increase in progenitor maintenance via Delta-Notch signalling, although the mechanism underlying this imbalance remains unclear. Here we show in Xenopus embryos and mouse P19 cells that the NeuroD promoter is substantially more sensitive to the phosphorylation status of Ngn2 than the Delta promoter, and that this can be attributed to differences in the ease of promoter activation. In addition, we also show that the phosphorylation status of Ngn2 regulates sensitivity to Notch signalling. These observations explain how Ngn2 post-translational modification in response to changes in the cell cycle kinase environment results in enhanced neuronal differentiation upon cell cycle lengthening.
Migraine-like Headache in a Patient with Complement 1 Inhibitor Deficient Hereditary Angioedema

We report on an angioedema patient with a genetic defect in complement 1 inhibitor, manifesting migraine-like episodes of headache, effective prophylaxis with Danazol, and triptan for a treatment of acute clinical episode. The patient was 44-yr-old Korean man with abdominal pain and headache, who was brought into the Emergency Department of Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul. He suffered from frequent attacks of migraine-like headache (3-7 per month), pulsating in nature associated with nausea. Severities were aggravated by activity and his headache had shown recent progression with abdominal pain. No remarkable findings were observed on radiologic examination, brain magnetic resonance images and intracranial and extracranial magnetic resonance angiography. Danazol 200 mg every other day was subsequently used. Following administration of Danazol, symptoms showed improvement and the patient was discharged. While taking Danazol, the migraine-like episodes appeared to be prevented for about 2 yr. At the eighth month, he suffered a moderate degree of migraine-like headache; however, administration of naratriptan 2.5 mg resolved his problem. A case of genetic defect of C1-INH deficiency presented with headache episodes, and was controlled by Danazol and triptan. It suggests that pathogenic mechanism of headache in hereditary angioedema may be mediated by the neurogenic inflammatory-like physiology of migraine.
Performing Initiative Data Prefetching in Distributed File Systems for Cloud Computing

This paper presents an initiative data prefetching scheme on the storage servers in distributed file systems for cloud computing. In this prefetching technique, the client machines are not substantially involved in the process of data prefetching, but the storage servers can directly prefetch the data after analyzing the history of disk I/O access events, and then send the prefetched data to the relevant client machines proactively. To put this technique to work, the information about client nodes is piggybacked onto the real client I/O requests, and then forwarded to the relevant storage server. Next, two prediction algorithms have been proposed to forecast future block access operations for directing what data should be fetched on storage servers in advance. Finally, the prefetched data can be pushed to the relevant client machine from the storage server. Through a series of evaluation experiments with a collection of application benchmarks, we have demonstrated that our presented initiative prefetching technique can benefit distributed file systems for cloud environments to achieve better I/O performance. In particular, configuration-limited client machines in the cloud are not responsible for predicting I/O access operations, which can definitely contribute to preferable system performance on them.
A Smart Car Control Model for Brake Comfort Based on Car Following

This paper demonstrates a novel car-following model focused on passenger comfort, for example, a rapid deceleration will make passengers uncomfortable. The brake comfort model of car following was set up according to the relationship between vehicle deceleration and passenger comfort levels. The model calculates the controlled car's acceleration by measuring the distance between the controlled car and its preceding car, as well as the velocity of the controlled car. By controlling the car's acceleration, the model is able to keep riders feeling comfortable. The friction coefficient between the car and the road surface is also considered. Experiments show that the model is highly compatible with real cases.
Fast Convex Layers Algorithm for Near-Duplicate Image Detection

This paper builds on a novel, fast algorithm for generating the convex layers on grid points with linear time complexity. Convex layers are extracted from the binary image. The obtained convex hulls are characterized by the number of their vertices and used as representative image features. A computational geometric approach to near-duplicate image detection stems from these features. Similarity of feature vectors of given images is assessed by correlation coefficient. This way, all images with closely related structure and contents can be retrieved from large databases of images quickly and efficiently. The algorithm can be used in various applications such as video surveillance, image and video duplication search, or image alignment. Our approach is rather robust up to moderate signal-to-noise ratios, tolerates lossy image compression, and copes with translated, rotated and scaled image contents.
Preserving the Hand-drawn Appearance of Graphs

When using a sketching tool to draw graphs, the edges need to appear hand-drawn. This is particularly the case after edges have been repositioned – if the action of moving a node results in its edges appearing as straight lines, the graph drawing will not retain its informal, hand-drawn appearance. The method for preserving the hand-drawn appearance of graphs described here is based on user observations and takes into account the context of the edge. The effectiveness of this algorithm was validated with a user study which suggests that people cannot distinguish the generated edges from hand-drawn edges.
An Integrated Approach To Blood-Based Cancer Diagnosis And Biomarker Discovery

Disrupted or abnormal biological processes responsible for cancers often quantitatively manifest as disrupted additive and multiplicative interactions of gene/protein expressions correlating with cancer progression. However, the examination of all possible combinatorial interactions between gene features in most case-control studies with limited training data is computationally infeasible. In this paper, we propose a practically feasible data integration approach, QUIRE (QUadratic Interactions among infoRmative fEatures), to identify discriminative complex interactions among informative gene features for cancer diagnosis and biomarker discovery directly based on patient blood samples. QUIRE works in two stages, where it first identifies functionally relevant gene groups for the disease with the help of gene functional annotations and available physical protein interactions, then it explores the combinatorial relationships among the genes from the selected informative groups. Based on our private experimentally generated data from patient blood samples using a novel SOMAmer (Slow Off-rate Modified Aptamer) technology, we apply QUIRE to cancer diagnosis and biomarker discovery for Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) and Ovarian Cancer (OVC). To further demonstrate the general applicability of our approach, we also apply QUIRE to a publicly available Colorectal Cancer (CRC) dataset that can be used to prioritize our SOMAmer design. Our experimental results show that QUIRE identifies gene-gene interactions that can better identify the different cancer stages of samples, as compared to other state-of-the-art feature selection methods. A literature survey shows that many of the interactions identified by QUIRE play important roles in the development of cancer.
Integrating Mutiview clusters with Tensor Methods

Integrating multiview cluster is an crucial issue in heterogeneous environment. Spectral clustering is used for integrating cluster in heterogeneous environment. In this paper, we used Principal Modularity Maximization based tensor decomposition for identifying hidden pattern in the context of spectral clustering. This gives the good result when compared to other methods. Here synthetic datasets are used for evaluating the results by comparing with Average Modularity Maximization and Total Modularity Maximization methods.
T-NOVA: A marketplace for virtualized network functions

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is a concept, which has attracted significant attention as a promising approach towards the virtualization/“softwarisation” of network infrastructures. With the aim of promoting NFV, this paper outlines an integrated architecture, designed and developed within the context of the EU FP7 T-NOVA project, which allows network operators not only to deploy virtualized Network Functions (NFs) for their own needs, but also to offer them to their customers, as value-added services (Network Functions as-a-Service, NFaaS). Virtual network appliances (gateways, proxies, firewalls, transcoders, analyzers etc.) can be provided on-demand as-a-Service, eliminating the need to acquire, install and maintain specialized hardware at customers' premises. A “NFV Marketplace” is also introduced, where network services and functions created by a variety of developers can be published, acquired and instantiated on-demand.
A Comparison of Event Representations in DEFT

This paper will discuss and compare event representations across a variety of types of event annotation: Rich Entities, Relations, and Events (Rich ERE), Light Entities, Relations, and Events (Light ERE), Event Nugget (EN), Event Argument Extraction (EAE), Richer Event Descriptions (RED), and Event-Event Relations (EER). Comparisons of event representations are presented, along with a comparison of data annotated according to each event representation. An event annotation ex-periment is also discussed, including annotation for all of these representations on the same set of sample data, with the purpose of being able to compare actual annotation across all of these approaches as directly as possible. We walk through a brief example to illustrate the various annotation approaches, and to show the intersections among the various annotated data sets.
Melatonin Responsive Hemicrania Continua in Which Indomethacin Was Associated With Contralateral Headache

Headache is a well‐documented side effect of indomethacin in the older medical literature; however, it has rarely been commented on in indomethacin‐responsive hemicrania continua. We describe the case of a 60‐year‐old woman with left‐sided hemicrania continua whose indomethacin treatment was associated with a continuous right‐sided migraine. Her indomethacin therapy was discontinued heralding a return of her left‐sided hemicrania continua and a resolution of her right‐sided migraine. Her hemicrania continua then responded well to melatonin, with recurrence on stopping and improvement on restarting. This is the most detailed description of headache as a side effect of indomethacin in a headache patient we are aware of, and one of only a few reported cases of melatonin‐responsive hemicrania continua. We review the evidence of headache as a side effect of indomethacin in order to highlight its importance in the treatment of headache disorders. We emphasize that indomethacin headache response may be more than simply a beneficial or neutral one and might be relevant to some cases of apparently indomethacin‐resistant hemicrania continua. We hope this case may encourage clinicians to inquire about headache as a potential side effect of indomethacin.
Frequent Mutation in the ABCC6 Gene (R1141X) Is Associated With a Strong Increase in the Prevalence of Coronary Artery Disease

Background—Pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) is an inborn disorder of the connective tissue with specific skin, ocular, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) manifestations. Recently, we and others have identified mutations in the gene coding for the ABCC6 transporter in PXE patients with ocular and skin involvement. In the Netherlands, as in the rest of Europe, a particular premature truncation variant ABCC6 (R1141X) was found in a large cohort of PXE patients. Given the association between CVD and PXE, we hypothesized that heterozygosity of this ABCC6 mutation could also confer an increased risk for CVD. Methods and Results—To assess the relationship between the frequent R1141X mutation in the ABCC6 gene and the prevalence of premature coronary artery disease (CAD), we conducted a case-control study of 441 patients under the age of 50 years who had definite CAD and 1057 age- and sex-matched population-based controls who were free of coronary disease. Strikingly, the prevalence of the R1141X mutation was 4.2 times higher among patients than among controls (3.2% versus 0.8%;P <0.001). Consequently, among subjects with the R1141X mutation, the odds ratio for a coronary event was 4.23 (95% CI: 1.76 to 10.20, P = 0.001). Conclusion—The presence of the R1141X mutation in the ABCC6 gene is associated with a sharply increased risk of premature CAD.
Simultaneous analysis of 1176 gene products in normal human aorta and abdominal aortic aneurysms using a membrane-based complementary DNA expression array.

BACKGROUND A number of changes in gene expression have been described in abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAAs), but the spectrum of molecular alterations in this disease is unknown. The purpose of this study was to characterize the expression of approximately 1000 gene products in human AAA tissue and to compare the profile of genes expressed in AAAs with that observed in normal aorta. MATERIALS AND METHODS Total RNA was isolated from abdominal aortic wall tissues (4 AAAs and 4 normal aortas), and array-specific [(32)P]-labeled complementary DNA (cDNA) probes were created with reverse transcription. The cDNA probes were hybridized with nylon membranes containing an array of 1176 cDNA clones (AtlasArray Human 1.2 I; Clontech, Palo Alto, Calif), and autoradiographs were scanned to identify the patterns of gene expression characteristic of each tissue type. Densitometric analysis was used to standardize the expression of individual genes to a panel of housekeeping controls, and differential gene expression was defined by a signal ratio of at least 2:1. RESULTS One hundred forty-five (12.3%) of the 1176 genes were consistently expressed in aortic tissue. Thymosin beta-4 was the most abundant of 101 transcripts detected in both AAAs and normal aorta, whereas 44 genes exhibited differential patterns of expression (39 predominant in AAAs and 5 in normal aorta). Densitometric analysis confirmed differences in expression for 20 of these gene products between AAAs and normal aorta, with the greatest increases seen for myeloid cell nuclear differentiation antigen (31-fold), cathepsin H (30-fold), platelet-derived growth factor-A (23-fold), apolipoprotein E (13-fold), gelatinase B/matrix metalloproteinase-9 (12-fold), and interleukin-8 (11-fold). The only gene products substantially decreased in AAAs were myosin light chain kinase (39-fold) and beta-1 integrin (twofold). AAA tissues thereby exhibited a distinct pattern of gene expression reflecting chronic inflammation, extracellular matrix degradation, atherosclerosis, and smooth muscle cell depletion. CONCLUSIONS cDNA expression arrays provide a powerful new approach to help identify the molecular mechanisms responsible for aneurysmal degeneration. Further studies will be needed to elucidate the functional and pathophysiologic significance of the individual genes that exhibit altered levels of expression in AAA tissue.
A Hybrid Web-Based Toolkit for Human Modeling

Modern web-based Scientific Visualization applications try to overcome common limitations imposed by limited internet bandwidth, server bottlenecks or network latency. A further aspect is the desire to gain platform independence by solely using instruments which are platform independent by conception: the programming language Java, the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), or the 3D API Java3D.We present a prototype of a hybrid web-based Scientific Visualization system which makes use of the increasing computational power of modern desktop workstations and personal computers on the client side, and the superior performance provided by a powerful machine on the server side. In order to achieve high interaction rates and to balance computational load the user can dynamically assign selected tasks to his client or to the server.Within the scientific field of human modeling we have implemented a hybrid web-based toolkit for the modeling of human muscles and skin. Our application allows the on-line generation and manipulation of three-dimensional implicit muscle models in a heterogeneous network and it offers various parameters to adjust computation and response time versus rendering quality.