Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intralaboratory development and evaluation of a high-performance liquid chromatography–fluorescence method for detection and quantitation of aflatoxins M1, B1, B2, G1, and G2 in animal liver

Aflatoxins are potent mycotoxins with effects that include hepatotoxicity, immunosuppression, and suppression of animal growth and production. The etiologic diagnosis of aflatoxicosis, which is largely based on analysis of contaminated feed matrices, has significant disadvantages given the fact that representative feed samples may not be available and feed-based test methods are not confirmatory of an etiologic diagnosis. A tissue-based analytical method for biomarkers of exposure would be valuable for confirmation of aflatoxicosis. We describe in-house development and evaluation of a high-performance liquid chromatographic method with fluorescence detection and precolumn derivatization for determination of aflatoxins M1, B1, B2, G1, and G2 in animal liver. The method demonstrates good selectivity for the tested aflatoxins in the liver matrix. The overall range was 0.03–0.10 ng/g for limit of detection and 0.09–0.18 ng/g for limit of quantitation. The correlation coefficient (R2) of calibration curves was >0.9978 for AFM1, 0.9995 for AFB1, 0.9986 for AFB2, 0.9983 for AFG1, and 0.9980 for AFG2. For fortification levels of 0.2–10 ng/g, repeatability was 10–18% for AFM1, 7–14% for AFB1, 5–14% for AFB2, 6–16% for AFG1, and 10–15% for AFG2. Recovery was 52–57% for AFM1, 54–62% for AFB1, 55–61% for AFB2, 57–67% for AFG1, and 61–65% for AFG2. There was no liver matrix effect found. The method is rugged against minor changes based on the selected factors. The results indicate that the proposed method is suitable for quantitative determination of aflatoxins M1, B1, B2, G1, and G2 in liver.
A sensitivity analysis of short-term hydropower planning using stochastic programming

Huge amount of uncertainties are being introduced to the power market because of the ongoing growth in the renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. The intermittent nature of these power sources increases the volatility of the day-ahead market prices. Therefore, improving planning tools and constructing an optimal bidding strategy to the day-ahead market is an essential task for the price-taker hydropower producer. This paper applies an optimal bidding model under the uncertainties of the day-ahead market prices and the water inflow level. Specifically, the model is built using a two-stage stochastic mixed integer linear programming approach. The uncertainties are handled by generating scenarios based on historical data. The model is tested by studying three reservoir test system. Profound sensitivity analysis is provided, in terms of volatility in day-ahead market prices and water inflow level as well as in terms of water opportunity cost and initial volume of the reservoir. Based on the comparison of the stochastic and corresponding deterministic problems, the result aims to show the impact of modeling the uncertainties explicitly.
MEMS three-dimensional scan mirror

A 1500-μm-diameter silicon/silicon nitride 3D scan mirror has been built using MEMS technology. It is capable of static and dynamic beam scanning achieved with a bi-axial gimbal. A gold-coated deformable membrane at the center of the device provides both focus control (z-axis) and spherical aberration correction. This architecture is able to move the focus of a laser beam throughout a three-dimensional space with a single optical surface, and is referred as a 3D scan mirror. This mirror will be incorporated into a miniature confocal laser scanning microscope for biomedical in-situ imaging applications. In this paper we describe the 3D scan mirror design, fabrication and characterization as well as its target application.
Young Person and Parent Perspectives on the Impact of Cleft Lip and/or Palate Within an Educational Setting

Background: During the school years, a cleft of the lip and/or palate (CL/P) may pose a risk to educational achievement. To further understand this multifaceted association, and to offer suggestions as to how young people’s educational experiences might be improved, qualitative investigation is warranted. Design: Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with young people born with CL/P (n = 10; aged 10-16 years) and their parents (n = 10). The resulting data were subjected to inductive thematic analysis. Results: Negative social interactions, cleft-related treatment, the presence of an additional condition, and a lack of appropriate support from teachers was found to influence young people’s educational experience. Methods for promoting diversity, support from clinical teams, facilitation of positive school transitions, implementation of training for teachers, and a holistic approach to the measurement of “success” were suggested by participants as potential ways of improving this experience. Conclusions: The findings of this study point to a need for a range of school-focused interventions, as well as the inclusion of a number of potentially impactful variables within future quantitative research.
Cloud manufacturing: key characteristics and applications

Cloud manufacturing is emerging as a new manufacturing paradigm as well as an integrated technology, which is promising in transforming today’s manufacturing industry towards service-oriented, highly collaborative and innovative manufacturing in the future. In order to better understand cloud manufacturing, this paper provides a critical review of relevant concepts and ideas in cloud computing as well as advanced manufacturing technologies that contribute to the evolution of cloud manufacturing. The key characteristics of cloud manufacturing are also presented in order to clarify the cloud manufacturing concept. Furthermore, a four-process structure is proposed to describe the typical scenario in cloud manufacturing, hoping to provide a theoretical reference for practical applications. Finally, an application case of a private cloud manufacturing system for a conglomerate is presented.
How to Invest in Getting Cost-effective Technologies into Practice? A Framework for Value of Implementation Analysis Applied to Novel Oral Anticoagulants

Cost-effective interventions are often implemented slowly and suboptimally in clinical practice. In such situations, a range of implementation activities may be considered to increase uptake. A framework is proposed to use cost-effectiveness analysis to inform decisions on how best to invest in implementation activities. This framework addresses 2 key issues: 1) how to account for changes in utilization in the future in the absence of implementation activities; and 2) how to prioritize implementation efforts between subgroups. A case study demonstrates the framework’s application: novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs) for the prevention of stroke in the National Health Service in England and Wales. The results suggest that there is value in additional implementation activities to improve uptake of NOACs, particularly in targeting patients with average or poor warfarin control. At a cost-effectiveness threshold of £20,000 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained, additional investment in an educational activity that increases the utilization of NOACs by 5% in all patients currently taking warfarin generates an additional 254 QALYs, compared with 973 QALYs in the subgroup with average to poor warfarin control. However, greater value could be achieved with higher uptake of anticoagulation more generally: switching 5% of patients who are potentially eligible for anticoagulation but are currently receiving no treatment or are using aspirin would generate an additional 4990 QALYs. This work can help health services make decisions on investment at different points of the care pathway or across disease areas in a manner consistent with the value assessment of new interventions.
Field renormalization in Photonic Crystal waveguides

A novel strategy is introduced in order to include variations of the nonlinearity into the nonlinear schrodinger Equation. This technique, which relies on renormalization, is in particular well adapted to nanostructured optical systems where the nonlinearity exhibits large variations up to two orders of magnitude larger than in bulk material. We show that it takes into account in a simple and efficient way the specificity of the nonlinearity in nanostructures that is determined by geometrical parameters like the effective mode area and the group index. The renormalization of the nonlinear schrodinger Equation is the occasion for physics oriented considerations and unveils the potential of Photonic Crystal waveguides for the study of new nonlinear propagation phenomena.
ION MOBILITY SPECTROMETRY DETERMINATION OF SMOKELESS POWDERS ON SURFACES

Federal agencies are interested in detecting explosive devices, compounds and explosive formulations potentially energetic or toxic to humans and animals. Advanced equipment has been designed and deployed to achi eve this goal. Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is a leading technique in explosive detection. In this project we developed an analytical methodology to detect different formulations of smokeless powders with the Barringer IonScan TM 400 IMS. Different amounts of Alliant-American Select, Alliant-Bulls eye, and Alliant-Red Dot smokeless powders were deposited and dry-transferred on to computer diskettes, CDs, filters, fibers and book covers. The surfaces were rubbed with IMS filters and the explosives were desorbed directly from the filter to the instrument inlet port. The data collected suggest that IMS could detect smokeless powders by its NG component in the order of a few nanograms.
A Simple Circuit Approach to Improve Speed and Power Consumption in Pulse-Triggered Flip-Flops

In this paper, simple circuital techniques to design efficient pulse triggered flip-flops are presented. The proposed approach aims at considerably alleviating the detrimental effects of current contention mechanisms, occurring at critical switching nodes of the circuits. In this way, both latency and power consumption of pulse triggered flip-flops are reduced. The proposed approach is assessed by means of simulations in 90-nm ST commercial CMOS technology. When applied to some recently proposed implicit pulse triggered flip-flop architectures, the suggested design strategy, allows speed to be improved up to 13% and power-delay-product to be lowered down to 14%. Moreover, also the process variation tolerance is considerably improved.
Efficient Estimation of the Cox Model with Auxiliary Subgroup Survival Information

Abstract With the rapidly increasing availability of data in the public domain, combining information from different sources to infer about associations or differences of interest has become an emerging challenge to researchers. This article presents a novel approach to improve efficiency in estimating the survival time distribution by synthesizing information from the individual-level data with t-year survival probabilities from external sources such as disease registries. While disease registries provide accurate and reliable overall survival statistics for the disease population, critical pieces of information that influence both choice of treatment and clinical outcomes usually are not available in the registry database. To combine with the published information, we propose to summarize the external survival information via a system of nonlinear population moments and estimate the survival time model using empirical likelihood methods. The proposed approach is more flexible than the conventional meta-analysis in the sense that it can automatically combine survival information for different subgroups and the information may be derived from different studies. Moreover, an extended estimator that allows for a different baseline risk in the aggregate data is also studied. Empirical likelihood ratio tests are proposed to examine whether the auxiliary survival information is consistent with the individual-level data. Simulation studies show that the proposed estimators yield a substantial gain in efficiency over the conventional partial likelihood approach. Two sets of data analysis are conducted to illustrate the methods and theory.
Adaptively Segmenting Angular Sectors for Radar HRRP Automatic Target Recognition

In this paper the manifold geometry in radar high-resolution range profile (HRRP) is firstly explored, and then, according to the characteristics of target pose sensitivity, a method of adaptively segmenting the aspect sectors is proposed for HRRP recognition through evaluating the curvature of HRRP manifold. Promising experimental results are presented for measured radar data.
Multilevel and channel-compensated language recognition : ATVS-UAM systems at NIST LRE 2009

This paper presents the systems submitted by ATVS – Biometric Recognition Group at 2009 language recognition evaluation, organized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology of United States (NIST LRE’09). Apart from the huge size of the databases involved, two main factors turn the evaluation into a very difficult task. First, the number of languages to be recognized was the biggest of all NIST LRE campaigns (23 different target languages). Second, the database conditions were strongly variable, with telephone speech coming from both broadcast news, extracted from Voice Of America (VOA) broadcast system, and conversational telephone speech (CTS). ATVS participation consisted of state-of-the-art acoustic and highlevel systems incorporating session variability compensation via Factor Analysis. Moreover, a novel back-end based on anchor models was used in order to fuse individual systems prior to one-vs.-all calibration via logistic regression. Results both in development and evaluation corpora show the robustness and excellent performance for most of the languages (among them, Iberian languages such as Spanish and Portuguese)
Optional multi-biometric cryptosystem based on fuzzy extractor

Following the wide use of smart devices, biometric cryptosystem is used to protect users' privacy data. However, biometric cryptosystem is rarely used in the scenario of mobile cloud, because the biometric sensors are different on various devices. In this paper, an optional multi-biometric cryptosystem based on fuzzy extractor and secret share technology is proposed. Each of the enrolled biometric modality generates a feature vector, and then the feature vector is put into a fuzzy extractor to get a stable codeword, namely a bit-string. All the codewords are used to bind a random key based on a secret share method, and the key can be used to encrypt users' privacy data. During the verification phase, part of the enrolled biometric modalities are enough to recover the random key. Therefore, the proposed scheme can provide a user the same biometric key on different devices. In addition, experiment on a virtual multi-biometric database shows that the novel concept of optional multi-biometric cryptosystem is better than the corresponding uni-biometric cryptosystem both in matching accuracy and key entropy.
Animal biodiversity: An introduction to higher-level classification and taxonomic richness

For the kingdom Animalia, 1,552,319 species have been described in 40 phyla in a new evolutionary classification. Among these, the phylum Arthropoda alone represents 1,242,040 species, or about 80% of the total. The most successful group, the Insecta (1,020,007 species), accounts for about 66% of all animals. The most successful insect order, Coleoptera (387,100 species), represents about 38% of all species in 39 insect orders. Another major group in Arthropoda is the class Arachnida (112,201 species), which is dominated by the mites and ticks (Acari 54,617 species) and spiders (43,579 species). Other highly diverse arthropod groups include Crustacea (66,914 species), Trilobitomorpha (19,606 species) and Myriapoda (11,885 species). The phylum Mollusca (117,358 species) is more diverse than other successful invertebrate phyla Platyhelminthes (29,285 species), Nematoda (24,783 species), Echinodermata (20,509 species), Annelida (17,210 species) and Bryozoa (10,941 species). The phylum Craniata, including the vertebrates, represents 64,832 species (for Recent taxa, except for amphibians): among these 7,694 described species of amphibians, 31,958 species of “fish” and 5,750 species of mammals.
Phylogenetic Responses of Forest Trees to Global Change

In a rapidly changing biosphere, approaches to understanding the ecology and evolution of forest species will be critical to predict and mitigate the effects of anthropogenic global change on forest ecosystems. Utilizing 26 forest species in a factorial experiment with two levels each of atmospheric CO2 and soil nitrogen, we examined the hypothesis that phylogeny would influence plant performance in response to elevated CO2 and nitrogen fertilization. We found highly idiosyncratic responses at the species level. However, significant, among-genetic lineage responses were present across a molecularly determined phylogeny, indicating that past evolutionary history may have an important role in the response of whole genetic lineages to future global change. These data imply that some genetic lineages will perform well and that others will not, depending upon the environmental context.
Soil-like conditions can be achieved inorganically in alkaline bauxite residue

Achieving a stable cover of vegetation on alkaline bauxite residue is challenging because alkalinity, sodicity, salinity and nutrient deficiency inhibit plant establishment. When the residue sand fraction is used as the growing medium there are additional problems of nutrient loss by leaching and poor water retention. Organic amendments or topsoil are consequently thought widely to be valuable for rehabilitation. Recognising the importance of organic matter for developing soil and achieving a stable ecosystem, we conducted a glasshouse experiment with kikuyu grass ( Pennisetum clandestinum ) to test the feasibility of generating organic matter in situ with water, nutrients and sunlight using inorganically amended residue sand. The amendment of the sand consisted of adding 4 % gypsum and 5 % carbonated (CO 2=sparged) red mud together with 150 mg/kg P as phosphoric acid and a range of macro= and micronutrients. Grass was grown by planting discs of turf in 64 pots (90 x 500 mm pipes fitted for leachate collection) each containing 2.9 kg of amended residue which had been leached with about 25mm of water. Experimental treatments consisted of 16 treatment combinations of 4 leaching frequencies and 4 rates of N application as solutions of ammonium sulfate applied every 4 days and containing maintenance levels of K and Mg. After 3 months, leachate pH had declined from 8.5 to 7.7. Leaching every 4 days for 3 weeks reduced electrical conductivity (EC) of leachate to < 5dS/m and used 1=2 pore volumes (100=200 mm) of water. Maximum dry matter production (roots and shoots) was about 35 g/pot after 3 months. This equates to about 50 Mg/ha. Growth response to N was linear up to the highest N rate of 6470 kg/ha ammonium sulfate. The results suggest that use of a non=invasive, sodium=tolerant grass such as kikuyu, besides providing a protective cover, has considerable potential for generating organic matter and accelerating soil development during restoration of bauxite residue.
Moisture Uptake in Organic Coatings Monitored with EIS

Although EIS is widely applied as a technique for monitoring the degradation of polymeric coatings when exposed to acqueous environments, a rigourous theoretical framework has not yet been fully developed. In this paper a mathematical model relating the kinetics of moisture uptake to the changes in the dielectric properties of organic coating is presented and a correlation between the extent of absorbed water and changes in the coating capacitance is developed. Thus, it is possible to measure both water diffusivity and solubility from capacitance data, making this technique very attractive as an alternative to the gravimetric method for investigating the barrier properties of organic coatings. The model developed in this paper was then employed to interpret the behaviour of industrial electrogalvanized iron sheet coated with a water based epoxyphenolic paint when exposed to an aqueous sodium chloride solution at room temperature.
On the development of fully adaptive channel allocation strategies for usage in high‐capacity cellular mobile radio systems

An alternative mathematical expression for the co‐channel interference probability is used, in order to calculate the cellular mobile radio system capacity and to construct a set of compatibility constraints needed for the development of fully adaptive channel allocation (FACA) strategies. The development of such channel allocation techniques becomes a main thrust for the system engineers in order to design an efficient system to manage traffic demands over the service area of a third generation cellular system. Three proposed FACA strategies are analysed and a simulation model is developed, in order to examine the performance of these strategies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Study on Plasma Sprayed HA/Ti Composite Coatings I. Microstructure, phase composition and mechanical properties

HA/Ti composite coatings on Ti-6Al-4V substrate were successfully deposited via plasma spraying, and then the microstructure, phase composition and mechanical properties were investigated. The results obtained indicate that the phases of HA and Ti are well-distributed in the composite coatings. The bonding strengthes of HA/Ti composite coatings are much higher than that of HA coating, that is explained in terms of the reduction of the mismatch of thermal expansion coefficients between coating and substrate. The value of bonding strength of HA/Ti composite coating does not obviously vary with the immersion time in simulated body fluid. Fracture toughness and hardness of HA/Ti composite coatings are higher than that of HA coating.
Expressing Biomedical Ontologies in Natural Language for Expert Evaluation

We report on a study of our custom Hootation software for the purposes of assessing its ability to produce clear and accurate natural language phrases from axioms embedded in three biomedical ontologies. Using multiple domain experts and three discrete rating scales, we evaluated the tool on clarity of the natural language produced, fidelity of the natural language produced from the ontology to the axiom, and the fidelity of the domain knowledge represented by the axioms. Results show that Hootation provided relatively clear natural language equivalents for a select set of OWL axioms, although the clarity of statements hinges on the accuracy and representation of axioms in the ontology.