Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Modular Code for Real Time Dynamic Simulation of Gas Turbines in Simulink

A high-fidelity real-time simulation code based on a lumped, nonlinear representation of gas turbine components is presented. The code is a general-purpose simulation software environment useful for setting up and testing control equipments. The mathematical model and the numerical procedure are specially developed in order to efficiently solve the set of algebraic and ordinary differential equations that describe the dynamic behavior of gas turbine engines. For high-fidelity purposes, the mathematical model takes into account the actual composition of the working gases and the variation of the specific heats with the temperature, including a stage-by-stage model of the air-cooled expansion. The paper presents the model and the adopted solver procedure. The code, developed in Matlab-Simulink using an object-oriented approach, is flexible and can be easily adapted to any kind of plant configuration. Simulation tests of the transients after load rejection have been carried out for a single-shaft heavy-duty gas turbine and a double-shaft aero-derivative industrial engine. Time plots of the main variables that describe the gas turbine dynamic behavior are shown and the results regarding the computational time per time step are discussed.
BLOCON: A Bufferless Photonic Clos network-on-chip architecture

On-chip photonic waveguides have been proposed as a feasible replacement for the long interconnects that cause speed and power bottlenecks. Along with recent advancements in nanophotonic technologies, we believe that combining on-chip waveguides with high-radix Network on Chip (NoC) topologies is a promising way to improve NoC performance. In this paper, we propose the BLOCON (BufferLess phOtonic ClOs Network) to exploit silicon photonics. We propose a scheduling algorithm named Sustained and Informed Dual Round-Robin Matching (SIDRRM) to solve the output contention problem, and a path allocation scheme named Distributed and Informed Path Allocation (DIPA) to solve the Clos network routing problem. In the simulation results, we show that with SIDRRM and DIPA, BLOCON improves the delay and power performance of the compared electrical and photonic NoC architectures over synthetic traffic patterns and SPLASH-2 traces.
Scalability and quality of service: a trade-off?

During the last decade, two big efforts on Internet quality of service were made. The first, IntServ, promises precise per-flow service provisioning but never really made it as a commercial end-user product, which was mainly accredited to its lack of scalability. Its successor, DiffServ, is more scalable at the cost of coarser service granularity - which may be the reason why it is not yet commercially available to end users either. This leaves us with the question: is there a fundamental trade-off between QoS and scalability? A trade-off that, in the long run, could prevent deployment of QoS for end users altogether?
Reduction rules for reset workflow nets

When a workflow contains a large number of tasks and involves complex control flow dependencies, verification can take too much time or it may even be impossible. Reduction rules can be used to abstract from certain transitions and places in a large net and thus could cut down the size of the net used for verification. Petri nets have been proposed to model and analyse workflows and Petri nets reduction rules have been used for efficient verification of various properties of workflows, such as liveness and boundedness. Reset nets are Petri nets with reset arcs, which can remove tokens from places when a transition fires. The nature of reset arcs closely relates to the cancellation behaviour in workflows. As a result, reset nets have been proposed to formally represent workflows with cancellation behaviour, which is not easily modelled in ordinary Petri nets. Even though reduction rules exist for Petri nets, the nature of reset arcs could invalidate the transformation rules applicable to Petri nets. This motivated us to consider possible reduction rules for reset nets. In this paper, we propose a number of reduction rules for Reset Workflow Nets (RWF-nets) that are soundness preserving. These reduction rules are based on reduction rules available for Petri nets [19] and we present the necessary conditions under which these rules hold in the context of reset nets.
First results from a VLBA proper motion survey of H2O masers in low-mass YSOs : the Serpens core and RNO 15-FIR

This article reports first results of a long-term observational program aimed to study the earliest evolution of jet/disk systems in low-mass YSOs by means of VLBI observations of the 22.2 GHz water masers. We report here data for the cluster of low-mass YSOs in the Serpens molecular core and for the single object RNO 15-FIR. Towards Serpens SMMI, the most luminous sub-mm source of the Serpens cluster, the water maser emission comes from two small (<5 AU in size) clusters of features separated by 25 AU, having line of sight velocities strongly red-shifted (by more than 10 km s -1 ) with respect to the LSR velocity of the molecular cloud. The two maser clusters are oriented on the sky along a direction that is approximately perpendicular to the axis of the radio continuum jet observed with the VLA towards SMM1. The spatial and velocity distribution of the maser features lead us to favor the interpretation that the maser emission is excited by interaction of the receding lobe of the jet with dense gas in the accretion disk surrounding the YSO in SMM1. The line of sight velocities of several features decrease at a rate of 1 km s -1 month -1 and the sky-projected relative motion of two features appears to be accelerated (decelerated) at a rate of 10-15 km s -1 month -1 . We propose that the shocks harboring the maser emission are slowed down as they proceed through the dense material surrounding the YSO. Towards RNO 15-FIR, the few detected maser features have both positions and (absolute) velocities aligned along a direction that is parallel to the axis of the molecular outflow observed on much larger angular scales. In this case the maser emission likely emerges from dense, shocked molecular clumps displaced along the axis of the jet emerging from the YSO. The protostar in Serpens SMM 1 is more massive than the one in RNO 15-FIR. We discuss the case where a high mass ejection rate can generate jets sufficiently powerful to sweep away from their course the densest portions of circumstellar gas. In this case, the excitation conditions for water masers might preferably occur at the interface between the jet and the accretion disk, rather than along the jet axis.
Accurate IGBT modeling under high-injection condition

A compact model of IGBT (Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistor) is developed by considering the high-injection condition explicitly. The model distinguishes the MOSFET controlled part and the bipolar transistor controlled part explicitly by introducing internal potential nodes, which are solved iteratively. It is verified that the model calculates the potential distribution along the device identical to that of 2D-device numerical simulation results. It is demonstrated that accurate and stable switching simulation is realized with the developed model.
Organising User Interfaces Around Reflective Accounts

Over recent years, studies of human-computer interaction (HCI) from sociological and anthropological perspectives have offered radical new perspectives on how we use computer systems. These have given rise to new models of designing and studying interactive systems. In this paper, we present a new proposal which looks not at the way in which we design systems, but at the nature of the systems we design. It presents the notion of an “account”— a reflective representation that an interactive system can offer of its own activity—and shows how it can be exploited within a framework oriented around sociologically-informed models of the contingent, improvised organisation of work. This work not only introduces a new model of interactive systems design, but also illustrates the use of reflective techniques and models to create theoretical bridges between the disciplines of system design and ethnomethodology.
A Secure E-coupon System for Mobile Users

Summary Since nowadays mobile phone messages are flourishing, the application of electronic coupon (e-coupon) will become a trend for mobile users. E-coupon for mobile commerce can provide mobility for users and distribution flexibility for issuers. However, most of the existed e-coupon schemes usually apply public-key cryptosystem to achieve the security, which will not be implemented in mobile devices due to the complex computations. In this paper, we propose a novel mobile e-coupon system that just applies some simple cryptographic techniques, such as one-way hash function and message authentication code. In our system, the issuer can control the number of issued e-coupons and prevent them from double-redeeming. The merchant can verify the validity of the e-coupon and the customers can securely transfer the e-coupon to others. The customer does not need to perform any exponential computation in redeeming and transferring the coupons.
Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Hepatitis B Virus D Genotype in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin

Hepatitis B virus genotype D can be found in many parts of the world and is the most prevalent strain in south-eastern Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East, and the Indian sub-continent. The epidemiological history of the D genotype and its subgenotypes is still obscure because of the scarcity of appropriate studies. We retrieved from public databases a total of 312 gene P sequences of HBV genotype D isolated in various countries throughout the world, and reconstructed the spatio-temporal evolutionary dynamics of the HBV-D epidemic using a Bayesian framework. The phylogeographical analysis showed that India had the highest posterior probability of being the location of the tree root, whereas central Asia was the most probable location of the common ancestor of subgenotypes D1–D3. HBV-D5 (identified in native Indian populations) diverged from the tree root earlier than D1–D3. The time of the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of the tree root was 128 years ago, which suggests that the common ancestor of the currently circulating subgenotypes existed in the second half of the XIX century. The mean tMRCA of subgenotypes D1–D3 was between the 1940s and the 1950–60s. On the basis of our phylogeographic reconstruction, it seems that HBV-D reached the Mediterranean area in the middle of the XX century by means of at least two routes: the first pathway (mainly due to the spread of subgenotype D1) crossing the Middle East and reaching north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and the second pathway (closely associated with D2) that crossed the former Soviet Union and reached eastern Europe and the Mediterranean through Albania. We hypothesise that the main route of dispersion of genotype D was the unsafe use of injections and drug addiction.
A new alpha-proteobacterial clade of Bdellovibrio-like predators: implications for the mitochondrial endosymbiotic theory.

Bdellovibrio-and-like organisms (BALOs) are peculiar, ubiquitous, small-sized, highly motile Gram-negative bacteria that are obligatory predators of other bacteria. Typically, these predators invade the periplasm of their prey where they grow and replicate. To date, BALOs constitute two highly diverse families affiliated with the delta-proteobacteria class. In this study, Micavibrio spp. , a BALO lineage of epibiotic predators, were isolated from soil. These bacteria attach to digest and grow at the expense of other prokaryotes, much like other BALOs. Multiple phylogenetic analyses based on six genes revealed that they formed a deep branch within the alpha-proteobacteria, not affiliated with any of the alpha-proteobacterial orders. The presence of BALOs deep among the alpha-proteobacteria suggests that their peculiar mode of parasitism maybe an ancestral character in this proteobacterial class. The origin of the mitochondrion from an alpha-proteobacterium endosymbiont is strongly supported by molecular phylogenies. Accumulating data suggest that the endosymbiont's host was also a prokaryote. As prokaryotes are unable to phagocytose, the means by which the endosymbiont gained access into its host remains mysterious. We here propose a scenario based on the BALO feeding-mode to hypothesize a mechanism at play at the origin of the mitochondrial endosymbiosis.
Why Evaluation Theory Should Be Used to Inform Evaluation Policy

Many organizations now have evaluation policies. Because formal evaluation policies intend to frame evaluation practice, it is important to understand the aims of policies and their influence on practice. Evaluation theory is also intended to guide practice; therefore, the extent to which policies are informed by theory is also important to consider, given the related purposes of evaluation theories and policies. Because evaluation policies have emerged with greater occurrence relatively recently, the conceptual and empirical work on the theory–policy–practice connection is limited. Our aim in this article is to flesh out the intersection between evaluation theory, policy, and practice. As illustrative examples, we discuss the three policies in terms of methods, use, and valuing—three core dimensions of evaluation theory. The article concludes with a set of reflections on the different strategies for and implications of a stronger integration of evaluation theory in evaluation policies.
Grouping Computational Data in Resource Caches of Edge-Fog Cloud

Edge-Fog clouds provide an attractive platform for bringing data processing closer to its source in a networked environment. In this paper we extend our work on Edge-Fog clouds and to an industrial automation scenario, where we show how grouping of computational data in resource caches lowers network traffic and shortens application-experienced latency. Our preliminary results are promising and in our future work we plan to evaluate more realistic scenarios and apply the solutions in real industrial automation cases.
Transgenic Suppression of AGAMOUS Genes in Apple Reduces Fertility and Increases Floral Attractiveness

We investigated the ability of RNA interference (RNAi) directed against two co-orthologs of AGAMOUS (AG) from Malus domestica (domestic apple, MdAG) to reduce the risks of invasiveness and provide genetic containment of transgenes, while also promoting the attractiveness of flowers for ornamental usage. Suppression of two MdAG-like genes, MdMADS15 and MdMADS22, led to the production of trees with highly showy, polypetalous flowers. These “double-flowers” had strongly reduced expression of both MdAG-like genes. Members of the two other clades within in the MdAG subfamily showed mild to moderate differences in gene expression, or were unchanged, with the level of suppression approximately proportional to the level of sequence identity between the gene analyzed and the RNAi fragment. The double-flowers also exhibited reduced male and female fertility, had few viable pollen grains, a decreased number of stigmas, and produced few viable seeds after cross-pollination. Despite these floral alterations, RNAi-AG trees with double-flowers set full-sized fruit. Suppression or mutation of apple AG-like genes appears to be a promising method for combining genetic containment with improved floral attractiveness.
Assessment of rooting depth in banana (Musa spp.) under two cropping systems

Brief summaries of no more than 350 words describing the rationale, objectives, methods, results, and conclusions of small and/or ongoing research projects. Abstracts must be self-explanatory and intelligible without reference to publications elsewhere and should not contain tables or figures. Reviews of articles published elsewhere will also be considered for this section.
Stress response in Lactococcus lactis: cloning, expression analysis, and mutation of the lactococcal superoxide dismutase gene

In an analysis of the stress response of Lactococcus lactis, three proteins that were induced under low pH culture conditions were detected. One of these was identified as the lactococcal superoxide dismutase (SodA) by N-terminal amino acid sequence analysis. The gene encoding this protein, designated sodA, was cloned by the complementation of a sodA sodB Escherichia coli strain. The deduced amino acid sequence of L. lactis SodA showed the highest degree of similarity to the manganese-containing Sod (MnSod) of Bacillus stearothermophilus. A promoter upstream of the sodA gene was identified by primer extension analysis, and an inverted repeat surrounding the -35 hexanucleotide of this promoter is possibly involved in the regulation of the expression of sodA. The expression of sodA was analyzed by transcriptional fusions with a promoterless lacZ gene. The induction of beta-galactosidase activity occurred in aerated cultures. Deletion experiments revealed that a DNA fragment of more than 130 bp surrounding the promoter was needed for the induction of lacZ expression by aeration. The growth rate of an insertion mutant of sodA did not differ from that of the wild type in standing cultures but was decreased in aerated cultures.
USING 3-D VIRTUAL REALITY MODELS FOR IMAGE ORIENTATION IN MOBILE COMPUTING

Advances in sensor technology and computing capabilities and modalities are revolutionizing close-range image collection and analysis for geospatial applications. These advances create the need for new ways of handling and processing video datasets at quasi real time rates. In this paper we present an innovative two step orientation technique for ground level motion imagery using a 3 dimensional virtual model as control information. In the first step few select anchor frames are orientated precisely via an image orientation-through-queries approach. In the second step, intermediate frames are orientated relatively to these anchor frames through an innovative analysis of building façade variations in them. Combined, these two steps comprise a complete approach to motion imagery orientation using a VR as control information.
Development of a Mobile, Automated Tool

The purpose of this research was to develop a portable prototype instrument designed to provide forensic examiners with the ability to characterize a tool marked surface, compare the data from that surface to data files obtained from any other surface, and evaluate the likelihood that the two surfaces were made using the same tool. While the areas selected for characterization are at the discretion of the examiner, acquisition of the data is carried out using a system based on a portable 3-D optical profilometer manufactured by Alicona, GmbH. Comparison of resulting data files is done in an objective manner using software algorithms developed and tested by researchers at Ames Laboratory / Iowa State University (AL/ISU). Due to the relatively small size of the instrument the actual device is portable; all the microscope components can be packed into a hard-shell suitcase allowing it to be taken directly to crime scenes if need be. The software package used for analysis, called “Mantis,” standing for Mark and Tool Inspection Suite, is resident on a laptop computer. Mantis is designed to be user friendly and easy to operate and employs open source software code to allow for continued research and expansion. Currently, using the system an examiner can 1) compare all types of tool marked surfaces in a manner similar to a comparison microscope; 2) obtain objective statistical evaluation of data files; 3) elucidate factors that existed when certain types of tool marks were made, e.g., angle of the tool. The design of the system is such that it provides an open source platform that other researchers can write algorithms for and test, while offering data-files that can be used by any system or researcher. Finally, all these benefits are resident in a portable system available at a greatly reduced hardware cost as compared to current systems in use. At this time the system has been tested on data sets consisting of i) fully striated marks created from 50 sequentially manufactured screwdrivers, ii) quasi striated markings produced by 50 sequentially manufactured shear-cut pliers, and iii) impression marks produced by 50 sequentially manufactured cold chisels. In all cases the system was able to analyze the markings and separate true matches from nonmatches to a high level of success. Exploratory studies on rifling marks left on fired bullets and cut marks produced by knives present a greater challenge, due to both the size of the files and their intrinsic nature. These initial results suggest that further development of statistical algorithms to address more complex markings is required
Integrating user's profile in the query model for Social Information Retrieval

Social Information Retrieval (SIR) exploits the user's social data in order to refine the retrieval, for instance in the case where users with different backgrounds may express different information needs as a same textual query. However, this additional source of information is not supported by the classical IR process. In this article, we propose an approach to generate the user profile from his social data. This generated profile is integrated within a SIR model allowing to personalize the list of documents returned to the user.
Initiatives as Knowledge-Creating Entities

Initiatives are ‘a principle mechanism through which organizations develop new competitive advantages. This paper proposes a view of initiatives as processes that recombine previously disconnected knowledge domains, with the firm’s knowledge base serving as a platform from which the initiative creates its own knowledge base. During this process initiative members couple themselves tighter in order to integrate their specialist knowledge into detailed action. This coupling causes the initiative to set up its own specific organizational form, administrative and incentive systems, and roles, effectively creating an appropriate context of its own within the firm. The firms in which they are embedded can constrain their knowledge development but also serve to enable their launch and development. Based on an analysis of 36 initiatives in three large firms, distinct patterns of knowledge formation could be discerned that lead to recommendations for managers and theory.
Leadership and Academic Reform: Biology at Berkeley

Leadership and Academic Reform: Biology at Berkeley Martin Trow Goldman School of Public Policy and The Center for Studies in Higher Education University of California, Berkeley Working Paper 99-8 Working Papers published by the Institute of Governmental Studies provide quick dissemination of draft reports and papers, preliminary analysis, and papers with a limited audience. The objective is to assist authors in refining their ideas by circulating results and to stimulate discussion about public policy. Working Papers are reproduced unedited directly from the author’s page.
Using Semantic Similarity to Acquire Cooccurrence Restrictions from Corpora

We describe a method for acquiring semantic cooccurrence restrictions for tuples of syntactically related words (e.g. verb-object pairs) from text corpora automatically. This method uses the notion of semantic similarity to assign a sense from a dictionary database (e.g. WordNet) to ambiguous words occurring in a syntactic dependency. Semantic similarity is also used to merge disambiguated word tuples into classes of cooccurrence restrictions. This encoding makes it possible to reduce subsequent disambiguation events to simple table lookups.