Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Subiculum: A Potential Site of Ictogenesis in a Neonatal Seizure Model

Studies have reported that the subiculum is one origin of interictal-like discharges in adult patients with temporal lobe epilepsy; however, whether the subiculum represents a site of ictogenesis for neonatal seizures remains unclear. In this study, multi-electrode recording techniques were used to record epileptiform discharges induced by low-Mg2+ or high-K+ artificial cerebrospinal fluid in neonatal mouse hippocampal slices, and the spatiotemporal dynamics of the epileptiform discharges were analyzed. The Na+–K+–2Cl− cotransporter 1 (NKCC1) blocker, bumetanide, was applied to test its effect upon epileptiform discharges in low-Mg2+ model. The effect of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) antagonist, d-AP5, upon the epileptiform discharges in high-K+ model was examined. We found that the neonatal subiculum not only relayed epileptiform discharges emanating from the hippocampus proper (HP) but also initiated epileptiform discharges (interictal- and ictal-like discharges) independently. The latency to onset of the first epileptiform discharge initiated in the subiculum was similar to that initiated in the HP. Bumetanide efficiently blocked seizures in the neonatal HP, but was less effectively in suppressing seizures initiated in the subiculum. In high-K+ model, d-AP5 was more effective in blocking seizures initiated in the subiculum than that initiated in the HP. Furthermore, Western blotting analysis showed that NKCC1 expression was lower in the subiculum than that in the HP, whereas the expression of NMDAR subunits, NR2A and NR2B, was higher in the subiculum than that in the HP. Our results revealed that the subiculum was a potential site of ictogenesis in neonatal seizures and possessed similar seizure susceptibility to the HP. GABAergic excitation resulting from NKCC1 may play a less dominant role during ictogenesis in the subiculum than that in the HP. The subicular ictogenesis may be related to the glutamatergic excitation mediated by NMDARs.
DevOps - A Software Architect's Perspective

The First Complete Guide to DevOps for Software Architects DevOps promises to accelerate the release of new software features and improve monitoring of systems in production, but its crucial implications for software architects and architecture are often ignored. In DevOps: A Software Architects Perspective, three leading architects address these issues head-on. The authors review decisions software architects must make in order to achieve DevOps goals and clarify how other DevOps participants are likely to impact the architects work. They also provide the organizational, technical, and operational context needed to deploy DevOps more efficiently, and review DevOps impact on each development phase. The authors address cross-cutting concerns that link multiple functions, offering practical insights into compliance, performance, reliability, repeatability, and security. This guide demonstrates the authors ideas in action with three real-world case studies: datacenter replication for business continuity, management of a continuous deployment pipeline, and migration to a microservice architecture. Comprehensive coverage includes Why DevOps can require major changes in both system architecture and IT roles How virtualization and the cloud can enable DevOps practices Integrating operations and its service lifecycle into DevOps Designing new systems to work well with DevOps practices Integrating DevOps with agile methods and TDD Handling failure detection, upgrade planning, and other key issues Managing consistency issues arising from DevOps independent deployment models Integrating security controls, roles, and audits into DevOps Preparing a business plan for DevOps adoption, rollout, and measurement
Privacy-Preserving Location-Based Query Using Location Indexes and Parallel Searching in Distributed Networks

An efficient location-based query algorithm of protecting the privacy of the user in the distributed networks is given. This algorithm utilizes the location indexes of the users and multiple parallel threads to search and select quickly all the candidate anonymous sets with more users and their location information with more uniform distribution to accelerate the execution of the temporal-spatial anonymous operations, and it allows the users to configure their custom-made privacy-preserving location query requests. The simulated experiment results show that the proposed algorithm can offer simultaneously the location query services for more users and improve the performance of the anonymous server and satisfy the anonymous location requests of the users.
Development and properties evaluation of marble dust reinforced ZA-27 alloy composites for ball bearing application

In this work, the usability of waste marble dust as a reinforcement in the development of ZA-27 alloy composites has been investigated for use in ball bearing application. ZA-27 alloy composites with five different concentration of marble dust viz. 0, 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 wt% of marble dust were fabricated using high-temperature vacuum casting. Developed composites were evaluated for various mechanical properties such as compressive strength, impact strength, flexural strength, and stress intensity factor (SIF) for 4 different crack lengths viz. 1, 2, 3, and 4 mm. Compressive strength and impact strength showed improvement for marble dust concentration up to 7.5 wt% while flexural strength and SIF kept on increasing continuously with increase in reinforcement content up to 10 wt% marble dust. There was ∼31%, ∼100%, ∼49%, and ∼184% improvement in compressive strength, impact strength, flexural strength, and SIF (for 4 mm crack length), respectively in comparison to those of 0 wt% marble dust composite. Fracture surface morphologies generated during fracture toughness analysis were examined using scanning electron microscopy to investigate the nature of failure. In addition to mechanical properties, thermo-mechanical behavior of the fabricated composites was evaluated by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) in the temperature range 25 °C–250 °C. DMA results revealed a continuous increase in storage modulus, loss modulus and tan delta with increase in marble dust concentration, except the loss modulus for 7.5 wt% marble dust. Based on the proposed composites, finite element method (FEM) analysis was carried out for single-row deep groove ball bearing application to investigate hardness, contact stress, and displacement between inner and outer race at specific loading condition (500 N) and then, validated by mathematical modeling.
Acoustic Echo Cancellation Using a Vector-Space-Based Adaptive Filtering Algorithm

A novel vector-space-based adaptive filtering (VAF) algorithm for acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) is presented. The proposed VAF algorithm can be divided into two phases: offline and online. In the offline phase, VAF constructs a vector space to incorporate the prior knowledge of adaptive filter coefficients from a wide range of different channel characteristics. Then, in the online phase, a mapping function is derived to estimate the adaptive filter for the testing condition using the constructed vector space. By using the vector space, VAF can effectively and efficiently estimate the parameters of the adaptive filter for the unknown testing condition. The experimental results for three designed AEC tasks demonstrate that VAF provides notably faster convergence rates compared to conventional adaptive filtering methods.
High-Redshift Quasars Found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data

We present photometric and spectroscopic observations of 15 high-redshift quasars (z > 3.6) discovered from ∼140 deg2 of five-color (u′, g′, r′, i′, and z′) imaging data taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) during its commissioning phase. The quasars are selected by their distinctive colors in SDSS multicolor space. Four of the quasars have redshifts higher than 4.6 (z = 4.63, 4.75, 4.90, and 5.00, the latter being the highest redshift quasar yet known). In addition, two previously known z > 4 objects were recovered from the data. The quasars all have i* < 20 and have luminosities comparable to that of 3C 273. The spectra of the quasars have similar features (strong, broad emission lines and substantial absorption blueward of the Lyα emission line) seen in previously known high-redshift quasars. Although the photometric accuracy and image quality fail to meet the final survey requirements, our success rate for identifying high-redshift quasars (17 quasars from 27 candidates) is much higher than that of previous multicolor surveys. However, the numbers of high-redshift quasars found is in close accord with the number density inferred from previous surveys.
Therapeutic efficacy of cardiosphere-derived cells in a transgenic mouse model of non-ischaemic dilated cardiomyopathy.

AIM Cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) produce regenerative effects in the post-infarct setting. However, it is unclear whether CDCs are beneficial in non-ischaemic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). We tested the effects of CDC transplantation in mice with cardiac-specific Gαq overexpression, which predictably develop progressive cardiac dilation and failure, with accelerated mortality. METHODS AND RESULTS Wild-type mouse CDCs (10(5) cells) or vehicle only were injected intramyocardially in 6-, 8-, and 11-week-old Gαq mice. Cardiac function deteriorated in vehicle-treated mice over 3 months of follow-up, accompanied by oxidative stress, inflammation and adverse ventricular remodelling. In contrast, CDCs preserved cardiac function and volumes, improved survival, and promoted cardiomyogenesis while blunting Gαq-induced oxidative stress and inflammation in the heart. The mechanism of benefit is indirect, as long-term engraftment of transplanted cells is vanishingly low. CONCLUSIONS Cardiosphere-derived cells reverse fundamental abnormalities in cell signalling, prevent adverse remodelling, and improve survival in a mouse model of DCM. The ability to impact favourably on disease progression in non-ischaemic heart failure heralds new potential therapeutic applications of CDCs.
A Multidisciplinary Sepsis Program Enabled by a Two-Stage Clinical Decision Support System

Sepsis is an inflammatory response triggered by infection, with risk of in-hospital mortality fueled by disease progression. Early recognition and intervention by multidisciplinary sepsis programs may reverse the inflammatory response among at-risk patient populations, potentially improving outcomes. This retrospective study of a sepsis program enabled by a 2-stage sepsis Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system sought to evaluate the program’s impact, identify early indicators that may influence outcomes, and uncover opportunities for quality improvement. Data encompassed 16 527 adult hospitalizations from 2014 and 2015. Of 2108 non–intensive care unit patients screened-in by sepsis CDS, 97% patients were stratified by 177 providers. Risk of adverse outcome improved 30% from baseline to year end, with gains materializing and stabilizing at month 7 after sepsis program go-live. Early indicators likely to influence outcomes include patient age, recent hospitalization, electrolyte abnormalities, hypovolemic shock, hypoxemia, patient location when sepsis CDS activated, and specific alert patterns.
Social Network, Social Support, and Risk of Incident Stroke: Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study

Background and Purpose— Having a small social network and lack of social support have been associated with incident coronary heart disease; however, epidemiological evidence for incident stroke is limited. We assessed the longitudinal association of a small social network and lack of social support with risk of incident stroke and evaluated whether the association was partly mediated by vital exhaustion and inflammation. Methods— The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study measured social network and social support in 13 686 men and women (mean, 57 years; 56% women; 24% black; 76% white) without a history of stroke. Social network was assessed by the 10-item Lubben Social Network Scale and social support by a 16-item Interpersonal Support Evaluation List-Short Form. Results— During a median follow-up of 18.6 years, 905 incident strokes occurred. Relative to participants with a large social network, those with a small social network had a higher risk of stroke (hazard ratio [95% confidence interval], 1.44 [1.02–2.04]) after adjustment for demographics, socioeconomic variables, marital status, behavioral risk factors, and major stroke risk factors. Vital exhaustion, but not inflammation, partly mediated the association between a small social network and incident stroke. Social support was unrelated to incident stroke. Conclusions— In this sample of US community-dwelling men and women, having a small social network was associated with excess risk of incident stroke. As with other cardiovascular conditions, having a small social network may be associated with a modestly increased risk of incident stroke.
Monitoring and Diagnosis of Hybrid Systems Using Particle Filtering Methods

Embedded systems are composed of a large number of components that interact with the physical world via a set of sensors and actuators, have their own computational capabilities, and communicate with each other via a wired or wireless network. Diagnostic systems for such applications must address new challenges caused by the distribution of resources, the networking environment, and the tight coupling between the computational and the physical worlds. Our approach is to move from centralized, discrete or continuous techniques toward a distributed, hybrid diagnosis architecture. Monitoring and diagnosis of any dynamical system depend crucially on the ability to estimate the system state given the observations. Estimation for hybrid systems is particularly challenging because it requires keeping track of multiple models and the transitions between them. This paper presents a particle filtering based estimation algorithm that addresses the challenge of the interaction between continuous and discrete dynamics in hybrid systems. The hybrid estimation methodology has been demonstrated on a rocket propulsion system.
Design & developing a model for minimizing movement in mobile network

Generally, issues concerning movement include a coordinated movement of a set of things to achieve a universal goal in a network. Mobile facility movement is a modern issue raised in locating. This study developed a model aiming at minimizing the movement in locating the mobile facilities and providing service for high-priority clients in a given network composed of clients and mobile facilities bearing two parameters in mind: the capacity of facilities and clients' priority. The validity of the model was then put to test applying GAMS software thereafter two numerical and graphical instances were introduced
Elongation of the Trachea During Neck Extension in Children: Implications of the Safety of Endotracheal Tubes

During neck extension, the changes in distance between endotracheal tube (ETT) tip and carina may not be equal to the changes in distance between vocal cords and ETT tip because of tracheal elongation. These distances are directly related to extubation risk. Using a fiberoptic bronchoscope, the distance between ETT tip and carina was measured in the neutral position after full extension of the neck in 25 children (2–8 yr old) scheduled for elective surgery under general anesthesia. The tracheal length was then measured in the neutral position and after full extension. The distance between vocal cords and ETT tip was calculated as the tracheal length minus the distance between ETT tip and carina. After full extension, the tracheal length (7.97 ± 0.85 cm) was increased by 0.95 ± 0.43 cm, and the change in distance between vocal cords and ETT tip was −1.08 ± 0.47 cm, whereas the change in distance between ETT tip and carina was 2.02 ± 0.58 cm. These results suggest that neck extension actually displaces the ETT tip to the vocal cords, increasing the risk of tracheal extubation in older children, although the actual displacement of ETT tip to vocal cords is reduced by tracheal lengthening.
An Integrated Method for under Frequency Load Shedding Based on Hybrid Intelligent System-Part I: Dynamic Simulation

Security is one of the most vital requirements in the operation of power systems. Frequency is a reliable indicator to determine instability condition in power system, i.e. the stability of power system is closely dependent on the value of system frequency. Under Frequency Load Shedding (UFLS) is one of the most important protection systems as in many cases it is the last action taken to prevent a system blackout after a serious disturbance occurs in power system. The first part of this two part paper presents various factors in modern power systems which have significant contribution on Under Frequency Load Shedding (UFLS). A high-order multi-machine frequency response model is utilized as it the best strategy of power system dynamic simulation. Classification of modern power system components and using an equal unit for each class is proposed in this work. The results show that ANN models can also be implemented as well as a fast dynamic simulator of electric power system. This assessment includes a review of significant researches on power system dynamic simulation and frequency response model leading to an integrated UFLS system design.
CAD for nanometer silicon design challenges and success

As silicon CMOS technology is scaled into the nanometer regime, the paradigm shift of computer-aided design (CAD) technology is indispensable to cope with two major challenges (i.e., the ever-increasing design complexity of gigascale integration and complicated physical effects inherent from the nanoscale technology). System-level design and verification methodologies manage the functional complexity, and manufacturing-aware design techniques control the nanoscale physical effects. In this highlight paper, most nanometer design issues are described and the issues related to the higher level of abstraction are summarized. Process variability can be controlled by statistical design, resolution enhancement, planarity control, and other manufacturing-aware design techniques. Continuously growing problems such as leakage power, signal integrity, and reliability are also discussed. Finally, technology CAD for future nanometer devices is presented. For successful nanometer silicon design, closer cooperation among the design, process technology, mask, and CAD communities are essential.
The Normative Standard of Mandarin in Taiwan: An Analysis of Variation in Metapragmatic Discourse

It has been argued for many years that a new standard of Mandarin is developing within Taiwan, distinct from the official form based on the Beijing pronunciation, as well as the non-standard vernacular, Taiwan-guoyu. The parameters by which this new standard, Taiwanese Mandarin, may be recognized, however, and the extent to which it exists in common perceptions, remain largely unknown. In order to better describe this variety, interviews were conducted in the north and south of Taiwan to elicit metapragmatic reports on the linguistic characteristics of highly standard and non-standard speech to mark opposing ends of a continuum of standardness. The inner area of this spectrum reveals the shape of a normative standard of Mandarin in common language ideologies. A quantitative sociolinguistic analysis was also conducted to measure usage of the segments elicited in these reports. Participants indicated that the prescribed form of the retroflex initials [ʈʂ], [ʈʂʰ], and [ʂ] creates distance within interaction and marks speakers as ‘weird’ or ‘strange’. Though it represents the standardized form, it is socially disfavored in general usage, thus marking one end of the continuum. In contrast, deletion of the labial feature in [w], [f], and [y], was most highly associated with a crude lack of sophistication, ruralness, and low education, marking the other end of the continuum. In the quantitative analyses, the non-prescribed labial segments were associated with low SES, older age, and factors of local identity. The prescribed retroflex correlated with higher SES, and northern identity, and showed a change over time toward more prescribed usage. The youngest age category, however, showed a reversal of this trend. An intermediate category of the retroflex initials patterned very similarly to the prescribed form, however it was free of negative qualitative associations. Thus Taiwanese Mandarin is marked by the absence of prescribed retroflex and non-prescribed labial forms, and presence of the intermediate retroflex. Some also questioned the basic existence of a ‘standard’ Mandarin in Taiwan, or explicitly affirmed the notion of a Taiwanese Mandarin. It is evident that the nature of standard Mandarin in Taiwan is in a state of sharp ideological and behavioral change.
Bayes By Backprop Neural Networks for Dialogue Management

In dialogue management for statistical spoken dialogue systems, an agent learns a policy that maps a belief state to an action for the system to perform. Efficient exploration is key to successful dialogue policy estimation. Current deep reinforcement learning methods are very promising but rely on ε-greedy exploration, which is not as sample efficient as methods that use uncertainty estimates, such as Gaussian Process SARSA (GPSARSA). This thesis implements Bayes-By-Backpropagation, a method to extract uncertainty estimates from deep Q-networks (DQN). These uncertainty estimates are used to guide exploration. We show that Bayes-ByBackpropagation DQN (BBQN) achieves more efficient exploration and faster convergence to an optimal policy than ε-greedy based methods, and reaches performance comparable to the state of the art in policy optimization, namely GPSARSA, especially when evaluated on more complex domains, and without the high computational complexity of Gaussian Processes. We also implement α-divergences, variational dropout, and minimizing the negative log likelihood as other means to extract uncertainty estimates from DQN, and compare performance to BBQN and DQN. This work is carried within in the Cambridge University Engineering Department dialogue systems toolkit, CUED-pydial.