Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of optical force measurement to mode characterization of atomic force microscopy nanomachining

Atomic force microscopy is often used not only to acquire the sample surface topography at the subnanometer scale but also to measure forces on the surface during imaging. This study aims to develop a practical measurement scheme of the actual scratching forces exerted during atomic force microscopy nanoscratching using a simple optical microscope setup. The measurement results are utilized to analyze the mode characteristics of atomic force microscopy nanomachining. Unlike typical atomic force microscopy force measurement methods using position-sensitive detector signal analysis, the optically measured atomic force microscopy cantilever deformation data using varying input (normal) forces along with information on the cantilever stiffness were used to estimate the components of the actual force exerted during nanomachining without using complex data interpolation methods. Scratching experiments were performed on Si(100) workpieces, and the estimated real force values were compared with the experimental data from atomic force microscopy nanomachining for each input force and corresponding scratch depth. Frictional coefficients and in-process acoustic emission monitoring results were also used to conduct an in-depth analysis of the actual force results. It is shown that the estimation results are meaningfully close to both the theoretical evaluations and the scratching experimental data as the scratch depth changes. Moreover, the force data are shown to have the ability to detect mode transitions such as the elastic–plastic and the plowing–cutting transitions during nanomachining, which validates the utility of this approach.
Diversity through coded cooperation

Motivated by the recent works on the relay channel and cooperative diversity, this letter introduces coded cooperation, where cooperation is achieved through channel coding methods instead of a direct relay or repetition. Each codeword is partitioned into two subsets that are transmitted from the user's and partner's antennas, respectively. Coded cooperation achieves impressive gains compared to a non-cooperative system while maintaining the same information rate, transmit power, and bandwidth. We develop bounds on BER and FER and illustrate the advantage of coded cooperation under a number of different scenarios.
Newborn Mice Vaccination with BCG.HIVA222 + MVA.HIVA Enhances HIV-1-Specific Immune Responses: Influence of Age and Immunization Routes

We have evaluated the influence of age and immunization routes for induction of HIV-1- and M. tuberculosis-specific immune responses after neonatal (7 days old) and adult (7 weeks old) BALB/c mice immunization with BCG.HIVA222 prime and MVA.HIVA boost. The specific HIV-1 cellular immune responses were analyzed in spleen cells. The body weight of the newborn mice was weekly recorded. The frequencies of HIV-specific CD8+ T cells producing IFN-γ were higher in adult mice vaccinated intradermally and lower in adult and newborn mice vaccinated subcutaneously. In all cases the IFN-γ production was significantly higher when mice were primed with BCG.HIVA222 compared with BCGwt. When the HIV-specific CTL activity was assessed, the frequencies of specific killing were higher in newborn mice than in adults. The prime-boost vaccination regimen which includes BCG.HIVA222 and MVA.HIVA was safe when inoculated to newborn mice. The administration of BCG.HIVA222 to newborn mice is safe and immunogenic and increased the HIV-specific responses induced by MVA.HIVA vaccine. It might be a good model for infant HIV and Tuberculosis bivalent vaccine.
FMCW phased array radar for automatically triggered measurements of snow avalanches

Radar has emerged as a means of measuring avalanche dynamics for validating models to predict avalanche behaviour for improved calculation of risk zones. However, current radar measurements do not provide a true representation of an entire avalanche flow. An FMCW, multi-chirp, 8 receiver channel phased array radar has been developed in attempt to provide 2-D field measurements in unparalleled detail. In this paper, we summarise the design of the radar and discuss further additions to the radar design since a previous report. The radar is deployed in a bunker at well-equipped avalanche test site where it has been automatically recording naturally occurring avalanches. Several avalanches have been recorded including a large wet snow avalanche which occurred on the 7th December 2010 has already been recorded. We present an encouraging MTI image of this avalanche from one of the receiver channels which reveals a wealth of information embedded within the data. In the future we hope to cohere the 8 channels of data to provide cross-range information, and also resolve the range and Doppler of various components of the avalanche.
Evaluating the Probability of Malicious Co-Residency in Public Clouds

We examine a system where servers can host several virtual machines in parallel and where some of the users are malicious. Arrivals and departures of both normal and malicious users are governed by random processes. The aim is to estimate the probability that a possible target will find itself sharing a server with an attacker. Two allocation policies for assigning virtual machines to servers are studied. In both cases, as well as attacks forming part of the arrival process, multiple simultaneous attacks are considered. Closed-form expressions for the desired estimates are obtained. Comparisons with simulations for purposes of validation are presented and the effect of increasing the number of available servers is illustrated.
Management of Patients With Acute Crush Injuries of the Extremities

A 19-year-old female was the unrestrained passenger in a car involved in a motor vehicle collision. As the car was crossing through an intersection, it was struck on the passenger side by another car at high speed. Upon impact, the passenger’s right leg was pinned between the passenger side door and the car dashboard. After a prolonged extraction from the car, the patient was transported to the emergency room where she was found to have a swollen and very tense right calf with numerous fractures involving the right lower extremity. She was immediately scheduled for emergency surgery.
Experiences of condom fit and feel among African-American men who have sex with men

Objective: To offer an empirical understanding of characteristics associated with the fit and feel of condoms among African-American men who have sex with men (MSM), a particularly high-risk group for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the United States. Methods: Survey data were collected from 178 adult African-American MSM attending a community event in Atlanta, Georgia. Results: Although the majority of participants reported that condoms generally fit properly and felt comfortable, a substantial number of men reported a variety of problems with the fit and feel of condoms. Specifically, 21% reported that condoms felt too tight, 18% reported that condoms felt too short, 10% reported that condoms felt too loose, and 7% reported that condoms felt too long. There were significant associations between men’s reports of condom breakage and slippage, and their perceptions of condom fit and feel. Perceptions of condom fit and feel were also related to men’s reports of seeking condoms for their size-specific properties. Conclusions: The fit and feel issues that men in this sample identified may be among those that contribute to their likelihood of using, or not using, condoms consistently and correctly. A better understanding of these factors will be beneficial to both condom manufacturers and sexual health professionals who share a common goal of increasing consistent and correct condom use and reducing the incidence of HIV and other STI among this and other communities.
Instance Label Prediction by Dirichlet Process Multiple Instance Learning

We propose a generative Bayesian model that predicts instance labels from weak (bag-level) supervision. We solve this problem by simultaneously modeling class distributions by Gaussian mixture models and inferring the class labels of positive bag instances that satisfy the multiple instance constraints. We employ Dirichlet process priors on mixture weights to automate model selection, and efficiently infer model parameters and positive bag instances by a constrained variational Bayes procedure. Our method improves on the state-of-the-art of instance classification from weak supervision on 20 benchmark text categorization data sets and one histopathology cancer diagnosis data set.
OBSERVATIONS ON SODIUM CHLORIDE RESTRICTION AND UREA CLEARANCE IN RENAL INSUFFICIENCY.

The azotemia which accompanies hypochloremia has been ascribed by some to transient renal insufficiency of a purely functional type (Haden and Guffey (1924), Mellinghoff (1934)) and in severe cases to grave anatomical changes in the kidney (Brown et al. (1923)). Others believe that renal function per se is essentially unaffected by hypochloremia (Blum, Grabar and Van Caulaert (1929a, b)) and that urea is retained by the body in order that the osmotic pressure of the body fluids may remain unchanged despite chloride loss. Diminished urinary excretion of nitrogen and the resulting azotemia are ordinarily used to measure renal insufficiency with the inherent assumption that renal insufficiency produces nitrogen retention primarily. Hartmann and Darrow (1928) suggest, however, that even in nephritis urea may be retained, not primarily because of reduction in the power of the kidneys to excrete urea but secondarily to compensate for the low osmotic pressure of the body fluids resulting from loss of electrolytes. Most patients in whom significant hypochloremia is discovered are suffering also from the other effects of vomiting-dehydration, diminished food intake and oliguria. Nitrogen might therefore accumulate in the blood simply because of oliguria (Peters (1932), Kerpel-Fronius and Butler (1935)) and the increased protein destruction of starvation and dehydration (Peters (1932), Meyer (1932), Morawitz and Schloss (1932)). The diminished excretion of phenolsulphonphthalein (Brown et al. (1923)) and of ferments (Mellinghoff (1934)) might also, according to this view, be produced by marked oliguria without primary change in the functioning power of the kidney per se. Conventional urea clearances with brief periods of urine collection have not revealed any change
Process-Variation Aware Multi-temperature Test Scheduling

Chips manufactured with deep sub micron technologies are prone to large process variation and temperature-dependent defects. In order to provide high test efficiency, the tests for temperature-dependent defects should be applied at appropriate temperature ranges. Existing static scheduling techniques achieve these specified temperatures by scheduling the tests, specially developed heating sequences, and cooling intervals together. Because of the temperature uncertainty induced by process variation, a static test schedule is not capable of applying the tests at intended temperatures in an efficient manner. As a result the test cost will be very high. In this paper, an adaptive test scheduling method is introduced that utilizes on-chip temperature sensors in order to adapt the test schedule to the actual temperatures. The proposed method generates a low cost schedule tree based on the variation statistics and thermal simulations in the design phase. During the test, a chip selects an appropriate schedule dynamically based on temperature sensor readings. A 23% decrease in the likelihood that tests are not applied at the intended temperatures is observed in the experimental studies in addition to 20% reduction in test application time.
Yeast Mitochondrial Initiator tRNA Is Methylated at Guanosine 37 by the Trm5-encoded tRNA (Guanine-N1-)-methyltransferase*

The TRM5 gene encodes a tRNA (guanine-N1-)-methyltransferase (Trm5p) that methylates guanosine at position 37 (m1G37) in cytoplasmic tRNAs in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Here we show that Trm5p is also responsible for m1G37 methylation of mitochondrial tRNAs. The TRM5 open reading frame encodes 499 amino acids containing four potential initiator codons within the first 48 codons. Full-length Trm5p, purified as a fusion protein with maltose-binding protein, exhibited robust methyltransferase activity with tRNA isolated from a Δtrm5 mutant strain, as well as with a synthetic mitochondrial initiator tRNA (tRNAMetf). Primer extension demonstrated that the site of methylation was guanosine 37 in both mitochondrial tRNAMetf and tRNAPhe. High pressure liquid chromatography analysis showed the methylated product to be m1G. Subcellular fractionation and immunoblotting of a strain expressing a green fluorescent protein-tagged version of the TRM5 gene revealed that the enzyme was localized to both cytoplasm and mitochondria. The slightly larger mitochondrial form was protected from protease digestion, indicating a matrix localization. Analysis of N-terminal truncation mutants revealed that a Trm5p active in the cytoplasm could be obtained with a construct lacking amino acids 1–33 (Δ1–33), whereas production of a Trm5p active in the mitochondria required these first 33 amino acids. Yeast expressing the Δ1–33 construct exhibited a significantly lower rate of oxygen consumption, indicating that efficiency or accuracy of mitochondrial protein synthesis is decreased in cells lacking m1G37 methylation of mitochondrial tRNAs. These data suggest that this tRNA modification plays an important role in reading frame maintenance in mitochondrial protein synthesis.
Single particle high resolution spectral analysis flow cytometry

While conventional multiparameter flow cytometers have proven highly successful, there are several types of analytical measurements that would benefit from a more comprehensive and flexible approach to spectral analysis including, but certainly not limited to spectral deconvolution of overlapping emission spectra, fluorescence resonance energy transfer measurements, metachromic dye analysis, free versus bound dye resolution, and Raman spectroscopy.
On Convergence of Particle Filters with General Importance Distributions

This paper is concerned with convergence of particle filter estimates of unbounded functions with general importance distributions. Particle filters are numerical methods for approximating Bayesian filtering solutions of non-linear/non-Gaussian state space models using sequential importance sampling. The performance of particle filters heavily depends on how the importance distribution for the sequential importance sampling is chosen. Not only the numerical performance is affected, but also the importance sampling approximation might fail to converge with an inappropriate choice of importance distribution. Up to the date, the convergence proofs of particle filters have been considered with bounded functions or with so called bootstrap filters which use the dynamic model as the importance distribution. In this paper, the aim is to study the convergence of particle filters in the context of unbounded functions and with more general importance distributions.
Wages and Ageing: Is There Evidence for the 'Inverse-U' Profile?

How individual wages change with time, and how they are expected to change as individuals grow older, is one of crucial determinants of their behaviour on the labour market including their decision to retire. The profile of individual hourly wages has for a long time been assumed to follow an "inverse-U" path, although there has been little work specifically concerning the age-wage profile and documenting it convincingly. The focus of this paper is the relationship between age and wages with special attention given to individuals close to retirement. The analysis is presented in a comparative context for Britain and Germany looking at two longitudinal datasets (BHPS and GSOEP respectively) for years 1995-2004. It stresses the importance of cohort effects and selection out of employment which seem crucial in determining the downward-sloping part of the "inverse-U" profile observed in most cross-sections. There seems to be little evidence that wages fall with age.
Effective Capacity Maximization in Multi-Antenna Channels with Covariance Feedback

The tradeoff between average transmission rate and average delay is important for the system design of future wireless communication systems. In double-correlated multiple antenna channels, the spatial degrees of freedom allow to optimize the transmit strategy under throughput/delay priority. In this work, we maximize the effective capacity of a MIMO system with covariance feedback. Interestingly, the larger the delay requirement is, the more spatial degrees of freedom are used to avoid low instantaneous transmission rates. This fact is shown analytically by deriving a closed-form expression for the beamforming optimality range as a function of the spatial correlation, the SNR, and the QoS exponent. Numerical simulations illustrate the average effective capacity optimization and confirm the theoretical results.
Simultaneous Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (SART): A Superior Implementation of the Art Algorithm

In this paper we have discussed what appears to be a superior implementation of the Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (ART). The method is based on 1) simultaneous application of the error correction terms as computed by ART for all rays in a given projection; 2) longitudinal weighting of the correction terms back-distributed along the rays; and 3) using bilinear elements for discrete approximation to the ray integrals of a continuous image. Since this implementation generates a good reconstruction in only one iteration, it also appears to have a computational advantage over the more traditional implementation of ART. Potential applications of this implementation include image reconstruction in conjunction with ray tracing for ultrasound and microwave tomography in which the curved nature of the rays leads to a non-uniform ray density across the image.
Synchronizing network probes to avoid measurement intrusiveness with the Network Weather Service

Presents a scalable protocol for conducting periodic probes of network performance in a way that minimizes collisions between separate probes. The goal of the protocol is to enable active performance monitoring of large-scale distributed computational systems and networks. We use the protocol to generate time series of measurement data that are then exposed to numerical forecasting models when a prediction of network performance is required. We present the protocol and demonstrate its effectiveness using the Network Weather Service -a tool for dynamically predicting network, CPU, memory and storage performance.
Exploring Billions of Audio Features

Many works in audio and image signal analysis are based on the use of "features" to represent characteristics of sounds or images. Features are used in various ways, for instance as inputs to classifiers to categorize automatically objects, e.g. for audio scene description. Most, if not all, approaches focus on the development of clever classifiers and on the various processes of feature selection, classifier algorithms and parameter tuning. Strangely, the features themselves are rarely justified. The predominant paradigm consists in selecting, by hand, "generic", well-known features from the literature and focusing on the rest of the chain. In this study we try to generalize the notion of feature to make the choice of features more systematic and less prone to hazardous, unjustified human choices. We introduce to this aim the notion of "analytical feature": features built only from the analysis of the problem at hand, using a heuristic function generation process. We show some experiments aiming at answering some general questions about analytical features.
Real-time acquisition and super-resolution techniques on 3D reconstruction

This work proposes to improve a traditional 3D reconstruction pipeline by combining it with two techniques: A realtime 3D modelling system to give a visual feedback in acquisition stage; and a super-resolution spatio-temporal filter to improve the depth data. We use noisy RGBD images from an inaccurate real-time depth sensor device in the whole process and later replace the color with data from a digital camera to generate realistic texture. Recently, several reconstruction approaches were presented acknowledging the potential of such real-time devices. However, those systems alone fail to retrieve small geometric characteristics from the object. The result of our experiments show a model with a considerable level of details, unexpected from low-quality RGBD images. We aim to use our pipeline to reconstruct objects with cultural value and add them to the virtual museum's database for visualization purpose.
The Optimal Elasticity of Taxable Income

The strength of the behavioral response to a tax rate change depends on the environment individuals operate in, and may be manipulated by instruments controlled by the government. We first derive a measure of the social benefit to affecting this elasticity. The paper then examines this effect in the solution to the optimal income taxation problem when such an instrument is available, first in a general model and then in an example when the government chooses the income tax base.
A comparison of learning-by-demonstration methods for force-based robot skills

Conventional programming techniques for robotic operations in unstructured environments are not suitable for human-like robot executions. In this paper we present a comparison of three different learning-by-demonstration techniques. A force-based representation of the learned data is presented and analyzed. The action to verify the experimental results can be related to Peg-in-Hole action. The results show which method is the most suitable to use for the specified task.
Multi-aircraft Conflict Detection and Resolution Based on Probabilistic Reach Sets

In this brief, a novel scheme to multi-aircraft conflict detection and resolution is introduced. A key feature of the proposed scheme is that uncertainty affecting the aircraft future positions along some look-ahead prediction horizon is accounted for via a probabilistic reachability analysis approach. In particular, ellipsoidal probabilistic reach sets are determined by formulating a chance-constrained optimization problem and solving it via a simulation-based method called scenario approach. Conflict detection is then performed by verifying if the ellipsoidal reach sets of different aircraft intersect. If a conflict is detected, then the aircraft flight plans are redesigned by solving a second-order cone program resting on the approximation of the ellipsoidal reach sets with spheres with constant radius along the look-ahead horizon. A bisection procedure allows one to determine the minimum radius such that the ellipsoidal reach sets of different aircraft along the corresponding new flight plans do not intersect. Some numerical examples are presented to show the efficacy of the proposed scheme.
Domain embedding preconditioners for mixed systems

In this paper we study block diagonal preconditioners for mixed systems derived from the Dirichlet problems for second order elliptic equations. The main purpose is to discuss how an embedding of the original computational domain into a simpler extended domain can be utilized in this case. We show that a family of uniform preconditioners for the corresponding problem on the extended, or fictitious, domain leads directly to uniform preconditioners for the original problem. This is in contrast to the situation for the standard finite element method, where the domain embedding approach for the Dirichlet problem is less obvious. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.