Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spin transport in lateral spin valves and across a metal-insulator transition in V₂O₃

Spin valves is a class of spintronic devices that use spin degree of freedom. They have been used to study various condensed matter phenomena. Applications of the spin valves proved to be very useful in every-day electronics. Modern nano-fabrication techniques allowed further development of lateral spin valves. It was shown before that they separate spin and charge currents. These devices can provide a better insight into the spin transport and serve as a basis for the next generation of applications. In this thesis spin injection and detection in metallic lateral spin valves with transparent interfaces were studied using dc current. This allowed observation of two types of backgrounds present in the non-local spin valve signal. One of them originates from the inhomogeneous current distribution in the device. The other arises from the Joule heating. This heating was found to increase average temperature of the device by 100 K for the 10¹² A /m² current density. The magnitude of the non-local spin valve signal is symmetric with the current direction for current densities up to approximately 4x10¹¹ A/m². This indicates that the type of spin accumulation in the non- magnetic metal can be effectively controlled by the current direction. For higher current densities the signal becomes smaller when the current is injected from ferromagnetic electrode into the non-magnetic metal. This is explained by the spin-dependent Seebeck effect - an additional spin current is induced by a temperature gradient inside the ferromagnetic electrode. Non-local signal in copper/permalloy lateral spin-valves was measured as a function of distance between ferromagnetic electrodes, and Cu thickness. Extracted Cu spin diffusion length and permalloy spin-polarization decrease for smaller Cu thickness. This is explained by an additional spin-flip scattering at surfaces and interfaces of devices. Finally, Ni/V₂O₃/permalloy current-perpendicular- to-plane spin-valve devices were measured as a function of temperature. Unique geometry of the device allows observation of the metal-insulator transition in V₂O₃ at 160 K. Spin-valve effect was found in the device below the transition temperature. However the effect disappears at higher temperatures. Only anisotropic magnetoresistance of Ni was measured above 160 K. The observed magnitude of the spin valve effect, and its disappearance above the transition temperature, cannot be explained by simple 2- channel model for a device with transparent interface
Dynamic and Efficient Private Keyword Search over Inverted Index--Based Encrypted Data

Querying over encrypted data is gaining increasing popularity in cloud-based data hosting services. Security and efficiency are recognized as two important and yet conflicting requirements for querying over encrypted data. In this article, we propose an efficient private keyword search (EPKS) scheme that supports binary search and extend it to dynamic settings (called DEPKS) for inverted index--based encrypted data. First, we describe our approaches of constructing a searchable symmetric encryption (SSE) scheme that supports binary search. Second, we present a novel framework for EPKS and provide its formal security definitions in terms of plaintext privacy and predicate privacy by modifying Shen et al.’s security notions [Shen et al. 2009]. Third, built on the proposed framework, we design an EPKS scheme whose complexity is logarithmic in the number of keywords. The scheme is based on the groups of prime order and enjoys strong notions of security, namely statistical plaintext privacy and statistical predicate privacy. Fourth, we extend the EPKS scheme to support dynamic keyword and document updates. The extended scheme not only maintains the properties of logarithmic-time search efficiency and plaintext privacy and predicate privacy but also has fewer rounds of communications for updates compared to existing dynamic search encryption schemes. We experimentally evaluate the proposed EPKS and DEPKS schemes and show that they are significantly more efficient in terms of both keyword search complexity and communication complexity than existing randomized SSE schemes.
Visual control for trajectory tracking of Quadrotors and real-time analysis on an emulated environment

Quadrotor are non-inertial systems with inherent nonlinear, very fast and very unstable dynamics where measurements of their state variables in an absolute frame of reference are very complex in GPS denied environments, such as indoors. In order to design control strategies for Quadrotors, we solve problems of imprecisely known models and noisily, or unavailable, position and speed measurements, and requirements of a safety test-bench for the first stages of design. In this paper, we face the problem of control of a Quadrotor using visual information and of a safe virtual Real-Time test of the controlled system. The contribution is twofold; first we present a model-free control law for tracking non-inertial robots, using as a case of study a Quadrotor, and we propose a Real-Time analysis of the dynamical behavior of the closed-loop system based on experimental data obtained using an emulation-based implementation architecture where the environment is a numerical emulation of the real one. The control of attitude and position are designed based on a Second Order Sliding Mode and PD like approaches, respectively, and the feedback state is obtained visually using an easy to program and portable Particle Filter for positions and a Second Order Differentiator for time derivatives. We describe the numerical simulation test bench and include some results obtained in Real- Time on an emulated environment.
Performance of AODV Routing Protocol with Increasing the MANET Nodes and Its Effects on QoS of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) consists of mobile wireless nodes. The communication between these mobile nodes is carried out without any centralized control. The ease of deployment and the infrastructure less nature of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) make them highly desirable for the present day multi media communications. Traditional routing protocols may not suffice for real time communications it depends upon the conditions and our requirements. Though there has been considerable research in this area. In this paper, we are analyzing the performance of reactive routing protocol via increasing number of nodes and observing its effect on Quality of Service (QoS) of Mobile Adhoc Network. As we know routing protocols make an important role for improving QoS in Mobile Adhoc Network. The QoS depends upon several parameters like end-end delay, throughput, date drop and network load. The reactive routing protocol which we are considering is AODV for this scenario with MCHG [1] [2]. Here we are observing performance of Routing Protocol via enhancing the network size on the basis of following parameters: delay, throughput, traffic sent, traffic received, data dropped and network load. Network simulation tool used in simulation is OPNET Modeler (Ver. 14.0). Finally, this paper conducts simulation experiments in the conditions where we can improve QoS of MANET Network performance.
A Spectral Algorithm for Improving Graph Partitions

In the cut-improvement problem, we are asked, given a starting cut (T; ¯ T) in a graph G, to find a cut with low conductance around (T; ¯ T) or produce a certificate that there is none. More precisely, for a notion of correlation between cuts, cut-improvement algorithms seek to produce approximation guarantees of the following form: for any cut (C; ¯ C) that is" -correlated with the input cut, the cut output by the algorit hm has conductance upperbounded by a function of the conductance of (C; ¯ C) and" . In this paper we approach the cut-improvement problem from a spectral perspective: given a graph G and a cut (T; ¯ T); we first associate a natural unit vector to ( T; ¯ T): Then we modify the standard spectral relaxation for G to bias it towards this vector, and use this relaxation to pre sent a new cut-improvement algorithm, SpImprove. Our relaxation gives rise to a geometric notion of correlati on among cuts. Moreover, we show that the classic sweep-cut rounding can still be applied and that we can solve our relaxation in nearly linear time by reducing it to an eigenvector computation. Further, we show how our approach is intimately connected to electrical networks in one limiting case. We believe this connection may be of independent interest. Finally, we compare our algorithm to the previous flowbased algorithm of Andersen and Lang [AL08]. We show that SpImprove is likely to be faster and give better approximation guarantees in many settings.
AIM TO UNIFY THE NARROW BAND IMAGING (NBI) MAGNIFYING CLASSIFICATION FOR COLORECTAL TUMORS: CURRENT STATUS IN JAPAN FROM A SUMMARY OF THE CONSENSUS SYMPOSIUM IN THE 79TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE JAPAN GASTROENTEROLOGICAL ENDOSCOPY SOCIETY

At present, there are many narrow band imaging (NBI) magnifying observation classifications for colorectal tumor in Japan. To internationally standardize the NBI observation criteria, a simple classification system is required. When a colorectal tumor is closely observed using the recent high‐resolution videocolonoscope, a pit‐like pattern on the tumor can be observed to a certain degree without magnification. In the symposium we could have a consensus that we will name the pit‐like pattern as ‘surface pattern. ’ Using the NBI system, the microvessels on the tumor surface can also be recognized to a certain degree. When the NBI system is used, the structure is emphasized, and consequently, the surface pattern can be recognized easily. Recently, an international cooperative group was formed and consists of members from Japan, the USA and Europe, which is named as the Colon Tumor NBI Interest Group. This group has developed a simple category classification (NBI international colorectal endoscopic [NICE] classification), which classifies colorectal tumors into types 1−3 even by closely observing colorectal tumors using a high‐resolution videocolonoscope (Validation study is now ongoing by Colon Tumor NBI Interest Group.). The key advantage of this is simplification of the NBI classification. Although the magnifying observation is the best for getting detailed NBI findings, both close observation and magnifying observation using the NICE classification might give almost similar results. Of course the NICE classification can be used more precisely with magnification. In this report we also refer the issues on NBI magnification, which should be solved as early as possible.
The Impact of Avatar Mobility on Distributed Server Assignment for Delivering Mobile Immersive Communication Environment

In our previous work, we proposed a distributed server architecture to deliver multi-party immersive voice communication service to mobile clients (e.g. Sony PSP) accessing a distributed virtual environment (DVE). We refer to such immersive voice communication service as mobile immersive communication environment (MICE). We also proposed solutions to assign server to create the auditory scene for each avatar. In this work, we ascertain the necessary update period of server reassignment in order to cope with avatar mobility in the virtual world. In our simulations, we measure the percentage differences in delay deviation and bandwidth cost between the case of no server reassignment update since t=l second (the initial time instant) and the case of ideal server reassignment at every second. Our results show that the impact of avatar mobility leads to increases in both delay deviation and bandwidth cost as the time elapse further from t=l second. Such increase in delay deviation and bandwidth cost is more significant at the low avatar densities than at the higher avatar densities. The optimal server assignment algorithm is found to be too computationally intensive to be executed within the required update periods. A much faster greedy heuristic has been devised to perform server assignment within the required update periods.
Using a multi-faceted approach to determine the changes in bacterial cell surface properties influenced by a biofilm lifestyle

Biofilm formation is a developmental process in which initial reversible adhesion is governed by physico-chemical forces, whilst irreversible adhesion is mediated by biological changes within a cell, such as the production of extracellular polymeric substances. Using two bacteria, E. coli MG1655 and B. cereus ATCC 10987, this study establishes that the surface of the bacterial cell also undergoes specific modifications, which result in biofilm formation and maintenance. Using various surface characterisation techniques and proteomics, an increase in the surface exposed proteins on E. coli cells during biofilm formation was demonstrated, along with an increase in hydrophobicity and a decrease in surface charge. For B. cereus, an increase in the surface polysaccharides during biofilm formation was found as well as a decrease in hydrophobicity and surface charge. This work therefore shows that surface modifications during biofilm formation occur and understanding these specific changes may lead to the formulation of effective biofilm control strategies in the future.
The Design of a Gene Chip for Functional Immunological Studies on a High‐Quality Control Platform

Abstract: We have created an immunology‐related microarray chip containing primarily known genes with well‐studied functional properties. By looking at known genes rather than expressed sequence tags, we hope to gain a better understanding of immunological pathways and how they work. The immunology gene chip contains genes from the following functional categories: T cell genes; B cell genes; dendritic cell genes; chemokine and cytokine genes; apoptosis genes; cell cycle genes; cell interaction genes; general hematology and immunology genes; and adhesion genes. We have also developed a novel three‐color cDNA array platform in which arrays are directly visualized before hybridization, which allows us to select only high‐quality chips for our experiments. In an effort to provide quantitative quality control for each array element as well as the entire chip, we have developed Matarray, a software package for image processing and data acquisition. With Matarray, we have built a quantitative data filtering and normalization scheme that has proved to be more efficient than the existing methods. The list of immunology chip genes is available from the authors.
EFFECTS OF CLAY AND MOISTURE CONTENT ON SOIL-CORROSION DYNAMIC

Soil corrosion is a serious threat to the integrity of buried structures such as underground storage tanks, oil and gas transmission pipelines, and many other structures. This paper investigates the effects of soil engineering properties towards metal loss of buried X70 carbon steel coupons. The study focuses on soil engineering properties which are soil clay and moisture content. A number of 160 pieces of X70 carbon steel coupon were installed underground in five different locations in Peninsular Malaysia for 12 months period to study the influence of the above mentioned parameters towards metal loss caused by soil-corrosion. The samples were retrieved every 3 months to determine its weight loss and corrosion growth rate over time. The result shows that the rapid growth of corrosion is relatively correlated with the high moisture content of soil. Yet, corrosion initiated at a slow rate for clayey soil. Soil moisture content was found more influential towards corrosion dynamic as compared to clay content based on the qualitative evaluation.
Etiology of Seizures in the Elderly

Summary: Our study covered a 5‐year period, and included all patients within a well‐defined area who developed seizures after age 60 years. The dominant cause of seizures was a previous stroke, accounting for 32% of all cases. Tumors accounted for 14%, and the cause of seizures remained unknown in 25%. Seizures were recurrent in >80% of patients with first seizure >6 months after stroke. Fifteen of 21 patients with tumors had metastatic tumors. Of the six patients with primary brain tumors, five had malignant gliomas and one had a meningioma. We conclude that epilepsy with onset after age 60 years is more often symptomatic than is epilepsy in younger patients; since seizures were the first sign of a central nervous system (CNS) disease in half of the patients with brain tumors, careful investigation is necessary to reach a correct diagnosis.
Graph Transformation Planning via Abstraction

Modern software systems increasingly incorporate self-* behavior to adapt to changes in the environment at runtime. Such adaptations often involve reconfiguring the software architecture of the system. Many systems also need to manage their architecture themselves, i.e., they need a planning component to autonomously decide which reconfigurations to execute to reach a desired target configuration. For the specification of reconfigurations, we employ graph transformations systems (GTS) due to the close relation of graphs and UML object diagrams. We solve the resulting planning problems with a planning system that works directly on a GTS. It features a domain-independent heuristic that uses the solution length of an abstraction of the original problem as an estimate. Finally, we provide experimental results on two different domains, which confirm that our heuristic performs better than another domain-independent heuristic which resembles heuristics employed in related work.
Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change

We study the joint dynamics of economic and political change. Predictions of the simple model that we formulate in the paper get considerable support in a panel of data on political regimes and GDP per capita for about 150 countries over 150 years. Democratic capital -- measured by a nation's historical experience with democracy and by the incidence of democracy in its neighborhood -- reduces the exit rate from democracy and raises the exit rate from autocracy. In democracies, a higher stock of democratic capital stimulates growth in an indirect way by decreasing the probability of a successful coup. Our results suggest a virtuous circle, where the accumulation of physical and democratic capital reinforce each other, promoting economic development jointly with the consolidation of democracy.
cROVER: Improving ROVER using automatic error detection

Recognizer Output Voting Error Reduction (ROVER), is a well-known procedure for decoders' combination aiming at reducing the Word Error Rate (WER) in transcription applications. However, it appears that this technique has reached a plateau in terms of performance. This paper presents a novel approach, cROVER, in order to boost the current ROVER performance, by relying on a contextual analysis to trim erroneous words. Experiments have proven that it is possible to outperform ROVER, despite the high false positive rate of the error detection technique.
Age‐Dependent Changes in AMPK Metabolic Pathways in the Lung in a Mouse Model of Hemorrhagic Shock

&NA; The development of multiple organ failure in patients with hemorrhagic shock is significantly influenced by patient age. Adenosine monophosphate‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) is a crucial regulator of energy homeostasis, which coordinates metabolic repair during cellular stress. We investigated whether AMPK‐regulated signaling pathways are age‐dependent in hemorrhage‐induced lung injury and whether AMPK activation by 5‐amino‐4‐imidazole carboxamide riboside (AICAR) affords lung protective effects. Male C57/BL6 young mice (3‐5 mo), mature adult mice (9‐12 mo), and young AMPK&agr;1 knockout mice (3‐5 mo) were subjected to hemorrhagic shock by blood withdrawing, followed by resuscitation with shed blood and lactated Ringer's solution. Plasma proinflammatory cytokines were similarly elevated in C57/BL6 young and mature adult mice after hemorrhagic shock. However, mature adult mice exhibited more severe lung edema and neutrophil infiltration, and higher mitochondrial damage in alveolar epithelial type II cells, than did young mice. No change in autophagy was observed. At molecular analysis, the phosphorylation of the catalytic subunit AMPK&agr;1 was associated with nuclear translocation of peroxisome proliferator‐activated receptor &ggr; co‐activator‐&agr; in young, but not mature, adult mice. Treatment with AICAR ameliorated the disruption of lung architecture in mice of both ages; however, effects in mature adult mice were different than young mice and also involved inhibition of nuclear factor‐&kgr;B. In young AMPK&agr;1 knockout mice, AICAR failed to improve hypotension and lung neutrophil infiltration. Our data demonstrate that during hemorrhagic shock, AMPK‐dependent metabolic repair mechanisms are important for mitigating lung injury. However, these mechanisms are less competent with age.
Image Segmentation Using Extended Topological Active Nets Optimized by Scatter Search

Image segmentation is the critical task of partitioning an image into multiple objects. Deformable Models are effective tools aimed at performing image segmentation. Among them, Topological Active Nets (TANs), and their extension, ETANs, are models integrating features of region-based and boundary-based segmentation techniques. Since the deformation of the meshes composing these models to fit the objects to be segmented is controlled by an energy functional, the segmentation task is tackled as a numerical optimization problem. Despite their good performance, the existing ETAN optimization method (based on a local search) can lead to result inaccuracies, that is, local optima in the sense of optimization. This paper introduces a novel optimization approach by embedding ETANs in a global search memetic framework, Scatter Search, thus considering multiple alternatives in the segmentation process using a very small solution population. With the aim of improving the accuracy of the segmentation results in a reasonable processing time, we introduce a global search-suitable internal energy term, a diversity function, a frequency memory population generator and two proper solution combination operators. In particular, these operators are effective in coalescing multiple meshes, a task previous global search methods for TAN optimization failed to accomplish. The proposal has been tested on a mix of 20 synthetic and real medical images with different segmentation difficulties. Its performance has been compared with two ETAN optimization approaches (the original local search and a new multi-start local search) as well as with the state-of-the-art memetic proposal for classical TAN optimization based on differential evolution. Our new method significantly outperformed the other three for the given set of images in terms of four standard segmentation metrics.
Measurement of neutron-induced single event transient pulse width narrower than 100ps

A novel SET pulse measurement circuit is proposed which can detect pulses narrower than 100ps. Alternation of SET pulses during the propagation through the chain of target cells is minimized, which is attributed to small chain length (typically 20). This circuit configuration contributes to obtaining pulse distribution similar to that observed in actual circuit in use. Distribution of SET pulse width measured by our circuit through the white neutron beam testing agrees well with that estimated by computer simulation.