Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
3 2 3 D ec 2 00 8 Dynamics of Planetary Systems in Star Clusters

At least 10-15% of nearby sun-like stars have known Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, very few planets are found in mature open and globular clusters such as the Hyades and 47 Tuc. We explore here the possibility that this dichotomy is due to the post-formation disruption of planetary systems associated with the stellar encounters in long-lived clusters. One supporting piece of evidence for this scenario is the discovery of freely floating low-mass objects in star forming regions. We use two independent numerical approaches, a hybrid Monte Carlo and a direct N-body method, to simulate the impact of the encounters. We show that the results of numerical simulations are in reasonable agreement with analytical determinations in the adiabatic and impulsive limits. They indicate that distant stellar encounters generally do not significantly modify the compact and nearly circular orbits. However, moderately close stellar encounters, which are likely to occur in dense clusters, can excite planets' orbital eccentricity and induce dynamical instability in systems which are closely packed with multiple planets. The disruption of planetary systems occurs primarily through occasional nearly parabolic, non adiabatic encounters, though eccentricity of the planets evolves through repeated hyperbolic adiabatic encounters which accumulate small-amplitude changes. The detached planets are generally retained by the potential of their host clusters as free floaters in young stellar clusters such as σ Orionis. We compute effective cross sections for the dissolution of planetary systems and show that, for all initial eccentricities, dissolution occurs on time scales which are longer than the dispersion of small stellar associations, but shorter than the age of typical open and globular clusters. Although it is much – 2 – more difficult to disrupt short-period planets, close encounters can excite modest eccentricity among them, such that subsequent tidal dissipation leads to orbital decay, tidal inflation, and even disruption of the close-in planets.
In silico evaluation of the Eucalyptus transcriptome

The expressed sequence tags (ESTs) produced in the Forests project provide an invaluable opportunity to assess the Eucalyptus transcriptome. Besides providing information on the different proteins produced by this plant, it is possible to infer gene expression profiles because non-normalized cDNA libraries were used. The EST frequency from any gene is correlated to the transcript levels in the tissues from which the cDNA libraries were constructed. The goal of this work was to identify Eucalyptus genes that showed either differential expression pattern or were ubiquitously expressed in the tissues sampled in the Forests project. Six robust statistical tests and very restrictive rules were applied to gain confidence in the in silico data aiming to avoid false positives. Several genes with interesting expression profiles were identified and some of them were validated by RT-PCR.
Combined image-based and depth visual servoing applied to robotized laparoscopic surgery

In this paper, we address the problem of controlling the motion of a surgical instrument close to an unknown organ surface by visual servoing in the context of robotized laparoscopic surgery. To achieve this goal, a visual servoing algorithm is developed that combines feature errors in the image and errors in depth measurements. The relationship between the velocity screw of the surgical instrument, the depth and the motion field is defined and a two-stage servoing scheme is proposed. In order to measure the orientation and the depth of the instrument with respect to the organ, a laser dot pattern is projected on the organ surface and optical markers are stuck on the instrument. Our work has been successfully validated with a surgical robot by performing experiments on living tissues in the surgical training room of IRCAD.
A neural network approach to the inspection of ball grid array solder joints on printed circuit boards

We describe an approach to automation of visual inspection of ball grid array (BGA) solder joint defects of surface mounted components on printed circuit boards by using a neural network. Inherently, the BGA solder joints are located below its own package body, and this induces a difficulty in taking a good image of the solder joints when using a conventional imaging system. To acquire the cross-sectional image of a BGA solder joint, an X-ray cross-sectional imaging method such as laminography and digital tomosynthesis is utilized. However an X-ray cross-sectional image of a BGA solder joint, using laminography or DT methods, has inherent blurring effect and artifact. This problem has been a major obstacle to extracting suitable features for classification. To solve this problem, a neural network based classification method is proposed. The performance of the proposed approach is tested on numerous samples of printed circuit boards and compared with that of a human inspector. Experimental results reveal that the proposed method shows practical usefulness in BGA solder joint inspection.
NOD-Rag2null IL-2Rγnull Mice: An Alternative to NOG Mice for Generation of Humanized Mice

We have developed NOD-Rag2null IL-2Rγnull (NR2G) mice similar to NOD-scidIL-2Rγnull (NOG) mice that are known as an excellent host to generate humanized mice. To evaluate the usefulness of NR2G mice as a host for humanized mice, the engraftment rates and differentiation of human cells after human hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation were compared among NR2G, NOG, and NOD-scid mice. For this purpose, the appropriate irradiation doses to expand the niche for human stem cells in the bone marrow were first determined. As a result, 8 and 2.5 Gy in adult, and 4 and 1 Gy in newborn NR2G and NOG mice, respectively, were found to be appropriate. Next, 5 × 104 human umbilical cord blood CD34+ cells were intravenously inoculated into irradiated adult or newborn of the immunodeficient mice. These HSC transplantation experiments demonstrated that both NR2G and NOG mice showed high engraftment rates compared with NOD-scid mice, although NOG mice showed a slightly higher engraftment rate than that for NR2G mice. However, no difference was found in the human cell populations differentiated from HSCs between NR2G and NOG mice. The HSC transplantation experiments to adults and newborns of two immunodeficient mice also revealed that the HSC transplantation into newborn mice resulted in higher engraftment rate than those into adults. These results showed that NR2G mice could be used as an alternative host to NOG mice to generate humanized mice.
Handwritten Text Recognition Results on the Bentham Collection with Improved Classical N-Gram-HMM methods

Handwritten Text Recognition experiments and results are presented on the historical Bentham text image dataset used in the ICFHR-2014 HTRtS competition. The successful segmentation-free holistic framework is adopted, using traditional modelling approaches based on Hidden Markov optical character models (HMM) and an N-gram language model (LM). Departing from the very basic N-gram-HMM baseline system provided in HTRtS, several improvements are made in text image feature extraction and LM and HMM modeling, including more accurate HMM training by means of discriminative training. As a result, we achieve similar recognition accuracy as some of the best performing (single, uncombined) systems based on (recurrent) Neural Networks (NN), using identical training and testing data. The traditional N-gram/HMM framework offers several advantages over modern approaches based on (hybrid, recurrent) NNs. Perhaps the most important is the much faster training of HMMs and the well understood stability of the results of Baum-Welch training. These advantages become very important when dealing with many historical document collections, which are typically huge and entail very high degrees of variability, making it generally difficult to re-use models trained on previous collections.
System Identification for Indoor Climate Control

The study focuses on the applicability of system identification to identify building and system dynamics for climate control design. The main problem regarding the simulation of the dynamic response of a building using building simulation software is that (1) the simulation of a large complex building is time consuming, and (2) simulation results often lack information regarding fast dynamic behaviour (in the order of seconds), since most software uses a discrete time step, usually fixed to one hour. The first objective is to study the applicability of system identification to reduce computing time for the simulation of large complex buildings. The second objective is to research the applicability of system identification to identify building dynamics based on discrete time data (one hour) for climate control design. The study illustrates that system identification is applicable for the identification of building dynamics with a frequency that is smaller as the maximum sample frequency as used for identification. The research shows that system identification offers good perspectives for the modelling of heat, air and moisture processes in a building. The main advantages of system identification models compared to the modelling of building dynamics using building simulation software are, that (1) the computing time is reduced significantly, and (2) system identification models run in a MATLAB environment, in which many building simulation tools have been developed
Bayesian updating for probability of failure of jacket platforms in Malaysia

The Jacket platform codes such as API LRFD and ISO 19902 are based on probabilistic design of component and joint reliability. They consider overall structural integrity, redundancy and multiple failure paths only indirectly by using structural integrity assessment methods. In this paper, probability of failure is determined as per design requirement of 100 year extreme conditions using Monte Carlo simulation. To get information on maximum strength, maximum wave height was increased till the reserve strength ratio reached 1, using SACS pushover analysis. Stokes's 5th order theory and Morrison Equation were used for finding the environmental loads. Regression analysis was used for the load model using surface fit tool of Matlab. The wave which gave an RSR value of 1 is considered as the maximum wave, the jacket can withstand with the available resistance of material. This theory has already been applied on land based structures, such as proof loading used against existing structures to gauge the strength of structure. This new maximum wave height has been used to find the updated failure probability and compare it with failure probability of design wave. The study covers one platform, and recommendation is made whether the platform is suitable for the extension of life or not. This study can further lead to updating based on new information on material resistance of platforms.
TASA: traffic offloading by tag-assisted social-aware opportunistic sharing in mobile social networks

To solve the mobile traffic explosion problem, there have been many efforts to try to offload the mobile traffic from infrastructured cellular links to direct local short-range communications among users. In this paper, we propose a novel framework of traffic offloading by Tag-Assisted Social-Aware opportunistic sharing in mobile social networks, TASA, to offload traffic by device-to-device sharing. Based on the evaluation of the tags of users and contents, we select a subset of users who are likely to receive the same content as initial seeds depending on their spreading impacts in online SNSs and their mobility patterns in offline MSNs. Then users share the content via opportunistic local connectivity (e.g., Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Direct, LTE D2D) with each other. The observation from SNS activities reveals that individual users have distinct access patterns, which allows TASA to further exploit the user-dependent access delay between the content generation time and each users access time for traffic offloading purposes. We model and analyze the traffic offloading and content spreading among users by taking into account various options in linking SNS and MSN trace data. The trace-driven evaluation demonstrates that TASA can reduce up to 78.9% of the cellular traffic.
PhD thesis summary: Kahneman and Tversky and the Making of Behavioral Economics

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva. nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.
Finding DNA Regulatory Motifs with Position-dependent Models

We consider the problem of de novo DNA motif discovery. The position weight matrix (PWM) model has been extensively used, yet this model makes the assumption that nucleotides at different positions are independent of each other. Recent results have shown that nucleotides bound by transcription factors often exhibit adjacent or nonadjacent dependencies. We address this problem by devising positional dependency models capable of capturing adjacent dependencies and non-adjacent dependencies (SPWDM). Our algorithms are based on Gibbs sampling to update the model parameter and dependencies structure. We compare two scoring functions:   -score and a conditional probability based score. We also improve several Gibbs sampling stages. Experiments are carried out on simulated and real data, showing that the SPWDM model makes improvement over pure PWM. The modifications to the Gibbs sampling algorithm are also shown to be effective. 
Ant Colony Optimization for Load Management Based on Load Shifting in the Textile Industry

The textile industry is a complicated manufacturing industry because it is a fragmented and heterogeneous sector dominated by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). There are various energy-efficiency opportunities that exist in every textile plant. However, even cost-effective options often are not implemented in textile plants mostly because of limited information on how to implement energy-efficiency measures. This paper presents the expansion of problem formulation of consummation management based on load shifting in textile industry. The mathematical model is a Non Polynomial (NP) hard optimization problem to determine the start time of the process in order to minimize the total electricity cost under varying tariffs such as flat rate and Time of Use (TOU). For solve this problem, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is applied and compared with Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). To show its efficiency, the case studies in case of Single Process Multiple Jobs (SPMJ) in term of small, medium and large scales are demonstrated. The results show that the proposed method is able to achieve the best solution efficiently and easy to implement.
Micro Electret Energy Harvesting Device with Analogue Impedance Conversion Circuit

A vibration-driven electret generator has been developed for energy harvesting applications. By using parylene as the spring material, a low-resonant-frequency MEMS generator is realized. Large in- plane amplitude of 0.8 mm at the resonant frequency as low as 37 Hz has been achieved. With our early prototype, output power of 0.28 ∝W has been obtained. We also demonstrate electret-powered operation of LED using a low-power-consumption impedance conversion circuit.
Ontology ( Re-) Engineering through Large-scale Data Mining

As Linked Open Data originates from various sources, leveraging well-defined ontologies aids integration. However, oftentimes the utilization of RDF vocabularies by data publishers differs from the intended application envisioned by ontology engineers. Especially in largescale datasets as presented in the Billion Triple Challenge a significant divergence between vocabulary specification and usage patterns can be observed. This may impede the goals of the Web of Data in terms of discovering domain-specific information in the Semantic Web. In this work, we identify common misusage patterns by employing frequency analysis and rule mining and propose reengineering suggestions.
Maintenance of ATP concentrations in and of fertilizing ability of fowl and turkey spermatozoa in vitro.

Summary. Fowl and turkey spermatozoa, when diluted in a glutamate-based medium and incubated at 40\s=deg\Cunder aerobic conditions showed a similar rate of oxygen utilization and maintained similar cellular ATP concentrations. Under anaerobic conditions, the glycolytic metabolism of fowl spermatozoa was sufficient to maintain a high ATP concentration, whilst turkey spermatozoa had a much lower glycolytic ability and their ATP levels fell rapidly. The maintenance of high sperm ATP concentrations was directly related to subsequent fertilizing ability of the spermatozoa. Diluted fowl semen showed good fertilizing ability ( > 70%) under aerobic conditions and under anaerobic conditions in the presence of 10 mM-glucose, but diluted turkey semen maintained good fertilizing ability only under aerobic conditions.
MULTIBAND HANDSET ANTENNA ANALYSIS IN- CLUDING LTE BAND MIMO SERVICE

A compact multiband handset antenna including MIMO antenna operation for LTE 13 band (746 » 787MHz) applications is proposed. The proposed antennas are separately located on the top and bottom portions of a mobile handset in order to use the antenna area more efiectively. The proposed antenna achieves isolations of higher than 14dB, enveloped correlation coe-cients (ECC) of less than 0.25, and total e-ciencies of greater than 40%. The operating frequency bands of Antenna 1 and Antenna 2 include the LTE 13 (746 » 787MHz)/DCS/PCS/UMTS (1710 » 2170MHz) bands and the LTE 13 (746 » 787MHz)/GSM850/900 (824 » 960MHz) bands, respectively.
Health-related quality of life and long-term morbidity and mortality in patients hospitalised with systolic heart failure

Background Health-related quality of life has been shown to impact prognosis in chronic heart failure, however with limited long-term follow-up. We analysed data spanning 8–12 years to assess the impact of health-related quality of life using the Nottingham Health Profile on first hospitalisation and mortality, for cardiovascular and all causes. Methods We included 208 patients aged ≥60 years with New York Heart Association class II–IV and left ventricular systolic dysfunction hospitalised in Stockholm during 1996–99. Data on hospital admissions, discharge diagnoses and date and cause of death were collected from administrative databases and medical records until 2007. Cox proportional hazard models were employed to analyse the time to event for mortality and hospitalisations. Results Mean age was 76 years, 58% were male and mean ejection fraction was 34%. Median survival was 4.6 years (range 6 days–11.9 years); 148 patients died. All-cause and cardiovascular mortality were determined by physical mobility (by Nottingham Health Profile), age, gender, diuretic dose and haemoglobin level. Glomerular filtration rate was significant for all-cause mortality, while atrioventricular plane displacement was predictive of cardiovascular mortality. Median time to first all-cause and cardiovascular hospitalisation was 5.7 and 11.2 months, respectively. Time to first all-cause hospitalisation was determined by physical mobility, emotional reactions, age, gender and haemoglobin level, while only physical mobility and diuretic dose predicted time to first cardiovascular hospitalisation. Conclusions In conclusion, in patients with systolic chronic heart failure, physical mobility as part of health-related quality of life is an independent prognostic marker for cardiovascular and all-cause readmissions and mortality over 12 years.
Determining nutrients degradation kinetics of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) straw using nylon bag technique in sheep

Straw a by-product from grain legume crops is produced in large quantities in Iran. Straw is constant component of ruminant diets on small holder farms; however, there is little information about its nutritive value. Accordingly experiment was conducted to determine the chemical composition and ruminal organic matter (OM) and crude protein (CP) degradability of chickpea straw using nylon bags (in situ) technique. Replicated samples were incubated at 0, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 48 and 72 hours in three rumen canulated Ghezel rams with 50±3 kg body weight. Dry matter (DM), CP, ether extract (EE), OM, crude fiber (CF) and nitrogen free extract (NFE) content of chickpea straws were 92.2, 6.1, 5.5, 92.0, 34.3 and 46.2%, respectively. The soluble fraction (a) of the OM and CP of chickpea straw was 17.5 and 40.8% and potential degradability (a+b) of OM and CP was 56.7 and 72.0%, respectively. Effective degradability at different passage rates (2, 5 and 8% per hours) for OM was 51.0 44.9 and 40.7% and for CP were 68.4, 64.3 and 61.3%, respectively. In conclusion, based on chemical composition and degradation characteristics, chickpea straw could have moderate nutritive value for ruminants.
A linear actuator system with 1-angstrom closed-loop control resolution and 50-millimeter travel range.

We have designed and tested a novel linear actuator system with 1-angstrom closed-loop control resolution and 50-mm travel range. There are two major ultraprecision motion control techniques that have been applied to this actuator: A novel laser Doppler encoder system with multiple-reflection optics; and A specially designed high-stiffness weak-link mechanism with stacked thin metal sheets having sub-angstrom driving sensitivity with excellent stability. In this paper, we present the system design and test results of this linear actuator. Applications of this new actuator system are also discussed.
Waveform Optimizations for Ultra-Wideband Radio Systems

Solutions are presented for various optimizations of transient waveforms and signals used in ultra-wideband radio systems. These include the transmit antenna generator waveform required to maximize receive antenna voltage amplitude (with bounded input energy), the transmit antenna generator waveform that provides the “sharpest” received antenna voltage waveform, and the transmit antenna generator waveform that maximizes received energy with an inequality constraint on the radiated power spectral density. Using variational methods, general optimization results are derived for arbitrary antennas, including the effects of generator and load impedances, and numerical examples are provided for lossless dipoles and resistively loaded dipoles using moment method solutions. Closed-form results are provided for short dipole antennas for some special cases. This work was supported by a MURI Project under Contract DAAD19-01-1-0477 from the US Army Research Laboratory.