Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Interleaved PWM Method With Better Voltage-Balancing Ability for Half-Bridge Three-Level DC/DC Converter

Since the voltage stress on the power switches is only half of the input voltage, three-level (TL) converters have been widely used in high-voltage applications. To ensure normal operation of TL converters, the voltages on the input divided capacitors and the blocking capacitor must be essentially balanced. In practice, asymmetry of the main circuit and the drive circuit may result in unbalance of these voltages, leading to higher voltage stress on the power switches and other problems. This letter proposes a novel pulse-width modulation (PWM) method with better voltage-balancing ability, which is implemented by interleaving two traditional PWM methods. First, the mechanism of voltage unbalance is analyzed. The new PWM method decouples the blocking capacitor voltage from the voltages of the input divided capacitors, and ensures that the former voltage is always kept around its ideal value, which can greatly simplify the sampling circuit and the voltage-balancing control scheme. Then, a voltage-balancing strategy aiming to adjust the phase shift of the drive signals only is given. Finally, experimental results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method and voltage-balancing strategy.
Endothelial cells microparticle-associated protein disulfide isomerase promotes platelet activation in metabolic syndrome

Background Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a common challenge in the world, and the platelet activation is enhanced in MetS patients. However, the fundamental mechanism that underlies platelet activation in MetS remains incompletely understood. Endothelial cells are damaged seriously in MetS patients, then they release more endothelial microparticles (EMPs). After all, whether the EMPs participate in platelet activation is still obscure. If they were, how did they work? Results We demonstrated that the levels of EMPs, PMPs (platelet derived microparticles) and microparticle-carried-PDI activity increased in MetS patients. IR endothelial cells released more EMPs, the EMP-PDI was more activated. EMPs can enhance the activation of CD62P, GPIIb/IIIa and platelet aggregation and this process can be partly inhibited by PDI inhibitor such as RL90 and rutin. Activated platelets stimulated by EMPs expressed more PDI on cytoplasm and released more PMPs. Materials and Methods We obtained plasma from 23 MetS patients and 8 normal healthy controls. First we built insulin resistance (IR) model of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), and then we separated EMPs from HUVECs culture medium and used these EMPs to stimulate platelets. Levels of microparticles, P-selectin(CD62P), Glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (GPIIb/IIIa) were detected by flow cytometry and levels of EMPs were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) activity was detected by insulin transhydrogenase assay. Platelet aggregation was assessed by turbidimetry. Conclusion EMPs can promote the activation of GPIIb/IIIa in platelets and platelet aggregation by the PDI which is carried on the surface of EMPs.
A Protein Cross‐Linking Assay for Measuring Cell Surface Expression of Glutamate Receptor Subunits in the Rodent Brain After In Vivo Treatments

Trafficking of neurotransmitter receptors between intracellular and cell surface compartments is important for regulating neurotransmission. We developed a method for determining if an in vivo treatment has altered receptor distribution in a particular region of rodent brain. After the treatment, brain slices are rapidly prepared from the region of interest. Then, cell surface–expressed proteins are covalently cross‐linked using the membrane‐impermeable, bifunctional cross‐linker bis(sulfosuccinimidyl)suberate (BS3). This increases the apparent molecular weight of surface receptors, while intracellular receptors are not modified. Thus, surface and intracellular receptor pools can be separated and quantified using SDS‐PAGE and immunoblotting. This method is particularly useful for analyzing AMPA receptor subunits, offering advantages in accuracy, efficiency, and cost compared to biotinylation. A disadvantage is that some antibodies no longer recognize their target protein after cross‐linking. We have used this method to quantify changes in receptor distribution after acute and chronic exposure to psychomotor stimulants. Curr. Protoc. Neurosci. 59:5.30. 1‐5.30. 19. © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Accurate mesh-based alignment for ground and aerial multi-view stereo models

We propose a method for accurate alignment of ground and aerial multi-view stereo (MVS) models. We achieve this goal by reconstructing the surface meshes from MVS point clouds generated by aerial and ground images respectively, and then iteratively removing the gap between them. The key issue is how to establish reliable correspondences between two meshes. To address this issue, we introduce a new set called the skeleton facet set (SFS) to represent the locally smooth part on the mesh, and then compute the transformation matrix by comparing the depths of the facets in SFS between aerial and ground models. Experimental results show that the proposed method is able to yield accurate alignment results and is robust to noise as well.
Assessment of Shear Failure Parameters for Sand-Clay Liners

The cohesion and angle of internal friction are generally the key parameters required in the analysis of different geotechnical problems. Variably, expansive soils undergo volume changes when subjected to moisture increase. Accordingly, the attraction forces between the clay particles and the internal friction are deemed to vary for different soil fabrics and different states of stresses. The influence of moisture on the shear strength parameters of clay liners need to be established to achieve adequate design. In this study, undrained direct shear tests were carried out for Al-Qatif clay sand mixtures at variable moisture contents in order to assess the variation of shear strength parameters when sand clay liners are inundated. The mold placement density was maintained the same for all moistures tested. The influence of moisture change on the shear strength parameters was assessed for the material used. In order to forecast the moisture profile in a clay liner, hydraulic conductivity as well as water retention properties was investigated.
A new metric for measuring image-based 3D reconstruction

We propose a novel metric to measure the image-based 3D reconstruction results without ground truth datasets. In contrast to previous metrics, our shading-based metric can not only accurately measure the reconstruction quality but also decouple from any reconstruction algorithm. Considering the uncertainty of topology, texture and soft shadow, we compute an anisotropic irradiance gradient field from multiple images to indicate the regions where reconstruction error occurs. We further apply the metric into the view planning application. Experimental results on both synthetic and real datasets illustrate the effectiveness of evaluating 3D reconstruction by our metric. The reconstruction accuracy and completeness overtop or are the same as the results of manually adding new viewpoints.
A Gesture Recognition System for Detecting Behavioral Patterns of ADHD

We present an application of gesture recognition using an extension of dynamic time warping (DTW) to recognize behavioral patterns of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We propose an extension of DTW using one-class classifiers in order to be able to encode the variability of a gesture category, and thus, perform an alignment between a gesture sample and a gesture class. We model the set of gesture samples of a certain gesture category using either Gaussian mixture models or an approximation of convex hulls. Thus, we add a theoretical contribution to classical warping path in DTW by including local modeling of intraclass gesture variability. This methodology is applied in a clinical context, detecting a group of ADHD behavioral patterns defined by experts in psychology/psychiatry, to provide support to clinicians in the diagnose procedure. The proposed methodology is tested on a novel multimodal dataset (RGB plus depth) of ADHD children recordings with behavioral patterns. We obtain satisfying results when compared to standard state-of-the-art approaches in the DTW context.
Newly breeding an inbred strain of ischemia-prone Mongolian gerbils and its reproduction and genetic characteristics

The Mongolian gerbil has been a useful laboratory animal in many research fields, especially in ischemia studies. However, due to the variation of the circle of Willis (COW), the ischemic model is unstable and various. To solve this problem, we newly established an inbred strain of gerbils, restricting breeding and keeping to F23. The data on the breeding and growth of the animals are described in the present study. The genetic characteristics of F4 to F20 detected by microsatellite DNA and biochemical markers are also shown here. The results demonstrated that the frequency of ischemic model by unilateral carotid occlusion and the frequency of incomplete COW increased, increasing from 50% and 75% in F1 to 88.89% and 100% in F20, respectively. The ratios of consistent patterns of COW in parents were positively related with the number of inbred generations. A reproductive performance analysis indicated that the average size of litters in the inbred gerbils was less than that of outbred gerbils and that adult body weight was also lower in inbred gerbils; also, the pups in the 2nd litter were the best ones chosen to reproduce. The genetic detection results indicated that 26 out of 28 microsatellite loci and all 26 biochemical markers were homozygous in F20, showing comparably identical genetic composition in inbred gerbils. All the data demonstrated that an inbred strain of ischemia-prone gerbil has been established successfully. This strain can be used in stroke research and can largely reduce the number of animals needed in experiments.
Hierarchical Density Order Embeddings

By representing words with probability densities rather than point vectors, probabilistic word embeddings can capture rich and interpretable semantic information and uncertainty. The uncertainty information can be particularly meaningful in capturing entailment relationships -- whereby general words such as "entity" correspond to broad distributions that encompass more specific words such as "animal" or "instrument". We introduce density order embeddings, which learn hierarchical representations through encapsulation of probability densities. In particular, we propose simple yet effective loss functions and distance metrics, as well as graph-based schemes to select negative samples to better learn hierarchical density representations. Our approach provides state-of-the-art performance on the WordNet hypernym relationship prediction task and the challenging HyperLex lexical entailment dataset -- while retaining a rich and interpretable density representation.
When is bigger better? The effects of group size on the evolution of helping behaviours

Understanding the evolution of sociality in humans and other species requires understanding how selection on social behaviour varies with group size. However, the effects of group size are frequently obscured in the theoretical literature, which often makes assumptions that are at odds with empirical findings. In particular, mechanisms are suggested as supporting large‐scale cooperation when they would in fact rapidly become ineffective with increasing group size. Here we review the literature on the evolution of helping behaviours (cooperation and altruism), and frame it using a simple synthetic model that allows us to delineate how the three main components of the selection pressure on helping must vary with increasing group size. The first component is the marginal benefit of helping to group members, which determines both direct fitness benefits to the actor and indirect fitness benefits to recipients. While this is often assumed to be independent of group size, marginal benefits are in practice likely to be maximal at intermediate group sizes for many types of collective action problems, and will eventually become very small in large groups due to the law of decreasing marginal returns. The second component is the response of social partners on the past play of an actor, which underlies conditional behaviour under repeated social interactions. We argue that under realistic conditions on the transmission of information in a population, this response on past play decreases rapidly with increasing group size so that reciprocity alone (whether direct, indirect, or generalised) cannot sustain cooperation in very large groups. The final component is the relatedness between actor and recipient, which, according to the rules of inheritance, again decreases rapidly with increasing group size. These results explain why helping behaviours in very large social groups are limited to cases where the number of reproducing individuals is small, as in social insects, or where there are social institutions that can promote (possibly through sanctioning) large‐scale cooperation, as in human societies. Finally, we discuss how individually devised institutions can foster the transition from small‐scale to large‐scale cooperative groups in human evolution.
Application Clustering Policies to Address System Fairness with Intel’s Cache Allocation Technology

Achieving system fairness is a major design concern in current multicore processors. Unfairness arises due to contention in the shared resources of the system, such as the LLC and main memory. To address this problem, many research works have proposed novel cache partitioning policies aimed at addressing system fairness without harming performance. Unfortunately, existing proposals targeting fairness require extra hardware which makes them impractical in commercial processors.Recent Intel Xeon processors feature Cache Allocation Technology (CAT), a hardware cache partitioning mechanism that can be controlled from userspace software and that allows to create partitions in the LLC and assign different groups of applications to them.In this paper we propose a family of clustering-based cache partitioning policies to address fairness in systems that feature Intel’s CAT. The proposal acts at two levels: applications showing similar amount of core stalls due to LLC accesses are first grouped into clusters, after which each cluster is given a number of ways using a simple mathematical model. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to address system fairness using the cache partitioning hardware in a real product. Results show that our best performing policy reduces system unfairness by up to 80% (39% on average) for 8-application workloads and by up to 45% (25% on average) for 12-application workloads compared to a non-partitioning approach.
Digraphs - theory, algorithms and applications

The theory of directed graphs has developed enormously over recent decades, yet this book (first published in 2000) remains the only book to cover more than a small fraction of the results. New research in the field has made a second edition a necessity. Substantially revised, reorganised and updated, the book now comprises eighteen chapters, carefully arranged in a straightforward and logical manner, with many new results and open problems. As well as covering the theoretical aspects of the subject, with detailed proofs of many important results, the authors present a number of algorithms, and whole chapters are devoted to topics such as branchings, feedback arc and vertex sets, connectivity augmentations, sparse subdigraphs with prescribed connectivity, and also packing, covering and decompositions of digraphs. Throughout the book, there is a strong focus on applications which include quantum mechanics, bioinformatics, embedded computing, and the travelling salesman problem. Detailed indices and topic-oriented chapters ease navigation, and more than 650 exercises, 170 figures and 150 open problems are included to help immerse the reader in all aspects of the subject. Digraphs is an essential, comprehensive reference for undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers in mathematics, operations research and computer science. It will also prove invaluable to specialists in related areas, such as meteorology, physics and computational biology.
Integration of Cognitive Task Analysis and Design Thinking for Autonomous Helicopter Displays

Ensuring that unmanned aerial systems’ (UAS) control stations include a tight coupling of systems engineering with human factors, cognitive analysis, and design is key to their success. We describe a combined cognitive task analysis (CTA) and design thinking effort to develop interfaces for an operator controlling an autonomous helicopter, a prototype system that the Office of Naval Research is developing. We first conducted CTA interviews with subject-matter experts having expertise in UAS flight operations, helicopter resupply, military ground forces, and marine airspace control. Data informed the development of analysis products, including human–system interface requirements, which drove the creation of design concepts through ideation sessions using design thinking methods. We validated and refined the design concepts with UAS pilots. We provide an overview of our process, illustrated by details of a timeline display development. Significant aspects of our work include close integration of CTA and design thinking efforts, designing for an “envisioned world” of interaction with highly autonomous helicopter systems, and the importance of knowledge elicitation early in system design. This effort represents a successful demonstration of an innovative design process in developing UAS interfaces.
Association of diet and lifestyle with blood pressure in the Guangxi Hei Yi Zhuang and Han populations

Abstract Objective To detect the association of diet and lifestyle with blood pressure in the Guangxi Hei Yi Zhuang and Han populations. Design A cross-sectional study of hypertension. Setting Both populations were from seven to nine villages in Napo County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. Subjects A total of 1068 subjects of Hei Yi Zhuang and 933 participants of Han Chinese aged 20–89 years were surveyed by a stratified randomised cluster sampling. Results The levels of systolic blood pressure and pulse pressure were higher in Hei Yi Zhuang than in Han (125·20 (sd 18·62) v. 121·88 (sd 15·99) mmHg and 48·64 (sd 14·75) v. 44·98 (sd 11·12 ) mmHg, P < 0·001 for each, respectively). The prevalence of hypertension and isolated systolic hypertension was also higher in Hei Yi Zhuang than in Han (25·19 % v. 17·26 % and 12·45 % v. 3·86 %, P < 0·001 for each, respectively). Mean arterial pressure was positively correlated with gender, age, physical activity, TAG, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, total energy, total fat and salt intakes, and negatively associated with education level and total dietary fibre intake in Hei Yi Zhuang (P < 0·05–0·001), whereas it was positively associated with gender, age, physical activity, BMI, waist circumference, total cholesterol, alcohol consumption, cigarette smoking, total energy, total fat and salt intakes, and negatively associated with education level and total dietary fibre intake in Han (P < 0·05–0·001). Conclusions The differences in blood pressure levels and the prevalence of hypertension between the Hei Yi Zhuang and Han populations were associated with different dietary habits, lifestyle choices, education level, as well as geographical surroundings.
A Triple-Mode Flexible E-Skin Sensor Interface for Multi-Purpose Wearable Applications

This study presents a flexible wireless electronic skin (e-skin) sensor system that includes a multi-functional sensor device, a triple-mode reconfigurable readout integrated circuit (ROIC), and a mobile monitoring interface. The e-skin device’s multi-functionality is achieved by an interlocked micro-dome array structure that uses a polyvinylidene fluoride and reduced graphene oxide (PVDF/RGO) composite material that is inspired by the structure and functions of the human fingertip. For multi-functional implementation, the proposed triple-mode ROIC is reconfigured to support piezoelectric, piezoresistance, and pyroelectric interfaces through single-type e-skin sensor devices. A flexible system prototype was developed and experimentally verified to provide various wireless wearable sensing functions—including pulse wave, voice, chewing/swallowing, breathing, knee movements, and temperature—while their real-time sensed data are displayed on a smartphone.
Improvements in Health-Related Quality of Life With Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Meta-analysis

Introduction Although the antidepressant efficacy of ECT is well documented, patient-reported outcomes after this treatment are less well characterized. The aims of the current meta-analysis are to quantify the impact of an acute course of ECT on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and to identify related moderators, specifically post-ECT depressive symptom remission and patient age. Methods We searched PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science databases for randomized and nonrandomized studies that report on changes in HRQoL measures after an acute course of ECT. Only studies that used the Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 (SF-36) instrument were included. A random effects model using the Hedges' g effect size was used in calculating the pre-post ECT outcomes on all 8 SF-36 subscales and the SF-36 total scores including the physical and mental composite scores. Subgroup analyses were conducted using remission status and age as moderators. Results Four studies contributed to this analysis. Significant improvements across all subscales of the SF-36 were observed. Large and very large effect sizes were present for both the SF-36 physical component score (PCS) and mental health component score (MCS), with the change in MCS being statistically superior to the PCS (MCS, Hedges' g = 1.28; 95% confidence interval, 1.15–1.42; PCS, Hedges' g = 0.97; 95% confidence interval, 0.86–1.07). Medium, large, and very large effect sizes were observed for SF-36 subscales scores. Post-ECT depression remission status was related to HRQoL improvement, with statistically significant differences present between remitters and nonremitters for PCS, MCS, and most SF-36 subscale scores. No significant differences were observed in improvement in HRQoL with ECT based on patient age. Conclusions An acute course of ECT for depressive symptoms produces medium to very large effect size improvements in HRQoL across multiple components and subscales measured by the SF-36. The magnitude of the effects reported by ECT patients is greater than those that have been reported in other open-label studies of brain stimulation techniques. This study confirms that ECT plays a vital role in the treatment of the most severely ill patients with depressive disorders.