Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Comparative Study of Joint Power and Reliability Management Techniques in Multicore Embedded Systems

Low power consumption and high-reliability are often major objectives in the design of embedded systems. To reduce power consumption, embedded systems usually employ system-level power management techniques, e.g. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) and Dynamic Power Management (DPM). To achieve high reliability, embedded systems often exploit fault-tolerant techniques. Fault-tolerant techniques are in a trade-off with energy consumption, peak-power consumption, and temperature. Thus, different methods have been introduced that simultaneously consider reliability and power consumption as the system constraints. Several novel methods have been proposed in previous works to reduce the power consumption of fault-tolerant systems, but there are no published guidelines to help designers to select the best approach for a given application. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of these methods by evaluating them in an identical simulation environment for an accurate evaluation.
Efficacy of Two Types of Femoral Cement Restrictor in Total Hip Arthroplasty

Distal occlusion of the femoral canal in total hip arthroplasty is important for cement pressurisation. Failure to adequately restrict cement may result in earlier prosthetic loosening and a longer column of distal cement which may make revision surgery more difficult. A standard plastic restrictor (Hardinge type) was compared with a bone plug restriction method in a randomised, prospective trial of 50 patients. Both types of restrictor failed to adequately restrict cement in over 50% of cases.
Design of a teaching plan for multiple Ping-Pong ball training.

This multiple ball training plan is designed according to such 4 stages in the Ping-Pong technique forma-tion pattern as generalization,differentiation,solidification and automation.Complicated tactic and technique com-bined training,move training,training for difficult techniques that are usually hard to grasped in one-on-one train-ing,athlete’s physical,mental and volitive capacity exercises,are implemented in the entire multi-ball teaching and training via the use of such 3 training means as "multi-point plus multi-ball","interactive multi-point plus multi-ball" and "single training with multi-ball",intensified training is carried out in an action specific way by means of ball supply,and the said problems are settled one by one.
The NEURON Book: Index

Assuming no previous knowledge of computer programming or numerical methods, The NEURON Book provides practical advice on how to get the most out of the NEURON software program. Although written primarily for neuroscientists, teachers and students, readers with a background in the physical sciences or mathematics and some knowledge about brain cells and circuits, will also find it helpful. Covering details of NEURON's inner workings, and practical considerations specifying anatomical and biophysical properties to be represented in models, this book uses a problem-solving approach that includes many examples to challenge readers.
APPLICATION OF SCHLIEREN TECHNIQUE IN ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING: A REVIEW

Additive manufacturing has gained a lot of attention in the past few decades due to its significant advantages in terms of design freedom, lower lead time, and ability to produce complex shapes. One of the pivotal factors affecting the process stability and hence the part quality is the shielding gas flow in additive manufacturing. As extremely beneficial for the process, the shielding gas flow is often set at maximum supply to achieve enough gas cover over the substrate. This causes excessive quantity of shielding gas to be unutilized. Realizing the importance of shielding gas, various studies have been carried out to monitor and visualize the shielding gas, and one such technique is Schlieren imaging. Schlieren visualization has been used since the 1800s as a powerful visualization tool to visualize fluctuations in optical density. The Schlieren technique is highly effective for visualizing and optimizing shielding gas flow. This paper aims to provide an overview of Schlieren technique used for visualization of shielding gas and highlights the application of Schlieren in additive manufacturing.
Bacillus anthracis Poly-γ-D-Glutamate Capsule Inhibits Opsonic Phagocytosis by Impeding Complement Activation

Bacillus anthracis poly-γ-D-glutamic acid (PGA) capsule is an essential virulent factor that helps the bacterial pathogen to escape host immunity. Like other encapsulated bacterial species, the B. anthracis capsule may also inhibit complement-mediated clearance and ensure bacterial survival in the host. Previous reports suggest that B. anthracis spore proteins inhibit complement activation. However, the mechanism through which the B. anthracis capsule imparts a survival advantage to the active bacteria has not been demonstrated till date. Thus, to evaluate the role of the PGA capsule in evading host immunity, we have undertaken the present head-to-head comparative study of the phagocytosis and complement activation of non-encapsulated and encapsulated B. anthracis strains. The encapsulated virulent strain exhibited resistance toward complement-dependent and complement-independent bacterial phagocytosis by human macrophages. The non-encapsulated Sterne strain was highly susceptible to phagocytosis by THP-1 macrophages, after incubation with normal human serum (NHS), heat-inactivated serum, and serum-free media, thus indicating that the capsule inhibited both complement-dependent and complement-independent opsonic phagocytosis. An increased binding of C3b and its subsequent activation to C3c and C3dg, which functionally act as potent opsonins, were observed with the non-encapsulated Sterne strain compared with the encapsulated strain. Other known mediators of complement fixation, IgG, C-reactive protein (CRP), and serum amyloid P component (SAP), also bound more prominently with the non-encapsulated Sterne strain. Studies with complement pathway-specific, component-deficient serum demonstrated that the classical pathway was primarily involved in mediating C3b binding on the non-encapsulated bacteria. Both strains equally bound the complement regulatory proteins C4BP and factor H. Importantly, we demonstrated that the negative charge of the PGA capsule was responsible for the differential binding of the complement proteins between the non-encapsulated and encapsulated strains. At lower pH closer to the isoelectric point of PGA, the neutralization of the negative charge was associated with an increased binding of C3b and IgG with the encapsulated B. anthracis strain. Overall, our data have demonstrated that the B. anthracis capsule inhibits complement fixation and opsonization resulting in reduced phagocytosis by macrophages, thus allowing the bacterial pathogen to evade host immunity.
A blood-based 22-gene expression signature for hepatocellular carcinoma identification

Background Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and lethal malignancies. Early detection of HCC could largely reduce mortalities. Ultrasonography (US) and serum Alpha Fetoprotein (AFP) test are the screening methods that are most frequently applied to high-risk populations. Due to the poor performance of AFP testing, and the highly operator-dependent nature of US, a biomarker for HCC early diagnosis is highly sought after. We developed a method for HCC screening using a 22-gene expression signature. Methods Peripheral whole blood of 98 patients were processed through microarrays for the first round of feature selection via two strategies, Minimal Redundancy Maximal Relevance and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator combined with Support Vector Machine (SVM). Candidate genes were combined for further validation through qPCR in an enlarged population with 316 samples with 104 chronic hepatitis, 112 liver cirrhosis (LC), and 100 HCC. Results A 22-gene signature was established in classifying HCC and non-cancer samples with good performance. The area under curve reached 0.94 in all of the samples and 0.93 in the AFP -negative samples. Conclusions We have established a blood mRNA signature with high performance for HCC screening. Our results show transcriptome of peripheral blood could be valuable source for biomarkers.
Inhibition of Microglial TGFβ Signaling Increases Expression of Mrc1

Microglia are constantly surveying their microenvironment and rapidly react to impairments by changing their morphology, migrating toward stimuli and adopting gene expression profiles characterizing their activated state. The increased expression of the M2-like marker Mannose receptor 1 (Mrc1), which is also referred to as CD206, in microglia has been reported after M2-like activation in vitro and in vivo. Mrc1 is a 175-kDa transmembrane pattern recognition receptor which binds a variety of carbohydrates and is involved in the pinocytosis and the phagocytosis of immune cells, including microglia, and thought to contribute to a neuroprotective microglial phenotype. Here we analyzed the effects of TGFβ signaling on Mrc1 expression in microglia in vivo and in vitro. Using C57BL/6 wild type and Cx3cr1CreERT2:R26-YFP:Tgfbr2fl/fl mice-derived microglia, we show that the silencing of TGFβ signaling results in the upregulation of Mrc1, whereas recombinant TGFβ1 induced the delayed downregulation of Mrc1. Furthermore, chromatin immunoprecipitation experiments provided evidence that Mrc1 is not a direct Smad2/Smad4 target gene in microglia. Altogether our data indicate that the changes in Mrc1 expression after the activation or the silencing of microglial TGFβ signaling are likely to be mediated by modifications of the secondary intracellular signaling events influenced by TGFβ signaling.
Intelligent Assistant for Exploring Data Visualizations

Visualization, while an effective tool for identifying patterns and insights, requires expert knowledge due to challenges faced when translating user queries to visual encodings. Re- search has shown that using a natural language interface (NLI) is effective for these challenges because the user can simply talk to a computer capable of producing the graphs directly. In this paper, we discuss our intelligent assistant which processes speech and hand pointing gestures while also dealing with any number of visualizations on a large screen dis- play. Evaluation of the system shows that it is capable of quickly producing visualizations. It also particularly effec- tive at responding to less ambiguous queries, while in certain cases can handle ambiguous or complex queries.
El Niño Seasonal Weather Impacts from the OLR Event Perspective

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) seasonal temperature and precipitation anomaly associations provide a useful basis for statistical seasonal weather forecasting in the seasons and regions where linkages between the tropical Pacific anomaly state and seasonal weather conditions are sufficiently strong in amplitude and consistent in character from one event to another (“robust”). Robust El Niño seasonal weather associations occur in boreal winter in many affected regions worldwide, when El Niño events reach peak amplitude in the tropical Pacific.
Model Order Selection for Robust-Control-Relevant Identification

Next-generation motion systems are envisioned to be lightweight due to increasing demands regarding throughput and precision. Typically, lightweight motion systems exhibit flexible dynamic behavior within the control bandwidth. In general, flexible dynamic behavior is not aligned with the degrees of freedom. As a result, next-generation motion systems are envisioned to be inherently multivariable. Hence, designing controllers through loop-shapingbased techniques becomes practically infeasible.
Nonlinear Control of Twin Helicopter with Slung Load

This paper focuses on simulation and control of a formation of two helicopters carrying a single external load. A simulation model of a rotorcraft twin-lift system is developed and implemented in the MATLAB / Simulink environment. All objects in the twin-helicopter system are coupled exclusively through elastic cable forces that acting on each of the bodies. Analytical checks of the model are performed for the trim and stability characteristics of each helicopter, and results show reasonable and expected behavior due to the physical coupling from the cables. A non-linear control scheme is developed that using an aerodynamic inverse approach which can expediently introduce cable forces and moments feedback in inner control loop. The controller calculates desired control inputs based on an inversion of the quasi-steady aerodynamics and the desired trajectory of each helicopter. In order to accurately track the commanded trajectory, the control law makes direct use of the measured cable force acting on each helicopter. The controller’s performance and robustness are demonstrated in non-linear simulation of the twin-lift system.
3D Thermal Numerical Analysis of a Densely Packed Concentrating Photovoltaic Receiver

This paper presents a three-dimensional numerical model that has been developed to predict the thermal behaviour of a high efficiency solar cell receiver under various conditions. Real-time meteorological data are used to calculate the heat transfer coefficient required to maintain the solar cell’s temperature below 80°C. An extended aluminium surface (heat sink) was designed and applied on the back of the receiver to increase heat removal by passive cooling. It is shown that passive cooling in densely packed geometries can only be feasible for concentrations below 60 suns. A minimum convective heat transfer coefficient of 3.5W/m 2 K was found to satisfy the cooling requirements when solar radiation is concentrated by a factor of 500x, for an ambient temperature of less than 25C. It is concluded that densely packed solar cell receivers require active cooling in order to operate safely, without the risk of complete failure in the field.
Asylum Paradiplomacy: Putting Cities on the Map of Migration Policymaking

About 61% of refugees and asylum seekers are located within urban areas and the shift from camps and rural spaces to cities is mainly driven by greater employment, housing opportunities and, consequently, more autonomy (UNHCR, 2019). This urbanization process has been increasing over the years and to better cope with this reality, cities are trying to play a major role in the external dimension of asylum policies. Through partnerships and agreements, municipalities seek to improve their hosting and settlement capacity. Whilst the debate around migration as a diplomatic tool mostly focuses on the state-centric perspective, this paper aims to shed light on the rise of cities as conducting actors of diplomatic actions towards the asylum issue. This work examines how the current migration management regime has been strengthening at the subnational level and highlights the opportunities and challenges involved in this recent dynamic.
The Impact Of Corruption On Financial Development In Africa

This study examines the impact of corruption on financial development in 50 African countries during the period 2000 â€“ 2014. The study uses dynamic system GMM estimator because it take care the endogeneity and country-specific-effect problems that may arise in panel data estimation. The results show that control of corruption, bank branches, human capital are highly determine financial development in Africa. The results provide empirical evidence for African policy-makers to introduce polices that aim to lower and to control corruption and to cover large areas by commercial bank branches in addition to invest more in the education of human capital.
A Monopole Antenna with Two Symmetric Strips for UWB Applications

In this paper, a monopole antenna with two symmetric L strips is proposed. Closed rings on either side have been introduced to enhance the bandwidth of the proposed antenna. The antenna geometry is fed with a microstrip line. The proposed geometry is designed on easily available FR4_epoxy dielectric material and the dimensions of the dielectric substrate used are of 50 mm x 50 mm x 1 mm. Antenna geometry’s performance is investigated in the frequency range between 2 GHz to 7 GHz. To validate the design, proposed geometry was fabricated and tested. Antenna impedance bandwidth of 86.3% was obtained in the operating band of 2.5GHz to 6.3GHz. Measured results fairly agree with the simulated data. General Terms Monopole microstrip antennas, Planar UWB antennas.
Doodle2App: Native App Code by Freehand UI Sketching

User interface development typically starts with freehand sketching, with pen on paper, which creates a big gap in the software development process. Recent advances in deep neural networks that have been trained on large sketch stroke sequence collections have enabled online sketch detection that supports many sketch element classes at high classification accuracy. This paper leverages the recent Google Quick, Draw! dataset of 50M sketch stroke sequences to pre-train a recurrent neural network and retrains it with sketch stroke sequences we collected via Amazon Mechanical Turk. The resulting Doodle2App website offers a paper substitute, i.e., a drawing interface with interactive UI preview and can convert sketches to a compilable single-page Android application. On 712 sketch samples Doodle2App achieved higher accuracy than the state-of-the-art tool Teleport. A video demo is at https://youtu.be/P4sb0pKTNEY
A Goal-Driven Approach for Deploying Self-Adaptive IoT Systems

Engineering Internet of Things (IoT) systems is a challenging task partly due to the dynamicity and uncertainty of the environment including the involvement of the human in the loop. Users should be able to achieve their goals seamlessly in different environments, and IoT systems should be able to cope with dynamic changes. Several approaches have been proposed to enable the automated formation, enactment, and self-adaptation of goal-driven IoT systems. However, they do not address deployment issues. In this paper, we propose a goal-driven approach for deploying self-adaptive IoT systems in the Edge-Cloud continuum. Our approach supports the systems to cope with the dynamicity and uncertainty of the environment including changes in their deployment topologies, i.e., the deployment nodes and their interconnections. We describe the architecture and processes of the approach and the simulations that we conducted to validate its feasibility. The results of the simulations show that the approach scales well when generating and adapting the deployment topologies of goal-driven IoT systems in smart homes and smart buildings.
Seasonality and immunity to laboratory-confirmed seasonal coronaviruses (HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-229E): results from the Flu Watch cohort study.

Background: There is currently a pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The intensity and duration of this first wave in the UK may be dependent on whether SARS-CoV-2 transmits more effectively in the winter than the summer and the UK Government response is partially built upon the assumption that those infected will develop immunity to reinfection in the short term. In this paper we examine evidence for seasonality and immunity to laboratory-confirmed seasonal coronavirus (HCoV) from a prospective cohort study in England. Methods: In this analysis of the Flu Watch cohort, we examine seasonal trends for PCR-confirmed coronavirus infections (HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-229E) in all participants during winter seasons (2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009) and during the first wave of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic (May-Sep 2009). We also included data from the pandemic and 'post-pandemic' winter seasons (2009-2010 and 2010-2011) to identify individuals with two confirmed HCoV infections and examine evidence for immunity against homologous reinfection. Results: We tested 1,104 swabs taken during respiratory illness and detected HCoV in 199 during the first four seasons. The rate of confirmed HCoV infection across all seasons was 390 (95% CI 338-448) per 100,000 person-weeks; highest in the Nov-Mar 2008/9 season at 674 (95%CI 537-835). The highest rate was in February at 759 (95% CI 580-975). Data collected during May-Sep 2009 showed there was small amounts of ongoing transmission, with four cases detected during this period. Eight participants had two confirmed infections, of which none had the same strain twice. Conclusion: Our results provide evidence that HCoV infection in England is most intense in winter, but that there is a small amount of ongoing transmission during summer periods. We found some evidence of immunity against homologous reinfection.
OPTIMIZATION OF CNC END MILLING OF BRASS USING HYBRID TAGUCHI METHOD USING PCA AND GREY RELATIONAL ANALYSIS

In order to improve the quality and productivity the present study highlights the optimization of CNC end milling process parameters to provide good surface finish. The surface finish has been identified as one of the main quality attribute and is directly related to the productivity of a machine. In this paper an attempt has been made to optimize the process such that the best surface roughness value can be obtained in a process. Hence a multi objective optimization problem has been obtained which can be solved by the hybrid Taguchi method comprising of principal components analysis as well as utility theory. To meet the basic assumption of taguchi method in the present work individual response correlation has been eliminated first by means of Principal components analysis (PCA). Correlated responses have been transformed into uncorrelated quality indices called as principal components. From the principal components the quality loss estimates have been calculated and the Grey relational values are found out for the quality loss estimates. Then the overall grey relational grade has been calculated. Finally taguchi method has been used to solve the optimization problem. Simultaneous optimization of huge number of responses can be done using the aforesaid method.
'Working While Studying' and Educational Mismatching Among Youth: Evidence From Zambia

This paper analyzed the effect of working while studying in college and university on educational mismatching in the Zambian labor market. The study used the 2014 School to Work Transition Survey data and estimated a range of extended ordered probit regression models that took self-selection and sample-selection bias into account. Our results showed that working while studying significantly reduced the likelihood of being undereducated for the job but increased the likelihood of being overeducated for the job, implying that additional support to enable youth to get exposure to the right amounts and types of work during college or university studies could potentially increase productivity by ensuring job matching. Stakeholders designing work-based skills-development programs should consider the possible counter effects of combining learning and working. Furthermore, there is a need for investment in guidance mechanisms for students wishing to combine work and learning.
Transparent Redirection in Content Delivery Networks using Software Deﬁned Networking

The Internet is the technology of choice for mass distribution of information today. Content Delivery Networks, as the method used to deliver majority of the Internet‘s content, are becoming the most important piece of making this kind of communication sustainable. They do however impose some limitations as opposed to older legacy approaches. Content Delivery Networks heavily rely on redirections, which directs user requests to the closest surrogate server to lower the delay for content delivery and distribution on a massive scale. Redirections have not received a signiﬁcant amount of attention in the recent year. This paper will show a TCP session handoﬀ can be achieved using Software Deﬁned Networking, which can be used a transparent redirection mechanism in Content Delivery Networks. The paper presents a working prototype including the achieved results with comparison with existing legacy approaches.