Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characteristics-based Boundary Conditions for the Euler Adjoint Problem: 2-D Formulation

Over the last decade the adjoint method has been consolidated as one of the most versatile and successful tools for aerodynamic design. It has become a research area on its own, spawning a large variety of applications and a prolific literature. Yet, some relevant aspects of the method remain relatively less explored in the literature. Such is the case with the adjoint boundary conditions and, more specifically, with regard to permeable boundaries. The present work discusses at length a novel approach to the continuous adjoint boundary problem, with emphasis on the full characteristic formulation of the far– field boundary conditions. The main goal of this approach is to ensure the well–posedness of the adjoint equations and consistency with the primal problem.
Reconstructing arrival processes to discrete queueing systems by inverse load transformation

In this article we propose methods to estimate the parameters of arrival processes to G/D/1 queueing systems only based on observed departures from the system. The derived estimates can be used for performance evaluation and capacity planning in cases where the arrival process is not observable directly. Instead, only the departure process modified at the (last) server needs to be observed. Concerning the arrival process we begin by focusing on the normally distributed number of arrivals per interval and on autoregressive processes. Both classes can be used to model traffic in communication networks on links with a high degree of aggregation. In the case of autoregressive processes we apply the Tobit regression model in order to derive accurate estimates of all parameters of the arrival process. We then continue by generalizing the estimation procedures to correlated arrival processes by using the Buckley–James Estimator. The results are presented for the single G/D/1 queue but are then generalized to the more realistic scenario of sequences of queues with possibly varying bottleneck capacity. The latter especially permits the modeling of effects due to interfering cross traffic. We show how the derived estimates can be used for performance evaluation or capacity planning based on effective bandwidth theory. Finally, we demonstrate that the estimation procedures can be utilized within wireless networks by means of a detailed simulation model.
Early Experiences and Clinical Implications of Restenosis and Drug-Eluting Stents: Part 2

OBJECTIVE To review early clinical experience and future implications of drug-eluting stents (DES) in percutaneous coronary interventions. DATA SOURCES Using the search terms sirolimus, paclitaxel, and drug-eluting stents, a literature review was conducted to identify peer-reviewed articles and abstracts in MEDLINE (1966—June 2003). Recent meeting abstracts were also accessed through the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology Web sites. Citations from available articles were reviewed for additional references. STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION Published reviews and studies showing the effects of in-stent restenosis and drug-coated and -eluting stents were evaluated and reviewed. DATA SYNTHESIS Current antiplatelet and antithrombotic therapy have proven successful in preventing acute in-stent thrombosis, but not in-stent restenosis. Recently, stents eluted with certain antimitotic agents have demonstrated positive findings in reducing restenosis (eg, sirolimus, paclitaxel-eluting stents) compared with bare-metal stents. However, data regarding long-term benefits and adverse effects are only beginning to accumulate. CONCLUSIONS While the current clinical efficacy and safety of DES appear promising, further investigations are required to examine long-term efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness. Subanalysis of the current data may help to determine the specific patient population that may benefit maximally from DES.
A Novel Scalable Multistage DWDM PON Architecture Using Cascaded Optical Interleavers With Increasing Periodicities Controlled in Central Offices

A new multistage scheme for dense wavelength division multiplexed passive optical networks (DWDM PON) is proposed. This scheme is realized by cascading optical interleavers with increasing periodicities. Downstream transmission of a DWDM comb consisting of four 10 Gb/s channels is demonstrated in the proposed multistage network. We also show a scheme to provide upstream transmission. Experimental results show that this technique has the potential to support many groups of customers located at various distances from the central office.
Generation of intensity-controlled two-dimensional shape-preserving beams in plasmonic lossy media

Two-dimensional surface-plasmon polariton waves, which propagate at a metal/dielectric interface, exhibit unique and attractive properties. These extraordinary properties, however, are accompanied by fundamentally inherent losses. The latter is probably the most pronounced challenge in the field of plasmonics and a true bottleneck for many applications. Shape-preserving beams, on the other hand, are unique solutions of the wave equation; they maintain their shape with propagation and also possess the ability to self-reconstruct. Here, we study the first realization of surface-plasmon shape-preserving beams, which maintain their shape and intensity over long distances, even when subjected to plasmonic losses. Moreover, their intensity distribution along propagation can be arbitrarily tailored. This is achieved without the use of any gain media, but rather by strictly controlling the initial plasmonic wavefront. This approach can be valuable for a variety of plasmonic applications, such as surface particle trapping and manipulation, on-chip communication, nonlinear optics, and more.
Behavioral and endocrine dynamics associated with infanticide in a black and white colobus monkey (Colobus guereza)

Infanticide has been observed in several colobines, but only one infanticide has previously been documented for black and white colobus monkeys (Colobus guereza). This report describes an infanticide observed in Kibale National Park, Uganda, in the summer of 2001. An adult male from a neighboring group attacked and killed a young infant whose mother subsequently remained in her own group and was observed mating 10 days later. She engaged in two mating periods of several days each, separated by approximately 1 month, during which she copulated frequently with the dominant male within her group. Urinary estrogen (EC) and progesterone metabolite (PdG) excretion patterns demonstrated that the female resumed ovarian cycling soon after the infanticide. Because the infanticidal male did not attempt to mate with the victim's mother, his actions were not consistent with the predictions of the sexual‐selection hypothesis. We speculate that infanticide associated with intergroup aggression may help secure access to high‐quality resources for the infanticidal male's group. Am. J. Primatol. 61:135–142, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The computing ontology: application in education

Working Group 3 at ITiCSE 2007 continued the ongoing work of the Ontology of Computing project. The working group brought several new people into the project and addressed areas of the ontology of particular interest to these participants. In particular, the group worked on the Ontology sections related to History of Computing, Computing Security and Social and Ethical issues. With the intention of applying the ontology to the support of curriculum development in mind, the group also reviewed and discussed proposed means of presenting a visual representation of the ontology. There was also some work on the present structure of the ontology and future possibilities.
Experimental 3D Sound Field Analysis with a Microphone Array

This article deals with spatial analysis of real 3D sound fields, and presents an optimal beamforming algorithm minimizing the power of side lobes, used to improve the spatial representation of sound fields. Optimal tap vectors are computed for a set of incidence directions mapping the whole sphere. The robustness of the algorithm to sensorpositioning errors and to sensor noise is tested with real data, acquired using microphone and loudspeaker arrays. It is shown that there is good agreement between the real and the corresponding simulated data regarding the incidence direction. Moreover, early reflections, providing new peaks in the representation depending on the location of secondary sources are also clearly visible.
Transient reduction in IgA+ and IgG+ memory B cell numbers in young EBV‐seropositive children: the Generation R Study

The EBV is known to persist in memory B cells, but it remains unclear how this affects cell numbers and humoral immunity. We here studied EBV persistence in memory B cell subsets and consequences on B cell memory in young children. EBV genome loads were quantified in 6 memory B cell subsets in EBV+ adults. The effects of EBV infection on memory B cell numbers and vaccination responses were studied longitudinally in children within the Generation R population cohort between 14 mo and 6 yr of age. EBV genomes were more numerous in CD27+IgG+, CD27+IgA+, and CD27−IgA+ memory B cells than in IgM‐only, natural effector, and CD27−IgG+ B cells. The blood counts of IgM‐only, CD27+IgA+, CD27−IgG+, and CD27+IgG+ memory B cells were significantly lower in EBV+ children than in uninfected controls at 14 mo of age—the age when these cells peak in numbers. At 6 yr, all of these memory B cell counts had normalized, as had plasma IgG levels to previous primary measles and booster tetanus vaccinations. In conclusion, EBV persists predominantly in Ig class‐switched memory B cells, even when derived from T cell‐independent responses (CD27−IgA+), and EBV infection results in a transient depletion of these cells in young children.
Dermal Enhancement: Bacterial Products on Intact Skin Induce and Augment Organ-Specific Autoimmune Disease1

The skin is both an essential barrier for host defense and an important organ of immunity. In this study, we show that the application of cholera toxin to intact mouse skin induces and enhances autoimmune diseases affecting organs at distant anatomic sites, whereas its administration by the mucosal route has been reported to have the opposite effect. First, the CNS autoantigen myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein 35–55, when applied repeatedly with cholera toxin to the intact skin of healthy C57BL/6 mice, induced relapsing paralysis with demyelinating immunopathologic features similar to multiple sclerosis. Second, the application of cholera toxin in the absence of autoantigen exacerbated the severity of conventional experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis induced by myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein in CFA. Third, the application of cholera toxin to the intact skin of NOD/Lt mice, with or without insulin B peptide 9–23, exacerbated insulitis and T lymphocyte-derived IFN-γ and IL-4 production in the islets of Langerhans, resulting in an increased incidence and rate of onset of autoimmune diabetes. The data presented in this study highlight the different outcomes of adjuvant administration by different routes. Because dermal application of cholera toxin, and other bacterial products with similar adjuvant activities, is being developed as a clinical vaccination strategy, these data raise the possibility that it could precipitate autoimmune disease in genetically susceptible humans.
An automatic classification system of online E-learning resources

This work focuses on how to development a categorizing system that can find the appropriate classification for on-line learning resources, which must follow some document standards, automatically. The proposed system can help users to share their creativities without the dilemma of following the standards of learning resources. The major works are learning resource classification and learning resource document matching. Learning resource classification module takes in charge of finding corresponding keywords of learning resources in the document database of the E-learning web site. The similarity of users' uploading resources and documents in the web site document database is done by learning resource document matching. The proposed automatic categorizing system for online learning resources can suggest the appropriate classification and learning object standard information for users' uploading resources after performing these modules.
BIST-based fault diagnosis in the presence of embedded memories

An efficient method is described for using fault simulation as a solution to the diagnostic problem created by the presence of embedded memories in BIST designs. The simulation is event-table-driven. Special techniques are described to cope with the faults in the Prelogic, Postlogic, and the logic embedding the memory control or address inputs. It is presumed that the memory itself has been previously tested, using automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) techniques via the correspondence inputs, and has been found to be fault-free.
FDRC - Flow duration time based rate control in data center networks

Data Center is now becoming an important facility for many applications (e.g, web search and retail). As TCP can't meet applications' demands for latency and throughput, many tcp-based protocols (e.g, DCTCP, D2TCP, L2DCT) have been proposed. Among them, protocols such as D2TCP incorporate explicit deadline into congestion window adjustment procedure to guarantee flows' latency and protocols such as L2DCT consider flow size when computing congestion window adjustment factor to guarantee the throughput of short flows. These two methods work well at some scenery but they have some deficiencies on two aspects. Firstly, we find that they can only reduce the percentage of flows missing deadline or reduce flow completion time, but can not meet both the goals simultaneously. Secondly, most of these methods need the user to know flow information (e.g, deadline, flow size), which may be hard to know exact value beforehand. In this paper, we advocate to use flow duration time into congestion window adjustment procedure. Based on this, we propose FDRC-Flow Duration Time based Rate Control algorithm. We find that without knowing flow information beforehand, FDRC can achieve the goal of reducing the percentage of flows missing deadline and cutting average flow completion time simultaneously. We theoretically analyze FDRC's behavior and implement FDRC into ns-2 as well as linux kernel. Our experiments show that FDRC performs better than D2TCP and L2DCT at nearly all the scenarios. On average, it performs 30% better than the state-of-art deadline-aware congestion control protocol D2TCP and 10% better than the state-of-art flowsize-aware protocol L2DCT.
A specific orientation of RNA secondary structures is required for initiation of reverse transcription

The 5' end of avian retrovirus RNA near the primer-binding site (PBS) forms two secondary structures, the U5-inverted repeat (U5-IR) and the U5-leader stems, and contains a 7-nucleotide sequence that anneals to the T psi C loop of the tRNA(Trp) primer. Mutations that disrupt any of these base pair interactions cause defects in initiation of reverse transcription both in vivo and in vitro (D. Cobrinik, A. Aiyar, Z. Ge, M. Katzman, H. Huang, and J. Leis, J. Virol. 65:3864-3872, 1991; A. Aiyar, D. Cobrinik, Z. Ge, H.-J. Kung, and J. Leis, J. Virol. 66:2464-2472, 1992). We have now examined the effect of perturbing the non-base-paired intervening "spacer" sequences between these secondary-structure elements. Small deletions or insertions in these intervening sequences decreased initiation of reverse transcription in vitro. In contrast, base substitutions, which maintain the spacing distances between the structures, had no detectable effect. Additionally, a small deletion at the 3' end of the PBS caused a significant decrease in initiation of reverse transcription whereas substitution mutations again had no effect. Together, these results indicate that reverse transcriptase forms a complex in which the different structural elements are maintained in a specific orientation that is required for efficient initiation of reverse transcription. Specific sequence recognition of the duplex structures by reverse transcriptase is also required since mosaic RNAs that combine the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 PBS with avian sequences is not efficiently utilized for reverse transcription even though the primer used can anneal to the substituted PBS.
A partial deletion of the aspartoacylase gene is the cause of Canavan disease in a family from Mexico

Editor—Canavan disease (McKusick No 271900) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterised by spongy degeneration of the brain. This disorder is most prevalent in people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent but has been observed in other ethnic groups. Patients have severe mental retardation, poor head control, macrocephaly, and seizures. Canavan disease is caused by the accumulation of N-acetylaspartic acid (NAA) in the brain as the result of a deficiency of aspartoacylase (ASPA) (EC 3.5.1.15) activity.1 The human ASPA gene has been mapped to chromosome 17p13. The gene spans a distance of approximately 30 kb and is organised into six exons.2 Previously described mutations in the ASPA gene include single nucleotide changes leading to missense, nonsense, and exon skipping mutations and frameshift mutations caused by the insertion or deletion of a small number (1-4 bp) of nucleotides.3 In Ashkenazi Jewish patients, the E285, Y231X, and 433-2(A to G) mutations account for approximately 82.9%, 14.8%, and 1.1% of disease alleles respectively. The predominant mutation in non-Jewish patients is the A305E mutation, which accounts for approximately 60% of non-Jewish Canavan disease mutations.4 Surprisingly, large deletions involving the ASPA gene have not yet been described. Here, we report the first instance of a partial deletion of the ASPA gene in Canavan disease. Two affected children in a family from Mexico were homozygous for a 190 kb deletion. The parents of the affected sibs were second cousins once removed. There was no other family history of Canavan disease or other neurodegenerative disorder. Testing of the affected children for the common Jewish and non-Jewish Canavan disease mutations was negative. Preliminary Southern blot experiments using an ASPA cDNA suggested that the affected children were …
Thirteen years of experience with the endoscopic midface lift.

BACKGROUND Numerous techniques have been used to rejuvenate the aging midface. The Endotine midface technique involves an endoscopic temporal approach, including midface dissection and malar suspension with fixation. The Endotine device (Microaire, Charlottesville, Virginia) eliminates the intraoral incision and use of sutures, enabling multipoint fixation and fast, simple adjustability for optimal control of midface elevation and volume. OBJECTIVES The authors describe their preferred technique for the endoscopic midface lift and summarize their 13 years of experience. METHODS A retrospective chart review was conducted of 183 patients who underwent endoscopic midface surgery. Patients treated from 1998 to 2003 received direct needle fixation (n = 95). Those treated later underwent fixation with the Endotine device (n = 88). RESULTS Most (90%) of the patient population was female, and the average age at the time of surgery was 46 years (range, 39-54 years). Needle fixation was used in 95 patients and Endotine fixation in 88. The average follow-up period was 7 years. The authors have observed many improvements in outcomes since the introduction of the Endotine device into their practice. These include reduced swelling and bruising, more symmetric elevation of the malar fat pad, mild improvement of tear trough deformity, softening of the nasolabial folds, and, in some cases, decreased "jowling. " The asymmetry often associated with direct needle fixation has decreased, and no skin dimpling has occurred. Through their experience, the authors' preferred technique has become the temporal-only approach with Endotine fixation. CONCLUSIONS The Endotine midface suspension device enhances soft-tissue fixation, provides simple adjustability for optimal elevation and projection, and maintains mechanical fixation until biologic fixation becomes adequate. The 5 tines provide multiple points of contact for secure soft-tissue fixation. Elevation forces are evenly distributed over a wide area, which eliminates skin irregularities. Insertion and deployment are accomplished easily through temporal incision.
Seasonal population dynamics and behaviour of insects in models of vector‐borne pathogens

It is clear that the seasonal population dynamics and behaviour of insects and other vectors should be considered in models of vector-borne pathogens. Further data are required to model these adequately, particularly for the behavioural ecology of vectors. These models would then be more valuable for exploring the transmission cycles and development of control strategies. However, it is important to recognize that it is impossible to do everything at once, and all components of vector and host biology cannot and should not be included in every model. Models with many parameters, all of which have high variability, are difficult to analyse. However, it is important to be explicit in model assumptions and, when excluding vector seasonality or behaviour from the model, ensure that it is intentional and not simply by omission. There is a long-standing tradition of incorporating aspects of models from other disciplines into models of vector-borne pathogens, and this is useful when including behaviour, seasonality and other complex interactions in these models. Spatial structure, dispersal and foraging behaviour have been studied extensively in parasitoids (e.g. Wilson & Hassell, 1997; Hassell, 2000; Olson et al., 2000). Demographic stochasticity, variable time periods, seasonal structures and individual behaviour have been considered in the epidemiology of directly transmitted pathogens (e.g. Earn et al., 1998; Keeling & Grenfell, 1998, 2000; Grenfell et al., 2001; Lloyd, 2001). Models of ecological systems increasingly incorporate stochastic effects, spatial structure, community structure and dispersal (e.g. Sklar & Costanza, 1990; Ives et al., 1999; South, 1999; Bjornstad & Grenfell, 2001; King & Schaffer, 2001; Wiegand et al., 2001; Keeling et al., 2002). There are exciting opportunities for considering these ecological factors in vector-borne diseases and exploring the impact on pathogen transmission. The research discussed here provides examples of how some of these aspects can be incorporated into models of vector-borne pathogens. Considering complex structures and models in other disciplines and incorporating relevant aspects into models of vector-borne pathogens will improve the understanding of transmission.
Retracting Soft Tissue in Minimally Invasive Hip Arthroplasty Using a Robotic Arm

Background. All surgical procedures in orthopedics involve the retraction of soft tissue. In this study, the performance of 3 assistants holding the medial retractor during minimally invasive hip arthroplasty was compared with a semiactive retractor holder in a cadaver setup. Methods. A total of 40 measurements on 3 cadavers were carried out with each subject (3 human, 1 robot) measuring each cadaver 10 times. The retractor was equipped with a sensor array on both sides, to measure variations of the retracting pressures over a 2-minute interval. Results. The semiactive retractor holder showed an almost constant performance compared with the test subjects. There was no significant reduction of the applied pressure and almost no variation during the 2-minute interval and across all measurements. Conclusions. The performance of the semiactive retractor holder was more stable than that of a human assistant, making it suitable for intraoperative usage.