Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Single Longitudinal-Mode Tunable Fiber Ring Laser Based on Stimulated Rayleigh Scattering in a Nonuniform Optical Fiber

We have realized a novel tunable narrow linewidth fiber laser with single-longitudinal-mode operation based on the homogenous gain broadening effect of Er-doped fiber and the stimulated Rayleigh scattering (STRS) in a nonuniform optical fiber in a ring laser configuration. A 3 dB linewidth of less than 2.0 kHz is achieved with 70 dB extinction. The minimum tunable laser bandwidth is determined by the balance of the bandwidth of tunable bandpass filter (in GHz), relaxation time and gain of the Er-doped fiber, and cavity loss. The tuning range is determined by the range of tuning filter within Er-doped fiber gain spectrum. This technique is applicable to any fiber with much higher stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold than that of STRS.
Development of microstrip chebyshev low pass filters using laser micromachining

This paper describes the development of the 5th order Chebyshev microstrip low pass filter using both Advanced Design Software (ADS) simulation and laser micromachining fabrication technique. The significance of this work is the introduction of a new concept used to fabricate low-pass filter which is using laser micromachine. At present, laser micromachine is used to complement conventional photolithography process in the production of MEMS devices. The use of laser micromachining can lead to finer finishes, improved accuracy and less process overhead. The fabrication is implemented using silicon substrate, as opposed to the commonly used FR4 substrate. The simulation and measurement results of microstrip low pass filter fabricated using the micromachine have been compared and excellent agreement is observed. The rejection performance of the filter is improved when the gain is approximately 40dB. The return loss matching response is observed to be near to -20dB. The fabricated circuit cut-off frequency is closer to the simulated design frequency of 2.5GHz.
URL-based Web Page Classification - A New Method for URL-based Web Page Classification Using n-Gram Language Models

This paper is concerned with the classification of web pages using their Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) only. There is a number of contexts these days in which it is important to have an efficient and reliable classification of a web-page from the URL, without the need to visit the page itself. For example, emails or messages sent in social media may contain URLs and require automatic classification. The URL is very concise, and may be composed of concatenated words so classification with only this information is a very challenging task. Much of the current research on URL-based classification has achieved reasonable accuracy, but the current methods do not scale very well with large datasets. In this paper, we propose a new solution based on the use of an n-gram language model. Our solution shows good classification performance and is scalable to larger datasets. It also allows us to tackle the problem of classifying new URLs with unseen sub-sequences.
SAR image segmentation for land cover change detection

Synthetic aperture radar is used for land cover change detection which can either be mounted on a drone or an aircraft, spacecraft. It can be used for land cover change detection by comparing two images which are taken at different intervals of time. For this we are using differencing methods. The operators used in differencing methods are log ratio and mean ratio. For obtaining a better difference in image. The image fusion technique is applied using complementary information obtained from log ratio and mean ratio differenced image then the image is segmented using k means clustering algorithms in which k centroids are placed as one for each cluster such that they are at maximum distance away from each other. The image obtained is compared with the ground truth, which has been already implemented. Now if the image is normal there is no change, and if the image is abnormal then the change has occurred during that time interval.
Associations between leaf structure, orientation, and sunlight exposure in five Western Australian communities.

Five plant communities in Western Australia, as well as selected desert and Rocky Mountain species of the western USA, were surveyed to evaluate associations among leaf structure, orientational properties, and the sunlight exposure and precipitation characteristic of each community. Selected leaf structural features have been associated previously with photosynthetic function and included shape, thickness, the ratio of thickness to width, stomatal distribution, leaf surface coloration, and the number and distribution of palisade cell layers. Decreases in annual precipitation (<4 to over 15 cm/yr) and increases in total daily sunlight (4.2 to 29.2 mol photons/m1) corresponded strongly to an increase in the percentage of species in a given community with more inclined (more inclined than +/- 45 degrees from horizontal) or thicker leaf mesophyll (>0.4 mm) leaves. Also, the percentage of species with a leaf thickness to width ratio >0.1, which were amphistomatous, or which had palisade cell layers beneath both leaf surfaces, increased from >20% in the highest rainfall and lowest sunlight community to >80% in the community with least rainfall but greatest sunlight exposure. Over 70% of the species in the most mesic, shaded community had lighter abaxial than adaxial leaf surfaces (leaf bicoloration). All of the above structural features were positively associated with a more inclined leaf orientation (r1 = 0.79), except for leaf bicoloration, which was negatively associated (r1 = 0.75). The ratio of adaxial to abaxial light was more strongly associated with leaf bicoloration (r1 = 0.83) and the presence of multiple adaxial and isobilateral palisade cell layers(r1 = 0.80) than with total incident sunlight on just the adaxial leaf surface (r1 = 0.69 and 0.73, respectively). These results provide field evidence that leaf orientation and structure may have evolved in concert to produce a photosynthetic symmetry in leaf structure in response to the amount of sunlight and other limiting factors of the community. This structural symmetry may serve fundamentally to regulate the distribution of both light and CO2 levels inside the leaf and, thus, increase photosynthetic CO2 uptake per unit leaf biomass.
Interactive 3D Force-Directed Edge Bundling on Clustered Edges

Graphs play an important role in data analysis. Especially, graphs with a natural spatial embedding can benefit from a 3D visualization. But even more then in 2D, graphs visualized as intuitively readable 3D node-link diagrams can become very cluttered. This makes graph exploration and data analysis difficult. For this reason, we focus on the challenge of reducing edge clutter by utilizing edge bundling. In this paper we introduce a parallel, edge cluster based accelerator for the force-directed edge bundling algorithm presented in [5]. This opens up the possibility for user interaction during and after both the clustering and the bundling.
The GALAH survey: scientific motivation

The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey is a large high-resolution spectroscopic survey using the newly commissioned High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The HERMES spectrograph provides high-resolution (R ~ 28 000) spectra in four passbands for 392 stars simultaneously over a 2 deg field of view. The goal of the survey is to unravel the formation and evolutionary history of the Milky Way, using fossil remnants of ancient star formation events which have been disrupted and are now dispersed throughout the Galaxy. Chemical tagging seeks to identify such dispersed remnants solely from their common and unique chemical signatures; these groups are unidentifiable from their spatial, photometric or kinematic properties. To carry out chemical tagging, the GALAH survey will acquire spectra for a million stars down to V ~ 14. The HERMES spectra of FGK stars contain absorption lines from 29 elements including light proton-capture elements, α-elements, odd-Z elements, iron-peak elements and n-capture elements from the light and heavy s-process and the r-process. This paper describes the motivation and planned execution of the GALAH survey, and presents some results on the first-light performance of HERMES.
Blood Lactate in HIV-infected Children on Antiretroviral Therapy in Rural South Africa

We studied blood lactate levels in 253 South African children on antiretroviral therapy. The prevalence of hyperlactatemia was 68% and severity was mild in most cases (69%). There was no association of symptoms and/or signs with hyperlactatemia. Independent predictors were lipo-dystrophy, time on antiretroviral therapy and baseline CD4 count. Increased awareness of hyperlactatemia in African children on antiretroviral therapy is warranted.
In vivo modulation of nitric oxide concentration dynamics upon glutamatergic neuronal activation in the hippocampus

Nitric oxide (•NO) is a labile endogenous free radical produced upon glutamatergic neuronal activity in hippocampus by neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS), where it acts as a modulator of both synaptic plasticity and cell death associated with neurodegeneration. The low CNS levels and fast time dynamics of this molecule require the use of rapid analytical methods that can more accurately describe its signaling in vivo. This is critical for understanding how the kinetics of •NO‐dependent signaling pathways is translated into physiological or pathological functions. In these studies, we used •NO selective microelectrodes coupled with rapid electrochemical recording techniques to characterize for the first time the concentration dynamics of •NO endogenously produced in hippocampus in vivo following activation of ionotropic glutamate receptors. Both L‐glutamate (1–100 mM) and N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA; 0.01–5 mM) produced transient, dose‐dependent increases in extracellular •NO concentration. The production of •NO in the hippocampus by glutamate was decreased by the nNOS inhibitor 7‐NI. Intraperitoneal administration of the NMDA receptor blocker, MK‐801, and the inhibitor of α‐amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methyl‐4‐isoazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptor, NBQX, applied locally greatly attenuated glutamate‐evoked overflow of •NO. Thus, •NO overflow elicited by activation of glutamate receptors appeared to result from an integrated activation of ionotropic glutamate receptors, both of the NMDA and AMPA receptors subtypes. Additionally, distinct concentration dynamics was observed in the trisynaptic loop with stronger and longer lasting effects of glutamate activation on •NO overflow seen in the CA1 region as compared with the dentate gyrus. Overall, the results provide a quantitative and temporal basis for a better understanding of •NO activity in the rat hippocampus. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Risk-based voltage stability monitoring and preventive control using wide area monitoring system

nowadays, power system tends to be operated in heavily stressed load, which can cause voltage stability problem. Moreover, occurrence probability of contingency is increasing due to growth of power system size and complexity. This paper proposes a new preventive control scheme based on voltage stability and security monitoring by means of wide area monitoring systems (WAMS). The proposed control scheme ensures voltage stability under major N-1 line contingencies, which are selected from all possible N-1 contingencies considering their occurrence probability and/or causing load curtailment. Some cases based on IEEE 57-bus test system are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The demonstration results show that the proposed method can provide important contribution in improving voltage stability and security performance.
A New Approach To Graph Based Object Classification On Images

The main idea of graph based image modeling is that the regions of the image, which contain similar properties, are denoted by graph vertices, and the relations between different regions are denoted by graph edges. The vertex and edge attributes usually describe the characteristics of that region and the relation between regions respectively. A simple approach to keep the structural and topological information of an image is to use digital image representation techniques; for instance, quad trees, etc. By modeling images as graphs, the task of image classification becomes one of classifying graphs. Quad trees have been used for representing images in the form of trees. In this paper we propose an algorithm that discovers the subgraphs present in a graph represented by a stream of labeled nodes and edges.Our algorithm is efficient and is easily tuned by the user to produce interesting patterns from various kinds of graph data.
A Decision Support System for Diabetes Mellitus Management

Diabetes mellitus is considered as a dangerous chronic disease. Diagnosis is the first step in its management. Clinical decision support system (CDSS) for diabetes diagnosis improves its detection and decreases the opportunity for its complications. However, its diagnosis is a theory-less problem. Case-based reasoning (CBR) is a problem-solving paradigm that uses past experiences to solve new problems. Integration of CBR and formal ontologies enhances the intelligence of this paradigm. Utilizing patients’ electronic health records (EHRs) for building case-base knowledge solves the problem of knowledge acquisition bottleneck; however, preparation steps are required. Moreover, using standard medical ontologies, such as SNOMED-CT, enhances the interoperability and integration of CDSS with the healthcare system. If ontology-based CBR systems utilize vague or imprecise knowledge, the semantic effectiveness is further improved. This paper proposes an advanced and complete fuzzy-ontology-based CBR framework that manages and utilizes imprecise knowledge. We implement the most critical steps in CBR (i.e., case representation and retrieval). The implemented framework has been tested on the diabetes diagnosis problem using a case-base of 60 real cases from The EHR of the Mansoura University Hospitals, Mansoura, Egypt. The proposed system has an accuracy of 97.67%.
Production of an anti-Aβ antibody fragment in Pichia pastoris and in vitro and in vivo validation of its therapeutic effect

ScFv-h3D6 has been shown as an efficient therapy in the 3xTg-AD mouse model of Alzheimer’s Disease. Because one of the major bottlenecks for the therapeutic uses of proteins produced in Escherichia coli is their potential contamination with endotoxins, LPS were extensively removed by a rather low-efficient, expensive, and time-consuming purification step. In addition, disulfide scrambling is favored in the reducing bacterial cytoplasm albeit the use of reductase deficient strains. To overcome these hurdles, as well as to improve the yield, the yeast Pichia pastoris, an endotoxin-free host system for recombinant protein production, has been used to produce scFv-h3D6, both in flask and in a fed-batch bioreactor. Comparison of the thermal stability of the obtained protein with that from E. coli showed no differences. Opposite to the case of the protein obtained from E. coli, no disulfide scrambled conformations or LPS traces were detected in that produced in P. pastoris. Cytotoxicity assays in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cell-cultures demonstrated that proteins from both expression systems were similarly efficient in precluding Aβ-induced toxicity. Finally, the 3xTg-AD mouse model was used to test the therapeutic effect of both proteins. Quantification of Aβ levels from cortex and hippocampus protein extracts by ELISA, and Aβ-immunohistochemistry, showed that both proteins reduced Aβ burden. This work demonstrates that scFv-h3D6 obtained from P. pastoris shows the same benefits as those already known for that obtained from E. coli, with multiple advantages in terms of recombinant production and safety.
Locus of control and the quantity--frequency index of alcohol use.

To test the relationship between locus of control and either quantity or frequency of drinking, 45 students completed Rotter's I-E scale and a drinking survey. The I-E and the I-E subscale of "personally relevant" items correlated positively with frequency, but were unrelated to both quantity and the product of quantity times frequency.
Transport of self-propelling bacteria in micro-channel flow

Understanding the collective motion of self-propelling organisms in confined geometries, such as that of narrow channels, is of great theoretical and practical importance. By means of numerical simulations we study the motion of model bacteria in 2D channels under different flow conditions: fluid at rest, steady and unsteady flow. We find aggregation of bacteria near channel walls and, in the presence of external flow, also upstream swimming, which turns out to be a very robust result. Detailed analysis of bacterial velocity and orientation fields allows us to quantify the phenomenon by varying cell density, channel width and fluid velocity. The tumbling mechanism turns out to have strong influence on velocity profiles and particle flow, resulting in a net upstream flow in the case of non-tumbling organisms. Finally we demonstrate that upstream flow can be enhanced by a suitable choice of an unsteady flow pattern.
A Forward-Adjoint Operator Pair Based on the Elastic Wave Equation for Use in Transcranial Photoacoustic Computed Tomography

Photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is an emerging imaging modality that exploits optical contrast and ultrasonic detection principles to form images of the photoacoustically induced initial pressure distribution within tissue. The PACT reconstruction problem corresponds to an inverse source problem in which the initial pressure distribution is recovered from measurements of the radiated wavefield. A major challenge in transcranial PACT brain imaging is compensation for aberrations in the measured data due to the presence of the skull. Ultrasonic waves undergo absorption, scattering and longitudinal-to-shear wave mode conversion as they propagate through the skull. To properly account for these effects, a wave-equation-based inversion method should be employed that can model the heterogeneous elastic properties of the skull. In this work, a forward model based on a finite-difference time-domain discretization of the three-dimensional elastic wave equation is established and a procedure for computing the corresponding adjoint of the forward operator is presented. Massively parallel implementations of these operators employing multiple graphics processing units (GPUs) are also developed. The developed numerical framework is validated and investigated in computer19 simulation and experimental phantom studies whose designs are motivated by transcranial PACT applications.
Simulation of piezoelectric plasma micro-thruster

A piezoelectric plasma micro-thruster (PPMT) is being developed as a thruster for attitude adjustment of nano-satellites. The PPMT consists of a RF driven PZT film operating as a step-up voltage transformer, which can ionize neutrals and accelerate ions and electrons in plasma. The PPMT was driven with a low voltage through the thickness at the resonance frequency in the radial direction. To simulate operation of the PPMT, a RF pulse was applied to the base of the PZT and corresponding output voltages within the grounded aperture plate were measured to determine the voltage transformation ratio. Aperture size, radial offset were swept and resultant resonance frequencies were determined to achieve the largest voltage output.
Image authentication and tampering localization based on watermark embedding in the wavelet domain

In this study, an image authentication and tampering localization technique, which is based on embedding a digital watermark into a plain image in the wavelet domain, is proposed. First, a previous blind watermarking technique is adopted to be robust to image compression. Then the extracted watermark is used to determine whether the watermarked image has been modified or not. If the image has been modified, the proposed sequential watermark alignment (SWA) and the morphological region growing (MRG) methods are used to find the tamper parts and determine the tampered region, respectively. Simulation results verify that several kinds of tampering effects in images can be correctly and efficiently detected by the proposed methods.
Model comparison of generalized linear mixed models

Generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) have been widely appreciated in biological and medical research. Maximum likelihood estimation has received a great deal of attention. Comparatively, not much has been done on model comparison or hypotheses testing. In this article, we propose a path sampling procedure to compute the observed‐data log‐likelihood function, so that the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) can be applied to model comparison or hypothesis testing. Advantages of the proposed path sampling procedure are discussed. Two medical data sets are analysed for providing illustrative examples of the proposed methodology. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ordered arrangement of orientation columns in monkeys lacking visual experience

The main object of this study was to see whether ordered sequences of orientation columns are present in very young visually naive monkeys. Recordings were made from area 17 in two macaque monkeys three and four weeks of age, whose eyes had been closed near the time of birth. The first monkey was born normally, but one day elapsed before eye closure could be done. The second was delivered by Cesarean section and the lids sutured shut immediately. The results in these two animals were very similar; in both, highly ordered sequences of orientation shifts were present, and were in no obvious way different from those seen in the adult. For example, average values for the size of orientation shifts, for the horizontal component of the distance between shifts, and for the slopes of orientation vs. track distance curves, were all similar to adult values. This indicates that the ordered column system is innately determined and not the result of early visual experience. In these two monkeys and a third one, sutured at two days and examined at 38 days, most of the cells seemed normal by adult standards, with simple, complex or hypercomplex receptive fields, showing about the same range in orientation specificity as is found in adults. About 10–15% of cells showed abnormalities similar to those seen in monkeys binocularly deprived of vision for longer periods. Furthermore, all three deprived monkeys showed a decided lack of cells that could be influenced from both eyes, whereas a normal three‐week‐old control animal seemed similar to the adult, with binocular cells comprising over half of the total population. A monkey deprived by binocular closure from the third to the seventh week also showed a diminution in number of binocularly influenced cells, suggesting that the deprivation from birth resulted in a deterioration of innate connections subserving binocular convergence. To be sure that the abnormalities in the deprived animals represented a deterioration of connections, we recorded from 23 cells in a normal two‐day‐old monkey: here the ocular dominance distribution of cells was about the same as in the adult, and the response characteristics of the cells were normal by adult standards.