Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical characteristics, risk factors, prognosis and immune status of secondary infection of sepsis: a retrospective observational study

Background: Secondary infection has a higher incidence in septic patients and affects clinical outcomes. This study aims to investigate the clinical characteristics, risk factors, prognosis and immune status of secondary infection of sepsis. Methods: A four-year retrospective study was carried out in Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, enrolling septic patients admitted between January, 2014 and January, 2018. Clinical data were acquired from medical records. CD14+ monocyte human leukocyte antigen-D related (HLA-DR) expression and serum cytokines levels were measured by flow cytometry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) respectively. Results: A total of 297 septic patients were enrolled, 92 of whom developed 150 cases of secondary infections. Respiratory tract was the most common site of secondary infection (n = 84, 56%) and Acinetobacter baumanii the most commonly isolated pathogen (n = 40, 31%). Urinary and deep venous catheterization increased the risk of secondary infection development. Lower HLA-DR expression and elevated IL-10 level were found in secondary infection group. The expected prolonged in-hospital stay owing to secondary infection was 4.63 days. Secondary infection was also associated with higher in-hospital, 30-day and 90-day mortality. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Log-rank test revealed secondary infection group had a worse survival between day 15 and day 90. Conclusions: Urinary and deep venous catheter indwelling increased the risk of developing secondary infection. Secondary infection influenced outcomes of septic patients and prolonged in-hospital length of stay. Underlying immunosuppression led to a higher tendency to developing secondary infection.
MEASUREMENT PROPERTIES OF A STANDARDIZED ELICITED IMITATION TEST: AN INTEGRATIVE DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are commonly used in second language acquisition (SLA)/bilingualism research contexts to assess the general oral proficiency of study participants. While previous studies have provided valuable EIT construct-related validity evidence, some key gaps remain. This study uses an integrative data analysis to further probe the validity of the Korean EIT score interpretations by examining the performances of 318 Korean learners (198 second language, 79 foreign language, and 41 heritage) on the Korean EIT scored by five different raters. Expanding on previous EIT validation efforts, this study (a) examined both inter-rater reliability and differences in rater severity, (b) explored measurement bias across subpopulations of language learners, (c) identified relevant linguistic features which relate to item difficulty, and (d) provided a norm-referenced interpretation for Korean EIT scores. Overall, findings suggest that the Korean EIT can be used in diverse SLA/bilingualism research contexts, as it measures ability similarly across subgroups and raters.
Uncertainty in the first principle model-based condition monitoring of HVAC systems

Model based techniques for automated condition monitoring of HVAC systems have been under development for some years. Results from the application of these methods to systems installed in real buildings have highlighted robustness and sensitivity issues. The generation of false alarms has been identified as a principal factor affecting the potential usefulness of condition monitoring in HVAC applications. The robustness issue is a direct result of the uncertain measurements and the lack of experimental control that axe characteristic of HVAC systems. This thesis investigates the uncertainties associated with implementing a condition monitoring scheme based on simple first principles models in HVAC subsystems installed in real buildings. The uncertainties present in typical HVAC control system measurements are evaluated. A sensor validation methodology is developed and applied to a cooling coil subsystem installed in a real building. The uncertainty in steady-state analysis based on transient data is investigated. The uncertainties in the simplifications and assumptions associated with the derivation of simple first principles based models of heat-exchangers are established. A subsystem model is developed and calibrated to the test system. The relationship between the uncertainties in the calibration data and the parameter estimates are investigated. The uncertainties from all sources are evaluated and used to generate a robust indication of the subsystem condition. The sensitivity and robustness of the scheme is analysed based on faults implemented in the test system during summer, winter and spring conditions.
R

Wounds are among the most common skin conditions, displaying a large etiological diversity and being characterized by different degrees of severity. Wound healing is a complex process that involves multiple steps such as inflammation, proliferation and maturation and ends with scar formation. Since ancient times, a widely used option for treating skin wounds are plantbased treatments which currently have become the subject of modern pharmaceutical formulations. Triterpenes with tetracyclic and pentacyclic structure are extensively studied for their implication in wound healing as well as to determine their molecular mechanisms of action. The current review aims to summarize the main results of in vitro, in vivo and clinical studies conducted on lupane, ursane, oleanane, dammarane, lanostane and cycloartane type triterpenes as potential wound healing treatments.
Sunlight to electricity : photovoltaic technology and business prospects

Since 1975, when "Sunlight to Electricity" was first published, changes in public awareness of energy issues, the price of energy, governmental policies toward energy development, and technical progress in solar-cell manufacture have been dramatic. The author has revised this book accordingly, providing a new forecast for the development of the solar cell business into the 21st century.In six chapters the book covers: Energy usage in the United States; Solar energy as a resource; Principles of photovoltaic energy conversion; State of the art in photovoltaic conversion technology; Projected development in photovoltaic solar conversion systems; and Business opportunities in photovoltaic energy conversion. Numerous references to papers, articles, or statements to government departments are provided throughout. "Sunlight to Electricity" is the only source of information on the solar cell business which combines the analyses of energy demand and supply, sunlight availability in relation to needs, market as a function of price, and technological forecasts to yield a complete technically-based business analysis for deciding whether to invest in the solar cell business. It provides a fundamental grounding in why solar cells work and why they offer a viable alternative energy source for the future. The last six or seven years, constituting the recent solar cell business history, are analyzed by classical techniques to aid in projecting opportunities for the future.Joseph A. Merrigan is Director of the Materials Coating and Engineering Division of the Eastman Kodak Company.
Investigation of fatigue damage in steel-free bridge decks with application to structural monitoring

The steel-free deck system is a unique concrete deck slab for girder bridges. The system does not require internal reinforcement for strength. This paper reports the results of an investigation into the fatigue behavior of this system. For this purpose, two sets of five precast steel-free decks with two different concrete strengths were constructed and tested under differing levels of fatigue loading to study their behavior. The behavior of parameters, such as the strap strain, deck deflection, and crack width, which could be monitored in field bridges with steel-free decks, was studied. Based on these experimental results, an S-N curve was suggested for the precast steel-free decks and a generic format for the monitoring parameters of the structural model was produced.
Enterprise Architecture at the Financial Sector with the EAAT Tool

In this Master Thesis an Enterprise Architecture Decision Makinganalysis is proposed within the field of Enterprise Architecture. A case study at acompany within the financial sector has been conducted for validation of theproposed analysis. Firstly, the Enterprise Architecture Analysis Tool (EAAT), whichhas been developed by the Industrial Information and Control Systems (ICS)department of KTH, is described. This tool has been used during the whole CaseStudy in order to create present and possible future state models for measuringService Availability. These models, which are based on a Metamodel, make possiblethe analysis of the Service Availability. Finally, some future research suggestions in thecontext of decision-making in Enterprise Architecture with EAAT are given.
The Effect of Wind Load on the Stability of a Container Crane

This study was carried out to analyze the effect of direction of wind load and machinery house location on the stability of container crane loading/unloading a container on a vessel. The overturning moment of container crane under wind load at 50m/s velocity was estimated by analyzing reaction forces at each supporting point. And variations of reaction forces at each supporting point of a container crane were analyzed according to direction of wind load and machinery house location. The critical location of machinery house was also investigated to install a tie-down which has an anti-overturning function of container crane at the land side supporting point.
Finite element modelling of photonic crystal fibres

Photonic crystal fibre (PCF), a new kind of optical fibre, has many air-holes in their cross-section and has potential applications to new optical communication systems. The main objective of this research is the modelling of photonic crystal fibre to identify the fundamental and higher order quasi-TE and TM modes with square, ,rectangular and circular air holes in a square and hexagonal matrix, by using a rigorous full-vectorial H-field based finite element method (FEM). Besides the modal solutions of the effective indices, mode field profiles, spot sizes, modal hybridness, polarization beat length and group velocity dispersion values for equal and unequal air holes; research was carried out to optimize and design highly birefringent PCF. The variation of modal birefringence is shown through the effect of hole diameters, air hole arrangement, structural asymmetry, operating wavelength, and pitch-distance. Birefringence was enhanced by breaking the structural symmetry and this was verified by using unequal air holes. The diameter of two air holes and four air holes in the first ring was changed to break the rotational symmetry and a comparison between the two designs is made in this work. In this work, highly birefringent PCF is designed with higher operating wavelength, larger d2/A value, lower pitch length for a given structural asymmetry. It is identified that birefringence value increases rapidly when d2 is much larger than d. At lower pitch value, one of the highest birefringence values reported so far at wavelertgth of 1.55 J.Jm for an asymmetric PCF using circular air holes. A single polarization guide PCF structure is also achieved. In this study, it has been identified that for fixed d/A and d2/A value, as operating wavelength is increased, birefringence increases significantly. It can also be identified that for higher d/A values, birefringence changes rapidly with A as their corresponding cutoff condition also approaches. One important validation of this work is the existence of modal birefringence for PCF with six-fold rotational symmetry. It is shown that birefringence value of a simple PCF incorporating circular holes but of different diameters is high compared to polarization maintaining Panda or Bow-tie fibres. This research also aims to investigate the modal leakage losses of PCF, by using a semi-vectorial beam propagation method (BPM) based on the versatile FEM. The robust perfectly matched layer (PML) boundary condition has been introduced to the modal solution approach. The effects of d2/A, operating wavelength and number of air holes have been thoroughly detailed and explained. In this study, it has been identified that the confinement loss decreases significantly with the increased number of rings, lower operating wavelength and lower d2/A value. For special case, PCF with large spot-size provides higher leakage loss
Lane Mark Detection Using On-vehicle LIDAR for Platooning

For highly efficient platooning, each vehicle in a platoon needs to maintain a short distance between each other and maintain the same lateral position within the traffic lane. Each vehicle must detect the lane marks and precisely calculate its lateral position from them. The authors developed a lane mark detection method using LIDAR based on lane mark feature extraction and lane shape estimation using a Hough transformation, and achieved excellent experimental results on an unused expressway. Moreover, they increased robustness in rainy conditions
A Single, Shared Triploidy in Three Species of Parasitic Nematodes

The root-knot nematodes of the genus Meloidogyne are important and damaging parasites capable of infecting most flowering plants. Within this genus, several species of the Meloidogyne incognita group show evidence of paleopolyploidy in their genomes. We used our software tool POInT, the Polyploidy Orthology Inference Tool, to phylogenetically model the gene losses that followed that polyploidy. These models, and simulations based on them, show that three of these species (M. incognita, M. arenaria and M. javanica) descend from a single common hybridization event that yielded triplicated genomes with three distinguishable subgenomes. While one of the three subgenomes shows elevated gene loss rates relative to the other two, this subgenome does not show elevated sequence divergence. In all three species, ancestral loci where two of the three gene copies have been lost are less likely to have orthologs in Caenorhabditis elegans that are lethal when knocked down than are ancestral loci with surviving duplicate copies.
Vibration of osteoblastic cells using a novel motion‐control platform does not acutely alter cytosolic calcium, but desensitizes subsequent responses to extracellular ATP

Low‐magnitude high‐frequency mechanical vibration induces biological responses in many tissues. Like many cell types, osteoblasts respond rapidly to certain forms of mechanostimulation, such as fluid shear, with transient elevation in the concentration of cytosolic free calcium ([Ca2+]i). However, it is not known whether vibration of osteoblastic cells also induces acute elevation in [Ca2+]i. To address this question, we built a platform for vibrating live cells that is compatible with microscopy and microspectrofluorometry, enabling us to observe immediate responses of cells to low‐magnitude high‐frequency vibrations. The horizontal vibration system was mounted on an inverted microscope, and its mechanical performance was evaluated using optical tracking and accelerometry. The platform was driven by a sinusoidal signal at 20–500 Hz, producing peak accelerations from 0.1 to 1 g. Accelerometer‐derived displacements matched those observed optically within 10%. We then used this system to investigate the effect of acceleration on [Ca2+]i in rodent osteoblastic cells. Cells were loaded with fura‐2, and [Ca2+]i was monitored using microspectrofluorometry and fluorescence ratio imaging. No acute changes in [Ca2+]i or cell morphology were detected in response to vibration over the range of frequencies and accelerations studied. However, vibration did attenuate Ca2+ transients generated subsequently by extracellular ATP, which activates P2 purinoceptors and has been implicated in mechanical signaling in bone. In summary, we developed and validated a motion‐control system capable of precisely delivering vibrations to live cells during real‐time microscopy. Vibration did not elicit acute elevation of [Ca2+]i, but did desensitize responses to later stimulation with ATP.
Mechanistic design of asphalt rehabilitation treatments for New Zealand roads

This paper describes the development of an asphalt rehabilitation design procedure that is aligned to the Transit New Zealand approach to the design of granular overlays. The proposed procedure uses the strain response of the existing pavement and its past performance, in terms of past traffic load, to determine a unique subgrade strain criterion for the pavement (sub)-section under consideration. After postulating a trial overlay thickness, the overlaid configuration is mechanistically analysed and checked for compliance against subgrade strain and asphalt strain requirements. The procedure takes the 'remaining life' of an existing asphalt surface layer into consideration if the latter is deemed to be in sound condition at the time of rehabilitation. Simplified procedures to adjust the moduli of stress dependent materials in the overlaid configuration are presented. Simple relationships are presented which express these adjustments in terms of the characteristics of the adopted pavement model. These relationships were generated from mechanistic analyses of many pavement configurations using a range of realistic material characteristics. At this stage these relationships have only been developed for conventional pavement configurations comprising sealed unbound granular base layer(s) over cohesive subgrades.
Making an Informed Vehicle Scrappage Decision

Abstract According to the US Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the number of publicly owned vehicles in the USA reached 3 913 999 in 2003. In order to maintain a stable vehicle fleet, government agencies must repeatedly make vehicle scrappage decisions because older vehicles must first retire to make room for newer vehicles. Typically, these decisions are made based on a deterministic ranking evaluation model to select candidate vehicles for replacement. The paper applied an objective and probabilistic method to a vehicle dataset collected by the DuPage County Forest Preserve District ((DCFPD), in the state of Illinois). A Weibull‐form survival model with time‐varying covariate and unobserved heterogeneity was estimated on the dataset. The results suggest that in addition to the fact that vehicle age is negatively related to the vehicle’s survival probability, there are other variables that also appear influential. The survival probabilities of alternative fuel vehicles are similar to those of reformulated unleaded gasoline vehicles. The results suggest that a probabilistic and objective model can benefit government agencies in their vehicle scrappage decisions.
A new image encryption scheme based on a hyperchaotic system & multi specific S-boxes

ABSTRACT This paper studies a new image encryption scheme based on a hyperchaotic system & multi-specific S-boxes. First, the hyperchaotic system generates a sequence that is used to create a specific S-box. The S-box is obtained by sorting the values of the sequence of hyperchaotics of increasing sort, and then taking their index as a new sequence to create the S-box. The number of specific S-boxes needed to encrypt the image depends on the rows of the plain image. Second, each row of the plain image is substituted by a different S-box to obtain the rows of the pre-encrypted image. Third, to increase the level of security, each specific S-box is considered as a column of the mask matrix. Then, a permutation is applied to the mask matrix, which used the last sequence of the hyperchaotic to permuted the rows of the mask matrix to obtain the permuted mask matrix. Finally, the XOR operation is applied between the permuted mask matrix and the pre-encrypted image to obtain the final cipher image. Experimental and analysis results show that the proposed algorithm has a good performance in terms of security, high sensitivity, as well as low time complexity.
A Study on the Improvement and Application of Environmentally-Friendly Factors at Outdoor Spaces in Apartment Complexes

This study investigated how external environmentally-friendly factors adopted to improve the quality of outdoor spaces have been designed and used in the construction of apartment complexes. The goal of this study is to determine what areas should be improved through environmentally-friendly ways to create natural outdoor spaces in apartment complexes and enhance their availability and usefulness. For this study, 21 environmentally-friendly factors were chosen and a checklist by specific item was prepared. This study examine how these items were applied to basic planning, detail design, and construction in 4 target areas. As a result, it was found that the development of environmentally-friendly residential areas was an ultimate goal of the project during basic planning and design. All target areas focused on developing an inner greens network, eco-pond, brook, and pedestrian track as well as the growth of a variety of plants. Some differences have been observed, however, in terms of method. Furthermore, due to economic and technological problems and poor construction site conditions, green walls/green roofs/pedestrian tracks/use of rainwater have not been properly promoted. These kinds of problems must be improved through the development of environmentally-friendly construction methods and materials, the expansion of natural grounds areas, economic support, a satisfactory repair and maintenance system.
Randomized controlled trial of exercise interventions for chronic whiplash-associated disorders: One-year follow-up of the effect on neck muscle endurance, active cervical range of motion and grip strength.

Background: Years after whiplash injury, more than 40 % of people experience persistent neck pain and disability, called whiplash-associated disorders (WAD). The relations between neck related function, neck pain and disability are inconclusive and need to be further investigated. The aims were; a) to compare the effect of three different exercise interventions – neck-specific exercise (NSE), NSE with a behavioral approach (NSEB) and prescribed physical activity (PPA) – on neck-muscle endurance (NME), active cervical range of motion (AROM), grip strength and pain intensity immediately before and after the tests, and b) to compare neck-disability in individuals who are below or above the cut-off for normative reference values of healthy individuals regarding NME, AROM and grip strength.Methods: This is a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled multicenter study including 12 months’ follow-up. A total of 216 individuals with chronic WAD grades II or III were recruited. Data were recorded at baseline, 3, 6, and 12 months. Linear mixed models were used and sub-group analyses were evaluated with non-parametric tests.Results: NSE and NSEB resulted in greater improvements compared to PPA (p < .01) and were maintained at 12 months’ follow-up in ventral (only males) and dorsal NME, AROM and pain intensity during testing. In grip strength, there were no significant between-group differences (p > 0.05). There were no significant differences between the NSE and NSEB groups (p > .05). Sub-group analyses revealed improvement in disability at 12 months follow-up in NSE and/or NSEB for individuals both below and above the cut-off reference value in NME and AROM. More severe disability was seen in individuals below the reference values both at baseline and 12 months’ follow-up. Individuals in the PPA group below the reference values in NME and AROM reported increasing disability at 12 months compared to baseline.Conclusion: The results suggest that neck-specific exercises (NSE, NSEB) improved clinical function and decreased disability in chronic WAD compared to PPA. The results may imply that higher neck-related clinical function can be important for reduced disability. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01528579, date of registration: February 8, 2012, retrospectively registered; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT0152857