Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Filtered Carrier Phase Estimator for High-Order QAM Optical Systems

We investigate, using Monte Carlo simulations, the performance characteristics and limits of a low-complexity filtered carrier phase estimator (F-CPE) in terms of cycle-slip occurrences and signal to noise ratio (SNR) penalties. In this work, the F-CPE algorithm has been extended to include modulation formats whose outer-ring symbols have a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) symmetry, and which are applicable to metro and long-haul optical networks: QPSK, 8, 16, and 64 quadrature-amplitude modulation (QAM). The proposed joint-polarization approach, where the number of non-null symbols in a simplified QPSK partition is increased, shows a further improvement in robustness against cycle slips, resulting in cycle-slip-free operation at symbol rate 32 GBd and laser linewidths up to 900 kHz, for the range of investigated SNRs. In addition, it reduces SNR penalties for only a small incremental complexity. We also propose a method for constellation alignment that exploits F-CPE computational blocks to minimize the electronic footprint, in order to compensate for an arbitrary rotation, introduced by F-CPE. We further show that F-CPE can successfully recover the phase of a 32QAM signal that does not have the outer-ring QPSK symmetry, albeit with increased penalties and higher cycle-slip rates. A performance comparison between F-CPE, the blind phase search algorithm, and a data-aided phase estimator, is also presented.
Demonetization: Sentiment and Retweet Analysis

“Demonetization is the process of removing currency from general usage or circulation. ” On November 8, 2016 in India demonetization of the 500 and 1000 rupee banknotes was announced. This paper presents a study of the effect of the demonetization in India in the year of 2016. A complete analysis has been performed on demonetization including Sentiment Analysis and Retweet Analysis. This paper presents a complete visualization of Demonetization and its effects on people round the globe. VADER, a lexicon based approach has been used for sentiment analysis by assigning tweets positive, negative and neutral polarity. We have also performed retweet analysis to predict which tweet can be retweeted again by using supervised learning model. Seven machine learning algorithms are considered for retweet prediction. In order to critically access the performance of learners various parameters such as precision, recall, f-measure, accuracy and AUC is used.
Análise do comportamento estrutural de ligações parafusadas viga-pilar com chapa de topo estendida

MAGGI, Y. I. (2004). Analysis of the Structural Behavior of Bolted BeamColumn Extended End Plate Connections. São Carlos. Thesis (Doctorate). São Carlos School of Engineering, University of São Paulo, Brazil. This work presents a numerical and experimental analysis on the structural behavior of bolted beam-column extended end plate connections. The behavior of the end plate and bolts used in the calculations of the end plate strength is specially discussed. Numerical results are used as basis to the discussions presented in this work and the modeling methodology, with FE models built with the ANSYS code, included 3D models of extended end plate and T-stub connections. The beam-to-column load transfer mechanisms and the yielding mechanisms at end plates and bolts are observed using numerical and experimental results. The yielding lines at the end plate are evaluated against the methodology proposed by Eurocode 3 for the calculations on the equivalent T-stub. Regarding the aforementioned factors, it is shown that the collapse modes indicated by Eurocode 3 do not represent satisfactorily the behavior of the analyzed connections. The numerical modeling was found to be general in application and reliable as a tool for parametric analyses and as a complement to experiments.
Evaluation of anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activity of AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream

Background: Acne vulgaris is almost a widespread disease occurring in all races. Propionibacterium acnes initiate acne and inflammatory mediators aggravate it. Conventional therapies for acne include comedolytic, anti-inflammatory, and anti-biotic agents. Due to adverse effects of these therapies, people are searching for alternative options. In this context, a polyherbal formulation AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream was developed for the treatment of Acne. Objective: The objective of this study is to study anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities of AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream. Materials and Methods: Skin irritation study was conducted on AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream as per OECD guidelines. (1) Anti-inflammatory activity: Anti-inflammatory activity of AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream in comparison with diclofenac sodium cream was assessed in carrageenan-induced rat paw edema model. (2) Antimicrobial activity for P. acnes: P. acnes were incubated under anaerobic conditions. Aliquots of molten brain–heart infusion with glucose agar were used as the agar base. Formulation and clindamycin (10 μg/ml) were introduced in to the Agar wells randomly. (3) Antimicrobial activity for Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus: bacteria were incubated under aerobic conditions at 37°C. Tryptic soy broth with glucose agar was used as the agar base. A volume of 0.5 ml of formulation and clindamycin (10 μg/ml) were introduced in to the wells randomly. The antibacterial activity was evaluated by measuring zones of inhibition (in mm). Results: AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream is nonirritant. Significant reduction in rat paw edema (43%) was observed with AHPL/AYTOP/0213 which was also comparable to diclofenac sodium cream (56.09%). Zone of inhibition for formulation was 20.68 mm, 28.20 mm, and 21.40 mm for P. acnes, S. epidermidis and S. aureus, respectively, which was comparable to clindamycin. The minimum inhibitory concentration of formulation AHPL/AYTOP/0213 obtained in anti-microbial study was 2.5 mg/mL. Conclusion: AHPL/AYTOP/0213 cream is nonirritant and possesses significant anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities, which further justifies its role in the management of acne vulgaris.
Novel object recognition is not affected by age despite age-related brain changes

Age-related memory impairments show a progressive decline across lifespan. Studies have demonstrated equivocal results in biological and behavioral outcomes of aging. Thus, in the present study we examined the novel object recognition task at a delay period that has been shown to be impaired in aged rats of two different strains. Moreover, we used a strain of rats, Fisher 344XBrown Norway, which have published age-related biological changes in the brain. Young (10 month old) and aged (28 month old) rats were tested on a standard novel object recognition task with a 50-minute delay period. The data showed that young and aged rats in the strain we used performed equally well on the novel object recognition task and that both young and old rats demonstrated a righthanded side preference for the novel object. Our data suggested that novel object recognition is not impaired in aged rats although both young and old rats have a demonstrated side preference. Thus, it may be that genetic differences across strains contribute to the equivocal results in behavior, and genetic variance likely influences the course of cognitive aging.
Membrane rafts–redox signalling pathway contributes to renal fibrosis via modulation of the renal tubular epithelial–mesenchymal transition

Membrane rafts (MRs)–redox signalling pathway is activated in response to transforming growth factor‐β1 (TGF‐β1) stimulation in renal tubular cells. This pathway contributes to TGF‐1β‐induced epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) in renal tubular cells. The the MRs–redox signalling pathway is activated in renal tubular cells isolated from angiotensin II (AngII)‐induced hypertensive rats. Inhibition of this pathway attenuated renal inflammation and fibrosis in AngII‐induced hypertension.
CHARACTERIZATION OF THE POZZOLANIC ACTIVITY OF VARIOUS AGROINDUSTRIAL WASTES : KINETIC PARAMETERS

In this research work a quantitative characterization of various materials (sugar cane waste ashes, bamboo leaf ash, calcined paper sludge, loessic soils, zeolite and fly ash) as pozzolanic materials based on the computing of the kinetic parameters of the pozzolanic reaction in pozzolan/calcium hydroxide systems is offered. The paper presents a synthetic overview of the more relevant results in the quantitative characterization of the pozzolanic reaction (computing of the kinetic parameters) of different materials carried out by the authors. Other experimental techniques, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM), were also employed. Two pozzolanic activity tests (conductometric method and accelerated chemical method) are employed. A kinetic-diffusive model (published by the authors in previous works) is used to describe the pozzolanic reaction. The kinetic parameters that characterize the process (in particular, the reaction rate constant and free energy of activation) are determined with relative accuracy in the fitting process of the model. The pozzolanic activity is quantitatively evaluated according to the values obtained of the kinetic parameters. This allows the comparison in a direct way of the pozzolanic reactivity of the materials, which is very useful for the employment of these materials. The values of the reaction rate constant jointly with the free energy of activation give a precise index of the reactivity or pozzolanic activity of the materials. According to the values calculated of the reaction rate constant K, bamboo leaf ash shows the highest reactivity (8.41. 10 h) followed by fly ash (1.76. 10 h), sugar straw ash (8.11. 10 h), sugar cane bagasse ash (1.91. 10 h), loessic soil (1.23. 10 h), calcined paper sludge (8.69. 10 h) and Zeolite (6.88. 10 h).
Image montage for constructing photorealistic virtual world from different real scene images

An image montage technique creates a photorealistic output image without artifacts by synthesizing multiple input images. We propose an image montage method to create a photo-realistic virtual scene that seems as if it exists in a real world by synthesizing real scene images captured in different places. The images to synthesize are appropriately selected from a large da­tabase of different scene images. We suppose that images in the database were captured in the same place by moving a camera to translate its 3D position and rotate its viewing direction. Our method first obtains lots of similar image pairs such that two images in each pair have similar regions as if they are the same scene part that shifts its position in respective images by a cam­era motion. Then, from the pairs, appropriate successive images are selected and arranged in a 3D virtual space such that every image is similar to both adjacent images in their overlapping regions to fake a camera motion of a walk-through in the space, which results in constructing a photorealistic virtual world. The similarity in the overlapping region is evaluated using gist and color histogram. The selection of the successive images is done by solving an optimization problem using a graph of images to search for appropriate closed paths, each of which satisfies a restriction of a 3D space. A final virtual scene image is synthe­sized by blending the overlapping regions of adjacent images in a desired closed path.
A Bypass-Switching SAR ADC With a Dynamic Proximity Comparator for Biomedical Applications

A bypass-switching successive approximation (BSSA) register analog-to-digital converter (ADC) employing a newly proposed dynamic proximity comparator is presented in this paper. By exploiting the current characteristics of a current correlator, the proposed comparator generates the bypass signal directly along with the polarity comparison result. The bypass window size can be adjusted to optimize the power reduction for different sensing applications with low-voltage sensitivity. A BSSA logic circuit is adopted with reduced number of logic gates as well as switching power. A prototyped chip including a proposed ADC has been designed and fabricated in a 0.18- $\mu \text{m}$ CMOS process occupying an area of 0.041 mm2. With a supply voltage of 0.6 V and at a sampling rate of 50 kS/s, the measured signal-to-noise-distortion ratio (SNDR) and spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) are 56.9 and 68.7 dB, respectively, achieving an effective number of bits (ENoB) of 9.16. The ADC consumes power of 114 nW while digitizing sinusoidal inputs. With a bypass window size of ±32 LSBs, the designed ADC consumes only 76 nW when quantizing full-scale electrocardiography signals that are generated from a certified commercial simulator, exhibiting a figure-of-merit (FoM) of 2.66 fJ/conversion-step. Besides ECG signals, the ADC is also demonstrated by digitizing electromyography and electrooculography signals from human bodies.
Genetic transformation of buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum M.) with Agrobacterium rhizogenes and production of rutin in transformed root cultures

We developed an efficient protocol for transformation of buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench.) root cultures by using stem explants that were infected by Agrobacterium rhizogenes strain 15834, a strain with the binary vector pBI121. Four weeks after infection, kanamycin-resistant roots appeared on 90% of explants that were maintained on hormone-free medium. PCR analysis of the neomycin phosphotransferase (NTPII) gene confirmed transformation in 17 of 20 kanamycin-resistant hairy root cultures. Detection of high levels of -glucuronidase (GUS) transcripts and enzyme activity, and GUS histochemical localization also confirmed the stable genetic transformation. We propagated isolated hairy roots in liquid medium to promote rapid growth and production of rutin, an important flavonol glycoside. The amount of hairy root clone 2 (12.6 g dry weight L-1) was around 2.4 times more than that of wild type root (5.3 g dry weight L-1). The content of rutin was found in hairy root clone 2 (1.3 mg/g dry weight) which was 2.6 times more than that of wild type root where the amount of rutin was 0.5 mg/g dry weight. Transgenic root cultures of F. esculentum will allow investigation of the molecular and metabolic regulation of rutin biosynthesis and evaluation of the genetic engineering potential of this species.
Automatic Pixel-Level Pavement Crack Detection Using Information of Multi-Scale Neighborhoods

Robust automatic pavement crack detection is critical to automated road condition evaluation. However, research on crack detection is still limited and pixel-level automatic crack detection remains a challenging problem, due to heterogeneous pixel intensity, complex crack topology, poor illumination condition, and noisy texture background. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for automatically detecting pavement cracks at pixel level, leveraging on multi-scale neighborhood information, and pixel intensity. Using pixel intensity information, a probabilistic generative model (PGM) based method is developed to calculate the probability of a crack for each pixel. This produces a probability map consisting of the probability of each pixel being part of the crack. We demonstrate that the neighborhoods of each pixel contain critical information for crack detection, and propose a support vector machine (SVM) based method to calculate the probability maps using information of multi-scale neighborhoods. We develop a fusion algorithm to merge the multiple probability maps, obtained from both PGM and SVM approaches, into a fused map, which can detect cracks with accuracy higher than any of the original probability maps. We also propose a weighted dilation operation that relies on the fused probability map to enhance the recognition of borderline pixels and improve the crack continuity without increasing the crack width improperly. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm achieves better performance in terms of precision, recall, f1-score, and receiver operating characteristic, in comparison with the state-of-the-art pavement crack detection algorithms.
Horizontal Gene Acquisitions Contributed to Genome Expansion in Insect-Symbiotic Spiroplasma clarkii

Abstract Genome reduction is a recurring theme of symbiont evolution. The genus Spiroplasma contains species that are mostly facultative insect symbionts. The typical genome sizes of those species within the Apis clade were estimated to be ∼1.0–1.4 Mb. Intriguingly, Spiroplasma clarkii was found to have a genome size that is >30% larger than the median of other species within the same clade. To investigate the molecular evolution events that led to the genome expansion of this bacterium, we determined its complete genome sequence and inferred the evolutionary origin of each protein-coding gene based on the phylogenetic distribution of homologs. Among the 1,346 annotated protein-coding genes, 641 were originated from within the Apis clade while 233 were putatively acquired from outside of the clade (including 91 high-confidence candidates). Additionally, 472 were specific to S. clarkii without homologs in the current database (i.e., the origins remained unknown). The acquisition of protein-coding genes, rather than mobile genetic elements, appeared to be a major contributing factor of genome expansion. Notably, >50% of the high-confidence acquired genes are related to carbohydrate transport and metabolism, suggesting that these acquired genes contributed to the expansion of both genome size and metabolic capability. The findings of this work provided an interesting case against the general evolutionary trend observed among symbiotic bacteria and further demonstrated the flexibility of Spiroplasma genomes. For future studies, investigation on the functional integration of these acquired genes, as well as the inference of their contribution to fitness could improve our knowledge of symbiont evolution.
Automatic K selection method for the K - Means algorithm

The key problem of the K-means clustering algorithm is to ascertain the appropriate number of clusters, that is K value, usually by ceaseless experiments to obtain it, the voting mechanism method was introduced in this paper to automatically determine the optimal number of clusters in a dataset. The voting mechanism method was introduced in this paper to automatically determine the optimal number of clusters in a dataset. In this method, the symbol K is used to represent the number of clusters, and a series candidate sets of K were obtained by using different validity indexes. Then, the frequency of each K was calculated, and we chose the highest frequency as the final number of clusters, that is the value of K. Using the method proposed in this paper to divide the real dataset of the ship tonnage, the experimental result is basically consistent with the rules of the actual operation, so the experimental verify the reliability and effectiveness of the approach presented in this paper.
Cortical thickness contributes to cognitive heterogeneity in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

Abstract The aim of this study was to investigate cerebral cortical thickness alterations in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and their association with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Thirty T2DM patients without MCI, 30 T2DM patients with MCI, and 30 healthy controls were recruited. All subjects underwent high-resolution sagittal T1-weighted structural imaging using a 3-dimensional magnetization prepared rapid acquisition gradient echo (MPRAGE) sequence. The cortical thicknesses of the whole brain of the 3 groups were analyzed and compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. Partial correlations between the cortical thicknesses of each brain region and standard laboratory testing data were analyzed for the T2DM without MCI group. The associations between cortical thicknesses and neuropsychological scale scores were also analyzed in the T2DM with MCI group. Compared with the healthy controls, the T2DM without MCI group showed statistically significant reduction in the cortical thickness of the left posterior cingulate gyrus, right isthmus cingulate gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, paracentral lobule, and transverse temporal gyrus. No significant correlation was found between the standard laboratory testing data and the cortical thicknesses of these cerebral regions. Compared with the T2DM without MCI group, the cortical thickness alterations in the T2DM with MCI group were bidirectional. Increased cortical thickness was found in the left parahippocampal gyrus and the right isthmus cingulate gyrus. Decreased cortical thickness was observed in the left pars triangularis and the right pars opercularis. Significant correlations were found between the cortical thickness of the right pars opercularis and the Complex Figure Test-delayed recall scores (r = 0.464, &rgr; = 0.015), Trail Making Test A consuming time (r = −0.454, &rgr; = 0.017), and Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores (r = 0.51, &rgr; = 0.007). T2DM could influence the gray matter of several brain regions. The cortical thickness reduction of the right pars opercularis may be a biomarker of cognitive impairment and play an important role in its pathophysiological mechanism.
A NEW SPECIES OF FRESHWATERCRAB ( DECAPODA , POTAMONAUTIDAE ) FROM THE SWAMP FORESTSOF KWAZULU-NATAL , SOUTH AFRICA : BIOCHEMICALAND MORPHOLOGICALEVIDENCE

Potamonautid river crabs were collected from  ve localities in northeastern KwaZulu-Natal to determine biochemical and morphological differentiation among these populations. Two distinct forms were included in these collections. One of the forms could be identi ed as Potamonautes sidneyi, whereas the other was previously unknown. Biochemical analysis of 21 presumptive allozyme loci showed the two forms to be distinct, separating at a genetic identity value of 0.829. A  xed allele difference at the HEX locus in the sympatric populations of the two forms indicated that they were reproductively isolated. Morphometric analysis of seven carapace variables, by means of a discriminant function analysis, showed the two forms to be distinct. The unidenti ed form, which appears to be con ned to patches of swamp forest in northeastern KwaZulu-Natal, is described in this paper as Potamonautes lividus sp. nov.