Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quasi-Static Three-Point Bending of Carbon Fiber Sandwich Beams With Square Honeycomb Cores

Sandwich beams comprising identical face sheets and a square honeycomb core were manufactured from carbon fiber composite sheets. Analytical expressions were derived for four competing collapse mechanisms of simply supported and clamped sandwich beams in three-point bending: core shear, face microbuckling, face wrinkling, and indentation. Selected geometries of sandwich beams were tested to illustrate these collapse modes, with good agreement between analytic predictions and measurements of the failure load. Finite element (FE) simulations of the three-point bending responses of these beams were also conducted by constructing a FE model by laying up unidirectional plies in appropriate orientations. The initiation and growth of damage in the laminates were included in the FE calculations. With this embellishment, the FE model was able to predict the measured load versus displacement response and the failure sequence in each of the composite beams.
Association between multiple cutaneous melanoma and other primary neoplasms

Background. The risk of a subsequent cancer is an important issue for patients with melanoma. The development of a second primary cancer in patients with a solitary melanoma has been discussed in several studies. However, to our knowledge, the incidence of second primary cancer (SPC) in patients with multiple primary melanoma (MPM) has not been thoroughly investigated.
Scaling the Information Extraction from Unstructured and Ungrammatical Data Sources on Web

Information Extraction (IE) on the web is the task of automatically extracting knowledge from text. Web Information Extraction (WIE) systems have recently been able to extract massive quantities of relational data from online text. This massive body of text which are now available on the World Wide Web do presents an unparalleled opportunity for information extraction. However, this information extraction on the Web is challenging due to the vast variety of distinct concepts and structured expressed. The explosive growth and popularity of the worldwide web has resulted in a huge amount of information sources on the Internet. However, due to the heterogeneity, diversity and the lack of structure of Web information sources, access to this huge collection of information has been limited to browsing and searching.
Prolonged TCR/CD28 Engagement Drives IL-2-Independent T Cell Clonal Expansion through Signaling Mediated by the Mammalian Target of Rapamycin1

Proliferation of Ag-specific T cells is central to the development of protective immunity. The concomitant stimulation of the TCR and CD28 programs resting T cells to IL-2-driven clonal expansion. We report that a prolonged occupancy of the TCR and CD28 bypasses the need for autocrine IL-2 secretion and sustains IL-2-independent lymphocyte proliferation. In contrast, a short engagement of the TCR and CD28 only drives the expansion of cells capable of IL-2 production. TCR/CD28- and IL-2-driven proliferation revealed a different requirement for PI3K and for the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). Thus, both PI3K and mTOR activities were needed for T cells to proliferate to TCR/CD28-initiated stimuli and for optimal cyclin E expression. In contrast, either PI3K or mTOR were sufficient for IL-2-driven cell proliferation as they independently mediated cyclin E induction. Interestingly, rapamycin delayed cell cycle entry of IL-2-sufficient T cells, but did not prevent their expansion. Together, our findings indicate that the TCR, CD28, and IL-2 independently control T cell proliferation via distinct signaling pathways involving PI3K and mTOR. These data suggest that Ag persistence and the availability of costimulatory signals and of autocrine and paracrine growth factors individually shape T lymphocyte expansion in vivo.
Privacy Policy Statements and Consumer Willingness to Provide Personal Information

Consumersâ€™ concerns about information privacy are a primary obstacle to the success of e-commerce. The adoption of privacy policy statements is a direct response to this concern. This exploratory study examined the willingness of graduate students (who, by virtue of age, education, and income, are representative of typical Internet consumers) to provide various types of personal information given varying degrees of protection offered by privacy policy statements. The results demonstrated that the willingness to provide information to Web merchants increased as the level of privacy guaranteed by the statements increased. More importantly, the level of privacy promised by the statements interacted with respondentsâ€™ prior familiarity with policy statements in terms of their willingness to provide personal information. The results also demonstrated that while most individuals were aware of privacy policy statements, less than half of the respondents had ever read a privacy statement.
Neuropsychological Test Performance Prior To and Following Sports-Related Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

ObjectiveTo examine the utility of neuropsychological tests in assessing college athletes prior to and following a sports-related mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI). DesignA prospective study of college athletes who sustained mTBI while engaged in sport. Preinjury baseline neuropsychological test data were obtained for athletes at risk for mTBI. Following an mTBI, the athlete and his or her matched noninjured control were evaluated at 2 hours, 48 hours, 1 week, and 1 month postinjury. SettingMale and female athletes from a Division I college. ParticipantsMale and female athletes from the football, men's ice hockey, men's and women's soccer, and men's and women's basketball teams at Penn State University. A total of 29 injured and 20 noninjured athletes participated in the study. InterventionsNeuropsychological test batteries were administered at baseline and serially following mTBI. Main Outcome MeasuresPost-Concussion Symptom Checklist, Hopkins Verbal Learning Test, Symbol Digit Modalities Test, Stroop Color-Word Test, Trail Making Test, VIGIL/W, List Learning, Digit Span, Penn State Cancellation Test, and Controlled Oral Word Association. ResultsNeuropsychological test data yielded significant differences between injured athletes and controls at 2 hours and 48 hours following cerebral concussion; injured athletes performing significantly worse than controls. Injured athletes reported a significantly greater number of postconcussion symptoms 2 hours following injury but not at the 48-hour assessment. No multivariate group differences were found at 1 week, but univariate analyses suggested significant differences on a few measures. At 1 month postinjury, a statistically significant difference was found on one measure with injured athletes marginally outperforming controls. ConclusionsNeuropsychological tests are useful in the detection of cognitive impairment following mTBI. The test data appear to be more effective than subjective report of symptoms in differentiating between injured and noninjured athletes at 48 hours postinjury. Although significant individual variability existed, most injured athletes recovered within 1 week of injury. A battery of tests, rather than any single test, is necessary to capture the variability that exists among injured athletes.
Shape from texture using the Wigner distribution

A method is presented for estimating the orientation of a textured surface as a descriptor of surface shape. It is based on the analysis of local spectrum information of the texture in an image. The local spectrum representation is computed by the two-dimensional Wigner distribution, which gives the spatial-frequency information as a function of location. The change in texture density, or the so-called texture gradient, caused by the perspective projection of a surface in the three dimensional world onto the two-dimensional image plane, is computed from this space-frequency representation by measuring the high-frequency energy distribution at each location of the image. The surface orientation is then estimated from the texture gradient. This method was implemented for the limited case of planar surfaces. Simulations were performed and results were analyzed to address issues related to the method's estimation accuracy, implementation, and limitations. <<ETX>>
Development of a dynamic biped walking system for humanoid - development of a biped walking robot adapting to the humans' living floor

In this paper, the authors introduce an anthropomorphic dynamic biped walking robot adapting to the humans' living floor. The robot has two systems: 1) a special foot system to obtain the position relative to a landing surface and the gradient of the surface during its dynamic walking; 2) an adaptive walking control system to adapt to the path surfaces with unknown shapes by utilising the information of landing surface, obtained by the foot system. Two units of the foot system WAF-3 have been developed: a biped walking robot WL-12RVII that has the foot system and the adaptive walking control system installed inside it. A walking experiment with the WL-12RVII was performed. As a result, dynamic biped walking adapting to humans' living floor with unknown shape was realised. The maximum walking speed was 1.28 s/step with a 0.3 m step length, and the adaptable deviation range was from -16 to 16 mm/step in the vertical direction, and from -3 to +3/spl deg/ in the tilt angle.
Modeling MIMO Fading Channels: Background, Comparison and Some Progress

The spatial correlation properties of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels can greatly affect the performance of MIMO systems. It is therefore important to develop MIMO channel models which can provide accurate spatial correlation characteristics. This paper starts with the brief review of MIMO channel models and then concentrates on investigating the spatial correlation characteristics of the spatial channel model (SCM) in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the Kronecker based stochastic model (KBSM) at three levels, namely the cluster level, link level, and system level. The KBSM has the spatial separability at all the three levels. The SCM shows the spatial separability at the link and system levels, but not at the cluster level since its spatial correlation is related to the joint distribution of the angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD). The KBSM with the Gaussian shaped power azimuth spectrum (PAS) is found to fit best the 3GPP SCM in terms of the spatial correlations. Despite of its simplicity and analytical tractability, the KBSM is restricted to model only the average spatial behavior of MIMO channels. The SCM provides more insights of the variations of different MIMO channel realizations but the implementation complexity is relatively high
Cloud Adoption in the Spotlight - Empirical Insights from German IT Experts

In comparison to traditional IT paradigms, cloud computing enables to obtain desired computing resources on-demand without requiring large, upfront investments and to dynamically adapt and scale these resources to varying business requirements. However, cloud computing is not a panacea. This drives the need to examine the specific reasons and requirements for cloud adoption in practice. In this paper, we take a twofold approach for this purpose. First of all, we follow an analytical approach by conducting a literature survey on existing adoption frameworks in order to analyze the complete life cycle of the adoption process and derive five hypotheses for cloud adoption. In the second step, we identify the major criteria that foster the adoption of cloud computing from the perspective of IT experts within an empirical study. The study indicates that three out of our five hypotheses prevail in practice and that the replacement of legacy systems with public cloud offerings constitutes the most prevalent use case.
The State of Ontology Pattern Research

Semantic web ontologies have several advantages over other knowledge representation formats that make them appropriate for information logistics architectures and applications. However, the construction of ontologies is still time-consuming and error prone for practitioners. One recent development that aims to remedy this situation is the introduction of ontology design patterns, codifying best practices and promoting reuse. This paper presents a literature survey into the state of research on ontology patterns, and suggests the use of such patterns for modeling information demand and distribution.
The Thought Control Questionnaire – psychometric properties in a clinical sample, and relationships with PTSD and depression

Background. Recent developments in research suggest that particular attempts to control thoughts may contribute to the problem of intrusion. An instrument capable of identifying strategies for dealing with unwanted intrusions in clinical populations may be used for differentiating between thought control strategies that may or may not be helpful. Methods. The Thought Control Questionnaire (TCQ) (Wells & Davies, 1994) developed and validated on a normal sample, was administered to a clinical sample in order to investigate the consistency of the original factor structure and its psychometric properties. The sensitivity of the scale to change associated with recovery was also examined. Relationships between individual differences in thought control strategies and psychiatric symptoms in patients with DSM-IV major depression, and PTSD with or without major depression were investigated. Results. The Scree Test suggested a six-factor solution which was rotated. This solution split the original distraction subscale into separate behavioural and cognitive distraction, otherwise the subscales were almost identical to those obtained in non-clinical subjects. As this split has been shown to be unreliable, further analyses in this study were based on the five-factor version of the TCQ obtained by Wells & Davies (1994). Predictors of recovery and of symptoms in PTSD and depression were explored. Conclusions. Correlations between the TCQ subscales and other measures suggest that particular thought control strategies may be associated with the symptoms of PTSD and depression. The TCQ scales appear to be sensitive to changes associated with recovery. Significant differences emerged in thought control strategies between depressed and PTSD patients. Hierarchical regression analysis showed distraction, punishment and reappraisal control strategies predicted depression scores in depressed patients while use of distraction predicted intrusions in PTSD.
Impacts of decoy elements on result set evaluations in knowledge-based recommendation

State-of-the-art recommender systems only partially consider psychological aspects of consumer behaviour. Taking into account those aspects helps to improve the overall understanding of related decision processes. In this paper we investigate influences triggered by so called decoy effects which are known phenomena in decision psychology and marketing. Particularly, we focus on changes in the perceived product utility and the effect on the subjectively felt confidence in a customer's own decision in a potential sales situation. To this end, we report the results of two empirical studies which analyse decoy effects in not yet investigated item/attribute constellations.
Improving Accuracy of Veracity Judgment through Cue Training

The ability to make judgments of veracity was investigated to see if training individuals on visual, vocal, or verbal content cues of deception would increase their ability to judge whether a message was truthful. The overall rate of accuracy of judging veracity was significantly greater for subjects trained on verbal content cues. More specifically, for detecting truthful messages, subjects trained on verbal content cues had significantly greater accuracy than subjects who received no cue training, whereas for detecting deceptive messages, there were no significant differences in accuracy among conditions.
A 200 watt broadband continuous-mode doherty power amplifier for base-station applications

This paper presents a high-power Continuous-mode Doherty Power Amplifier (C-DPA) for base-station applications. By utilizing de-embedded models of active devices and allowing the two transistors modulate each other at harmonic frequencies, the proposed C-DPA exhibits improved power, efficiency and bandwidth. Based on the proposed technique, a demonstrating 200 Watt C-DPA was designed over 1.7–2.7 GHz band. According to the measured results, over the 1 GHz bandwidth, the designed DPA generates 52.7–54.3 dBm power at saturation and exhibits 40%-50.2% drain efficiency at −6dB power back-off (BO). To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the state-of-the-art performance of high-power broadband DPAs for base-station applications. Furthermore, using a 10MHz, 7.5dB PAPR LTE signal, the fabricated DPA was measured and linearized over the full-band, verifying its ability of being linearized.
Unusual behavior of uncoated thick-film PZT cantilevers towards fluid phases sensing. Application to water and ethanol detection

Detection of water and ethanol vapors is successfully performed using the 31-longitudinal mode of uncoated Au/PZT/Au cantilevers giving respectively negative and positive resonance frequency shifts. Differences between the cantilever's response to water and ethanol vapors are explained by the higher wettability of gold towards ethanol. High values of frequency shifts cannot be justified by the viscosity and density effect of those gases but by the mass and stiffness effects. The negative shifts obtained with liquid ethanol and water is confirmed by the measurements realized in liquids having different viscosities. Correlations between shifts obtained and mass/stiffness effects related to the porous microstructure of PZT thick-film cantilever are proposed.
Latest decade's spatial-temporal properties of aerosols over China

Aerosols are one of the most important parameters affecting the Earth's energy balance and hydrological cycle1. They can arouse uncertainties effects on climates. To narrow the uncertainties associated with the direct and indirect aerosol effects on climates, the spatial-temporal properties of aerosol over China are investigated using the radiance measurements performed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on board the Terra and Aqua satellites from 2002 to 2010. The most prominent variational regions are the northern, eastern China. The high AOD values occur in 2004, 2006 and 2007 year, respectively. The tendencies of AOD are in good agreement with corresponding AOD tendencies based on data from Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) stations in the study regions2. Seasonal AOD maxima are obtained in spring (March to May) and summer (June to August) seasons, due to large humidity and biomass burning, respectively. Dust activities in spring are frequent occurrences that also lead to high aerosol loading. AOD minima are obtained in winter (December to February) seasons. The result of our analysis reveal significant trend of seasonal AOD in the Northern and Southern China.
Assessing Physical Activity of Women of Childbearing Age. Ongoing Work to Develop and Evaluate Simple Methods

Simple methods were developed and evaluated to assess total energy expenditure in 24 healthy, Swedish women planning pregnancy. Total energy expenditure was measured by the doubly-labeled water method (reference method) and three simple methods: heart rate recording, movement registration by an accelerometer, and a questionnaire. Mean total energy expenditure obtained by the four methods varied between 2,530 kcal per 24 hours (10,570 kJ/24 hours) and 2,730 kcal per 24 hours (11,420 kJ/24 hours). No significant difference between the results obtained by the different methods was found. The mean difference between the simple method and the reference method was for the questionnaire 204 ± 508 kcal per 24 hours (853 ± 2,124 kJ/24 hours), for the heart rate recorder 58 ± 338 kcal per 24 hours (241 ± 1,416 kJ/24 hours) and for the accelerometer 6 ± 325 kcal per 24 hours (25 ± 1,360 kJ/24 hours). The heart rate recorder and the questionnaire overestimated high and underestimated low energy expenditures. The accelerometer and the heart rate recorder were able to assess mean total energy expenditure of groups. No systematic bias was found when the accelerometer was used.
Complete electrolysis using a microflow cell with an oil/water interface.

A novel microflow cell with a nitrobenzene (NB)/water (W) interface was developed. A poly(tetrafluoroethylene) membrane filter was employed to prepare the NB/W interface which was formed over a thin channel (0.1 mm thick, 48 cm long) on a silver plate. The silver plate was electrolyzed in advance and served as an Ag/AgCl electrode for controlling the Galvani potential difference across the NB/W interface as well as detecting the current flowing through the interface. Using the microflow cell, complete electrolysis was accomplished for the interfacial transfer of a representative ion (i.e., tetramethylammonium ion). Thus, the present microflow cell was shown to be promising for coulometric (i.e., absolute quantitative) analysis of ions. Also, the microflow cell was shown to be useful for determination of the number of electrons for complicated charge-transfer processes at the oil/water interface.
Occurrence of Poly-β-Hydroxybutyrate in the Azotobacteriaceae

Poly-β-hydroxybutyrate (PHB) from various representative strains of the genera Azotobacter, Beijerinckia, and Derxia was isolated and characterized. During growth in shake culture, with glucose as a carbon and energy source, and molecular nitrogen as a nitrogen source, increase in dry weight appeared linear, and PHB formed a constant percentage of the dry weight. In a medium containing 1% (w/v) glucose, PHB declined with the onset of the stationary phase of growth; with 2% (w/v) glucose, an increase in PHB content during stationary phase was noted in the case of some strains, before a subsequent decline. The decrease in PHB as a percentage of dry cellular weight (not of total amount present in the culture) during growth of some strains with 2% as opposed to 1% (w/v) glucose may be ascribed to a greater production of capsular polysaccharide. PHB content could not be used as a taxonomic criterion. Strain differences were as great as or greater than species differences. The only strain of Beijerinckia fluminensis obtained contained PHB, but it could not be grown on the nitrogen-free medium used. Two species of the genus Azotomonas, reported to be aerobic, nonsymbiotic nitrogen-fixers, did not grow on the nitrogen-free medium used and did not produce PHB during growth with a combined nitrogen source.