Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parametric Design and Optimization of Steel Car Deck Panel Structures

Stiffened panels play a significant role in marine industry because of their high strengthweight ratio, they account for a significant amount of a vessel’s weight. Hence, weight optimization of these structures can reduce the material costs and to a great extent increase the cargo capacity of a vessel. This thesis looks into the performance of three steel car deck panels with respect to their weights for a Pure Car and Truck Carrier (PCTC). The focus is on the structural arrangement rather than a comparison of steel and alternative materials, since lightweight materials are still not economically viable for these types of ships. Two of the car deck panels have conventional structural arrangement stiffened with longitudinal and transverse stiffeners while the third one uses diagonally positioned beams. In order to carry out a consistent comparison, the car deck panels are optimized by means of finite element analysis and parametric sensitivity analysis. The panels are modelled with linear elastic materials and a global strength analysis is made with a uniformly distributed load. Results prove the accuracy of the way that an older car deck panel (Concept B) had been developed over time, resulting in the car deck panel currently in use (Concept A). Results also show that the current car deck panel structure could be developed further by utilizing the optimization techniques, reducing their weight by up to 6%.
The Production and Filtration Efficiency Testing of Nonwoven Electrospun Fiber Mats

THE PRODUCTION AND FILTRATION EFFICIENCY TESTING OF NONWOVEN ELECTROSPUN FIBER MATS By Jan C. Uecker, Master of Science A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2009 Director: Dr. Gary Tepper, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering In this thesis the production and filtration performance of electrospun nylon-4,6 nanofiber mats was experimentally studied. The average fiber diameter of nylon-4,6 fibers is controlled by altering the polymer concentration in solution. Adding small amount of pyridine to the electrospinning solution controlled fiber beading and other defects. These fibers were then deposited onto a wide variety of conductive and dielectric substrate materials. A corona ion source was used to eliminate surface charging effects observed at the surface of all substrates. The resulting fiber mats, uniform in size and distribution as verified by SEM imaging, are tested for filtration efficiency and pressure drop. A Figure of Merit (FOM) is calculated for each filter produced and compared to high-grade commercial filters.
Impact of the intraseasonal variability of large-scale circulation over the Western North Pacific on the characteristics of tropical cyclone track

The life cycle of the Southeast Asian–western North Pacific monsoon circulation is established by the northward migrations of the monsoon trough and the western Pacific subtropical anticyclone, and is reflected by the intraseasonal variations of monsoon westerlies and trade easterlies in the form of an east–west seesaw oscillation. In this paper, an effort is made to disclose the influence of this monsoon circulation on tropical cyclone tracks during its different phases using composite charts of large-scale circulation for certain types of tracks. A majority of straight-moving (recurving) tropical cyclones appear during weak (strong) monsoon westerlies and strong (weak) trade easterlies. The monsoon conditions associated with straight-moving tropical cyclones are linked to the intensified subtropical anticyclone, while that associated with recurving tropical cyclones is coupled with the deepened monsoon trough. The relationship between genesis locations and track characteristics is evolved from the intraseasonal variation of the monsoon circulation reflected by the east– west oscillation of monsoon westerlies and trade easterlies. Composite circulation differences between the flows associated with the two types of tropical cyclone tracks show a vertically uniform short wave train along the North Pacific rim, as portrayed by the Pacific–Japan oscillation. During the extreme phases of the monsoon life cycle, the anomalous circulation pattern east of Taiwan resembles this anomalous short wave train. A vorticity budget analysis of the strong monsoon condition reveals a vorticity tendency dipole with a positive zone to the north and a negative zone to the south of the deepened monsoon trough. This meridional juxtaposition of vorticity tendency propagates the monsoon trough northward. The interaction of a tropical cyclone with the monsoon trough intensifies the north–south juxtaposition of the vorticity tendency and deflects the tropical cyclone northward. In contrast, during weak monsoon conditions, the interaction between a tropical cyclone and the subtropical high results in a northwestward motion steered by the intensified trade easterlies. The accurate prediction of the monsoon trough and the subtropical anticyclone variations coupled with the monsoon life cycle may help to improve the forecasting of tropical cyclone tracks.
CMAR_A_204357 5075..5089

Department of Health Check-Up Center, Jinshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 201508, People’s Republic of China Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor that affects women with higher incidence. High-mobility group box 3 (HMGB3) plays critical functions in DNA repair, recombination, transcription and replication. This study aimed to investigate the effects of HMGB3 silence on mammosphere formation and tumor growth of breast cancer. Methods: LV5-HMGB3 and LV3-siHMGB3 vectors were transfected into MCF10A, MDAMB-231, HCC1937, ZR-75-1 and MCF7 cells. Cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay was used to evaluate cell proliferation. Xenograft tumor mice model was established by injection of MDA-MB-231. qRT-PCR and western blot were used to examine the expression of Nanog, Sox2 and OCT-4. Mammosphere forming assay was employed to evaluate mammosphere formation both in vivo and in vitro. Dual luciferase assay was utilized to verify the interaction between HMGB3 and hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1α). CD44/CD24 was assessed with flow cytometry. Results: HMGB3 expression was higher significantly (p<0.05) in cancer cells compared to normal cells. HMGB3 overexpression significantly (p<0.05) enhanced and HMGB3 silence reduced cell proliferative mice compared to MCF10A and MDA-MB-231, respectively. HMGB3 overexpression enhanced and HMGB3 silence inhibited mammosphere formation. HMGB3 overexpression upregulated and HMGB3 silence downregulated Nanog, SOX2 and OCT-4 genes/proteins in MCF10A and MDA-MB-231 cells, respectively. HMGB3 silence reduced CD44/CD24 levels in cancer cells. Silence of HMGB3 strengthened reductive effects of PTX on tumor sizes, iPSC biomarkers and mammosphere amounts in xenograft tumor mouse models. HMGB3 silence inhibited mammoshpere formation, cell proliferation and CD44CD24 by interacting with HIF1α. Conclusion: HMGB3 silence could inhibit the cell proliferation in vitro and suppress tumor growth in vivo levels. The antitumor effects of HMGB3 silence were mediated by interacting with the HIF1α.
Amorphous Calcium Orthophosphates: Nature, Chemistry and Biomedical Applications

Amorphous calcium orthophosphates (ACPs) represent a unique class of biomedically relevant calcium or- thophosphate salts, having variable chemical but rather identical glass-like physical properties, in which there are neither translational nor orientational long-range orders of the atomic positions. Normally, ACPs are the first solid phases, precipi- tated after a rapid mixing of aqueous solutions containing ions of Ca 2+ and PO4 3- ; however, other production techniques are known. Interestingly, but ACPs prepared by wet-chemical techniques were found to possess a relative constancy in their chemical composition over a relatively wide range of preparation conditions, which suggested the presence of a well-defined local structural unit, presumably, with the structure of Ca9(PO4)6 - so-called a Posner's cluster. However, the presence of similar clusters in ACPs produced by other techniques remains uncertain. All ACPs are thermodynamically unstable com- pounds and, unless stored in dry conditions or doped by stabilizers, spontaneously they tend to transform to crystalline cal- cium orthophosphates, mainly to calcium apatites. This solution instability of ACPs and their easy transformation to crys- talline phases are of a great biological relevance. Namely, the initiating role ACPs play in matrix vesicle biomineralization raises the importance of ACPs from a mere laboratory curiosity to that of a reasonable key intermediate in skeletal calcifi- cation. In addition, due to great chemical and structural similarities to the calcified tissues of mammals, as well as excellent biocompatibility and bioresorbability, all types of ACPs are very promising candidates to manufacture artificial bone grafts. In this review, current knowledge on occurrence, preparation, composition, structure, major properties and biomedical ap- plications of ACPs have been summarized. To assist the readers in looking for the specific details on ACPs, a great number of references have been collected and systematized.
Video Streaming in Urban Vehicular Environments: Junction-Aware Multipath Approach

In multipath video streaming transmission, the selection of the best vehicle for video packet forwarding considering the junction area is a challenging task due to the several diversions in the junction area. The vehicles in the junction area change direction based on the different diversions, which lead to video packet drop. In the existing works, the explicit consideration of different positions in the junction areas has not been considered for forwarding vehicle selection. To address the aforementioned challenges, a Junction-Aware vehicle selection for Multipath Video Streaming (JA-MVS) scheme has been proposed. The JA-MVS scheme considers three different cases in the junction area including the vehicle after the junction, before the junction and inside the junction area, with an evaluation of the vehicle signal strength based on the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), which is based on the multipath data forwarding concept using greedy-based geographic routing. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated based on the Packet Loss Ratio (PLR), Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) and End-to-End Delay (E2ED) metrics. The JA-MVS is compared against two baseline schemes, Junction-Based Multipath Source Routing (JMSR) and the Adaptive Multipath geographic routing for Video Transmission (AMVT), in urban Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs).
Obesity and Blood Pressure Variations among the Bengali Kayastha Population of North Bengal, India

Abstract Obesity is defined either by increased waist circumference (WC), waist-height ratio (WHtR), conicity index (CI) waist-hip ratio (WHR) and/or body mass index (BMI). As individuals from the developing countries consume more quantities of high-energy food and have less physical activity, the number of overweight and obese individuals increase. Obesity has a detrimental effect on blood pressure and increases cardiovascular events. One important issue that is currently assuming relevance in studies involving blood pressure and anthropometric parameters is the mean arterial pressure (MAP). There exists limited data on such issues among different Indian population and caste groups. This cross sectional study was carried out during the period October-December 2007 in four localities of Alipurduar town (Alipurduar sub-division, Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal, India). A total of 150 individuals (75 males and 75 females) agreed to take part in the same. Blood pressure (SBP and DBP) was measured on left arm by auscultatory method using a mercury sphygmomanometer. The anthropometric measurements have been recorded using standard procedures. The male individuals show higher means with respect to the anthropometric measurements and the blood pressure values, as compared to the females. The prevalence of hypertension was almost 50.00%. Obesity accounted for 80.00% of the individuals. Using step-wise regression analysis, it has been observed that all the anthropometric parameters play a role in blood pressure. It can be observed that the Bengali Kayastha population of Alipurduar town has a high prevalence of obesity. Moreover, BMI, WC and WHtR have strong correlations with DBP and MAP.
Extreme ultraviolet carrier-frequency shearing interferometry of a lithographic four-mirror optical system

The phase-shifting point diffraction interferometer (PS/PDI) has recently been developed to address the problem of at-wavelength metrology of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) optical systems. Although extremely accurate, the fact that the PS/PDI is limited to use with coherent EUV sources, such as undulator radiation, is a drawback for its widespread use. An alternative to the PS/PDI, with relaxed coherence requirements, is lateral shearing interferometry (LSI). Here we describe various LSI implementations and demonstrate the use of a cross-grating, carrier-frequency configuration to characterize a large-field 4×-reduction EUV lithography optic. The results obtained are directly compared with PS/PDI measurements.
Detecting image defects and using Ersatz data on autonomous vehicle benchmarks , in the presence of adversaries

This page lists the research topics that are currently available in the . Each topic can be structured either as a special Secure Systems group assignment or as an MSc thesis depending on the interests, background and experience of the students. If you are interested in a particular topic, send e-mail to the contact person (as well as the professor responsible: either or ) listed explaining your N. Asokan Tuomas Aura background and interests.
Some Properties of Statistical Information: Pragmatics, Semantics, and Syntactics

ion by means of aggregation is one of the most typical semantical features of statistical information. The prefixes microand macroare often used to distinguish between statistical information before and after aggregation. Sometimes the very term statistical information is actually reserved for macroinformation, that is, information that has been subject to some type of aggregation process. However, we shall follow here the more common practice of letting both microinformation and macroinformation be called statistical information, as long as the purpose (or at least one of the most important purposes) of the microinformation is to serve as a basis for aggregation processes and other forms of statistical information processing. In many statistical information systems the input information consists of unaggregated microinformation, whereas the output information consists of aggregated macroinformation. However, this is a rule with exceptions. For example, if a national statistical office collects economical information from companies, this information is microinformation for the survey processing in the statistical office, but for each one of the companies contributing to the survey, the contributed information is likely to be aggregated from numerous economical transactions inside the company.
Development of microscale 3D fused quartz hemi-toroidal shells for high-Q resonators and gyroscopes

Summary In this paper, recent developments in design and fabrication of micromachined fused quartz hemi-toroidal shells are presented. The fabrication is based on micro glassblowing process, demonstrated to enable realization of high-Q MEMS resonators and gyroscopes. The design optimization of the shell geometry is performed using parametric finite element analysis, and the effect of geometrical parameters on the scaling of the resonant frequencies and energy dissipation are discussed. Three variations of the micro-glassblowing process are studed in the paper, concluding that shell resonators with a broad operational frequency range without losing the symmetry and Q-factor are feasible. Finite element models are presented to simulate the presented glassblowing processes, which is used to accurately predict the final geometry of shell resonators. Operational frequency as low as 5 kHz and Q-factor as high as 1.7 million are demonstrated on the fabricated shell resonators. The proposed process modifications demonstrate a low-cost and scalable fabrication of 3D shells for resonators and gyroscopes which can be used in inertial navigation and timing applications.
A TEMPLATE-INDEPENDENT CONTENT EXTRACTION APPROACH FOR NEWS WEB PAGES

A TEMPLATE-INDEPENDENT CONTENT EXTRACTION APPROACH FOR NEWS WEB PAGES Ahmet Yeniçağ M.S. in Computer Engineering Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Fazlı Can September, 2012 News web pages contain additional elements such as advertisements, hyperlinks, and reader comments. These elements make the extraction of news contents a challenging task. Current news content extraction (NCE) methods are usually template-dependent. They require regular maintenance, since news providers frequently change their web page templates. Therefore, there is a need for NCE methods that extract news contents accurately without depending on web page templates. In this thesis, a template-independent News content EXTraction approach, called N-EXT, is introduced. It first parses a web page into its blocks according to the HTML tags. Then, it examines all blocks to detect the one that contains the major part of the news content. For this purpose, it assigns weights to the blocks by considering both their textual sizes and similarities to the news title. For quantifying the importance of these two weight components, we use the k-fold cross validation approach; and for assessing the impact of different possible similarity measures, we use a one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with a Scheffé comparison. The block with the highest weight is considered as the news block. Our approach eliminates the sentences in the news block that are not related to the news content by considering similarities of sentences to the news block. Finally, it also examines other blocks to detect the rest of the news content. The experimental results show the accuracy and robustness of our method by using two test collections whose web pages are obtained from several different news websites.
Spatio-temporal analysis of the avalanche hazard in the North of Italy

The study of avalanche events is particularly important to assess and predict the degree of risk involved in a given area and time. In this work we consider an alternative methodology based on a space-time point process where the intensity function indicates the limiting expected rate of occurrence of snow avalanches occurring on day t at location (x, y), conditioned on the historical information available prior to time t . The model depends also on some environmental variables (degree of slope, exposure, altitude, etc.) which may be considered as covariates. In order to show the spatio temporalmodeling of the avalanche hazardwe consider the application to the digitalized Avalanche Database of the Trentino region, Italy.
TOWARD THE INTEGRATED CONTEXT-AWARE LIBRARY SERVICES

Wireless technology is already a common element on university campuses. Instead of using the library’s computers, students will be able to use laptops or mobile devices to access all library-related resources including catalogue, web sites and other electronic resources. This study presents the integrated context-aware library service to help readers get the right information for them more easily. The integrated context-aware library services’ levels included: (1) Traditional Library Service, (2) Campus e-Learning, (3) Libraries Consortium, (4) Libraries without walls. The novel library service should analysis the reader’s location and profile, push the right information to them, such as online e-journals, and SDI services. This design based on wireless and mobile computing in educational digital libraries and the informal learning environment. In this study we seek to extend the library service by addressing the gaps in the limitation of space and time. The study presented an idea to compose information-providing services by context-aware library services and the framework of context-aware library services that provide more convenient services to the readers.
Stochastic Valuation of Segregated Fund Contracts in an Emerging Market

Stochastic valuation modeling is an important area for financial professionals who deal in products such as equity insurance, especially segregated fund contracts. A stochastic analysis of the guarantee liabilities under any given segregated fund contract requires a credible long-term model of the underlying equity (stock) return process. This paper introduced econometric models far less complex than the Wilkie model for valuing and managing financial risks associated with combined guaranteed minimum maturity benefit and minimum death benefit (GMMB/GMDB) regarding segregated fund contracts in an emerging market (India). Finally, we assess the valuation model via simulation under the GMMB/GMDB for a life age 50 with varying assumptions about the margin offset. The simulation results clearly indicate that, the net present value of outgo is mostly in the negative.
EFFECTS OF HELICOPTER HORIZONTAL TAIL CONFIGURATIONS ON AERODYNAMIC DRAG CHARACTERISTICS

Experimental aerodynamic investigations remain the subject of interest in rotorcraft community since the flow around the helicopter is dominated by complex aerodynamics and flow interaction phenomena. The objective of this study is to determine the aerodynamic drag characteristics of helicopter horizontal tail by conducting wind tunnel tests. To fulfil the objective, three of the most common helicopter horizontal tail configurations namely Forward Stabilizer, Low-aft Stabilizer and T-tail Stabilizer, were fabricated as a simplified scaled-down wind tunnel model mated with a standard ellipsoidal fuselage. The test wind speed for this experimental work was 30 m/s, determined from Reynolds sweep, which was corresponding to Reynolds number of 2.8 x 10 5 . Wind tunnel tests were performed at variations angle of attack ranging from -15 O to 15 O with 5 O interval. The results tell that at zero yaw and zero pitch angles, Forward Stabilizer contributed the least drag coefficient at 0.277 implying the configuration could be the best for cruising flight segment. Contrarily to T-tail Stabilizer, this configuration contributed the most drag coefficient at 0.303, which was 9% higher than the former. The T-tail Stabilizer was also found to be the most sensitive to the change of angle of attack where the drag was drastically increased up to 131.35% at -15 O angle of attack compares to at zero angle of attack. These findings had successfully testified that the type of stabilizer configuration does significantly influencing the aerodynamic drag characteristics of helicopter. Subsequently, the selection of stabilizer must wisely be done to have the best aerodynamic efficiency and performance for the helicopter.