Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polydimethylsiloxane and Castor Oil Comodified Waterborne Polyurethane

In view of both improving properties of waterborne polyurethane (WPU) and sufficient utilization of renewable resources, a series of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and castor oil (C.O.) comodified anionic WPUs with internal cross-linking was prepared through a prepolymer mixing process. The chemical structure of synthesized polymers was characterized by Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). In comparison with traditional linear WPU synthesized from petroleum-based polyols, these novel WPU films exhibited superior properties in solvent and water resistance, thermal stability, and mechanical strength, which suggest promising applications of these new environmentally friendly materials, particularly in the area of decorative and protective coatings. In addition, the results showed that with the increase in PDMS content in these co-modified WPUs the average particle size, the water resistance, and the thermal stability increased accordingly while the solvent resistance and the mechanical properties decreased.
Stability Analysis and Design of Volt-VAR Controller for Grid Connected PV Systems with Consideration of the Impact of Voltage Feedforward

The high penetration of PV systems in distribution networks might give rise to overvoltage. A solution is controlling the reactive power output of the PV inverters based on V-Q droop control method. In this method, when the PV terminal voltage exceeds a threshold, the PV inverter absorbs reactive power. The reactive power absorption produces a voltage drop across the distribution transformer and the lines, hence mitigating the overvoltage. In order to ensure stability, the V-Q droop controller is accompanied by a low-pass filter. The cut-off frequency of the reactive power filter has a significant impact on the system dynamics. In this paper, the impact of the filter’s bandwidth on the small signal stability of the system and the system’s dynamic response is analyzed. It is shown that while adopting a lower bandwidth for the V-Q droop filter can ensure the stability, it might cause transient voltage overshoots when the active power output undergoes fast changes due to cloud passing. This issue is partly due to the unwanted interaction between V-Q droop controller and the voltage feedforward control. By utilizing a lowpass filter in the voltage feedforward path, the stable operation and fast dynamic response can be achieved simultaneously.
Asynchronous array multiplier with an asymmetric parallel array structure

In this paper an asynchronous array multiplier with a new parallel structure is introduced. This parallel array structure is designed to make the computation time faster with lower power consumption. An asymmetric array structure is used to minimize the average computation time in an asynchronous multiplier. Simulation shows that this structure reduces the time needed for computation by 55% as compared to conventional Booth encoding array structures and that the multiplier with the proposed array structure shows reduction of 40% in the computational time with relatively lower power consumption.
Classifying COVID-19 Lung CT-Scans Using Complex-Valued CNN

In the past 1.5 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken countless lives and may continue to do so if we do not improve our ability to identify and contain emerging variants. One of the areas we may improve in is developing alternative forms of COVID testing, such as testing based on CT-scans of patient lungs. Traditional Real-valued CNNs have already been applied to this classification task and seen good results, but there we could also explore the potential benefits of applying a Complex-valued CNN model. In this paper, it shows how optimization of complex-valued CNN is a step further in the right direction to achieving lower loss rates. The specific ways to build a complex-valued CNN model upon a traditional real-valued 2D CNN is introduced. The paper compares traditional real-valued convolutional neural networks, in specific, a Lenet-5 model and Resnet-18, and a complex-valued CNN model in the application of image classification. A complex-valued CNN model will achieve a significantly lower training loss and a higher accuracy than a Lenet-5 model. For the same training amount, the complex-valued CNN will have much higher optimization efficiency than Resnet-18 and have as good performance in loss and accuracy as Resnet-18, a modern deep real-valued CNN. The complex-valued CNN is especially useful for cases that need to both high accuracy and efficiency, like Covid-19 CT scans detection. It also shows very good potential to as an efficient optimization method that do not need to keep increasing the depth of the neural network. However, the weight initialization tends to have a greater impact on the imaginary parts, which may cause an oscillating training loss for small datasets. This area needs further researches and optimization. Another potential area that worth further investigation is to combine the complex-valued neural network with the modern deep CNN networks like Vgg and ResNet.
MeCP2, a Key Contributor to Neurological Disease, Activates and Represses Transcription

Mutations in the gene encoding the transcriptional repressor methyl-CpG binding protein 2 (MeCP2) cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome. Loss of function as well as increased dosage of the MECP2 gene cause a host of neuropsychiatric disorders. To explore the molecular mechanism(s) underlying these disorders, we examined gene expression patterns in the hypothalamus of mice that either lack or overexpress MeCP2. In both models, MeCP2 dysfunction induced changes in the expression levels of thousands of genes, but unexpectedly the majority of genes (∼85%) appeared to be activated by MeCP2. We selected six genes and confirmed that MeCP2 binds to their promoters. Furthermore, we showed that MeCP2 associates with the transcriptional activator CREB1 at the promoter of an activated target but not a repressed target. These studies suggest that MeCP2 regulates the expression of a wide range of genes in the hypothalamus and that it can function as both an activator and a repressor of transcription.
A survey of the research on power management techniques for high‐performance systems

This paper surveys the research on power management techniques for high‐performance systems. These include both commercial high‐performance clusters and scientific high‐performance computing (HPC) systems. Power consumption has rapidly risen to an intolerable scale. This results in both high operating costs and high failure rates so it is now a major cause for concern. It has imposed new challenges to the development of high‐performance systems. In this paper, we first review the basic mechanisms that underlie power management techniques. Then we survey two fundamental techniques for power management: metrics and profiling. After that, we review the research for the two major types of high‐performance systems: commercial clusters and supercomputers. Based on this, we discuss the new opportunities and problems presented by the recent adoption of virtualization techniques, and again we present the most recent research on this. Finally, we summarize and discuss the future research directions. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Avaliação computacional de enfisema pulmonar em TC: comparação entre um sistema desenvolvido localmente e um sistema de uso livre

OBJECTIVE: To present a locally developed system of computer vision for use with HRCT images, designated SIStema para a Deteccao e a quantificacao de Enfisema Pulmonar (SISDEP, System to Detect and Quantify Pulmonary Emphysema), and to compare this system with a freeware system tool. METHODS: Thirty-three HRCT images scanned at the apex, hilum and base of the lungs of 11 patients with COPD were analyzed. The SISDEP was compared with the Osiris Medical Imaging Software Program regarding lung parenchyma segmentation, precision of the measurement of the cross-sectional area of the lungs in mm2, mean lung density (MLD), relative area (RA) of the lung occupied by voxels with attenuation values < -950 hounsfield units (ra -950), 15th percentile point (perc15) and visualization of hyperinflated areas using a color mask. RESULTS: Although both computational systems were efficient in segmenting the lungs, the SISDEP performed this task automatically and more rapidly. There were significant correlations between the two systems in terms of the results obtained for lung cross-sectional area, MLD, RA -950 and Perc15 (r2 = 0.99, 0.99, 0.99 and 1.00, respectively). The color mask tool of the SISDEP allowed excellent visualization of hyperinflated areas, discriminating them from normal areas. CONCLUSIONS: The SISDEP was efficient in segmenting the lungs and quantifying lung hyperinflation, presenting an excellent correlation with the Osiris system. The SISDEP constitutes a promising computational tool for diagnosing and assessing the progression of emphysema in HRCT images of COPD patients.
Rate-adaptive M-QAM in MIMO diversity systems using space-time block codes

In this contribution, we first derive the Shannon capacity of MIMO orthogonal space-time block coding (STBC) in Rayleigh fading, expressing it in closed-form as function of the number of transmit and receive antennas, and the average received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We then assess the performance of M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) used in conjunction with STBC. The performance of this rate adaptive policy is evaluated in terms of its induced average bit error rate and average spectral efficiency, the latter being compared to the derived Shannon capacity which represents the upper bound on the achievable spectral efficiency for any practical approach to adaptive modulation (AM) using STBC.
Results of rapid bottom-up software process modeling

This experience paper reports the results of rapid bottom-up software process modeling that was undertaken to improve understanding of software development processes as they were actually performed and to suggest improvements to these processes. In a short time frame, 23 software developers and testers were interviewed and re-interviewed about their individual software processes. Individual software process models were hand drawn in the Spearmint notation during the first interviews and later transcribed into computer models using the Spearmint tool for the re-interviews. The strengths and weaknesses of the rapid approach adopted are described. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nonculture Molecular Techniques for Diagnosis of Bacterial Disease in Animals

The past decade has seen remarkable technical advances in infectious disease diagnosis, and the pace of innovation is likely to continue. Many of these techniques are well suited to pathogen identification directly from pathologic or clinical samples, which is the focus of this review. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and gene sequencing are now routinely performed on frozen or fixed tissues for diagnosis of bacterial infections of animals. These assays are most useful for pathogens that are difficult to culture or identify phenotypically, when propagation poses a biosafety hazard, or when suitable fresh tissue is not available. Multiplex PCR assays, DNA microarrays, in situ hybridization, massive parallel DNA sequencing, microbiome profiling, molecular typing of pathogens, identification of antimicrobial resistance genes, and mass spectrometry are additional emerging technologies for the diagnosis of bacterial infections from pathologic and clinical samples in animals. These technical advances come, however, with 2 caveats. First, in the age of molecular diagnosis, quality control has become more important than ever to identify and control for the presence of inhibitors, cross-contamination, inadequate templates from diagnostic specimens, and other causes of erroneous microbial identifications. Second, the attraction of these technologic advances can obscure the reality that medical diagnoses cannot be made on the basis of molecular testing alone but instead through integrated consideration of clinical, pathologic, and laboratory findings. Proper validation of the method is required. It is critical that veterinary diagnosticians understand not only the value but also the limitations of these technical advances for routine diagnosis of infectious disease.
A benchmarking framework for methods to design flexible business processes

The assumption made in this article is that flexible processes require specific design methods. The choice of a method for modelling flexible processes depends on many criteria and situations that we gathered in a benchmarking framework. The user can use it as a decision support tool to choose the appropriate method in order to design flexible business processes in a given project situation. This framework also includes managerial concerns such as the time and the budget of the project. We use three enterprise modelling techniques to illustrate how to use the proposed framework. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Parallel Prefix Ling Structures for Modulo 2^n-1 Addition

Parallel-prefix adders draw significant amounts of attention within general-purpose and application-specific architectures because of their logarithmic delay and efficient implementation in VLSI. This paper proposes a scheme to enhance parallel-prefix adders for modulo $2^n - 1$ addition by incorporating Ling equations into parallel-prefix structures. As opposed to previous research, this work clarifies the use of Ling equations for Modulo and provides enhancements to its implementation. Results are given in this work for a placed and routed design within a variation-aware 45nm technology. The implementation results show a significant improvement in delay and even a reduction in power dissipation.
The Epigenetic Landscape of Plants

In plants, DNA methylation, histone modifications, and RNA interference play critically important roles in regulating chromatin structure, thereby profoundly affecting transcription and other molecular events. Recent advances in microarray and high-throughput sequencing technologies have enabled genome-wide studies of these pathways in great detail. The vast amounts of “epigenomic” data generated so far have provided new insights into the mechanisms and functions of these pathways and have broadened our understanding of the structure and organization of plant chromatin as a whole.
An efficient computation model for coarse grained reconfigurable architectures and its applications to a reconfigurable computer

The mapping of high level applications onto the coarse grained reconfigurable architectures (CGRA) are usually performed manually by using graphical tools or when automatic compilation is used, some restrictions are imposed to the high level code. Since high level applications do not contain parallelism explicitly, mapping the application directly to CGRA is very difficult. In this paper, we present a middle level Language for Reconfigurable Computing (LRC). LRC is similar to assembly languages of microprocessors, with the difference that parallelism can be coded in LRC. LRC is an efficient language for describing control data flow graphs. Several applications such as FIR, multirate, multichannel filtering, FFT, 2D-IDCT, Viterbi decoding, UMTS and CCSDC turbo decoding, Wimax LDPC decoding are coded in LRC and mapped to the Bilkent Reconfigurable Computer with a performance (in terms of cycle count) close to that of ASIC implementations. The applicability of the computation model to a CGRA having low cost interconnection network has been validated by using placement and routing algorithms.
Immunohistochemical Characterization and Morphometric Analysis of Macrophages in Rat Mammary Tumors

Macrophages are an important leukocyte component of the microenvironment of neoplasms. Macrophages have classically been subdivided into M1 and M2, depending on their roles in immune response, wound healing, and promotion or inhibition of tumor growth. In human breast cancer, increased presence of M2 macrophages has been associated with poor prognosis. The authors hypothesized that rat mammary carcinomas have increased macrophage influx compared to benign mammary proliferative lesions and normal mammary glands as well. In humans, both M1 and M2 macrophages express CD68, while CD163 is expressed primarily by M2 macrophages. Based on a single immunolabeling protocol with anti-CD68 and anti-CD163 antibodies, the extent of macrophage influx was investigated by morphometry to quantitate the immunopositive cells in normal rat mammary glands, benign mammary proliferative lesions, and mammary carcinomas. In mammary carcinomas, there was significantly higher percentage of CD68+ cells compared to benign mammary proliferative lesions and normal mammary glands. There was also higher percentage of CD163+ cells in mammary carcinomas compared to benign mammary proliferative lesions. Thus, increase in CD68+ and CD163+ macrophages corresponded to increased malignancy of rat mammary tumors in this study.
Chaotic Dirac Billiard in Graphene Quantum Dots

The exceptional electronic properties of graphene, with its charge carriers mimicking relativistic quantum particles and its formidable potential in various applications, have ensured a rapid growth of interest in this new material. We report on electron transport in quantum dot devices carved entirely from graphene. At large sizes (>100 nanometers), they behave as conventional single-electron transistors, exhibiting periodic Coulomb blockade peaks. For quantum dots smaller than 100 nanometers, the peaks become strongly nonperiodic, indicating a major contribution of quantum confinement. Random peak spacing and its statistics are well described by the theory of chaotic neutrino billiards. Short constrictions of only a few nanometers in width remain conductive and reveal a confinement gap of up to 0.5 electron volt, demonstrating the possibility of molecular-scale electronics based on graphene.
Autophagy Is Essential for Preimplantation Development of Mouse Embryos

After fertilization, maternal proteins in oocytes are degraded and new proteins encoded by the zygotic genome are synthesized. We found that autophagy, a process for the degradation of cytoplasmic constituents in the lysosome, plays a critical role during this period. Autophagy was triggered by fertilization and up-regulated in early mouse embryos. Autophagy-defective oocytes derived from oocyte-specific Atg5 (autophagy-related 5) knockout mice failed to develop beyond the four- and eight-cell stages if they were fertilized by Atg5-null sperm, but could develop if they were fertilized by wild-type sperm. Protein synthesis rates were reduced in the autophagy-null embryos. Thus, autophagic degradation within early embryos is essential for preimplantation development in mammals.
Adaptive modulation for V-BLAST systems with power constraints

Adaptive modulation for Vertical Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (V-BLAST) systems is considered in this paper with peak power constraints on each antenna besides the average total power limit on the entire system. The bit loading and power allocation of margin maximization problem and rate maximization problem is given by modifying the incremental allocation algorithm. The loading algorithm of combination of both fixed and variable rate services is presented as well. The results show that the power limit which is very practical for a real V-BLAST system saves the total energy of the whole system at a target bit error rate (BER), but decreases bit rate for rate maximization or deteriorates BER performance for margin maximization
Human Cord Blood CD133+ Stem Cells Transplanted to Nod‐Scid Mice Provide Conditions for Regeneration of Olfactory Neuroepithelium After Permanent Damage Induced by Dichlobenil

The herbicide dichlobenil selectively causes necrosis of the dorsomedial part of olfactory neuroepithelium (NE) with permanent damage to the underlying mucosa, whereas the lateral part of the olfactory region and the nasal respiratory mucosa remain undamaged. We investigated here whether human umbilical cord blood CD133+ stem cells (HSC) injected intravenously to nod‐scid mice pretreated with dichlobenil may engraft the olfactory mucosa and contribute to the regeneration of the damaged NE. We tested HLA‐DQα1 DNA and three human microsatellites (Combined DNA Index System) as indicators of engrafted cells, finding polymerase chain reaction evidence of chimaerism in various tissues of the host, including the olfactory mucosa and bulb, at 7 and 31 days following HSC transplantation. Histology, immunohistochemistry, and lectin staining revealed the morphological recovery of the dorsomedial region of the NE in dichlobenil‐treated mice that received HSC, contrasting with the lack of regeneration in similarly injured areas as these remained damaged in control nontransplanted mice. FISH analysis, to detect human genomic sequences from different chromosomes, confirmed persistent engraftment of the regenerating olfactory area with chimeric cells. Electro‐olfactograms in response to odorants, to test the functionality of the olfactory NE, confirmed the functional damage of the dorsomedial area in dichlobenil‐treated mice and the functional recovery of the same area in transplanted mice. These findings support the concept that transplanted HSC migrating to the damaged olfactory area provide conditions facilitating the recovery from olfactory receptor cell loss. STEM CELLS 2009;27:825–835
Proliferating Cells Express mRNAs with Shortened 3' Untranslated Regions and Fewer MicroRNA Target Sites

Messenger RNA (mRNA) stability, localization, and translation are largely determined by sequences in the 3′ untranslated region (3′UTR). We found a conserved increase in expression of mRNAs terminating at upstream polyadenylation sites after activation of primary murine CD4+ T lymphocytes. This program, resulting in shorter 3′UTRs, is a characteristic of gene expression during immune cell activation and correlates with proliferation across diverse cell types and tissues. Forced expression of full-length 3′UTRs conferred reduced protein expression. In some cases the reduction in protein expression could be reversed by deletion of predicted microRNA target sites in the variably included region. Our data indicate that gene expression is coordinately regulated, such that states of increased proliferation are associated with widespread reductions in the 3′UTR-based regulatory capacity of mRNAs.
Peripheral-state sense multiple access/interference control (PSMA/IC) for distributed radio resource management

This paper presents a novel multiple access scheme called peripheral state sense multiple access with interference control for ad-hoc networks. The scheme sets some predefined rules to allow several terminals to transmit simultaneously, and so attains multiple-input multiple-output channel capacity. The proposed rules yield two main benefits. (1) They control interference levels in order to achieve high total throughput. (2) The rules guarantee minimum throughputs even to terminals with the minimum number of receive antennas, when terminals with various numbers of receive antennas share a fixed bandwidth. Computer simulations elucidate the potential capacity of the proposed scheme. The results show that our scheme attains higher throughput than the arrangement that precludes simultaneous transmissions, while it does not excessively decrease the throughput of terminals with the minimum number of receive antennas. The results also show that dispensing with the rules degrades the throughput