Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Two-Parameter Study of the Locking Region of a Semiconductor Laser Subject to Phase-Conjugate Feedback

We present a detailed bifurcation analysis of a single-mode semiconductor laser subject to phase-conjugate feedback, a system described by a delay differential equation. Codimension-one bifurcation curves of equilibria and periodic orbits and curves of certain connecting orbits are presented near the laser's locking region in the two-dimensional parameter plane of feedback strength and pump current. We identify several codimension-two bifurcations, including a double-Hopf point, Belyakov points, and a T-point bifurcation, and we show how they organize the dynamics. This study is the first example of a two-parameter bifurcation study, including bifurcations of periodic and connecting orbits, of a delay system. It was made possible by new numerical continuation tools, implemented in the package DDE-BIFTOOL, and showcases their usefulness for the study of delay systems arising in applications.
Volatile Constituents of the Aerial Parts of Pulicaria sicula (L.) Moris Growing Wild in Sicily: Chemotaxonomic Volatile Markers of the Genus Pulicaria Gaertn.

The chemical composition of the essential oil isolated from the aerial parts of Pulicaria sicula (L.) Moris was characterized by GC‐FID and GC/MS analyses. The oil was particularly rich in oxygenated terpenoids. Among the oxygenated monoterpenes (content of 44.5%), the most abundant were borneol (23.7%), bornyl acetate (6.5%), and isothymol isobutyrate (6.2%). Caryophyllene oxide (10.2%), caryophylladienol I (4.3%), and caryophylla‐3,8(13)‐dien‐5β‐ol (4.4%) were identified as the main constituents among the oxygenated sesquiterpenes. Furthermore, a complete literature review on the composition of the essential oils of all the Pulicaria taxa studied so far was performed and a principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out.
Interferometric Evanescent Wave Biosensor Principles and Parameters

This review tries to present an overview of the most important parameters to be taken in consideration in the evaluation of interferometer biosensors. Waveguide interferometers have particular importance, because by utilizing the combination of two very sensitive methods, the waveguiding and the interferometry techniques, they offer very good reliability and possibility for miniaturization and integration in optical chips. By using the evanescent wave technology they measure the interaction between receptors and biomolecules in real time without using labels. Receptors are immobilized onto a sensor surface and the interaction with the biomolecules near it cause a refractive index change. A large number of applications in life sciences, including binding kinetics of receptor-biomolecule pairs and virus-protein interactions, are using evanescent wave-based biosensors for their studies. This article describes the technology behind their sensing techniques, and a range of applications where they are used.
Nano composite materials

Composites are replacing the conventional and non-conventional alloys and materials. They are used to enhance the material properties & performance efficiency. Also to design materials with combination of desired properties. Nano composites are the developed version in use. Nano means a Greek prefix of “one billionth”. Its basic unit of measure is nanometer (nm) or 10^−9 m. This is a science more than technology. It is also called as Nano Science. Various properties, processes and the applications of Nanocomposites are discussed in brief. The main trends in the structural composite field are related to the reduction of the cost which cannot only be related to the improvement in the manufacturing technology, but needs integration between design, material, process, tooling, quality assurance, and manufacturing. Moreover, the high-tech industry, such as telecommunication, where specific functional properties are the principal requirements, will take advantages by the composite approach in the next future. The control of the filler size, shape and surface chemical nature has a fundamental role in the development of materials that can be utilized to develop devices, sensors and actuators based on the tailoring of functional properties such as optical, chemical and physical, magneto-elastic etc. Finally, a future technological challenge will be the development of a new class of smart composite materials whose elasto-dynamic response can be adapted in real time in order to significantly enhance the performance of structural and mechanical systems under a diverse range of operating conditions.
Optimization of EMG-signal Source Classification based on Adaptive Wavelets K-mean Algorithm

In this paper the optimization of EMG signals segmentation and decomposition based on wavelet representation and k-mean clustering technique is presented. It is shown that wavelet decomposition can be usefull in detecting particular spikes in EMG signals and the presented segmentation algorithm may be useful for the detection of active segments in related MUAP’s action potentials. The algorithms has been tested on the synthetic model signal and on real signals recorded with intramuscular multi-point electrode. The efficiency of EMG signal decomposition and classification with adaptive wavelet algorithm were presented. Single and multiple fibers MUAP patterns were tested and identified. By applying a Debauchies wavelet transformation and k-mean clustering algorithm to localize the action-potential source in the presence of specific neuromuscular diseases like NMI neuropathy, muscular dystrophy and myasthenia gravis (MG), instead of many decomposition and pattern recognition algorithm, wavelets and k-mean clustering have its flexibility for robustly classify and localize the signal stochastic sources with a linear way, in addition to identify the blind source for EMG bioelectric potential.
Recompression of Hadamard Products of Tensors in Tucker Format

The Hadamard product features prominently in tensor-based algorithms in scientific computing and data analysis. Due to its tendency to significantly increase ranks, the Hadamard product can represent a major computational obstacle in algorithms based on low-rank tensor representations. It is therefore of interest to develop recompression techniques that mitigate the effects of this rank increase. In this work, we investigate such techniques for the case of the Tucker format, which is well suited for tensors of low order and small to moderate multilinear ranks. Fast algorithms are attained by combining iterative methods, such as the Lanczos method and randomized algorithms, with fast matrix-vector products that exploit the structure of Hadamard products. The resulting complexity reduction is particularly relevant for tensors featuring large mode sizes $I$ and small to moderate multilinear ranks $R$. To implement our algorithms, we have created a new Julia library for tensors in Tucker format.
Phenotype-Based Identification of Host Genes Required for Replication of African Swine Fever Virus

ABSTRACT African swine fever virus (ASFV) produces a fatal acute hemorrhagic fever in domesticated pigs that potentially is a worldwide economic threat. Using an expressed sequence tag (EST) library-based antisense method of random gene inactivation and a phenotypic screen for limitation of ASFV replication in cultured human cells, we identified six host genes whose cellular functions are required by ASFV. These included three loci, BAT3 (HLA-B-associated transcript 3), C1qTNF (C1q and tumor necrosis factor-related protein 6), and TOM40 (translocase of outer mitochondrial membrane 40), for which antisense expression from a tetracycline-regulated promoter resulted in reversible inhibition of ASFV production by >99%. The effects of antisense transcription of the BAT3 EST and also of expression in the sense orientation of this EST, which encodes amino acid residues 450 to 518 of the mature BAT3 protein, were investigated more extensively. Sense expression of the BAT3 peptide, which appears to reversibly interfere with BAT3 function by a dominant negative mechanism, resulted in decreased synthesis of viral DNA and proteins early after ASFV infection, altered transcription of apoptosis-related genes as determined by cDNA microarray analysis, and increased cellular sensitivity to staurosporine-induced apoptosis. Antisense transcription of BAT3 reduced ASFV production without affecting abundance of the virus macromolecules we assayed. Our results, which demonstrate the utility of EST-based functional screens for the detection of host genes exploited by pathogenic viruses, reveal a novel collection of cellular genes previously not known to be required for ASFV infection.
Influence of immobilization on the stability of pTG201 recombinant plasmid in some strains of Escherichia coli

The stability of pTG201 plasmid was examined by continuous culture in three genetically different Escherichia coli hosts. Two types of experiment were carried out, one with free cells and one with immobilized cells. When cells were cultivated in free continuous culture in the absence of antibiotic selection, the plasmid was maintained with various degrees of stability in the three host organisms. By contrast, in continuous culture with immobilized cells, plasmid pTG201 was stably maintained in the three strains. We showed that the increase in pTG201 stability in immobilized cells is due neither to plasmid transfer between immobilized cells nor to an increase of the plasmid copy number of immobilized cells. We also showed that plasmid-free cells, when coimmobilized and grown in competition with plasmid-containing cells, cannot overrun the culture.
Probabilistic Prioritization of Movement Primitives

Movement prioritization is a common approach to combine controllers of different tasks for redundant robots, where each task is assigned a priority. The priorities of the tasks are often handtuned or the result of an optimization, but seldomly learned from data. This letter combines Bayesian task prioritization with probabilistic movement primitives (ProMPs) to prioritize full motion sequences that are learned from demonstrations. ProMPs can encode distributions of movements over full motion sequences and provide control laws to exactly follow these distributions. The probabilistic formulation allows for a natural application of Bayesian task prioritization. We extend the ProMP controllers with an additional feedback component that accounts inaccuracies in following the distribution and allows for a more robust prioritization of primitives. We demonstrate how the task priorities can be obtained from imitation learning and how different primitives can be combined to solve even unseen task-combinations. Due to the prioritization, our approach can efficiently learn a combination of tasks without requiring individual models per task combination. Furthermore, our approach can adapt an existing primitive library by prioritizing additional controllers, for example, for implementing obstacle avoidance. Hence, the need of retraining the whole library is avoided in many cases. We evaluate our approach on reaching movements under constraints with redundant simulated planar robots and two physical robot platforms, the humanoid robot “iCub” and a KUKA LWR robot arm.
Escherichia coli DNA Topoisomerase I Inhibits R-loop Formation by Relaxing Transcription-induced Negative Supercoiling*

It has recently been shown that RNase H overproduction can partially compensate for the growth defect due to the absence of DNA topoisomerase I in Escherichia coli(Drolet, M., Phoenix, P., Menzel, R., Massé, E., Liu, L. F., and Crouch, R. J. (1995) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 92, 3526–3530). This result has suggested a model in which inhibitory R-loops occur during transcription in topAmutants. Results presented in this report further support this notion and demonstrate that transcription-induced supercoiling is involved in R-loop formation. First, we show that stable R-loop formation duringin vitro transcription with E. coli RNA polymerase only occurs in the presence of DNA gyrase. Second, extensive R-loop formation in vivo, revealed by the production of RNase H-sensitive hypernegatively supercoiled plasmid DNAs, is observed under conditions where topA mutants fail to grow. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that the coupling of transcription and translation in bacteria is an efficient way of preventing R-loop formation.
Integrating Person-to-Person Social Support in Smartphone Apps for Promoting Physical Activity

The epidemic of physical inactivity is a major health hazard in the modern society, therefore creating effective and innovative health programs and interventions is important. This paper presents a novel approach in which person-to-person social support is incorporated in mHealth interventions for increasing physical activity. Social support is already used as a behaviour change technique in mHealth apps for influencing physical activity, but mostly offered virtually. While virtually-offered social support is efficient, we believe that person-to-person communication, based on personal coaching, might open a new way of influencing the inactive users and their motivation. Responding to this, we developed an Android application that facilitates physically inactive users to connect with a real life coach to receive person-to-person social support. This paper explains the motivation behind the system’s design decisions and discusses the potential of social support in mHeatlh apps. In addition, we present the design of the evaluation study in which the hypotheses and research questions will be evaluated.
Application of combined finite and complex value boundary elements method for magnetic field calculation of electromecanical systems

Numerical calculation of plane-parallel magnetic field of electromechanical systems with nonlinear properties of ferromagnetic bodies is considered. Solution of the boundary value problem is brought to the functional minimization problem. Different approaches are used to calculate vector potential in domains with nonlinear and nonlinear magnetic properties. Finite element approximation is used in medium with nonlinear properties. Complex value boundary elements and the Cauchy formula are used in medium with linear properties. The results of suspension electromagnet magnetic field modelling are given. The proposed method allows reducing requirements to computational resources and increasing precision of electromagnetic field calculation when electromechanical systems with moving ferromagnetic elements are designed.
How to Avoid the Fallacies of Cognitive Subtraction in Brain Imaging

Functional neuroanatomy of cognitive processes is generally derived by subtraction of a control task from an experimental task. We show that this method is logically untenable and propose to replace it with an adaptation of the specific-effect method and of the additive-factor method. The basic flaw that undermines the subtractive method is the comparison between different tasks. We argue that the specific-effect method should be used when investigating activations produced by different levels of a qualitative variable, whereas the additive-factor method should be used for quantitative variables. The use of these methods allows one to distinguish between parallel and serial stages of processing and between local and distributed processing.
Managing Stress

Video calling (VC) aims to create multi-modal, collaborative environments that are "just like being there. " However, we found that autistic individuals, who exhibit atypical social and cognitive processing, may not share this goal. We interviewed autistic adults about their perceptions of VC compared to other computer- mediated communications (CMC) and face-to-face interactions. We developed a neurodiversity-sensitive model of CMC that describes how stressors such as sensory sensitivities, cognitive load, and anxiety, contribute to their preferences for CMC channels. We learned that they apply significant effort to construct coping strategies to support their sensory, cognitive, and social needs. These strategies include moderating their sensory inputs, creating mental models of conversation partners, and attempting to mask their autism by adopting neurotypical behaviors. Without effective strategies, interviewees experience more stress, have less capacity to interpret verbal and non-verbal cues, and feel less empowered to participate. Our findings reveal critical needs for autistic users. We suggest design opportunities to support their ability to comfortably use VC, and in doing so, point the way towards making VC more comfortable for all.
Occurrence of 2-keto-deoxyoctonic acid 5-phosphate in lipopolysaccharides of Vibrio cholerae Ogawa and Inaba

A phosphorylated 2-keto-3-deoxyoctonic acid (KDO) was released from the lipopolysaccharides of Vibrio cholerae Ogawa and Inaba after strong acid hydrolysis. The phosphorylated KDO was identified by gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry after reduction and permethylation as KDO-5-phosphate and an isomer of it being phosphorylated at position 7 or 8. After treatment with alkaline phosphatase, KDO was detected by gas-liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. It was indistinguishable from authentic 2-keto-3-deoxy-D-manno-octonic acid.
Intravenous immunoglobulin for chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy: a multiracial Asian perspective

Sirs, Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP) is a relapsing, immune-mediated disease, which results in considerable morbidity. In a recent study by Hughes et al. [1], the authors showed good shortand longterm efficacy and safety of 10% caprylatechromatography purified intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) in CIDP. In this study, they aimed to establish the longterm efficacy and safety profile of this treatment, so as to support licensing. In addition, it was suggested that the manufacturing process for this form of IVIg required fewer steps to obtain a purer final product. Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy occurs worldwide, but to our knowledge, only two Japanese studies have described the clinical response to IVIg in the Asian population [2,3]. No multiracial Asian study data reporting the use of IVIg has been formally published in the English language. However, the use of IVIg in CIDP has been addressed in several Western studies [4,5], employing dosage regimens similar to our own. To this end, the multiracial Asian experience presented here would be of great clinical interest, and may further facilitate worldwide licensing of IVIg for this purpose. Over a 3-year period, 12 consecutive patients were diagnosed with CIDP based on previously published clinical, electrophysiological and exclusion criteria [6]. None were previously treated with IVIg, corticosteriods or immunosuppresive agents. Functional disability was assessed with a similar inflammatory neuropathy cause and treatment (INCAT) disability score [6] before treatment and 20 weeks after. All patients received one of three available IVIg preparations, administered over 5 days, at a daily dose of 0.4 g/kg/ day [4,5]. The IVIg types were known to differ slightly in terms of purity and processing [7]. The clinical characteristics and treatment response data are summarized in Table 1. Of the 12 patients, 11 (92%) showed significant improvement in INCAT scores of 1 point or more (mean change: 3.4) at 20 weeks (paired t-test, P < 0.0001). There was significant negative correlation of duration of disease onset to treatment with the change in INCAT score (Pearson s correlation coefficient r = )0.66, P = 0.02), suggesting that earlier treatment resulted in greater improvement of clinical disability. In addition, no significant difference of change in INCAT score was demonstrated between the three types of IVIg (Kruskal–Wallis test, P = 0.98). On follow-up, two patients relapsed at
Strong localization of photons in certain disordered dielectric superlattices.

A new mechanism for strong Anderson localization of photons in carefully prepared disordered dielectric superlattices with an everywhere real positive dielectric constant is described. In three dimensions, two photon mobility edges separate high- and low-frequency extended states from an intermediate-frequency pseudogap of localized states arising from remnant geometric Bragg resonances. Experimentally observable consequences are discussed.
Short article: Language comprehenders retain implied shape and orientation of objects

According to theories of embodied cognition, language comprehenders simulate sensorimotor experiences to represent the meaning of what they read. Previous studies have shown that picture recognition is better if the object in the picture matches the orientation or shape implied by a preceding sentence. In order to test whether strategic imagery may explain previous findings, language comprehenders first read a list of sentences in which objects were mentioned. Only once the complete list had been read was recognition memory tested with pictures. Recognition performance was better if the orientation or shape of the object matched that implied by the sentence, both immediately after reading the complete list of sentences and after a 45-min delay. These results suggest that previously found match effects were not due to strategic imagery and show that details of sensorimotor simulations are retained over longer periods.
High activity of cubic PtRh alloys supported on graphene towards ethanol electrooxidation.

Cubic PtRh alloys supported on graphene (PtxRhy/GN) with different atomic ratio of Pt and Rh were directly synthesized for the first time using the modified polyol method with Br(-) for the shape-directing agents. The process didn't use surface-capping agents such as PVP that easily occupy the active sites of electrocatalysts and are difficult to remove. Graphene is the key factor for cubic shape besides Br(-) and keeping catalysts high-dispersed. The X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and transmission electron microscope (TEM) were used to characterize the structure and morphology of these electrocatalysts. The results showed that they were composed of homogeneous cubic PtRh alloys. Traditional electrochemical methods, such as cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry, were used to investigate the electrocatalytic properties of PtxRhy/GN towards ethanol electrooxidation. It can be seen that PtxRhy/GN with all atomic ratios exhibited high catalytic activity, and the most active one has a composition with Pt : Rh = 9 : 1 atomic ratio. Electrochemical in situ FTIR spectroscopy was used to evaluate the cleavage of C-C bond in ethanol at room temperature in acidic solutions, the results illustrated that Rh in an alloy can promote the split of C-C bond in ethanol, and the alloy catalyst with atomic ratio Pt : Rh = 1 : 1 showed obviously better performance for the C-C bond breaking in ethanol and higher selectivity for the enhanced activity of ethanol complete oxidation to CO2 than alloys with other ratios of Pt and Rh. The investigation indicates that high activity of PtxRhy/GN electrocatalyst towards ethanol oxidation is due to the specific shape of alloys and the synergistic effect of two metal elements as well as graphene support.