Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and Characterization of Improved NiTiPd High-Temperature Shape-Memory Alloys by Solid-Solution Strengthening and Thermomechanical Processing

The need for compact, solid-state actuation systems for use in the aerospace, automotive, and other transportation industries is currently motivating research in high-temperature shape-memory alloys (HTSMA) with transformation temperatures greater than 100 C. One of the basic high-temperature alloys investigated to fill this need is Ni(19.5)Ti(50.5)Pd30. Initial testing has indicated that this alloy, while having acceptable work characteristics, suffers from significant permanent deformation (or ratcheting) during thermal cycling under load. In an effort to overcome this deficiency, various solid-solution alloying and thermomechanical processing schemes were investigated. Solid-solution strengthening was achieved by substituting 5at% gold or platinum for palladium in Ni(19.5)Ti(50.5)Pd30, the so-called baseline alloy, to strengthen the martensite and austenite phases against slip processes and improve thermomechanical behavior. Tensile properties, work behavior, and dimensional stability during repeated thermal cycling under load for the ternary and quaternary alloys were compared. The relative difference in yield strength between the martensite and austenite phases and the dimensional stability of the alloy were improved by the quaternary additions, while work output was only minimally impacted. The three alloys were also thermomechanically processed by cycling repeatedly through the transformation range under a constant stress. This so-called training process dramatically improved the dimensional stability in these samples and also recovered the slight decrease in work output caused by quaternary alloying. An added benefit of the solid-solution strengthening was maintenance of enhanced dimensional stability of the trained material to higher temperatures compared to the baseline alloy, providing a greater measure of over-temperature capability.
The Design of Competitive Online Algorithms via a Primal-Dual Approach

The primal—dual method is a powerful algorithmic technique that has proved to be extremely useful for a wide variety of problems in the area of approximation algorithms for NP-hard problems. The method has its origins in the realm of exact algorithms, e.g., for matching and network flow. In the area of approximation algorithms, the primal—dual method has emerged as an important unifying design methodology, starting from the seminal work of Goemans and Williamson [60] We show in this survey how to extend the primal—dual method to the setting of online algorithms, and show its applicability to a wide variety of fundamental problems. Among the online problems that we consider here are the weighted caching problem, generalized caching, the set-cover problem, several graph optimization problems, routing, load balancing, and the problem of allocating ad-auctions. We also show that classic online problems such as the ski rental problem and the dynamic TCP-acknowledgement problem can be solved optimally using a simple primal—dual approach. The primal—dual method has several advantages over existing methods. First, it provides a general recipe for the design and analysis of online algorithms. The linear programming formulation helps detecting the difficulties of the online problem, and the analysis of the competitive ratio is direct, without a potential function appearing "out of nowhere. " Finally, since the analysis is done via duality, the competitiveness of the online algorithm is with respect to an optimal fractional solution, which can be advantageous in certain scenarios.
Meditation: its Tremendous Impact on Heart Rate Variability

The heart is connected through the nervous system directly to major organs and is able to sense their need. The heart also responds to adrenaline in the blood flowing through it. With these inputs the heart is able to adjust its rate to accommodate the needs of the whole body. By its heartbeat, it is able to broadcast a common signal to every cell. One measure of heart health is Heart Rate Variability (HRV). HRV is defined in terms of how different the lengths of time between each heart beat is. The greater the difference in times between heart beats, the healthier is the heart thought to be. Individuals may be able to learn to increase their own HRV and become healthier by a daily meditation practice. This paper uses Heart Variability as the base signal for studying the impact of meditation on it. The paper brings out the difference between pre and post meditation conditions in terms qualitative measure of Power Spectral Density (PSD) variations using Smoothed Pseudo Wigner Ville (SPWVD) distribution method. The simulations highlight the meditation effects overtime period in PSDs.
An unconventional approach in polymer wear: online vision system

Tribology which deals with the fundamental interaction of materials has robust link with morphological modification of contacting surfaces. Adequate information on morphological modification during surface interaction is essential for understanding the constructive nature of wear in polymer composites. This can be accomplished from the recent advancements in electronic imaging which aids to study the morphological modifications of moving surface at a micron scale. In the present research, polymer composite is tested against steel counter material under rolling/sliding contact. A high speed online vision system in conjunction with a reflected light bright field optical microscope is used to acquire micrographs during the testing process. The acquired real-time micrographs of contact surface are post processed in order to quantitatively estimate the changes incurred by the surface scars. Image processing techniques such as blur estimation, segmentation by local thresholding and grey scale granulometry were used for the quantitative estimate. The quantitative estimate of segmented regions from the values of grey scale granulometry represents the self-healing mechanism of polymer composite through resin back transfer phenomena. Also, it is evident from the micrographs that a substantial area of the contact surface is required for morphological investigations for analyzing the surface changes. It is evident from the present research that a combined approach with quantitative and qualitative analysis is an indispensable for wear surface investigations.
Sunshine or Shield?

How does the use of a secret vote affect the likelihood that legislators will punish their peers? Two contending arguments exist in the literature: some argue that secret voting may be prejudicial, while others argue that it may help accountability. We address this controversy by analyzing the case of the Brazilian Congress, which uses a sequential combination of open and secret voting procedures. We begin with a statistical analysis of the Congress that establishes some key parameters of variance. The results of this exercise are then used to populate an agent-based model of the Congress, which is used to simulate a variety of potential behaviors under diverse conditions. Agent-based modeling enables us to extend the discussion beyond the small-n of cases available in the real world, demonstrating that slight changes in parameters can lead to very large changes in the overall effect of voting procedure. Modeling voting behaviors under different conditions, we conclude that both arguments about secret voting may hold true, and that the effects of the type of vote – open or secret – will be contingent on factors such as the power of the accused politician, the composition of the voting body, and the publicity given to the accusations.
TOOTH REPLICATION TECHNIQUES, SEM IMAGING AND MICROWEAR ANALYSIS IN PRIMATES: METHODOLOGICAL OBSTACLES

Dental microwear analyses are among the most significant techniques through which a researcher can make dietary and ecological inferences from primate fossil specimens. Hard particles, such as plant phytoliths or silica-base sands, can scratch tooth enamel surfaces during food mastication producing a dietary specific pattern of microwear on the enamel surface. The density, axis length and orientation of microwear features, either striations or pits, are highly informative of dietary habits in both extant and fossil primates. The analysis of tooth enamel surfaces requires the use of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques, because of its high resolution power, including gold-coating of teeth for observation. Problems arise when specimens to be analysed are unique and there is no possibility of a direct observation with an environmental microscope. Negative moulds must then be made and silicone-base components are indicated for high quality replication of enamel surfaces. A positive cast needs to be obtained, and epoxy-base resins are frequently used for their good quality and durability. However, successive silicon and epoxy replications result in the loosing of surface detail and precision. Surface observation errors can also be caused be the SEM technology itself, especially if back-scattered electrons are used instead of secondary electrons for maximizing the topographical information of enamel images. This paper reviews the most commonly used methodological approaches to tooth moulding and casting, comparing SEM micrographs of casts with actual tooth surfaces, and contrasting the reliability of SEM images for dietary interpretation of tooth microwear in both extant and fossil primates.
Hulless Barley – A Rediscovered Source for Functional Foods Phytochemical Profile and Soluble Dietary Fibre Content in Naked Barley Varieties and Their Antioxidant Properties

The beginning of agriculture is dated back to 10,000 years ago in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Near East. Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the cereal founder crops and it is believed that first plant domestication took place within the Fertile Crescent (Lev-Yadun et al., 2000). Hordeum vulgare L. subsp. spontaneum (wild barley) is said to be the ancestor of today’s barley. The spread of barley most likely started in present-day Israel, northern Syria, southern Turkey, eastern Iraq and western Iran. With the movement of civilizations accompanied by the establishment of trade routes the use and cultivation of barley reached Europe. Barley was a popular food in ancient Greece and Italy and used as an ingredient for preparing porridge or unleavened bread. Greek and Roman scholars such as Hippocrates or Pliney the Elder, respectively, considered barley as a healthy and nourishing food and barley gained as well recognition for medical treatments. In the ancient Rome, gladiators believed that barley could increase strength and stamina and thus preferred it to other cereals. Barley reached Spain around 5,000 BC and spread then over today’s Germany and France. Indications of domestication of barley on the British Isles date back until 3,000 BC and one millennium later, barley was introduced to Northern Europe. Probably due to the nourishing properties and the ruggedness of the crop, barley became a major food especially for poor people throughout history (Newman & Newman, 2005).
RT : RADIOACTIVE-RETARDATION-REACTION-TRANSPORT- PROGRAM FOR THE SIMULATION OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE

We present a software-tool for the simulation of a transport and reaction model for a potential waste scenarios of a radioactive waste-disposals. We introduce the complex model for the transport-, reactionand sorption-processes. The model is based on systems of linear convection-diffusiondispersion-reaction equations with equilibrium sorption. The discretisation is done with finite volume discretisation and a reconstruction with higher order polynoms. The convection-reaction term is explicit discretised with embedded analytical solutions. The diffusion-dispersion-term is discretised with implicit methods and the solvers use the BiCGStab with multi-grid methods. We focus us to the simulation of a 2d and 3d test case which we present with different gridand time-step-refinements. The potential waste scenario for 2d and 3d is discussed. At the end we will discuss the further works.
Plasma N-terminal proatrial natriuretic peptide concentration in cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

ii Acknowledgements . iv Table of Contents . v List of Figures . vi List of Abbreviations . vii Introduction . 1 Chapter I: Literature Review . 4 I. Atrial Natriuretic Peptide . 4 A. Introduction . 4 B. ANP Synthesis and release . 5 C. Natriuretic peptide receptors . 6 D. Physiologic actions of ANP . 8 II. Diastolic function, dysfunction and HCM 9 A. Diastolic function 10 B. Diastolic dysfunction and HCM . 16 III: Neurohormonal activity & cardiac disease . 20 Chapter II: Plasma N-terminal proatrial natriuretic peptide concentration in cats with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. 25 A. Abstract . 25 B. Introduction . 27 C. Materials and methods . 28 D. Results . 33 E. Discussion . 34 Chapter III: Conclusions . 40 Footnotes . 41 References . 42 Appendix I: Figures . 47 Figure 1 . 47 Figure 2 . 48 Figure 3 . 49 Figure 4 . 50 Vita . 51
Activity of Microfinance Institutions in the Period of the Global Financial Crisis

The article examines the models of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and some alterations in this field. The regional distribution of MFIs has been shown, as well as their main ties with the real economy against a background of commercial banks. The study also provide some findings on the influence of the financial crisis, which erupted in the late 2007, on the microfinance sector. Therefore, the author analyzed the literature and quantitative data in order to determine these relationships.
teEther: Gnawing at Ethereum to Automatically Exploit Smart Contracts

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin not only provide a decentralized currency, but also provide a programmatic way to process transactions. Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency next to Bitcoin, is the first to provide a Turing-complete language to specify transaction processing, thereby enabling so-called smart contracts. This provides an opportune setting for attackers, as security vulnerabilities are tightly intertwined with financial gain. In this paper, we consider the problem of automatic vulnerability identification and exploit generation for smart contracts. We develop a generic definition of vulnerable contracts and use this to build TEE THER, a tool that allows creating an exploit for a contract given only its binary bytecode. We perform a large-scale analysis of all 38,757 unique Ethereum contracts, 815 out of which our tool finds working exploits for—completely automated.
An Improved K-Means Algorithm for Gene Expression Data Clustering

— Data mining technique used in the field of clustering is a subject of active research and assists in biological pattern recognition and extraction of new knowledge from raw data. Clustering means the act of partitioning an unlabeled dataset into groups of similar objects. Each group, called a cluster, consists of objects that are similar between themselves and dissimilar to objects of other groups. Several clustering methods are based on partitional clustering. This category attempts to directly decompose the dataset into a set of disjoint clusters leading to an integer number of clusters that optimizes a given criterion function. The criterion function may emphasize a local or a global structure of the data, and its optimization is an iterative relocation procedure. The K-Means algorithm is one of the most widely used partitional clustering techniques. Since K-Means is extremely sensitive to the initial choice of centers and a poor choice of centers may lead to a local optimum that is quite inferior to the global optimum, we propose a strategy to initiate K-Means centers. The improved K-Means algorithm is compared with the original K-Means, and the results prove how the efficiency has been significantly improved.
Title : Optimized arrays for 2-D cross-borehole electrical tomography surveys

The use of optimized arrays generated using the ‘Compare R’ method for cross-borehole resistivity measurements is examined in this paper. We compare the performances of two array optimization algorithms, one that maximizes the model resolution and another that minimizes the point spread value. Although both algorithms give similar results, the model resolution maximization algorithm is several times faster. A study of the point spread function plots for a cross-borehole survey shows that the model resolution within the central zone surrounded by the borehole electrodes is much higher than near the bottom end of the boreholes. Tests with synthetic and experimental data show that the optimized arrays generated by the ‘Compare R’ method have significantly better resolution that a ‘standard’ measurement sequence used in previous surveys. The resolution of the optimized arrays is less if arrays with both current (or both potential) electrodes in the same borehole are excluded. However, they are still better than the ‘standard’ arrays.
ISI Mitigation in Image Data for Wireless Wideband Communications Receivers using Adjustment of Estimated Flat Fading Errors

We first build up a wireless communication simulator including Gray coding, modulation, different channel models (AWGN, flat fading and frequency selective fading channels), channel estimation, adaptive equalization, and demodulation. Next, we test the effect of different channel models to the data and image in receiver with constellation and BER (bit error rate) plots under QPSK modulation. For Image data source, we also compare the received image quality to original image in different channels. At last, we give detail results and analyses of the performance improvement with channel estimation and adaptive equalization in slow Rayleigh fading channel. For frequency selective fading channel, we use linear equalization with both LMS (least mean squares) and RLS (Recursive Least Squares) algorithms to compare the different improvements. We will see that in AWGN channel, the image is degraded by random noise; in flat fading channel, the image is degraded by random noise and block noise; in frequency selective fading channel, the image is degraded by random noise, block noise, and ISI.
Lipoarabinomannan branching and Th cell differentiation

1 School of Biosciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK; 2 Health and Sciences Research Institute, University of Minho and ICVS/3B’s PT Government Associate Laboratory, Braga/Guimarães, Portugal; 3 Institute for Biotechnology 1, Research Centre Juelich, D-52425 Juelich, Germany; 4 CNRS, IPBS (Institut de Pharmacologie et de Biologie Structurale), Toulouse, France; 5 Université de Toulouse, UPS, IPBS, Toulouse, France; 6 Department of Medical Microbiology and Infection Control, VU University Medical Center, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Gene Collector V 1 . 1 : a user-friendly bilingual gene data mining software

The amount of available biological information in public databases has grown, and in an exponential manner. In the light of this growth, scientists’ data analysis requirements have rapidly changed. We developed a computer software capable of capturing and summarizing information about a gene set from public databases. “Gene Collector v.1. 1” is a bilingual data mining tool to aid in biomedical researches and also useful for educational uses. Using NCBI and Ensembl IDs as input, it is capable of gathering information on nomenclature (official symbol, aliases and full name), species, location (band, coordinates and strand), number of alternative transcripts and gene product type. The data set can be downloaded as a spreadsheet or as a local database. Some obtained parameters are summarized in a simple report. Using the program’s output, further analyses can be performed aiming to answer specific biological questions, making useful links with other bioinformatic tools.
The efficacy, safety & outcomes of laparoscopic pyelolithotomy (retroperitoneoscopic pyelolithotomy) and its comparison with percutaneous nephrolithotomy

Objective: The aim of the study was to compare the safety, efficacy & outcomes of laparoscopic pyelolithotomy (RPPL) and its comparison with percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL ) for the management of single large (> 2.0 cm ) renal pelvic calculus. Methods: This study was performed from May 2009 to March 2012 at S.N. Medical College and Hospital, Agra (INDIA). It included two groups of patients with large renal pelvic stones; only patients with stones 2.0 cm or greater were included. Group1 included 18 patients treated By RPPL and Group 2 included 20 patients treated by the PNL. Differences between the two procedures were compared and analyzed. Results: There was no difference between the two groups regarding patient demographics and stone size. The mean stone size in RPPL and PCNL group were 3.7 & 3.90 cm respectively. There were one conversion to open surgery in RPPL group.The mean operative time was significantly longer in Group 2 (RPPL) 145.88 35.54 vs. 76.2 9.21 min p ? 0.005) respectively. The blood loss was 180.2563. 28 ml in RPPL as compared to 150.534. 06 ml in PCNL group (p value NS). The mean hospital stay was 4.5 and 3.5 day in RPPL & PCNL group respectively. There is no residual stone in both group and no need of blood transfusion in post operative period. Conclusion: Retroperitotoneoscopic pyelolithotomy was associated with longer operating time,more invasive & less cosmetic, require more analgesia, had more blood loss as compared to PCNL.While patients undergo PCNL had shorter hospital stay & rapid return to normal activity & more cost effective as compared to RPPL.
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

Today, there exists a growing number of publicly available HRTF datasets, with each set often proposing a unique variation on the spatial discretization measurement grid. These various grids, typically determined by the mechanical system employed, result in datasets which are not directly comparable or exploitable. To alleviate the limitation of incompatible grids and assist in the adaptation of measurements performed on one grid to another, facilitating the inter-exchange of HRTF sets, a fixed radius HRTF interpolation method is proposed. The approach is based on a decomposition of the sound field using spherical harmonics, allowing for a global spatial recomposition. A high spatial density HRTF was used as a test case for evaluating the interpolation method, and a series of measures are employed to quantitatively compare the quality of the interpolation as theoretical laws.
Hand gesture classification using 24 GHz FMCW dual polarised radar

All rights reserved. This paper evaluates the classification performance of a dual polarised on receive, 24 GHz Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar system to autonomously identify micro-Doppler signatures of unique hand gestures. We employ an Eigen subspace feature selection technique on the calculated signal subspace in order to classify each gesture. Measurements using the dual polarised radar, permitting simultaneous recording of both the co-pol and cross-pol returns, are evaluated with this processing technique and results are reported herein. Our analysis displays the challenges presented by the high variance in individuals gestures and the limited additional information the cross polarised returns have provided to the classifier. Classification performance comparisons are presented when co, cross and dual polarised data are provided to the classifier. With this technique we achieve autonomous classification performance of up to 84.6% when Eigenvalue derived features are used for classification.