Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulation of Photonic Band Gap Waveguides in Lead-Lanthanum Zirconate-Titanate

Simulations of photonic crystals slabs (PCSs) in thin films of lead-lanthanum zirconate-titanate (PLZT) show band gaps larger than 27 % of the mid-gap frequency for a hexagonal hole-type photonic crystal. The vertical asymmetry caused by the introduction of electrode and buffer layers in a thin film stack, required for epitaxial growth on silicon, does not appreciably affect the photonic crystal properties. Waveguides can be formed in the PCS by removing rows of holes from the crystal lattice. We find that the propagation losses in such waveguide are strongly affected by the thickness and optical attenuation coefficient of the electrode layer, and that the transmission through a 60 degree waveguide bend can be substantially increased by introduction of additional defects.
Reduced-Scale-Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation of an Innovative Subway

An innovative subway has been proposed using super capacitors as the main energy source. Different steps have been defined in order to check the performance of this new supply system on a real subway. In this paper, a reduced-scale hardware-in-the-loop simulation is presented for initial experimental validations on a reduced-power experimental setup. Special attention is paid to reproducing torque, acceleration, and jerk limitations of the real system.
Enhanced resistance of mice to bacterial infection induced by recombinant human interleukin-1a

The effect of recombinant human interleukin-1a on the survival rate of Std-ddY male mice systemically infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa 12 or Klebsiella pneumoniae P-5709 was evaluated. In P. aeruginosa infection, interleukin-1a given intramuscularly twice, 3 days and 1 day before inoculation of bacteria, most effectively protected animals from death due to infection. The effect was dose dependent, with a maximum survival rate of 92.5% at 10 micrograms per mouse, while only 8.3% of the control group survived until the end of the observation period. The 50% effective dose of interleukin-1a was 0.261 microgram per mouse. In K. pneumoniae infection, interleukin-1a given intramuscularly twice, simultaneously with and 1 day after the inoculation of bacteria, was most effective. The protective effect of interleukin-1a was again dose dependent and was generally more marked than in P. aeruginosa infection. The 50% effective dose was 0.034 microgram per mouse. In both infections, there was no significant increase in the survival rates of animals injected with human albumin or heat-inactivated interleukin-1a. These observations raise the possibility that human interleukin-1a could serve as a therapeutic tool for patients with bacterial infections.
Design and performance of an efficient rectenna incorporating a fractal structure

We present an efficient rectenna capable of harvesting ambient radio frequency energy to obtain utilizable direct current power at a frequency of 2.45 GHz. The rectifying antenna incorporates a fractal structure at its antenna section. The unique space‐filling property of fractals is implemented to develop an antenna with a significant size reduction. A Sierpinski carpet, which is a simple and effective fractal design, is edge‐fed and iterated up to the 3rd order. The received signal from the 2nd‐order fractal iterated patch antenna is rectified using a rectifier circuit that uses an HSMS 8202 (Avago Technologies, California, USA) diode. The realized rectenna has the capacity to exhibit a maximum efficiency of 57% at an input power level of 20 dBm. Simulations for the fractal iterated patch antennas and rectifier circuit are performed in Ansoft HFSS, Ver. 10 (Ansys, Canonsburg, USA) and ADS (Agilent Technologies, Mississauga, Canada), respectively. The simulated antenna and rectenna are experimentally tested to verify the simulation results. The simulation and experimental results for the antenna and rectenna design are found to be in good agreement with each other. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Probabilistic Modeling of Photo Voltaic Modules and Wind Power Generation Impact on Distribution Networks

The rapid growth in use of renewable intermittent energy resources, like wind turbines (WTs) and solar panels, in distribution networks has increased the need for having an accurate and efficient method of handling the uncertainties associated with these technologies. In this paper, the unsymmetrical two point estimate method (US2PEM) is used to handle the uncertainties of renewable energy resources. The uncertainty of intermittent generation of WT, photo voltaic cells, and also electric loads, as input variables, are taken into account. The variation of active losses and imported power from the main grid are defined as output variables. The US2PEM is compared to symmetrical two point estimate method, Gram-Charlier method, and Latin hypercube sampling method, where Monte Carlo simulation is used as a basis for comparison. The validity of the proposed method is examined by applying it on a standard radial 9-node distribution network and a realistic 574-node distribution network.
Supplier Selection Problem: Integrating Grey Relational Analysis and TOPSIS

Many processes are involved in managing the supply chain to expedite the flow of information and materials. The Supply Chain Council developed a Supply Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR) as a cross-industry reference model for supply chain management, which identifies five major supply chain process: plan, source, make, deliver, and return. One of the subprocesses in the source process is identifying suppliers. In modern management, a company tries to establish a long-term relationship with its supplier to ensure its stable source and therefore evaluating supplier has become even more critical than ever in gaining strategic advantage in supply chain management. In this paper, we going to propose a supplier evaluation model based on grey relational analysis and TOPSIS which have been extensively applied in various fields including decision making.
Lentiviral vectors pseudotyped with envelope glycoproteins derived from gibbon ape leukemia virus and murine leukemia virus 10A1.

Lentiviral vectors pseudotyped with the envelope glycoproteins (Env) of amphotropic murine leukemia virus (MLV) and the G protein of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-G) have been successfully used in recent preclinical gene therapy studies. We report here the generation of infectious HIV-1-derived vector particles pseudotyped with the Env of the molecular clone 10A1 of MLV and with chimeric envelope glycoprotein variants derived from gibbon ape leukemia virus (GaLV) and MLV. Formation of infectious HIV-1 (GaLV) pseudotype vectors was only possible with the substitution of the cytoplasmic tail of GaLV Env with that of MLV. The lentiviral vectors exhibited a host cell range identical with that of MLV(GaLV) and MLV(10A1) vectors, which are known to enter cells either via the GaLV-receptor Glvr-1 (Pit-1) or via the amphotropic receptor Ram-1 (Pit-2) in addition to Glvr-1, respectively. Thus, HIV-1(GaLV) and HIV-1(10A1) pseudotype vectors may be useful for efficient gene transfer into a variety of human tissues like primary human hematopoietic cells.
The Pseudomonas aeruginosa pilK gene encodes a chemotactic methyltransferase (CheR) homologue that is translationally regulated

A new locus, designated pilK, located immediately adjacent to the previously described Pseudomonas aeruginosa pilG–J gene cluster, has been identified. Sequence analysis of a 1.3 kb region revealed the presence of a single open reading frame of 291 amino acid residues (Mr, 33 338) that contained significant homology to the chemotactic methyltransferase proteins of Escherichia coli. Bacillus subtilis and the gliding bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. The 60 bp pilJ–pilK intergenic region was devoid of promoter consensus sequences, suggesting that pilj and pilK are contained within the same transcriptional unit. The intergenic region did contain, however, a large, highly GC‐rich, inverted repeat that prevented PilK production in expression studies. To investigate the regulatory role of these sequences, pilK‐lacZ gene fusions, as well as derivatives containing sequence alterations in the potential stem‐loop region, were constructed and analysed in E. coli and P. aeruginosa. Modification of the inverted repeat region in pilK‐lacZ protein fusion constructs resulted in as much as a 24'fold increase in β‐galactosidase activity, whereas similar modifications in pilK‐lacZ transcriptional fusions had only a marginal effect on β‐galactosidase levels. These results indicated that PilK production may be largely regulated at the level of translation. In stark contrast to pilG‐J mutants, which are dramatically impaired in pilus production and/or function, a PAO1 pilK deletion mutant was indistinguishable from the wild type. In addition, complementation studies suggested that the PilK and E. coli CheR proteins are not functionally interchangeable.
Predictive model for incident occurrences in steel plant in India

Steel industry is considered to be an economic sector with higher number of accidents. Workers in this industry are exposed to a wide variety of hazards during working hours. Thus, the database maintained in industry varies in terms of the types of data indicating nature of accidents, causes of accidents, date and time-stamp etc. The objective of this study is to give predictive solution of accident occurrences in a steel industry based on free-text data or narratives logged in the database from previous incidents report. Utilizing the database comprised of 9488 observations of occupational accidents during the year 2010 to 2013 in an integrated steel manufacturing plant in India, text mining technique has been used, and its outputs have been fed into three classifiers namely Support Vector Machines, Random Forest, and Maximum Entropy which are tested for the evaluation of best fit model that could predict the injury occurrences in workplace. Furthermore, with the help of the same three classifiers, the causes of injuries are also predicted. Maximum Entropy and Random Forest classifiers are found out to be the best of all other classifiers in terms of higher area under curve (AUC) value in binary and multi-class prediction model, respectively.
Human antigen‐presenting cell/tumour cell hybrids stimulate strong allogeneic responses and present tumour‐associated antigens to cytotoxic T cells in vitro

Most tumours do not stimulate effective antitumour immune responses in vivo. In order to enhance the immunogenicity of human tumour cells, we fused a variety of tumour cell lines with an Epstein–Barr virus transformed B‐lymphoblastoid cell line (EBV B‐LCL) in vitro, to produce stable hybrid cells. Hybrid cell lines showed a marked increase in their ability to stimulate primary allogeneic T‐cell responses in vitro, as compared with the parent tumour cells. The hybrid cells induced proliferation of naive (CD45RA+) as well as memory (CD45RO+) T lymphocytes, and both CD4+ and CD8+ subpopulations of T cells were directly stimulated. The stimulatory hybrids expressed human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class I and II, and a wide range of surface accessory molecules, including the T‐cell co‐stimulatory ligand molecules CD40, CD80 (B7.1) and CD86 (B7.2), the expression of which was required for optimal stimulation of T‐cell responses. Fusion of the EBVB‐LCL with a melanoma cell line (518.A2) yielded hybrid cells that expressed the melanoma‐associated antigens MAGE‐1 and MAGE‐3, and presented these antigens to antigen‐specific, HLA class I‐restricted cytotoxic T‐lymphocyte clones with greater efficiency than the parent melanoma cell line. These findings suggest that the generation of human antigen‐presenting cell/tumour cell hybrids offers promise as an approach to cancer immunotherapy.
Feasibility study for a new high resolution Thomson scattering system for the ASDEX Upgrade pedestal

A new Thomson scattering diagnostic is proposed for the study of fast plasma dynamics in the pedestal of ASDEX Upgrade. The diagnostic will measure electron temperature and density profiles over a ~ 3 cm wide area in the edge transport barrier region, with ~ 1? 2 mm spatial resolution and ~ 10 kHz sampling rate. A challenging goal of the project is the study of the bootstrap current in the plasma pedestal by measuring the distortion and shift of the electron distribution along the toroidal direction. Expected spatial and time resolutions of the current density measurements are ~ 3 mm and ~ 1 ms correspondingly. The new diagnostic will be used to study the fast dynamic behaviour of the pedestal bootstrap current, where models indicate that it plays a key role in regulating edge stability, e.g. during ELMs. The diagnostic design is based on the intra-cavity multi-pass system currently in operation in TEXTOR, which uses a probing ruby laser, a grating spectrometer and two fast CMOS cameras for scattered light detection, and has achieved measuring accuracies of the order of ~ 1% for ne and ~ 2% for Te. Parts of that system will be reused in ASDEX Upgrade (some with significant modifications), but the laser multi-pass and light collection systems are entirely redesigned. Restrictions in space and line-of-sight availability have led to the adoption of a design which uses in-vessel multi-pass mirrors and light collection optics, requiring a number of innovative technical solutions to permit remote laser alignment and light collection. We give an overview of the project, discuss the underlying physics basis and present a number of technical solutions employed.
Molecular Characterization of Malassezia Species Isolated from Dog with and Without Otitis and Seborrhoeic Dermatitis

3 Abstract: The lipophilic yeasts of the genus Malassezia are opportunistic microorganisms of the skin microflora, but they can be agents of various dermatomycoses. In this study, random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR technique was applied to the genetic typing of Malassezia species isolated from dog with otitis and seborrhoeic dermatitis and healthy dog. The analysis of electrophoretic profiles on 1/5% agarose gel showed a total 890 clearly amplified PCR band in 176 different positions. The phenogram constructed from the pairwise similarity among all Malassezia isolates demonstrated that the tested isolates of Malassezia are grouped into 22 distinct groups. This study was able to assess some DNA polymorphism of different Malassezia isolates in dogs. The detection of these differences between the RAPD band patterns from dogs observed could facilitate the monitoring of spread and pathogenicity of Malassezia infections in these animals.
CliffGuard : An Extended Report ∗

A fundamental problem in database systems is choosing the best physical design, i.e., a small set of auxiliary structures that enable the fastest execution of future queries. Almost all commercial databases come with designer tools that create a number of indices or materialized views (together comprising the physical design) that they exploit during query processing. Existing designers are what we call nominal; that is, they assume that their input parameters are precisely known and equal to some nominal values. For instance, since future workload is often not known a priori, it is common for these tools to optimize for past workloads in hopes that future queries and data will be similar. In practice, however, these parameters are often noisy or missing. Since nominal designers do not take the influence of such uncertainties into account, they find designs that are sub-optimal and remarkably brittle. Often, as soon as the future workload deviates from the past, their overall performance falls off a cliff. Thus, we propose a new type of database designer that is robust against parameter uncertainties, so that overall performance degrades more gracefully when future workloads deviate from the past. Users express their risk tolerance by deciding on how much nominal optimality they are willing to trade for attaining their desired level of robustness against uncertain situations. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to adopt the recent breakthroughs in robust optimization theory to build a practical framework for solving one of the most fundamental problems in databases, replacing today’s brittle designs with robust designs that guarantee a predictable and consistent performance.
Comparative study of different hill climbing MPPT through simulation and experimental test bed

Hill climbing MPPT technique is commonly used in photovoltaic systems in order to achieve maximum power from it. Due to the massive numbers of the MPPT techniques in this field, it becomes essential to find and verify the most effective, simplest and reliable technique to be used. In this paper comparative studies of two different climbing MPPTs that are conventional perturb and observe and modified perturb and observe has been performed. The paper verifies their tracking performance through calculations. Simulations are also performed using MATLAB SIMULINK and results are analyzed. In addition, hardware implementation has been carried out which verifies simulation results. This study should serve as a strong evidence for practical feasibility of the modified perturb and observe method for MPPT.
Culture and Social Distance: A Case Study of Methodological Cautions

Abstract The authors presented, as a case study of methodological challenges in cross-cultural research, E. S. Bogardus's (1925) Social Distance Scale, which requires respondents to indicate the social distance between themselves and others. The meaningfulness of the scale depends on the assumption that respondents believe that the magnitude of social distance increases as one moves through the social categories of family member, friend, neighbor, coworker, and citizen. The authors tested this assumption for English Canadian, French Canadian, Jewish, Indian, Algerian, and Greek participants, all 1st-generation immigrants in Montreal. The participants rated their willingness to associate with members of each of the other ethnic groups in 5 social categories. The percentage of respondents in each sample whose data conformed to the prediction ranged from 63.7% to 98.0%, with English Canadian, French Canadian, and Jewish respondents providing responses most consistent with the predicted pattern. The Indian and Algerian respondents' data were the least consistent with the predicted pattern, especially when rating members of their own ethnic groups.
Pharmacokinetics, dosimetry, and toxicity of the targetable atomic generator, 225Ac-HuM195, in nonhuman primates.

UNLABELLED Short-lived alpha-emitting isotopes individually conjugated to monoclonal antibodies have now reached human use, but little is still known about their toxicity. Use of antibody targetable (225)Ac nanogenerators is a new approach in the field of alpha-immunotherapy offering the advantage of a 10-d half-life (t(1/2)) and increased potency due to generation of 3 new atoms, yielding a total of 4 alpha-particles. However, the 3 alpha-emitting daughter elements generated have the potential for significant toxicity as these nuclides are no longer bound to the carrier IgG. METHODS Cynomolgus monkeys were used to evaluate the toxicity of prototype (225)Ac nanogenerators. Monoclonal antibody HuM195 (anti-CD33) is the carrier for planned human clinical trials of (225)Ac; there are no CD33 sites in cynomolgus monkeys. In one experiment, 2 monkeys received a single intravenous dose of (225)Ac-HuM195 at 28 kBq/kg. This dose level is approximately the planned initial human dose. In another experiment, 2 animals received a dose escalation schedule of 3 increasing (225)Ac-HuM195 doses with a cumulative activity of 377 kBq/kg. The whole-blood t(1/2) of (225)Ac, ratios of (225)Ac to its ultimate alpha-emitting daughter nuclide (213)Bi, generation of monkey anti-HuM195 antibodies (MAHA), hematologic indices, serum biochemistries, and clinical parameters were measured. Monkeys were euthanized and examined histopathologically when the dose escalation reached toxicity. RESULTS The blood t(1/2) of (225)Ac-HuM195 was 12 d, and 45% of generated (213)Bi daughters were cleared from the blood. MAHA production was not detected. Approximately 28 kBq/kg of (225)Ac caused no toxicity at 6 mo, whereas a cumulative dose of approximately 377 kBq/kg caused severe toxicity. In the cumulative dosing schedule, single doses of approximately 37 kBq/kg resulted in no toxicity at 6 wk. After approximately 130 kBq/kg were administered, no toxicity was observed for 13 wk. However, 28 wk after this second dose administration, mild anemia and increases of blood urea nitrogen and creatinine were detected. After administration of an additional 185 kBq/kg, toxicity became clinically apparent. Monkeys were euthanized 13 and 19 wk after the third dose administration (cumulative dose was 377 kBq/kg). Histopathologic evaluation revealed mainly renal tubular damage associated with interstitial fibrosis. CONCLUSION (225)Ac nanogenerators may result in renal toxicity and anemia at high doses. The longer blood t(1/2) and the lack of target cell antigens in cynomolgus monkeys may increase toxicity compared with human application. Therefore, a dose level of at least 28 kBq/kg may be a safe starting dose in humans. Hematologic and renal function will require close surveillance during clinical trials.
THE MODULATION OF REWARD TO NICOTINE AND ETHANOL BY SEX AND STAGE OF EXPOSURE

Tobacco and alcohol are among the most widely used and abused drugs in America, resulting in disastrous health consequences and a massive resource drain on society. Nicotine (the primary reinforcing component in tobacco) and alcohol are often used together, though there is limited research on exposure to both drugs at the same time. The present study attempted to fill this gap in knowledge by examining the reward for a cocktail of nicotine and alcohol in male and female Long-Evans rats with differing histories of drug exposure. The conditioned place preference paradigm was used to examine the effects of sex as well as the different histories of prenatal and/or adolescent drug exposure on reward for the cocktail. There was a main effect of sex on reward, with males showing a conditioned place preference for the cocktail and females showing no preference. Additional measures of locomotor activity induced by the drug cocktail differed depending on adolescent nicotine exposure, with rats having a previous history of nicotine exhibiting greater total distance travelled after receiving the cocktail. Results of the study indicate a possible moderating role of nicotine with alcohol co-exposure, and suggest that future studies should modify the exposure paradigm to better examine this potential role.