Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Implementation of a Wireless Underwater Video Link

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are increasingly being considered for remotely supervised missions, primarily for routine subsea inspection tasks currently performed by tethered remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). This project is a step in the development of a high speed, networked wireless communication capability for AUVs using MIT Sea Grant's softwaredefined Reconfigurable Modem (R-Modem) acoustic communications platform. We have demonstrated a test implementation of live streaming video with a digital camera connected to an R-Modem transceiver; and explored a range of tuning parameters for the video link. Thesis Supervisor: Professor Chryssostomos Chryssostomidis Department of Mechanical Engineering Director, MIT Sea Grant Program Thesis Co-Supervisor: Dr. Milica Stojanovic Principal Research Scientist MIT Sea Grant Program
Effect of Ag Alloying on Microstructure, Mechanical and Electrical Properties of NiAl Intermetallic Compound

In this paper, the effects of Ag on microstructure, mechanical and electrical properties of NiAl intermetallic compound were investigated. The present results show that the NiAl-Ag alloys consisted of two phases: beta-NiAl and Ag-rich solid solution. The amount of the Ag-rich phase increased with increasing Ag content. Ag has very low solubility in NiAl and they form pseudo-binary monotectic systems. The addition of 0.5-1at. % Ag to NiAl increased its strength while the addition of more than 1at. % Ag decreased its strength. The strengthening and weakening effects come from solid solution hardening and second ductile phase softening. In addition, Ag alloying can improve NiAl's room temperature compressive ductility. The NiAl-Ag alloy has high hardness and electrical conductivity that make it an attractive candidate for electrical contact material. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Measles Virus Infects and Suppresses Proliferation of T Lymphocytes from Transgenic Mice Bearing Human Signaling Lymphocytic Activation Molecule

ABSTRACT Humans are the only natural reservoir of measles virus (MV), one of the most contagious viruses known. MV infection and the profound immunosuppression it causes are currently responsible for nearly one million deaths annually. Human signaling lymphocytic activation molecule (hSLAM) was identified as a receptor for wild-type MV as well as for MV strains prepared as vaccines. To better evaluate the role of hSLAM in MV pathogenesis and MV-induced immunosuppression, we created transgenic (tg) mice that expressed the hSLAM molecule under the control of the lck proximal promoter. hSLAM was expressed on CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in the blood and spleen and also on CD4+, CD8+, CD4+ CD8+, and CD4− CD8− thymocytes. Wild-type MV, after limited passage on B95-8 marmoset B cells, and the Edmonston laboratory strain of MV infected hSLAM-expressing cells. There was a direct correlation between the amount of hSLAM expressed on the cells' surface and the degree of viral infection. Additionally, MV infection induced downregulation of receptor hSLAM and inhibited cell division and proliferation of hSLAM+ but not hSLAM− T cells. Therefore, these tg mice provide the opportunity for analyzing and comparing MV-T cell interactions and MV pathogenesis in cells expressing only the hSLAM MV receptor with those of tg mice whose T cells selectively express another MV receptor, CD46.
Dietary Inflammatory Index and Recurrence of Depressive Symptoms

There is a growing interest in understanding the role of inflammation in the diet–depression relationship. The present study examined whether the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII; a measure of the inflammatory potential of individuals’ diets) is associated with recurrent depressive symptoms (DepS) (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale score > 16 or taking antidepressants both at baseline and follow-up) assessed over 5 years in middle-aged men (n = 3,178) and women (n = 1,068) from the Whitehall II Study. For each increment of 1 SD of DII score, odds of recurrent DepS increased by 66% (95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.30, 2.12]) in women, whereas no significant association between DII and recurrent DepS was observed in men (odds ratio [OR] = 1.12; 95% CI = [0.92, 1.36]). This association was little attenuated after adjustment for confounders and after taking into account levels of interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein. In conclusion, there is an association between proinflammatory diet and recurrent DepS in women that seems to not be driven by circulating inflammatory markers.
INFORMATION SYSTEMS THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

Some basic concepts concerning information systems are defined and investigated. With every information system a query language is associated and its syntax and semantics is formally defined. Some elementary properties of the query language are stated. The presented approach leads to a new information systems organization. The presented idea was implemented and the implementation shows many advantages compared with other methods. UVTRODUCTION This paper reports part of the activities of the Information Systems Group in Warsaw. We proposed and investigated in this Group a certain mathematical model for attribute based information systems. This model was first published by Pawlak[l] and extended by Marek and Pawlak[2]. In this report we use somewhat a new formulation of the discussed model and state some new problems. The idea of an information system investigated in this report is slightly related to that of Codd [3], Salton[4] and Wang and Chiang[S], however there are essential differences between them. In our approach in contrary to [4] and [5] the query language is formally introduced and extensively investigated. The language plays also an essential role in the approach of Cherniavsky and Schneiderl61, where not the data model but a data information language (extended first order language) is the departure point of an information systems study and implementation. In our approach we try link both mentioned views together. Formal definition of syntax and semantics of a query language is introduced in this approach-which offers deeper insight and understanding of phenomena involved in information processing, and provide facilities for using standard logical methods in this area. For example in the relational model, the query language is not defined precisely, there is no formal definition of the semantics what causes that some basic notions are obscure in this approach. The functional dependency of attributes is another good example to trace the differences between our approach and relational model. In both models data are arranged into tables. The columns are marked by attributes , and each column contains values of an attribute marking that column. Each such a table defines also all functional dependencies between attributes and this fact is a departure point of our definition of functional dependency, whereas in relational model some initial functional dependencies are assumed to be valid-independently from the database-on the basis of the knowledge about the real world. This may, however, lead to contradiction, that is to say, preassumed dependencies may be not consistant with …
The Frequency of Perioperative Vision Loss

The frequency of perioperative vision loss, especially for spinal surgery, has been increasing recently. We undertook a retrospective study to determine the frequency of this outcome in a large surgical population receiving general or central neuraxis regional anesthesia for noncardiac procedures from 1986 to 1998. Specific criteria were used to separate cases in which the surgical procedure likely directly contributed to the vision loss. Vision loss was present if any part of the visual field was affected. Initial database screening found 405 cases of new-onset vision loss or visual changes in 410,189 patients who underwent 501,342 anesthetics and who survived at least 30 days after their final procedures. Two hundred sixteen of these patients regained full vision or acuity within 30 days. Of the 189 patients who developed vision deficits for longer than 30 days, 185 underwent ophthalmologic or neurologic procedures in which ocular or cerebral tissues were surgically damaged or resected. The remaining 4 patients (1 per 125,234 overall; 0.0008%) developed prolonged vision loss without direct surgical trauma to optic or cerebral tissues. In this large study population of noncardiac surgical patients, including those who underwent spinal surgical procedures, the frequency of perioperative vision loss persisting for longer than 30 days was very small.
Cost-Aware Virtual USB Drive: Providing Cost-Effective Block I/O Management Commercial Cloud Storage for Mobile Devices

This paper addresses difficulties in mapping blocks onto cloud storage and proposes a novel cost-aware log-structured block I/O management over one of the commercial cloud storage, Amazon S3. The proposed scheme is imbedded in the virtual USB drive architecture that replaces the NAND flash of the USB memory with the capacity-free network storage. The key of the proposed scheme is to perform onto the cloud storage log-structured writes with the optimal number of data blocks that adaptively changes with I/O characteristics (the number of I/O operations and storage size) and cloud storage pricing policy. The proposed scheme also efficiently manages associate metadata by using well-organized data structures and layouts both in the memory and on the cloud storage. Performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme can reduce the total I/O costs significantly up to 54%, as compared with a simple one-to-one mapping scheme.
Timing speculation in FPGAs: Probabilistic inference of data dependent failure rates

The goal of this work is to model and predict timing failure rates of digital blocks in FPGAs due to delay variation. The timing failures are modelled as transient faults depending on the input vectors to the block, as opposed to conventional critical path failures. Firstly, we present transition tables derived from the truth tables of the logic gates which are apt for our purpose. Next we present a model of transient circuit behaviour based on Bayesian Networks and a method to infer timing failure rates. We implemented these methods with the Bayes Network Toolbox in MATLAB, and compared our results with Monte-Carlo simulations based on SAE-J2748 package for VHDL, and actual implementations and measurements on a Cyclone III FPGA. The test cases are simple arithmetic circuits, such as adders and multipliers. We show that, with this method comparison of error rates is possible among various implementations. We conclude with emphasis on the need for such a method for advancing probabilistic computing paradigms.
Is Green Fiscal Policy as a Driver for Green Energy Economy: Emprircal Evidence from Developing Countries

Before the beginning of 2008 Global Financial Crisi s, many countries had heavily relied on conventional “black” economic development which req uired resource depletion and utilization of fossil fuels leading to serious envi ronmental pollution and ecological crisis. Consequently, green economy is now seen as a new ve hicle for creating economic, social and environmental benefits. (CCICED, 2011). The phrase “Green Economy”, which means the efficient application of natural resources, has evo lved to refer to an economy which has reduced adverse impacts on global environment – air , water, biodiversity and climate (G.Mulgan and O.Salem, 2008). At its most basic lev el, green economy is the clean energy economy, encouraging dissemination of renewable ene rgy (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal) technologies (K.Gordon and J.Hays, 2008). The pace of green capital accumulation has accelerated in recent years, led by technological p rogress, economies of scale, strong policy support and favorable public opinion. Green program s had also proven to be important in national fiscal stimulus plans during the 2008/2009 global financial crisis (Luc Eyraud et. al. 2011)
Exploration of possible energy sources for hybrid power system of indoor WSN

Energy harvesting (EH) for wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes has become common due increased demand on ensuring autonomous operation of low power sensors and devices. It has been shown that there is no single power source providing optimal resource utilization of WSN. This paper is dedicated to the investigation of energy harvesting components with potential of implementation in hybrid power systems of autonomous WSN. First, the possible topology of hybrid power system is provided, including two distinct alternative power sources. Then the experimental investigation of solar and radio frequency power harvesters is provided, depicting the possibilities of integration of mentioned power sources within single intelligent power system.
Development of polyethersulfone phase‐inversion membranes for membrane distillation using oleophobic coatings

Highly porous macrovoid-free polyethersulfone membranes have been prepared using the phase-inversion process with water as the non-solvent. These membranes are of great interest for membrane distillation (MD) after application of a hydrophobic/oleophobic coating. The membrane structure was controlled by optimizing the process conditions and dope composition. Counter intuitively, increasing the polymer concentration favors the formation of larger surface pores under similar process conditions. A symmetric membrane is obtained when a sufficient amount of high-molecular-weight polyvinylpyrrolidone was added to the dope solution, which appears to play an important role in the structure formation process. The final membrane shows similar performance compared to commercial MD membranes. However, the membranes developed in this study show an oleophobic character, broadening the applications of MD. Moreover, the compressibility of these membranes is severely reduced compared to stretched membranes, which is expected to result in an improved MD performance at full scale. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45516.
Nanoparticles Cut Tumors' Supply Lines

On page 2404, a team reports erasing tumors in mice by packing a tiny particle with a gene that forces blood vessel cells to self-destruct and then "mailing" the particle to blood vessels feeding tumors. Researchers are enthusiastic about the new work, although they are treading gingerly around the landmines in cancer treatment, where hopes have been raised and dashed many times.
On the Use of Benchmarks for Multiple Properties

Benchmark calculations provide a large amount of information that can be very useful in assessing the performance of density functional approximations, and for choosing the one to use. In order to condense the information some indicators are provided. However, these indicators might be insufficient and a more careful analysis is needed, as shown by some examples from an existing data set for cubic crystals.
Helping students appreciate test-driven development (TDD)

Testing is an important part of the software development cycle that should be covered throughout the computer science curriculum. However, for students to truly learn the value of testing, they need to benefit from writing test cases for their own software.We report on our initial experiences teaching students to write test cases and evaluating student-written test suites, with an emphasis on our observation that, without proper incentive to write test cases early, many students will complete the programming assignment first and then add the build of their test cases afterwards. Based on these experiences, we propose new mechanisms to provide better incentives for students to write their test cases early.We also report on some of the limitations of code coverage as a tool for evaluating test suites, and finally conclude with a survey of related work on introducing testing into the undergraduate curriculum.
Fault Tolerance Sensor fusion approach to Mobile Robot Navigation

The requirements for greater fault tolerance and robustness in real time autonomous and semi-autonomous mobile robot have resulted in the proposal of a number of different software architectures and Laboratory Experiment setups. This paper describes the implementation of a neural network assistant sensor fusion for a layer based controller. In this approach, couples of sonar sensors, CMOS camera and Infra Red (IR) sensors were taken as principle sensor information resources. In this paper robot sensor system belongs to two parallel systems an active behavior fusion system and fault tolerance sensor system for robust robot behavior execution including goal-directed behavior. This proposes a method which enables a mobile robot to acquire a purposive behavior for accomplishing a given task by directly coupling multi sensor information and actions through interaction between the robot and its environment. We use reinforcement-learning scheme to formalize such a coupling process. First, we define states described by combinations of various kinds of data provided by different types of sensors and motor commands to the mobile robot. Then, we acquire pairs of robot actions and states suitable for achieving the given goal by using Q-learning algorithm. As a result of learning, the goal-directed behavior is obtained and information needed for the current subtask is automatically selected among multi sensor information. Alternatively sensor inputs are also separately fed into the behavior fusion algorithm that is attached to execute the fault tolerance functionality in which mainly consists of obstacle avoidance, recognition and navigation layers. The implementation of fault-tolerant systems is generally used independent redundant components. Additionally, sensor fusion of redundant sensors makes an application more robust to external and internal errors. In case of failures, many sensor fusion algorithms are able to provide a degraded level of service so that the application is able to continue its operation and to provide its service. The validity of the method is demonstrated by computer simulations.
FDA drug safety communication: FDA requests label changes and single-use packaging for some over-the-counter topical antiseptic products to decrease risk of infection.

[11-13-2013] The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requesting label and packaging changes to enhance the safe use of certain over-the-counter (OTC) topical antiseptic products. This request is the result of our ongoing evaluation of infrequent but continuing reports of infections resulting from antiseptic products labeled for preoperative or preinjection skin preparation. When used properly, topical antiseptics are safe and effective products to reduce the number of bacteria on patients’ skin prior to surgery or injections. However, most often, contamination of topical antiseptics occurs when organisms are introduced into the product by users. Therefore, health care professionals and patients should follow all label directions to decrease the chances of infection.
Fasudil Decreases Lesion Burden in a Murine Model of Cerebral Cavernous Malformation Disease

Background and Purpose— Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs) are characterized by grossly dilated capillaries, associated with vascular leak and hemorrhage, and occur in sporadic or inherited (autosomal-dominant) forms with mutations in 1 of 3 gene loci (CCM 1, 2 or 3). We previously reported that the CCM1 protein (KRIT1) localizes to endothelial cell–cell junctions and loss of KRIT1 leads to junctional instability associated with activation of RhoA and its effector Rho kinase. Although Rho kinase inhibition has been proposed as potential therapy for CCM, there has been no demonstration of a therapeutic effect on CCM lesion genesis in vivo. Methods— Our recently generated a model of CCM1 disease (Ccm1+/−Msh2−/−) was treated with the Rho kinase inhibitor fasudil (100 mg/kg/day administered in drinking water from weaning to 5 months of age), or placebo, and blindly assessed CCM lesion burden by systematic survey of animals' brains. For comparison, we also assessed therapeutic effect in previously described Ccm2+/−Trp53−/− mice treated with the same dose and duration of fasudil and placebo. Results— Fasudil-treated Ccm1+/−Msh2−/− mice had a significantly decreased prevalence of CCM lesions compared with placebo controls. Lesions in treated animals were smaller and less likely associated with hemorrhage, inflammation, and endothelial proliferation and exhibited decreased expression of Rho kinase activation biomarkers. A therapeutic effect was also documented in Ccm2+/−Trp53−/− mice. Conclusions— This represents the first report of therapeutic benefit of pharmacological therapy in development and progression of CCMs and indicates that Rho kinase activation is a critical step in CCM lesion genesis and maturation.
Graph model boosting for structural data recognition

This paper presents a novel method for structural data recognition using a large number of graph models. Broadly, existing methods for structral data recognition have two crucial problems: 1) only a single model is used to capture structural variation, 2) naive classification rules are used, such as nearest neighbor method. In this paper, we propose to strengthen both capturing structural variation and the classification ability. The proposed method constructs a large number of graph models and trains decision tree classifiers with the models. There are two contributions of this paper. The first contribution is a novel graph model which can be constructed by straightforward calculation. This calculation enables us to construct many models in feasible time. The second contribution is a novel approach to capture structural variation. We construct a large number of our models in a boosting framework so that we can capture structural variation comprehensively. Consequently, we are able to perform structural data recognition with the powerful classification ability and comprehensive structural variation. In experiments, we show that the proposed method achieves significant results and outperforms the existing methods.
Carotenoids in Staple Cereals: Metabolism, Regulation, and Genetic Manipulation

Carotenoids play a critical role in animal and human health. Animals and humans are unable to synthesize carotenoids de novo, and therefore rely upon diet as sources of these compounds. However, major staple cereals often contain only small amounts of carotenoids in their grains. Consequently, there is considerable interest in genetic manipulation of carotenoid content in cereal grain. In this review, we focus on carotenoid metabolism and regulation in non-green plant tissues, as well as genetic manipulation in staple cereals such as rice, maize, and wheat. Significant progress has been made in three aspects: (1) seven carotenogenes play vital roles in carotenoid regulation in non-green plant tissues, including 1-deoxyxylulose-5-phosphate synthase influencing isoprenoid precursor supply, phytoene synthase, β-cyclase, and ε-cyclase controlling biosynthesis, 1-hydroxy-2-methyl-2-(E)-butenyl 4-diphosphate reductase and carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases responsible for degradation, and orange gene conditioning sequestration sink; (2) provitamin A-biofortified crops, such as rice and maize, were developed by either metabolic engineering or marker-assisted breeding; (3) quantitative trait loci for carotenoid content on chromosomes 3B, 7A, and 7B were consistently identified, eight carotenogenes including 23 loci were detected, and 10 gene-specific markers for carotenoid accumulation were developed and applied in wheat improvement. A comprehensive and deeper understanding of the regulatory mechanisms of carotenoid metabolism in crops will be beneficial in improving our precision in improving carotenoid contents. Genomic selection and gene editing are emerging as transformative technologies for provitamin A biofortification.