Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability analysis of CFRP shear walls subject to blast loading

This study presents the structural reliability of CFRP shear walls subject to blast loading. The safety of a reinforced concrete shear wall, laminated with Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer, is modelled with a 108.9kg of Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil (ANFO) an explosive, with an equivalent magnitude of 87kg Trinitrotoluene (TNT). The shear performance of the laminated wall under the blast is evaluated using the First Order Reliability Method (FORM) in MATLAB environment. An increasing decline in the shear possibility of the laminated wall was observed as the standoff distance of the explosion increased, which is consistent with experimental data. Keywords : Blast load, TNT, FORM, Shear wall. CFRP.
A complication associated with central line removal in the pediatric population: retained fixed catheter fragments.

BACKGROUND There are many reports on the complications that occur at the time of insertion and during the life of central venous indwelling catheters. However, there is no literature that describes the complications that occur at the time of removal of these lines. METHODS A retrospective review of 136 central line (Broviacs [B], Port-A- Caths [PC] and Hickmans [HC]) removals during the last 5 years was undertaken. RESULTS A total of 97% were removed after completion of chemotherapy, and 3% because of sepsis or malfunction. Three PC lines broke at the time of removal resulting in a length of line remaining in the central venous system (the superior vena cava, innominate vein, and bracheo-cephalic subclavian junction). Two lines were inserted by a cut-down technique into the external jugular and one line by the percutaneous technique into the subclavian vein. At follow-up, none of the residual lines were associated with thrombus formation, and none showed any evidence of migration. CONCLUSIONS This review identifies a specific problem that can occur with central line removal. Both the long-term affects of residual catheter within the central venous system and the need to remove the foreign body have yet to be addressed.
Least Squares Volatility Change Point Estimation for Partially Observed Diffusion Processes

A one-dimensional diffusion process X = {X t , 0 ≤ t ≤ T}, with drift b(x) and diffusion coefficient known up to θ > 0, is supposed to switch volatility regime at some point t* ∈ (0,T). On the basis of discrete time observations from X, the problem is the one of estimating the instant of change in the volatility structure t* as well as the two values of θ, say θ1 and θ2, before and after the change point. It is assumed that the sampling occurs at regularly spaced times intervals of length Δ n with nΔ n = T. To work out our statistical problem we use a least squares approach. Consistency, rates of convergence and distributional results of the estimators are presented under an high frequency scheme. We also study the case of a diffusion process with unknown drift and unknown volatility but constant.
Productivity and Performance of Global-View Programming with XcalableMP PGAS Language

XcalableMP (XMP) is a PGAS parallel language with a directive-based extension of C and Fortran. While it sup- ports “coarray” as a local-view programming model, an XMP global-view programming model is useful when parallelizing data-parallel programs by adding directives with minimum code modification. This paper considers the productivity and performance of the XMP global-view programming model. In the global-view programming model, a programmer describes data distributions and work-mapping to map the computations to nodes, where the computed data are located. Global-view communication directives are used to move a part of the distributed data globally and to maintain consistency in the shadow area. Rich sets of XMP global-view programming model can reduce the cost for parallelization significantly, and optimization of “privatization” is not necessary. For productivity and performance study, the Omni XMP compiler and the Berkeley Unified Parallel C compiler are used. Experimental results show that XMP can implement the benchmarks with a smaller programming cost than UPC. Furthermore, XMP has higher access performance for global data, which has an affinity with own process than UPC. In addition, the XMP coarray function can effectively tune the application's performance.
Fuzzy logic guidance of formation flight

In this paper, fuzzy logic control method is used to control the formation flight of fixed wing aircraft in leader-follower form. A two loop control structure is used. In the inner loop, aircraft flight is controlled using the State Dependent Riccati Equation (SDRE) method. In the outer loop, fuzzy logic control approach is used to control the formation guidance. The success of the approach is demonstrated through simulations.
Von Neumann-Morgenstern Solutions for 1-Convex Games

The 1-convex TU games have appealing theoretical and practical applications. We identify the family of 1-convex n-person games with the same cores but dierent vNM solutions. A characterization of the set of imputations which are not dominated by the core and an explicit description of particular vNM solutions are given. These solutions consist of the core and complementary set which allows a simple interpretation. Mathematics Subject Classication: 91A12
Hydra: a massively-multiplayer peer-to-peer architecture for the game developer

We present the design and implementation of Hydra, a peer-to-peer architecture for massively-multiplayer online games. By supporting a novel augmented server-client programming model with a protocol that guarantees consistency in the messages committed when nodes fail, existing game developers can realize the benefits of a peer-to-peer architecture without the burden of handling the complexities associated with network churn. Our key contribution is the development of a programming interface that is intuitive and easy to use, and that can be supported transparently at the network layer. We have implemented a prototype of Hydra and we demonstrate that our proposed architecture is practical by developing two games under the Hydra framework: a simple "capture the flag" tank game and a squad-based real-time strategy (RTS) game. Our experience in developing these games suggests that our proposed programming model is suitable for game development. Our preliminary experiments also show that Hydra imposes only a small message overhead and is thus scalable.
Complex Relations Extraction

Information Extraction (IE) is the process of deriving useful information from unstructured text documents. Much of the recent research in the area of IE has been focused on named identification and binary relations extraction. In this paper, we investigate the problem of complex relations extraction. Complex relations are nary (n>2) relations between n entities. In this paper, we present an approach in which complex relations are first factorised into binary relations and then different classifiers (Maximum Entropy, Naïve Bayes and Decision Tree) are trained for relatedness in this paper. A graph is then created between the pairs of related entities in order to reconstruct complex relations. In the second stage, maximal cliques are used for finding potential complex relation instances in that graph. The system is evaluated against the results obtained from different classifiers in terms of Precision, Recall and F-score. The system achieves better results when compared to other presented approaches.
Tool-assisted unit test selection based on operational violations

Unit testing, a common step in software development, presents a challenge. When produced manually, unit test suites are often insufficient to identify defects. The main alternative is to use one of a variety of automatic unit test generation tools: these are able to produce and execute a large number of test inputs that extensively exercise the unit under test. However, without a priori specifications, developers need to manually verify the outputs of these test executions, which is generally impractical. To reduce this cost, unit test selection techniques may be used to help select a subset of automatically generated test inputs. Then developers can verify their outputs, equip them with test oracles, and put them into the existing test suite. In this paper, we present the operational violation approach for unit test selection, a black-box approach without requiring a priori specifications. The approach dynamically generates operational abstractions from executions of the existing unit test suite. Any automatically generated tests violating the operational abstractions are identified as candidates for selection. In addition, these operational abstractions can guide test generation tools to produce better tests. To experiment dynamic approach, we integrated the use of Daikon (a dynamic invariant detection tool) and Jtest (a commercial Java unit testing tool). An experiment is conducted to assess this approach.
Eine L2-optimale Beobachtertechnik zur Vermeidung von Regler-Windup

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag stellt eine neue Entwurfsmethodik für Hippes Regler-Antiwindup, das auch als Beobachtertechnik bezeichnet wird, vor. Die Beobachtertechnik basiert auf einer geeigneten Zerlegung des Reglers. Um eine akzeptable Regelgüte sicherzustellen, wurden bislang alle zulässigen Zerlegungen mittels Simulationen evaluiert. Die neu eingeführte Methode bestimmt mittels konvexer Optimierung für jede Zerlegung einen Kennwert, der die Abweichung von dem erwünschten linearen Verhalten des Regelkreises im Sinne der L2-Norm charakterisiert. Anhand der Kennwerte wird dann eine Zerlegung gewählt. Abstract This article presents a new design method for Hippe´s controller anti-windup, also referred to as observer technique. The observer technique prevents controller windup by a suitable decomposition of the controller. So far a decomposition ensuring an acceptable closed-loop performance has been chosen based on simulation results of all valid decompositions. The new method computes a specific value for each decomposition characterizing the degradation from the desired linear performance in terms of the L2-norm. Then a proper decomposition is chosen based on these specific values.
Noise adaptive training for subspace Gaussian mixture models

Noise adaptive training (NAT) is an effective approach to normalise the environmental distortions in the training data. This paper investigates the model-based NAT scheme using joint uncertainty decoding (JUD) for subspace Gaussian mixture models (SGMMs). A typical SGMM acoustic model has much larger number of surface Gaussian components, which makes it computationally infeasible to compensate each Gaussian explicitly. JUD tackles the problem by sharing the compensation parameters among the Gaussians and hence reduces the computational and memory demands. For noise adaptive training, JUD is reformulated into a generative model, which leads to an efficient expectation-maximisation (EM) based algorithm to update the SGMM acoustic model parameters. We evaluated the SGMMs with NAT on the Aurora 4 database, and obtained higher recognition accuracy compared to systems without adaptive training. Index Terms: adaptive training, noise robustness, joint uncertainty decoding, subspace Gaussian mixture models
Commentary: Representativeness is usually not necessary and often should be avoided.

Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Department of Medical Sciences, University of Turin, Turin, Italy, Centre for Statistical Methodology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, Departments of Medical Statistics and Non-communicable Disease Epidemiology, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK and Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
Defect in Synaptic Vesicle Precursor Transport and Neuronal Cell Death in KIF1A Motor Protein–deficient Mice

The nerve axon is a good model system for studying the molecular mechanism of organelle transport in cells. Recently, the new kinesin superfamily proteins (KIFs) have been identified as candidate motor proteins involved in organelle transport. Among them KIF1A, a murine homologue of unc-104 gene of Caenorhabditis elegans, is a unique monomeric neuron– specific microtubule plus end–directed motor and has been proposed as a transporter of synaptic vesicle precursors (Okada, Y., H. Yamazaki, Y. Sekine-Aizawa, and N. Hirokawa. 1995. Cell. 81:769–780). To elucidate the function of KIF1A in vivo, we disrupted the KIF1A gene in mice. KIF1A mutants died mostly within a day after birth showing motor and sensory disturbances. In the nervous systems of these mutants, the transport of synaptic vesicle precursors showed a specific and significant decrease. Consequently, synaptic vesicle density decreased dramatically, and clusters of clear small vesicles accumulated in the cell bodies. Furthermore, marked neuronal degeneration and death occurred both in KIF1A mutant mice and in cultures of mutant neurons. The neuronal death in cultures was blocked by coculture with wild-type neurons or exposure to a low concentration of glutamate. These results in cultures suggested that the mutant neurons might not sufficiently receive afferent stimulation, such as neuronal contacts or neurotransmission, resulting in cell death. Thus, our results demonstrate that KIF1A transports a synaptic vesicle precursor and that KIF1A-mediated axonal transport plays a critical role in viability, maintenance, and function of neurons, particularly mature neurons.
The combination of deoxynivalenol and zearalenone at permitted feed concentrations causes serious physiological effects in young pigs

This study was to investigate the effects of the combination of deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZON) on pigs. Twenty-four weaning piglets were divided into a control group fed a diet free of mycotoxins and a toxin group fed a diet containing 1 mg/kg DON and 250 µg/kg ZON. The results showed that supplementation of DON and ZON in diets had extensive effects on pigs. More specifically, DON and ZON caused levels of total protein, albumin, and globulin in sera to decrease (p < 0.05) by 14.5%, 6.5% and 11.3%, respectively, and at the same time increased (p < 0.05) the serum enzyme activities of γ-glutamyltransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase by 72.0%, 32.6% and 36.6%, respectively. In addition, DON and ZON decreased (p < 0.05) the level of anti-classical swine fever antibody titers by 14.8%. Real-time PCR showed that DON and ZON caused the mRNA expression levels of IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-2, to decrease (p < 0.05) by 36.0%, 29.0% and 35.4%, respectively. Histopathological studies demonstrated that DON and ZON caused abnormalities in the liver, spleen, lymph nodes, uterus, and kidney. The concentrations of DON and ZON used in this study are in line with the published critical values permitted by BML. Our study clearly put the standard and adequacy of safety measures for these toxins into question. The authors suggest that with the increasing availability of cellular and molecular technologies, it is time to revisit the safety standards for toxins in feeds so as to make feeds safer, providing consumers with safer products.
Dual CDK4/CDK6 Inhibition Induces Cell-Cycle Arrest and Senescence in Neuroblastoma

Purpose: Neuroblastoma is a pediatric cancer that continues to exact significant morbidity and mortality. Recently, a number of cell-cycle proteins, particularly those within the Cyclin D/CDK4/CDK6/RB network, have been shown to exert oncogenic roles in neuroblastoma, suggesting that their therapeutic exploitation might improve patient outcomes. Experimental Procedures: We evaluated the effect of dual CDK4/CDK6 inhibition on neuroblastoma viability using LEE011 (Novartis Oncology), a highly specific CDK4/6 inhibitor. Results: Treatment with LEE011 significantly reduced proliferation in 12 of 17 human neuroblastoma-derived cell lines by inducing cytostasis at nanomolar concentrations (mean IC50 = 307 ± 68 nmol/L in sensitive lines). LEE011 caused cell-cycle arrest and cellular senescence that was attributed to dose-dependent decreases in phosphorylated RB and FOXM1, respectively. In addition, responsiveness of neuroblastoma xenografts to LEE011 translated to the in vivo setting in that there was a direct correlation of in vitro IC50 values with degree of subcutaneous xenograft growth delay. Although our data indicate that neuroblastomas sensitive to LEE011 were more likely to contain genomic amplification of MYCN (P = 0.01), the identification of additional clinically accessible biomarkers is of high importance. Conclusions: Taken together, our data show that LEE011 is active in a large subset of neuroblastoma cell line and xenograft models, and supports the clinical development of this CDK4/6 inhibitor as a therapy for patients with this disease. Clin Cancer Res; 19(22); 6173–82. ©2013 AACR.
Cyclooxygenase‐2 inhibition increases gastric tone and delays gastric emptying in rats 1

Abstract We evaluated the effects of cyclooxygenase‐2 (COX‐2) selective inhibitors, COX‐1 selective inhibitor, or COX non‐selective inhibitor on gastric emptying and intestinal transit of liquids, and evaluated the effect of a COX‐2 selective inhibitor on gastric tonus (GT). Male Wistar rats were treated per os with saline (control), rofecoxib, celecoxib, ketorolac, rofecoxib + ketorolac, celecoxib + ketorolac, or indomethacin. After 1 h, rats were gavage‐fed (1.5 mL) with the test meal (5% glucose solution with 0.05 g mL−1 phenol red) and killed 10, 20 or 30 min later. Gastric, proximal, medial or distal small intestine dye recovery (GDR and IDR, respectively) were measured by spectrophotometry. The animals of the other group were treated with i.v. valdecoxib or saline, and GT was continuously observed for 120 min using a pletismomether system. Compared with the control group, treatment with COX‐2 inhibitors, alone or with ketocolac, as well as with indomethacin increased GDR (P < 0.05) at 10‐, 20‐ or 30‐min postprandial intervals. Ketorolac alone did not change the GDR, but increased the proximal IDR (P < 0.05) at 10 min, and decreased medial IDR (P < 0.05) at 10 and 20 min. Valdecoxib increased (P < 0.01) GT 60, 80 and 100 min after administration. In conclusion, COX‐2 inhibition delayed the gastric emptying of liquids and increased GT in rats.
A Mechanized Refinement Framework for Analysis of Custom Memories

We present a framework for formal verification of embedded custom memories. Memory verification is complicated by the difficulty in abstracting design parameters induced by the inherently analog nature of transistor-level designs. We develop behavioral formal models that specify a memory as a system of interacting state machines, and relate such models with an abstract read/write view of the memory via refinements. The operating constraints on the individual state machines can be validated by readily available data from analog simulations. The framework handles both static RAM (SRAM) and flash memories, and we show initial results demonstrating its applicability.
A Comparative Study of the Surgical Treatment of Axillary Osmidrosis by Instrument, Manual, and Combined Subcutaneous Shaving Procedures

Between 1986 and 1996, 128 patients underwent surgery for axillary osmidrosis via en bloc removal of subcutaneous cellular tissue. The patients were followed for 6 months to 7 years (average follow-up, 25 months). The authors propose three categories in which they classified shaving procedures: instrumental shavings (N = 84), manual shavings (N = 96), and combined shaving procedures (N = 76). A modified Inaba's shaver was used in instrument shavings. Combined shaving is mixture of instrument and conventional manual shaving. All patients were asked to complete a questionnaire postoperatively. This follow-up demonstrated that 92.9% of patients who underwent instrument shaving, 95.8% of patients who underwent manual shaving, and 97.4% of patients who underwent combined shaving experienced no odor or occasional, very mild axillary odor postoperatively. Postoperative scar formation was either invisible or excellent in 92.9% of instrument shavings, and 92.1% of patients who underwent the combined procedure reported either a hairless axilla or a marked decrease of axillary hair. The total satisfaction rate in the combined procedure was 94.7%, which is a better result than the instrument (92.9%) and the manual (91.7%) shaving procedures. The wound complication rate per patient with the combined procedure was 13.2%. There was no scar contracture or limitation in arm abduction. The combined subcutaneous shaving procedure using the modified Inaba's shaver has the advantages of rapid and accurate shaving, low incidence of hematoma formation, enhanced wound healing, and easy postoperative care. Therefore, en bloc resection of subcutaneous cellular tissue by combined shaving is a viable option for treatment of axillary osmidrosis.
Humanoid social robots: A design for interaction

This paper describes our latest humanoid social robots HR-1 and HR-2. The robots HR-1 and HR2 provide a mechanically sound platform, with on-board computer vision and other sensors. The robots have similar upper body structure, both with different locomotion system, HR-1 has a mobile platform and HR-2 is a biped robot. The paper also presents the control architecture and the software architecture of both robots. Finally, there is a discussion of the robot performance during a three-day exhibition.
Cigarette Smoking, Desire to Quit, and Tobacco-Related Counseling Among Patients at Adult Health Centers.

Objectives. We determined cigarette smoking prevalence, desire to quit, and tobacco-related counseling among a national sample of patients at health centers. Methods. Data came from the 2009 Health Center Patient Survey and the 2009 National Health Interview Survey. The analytic sample included 3949 adult patients at health centers and 27 731 US adults. Results. Thirty-one percent of health center patients were current smokers, compared with 21% of US adults in general. Among currently smoking health center patients, 83% desired to quit and 68% received tobacco counseling. In multivariable models, patients had higher adjusted odds of wanting to quit if they had indications of severe mental illness (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 3.26; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.19, 8.97) and lower odds if they had health insurance (AOR = 0.43; 95% CI = 0.22, 0.86). Patients had higher odds of receiving counseling if they had 2 or more chronic conditions (AOR = 2.05; 95% CI = 1.11, 3.78) and lower odds if they were Hispanic (AOR = 0.57; 95% CI = 0.34, 0.96). Conclusions. Cigarette smoking prevalence is substantially higher among patients at health centers than US adults in general. However, most smokers at health centers desire to quit. Continued efforts are warranted to reduce tobacco use in this vulnerable group.
Proteins and DNA elements essential for the CRISPR adaptation process in Escherichia coli

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and their associated proteins (CRISPR/Cas) constitute a recently identified prokaryotic defense mechanism against invading nucleic acids. Activity of the CRISPR/Cas system comprises of three steps: (i) insertion of alien DNA sequences into the CRISPR array to prevent future attacks, in a process called ‘adaptation’, (ii) expression of the relevant proteins, as well as expression and processing of the array, followed by (iii) RNA-mediated interference with the alien nucleic acid. Here we describe a robust assay in Escherichia coli to explore the hitherto least-studied process, adaptation. We identify essential genes and DNA elements in the leader sequence and in the array which are essential for the adaptation step. We also provide mechanistic insights on the insertion of the repeat-spacer unit by showing that the first repeat serves as the template for the newly inserted repeat. Taken together, our results elucidate fundamental steps in the adaptation process of the CRISPR/Cas system.