Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determining Fatigue Crack Opening Loads from Near-Crack-Tip Displacement Measurements

The aim of this research was to develop a near-crack-tip measurement method that quantifies crack closure levels in the near-threshold fatigue crack growth regime--a regime where crack closure is not well characterized by remote compliance methods. Further understanding of crack closure mechanics was gained by performing novel crack growth experiments in conjunction with numerical simulations of three-dimensional crack-front propagation. Steady-state (i.e., constant growth rate) fatigue crack growth rates were characterized by performing constant cyclic stress intensity range ({Delta}K) experiments over a wide range of stress ratios (R). Near-crack-tip (less than 0.3 mm behind) load-versus-displacement measurements were conducted on the specimen surface using a novel noncontact experimental technique (Digital Imaging Displacement System--DIDS). The experiments and simulations revealed that the three-dimensional aspects of fatigue crack closure must be considered to determine correct opening load levels from near-crack-tip load-versus-displacement data. It was shown that near-crack-front, but increase near the free surface. The interior opening load was found to collapse closure-affected data to intrinsic rates, and thus shown to relate to the true crack-front driving force parameter. Surface opening load DIDS measurements made at an optimal distance behind the crack tip were used to correlate da/dN with {Delta}K{sub eff}. Opening load determinations made lessmore » than the optimal distance behind the crack tip were shown to be too high to correlate fatigue crack growth rates. « less
Extraction of Equivalent Network of Arbitrarily Shaped Power-Ground Planes With Narrow Slots Using a Novel Integral Equation Method

A novel integral equation method for efficient and accurate modeling of power-ground planes with narrow slots is provided in this paper. The equivalence principle is used to extend finite-size power-ground planes to infinite parallel planes. The discontinuities in the original power-ground planes, including the slot, via clearance, and boundary, are represented by equivalent electric and magnetic currents. Coupled integral equations are created for these equivalent currents. By making use of the modal field distribution between the power and ground planes, the complex surface integrals are reduced to simple one-dimensional line integrals. This greatly reduces the computing time while good accuracy is preserved. Thereafter, the paths of integration are discretized into many segments, which are equivalent to network ports, such that an equivalent microwave network of the power-ground planes with slots is derived through the solution of the integral equations. This equivalent network is used for power integrity analysis. By comparing the proposed method with measurement results and available full-wave methods, its accuracy and efficiency are verified.
Comparing the effects of a cardiac rehabilitation program on functional capacity of obese and non-obese women with coronary artery disease

BACKGROUND Obesity and sedentary lifestyle are known as important risk factors of coronary artery disease. The prevalence of obesity has increased among both men and women in the world. Therefore, the present study tried to evaluate the effectiveness of a cardiac rehabilitation program on functional capacity and body mass index (BMI) in obese and non-obese women with coronary artery disease. METHODS In an observational study during 2000-11, we evaluated a total of 205 women with coronary artery disease who referred to the cardiac rehabilitation unit of Isfahan Cardiovascular Research Institute, Isfahan, Iran. BMI and functional capacity of each patient were assessed before and after the program. The patients were categorized as obese or non-obese based on their BMI. All participants completed the full course of the program. Data was analyzed by independent t-test and paired t-test in SPSS15. RESULTS Our finding showed that an 8-week cardiac rehabilitation program had significant effects on functional capacity in obese and non-obese female patients (P < 0.01 for both). The program also resulted in BMI improvements in both groups (P < 0.01 for both). Comparing the changes in the two groups did not reveal any significant differences in functional capacity. However, the two groups were significantly different in terms of BMI changes. CONCLUSION Cardiac rehabilitation programs are a major step in restoration of functional capacity and improvement of BMI in obese and non-obese women with coronary artery disease.
De-Centralized Dynamic ICIC Using X2 Interfaces for Downlink LTE Systems

A novel de-centralized dynamic inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) method, which can change cell-edge bands dynamically by using an X2 interface and can be applied to current downlink long-term evolution (LTE) systems, is proposed. This dynamic ICIC method can autonomously optimize fractional frequency reuse (FFR) parameters and thus increase throughput. In addition, it works well even in the presence of control delays in time-variable environments. Static and dynamic system-level simulation (SLS) demonstrated that the throughput achieved by the proposed method is superior to that of conventional FFR methods.
Describing Colors, Textures and Shapes for Content Based Image Retrieval - A Survey

Visual media has always been the most enjoyed way of communication. From the advent of television to the modern day hand held computers, we have witnessed the exponential growth of images around us. Undoubtedly it’s a fact that they carry a lot of information in them which needs be utilized in an effective manner. Hence intense need has been felt to efficiently index and store large image collections for effective and on-demand retrieval. For this purpose low-level features extracted from the image contents like color, texture and shape has been used. Content based image retrieval systems employing these features has proven very successful. Image retrieval has promising applications in numerous fields and hence has motivated researchers all over the world. New and improved ways to represent visual content are being developed each day. Tremendous amount of research has been carried out in the last decade. In this paper we will present a detailed overview of some of the powerful color, texture and shape descriptors for content based image retrieval. A comparative analysis will also be carried out for providing an insight into outstanding challenges in this field.
Magnetoactive liquid crystal elastomer nanocomposites

We present liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) nanocomposites containing superparamagnetic nanoparticles that perform local heat dissipation upon irradiation with electromagnetic fields. A fast local temperature rise is observed that leads to a distinct contraction at the nematic–isotropic transition temperature of the elastomer. The materials exhibit contractions up to 27% of the original length with short response times. We found the heat production rate and the heat transfer coefficient the parameters that determine the maximum contraction rate.
Adaptive commitment for distributed real-time transactions

Distributed real-time transaction systems are useful for both real-time and high-performance database applications. Standard transaction management approaches that use the two-phase commit protocol suffer from its high costs and blocking behavior which is problematic in real-time computing environments. Our approach in this paper is to identify ways in which a commit protocol can be made adaptive in the sense that under situations that demand it, such as a transient local overload, the system can dynamically change to a different commitment strategy. The decision to do so can be taken autonomously at any site. The different commitment strategies exploit a trade-off between the cost of commitment and the obtained degree of atomicity. Our protocols are based on optimistic commitment strategies, and they rely on local compensatory actions to recover from non-atomic executions. We provide the necessary framework to study the logical and temporal correctness criteria, and we describe examples to illustrate the use of our strategies.
Style-Specific Phrasing in Speech Synthesis

People pause between words and sentences when they speak. They pause to emphasize content, or to make an utterance more understandable, or just to take a breath. A speech synthesizer should also insert similar pauses to sound natural. The process of inserting prosodic breaks in an utterance is called Phrasing. Phrasing is a crucial step during speech synthesis because other models of prosody depend on it. Phrasing also helps characterize styles of speech, and synthesizers must adapt their phrasing to different speaking styles. This thesis presents a data-driven grammar-based approach that can be used to build style-specific phrasing models. We automatically label phrase breaks from speech data and use features over acoustic syntax in our modeling. Experimental results, both objective and subjective, show that these models are better than the prior state-of-art across various speaking styles. This thesis presents a minimum error-rate training approach to improve the phrasing models by optimizing them directly towards the evaluation criterion: the F-measure. This framework also allows us to define a knob that can be used to vary the number of phrase breaks produced in an utterance. This can be useful when changing the speaking rate. This thesis also discusses modeling not just the placement of phrase breaks, but also their duration. Corpus analysis shows that durations of breaks vary quite significantly between different styles, and we present methods with which this variation can be captured in a way that is perceptually better. The presented phrasing methods can have a broader impact on intonation models and can enhance the intelligibility of the synthesis of machine translation output. These methods can also be extended to “low-resource” scenarios, such as when building voices for uncommon languages, or for languages that do not have a standardized orthography.
Primitive Lymphoid Progenitors in Bone Marrow with T Lineage Reconstituting Potential1

Multiple subsets of the bone marrow contain T cell precursors, but it remains unclear which is most likely to replenish the adult thymus. Therefore, RAG-1+ early lymphoid progenitors (RAG-1+ ELP), and CD62L/L-selectin+ progenitors (LSP), as well as common lymphoid progenitors from C57BL6-Thy1.1-RAG-1/GFP mouse bone marrow were directly compared in transplantation assays. The two c-Kithigh populations vigorously regenerated the thymus and were superior to common lymphoid progenitors in magnitude and frequency of thymic reconstitution. Regeneration was much faster than the 22 days described for transplanted stem cells, and RAG-1+ ELP produced small numbers of lymphocytes within 13 days. As previously reported, LSP were biased to a T cell fate, but this was not the case for RAG-1+ ELP. Although RAG-1+ ELP and LSP had reduced myeloid potential, they were both effective progenitors for T lymphocytes and NK cells. The LSP subset overlapped with and included most RAG-1+ ELP and many RAG-1−TdT+ ELP. LSP and RAG-1+ ELP were both present in the peripheral circulation, but RAG-1+ ELP had no exact counterpart among immature thymocytes. The most primitive of thymocytes were similar to Lin−c-KithighL-selectin+TdT+RAG-1− progenitors present in the marrow, suggesting that this population is normally important for sustaining the adult thymus.
Electrical, Morphological and Rheological Study of Melt-Mixed Polystyrene/Copper Nanowire Nanocomposites

Polystyrene and copper nanowires were melt-mixed at 200 °C and 50 rpm in 5 mL and 15 mL DSM co-rotating conical micro-compounders (DSM5 and DSM15), respectively. The electrical, morphological and rheological properties of the resulting nanocomposites were studied. The electrical percolation of nanocomposites is between 1.0 and 2.0 vol.-% for the composites prepared in DSM5 and above 2.0 vol.-% for the composites prepared in DSM15. SEM micrographs show smaller copper nanowire agglomerates inside polystyrene from DSM15 than those from DSM5. However, TEM micrographs reveal that both single copper nanowires and nanowire bundles coexist in the polymer matrix for the samples prepared in both micro-compounders. No obvious microstructure transition is detected by the dynamic rheological data at 200 °C.
Chondrogenic differentiation of bovine bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in different hydrogels: Influence of collagen type II extracellular matrix on MSC chondrogenesis

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are candidate cells for cartilage tissue engineering. This is due to their ability to undergo chondrogenic differentiation after extensive expansion in vitro and stimulation with various biomaterials in three‐dimensional (3‐D) systems. Collagen type II is one of the major components of the hyaline cartilage and plays a key role in maintaining chondrocyte function. This study aimed at analyzing the MSC chondrogenic response during culture in different types of extracellular matrix (ECM) with a focus on the influence of collagen type II on MSC chondrogenesis. Bovine MSCs were cultured in monolayer as well as in alginate and collagen type I and II hydrogels, in both serum free medium and medium supplemented with transforming growth factor (TGF) β1. Chondrogenic differentiation was detected after 3 days of culture in 3‐D hydrogels, by examining the presence of glycosaminoglycan and newly synthesized collagen type II in the ECM. Differentiation was most prominent in cells cultured in collagen type II hydrogel, and it increased in a time‐dependent manner. The expression levels of the of chondrocyte specific genes: sox9, collagen type II, aggrecan, and COMP were measured by quantitative “Real Time” RT‐PCR, and genes distribution in the hydrogel beads were localized by in situ hybridization. All genes were upregulated by the presence of collagen, particularly type II, in the ECM. Additionally, the chondrogenic influence of TGF β1 on MSCs cultured in collagen‐incorporated ECM was analyzed. TGF β1 and dexamethasone treatment in the presence of collagen type II provided more favorable conditions for expression of the chondrogenic phenotype. In this study, we demonstrated that collagen type II alone has the potential to induce and maintain MSC chondrogenesis, and prior interaction with TGF β1 to enhance the differentiation. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Algorithm for parallel inverse halftoning using partitioning of Look-Up Table (LUT)

The look-up table (LUT) method for inverse halftoning is fast and computation-free technique employed to obtain good quality images. In this work we propose a new algorithm to parallelize the LUT method so that more pixels can be concurrently inverse halftoned using minimum additional hardware. The proposed algorithm partitions the single LUT of serial LUT method into N smaller look-up tables (s-LUTs) such that the total number of entries in all s-LUTs remain equal to the number of entries in the single LUT of serial LUT method. The proposed algorithm can be implemented on a single FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) device with external memories to store s-LUTs.
Exposure systems for bioelectromagnetic investigations in the radiofrequency range: Classification and emerging trends

In this work, the radiofrequency (RF) exposure systems, used for bioelectromagnetic investigations and published in international journals from 1999, have been reviewed and classified. Classification is based on criteria accounting for both the experimental protocol and the kind of electromagnetic structure employed: radiating, propagating and resonant. The main general features of different kinds of in vitro and in vivo systems have been presented and discussed. Moreover, specifications coming from emerging trends in bioelectromagnetic research have been examined.
Generalization of the strategies in differential evolution

Summary form only given. Differential evolution, is a recently invented global optimization algorithm. Originally proposed as a method for the global continuous optimization differential evolution has been easily modified for handling mixed (continuous and discrete) variables. In order to have a better choice of the differentiation's formula, we introduce a generalization of the differential evolution's strategies. This is done by dividing them into four groups according to their differentiation principle. Such approach leads us to the new universal formula of differentiation. Some examples of strategies are demonstrated and compared on the De Jong test functions.
Design of an enhanced hybrid fuzzy P+ID controller for a mechanical manipulator

We propose in this paper an enhanced fuzzy P+ID controller to improve control performance in both dynamic transient and steady-state periods for mechanical manipulators under uncertainty. The fuzzy P+ID controller adds only two additional parameters to be tuned relative to the original PID controller. One of these parameters is mainly used to reduce a steady-state error. The other is used to speed up the dynamic response. A simulation study and experimental results for a two-link manipulator with uncertainty demonstrate the superior control performance of the proposed fuzzy P+ID controllers.
A polymorphism in the delta-aminolevulinic acid dehydratase gene may modify the pharmacokinetics and toxicity of lead.

Associations between the presence of a constitutional variant of delta-aminolevulinic acid dehydratase (ALAD-2) and lead concentrations in blood and bone, as well as between this allele and indices of kidney function, were investigated among 691 members of a construction trade union. The average blood lead level in this group was 7.78 micrograms/dl. No significant difference was observed in blood lead concentration in ALAD-2 carriers compared to those homozygous for the more common ALAD-1 allele (7.78 +/- 3.62 micrograms Pb/dl vs. 7.73 ( +/- 3.48 micrograms Pb/dl, respectively; p = 0.73). Bone lead was measured in a subset of 122 of the study subjects. Patella minus tibia lead concentrations for each individual averaged 3.35 +/- 11.99 micrograms Pb/g bone mineral in ALAD-1 homozygotes and 8.62 +/- 9.47 micrograms Pb/g bone mineral in ALAD-2 carriers (p = 0.06). Comparisons of blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and uric acid by genotype indicated elevated levels among ALAD-2 individuals (p = 0.03 and 0.07, respectively). In logistic regression models accounting for other variables potentially associated with BUN and uric acid levels, BUN was significantly associated with blood lead levels (p = 0.01). Associations of BUN and uric acid levels with ALAD-2 were of borderline statistical significance in these models (p = 0.06 and 0.07). Taken together, these results suggest that the ALAD-2 genotype may influence the pharmacokinetic distribution and chronic renal toxicity of lead, perhaps due to differential binding of lead to the variant protein. Imagesp248-aFigure 1.
Posttraumatic Ankle Osteoarthritis After Ankle-Related Fractures

Objectives: The present study analyzes etiologies, pathomechanisms, and predisposing factors that lead to the development and progression of posttraumatic ankle osteoarthritis (OA) after ankle-related fractures. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Tertiary health care center. Patients: The underlying cohort was 257 painful end-stage ankle OA patients (270 cases) presenting to the authors' clinic. Patients from this cohort with a history of ankle-related fracture (141 patients) were evaluated. Intervention: Analysis of individual clinical and radiologic history since the time of injury; physical and radiologic examination at the time of ankle OA. Main Outcome Measures: OA latency time, fracture type, treatment methods, complication of fracture healing, soft tissue situation, age, pain score, American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Society ankle score, range of motion, radiologic tibiotalar alignment, and radiologic ankle OA grading were evaluated. Results: The latency time between injury and end-stage ankle OA was 20.9 years (1-52 years). Malleolar fracture was the most common fracture (53.2%). A negative correlation of the OA latency time with the fracture severity was observed for some fracture types (pilon fractures, r = −0.4, P < 0.01). Patients with complications during the healing process showed significantly shorter OA latency time (P < 0.01). The patients' age at time of injury correlated negatively with the OA latency time (r = −0.6, P < 0.01). Conclusions: The present study addresses the link between ankle-related fractures and secondary posttraumatic ankle OA. The latency time between injury and OA depends on fracture type and severity, occurrence of complications in the healing process, and patient-related factors, for example, age.
A Bootstrap Method for Constructing Local Grammars

Local grammars are finite-state grammars or finite-state automata that represent sets of utterances of a natural language. Local grammars have been used to describe a wide variety of sets of strings, ranging from finite sets of words related by prefixation and suffixation to sets of sentences syntactically and semantically related. Formal representations of finite-state grammars are quite varied, although equivalent. We have chosen a particular representation by graphs which is well-adapted to the syntax of natural languages. Using a particular example, we will present in detail a method for constructing local grammars using large corpora.
Landscape Pattern Change and Driving Forces Analysis in Response to Urbanization

In order to analysis the landscape pattern change in Shenyang, we counted the most representative landscape metrics according to the remote sensing images from 2005 to 2010. And then we used the transition matrix of land use to analyze the situation of land use macroscopically by change trend. We analyzed the driving forces of landscape change of study area from 2005 to 2010 using the multivariate statistics method of Principal component analysis (PCA). The results showed that the area of agriculture and green space decreased, and the rural settlement and urban land increased correspondingly. Based on the results of PCA analysis, the landscape changes were mainly driven by the forces of population increasing and economic development.
Multi-service radio dimensioning for UMTS packet-switched services

We address the issue of multiservice packet demand modeling in the radio dimensioning process for 3G/IMT-2000 systems. For packet services, quality of service (QoS) is measured as a time delay over the radio interface. New tables stemming from simulations are proposed to convert the volume of packet data expressed in Mbits into a required pipe respecting the QoS. The mix of packet services with different QoS requirements and the mix of circuit and packet services are also addressed. This new demand modeling scheme has been implemented in Orange Support & Consulting's dimensioning tool, ndt/spl trade/ and compared to the results of Orange Support & Consulting's UTRA simulation tool.