Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new model for electrical ageing and breakdown in dielectrics

We derive a simple but generally applicable model for multi-factor ageing in which thermally-induced bond scission is a universal underlying physical process which determines ageing. The final destruction of the dielectric is assumed to occur by a Griffith-crack treeing process and this will have a formative time which will be part of the overall ageing time. Whether it will be a significant part will depend on t/sub c/ and therefore on the field E.
Face recognition alert mechanism and idealness for monitoring user motion by Web services

The Web services use community to grow with different functionality and location. Today web service can provide satisfactory solution for each and every application. Web services are communicating with face identifier and detect the problem occur in the location. Face recognition is the process of identifying human face based on circumstance. This work implements with a system that is configured to identify faces especially the image caught in ATM camera with certain environmental constraints. The proposed work enhances this approach using web logic and web services. The mechanism works on the proposed system for all the constraints specified for identifying images and provides feasible solution through broad area spectrum for identifying images and to store images in all other web services. The transitional algorithm uses Eigen values along with Adaboost, Daugman's Method and Global Gabor Phase Pattern which is in turn applied for face recognition in web services. The results are proven to be effective and feasible by which an image identified and the result is well shared among all other web services.
Repeated Chlamydia trachomatis genital infections in adolescent women.

BACKGROUND Repeated Chlamydia trachomatis infections are common among young sexually active women. The relative frequency of reinfection and antibiotic treatment failure is undefined. METHODS Adolescent women enrolled in a longitudinal cohort had behavioral and sexually transmitted infection assessments performed every 3 months, including amplification tests for C. trachomatis, ompA genotyping, and interviews and diary entries to document sex partner-specific coitus and event-specific condom use. Repeated infections were classified as reinfection or treatment failure by use of an algorithm. All infections for which treatment outcomes were known were used to estimate the effectiveness of antibiotic use. RESULTS We observed 478 episodes of infection among 210 study participants; 176 women remained uninfected. The incidence rate was 34 episodes/100 woman-years. Of the women who were infected, 121 experienced 1 repeated infections, forming 268 episode pairs; 183 pairs had complete data available and were classified using the algorithm. Of the repeated infections, 84.2% were definite, probable, or possible reinfections; 13.7% were probable or possible treatment failures; and 2.2% persisted without documented treatment. For 318 evaluable infections, we estimated 92.2% effectiveness of antibiotic use. CONCLUSIONS Most repeated chlamydial infections in this high-incidence cohort were reinfections, but repeated infections resulting from treatment failures occurred as well. Our results have implications for male screening and partner notification programs and suggest the need for improved antibiotic therapies.
Sub-threshold latch-based icyflex2 32-bit processor with wide supply range operation

A 32-bit icyflex2 processor operating over a wide supply range (WSR) is presented, showing a very low energy consumption in comparison to other state-of-art 32-bit processors. Operating under very different supply conditions involves tremendous differences in operating frequency, and a large sensitivity to process and temperature variations at low-voltage, which both tend to complicate timing closure. In this paper, WSR is achieved on the one hand thanks to standard cells, RAM, ROM and level shifters optimized for sub-threshold operation and for low-leakage, and on the other hand thanks to a latch-based design methodology, which simplifies the timing closure in fast corners, while focusing on setup optimization in slow corners. Results are reported for the integration of this sub-threshold latch-based 32-bit icyflex2 processor in EM Microelectronic Marin ALP CMOS 180 nm technology showing full functionality for supply voltage ranging from 0.37 V (i.e. sub-threshold operation) to 1.8 V (i.e super-threshold operation), over 5 process corners and for temperatures between -25 and 75°C. The Minimum Energy Point (MEP), where the circuit operates at the highest energy efficiency, occurs at sub-threshold voltages, reaching an energy per operation as low as 17.1 pJ/cycle at 19 kHz and 0.37 V. The energy per operation rises to 119.3 pJ/cycle at 1.1 V and 10 MHz, almost 7 times higher than at the MEP, demonstrating the clear advantage of sub-threshold operation in terms of energy. This possibility to maintain continuous full functionality of the design by adapting the operation frequency and varying the supply voltage makes that design a perfect candidate for adaptive dynamic voltage frequency scaling (ADVFS).
Overview of technology developments in probiotic field

Probiotics are ‘live microorganisms which, when administrated in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host’ (FAO/WHO, 2001). This requirement, i.e. that the probiotic bacteria must be in viable form at the time of consumption, poses a number of technical challenges from food processing perspectives. Environmental stresses encountered during food processing include acid exposure during food fermentations, extremes in temperatures encountered during drying processes, in addition to oxidative, osmotic, and food matrix stresses. Furthermore, the ingested bacteria must remain viable during gastric transit, to reach the site of action in viable form to exert the probiotic effects. This imposes further stresses, as the gastrointestinal tract is naturally designed to impede the passage of microorganisms with low pH encountered in the stomach and the detergent-like properties of bile encountered in the duodenum. A number of approaches have been investigated in order to minimise the damage caused by exposure to such stresses experienced by probiotics during food processing and gastric transit. Approaches for protection of probiotic viability during food processing and shelf life include manipulation of bacterial cell physiology, application of prelethal stress to the cultures during cell preparation, selection of appropriate drying conditions, and optimisation of reconstitution conditions after drying. Furthermore, probiotic viability losses can be minimised by selection of appropriate food carriers for their delivery to the intestine. In this respect, the composition and physical nature of the food matrix can have profound effects on the stability of live probiotics during gastric transit. Encapsulation of probiotics is another approach to positively affect viability of probiotics in some matrices. Furthermore, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying bacterial survival in hostile environments in order to develop efficacious functional foods delivering the benefits associated with the probiotics within.
Impacts of clustering on noise-induced spiking regularity in the excitatory neuronal networks of subnetworks

In this paper, we investigate how clustering factors influent spiking regularity of the neuronal network of subnetworks. In order to do so, we fix the averaged coupling probability and the averaged coupling strength, and take the cluster number M, the ratio of intra-connection probability and inter-connection probability R, the ratio of intra-coupling strength and inter-coupling strength S as controlled parameters. With the obtained simulation results, we find that spiking regularity of the neuronal networks has little variations with changing of R and S when M is fixed. However, cluster number M could reduce the spiking regularity to low level when the uniform neuronal network's spiking regularity is at high level. Combined the obtained results, we can see that clustering factors have little influences on the spiking regularity when the entire energy is fixed, which could be controlled by the averaged coupling strength and the averaged connection probability.
Consumer Credit Risk Models Via Machine-Learning Algorithms

We apply machine-learning techniques to construct nonlinear nonparametric forecasting models of consumer credit risk. By combining customer transactions and credit bureau data from January 2005 to April 2009 for a sample of a major commercial bank's customers, we are able to construct out-of-sample forecasts that significantly improve the classification rates of credit-card-holder delinquencies and defaults, with linear regression R2's of forecasted/realized delinquencies of 85%. Using conservative assumptions for the costs and benefits of cutting credit lines based on machine-learning forecasts, we estimate the cost savings to range from 6% to 25% of total losses. Moreover, the time-series patterns of estimated delinquency rates from this model over the course of the recent financial crisis suggest that aggregated consumer credit-risk analytics may have important applications in forecasting systemic risk.
Ziconotide: a review of its pharmacology and use in the treatment of pain

Ziconotide is a powerful analgesic drug that has a unique mechanism of action involving potent and selective block of N-type calcium channels, which control neurotransmission at many synapses. The analgesic efficacy of ziconotide likely results from its ability to interrupt pain signaling at the level of the spinal cord. Ziconotide is a peptidic drug and has been approved for the treatment of severe chronic pain in patients only when administered by the intrathecal route. Importantly, prolonged administration of ziconotide does not lead to the development of addiction or tolerance. The current review discusses the various studies that have addressed the in vitro biochemical and electrophysiological actions of ziconotide as well as the numerous pre-clinical studies that were conducted to elucidate its antinociceptive mechanism of action in animals. In addition, this review considers the pivotal Phase 3 (and other) clinical trials that were conducted in support of ziconotide’s approval for the treatment of severe chronic pain and tries to offer some insights regarding the future discovery and development of newer analgesic drugs that would act by a similar mechanism to ziconotide but which might offer improved safety, tolerability and ease of use.
Origin, evolution and function of the hemipteran perimicrovillar membrane with emphasis on Reduviidae that transmit Chagas disease

Abstract The peritrophic matrix is a chitin-protein structure that envelops the food bolus in the midgut of the majority of insects, but is absent in some groups which have, instead, an unusual extra-cellular lipoprotein membrane named the perimicrovillar membrane. The presence of the perimicrovillar membrane (PMM) allows these insects to exploit restricted ecological niches during all life stages. It is found only in some members of the superorder Paraneoptera and many of these species are of medical and economic importance. In this review we present an overview of the midgut and the digestive system of insects with an emphasis on the order Paraneoptera and differences found across phylogenetic groups. We discuss the importance of the PMM in Hemiptera and the apparent conservation of this structure among hemipteran groups, suggesting that the basic mechanism of PMM production is the same for different hemipteran species. We propose that the PMM is intimately involved in the interaction with parasites and as such should be a target for biological and chemical control of hemipteran insects of economic and medical importance.
Fundamental classes of negatively curved manifolds cannot be represented by products of manifolds

Not every singular homology class is the push-forward of the fundamental class of some manifold. In the same spirit, one can study the following problem: Which singular homology classes are the push-forward of the fundamental class of a given type of manifolds? In the present article, we show that the fundamental classes of negatively curved manifolds cannot be represented by a non-trivial product of manifolds. This observation sheds some light on the functorial semi-norm on singular homology given by products of compact surfaces.
Sequential smoothing framework for convex-concave saddle point problems with application to large-scale constrained optimization

In this paper, we propose a sequential smoothing algorithm for solving large scale convex-concave saddle point problems. We prove that this class of algorithms achieves the convergence rate O(1/√ε) in the deterministic setting and O(1/√ε) with probability at least 1 − δ, where δ ∊ (0, 1), in the stochastic setting, to obtain an g-optimal solution. We then apply our general algorithm to specific problems in large-scale convex constrained optimization.
Automatic Speech-to-Text Transcription in Arabic

The Arabic language presents a number of challenges for speech recognition, arising in part from the significant differences in the spoken and written forms, in particular the conventional form of texts being non-vowelized. Being a highly inflected language, the Arabic language has a very large lexical variety and typically with several possible (generally semantically linked) vowelizations for each written form. This article summarizes research carried out over the last few years on speech-to-text transcription of broadcast data in Arabic. The initial research was oriented toward processing of broadcast news data in Modern Standard Arabic, and has since been extended to address a larger variety of broadcast data, which as a consequence results in the need to also be able to handle dialectal speech. While standard techniques in speech recognition have been shown to apply well to the Arabic language, taking into account language specificities help to significantly improve system performance.
Shedding Light on Restoring Respiratory Function After Spinal Cord Injury

Loss of respiratory function is one of the leading causes of death following spinal cord injury. Because of this, much work has been done in studying ways to restore respiratory function following spinal cord injury (SCI) – including pharmacological and regeneration strategies. With the emergence of new and powerful tools from molecular neuroscience, new therapeutically relevant alternatives to these approaches have become available, including expression of light sensitive proteins called channelrhodopsins. In this article we briefly review the history of various attempts to restore breathing after C2 hemisection, and focus on our recent work using the activation of light sensitive channels to restore respiratory function after experimental SCI. We also discuss how such light-induced activity can help shed light on the inner workings of the central nervous system respiratory circuitry that controls diaphragmatic function.
A Giant Pseudoaneurysm of the Forearm as Unusual Complication of Bacterial Endocarditis

A 59-year-old man with fever was diagnosed with endocarditis due to Streptococcus bovis. Two weeks after antibiotic therapy was started, he presented with red and painful swelling of the forearm without any sign of systemic inflammation. A giant hematoma connected to the radial artery was detected with ultrasound. Surgical intervention with the removal of multiple, sterile clots from the hematoma was performed, and the multiple lacerations of the artery detected were corrected. This is the first case reporting rupture of the radial artery as a complication of infective endocarditis.
Variations in physiological responses of participants during different stages of an immersive virtual environment experiment

This paper presents a study of the fine grain physiological responses of participants to an immersive virtual simulation of an urban environment. The analysis of differences in participant responses at various stages of the experiment (baseline recordings, training, first half and second half of the urban simulation) are examined in detail. It was found that participants typically show a stress response during the training phase and a stress response towards the end of the simulation of the urban experience.There is also some evidence that variations in the level of visual realism based the texture strategy used was associated with changes in mental stress.
Critical Role for the Chemokine Receptor CXCR6 in Homeostasis and Activation of CD1d-Restricted NKT Cells1

NK T (NKT) cells play important roles in the regulation of diverse immune responses. However, little is known about the mechanisms that regulate homeostasis and activation of these cells. Thymic NKT cells up-regulated the chemokine receptor CXCR6 following positive selection and migrated toward CXCL16 in vitro. However, CXCR6 was not essential for thymic development or maturation. In contrast, liver and lung NKT cells were depleted in CXCR6+/− and CXCR6−/− mice. The reduction in liver and lung NKT cells coincided with an increase in bone marrow NKT cells, suggesting a redistribution of NKT cells in CXCR6−/− animals. In wild-type mice, CXCL16 neutralization reduced accumulation of mature NK1.1+, but not immature NK1.1− NKT cell recent thymic emigrants in the liver. Given that thymic NKT cells are preferentially exported as NK1.1− cells, this suggests an additional role for CXCR6/CXCL16 in maturation or survival of immature liver NKT cells. CXCL16 blockade did not deplete resident NK1.1+ NKT cells, indicating that CXCR6/CXCL16 are not required to retain mature NKT cells in the liver. Cytokine production by liver and spleen NKT cells was impaired in CXCR6−/− mice following in vivo stimulation with α-galactosylceramide, implicating a novel role for CXCR6 in NKT cell activation. Reduced IFN-γ production was not due to an intrinsic defect as production was normal following PMA and ionomycin stimulation. Preformed transcripts for IL-4, but not IFN-γ, were reduced in CXCR6−/− liver NKT cells. These data identify critical roles for CXCR6/CXCL16 in NKT cell activation and the regulation of NKT cell homeostasis.
BISAR: Boosted input selection algorithm for regression

We present in this paper a new regression method adapted to problems dealing with a huge set of potential features like in pattern recognition. This method combines a boosted forward feature selection algorithm and a Generalized Regression Neural Network. The feature selection uses a new criterion, the Fuzzy Functional Criterion, to evaluate the relevance of each feature. It is well suited to measure to what extent a random variable y can be viewed as a function of another random variable x. We explain how this measure is more appropriate than the classical mutual information. At each step, features are evaluated using weights on examples computed from the error produced by the neural network at the previous step. This boosting strategy helps our system to focus on hard examples during the feature selection process. The application is head pose estimation, a challenging problem in pattern recognition. Test are carried out on the commonly used Pointing 04 database and compared with state-of-the-art results.
Influence of chirped excitation pulses in an optical clock with ultracold calcium atoms

We have investigated the influence of frequency chirps of the excitation pulses in a time-domain optical Ramsey-Borde/spl acute/ atom-interferometer used in an optical clock with ultracold calcium atoms. With optical interferometry, we identify a ringing in the excitation pulses to be responsible for the observed frequency shifts. Using these results, the uncertainty of the latest frequency measurement could be reduced to 1.2/spl middot/10/sup -14/.
Inhaled Nitric Oxide Improves Outcomes After Successful Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Mice

Background— Sudden cardiac arrest (CA) is a leading cause of death worldwide. Breathing nitric oxide (NO) reduces ischemia/reperfusion injury in animal models and in patients. The objective of this study was to learn whether inhaled NO improves outcomes after CA and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Methods and Results— Adult male mice were subjected to potassium-induced CA for 7.5 minutes whereupon CPR was performed with chest compression and mechanical ventilation. One hour after CPR, mice were extubated and breathed air alone or air supplemented with 40 ppm NO for 23 hours. Mice that were subjected to CA/CPR and breathed air exhibited a poor 10-day survival rate (4 of 13), depressed neurological and left ventricular function, and increased caspase-3 activation and inflammatory cytokine induction in the brain. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed brain regions with marked water diffusion abnormality 24 hours after CA/CPR in mice that breathed air. Breathing air supplemented with NO for 23 hours starting 1 hour after CPR attenuated neurological and left ventricular dysfunction 4 days after CA/CPR and markedly improved 10-day survival rate (11 of 13; P=0.003 versus mice breathing air). The protective effects of inhaled NO on the outcome after CA/CPR were associated with reduced water diffusion abnormality, caspase-3 activation, and cytokine induction in the brain and increased serum nitrate/nitrite levels. Deficiency of the &agr;1 subunit of soluble guanylate cyclase, a primary target of NO, abrogated the ability of inhaled NO to improve outcomes after CA/CPR. Conclusions— These results suggest that NO inhalation after CA and successful CPR improves outcome via soluble guanylate cyclase–dependent mechanisms.
Advanced metal powder based manufacturing of complex components by electron beam melting

Abstract Electron beam melting of Ti–6Al–4V powder (∼30 μm diameter) to create complex, three-dimensional components layer by layer using CAD is described along with the characterisation of these products (builds) by optical and electron microscopy, and mechanical testing. Build defects, including porous (unmelted or unsintered) zones, inclusions and gas bubbles trapped in the atomised powder particles and retained in the build, are illustrated. Reticulated mesh geometries and their applications are described along with examples having biomedical applications. Microstructures of solid components and mesh arrays are described. Powder chemistries and solid build chemistries are also examined and shown to be constant for up to 40 cycles of powder reuse, but there was a 10–15% reduction in Al content in the solid builds at optimised build conditions. Quality control and related issues are also described using duplicate products for destructive testing correlated with removable quality control tabs on the builds.
Fast Mutation Operator Applied in Detector Generating Strategy

Inspired by the stimulated-responding mutation process of gene segment, a new mutation operator is proposed. The main characteristic is its mutation method, when one bit is mutated then the following contiguous bits are to be mutated according to the mutated, which make it owns better capability of local search. At the same time a new algorithm, named Contiguous somatic stimulated mutation algorithm (CSSMA), is given based on the novel mutation operator. Experiments showed, the CSSMA outperforms than some classical algorithms in term of the detective rate and time cost.