Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
iMiner: Sub-room-level POI interaction detection for semantic location history construction

Sub-room-level location-based services are poised to impact people's daily lives in the near future. Sub-room-level semantic location history (SLH) construction is an essential component of such services. However, little in-depth research on constructing SLH in sub-room-level scenarios has been conducted. In this paper, we propose iMiner, an automatic sub-room-level SLH construction system. iMiner consists of an improved Kalman filter-based approach to obtain accurate location and heading estimation from inertial sensor readings of smartphones. The collected users' location and heading histories arc further mined to estimate areas of interaction (AOIs). AOT is a novel idea and a powerful tool for accurately embedding points of interest into geographic trajectories. A series of experiments were conducted in two large-scale sites. The results have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Water Relations of Seagrasses: STATIONARY VOLUMETRIC ELASTIC MODULUS AND OSMOTIC PRESSURE OF THE LEAF CELLS OF HALOPHILA OVALIS, ZOSTERA CAPRICORNI, AND POSIDONIA AUSTRALIS.

The stationary volumetric elastic modulus (epsilon(s)) of the leaf cells of three seagrasses (Halophila ovalis (R.Br.) Hook, Zostera capricorni Aschers, and Posidonia australis Hook f. ) was evaluated from estimates of epsilon(s) plus intracellular osmotic pressure (epsilon(s) + II(i)) and II(i). The estimates of (epsilon(s) + II(i)) were made using a linear displacement transducer to measure very small changes in thickness of leaf tissue produced by changes in external osmotic pressure (II(o)). epsilon(s) increases with increasing turgor pressure in each of the species and the maximum values of epsilon(s) are: 22 megapascals for H. ovalis, 17 megapascals for Z. capricorni, and 51 megapascals for P. australis.There is a hysteresis in thickness changes versus changes in II(o) which indicates a hysteresis in the relationship between volume and turgor pressure. The hysteresis results in epsilon(s) being different for swelling and for shrinking cells over the same range of II(o) and this may be important in other aspects of plant-water relations.A new design of an apparatus employing a linear displacement transducer for measuring very small changes in tissue thickness is described. The new design has the advantages of virtually frictionless movement and a precision of 0.05 micrometer.
Identification of the Virus-Specific Proteins of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Temperature-Sensitive Mutants by Immunoprecipitation

Abstract The proteins of Long strain RSV and three temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants of the A2 strain were compared by pulse labeling virus-infected cells with [35S]methionine and [3H]glucosamine followed by analysis of the cell lysates by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. At the permissive temperature (30°) proteins ranging in molecular weight from 24,000 to 50,000 (VP24, VP27, VP33, VP44) could be identified. Immunoprecipitation of viral lysates by immune rabbit serum demonstrated antigenic similarity with VP27, VP44, VP50, and VP67 in all ts mutants and Long strain RSV. [3H]Glucosamine labeling demonstrated glycoproteins of 90,000 (GP90) and 50,000 (GP50) in Long strain and GP90 in the ts mutants.
Advanced Wastewater Treatment Engineering—Investigating Membrane Fouling in both Rotational and Static Membrane Bioreactor Systems Using Empirical Modelling

Advanced wastewater treatment using membranes are popular environmental system processes since they allow reuse and recycling. However, fouling is a key limiting factor and so proprietary systems such as Avanti’s RPU-185 Flexidisks membrane bioreactor (MBR) use novel rotating membranes to assist in ameliorating it. In earlier research, this rotating process was studied by creating a simulation model based on first principles and traditional fouling mechanisms. In order to directly compare the potential benefits of this rotational system, this follow-up study was carried out using Avanti’s newly developed static (non-rotating) Flexidisks MBR system. The results from operating the static pilot unit were simulated and modelled using the rotational fouling model developed earlier however with rotational switching functions turned off and rotational parameters set to a static mode. The study concluded that a rotating MBR system could increase flux throughput when compared against a similar static system. It is thought that although the slowly rotating spindle induces a weak crossflow shear, it is still able to even out cake build up across the membrane surface, thus reducing the likelihood of localised critical flux being exceeded at the micro level and lessening the potential of rapid trans-membrane pressure increases at the macro level.
New developments in the melt rheology of nylons. I: Effect of moisture and molecular weight

Peculiar observations on the melt rheology of ultra-dry nylon resins, nylon 6 in particular, are reported. One aspect of this study deals with a sharp increase in zero shear melt viscosity (e.g. 2 to 5 times) as the nylon 6 resin moisture is taken from 0.10 down to 0.00%; the effect being reversible. Changes of such magnitude are unexpected considering that there are no detectable variations of the chemical/compositional/molecular weight type in the starting resin, when subjected to the imposed drying conditions. Another aspect of this study deals with a deviation of nylons (6, 6,6, and 12) from the Bueche (1952) relationship, well accepted for polymers to date. Under moderate drying conditions (e.g. 50°C/17 h/110 millitorr), the molecular weight exponent is found to be 3.8, which is within the range of 3.4 to 3.8 reported for nylon 6. However, under more severe drying conditions (e.g. 110°C/17 h/110 millitorr), the molecular weight exponents for nylon 6, nylon 66, and nylon 12 are 4.8, 5.4, and 4.6, respectively. We are proposing that a sharp increase in melt viscosity of ultra-dry nylon 6 is partly due to an increase in the molecular weight of the melt (extrudate) which then, has a more pronounced impact on melt viscosity in view of the 4.8 exponent. Such unique results, in contrast to polyethylene (free radical polymer) and poly(ethylene terephthalate) (condensation polymer) are tentatively attributed to H-bonding in nylon melts. Yet another aspect of this study deals with the rheology of supercooled molten polymers that can offer advantages for analytical characterization.
Occupational Exposure of Diesel Station Workers to BTEX Compounds at a Bus Depot

Diesel fuel is known to emit pollutants that have a negative impact on environmental and human health. In developing countries like South Africa, attendants are employed to pump fuel for customers at service stations. Attendants refuel vehicles with various octane unleaded fuel, lead-replacement petrol and diesel fuel, on a daily basis. Attendants are at risk to adverse health effects associated with the inhalation of volatile organic compounds released from these fuels. The pollutants released include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX), which are significant due to their high level of toxicity. In this study, a risk assessment of BTEX was conducted at a diesel service station for public buses. Using Radiello passive samplers, it was found that benzene concentrations were above recommended international standards. Due to poor ventilation and high exposure duration, the average benzene concentration over the sampling campaign exceeded the US Environmental Protection Agency’s chronic inhalation exposure reference concentration. Lifetime cancer risk estimation showed that on average there is a 3.78 × 10−4 cancer risk, corresponding to an average chronic daily intake of 1.38 × 10−3 mg/kg/day of benzene exposure. Additionally, there were incidences where individuals were at potential hazard risk of benzene and toluene that may pose non-carcinogenic effects to employees.
How to Fragment Your File System

Yang Zhan is a PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is advised by Donald Porter. His research mainly focuses on writeoptimized data structures. He also works on concurrent data structures. yzhan@cs.unc. edu File systems attempt to avoid aging, or fragmentation over time, by strategically allocating space for files. System implementers and users alike treat aging as a solved problem. Here, we present a realistic workload, based on Git, that can cause these best-guess file-blockplacement heuristics to fail, inducing large performance declines due to aging. This performance decline cannot be prevented with more caching or larger disks, and SSDs reduce but do not eliminate the aging effects. Our Git-based aging scheme can simulate a year of aging in under an hour. To make it easy for practitioners to incorporate aging into benchmarks, we have open-sourced our aging scripts at betrfs.org.
Efficiency of Immunotoxin Cytotoxicity Is Modulated by the Intracellular Itinerary

Pseudomonas exotoxin-based immunotoxins, including LMB-2 (antiTac(Fv)-PE38), are proposed to traffic to the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and move by a retrograde pathway to the endoplasmic reticulum, where they undergo translocation to the cytoplasm, a step that is essential for cytotoxicity. The retrograde transport pathways used by LMB-2 are not completely understood, so it is unclear if transit through specific organelles is critical for maximal cytotoxic activity. In this study, we used Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines that express chimeric constructs of CD25, the Tac antigen, attached to the cytoplasmic domain of the TGN-targeted transmembrane proteins, TGN38 and furin. These chimeras are both targeted to the TGN, but the itineraries they follow are quite different. LMB-2 was incubated with the two cell lines, and the efficiency of cell killing was determined using cell viability and cytotoxicity assays. LMB-2 that is targeted through the endocytic recycling compartment to the TGN via Tac-TGN38 kills the cells more efficiently than immunotoxins delivered through the late endosomes by Tac-furin. Although the processing to the 37 kDa active fragment was more efficient in Tac-furin cells than in Tac-TGN38 cells, this was not associated with enhanced cytotoxicity – presumably because the toxin was also degraded more rapidly in these cells. These data indicate that trafficking through specific organelles is an important factor modulating toxicity by LMB-2.
Oral cavity infection: an adverse effect after the treatment of oral cancer in aged individuals

Objective The immune compromised patients after treatment of oral cancer may have a chance of infection by drug-resistant opportunistic microbes. We investigated the occurrence of opportunistic microorganisms in aged individuals receiving follow-up examinations after treatment of oral cancer in China. Material and Methods These patients were used as test group and the respective age grouped healthy individuals as control group. In this study, the oral cavity microorganisms such as bacteria and yeast were taken for the analysis. After the screening of representative microorganisms, their aptitude of pervasiveness against drugs was studied. Here, we used antimicrobial agents which are common in clinical practice. We also performed studies to investigate the presence of toxin genes in methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Results The results indicate that the prevalence of drug-resistant microbes was more pronounced in oral cancer patients after initial treatment above 70 years old. The oxacillin resistance of S. aureus isolate confirms that the prevalence of MRSA is increasing in accordance to age-factor and immune compromise in elderly patients. Conclusions This study reveals the occurrence of drug-resistant opportunistic microorganisms in oral cavity after treatment for oral cancer in aged individuals. Special attention should be directed to MRSA during the treatment of oral cancer, and to realize the fact of immune compromise in elderly patients.
Direct IP-based mobile-to-mobile communications: first phase results

The networking world is showing increasing interest in changing from circuit-based to a complete packet-based system. The change has been slow for many years but is now accelerating from the dated Tim-Division Multiplexed (TDM) narrowband networks to an IP-based broadband network system. This offers several key advantages, including, simpler up-grades, lower costs, and integrated support for a wide range of high-value voice, data, and video applications and services.Many factors have converged to make the market ripe for the change from circuit to packet. The emergence of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) as a access technology for broadband along with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is now proving increasingly competitive with TDM networks and is just one example of many that are pushing for the migration of circuit to packet based networks. TVoIP and 3G are amongst the other examples that will inventively lead to an entire IP-based world.This paper investigates a disadvantage that mobile packet-based networks presently hold. It addresses the difficult task of transmitting IP -based services from one mobile device to another when using standard mobile services in the UK. The issues surround the type of IP address provided to a device from the mobile provider on connection. The IP number is both DHCP served and not publicly routable. Although it is possible to undertake such a process via a private APN, the cost for such an arrangement, together with a suitable backhaul, would be a major barrier to the practical implementation of such a service for many users
Raman Spectroscopy and XPS Analysis of Epitaxial Graphene Grown on 4H-SiC (0001) Substrate under an Argon Pressure of 900 mbar Environment

This paper investigated a feasible process of growing epitaxial graphene on 4H hexagonal poly-type of silicon carbide Si-faced polar surface (0001) under an argon pressure of 900 mbar conditions. Using Raman Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, epitaxial graphene grown at temperature 1600°C is confirmed to take shape weakly on 4H-SiC (0001) with an average domain size of several tens of nanometers, and this can be seen as the characteristic of initial formation of epitaxial graphene on substrate.
More morphisms between bundle gerbes.

Usually bundle gerbes are considered as objects of a 2-groupoid, whose 1- morphisms, called stable isomorphisms, are all invertible. I introduce new 1-morphisms which include stable isomorphisms, trivializations and bundle gerbe modules. They fit into the structure of a 2-category of bundle gerbes, and lead to natural definitions of surface holonomy for closed surfaces, surfaces with boundary, and unoriented closed surfaces.
Electroactive Polymer (EAP) Actuators as Artificial Muscles - Reality

The invention comprises a method and apparatus for flushing debris from a liquid circulation system such as the cooling system of a water-cooled vehicle. The apparatus includes an inlet conduit for flushing liquid, a series of branch conduits connected to points on the circulation system, a drainage conduit for used water, and a valve or series of valves settable between various positions dictating different flow paths for the flushing liquid through the conduits and the circulation system.
Maximum Likelihood Decoding of Codes on the Z-channel

The aim of this paper is to extend some basic concepts related to the Maximum Likelihood decoding of codes on the Z-channel, which is a particular, but very important, example of an asymmetric channel. We study distance properties of linear codes over the Z-channel, in order to define a suitable metric for the implementation of a Maximum Likelihood decoder on the channel. A combinatorial expression for an approximation on the probability of incorrect Maximum Likelihood decoding is also provided, and comparisons are given to evaluate the tightness of the estimation, when a Hamming code, a Turbo code and an LDPC code are used for communicating over the Z-channel.
Inverse heat conduction problem in a phase change memory device

An invers heat conduction problem is solved considering the thermal investigation of a phase change memory device using the scanning thermal microscopy. The heat transfer model rests on system identification for the probe thermal impedance and on a finite element method for the device thermal impedance. Unknown parameters in the model are then identified using a nonlinear least square algorithm that minimizes the quadratic gap between the measured probe temperature and the simulated one.
Metrics and QoE assessment in P2PTV applications

Peer-to-peer P2P is a growing technology offering an affordable platform to deploy distributed services and streaming of multimedia content through peer-to-peer television P2PTV. Nevertheless, to promote such technology it is necessary to provide a solid streaming quality assessment mechanism. In this context, legacy solutions tied to service level agreements are no longer suitable, as for P2P systems, the service consumers become an active part by assisting in the service delivery. To overcome this limitation, we present a generic multi-layer monitoring and management framework to assess the quality of service QoS and the quality of experience QoE of multimedia traffic in any P2PTV streaming application. We also demonstrate the usefulness of our solution, by analysing the performance of a real streaming application in a P2PTV environment.
Heterogeneity Among Neuroepithelial Cells in the Chick Retina Revealed by Immunostaining with Monoclonal Antibody PM1

Neuroepithelial cells appear as a homogeneous population of cells in the cell cycle that seem to behave as pluripotent neural precursors. The study of the intrinsic heterogeneity and subtle developmental changes among neuroepithelial cells has been hindered by the lack of specific markers. To address that study, a panel of monoclonal antibodies was produced against early developing chick retina. The monoclonal antibody precursor marker 1 (PM1) labels most, if not all, of the early neuroepithelial cells in embryonic day 4 retinal sections. This pattern is transient since the labelling becomes restricted to the peripheral retina as development proceeds and eventually disappears from the neuroepithelial cells. However, apparently in parallel, the differentiating retinal ganglion cells become PM1‐positive. The expression of the PM1 antigen, a 73 × 103Mr protein, as shown by western blotting, also decreases with development. In addition, a chick retina dissociated‐cell culture system, where retinal neuroepithelial cells actively proliferate and undergo differentiation under defined conditions, in combination with monoclonal antibody PM1, allowed us to characterize and quantify the proliferating and differentiating neuroepithelial cells. Interestingly, the fraction of total neuroepithelial cells that are stained with PM1 sharply decreases as retinal development proceeds, in correlation with the staining pattern in sections from matched stages. These data thus reveal that the pluripotent neural precursors in the chick retina already represent an intrinsically heterogeneous population, and that this population changes with development.
Structure and Mechanics of Supporting Cells in the Guinea Pig Organ of Corti

The mechanical properties of the mammalian organ of Corti determine its sensitivity to sound frequency and intensity, and the structure of supporting cells changes progressively with frequency along the cochlea. From the apex (low frequency) to the base (high frequency) of the guinea pig cochlea inner pillar cells decrease in length incrementally from 75–55 µm whilst the number of axial microtubules increases from 1,300–2,100. The respective values for outer pillar cells are 120–65 µm and 1,500–3,000. This correlates with a progressive decrease in the length of the outer hair cells from >100 µm to 20 µm. Deiters'cell bodies vary from 60–50 µm long with relatively little change in microtubule number. Their phalangeal processes reflect the lengths of outer hair cells but their microtubule numbers do not change systematically. Correlations between cell length, microtubule number and cochlear location are poor below 1 kHz. Cell stiffness was estimated from direct mechanical measurements made previously from isolated inner and outer pillar cells. We estimate that between 200 Hz and 20 kHz axial stiffness, bending stiffness and buckling limits increase, respectively,∼3, 6 and 4 fold for outer pillar cells, ∼2, 3 and 2.5 fold for inner pillar cells and ∼7, 20 and 24 fold for the phalangeal processes of Deiters'cells. There was little change in the Deiters'cell bodies for any parameter. Compensating for effective cell length the pillar cells are likely to be considerably stiffer than Deiters'cells with buckling limits 10–40 times greater. These data show a clear relationship between cell mechanics and frequency. However, measurements from single cells alone are insufficient and they must be combined with more accurate details of how the multicellular architecture influences the mechanical properties of the whole organ.
Scout Algorithms and Genetic Algorithms: A Comparative Study

This paper gives a comparative study of the recently proposed Scout algorithm and the standard genetic algorithm (SGA). Although these evolutionary algorithms are di erently con gurated and use di erent evolutionary operators, essential similarities of both algorithms can be pointed out. These similarities can be found at three levels, theoretically and empirically: it is discussed that the Scout algorithm ful lls Holland's paradigm of admissible detector con guration; from the definition of the Scout algorithm and its variants, the Schemata theorem for Scout algorithms is justi ed; and experimental evidence is given, that Scout algorithm's performance re ects SGA's performance for SGA hard problems (Tanese functions) and SGA deceptive problems (Royal Road Functions). Thus, Scout algorithms and SGA are both unique instances of a broader, yet unknown class of evolutionary algorithms. The most important advantage of Scout algorithms is the fashioning of their update rules. This update rule has no counterpart in the SGA.
Rheological properties and irreversible dispersion changes in carbon nanotube/epoxy systems

We report on the rheological properties of semidilute carbon nanotube (CNT)/epoxy suspensions with varying filler content prepared with different dispersion methods. We show that dispersion techniques can be distinguished by means of the rheological response. It was found that the suspensions undergo a lasting dispersion changes during the first shear sweep measurement. Shear-induced changes within the suspension can also be visualized optically. Our results demonstrate that the rheological properties are strongly influenced by the measurement procedure, which has to be known in order to guarantee reproducible and comparable results. Finally, it does not seem possible to completely reset the sample history by shear treatment. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2011. ©2011 Society of Plastics Engineers
Learning Deterministically Recognizable Tree Series

We devise a learning algorithm for deterministically recognizable tree series where the weights are taken from a commutative group. For this, we use an adaptation of the minimal adequate teacher model that was originally introduced by Angluin. The algorithm runs in polynomial time and constructs the unique minimal deterministic bottom-up finite state weighted tree automaton that recognizes the tree series in question.