Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model Predictive Control of Variable Refrigerant Flow Systems

Model Predictive Control (MPC) of vapor compression systems (VCSs) offers several advantages over conventional control methods (such as multivariable process control with selector logic) in terms of 1) the resulting closed-loop performance and 2) the control engineering design process. VCSs are multivariable systems and feature constraints on system variables and actuators that must be enforced during steady-state and transient operation. We present the design and validation of an MPC for a split ductless VCS. The design regulates room temperature with zero steady state error for unknown changes in the thermal load and enforces constraints on system variables such as compressor discharge temperature and actuator ranges and rates. We show how the MPC design can evolve during the engineering process by adding and modifying constraints and process variables. The design methodology provides guarantees in terms of closed loop stability and convergence. Importantly, in contrast to other published results on MPC for VCSs, our design makes use of only available temperature measurements and does not require pressure or mass flow measurements which are typically not available in production VCSs.
Q A ] 2 8 M ar 2 00 4 ITEP-TH1 / 04 Representation theory and quantum integrability ∗

We describe new constructions of the infinite-dimensional representations of U(g) and Uq(g) for g being gl(N) and sl(N). The application of these constructions to the quantum integrable theories of Toda type is discussed. With the help of these infinitedimensional representations we manage to establish direct connection between group theoretical approach to the quantum integrability and Quantum Inverse Scattering Method based on the representation theory of Yangian and its generalizations. In the case of Uq(g) the considered representation is naturally supplied with the structure of Uq(g) ⊗ Uq̃(ǧ)-bimodule where ǧ is Langlands dual to g and log q/2πi = −(log q̃/2πi)−1. This bimodule structure is a manifestation of the Morita equivalence of the algebra and its dual. Extended talk by the third author at the satellite XIV ICMP workshop: ”Infinite Dimensional Algebras and Quantum Integrable systems”, July 21-25, 2003, Faro, Portugal Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia Hamilton Mathematical Institute at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia 1
Circulating Porphyromonas gingivalis lipopolysaccharide resets cardiac homeostasis in mice through a matrix metalloproteinase-9-dependent mechanism

Porphyromonas gingivalis lipopolysaccharide (Pg‐LPS) circulates systemically in over 50% of periodontal disease (PD) patients and is associated with increased matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)‐9. We hypothesized that low systemic Pg‐LPS would stimulate an inflammatory response in the left ventricle (LV) through MMP‐9, leading to a decrease in cardiac function. Wild‐type (WT) and MMP‐9 null mice (4–7 months old) were exposed for 1 or 28 days to low dose Pg‐LPS or saline (n ≥ 6/group). MMP‐9 significantly increased in WT mice LV at 1 and 28 days of exposure, compared to control (P < 0.05 for both). Fractional shortening decreased subtly yet significantly in WT mice by day 28 (31 ± 1%) compared to control (35 ± 1%; P < 0.05), and this decrease was attenuated in null (34 ± 1%) mice. Plasma cardiac troponin I levels were elevated in WT mice at day 28. Macrophage‐related factors increased over twofold in WT plasma and LV after day 1 (monocyte chemoattractant protein‐5, macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)‐1α, MIP‐1γ, stem cell factor, Ccl12, Ccl9, Il8rb, Icam1, Itgb2, and Spp1; all P < 0.05), indicating a moderate inflammatory response. Levels returned to baseline by day 28, suggesting tolerance to Pg‐LPS. In contrast, macrophage‐related factors remained elevated in day 28 null mice, indicating a sustained defense against Pg‐LPS stimulation. Consistent with these findings, LV macrophage numbers increased in both groups at day 1 and returned to baseline by day 28 in the WT mice only. Major histocompatibility complex (MCH) II remained elevated in the null group at day 28, confirming Pg‐tolerance in the WT. Interestingly Il‐1α, a regulator of macrophage immunosuppression, increased in the plasma of WT mice only on day 28, suggesting that Il‐1α plays a role in tolerance in a MMP‐9‐dependent manner. In conclusion, circulating Pg‐LPS induced tolerance in WT mice, resulting in significant LV changes and subtle cardiac dysfunction. MMP‐9 played a major role in the regulation of chronic systemic inflammation and associated cardiac dysfunction.
Structural dynamics of Belgium’s foreign trade

The liberalisation of trade and finance, the reduction in transport costs and progress in the field of information and communication technologies have brought about profound changes in the international environment. As a result, the interpenetration of economies has increased sharply, and this has been reflected in the growing intensification of international trade in goods and services. Against this background, there has been considerable diversification of the type of goods and services traded across national borders and the list of trading partners has lengthened. This process of transformation is mirrored in the importance of the role played by the extensive margin in longterm growth of Belgian exports since 1995. The changing pattern of exports associated with new markets opening up or existing ones being abandoned, to which this extensive margin refers, even seems to have intensified during the recent recession. The growth of Belgium’s exports over the last five years has in fact largely had its roots in the diversification of Belgian exporters’ product portfolios. They seem to have repositioned themselves in market segments with higher technological content, in expanding markets like eastern Europe, China and India so as to safeguard or boost their market share abroad.
Comparing the Performance and Power Usage of GPU and ARM Clusters for Map-Reduce

This paper compares two parallel architectures, the GPU and the integrated ARM cluster, for the execution of map-reduce applications. The comparison targets performance and power usage. The increasing importance of energy efficiency, especially for large distributed systems - such as frequently used for map-reduce - motivates the comparison of alternative parallel architectures. Because the different hardware platforms require specific map-reduce implementations, we selected two different implementations and showed that GPU provides a better performance per watt than ARM cluster, but by less than an order of magnitude. These results indicate the great potential of ARM clusters, given the differences in hardware and software between the alternatives.
Polypyrimidine Tract Binding Protein Antagonizes Exon Definition

PTB appears to be a global repressor of weak or regulated exons. We propose here that PTB multimerization sequesters these exons to prevent exon definition. This is likely critical not only to prevent inclusion of pseudo-exons but also to set up cell-type-specific exon definition. What remains unclear about PTB can probably be broken down into two basic questions. First, what is the precise mechanism of repression? Second, how is this mechanism circumvented? Most of the research to resolve the first question has focused primarily on identifying instances of PTB repression but has done little to understand how that repression is achieved. Recently, both in vivo and in vitro assays for PTB repression have been developed (8, 65); thus, a detailed structure-function analysis can be done. Information from this approach may address mechanistic questions such as if PTB multimerization is required for repression or if there are PTB cofactors. Understanding how this repression is lifted will probably be a more complicated issue. Overwhelming PTB may occur by numerous mechanisms, such as strengthening weak splice sites via activators such as TIA-1 (18), causing the enhancement of inclusion via a tissue-specific expression of antagonizing RNA-binding proteins, or simply by modulating the expression of a PTB cofactor.
Title: Embedded Software Composition and Verification Embedded Software Composition and Verification

Developing networked embedded systems involves reasoning about complex interactions between software modules, including operating system and middleware services and application-specific components, various hardware units and the environment. Component-based design addresses this challenge by allowing engineers to partition the embedded application into several components along well-defined interfaces. The interface specification formalism is of crucial importance in supporting isolated component development and testing. We propose a hierarchical interface automaton language for the design of embedded software components and applications. The formalism allows the specification of structural, as well as behavioral aspects of components. The paper develops automated analysis techniques for asserting compatibility and composability of embedded software components. A prototype modeling environment and integrated verification tools targeting TinyOS, a representative embedded operating system, are also presented.
Dose Responsive Effects of Subcutaneous Pentosan Polysulfate Injection in Mucopolysaccharidosis Type VI Rats and Comparison to Oral Treatment

Background We previously demonstrated the benefits of daily, oral pentosan polysulfate (PPS) treatment in a rat model of mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) type VI. Herein we compare these effects to once weekly, subcutaneous (sc) injection. The bioavailability of injected PPS is greater than oral, suggesting better delivery to difficult tissues such as bone and cartilage. Injected PPS also effectively treats osteoarthritis in animals, and has shown success in osteoarthritis patients. Methodology/Principal Findings One-month-old MPS VI rats were given once weekly sc injections of PPS (1, 2 and 4 mg/kg, human equivalent dose (HED)), or daily oral PPS (4 mg/kg HED) for 6 months. Serum inflammatory markers and total glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) were measured, as were several histological, morphological and functional endpoints. Overall, weekly sc PPS injections led to similar or greater therapeutic effects as daily oral administration. Common findings between the two treatment approaches included reduced serum inflammatory markers, improved dentition and skull lengths, reduced tracheal deformities, and improved mobility. Enhanced effects of sc treatment included GAG reduction in urine and tissues, greater endurance on a rotarod, and better improvements in articular cartilage and bone in some dose groups. Optimal therapeutic effects were observed at 2 mg/kg, sc. No drug-related increases in liver enzymes, coagulation factor abnormalities or other adverse effects were identified following 6 months of sc PPS administration. Conclusions Once weekly sc administration of PPS in MPS VI rats led to equal or better therapeutic effects than daily oral administration, including a surprising reduction in urine and tissue GAGs. No adverse effects from sc PPS administration were observed over the 6-month study period.
Moving beyond Marcuse: Gentrification, displacement and the violence of un-homing

Displacement has become one of the most prominent themes in contemporary geographical debates, used to describe processes of dispossession and forced eviction at a diverse range of scales. Given its frequent deployment in studies describing the consequences of gentrification, this paper seeks to better define and conceptualise displacement as a process of un-homing, noting that while gentrification can prompt processes of eviction, expulsion and exclusion operating at different scales and speeds, it always ruptures the connection between people and place. On this basis – and recognising displacement as a form of violence – this paper concludes that the diverse scales and temporalities of displacement need to be better elucidated so that their negative emotional, psychosocial and material impacts can be more fully documented, and resisted.
A 20 GHz low noise amplifier with active balun in a 0.25 um SiGe BICMOS technology

A 20 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) with an active balun fabricated in a 0.25um SiGe BICMOS (f/sub t/ = 47 GHz) technology is presented The LNA achieves 7 dB of gain and a noise figure of 4.9 dB with all ports simultaneously matched with better than -16 dB of return loss. The amplifier is highly linear with an IP1dB of 0 dBm and IIP3 of 9 dBm, while consuming 14 mA of DC current from a 3.3v rail. To the authors knowledge, the LNA delivers the lowest reported noise figure and highest linearity for a silicon implementation of an (active balun /LNA) at 20 GHz.
On Equilibrium Distribution Properties in Software Reliability Modeling

The non-homogeneous Poisson processes (NHPPs) have gained much popularity in actual software testing phases to assess the software reliability, the number of remaining faults in the software, the software release schedule, {\it{etc}}. In this paper, we propose a novel modeling approach for the NHPP-based software reliability models (SRMs) to describe the stochastic behavior of software fault-detection processes. The fundamental idea is to apply the equilibrium distribution to the fault-detection time distribution. We study the equilibrium distribution properties in software reliability modeling and compare the resulting NHPP-based SRMs with the existing ones.
Orthogonal projection weights in dimension reduction based on Partial Least Squares

Dimension reduction is important during the analysis of gene expression microarray data, because the high dimensionality in the data set hurts the generalisation performance of classifiers. Partial Least Squares Based Dimension Reduction (PLSDR) is a frequently used method, since it is specialised in handling high dimensional data set and leads to satisfying classification performance. However, the previous works exist an ambiguous usage of projection weights in PLSDR. To assure the orthogonality of projected components, the usually used project weights are nonorthogonal. Here, we propose to use orthogonal project weights for PLSDR. Experimental results on four microarray data sets show our proposed orthogonal project weights are better than the previous used to help improve the generalisation performance of classifiers.
Health and Quality of Life Outcomes

Background: Patients in emergency departments show a high prevalence of substance use. Quality of life is associated with substance use as well as socioeconomic status. Little is known about quality of life in substance-abusing young patients with minor trauma. Methods: An investigation in an Emergency Department in an inner city university hospital was conducted during 8 months. Overall, 1,596 patients completed the SF-36 and an established SESquestionnaire and were screened for substance use (harmful alcohol consumption (≥ 8 points in men and ≥ 5 points in women on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), smoking and illicit drug use). Results were compared with a representative German population sample (German Federal Health Survey 1998). Results: Median age of participants was 32 years and 61.8% were male. Mean physical component summary score (PCS) of the Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36) was 53.4 ± 8.3 points and significantly higher than the age and gender-stratified German Federal Health Survey-data. Mean mental component summary score (MCS) was 47.9 ± 10.0 points and significantly lower than the age and gender-stratified German Federal Health Survey-data. In Emergency Department patients, prevalence of substance use was high and harmful alcohol consumption and illicit drug use were strongly associated with impaired mental health. Education and occupational status were strongly positively associated with physical health. Conclusion: We conclude that there is a high prevalence of substance use in young patients with minor trauma and mental quality of life is impaired. Screening and brief intervention strategies to reduce substance-use associated disorders should consider these findings. Published: 01 December 2005 Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 2005, 3:77 doi:10.1186/1477-7525-3-77 Received: 05 July 2005 Accepted: 01 December 2005 This article is available from: http://www.hqlo. com/content/3/1/77 © 2005 Neuner et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
A New Database (GCD) on Genome Composition for Eukaryote and Prokaryote Genome Sequences and Their Initial Analyses

Eukaryote genomes contain many noncoding regions, and they are quite complex. To understand these complexities, we constructed a database, Genome Composition Database, for the whole genome composition statistics for 101 eukaryote genome data, as well as more than 1,000 prokaryote genomes. Frequencies of all possible one to ten oligonucleotides were counted for each genome, and these observed values were compared with expected values computed under observed oligonucleotide frequencies of length 1–4. Deviations from expected values were much larger for eukaryotes than prokaryotes, except for fungal genomes. Mammalian genomes showed the largest deviation among animals. The results of comparison are available online at http://esper.lab. nig.ac. jp/genome-composition-database/.
Classifiers fusion method to recognize handwritten persian numerals

Recognition of Persian handwritten characters has been considered as a significant field of research for the last few years under pattern analysing technique. In this paper, a new approach for robust handwritten Persian numerals recognition using strong feature set and a classifier fusion method is scrutinized to increase the recognition percentage. For implementing the classifier fusion technique, we have considered k nearest neighbour (KNN), linear classifier (LC) and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. The innovation of this tactic is to attain better precision with few features using classifier fusion method. For evaluation of the proposed method we considered a Persian numerals database with 20,000 handwritten samples. Spending 15,000 samples for training stage, we verified our technique on other 5,000 samples, and the correct recognition ratio achieved approximately 99.90%. Additional, we got 99.97% exactness using four-fold cross validation procedure on 20,000 databases.
Recent Advances in Controlled Immobilization of Proteins onto the Surface of the Solid Substrate and Its Possible Application to Proteomics

Proteome analysis plays a key role in the elucidation of the functions and applications for numerous proteins. For proteome analyses, various microplate- and microarray-based techniques have been developed by a number of re- searchers. Their intent was to immobilize proteins on the surface of a solid substrate in a site-directed manner while re- taining structure and native biological function. In this review, we focus on recent advances in immobilization methodol- ogy for proteins/enzymes on a surface, including those using the affinity peptides screened by random peptide library sys- tems. We also discuss applications of the affinity peptide-mediated immobilization method in fields related to proteome analysis, particularly our recent work concerning immunoassay and protein-protein interaction analysis.
Layered robotic system safety with lessons learned from automatic pedestrian doors

Early approaches to robotic system safety employed mechanical barriers to physically isolate robotic systems from their human operators. Modern collaborative applications for robotic systems, however, are driving the replacement of these physical barriers with other approaches to robotic system safety. This paper begins with a brief discussion of the elements comprising a robotic system and an admission that the robotics engineer can no longer rely on the ever-increasing density of microprocessors to solve problems through sheer computing power. The paper then discusses an automatic pedestrian door example system. Though perhaps not immediately obvious, automatic pedestrian doors are examples of robotic systems. People and automatic doors have been operating in the same workspace for decades and there are lessons to be learned from this experience. One of them being that even single-axis collaborative robotic systems present complex safety challenges. Systems with multiple robots and tens, if not hundreds, of axes will be exponentially more complex. Finally, the paper overviews a layered approach to collaborative robotic system safety. This approach is rich enough to the address the complexity of the problem domain, yet still computationally manageable by distributing the computing load across multiple layers.
Advanced Visualizations of Scale Interactions of Tropical Cyclone Formation and Tropical Waves

A current challenge in tropical cyclone research is to improve our understanding of TC formation and intensification by studying TC interactions with environmental flows. A coupled, advanced global multiscale modeling and concurrent visualization system (CAMVis) shows potential for such studies, especially with the integration of StreamPack&amp;#x2014;a quasi-3D streamline package.
Sexual Experiences of Nursing Students and Its Correlates at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City, Nigeria

Background: The sexual experiences of individuals impacts on their psychological well-being. The study determined the sexual experiences of student nurses at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), as well as other factors which may be contributory to the enjoyment of their sexual experience and psychological health. Methods: The Sexual Experience Inventory (SEI) and the Index of Self-Esteem (ISE) were administered on the final year nursing students at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital. Results: One hundred and twenty nine (129) nursing students participated. All participants were females; 123 (95.3%) were single, 84% of them were aged 21 to 28 years. Eighty seven (67.4%) were sexually active. The desire for sexual satisfaction and religious teachings were the factors which determined the frequency of sexual activities in 39.1% and 36.8% of the respondents respectively. Among the sexually active, 47% had more than one sexual partner. The experience of orgasm was statistically related to the enjoyment of sexual activity (χ2=12.08, p=0.00) Circumcision was not found to be statistically important in the determination of sexual enjoyment in the respondents studied (χ2= 0.03, p=0.85). Both circumcision and sexual enjoyment did not significantly affect self-esteem. Conclusion: Over half of the students in this study were sexually active with first intercourse occurring early between 17 to 22 years. Achievement of orgasm was important for sexual satisfaction and enjoyment however, the presence or absence of orgasm and circumcision did not affect the self-esteem of the students.
Chapter 16 Searching Videos in Visual Semantic Spaces

Traditional image and video search leverages matching of associated textual information, low-level content-based features, or a combination of the two. Visual semantics bond textual information and low-level content features in an entirely new feature space for image and video indexing, searching, and browsing. In this chapter, we first introduce state of the art of visual semantics extraction technologies and then present our work on fast exploration of a large set of video data using 374 semantic concepts derived from the LSCOM lexicon. The new system, when coupled with traditional image search techniques, produces a very intuitive and fruitful design for a highly interactive traversal