Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of crack growth rate and growth model of ultrafine grained copper

High-cycle fatigue tests were carried out on smooth specimens of ultrafine grained (UFG) copper produced by equal channel angular pressing for 12 passes. The growth behavior of a small surface-crack was monitored. A major crack, which led to the final fracture of the specimen, initiated from shear bands (SBs) at an early stage of stressing. Different tendencies of growth behavior occurred depending on the ranges of crack length. To understand the changes in growth rate and fracture surface morphologies, a quantitative model describing a crack growth mechanism were developed considering the reversible plastic zone size at a crack tip. In addition, the crack growth rate of UFG copper was evaluated by applying the small-crack growth raw.
Deep Learning Powered In-Session Contextual Ranking using Clickthrough Data

User interactions with search engines provide many cues that can be leveraged to improve the relevance of search results through personalization. The context information (history of queries, clicked documents, etc.) provides strong signals about users’ search intent, which can be used to personalize the search experience and improve a web search engine. We demonstrate how to generate the semantic features from in-session contextual information with deep learning models, and incorporate these semantic features into the current ranking model to re-rank the results. We evaluate our approach using a large, real-world search log data from a major commercial web search engine, and the experimental results show our approach can significantly improve the performance of the search engine. Furthermore, we also find that the domain-specific, click-based features can effectively decrease the unsatisfied clicks for the current ranking model to improve the search experience.
The amino terminal extension of mammalian mitochondrial RNA polymerase ensures promoter specific transcription initiation

Mammalian mitochondrial transcription is executed by a single subunit mitochondrial RNA polymerase (Polrmt) and its two accessory factors, mitochondrial transcription factors A and B2 (Tfam and Tfb2m). Polrmt is structurally related to single-subunit phage RNA polymerases, but it also contains a unique N-terminal extension (NTE) of unknown function. We here demonstrate that the NTE functions together with Tfam to ensure promoter-specific transcription. When the NTE is deleted, Polrmt can initiate transcription in the absence of Tfam, both from promoters and non-specific DNA sequences. Additionally, when in presence of Tfam and a mitochondrial promoter, the NTE-deleted mutant has an even higher transcription activity than wild-type polymerase, indicating that the NTE functions as an inhibitory domain. Our studies lead to a model according to which Tfam specifically recruits wild-type Polrmt to promoter sequences, relieving the inhibitory effect of the NTE, as a first step in transcription initiation. In the second step, Tfb2m is recruited into the complex and transcription is initiated.
Depressive Symptoms and Metabolic Risk in Adult Male Twins Enrolled in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Twin Study

Objective To determine the extent to which depressive symptoms are associated with metabolic risk factors and whether genetic or environmental factors account for this association. Method Twin structural equation modeling was employed to estimate genetic and environmental contributions to the covariation of depressive symptoms, as indexed by the Centers for Epidemiological Studies–Depression Scale, and common variance among blood pressure, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and serum triglycerides and glucose among 87 monozygotic and 86 dizygotic male twin pairs who participated in the NHLBI twin study. Results Depressive symptoms were associated with individual components of the metabolic syndrome and common variance among the risk factors. Twin structural equation modeling indicated that the associations were attributable to environmental (nongenetic) factors. Conclusions These results support the hypothesis that depressive symptoms may increase risk for a pattern of physiological risk consistent with the metabolic syndrome.
Recent Advances in Interface Engineering for Planar Heterojunction Perovskite Solar Cells

Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells are considered as one of the most promising next-generation solar cells due to their advantages of low-cost precursors, high power conversion efficiency (PCE) and easy of processing. In the past few years, the PCEs have climbed from a few to over 20% for perovskite solar cells. Recent developments demonstrate that perovskite exhibits ambipolar semiconducting characteristics, which allows for the construction of planar heterojunction (PHJ) perovskite solar cells. PHJ perovskite solar cells can avoid the use of high-temperature sintered mesoporous metal oxides, enabling simple processing and the fabrication of flexible and tandem perovskite solar cells. In planar heterojunction materials, hole/electron transport layers are introduced between a perovskite film and the anode/cathode. The hole and electron transporting layers are expected to enhance exciton separation, charge transportation and collection. Further, the supporting layer for the perovskite film not only plays an important role in energy-level alignment, but also affects perovskite film morphology, which have a great effect on device performance. In addition, interfacial layers also affect device stability. In this review, recent progress in interfacial engineering for PHJ perovskite solar cells will be reviewed, especially with the molecular interfacial materials. The supporting interfacial layers for the optimization of perovskite films will be systematically reviewed. Finally, the challenges remaining in perovskite solar cells research will be discussed.
Energy-efficient joint content caching and small base station activation mechanism design in heterogeneous cellular networks

Heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs), by introducing caching capability, has been considered as a promising technique in 5G era, which can bring contents closer to users to reduce the transmission delay, save scarce bandwidth resource. Although many works have been done for caching in HCNs, from an energy perspective, there still exists much space to develop a more energy-efficient system when considering the fact that the majority of base stations are under-utilized in the most of the time. Therefore, in this paper, by taking the activation mechanism for the base stations into account, we study a joint caching and activation mechanism design to further improve the energy efficiency, then we formulate the optimization problem as an Integer Linear Programming problem (ILP) to maximize the system energy saving. Due to the enormous computation complexity for finding the optimal solution, we introduced a Quantum-inspired Evolutionary Algorithm (QEA) to iteratively provide the global best solution. Numerical results show that our proposed algorithm presents an excellent performance, which is far better than the strategy of only considering caching without deactivation mechanism in the actual, normal situation. We also provide performance comparison among our QEA, random sleeping algorithm and greedy algorithm, numerical results illustrate our introduced QEA performs best in accuracy and global optimality.
Multi-view Normal Field Integration for 3D Reconstruction of Mirroring Objects

In this paper, we present a novel, robust multi-view normal field integration technique for reconstructing the full 3D shape of mirroring objects. We employ a turntable-based setup with several cameras and displays. These are used to display illumination patterns which are reflected by the object surface. The pattern information observed in the cameras enables the calculation of individual volumetric normal fields for each combination of camera, display and turntable angle. As the pattern information might be blurred depending on the surface curvature or due to non-perfect mirroring surface characteristics, we locally adapt the decoding to the finest still resolvable pattern resolution. In complex real-world scenarios, the normal fields contain regions without observations due to occlusions and outliers due to interreflections and noise. Therefore, a robust reconstruction using only normal information is challenging. Via a non-parametric clustering of normal hypotheses derived for each point in the scene, we obtain both the most likely local surface normal and a local surface consistency estimate. This information is utilized in an iterative min-cut based variational approach to reconstruct the surface geometry.
Regulation of Kv7 (KCNQ) K+ Channel Open Probability by Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-Bisphosphate

Voltage-gated Kv7 (KCNQ) channels underlie important K+ currents, including the neuronal M current, and are thought to be sensitive to membrane phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) and PIP2 depletion to underlie muscarinic receptor inhibition. We studied regulation of Kv7.2-7.4 channels by PIP2 in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells using single-channel and whole-cell patch clamp and biochemical analysis. Maximal open probabilities (Po) of Kv7.2-Kv7.4 homomultimers and of Kv7.2/7.3 heteromultimers were found to be strongly dependent on the [diC8-PIP2] applied to inside-out patches, with differential apparent affinities that correlate with their maximal Po in on-cell mode. Unitary conductance was not affected by PIP2. Raising tonic [PIP2] by coexpression of phosphatidylinositol (4)5-kinase increased the maximal Po of both Kv7.2 and Kv7.2/7.3 channels studied in on-cell patches and increased whole-cell Kv7.2, but not Kv7.3, current amplitudes. In cells coexpressed with muscarinic M1 receptors, bath application of muscarinic agonist reduced the maximal Po of Kv7.2/7.3 channels isolated in on-cell patches. Coexpression of a PIP2 sequestering construct moderately reduced whole-cell Kv7.2/7.3 currents, and coexpression of a construct containing a PIP2 phosphatase nearly abolished them. Finally, biochemical analysis of anionic phospholipids in CHO cells stably expressing M1 receptors shows that PIP2 and PIP are nearly depleted 1 min after muscarinic stimulation, with an unexpected rebound after 10 min. These results strongly support the direct regulation of Kv7 channels by PIP2 and its depletion as the mechanism of muscarinic suppression of M channels. Divergent apparent affinities of Kv7.2-7.4 channels for PIP2 may underlie their highly differential maximal Po observed in cell-attached patches.
Experimental investigation of the effect of protective coatings on temperature sensitivity of side-hole optical fibers

Side-hole optical fibers are directed towards construction of pressure sensors owing to their extremely high sensitivity to the pressure. However, the fact of negative effect of polymer protective coatings on deformation of optical fiber characteristic has been discovered. In this work the efforts were made to eliminate this undesirable phenomenon by use of standard protective coatings used for production of telecommunication optical fibers. The results of these investigations have appeared negative.
Phonetic Feature Encoding in Human Superior Temporal Gyrus

Deciphering Language Consonants and vowels represent basic building blocks of human language. How their characteristics are extracted from acoustic speech input is not well understood. Directly recording from the superior temporal gyrus of patients as part of their clinical evaluation for epilepsy surgery, Mesgarani et al. (p. 1006, published online 30 January; see the Perspective by Grodzinsky and Nelken) investigated neural responses while the subjects listened to continuous speech. The findings reveal how both vowels and consonants of different phonetic categories are encoded. The human auditory cortex encodes what speech sounds like. [Also see Perspective by Grodzinsky and Nelken] During speech perception, linguistic elements such as consonants and vowels are extracted from a complex acoustic speech signal. The superior temporal gyrus (STG) participates in high-order auditory processing of speech, but how it encodes phonetic information is poorly understood. We used high-density direct cortical surface recordings in humans while they listened to natural, continuous speech to reveal the STG representation of the entire English phonetic inventory. At single electrodes, we found response selectivity to distinct phonetic features. Encoding of acoustic properties was mediated by a distributed population response. Phonetic features could be directly related to tuning for spectrotemporal acoustic cues, some of which were encoded in a nonlinear fashion or by integration of multiple cues. These findings demonstrate the acoustic-phonetic representation of speech in human STG.
AN UNBIASED CHANNEL ESTIMATOR FOR SPACE- TIME BLOCK CODING UNDER RAYLEIGH FADING

The performance of a supervised LMS adaptive channel estimator for space-time block coded systems (STBC) with two transmit antennas and one receive antenna is demonstrated. The wireless channel statistic is Rayleigh with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) present at its output. It is shown that it is possible to achieve an unbiased estimate when a single-tap estimator is used. The two adaptive coefficients (due to employing transmit diversity) converge to the true channel gains owing to the orthogonality of the space-time block code. This adaptive channel estimator results in zero mean square error (MSE) in the absence of noise. The estimated channel gains are used in the STBC decoder to achieve decoding. The algorithm is tested in the context of recovering images transmitted over the wireless channel with modulation and space-time block coding, and is characterized mainly by its simple implementation. In addition, the single-tap estimator is shown to have a convergence time that is almost comparable to that of an N-tap estimator. Although the latter converges somewhat faster, it has a non-zero MSE upon convergence.
Statistical study of transient plasma structures in magnetotail lobes and plasma sheet boundary layer: Interball-1 observations

Abstract. The present paper is devoted to the statistical study of plasma structures observed at the interface between magnetospheric lobes and the plasma sheet at distances of 15–25 RE . The majority of the registered structures are bursty earthward ion streams with energies about 10–30 keV known as "beamlets". The paper describes the results of beamlet statistical analysis for different interplanetary magnetic fields (IMF), clock-angles and various magnetospheric conditions. It is shown that the energy of beamlets increases monotonously with a distance from the neutral sheet (NS) during slightly southward IMF and quiet magnetospheric conditions. Under these conditions, beamlets are observed up to 5–6 RE over the NS. In contrast, the beamlet energy decreases with increasing distance from the NS if the IMF is northward, and the region of beamlet observation becomes much wider up to 12 RE above the NS. The same (inverse) beamlet energy dependence on the distance from the NS is also registered during active magnetospheric periods. Yet, the plasma structures of various duration with quasi-isotropic ion velocity distributions resembling the plasma of the plasma sheet (PS) were observed in the same region. Statistical study performed for various IMF clock-angles demonstrates the clear difference in the spatial distributions of such plasma structures for two extreme IMF directions. When IMF is primarily northward, PS-like plasma fills the lobe region almost entirely and could be associated with the PS expansions. For primarily southward IMF time intervals, the probability of observing PS-like structures of long duration sharply decreases with the increasing distance from the NS, but PS-like structures of short durations ( Key words. Magnetospheric physics (magnetotail; magnetotail boundary layers; plasma sheet)
Immunopathogenesis of psoriasis

Abstract: Psoriasis is a chronic skin disease that affects about 1.5% of the Caucasian population and is characterized by typical macroscopic and microscopic skin alterations. Psoriatic lesions are sharply demarcated, red and slightly raised lesions with silver‐whitish scales. The microscopic alterations of psoriatic plaques include an infiltration of immune cells in the dermis and epidermis, a dilatation and an increase in the number of blood vessels in the upper dermis, and a massively thickened epidermis with atypical keratinocyte differentiation. It is considered a fact that the immune system plays an important role in the pathogenesis of psoriasis. Since the early 1990s, it has been assumed that T1 cells play the dominant role in the initiation and maintenance of psoriasis. However, the profound success of anti‐tumor necrosis factor‐α therapy, when compared with T‐cell depletion therapies, should provoke us to critically re‐evaluate the current hypothesis for psoriasis pathogenesis. Recently made discoveries regarding other T‐cell populations such as Th17 and regulatory T cells, dendritic cells, macrophages, the keratinocyte signal transduction and novel cytokines including interleukin (IL)‐22, IL‐23 and IL‐20, let us postulate that the pathogenesis of psoriasis consists of distinct subsequent stages, in each of them different cell types playing a dominant role. Our model helps to explain the varied effectiveness of the currently tested immune modulating therapies and may enable the prediction of the success of future therapies.
Pentraxin 3: An Immuno-Regulator in the Lungs

Pentraxin 3 (PTX3) is a soluble pattern recognition receptor that is a humoral component of the innate immune system. It interacts with pathogenic moieties, infected and dying host cells and facilitates their removal through activation of appropriate innate and adaptive mechanisms. PTX3 is secreted by a diverse variety of cells, ranging from immune cells to structural cells, in response to Toll like receptor (TLR) engagement, inflammatory stimuli, and physical and chemical stress. Further, PTX3 plays an essential role in female fertility as it facilitates the organization of extracellular matrix in the cumulus oophorus. Such activity is also implicated in post-inflammation tissue repair. PTX3 is a multifunctional protein and plays a non-redundant role in providing immunity against potential immunological dangers. Thus, we assessed its role in lung immunity, as lungs are at a constant risk of infections and tissue damage that is attributable to perpetual exposure to foreign agents.
Repeating microlensing events in the OGLE data

Microlensing events are usually selected among single-peaked non-repeating light curves in order to avoid confusion with variable stars. However, a microlensing event may exhibit a second microlensing brightening episode when the source or/and the lens is a binary system. A careful analysis of these repeating events provides an independent way to study the statistics of wide binary stars and to detect extrasolar planets. Previous theoretical studies predicted that 0.5-2 per cent of events should repeat due to wide binary lenses. We present a systematic search for such events in about 4000 light curves of microlensing candidates detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) towards the Galactic bulge from 1992 to 2007. The search reveals a total of 19 repeating candidates, with six clearly due to a wide binary lens. As a by-product, we find that 64 events (∼2 per cent of the total OGLE-III sample) have been misclassified as microlensing; these misclassified events are mostly nova or other types of eruptive stars. The number and importance of repeating events will increase considerably when the next-generation wide-field microlensing experiments become fully operational in the future.
Subcritical crack growth in hardened cement paste

Subcritical crack growth (SCG) is an environmentally-assisted slow cracking phenomenon that occurs in (quasi-)brittle materials under static load. Subcritical cracks grow at stress levels much lower than the one required for fast dynamical cracking. This type of cracking is facilitated by some time-dependent effect at the crack tip that weakens the material. SCG can be characterized by the relationship between the stress intensity factor at crack tip and the subcritical crack velocity. The double-torsion (DT) test is commonly used to extract these as well as other SCG parameters from the measured force relaxation of DT-specimens. Understanding SCG is essential for making reliable predictions of the durability of concrete under sustained load. In this thesis, a novel method has been developed to optically measure SCG in hardened cement paste (with w/c-ratio of 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6 and 0.7) by carrying out DT tests inside an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope or under an optical microscope. Crack tip detection is facilitated by digital image correlation on the timelapse microscope images. DT-tests at 10% relative humidity (RH) in hardened cement paste showed that optically measured crack velocities were much lower than those calculated from the DT-specimen relaxation. In many experiments the SCG rapidly stopped, due to a lack of moisture in the environment and due to discontinuities in the cementitious matrix. At 90% RH, the force-relaxation in the DT-test was much higher than at 10% relative humidity due to the higher moisture content in the environment. Also at these conditions it was found that only part of the measured relaxation was due to actual crack growth.
Intelligibility of speech with filtered time trajectories of spectral envelopes

The effect of filtering the time trajectories of spectral envelopes on speech intelligibility was investigated. Since the LPC cepstrum forms the basis of many automatic speech recognition systems, the authors filtered time trajectories of the LPC cepstrum of speech sounds, and the modified speech was reconstructed after the filtering. For processing, they applied low-pass, high-pass and band-pass filters. The accuracy results from the perceptual experiments for Japanese syllables show that speech intelligibility is not severely impaired as long as the filtered spectral components have 1) a rate of change faster than 1 Hz when high-pass filtered, 2) a rate of change slower than 24 Hz when low-pass filtered, and 3) a rate of change between 1 and 16 Hz when band-pass filtered.