Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Co-operative neural networks and 'integrated' classification

'Integrated' classification refers to the conjunctive or competitive use of two or more (neural) classifiers. A cooperative neural network system comprising two independently trained Kohonen networks and co-operating with the help of a Hebbian network, is described. The effectiveness of such a network is demonstrated by using it to retrieve images and related texts from a multi-media database. Preliminary results of such an approach appear to be encouraging.
EULAR evidence-based recommendations for cardiovascular risk management in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other forms of inflammatory arthritis

Objectives: To develop evidence-based EULAR recommendations for cardiovascular (CV) risk management in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA). Methods: A multidisciplinary expert committee was convened as a task force of the EULAR Standing Committee for Clinical Affairs (ESCCA), comprising 18 members including rheumatologists, cardiologists, internists and epidemiologists, representing nine European countries. Problem areas and related keywords for systematic literature research were identified. A systematic literature research was performed using MedLine, Embase and the Cochrane library through to May 2008. Based on this literature review and in accordance with the EULAR’s “standardised operating procedures”, the multidisciplinary steering committee formulated evidence-based and expert opinion-based recommendations for CV risk screening and management in patients with inflammatory arthritis. Results: Annual CV risk assessment using national guidelines is recommended for all patients with RA and should be considered for all patients with AS and PsA. Any CV risk factors identified should be managed according to local guidelines. If no local guidelines are available, CV risk management should be carried out according to the SCORE function. In addition to appropriate CV risk management, aggressive suppression of the inflammatory process is recommended to further lower the CV risk. Conclusions: Ten recommendations were made for CV risk management in patients with RA, AS and PsA. The strength of the recommendations differed between RA on the one hand, and AS and PsA, on the other, as evidence for an increased CV risk is most compelling for RA.
Power-Law Distribution of Human Behaviors in Internet Forums

Internet and database technology provide the conditions for us to learn human behaviors empirically. Exploring these behaviors is important for us to understand internet users’ surfing habits, and to set the stage for better research on social dynamics closer to reality. In this paper, we explore the Internet users’ post and reply behaviors et al. in an internet forum, Tianya. Statistical analysis shows that, internet users’ post, reply, replied, page view, in-degree and out-degree distribution all follow power-law form, which is qualitatively agree with achievements of other researchers.
Improving Localization Accuracy: Successive Measurements Error Modeling

Vehicle self-localization is an essential requirement for many of the safety applications envisioned for vehicular networks. The mathematical models used in current vehicular localization schemes focus on modeling the localization error itself, and overlook the potential correlation between successive localization measurement errors. In this paper, we first investigate the existence of correlation between successive positioning measurements, and then incorporate this correlation into the modeling positioning error. We use the Yule Walker equations to determine the degree of correlation between a vehicle’s future position and its past positions, and then propose a p-order Gauss–Markov model to predict the future position of a vehicle from its past p positions. We investigate the existence of correlation for two datasets representing the mobility traces of two vehicles over a period of time. We prove the existence of correlation between successive measurements in the two datasets, and show that the time correlation between measurements can have a value up to four minutes. Through simulations, we validate the robustness of our model and show that it is possible to use the first-order Gauss–Markov model, which has the least complexity, and still maintain an accurate estimation of a vehicle’s future location over time using only its current position. Our model can assist in providing better modeling of positioning errors and can be used as a prediction tool to improve the performance of classical localization algorithms such as the Kalman filter.
Investigation of a two-stage boost converter using the neutral point of a motor

This paper discusses about a six-step operation strategy for a proposed two-stage boost converter using the neutral point of a motor. The proposed converter consists of a small boost chopper and a three-phase inverter, which has a boost up function from the use of the leakage inductance of a motor instead of a boost-up reactor, for a DC to AC conversion. When the inverter part outputs a square waveform of 180 degree, the input current has distortion because the neutral point voltage of the motor is fluctuated at three times of the output frequency. The input current distortion because of the voltage fluctuation is reduced to 1/8 smaller by applying a feed forward control. Additionally, in this proposed circuit, the DC current is imposed into the phase current of the motor. Therefore, the influence of the imposed DC current is investigated in a FEM by simulating a 1.5-kW IPM motor.
Indulgent Feeding Style and Children’s Weight Status in Preschool

Purpose: The primary aim of this study was to examine whether parent affect and child temperament characteristics differ across feeding styles in low-income families, given suggestive evidence. The secondary aim was to examine whether feeding styles were still related to children’s body mass index independent of parent affect, child temperament, and known correlates. Methods: Participants in this study were 718 parents of childrens attending Head Start programs across two sites (Texas and Alabama). Parents were categorized into feeding styles of authoritative (n = 118), authoritarian (n = 219), indulgent (n = 240) and uninvolved (n = 141) using a parent-report questionnaire characterizing feeding in a general parenting paradigm. Parents completed questionnaires and measured height and weight was obtained from parents and children. Results: Differences were found across feeding styles on parent affect and child temperament characteristics. Indulgent parents reported lower Negative Affect for themselves and lower Negative Affectivity for their children. The indulgent feeding style was significantly associated with higher child body mass index after controlling for parent affect, child temperament, and correlates (ethnicity, child age, parent body mass index). Conclusions: The results of this study not only show a robust association between the indulgent feeding style and weight status of low-income preschool childrens, but also suggest how congruence between parent emotional affect and child temperament characteristics may contribute to excess consumption among children of indulgent parents.
Effect of temperature on thermal properties of alkali-activated fly ash/slag binders

Geopolymeric binders exhibit high thermal stability and consequently it is believed that these materials can be extensively used in the construction of infrastructure, where fire safety is of major concern. For such applications, thermal properties play a fundamental role in the heat transfer calculation. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive experimental study of thermal properties of various geopolymeric binders at elevated temperatures. The binders were prepared using alkaliactivated low calcium fly ash/ground granulated blast-furnace slag at ratios of 100/0, 50/50, 10/90 and 0/100 wt%. A transient plane source measurement technique was applied to assess the heat capacity and thermal conductivity at temperatures ranging from 23–600 o C. Data generated was utilised to develop analytical expressions for estimating thermal properties as a function of temperature. The simplified relationships can be used for estimating the fire resistance of structural elements made with geopolymeric materials.
A NUCA model for embedded systems cache design

Embedded applications require high performance processors integrating fast and low-power cache. Dynamic non-uniform cache architectures (D-NUCA) have been proposed to overcome the performance limit introduced by wire delays when designing large cache. In this paper, we propose alternative designs of D-NUCA cache, namely triangular D-NUCA cache, to reduce power consumption and silicon area occupancy of D-NUCA cache. We compare the performances of triangular D-NUCA cache with conventional rectangular organization. Results show that our approach is particular useful in the embedded applications domain, as it permits the utilization of half-sized NUCA cache with performance improvements.
Heat-assisted magnetic recording media materials

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is being developed as the next-generation magnetic recording technology. High anisotropy granular media such as FePt-C have been demonstrated as HAMR media for ∼2 Tbpsi (terabits per in^2) recording density. In order for this technology to reach its full potential of 4–5 Tbpsi, more progress and innovations are needed for the key requirements for HAMR media, including microstructure, design, magnetic distribution, and thermal design. Beyond granular media, heated-dot magnetic recording (HDMR) is planned to extend areal density toward 10 Tbpsi. HDMR combines similar advanced recording layer materials with advanced patterning techniques to fabricate <10-nm rectangular dot media.
Procurement with Unforeseen Contingencies

The procurement of complex projects is often plagued by large cost overruns. One important reason for these additional costs are flaws in the initial design. If the project is procured with a price-only auction, sellers who spotted some of the flaws have no incentive to reveal them early. Each seller prefers to conceal his information until he is awarded the contract and then renegotiate when he is in a bilateral monopoly position with the buyer. We show that this gives rise to three inefficiencies: inefficient renegotiation, inefficient production and inefficient design. We derive the welfare optimal direct mechanism that implements the efficient allocation at the lowest possible cost to the buyer. The direct mechanism, however, imposes strong assumptions on the buyer's prior knowledge of possible flaws and their payoff consequences. Therefore, we also propose an indirect mechanism that implements the same allocation but does not require any such prior knowledge. The optimal direct and indirect mechanisms separate the improvement of the design and the selection of the seller who produces the good.
Emergence of radial nerve dominance in median nerve cortex after median nerve transection in an adult squirrel monkey.

Throughout the glabrous representation in Area 3b, electrical stimulation of the dominant (median or ulnar) input produces robust, short-latency excitation, evident as a net extracellular "sink" in the Lamina 4 current source density (CSD) accompanied by action potentials. Stimulation of the collocated nondominant (radial nerve) input produces a subtle short-latency response in the Lamina 4 CSD unaccompanied by action potentials and followed by a clear excitatory response 12-15 ms later. Laminar response profiles for both inputs have a "feedforward" pattern, with initial activation in Lamina 4, followed by extragranular laminae. Such corepresentation of nondominant radial nerve inputs with the dominant (median or ulnar nerve) inputs in the glabrous hand surface representation provides a likely mechanism for reorganization after median nerve section in adult primates. To investigate this, we conducted repeated recordings using an implanted linear multi-electrode array straddling the cortical laminae at a site in "median nerve cortex" (i.e., at a site with a cutaneous receptive field on the volar surface of D2 and thus with its dominant afferent input conveyed by the median nerve) in an adult squirrel monkey. We characterized the baseline responses to median, radial, and ulnar nerve stimulation. We then cut the median nerve and semichronically monitored radial nerve, ulnar nerve and median nerve (proximal stump) evoked responses. The radial nerve response in median nerve cortex changed progressively during the weeks after median nerve transection, ultimately assuming the characteristics of the dominant nerve profile. During this time, median, and ulnar nerve profiles displayed little or no change.
A hybrid approach to extract protein-protein interactions

MOTIVATION Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) play an important role in understanding biological processes. Although recent research in text mining has achieved a significant progress in automatic PPI extraction from literature, performance of existing systems still needs to be improved. RESULTS In this study, we propose a novel algorithm for extracting PPIs from literature which consists of two phases. First, we automatically categorize the data into subsets based on its semantic properties and extract candidate PPI pairs from these subsets. Second, we apply support vector machines (SVMs) to classify candidate PPI pairs using features specific for each subset. We obtain promising results on five benchmark datasets: AIMed, BioInfer, HPRD50, IEPA and LLL with F-scores ranging from 60% to 84%, which are comparable with the state-of-the-art PPI extraction systems. Furthermore, our system achieves the best performance on cross-corpora evaluation and comparative performance in terms of computational efficiency. AVAILABILITY The source code and scripts used in this article are available for academic use at http://staff.science. uva.nl/~bui/PPIs.zip CONTACT bqchinh@gmail.com.
Switching of filamin polypeptides during myogenesis in vitro

During chicken skeletal myogenesis in vitro, the actin-binding protein filamin is present at first in association with actin filament bundles both in myoblasts and in myotubes early after fusion. Later in mature myotubes it is found in association with myofibril Z disks. These two associations of filamin are separated by a period of several days, during which the protein is absent from the cytoplasm of differentiating myotubes (Gomer, R., and E. Lazarides, 1981, Cell, 23:524-532). To characterize the two classes of filamin polypeptides we have compared, by two-dimensional peptide mapping, 125I-labeled filamin immunoprecipitated from myoblasts and fibroblasts to filamin immunoprecipitated from mature myotubes and adult skeletal myofibrils. Myoblast filamin is highly homologous to fibroblast and purified chicken gizzard filamins. Mature myotube and adult myofibril filamins are highly homologous but exhibit extensive peptide differences with respect to the other three classes of filamin. Comparison of peptide maps from immunoprecipitated 35S-methionine-labeled filamins also shows that fibroblast and myoblast filamins are highly homologous but show substantial peptide differences with respect to mature myotube filamin. Filamins from both mature myotubes and skeletal myofibrils exhibit a slightly higher electrophoretic mobility than gizzard, fibroblast, and myoblast filamins. Short pulse-labeling studies show that mature myotube filamin is synthesized as a lower molecular weight variant and is not derived from a higher molecular weight precursor. These results suggest that myoblast and mature myotube filamins are distinct gene products and that during skeletal myogenesis in vitro one class of filamin polypeptides is replaced by a new class of filamin polypeptides, and that the latter is maintained into adulthood.
Hierarchical Cache Consistency in WAN Extended

This paper explores ways to provide strong consistency for Internet applications scaling to millions of clients. We ma ke four contributions. First, we identify the ways in which spe cific characteristics of data-access workloads affect the s calability of cache consistency algorithms. Second, we define tw o primitive mechanisms, split andjoin for growing and shrinking hierarchies. We show how these primitives can be implemented with a simple mechanism already present in a protocol for strong consistency that we have previously proposed . Third, we describe and evaluate policies for using split and join to address the fault tolerance and performance challen ges of hierarchies. Finally, we compare various algorithms for maintaining strong consistency in a range of hierarchy configurations. We evaluate our algorithms using simulations.
Biopesticides an eco-friendly pest management approach in agriculture : status and prospects

Agriculture is adversely affected by numerous pests like insects, weeds, plant pathogens and nematodes leading to reduced yield and poor quality of the produce. Biopesticides offer powerful tools to create a new generation of sustainable agriculture products and most likely alternatives some of the most problematic, pollution creating and carcinogenic chemical pesticides currently in use. These are the formulations based on the live organisms (e.g. fungi, bacteria, viruses) and their metabolites used to manage pests in agriculture. The present emphasis on the development and use of the biopesticides is based on the disadvantages associated with chemical pesticides. Globally, their use is increasing steadily at the rate of 10% per annum. Of the three classes of biopesticides, microbial pesticides are some of the earliest developed and widely used biopesticides. About 90% of the biopesticides are derived from just one entomopathogenic, endospore producing, Gram positive bacterium , commonly called Bt. Though, India has a vast potential for biopesticides, however, these represent only 2.8% of the over all pesticide market. Biopesicides, although shows a great promise, have not come up to the desired level so as to displace the dominance of chemical pesticides. As environmental safety is a global concern, we need to create awareness among the farmers, government agencies, policy makers, manufacturers and the common man to switch-over to biopesticides for pest management requirements.
Amelioration of experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis by inhibition of glyceraldehyde‐derived advanced glycation end‐product formation

AGEs are permanently modified macromolecule derivatives that form through nonenzymatic glycation of amino groups of proteins. Glycer‐AGEs are highly toxic and play an important role in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory diseases. However, the contribution of glycer‐AGEs to the pathogenesis of uveitis is unclear. In this study, we measured serum levels of glycer‐AGEs in 100 patients with endogenous uveitis (22 with HLA‐B27‐associated uveitis, 20 with VKH disease, 14 with Behçet's disease, and 44 with sarcoidosis) and 33 healthy volunteers. We then examined the effect of the AGE inhibitor in a mouse model of human endogenous uveitis (EAU) by continuous oral administration of pyridoxamine at 200 or 400 mg/kg/day. Regardless of the etiology, serum glycer‐AGE levels were significantly higher in patients with uveitis than in healthy subjects. Treatment with 400 mg/kg pyridoxamine significantly reduced the clinical and histological severity of EAU and was accompanied by a significant decrease in serum and retinal glycer‐AGE levels and suppression of translocation of NF‐κB p65 into the nucleus of retinal cells. Serum glycer‐AGE levels may therefore serve as a biomarker of human uveitis, as well as systemic inflammation, and may contribute to the progression of uveitis, including diabetic iritis, via the activation of NF‐κB.
Surfactant-assisted liquid-phase shear exfoliation of graphene and subsequent thin film fabrication by spray deposition

Graphite is the bulk form and source material of graphene, the versatile nanomaterial which consists of a single atomically thin sheet of carbon molecules in a honeycomb structure. It has unique properties, such as high elasticity, excellent optical properties and high electron mobility. The outstanding properties of graphene has made it the object of extensive research and a potential component for novel applications in several scientific fields, such as sensing technology. The scientific interest is high not just for graphene, the monolayer sheet, but also for graphene-like materials which are a common by-product of graphene production or otherwise resemble graphene by properties or structure. Graphene can be produced in numerous ways. This thesis investigates surfactant-assisted liquidphase shear exfoliation which derives from mechanical exfoliation. In the thesis, graphene was exfoliated from graphite in an aqueous surfactantgraphite suspension with a rotor-stator homogeniser. The graphene dispersion was separated with centrifugation and the graphene concentration was determined with ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy. The graphene samples were examined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). Thin graphene films were produced with spray deposition and the electrical conductivity of the films was determined by measuring the electrical resistivity of the films. Both commercial graphite and graphite excavated from Finnish soil were used to study the exfoliation, four different graphite samples in total. The graphite samples differed in particle size and purity. The Finnish graphite was excavated in Haapamäki, Finland, and purified with froth flotation and chemical leaching. The quality and yield of both the commercial graphene samples and the Finnish graphene were compared. The purity level of graphite was shown not to affect the graphene yield significantly, as opposed to the graphite particle size, which showed an effect on the yield. The electrical conductivity of the graphene thin films was found to be on a good level, considering the method used to produce the thin conductive components.
Chromatin and DNA methylation dynamics during retinoic acid-induced RET gene transcriptional activation in neuroblastoma cells

Although it is well known that RET gene is strongly activated by retinoic acid (RA) in neuroblastoma cells, the mechanisms underlying such activation are still poorly understood. Here we show that a complex series of molecular events, that include modifications of both chromatin and DNA methylation state, accompany RA-mediated RET activation. Our results indicate that the primary epigenetic determinants of RA-induced RET activation differ between enhancer and promoter regions. At promoter region, the main mark of RET activation was the increase of H3K4me3 levels while no significant changes of the methylation state of H3K27 and H3K9 were observed. At RET enhancer region a bipartite chromatin domain was detected in unstimulated cells and a prompt demethylation of H3K27me3 marked RET gene activation upon RA exposure. Moreover, ChIP experiments demonstrated that EZH2 and MeCP2 repressor complexes were associated to the heavily methylated enhancer region in the absence of RA while both complexes were displaced during RA stimulation. Finally, our data show that a demethylation of a specific CpG site at the enhancer region could favor the displacement of MeCP2 from the heavily methylated RET enhancer region providing a novel potential mechanism for transcriptional regulation of methylated RA-regulated loci.