Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TRANSFORMATION KINETICS, MICROPLASTICITY AND AGING OF MARTENSITE IN FE-31 NI.

Abstract : The effects of testing temperature and volume fraction of martensite on the microplastic response of unaged Fe-31 Ni martensite-austenite aggregates have been determined. These results, supplemented by other experimental studies, show that two unusual mechanisms of plastic deformation give rise to the apparent softness of the quenched structures. The transformation of retained austenite to martensite during the application of stress gives rise in specified conditions to large microplastic strains. The other strain component, which dominates the microdeformation above the temperature range where transformation occurs, is attributed to stress-assisted relaxation of internal stresses. The measured changes in elastic modulus and internal friction (at 80 kHz) during aging of Fe-31 Ni after quenching cannot be explained by the diffusion of point defects to dislocations. It is suggested that this aging effect is instead due to the motion of dislocations which occurs in order to decrease the internal stress. Experimental results pertaining to the kinetics of the austenite to martensite phase transformation show that no distinguishable athermal component of transformation exists in the Fe-31 Ni alloy. A model for martensitic kinetics is developed which treats the propagation of the interface as analogous to plastic deformation. This model and reconsideration of the implications of dislocation motion in the kinetics of embryo formation both lead to the conclusion that martensitic kinetics should be of a 'fast isothermal' character. (Author)
Effect of morning exercise in sunlight on the sleep-wake cycle in adolescents

A delay in bedtime occurs in adolescence compared with childhood. However, the early waking that morning school hours impose leads to partial sleep deprivation. Although exposure to light is the most important regulator of circadian rhythm in mammals, physical exercise influences circadian synchronization. To assess the effect of morning physical exercise in sunlight on the sleep-wake cycle (SWC) in adolescents, 160 first- and second-year high-school students were exposed to classes in their usual classroom (Group C) or in a swimming pool exposed to sunlight (Group E) while physically exercising (EE; i.e., swimming) or resting (EL). At baseline, we applied Health and Sleep and Horne & Ostberg chronotype assessment questionnaires. One week later and during the intervention, we applied the Sleep Diary and Karolinska Sleepiness Scale. During the intervention we observed no changes in bedtime, time in bed and in indices of irregularity of bedtime and wake-up time. The changes observed in wake-up time (i.e., a delay in the EE group on Saturday), sleep quality (i.e., an improvement), and sleepiness (i.e., an increase) were also observed in the control group, discarding an intervention effect. We suggest that morning physical exercise in sunlight had no effect on SWC parameters, sleep quality, or daytime sleepiness, possibly because of the large irregularity in the SWC between weekdays and weekends in adolescent students as well as the low frequency and duration of exercise during the intervention. Therefore, studies that evaluate a higher frequency or duration of exercise are needed to assess its effect on the SWC in adolescents.
Combined inhibition of monoacylglycerol lipase and cyclooxygenases synergistically reduces neuropathic pain in mice

Neuropathic pain is commonly treated with GABA analogues, steroids or non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). NSAIDs inhibit one or more COX isozymes but chronic COX inhibition paradoxically increases gastrointestinal inflammation and risk of unwanted cardiovascular events. The cannabinoids also have analgesic and anti‐inflammatory properties and reduce neuropathic pain in animal models. The present study investigated the analgesic effects of inhibiting both monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL) and COX enzymes, using low doses of both inhibitors.
Functional impairment of dendritic cells in patients infected with hepatitis C virus genotype 1 who failed peginterferon plus ribavirin therapy

Although chronic hepatitis C patients have a lower frequency and functions of dendritic cells (DCs) than healthy subjects, little is known about the serial changes in frequency and functions of DCs following anti‐viral treatment and the relationship with treatment outcomes. Twenty patients with hepatitis C virus genotype 1 receiving peginterferon (PEG‐IFN) and ribavirin for 24 weeks were enrolled. The frequency and functions of DCs were assayed at baseline and 24 weeks post‐treatment. Ten sex and age‐matched healthy adults served as controls. Nineteen of the 20 chronic hepatitis C patients completed 24 weeks of combination therapy. Fifteen patients achieved rapid virologic response and 12 achieved sustained virologic response (SVR). The baseline frequency of peripheral blood myeloid DCs and plasmacytoid DCs was significantly lower in chronic hepatitis C patients than in healthy controls. In patients who achieved SVR, the frequency of DCs subsets at the end of follow‐up increased to a level comparable to healthy controls. Although no functional defects of DCs was found in chronic hepatitis C patients in comparison with healthy controls, in patients without SVR had a lower CD83 expression and higher interleukin‐10 production of DCs than SVR patients. The results suggest that low CD83 expression and high IL‐10 production of DCs at the baseline may predict a poor virologic response to 24‐week PEG‐IFN plus ribavirin therapy in HCV genotype 1 patients. J. Med. Virol. 83:1212–1220, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Regularized adaptive notch filters for acoustic howling suppression

A method for the suppression of acoustic howling is developed, based on adaptive notch filters (ANF) with regularization (RANF). The method features three RANFs working in parallel to achieve frequency tracking, howling detection and suppression. The ANF-based approach to howling suppression introduces minimal processing delay and minimal complexity, in contrast to non-parametric frame-based methods featuring a non-parametric frequency analysis. Compared to existing ANF-based howling suppression methods, the proposed method allows for a more advanced howling detection such that tonal components in the source signal are not affected. The RANFs proposed in this paper are implemented in direct form and are updated using a gradient descent type algorithm. Results show that, under certain conditions, the level of suppression and sound quality are similar to what is obtained with frame-based methods.
A Fingerprint Encryption Scheme Based on Irreversible Function and Secure Authentication

A fingerprint encryption scheme based on irreversible function has been designed in this paper. Since the fingerprint template includes almost the entire information of users' fingerprints, the personal authentication can be determined only by the fingerprint features. This paper proposes an irreversible transforming function (using the improved SHA1 algorithm) to transform the original minutiae which are extracted from the thinned fingerprint image. Then, Chinese remainder theorem is used to obtain the biokey from the integration of the transformed minutiae and the private key. The result shows that the scheme has better performance on security and efficiency comparing with other irreversible function schemes.
Public vs. Publicized: Content Use Trends and Privacy Expectations

From a semantic standpoint, there is a clear differentiation between the meanings of public and publicized content. The former includes any content that is accessible by anyone, while the latter emphasizes visibility - publicized content is actively made available. As a user's on-line experience becomes more personalized and data is increasingly pushed rather than pulled, the line between public and publicized content is inevitably blurred. In this position paper, we present quantitative evidence that despite this trend, in some settings users do not anticipate the use of public content beyond the narrow context in which is was disclosed; they do not anticipate that the content may be publicized. While providing a "publicized" option for data is an important counterpart to the ability to limit access to data (e.g. through access control lists), such an option must be accompanied by both greater user awareness of the ramifications of such an option and by transparency into data usage.
A new linear constraint transformation approach for Petri nets with uncontrollable transitions

This work focuses on the problem of providing a linear algebraic characterization of the admissible marking set relative to a Petri net with uncontrollable transitions, subject to a linear constraint. More specifically, given a linear constraint that limits the number of tokens in one place, an algorithm is proposed to provide an approximation of the admissible marking set in terms of a disjunction of transformed linear constraints. The optimality of the solution is guaranteed provided that certain conditions are satisfied during the intermediate steps of the iterative approach.
Polysiloxane optical fibres and fibre structures

The polysiloxane fibres made of polysiloxanes such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and poly(dimethyl)(diphenil)siloxane (PDMDPS) can be attractive for different fibre applications and fibre structures. In this paper we describe the fabrication technological process of polysiloxane fibres and fibre structures integrated with conventional single-mode optical fibres. We present two-modes interferometer prepared from PDMS biconical optical fibre taper, PDMDPS optical fibre microloop interferometer and liquid microdroplet optical fibre interferometer. We achieved interesting optical properties all these fibre structures as was confirmed from the transmission characteristics what may be attractive for utilisation in various types of optical fibre sensors.
C-Reactive Protein and Genetic Variants and Cognitive Decline in Old Age: The PROSPER Study

Background Plasma concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of chronic inflammation, have been associated with cognitive impairment in old age. However, it is unknown whether CRP is causally linked to cognitive decline. Methods and Findings Within the Prospective Study of Pravastatin in the Elderly at Risk (PROSPER) trial, with 5680 participants with a mean age of 75 years, we examined associations of CRP levels and its genetic determinants with cognitive performance and decline over 3.2 years mean follow-up. Higher plasma CRP concentrations were associated with poorer baseline performance on the Stroop test (P = 0.001) and Letter Digit Tests (P<0.001), but not with the immediate and delayed Picture Learning Test (PLT; both P>0.5). In the prospective analyses, higher CRP concentrations associated with increased rate of decline in the immediate PLT (P = 0.016), but not in other cognitive tests (all p>0.11). Adjustment for prevalent cardiovascular risk factors and disease did not change the baseline associations nor associations with cognitive decline during follow-up. Four haplotypes of CRP were used and, compared to the common haplotype, carrierships associated strongly with levels of CRP (all P<0.007). In comparison to strong associations of apolipoprotein E with cognitive measures, associations of CRP haplotypes with such measures were inconsistent. Conclusion Plasma CRP concentrations associate with cognitive performance in part through pathways independent of (risk factors for) cardiovascular disease. However, lifelong exposure to higher CRP levels does not associate with poorer cognitive performance in old age. The current data weaken the argument for a causal role of CRP in cognitive performance, but further study is warranted to draw definitive conclusions.
Soft Error Detection for Iterative Applications Using Offline Training

Silent data corruption (SDC) from soft errors is one of the challenges for Exascale systems as the number of cores is increasing and the feature size is decreasing. In recent years, a variety of soft error handling methods have been proposed, including replicating computation, feature based runtime detection, algorithm-level protection and others. However, these methods are either relatively expensive or not sufficiently accurate or not even applicable for certain applications. For convergent iterative applications, we observe that their progression of values of the residual leaves a signature of SDC, which is specific to an application but independent of the input dataset size. Based on this observation, we explore a different approach to soft error detection, which involves machine learning technique for off-line training of an application with representative inputs, and on-line detection using the model, applied even to a different dataset. Our experimental evaluation shows that our method is low-cost and effective, and outperforms online detection.
Soccer Server: A Tool for Research on Multiagent Systems

This article describes Soccer Server, a simulator of the game of soccer designed as a benchmark for evaluating multiagent systems and cooperative algorithms. In real life, successful soccer teams require many qualities, such as basic ball control skills, the ability to carry out strategies, and teamwork. We believe that simulating such behaviors is a significant challenge for computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics technologies. It is to promote the development of such technologies, and to help define a new standard problem for research, that we have developed Soccer Server. We demonstrate the potential of Soccer Server by reporting an experiment that uses the system to compare the performance of a neural network architecture and a decision tree algorithm at learning the selection of soccer play plans. Other researchers using Soccer Server to investigate the nature of cooperative behavior in a multiagent environment will have the chance to assess their progress at RoboCup-97, an internatio.
Hormonal and Volume Dysregulation in Women With Premenstrual Syndrome

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) presents with emotional and physical symptoms. Although the emotional symptoms have been extensively studied, the pathophysiology of the fluid-retention symptoms is not currently known. We tested the hypothesis that the fluid regulatory mechanisms are disturbed in PMS. Nine regularly menstruating women with PMS were compared with 9 healthy age-matched women. Hemodynamic parameters and upright plasma volume shift (extrapolated from changes in hematocrit), plasma renin activity (PRA), and plasma aldosterone and sex hormones were measured at different times during the menstrual cycle. During the early follicular and the midluteal phases, the plasma volume shift, supine and upright PRA, and plasma aldosterone were similar in both groups, and none of the participants had edema. However, during the late luteal phase, ankle edema was present only in women with PMS, and their maximal plasma volume shift was lower compared with controls (11.7±1.3 versus 15.6±0.6; P=0.004). The area under the curve (estimates the amount of the total plasma shift during 30 minutes standing) was 300±28 and 406±16 in PMS and controls, respectively (P=0.01). PRA and aldosterone levels were higher during the late luteal phase in women with PMS compared with controls (supine PRA: 1.4±0.3 [PMS] versus 1.1±0.4 [control; P value not significant], upright PRA: 3.9±0.08 versus 1.6±0.3 ng/mL per hour [P=0.015], supine plasma aldosterone: 131±30 versus 68±17 pg/mL [P=0.09], and upright plasma aldosterone: 208±40 versus 102±16 pg/mL [P=0.03]). We, therefore, conclude that women with PMS have increased plasma fluid-regulatory hormones and disturbed fluid distribution only during their late luteal menstrual phase.
Synthesis and characterization of new inorganic polymeric composites based on kaolin or white clay and on ground-granulated blast furnace slag

Alkali activation of dehydroxylated kaolin or clay yielded high-strength polymeric materials, so-called geopolymers. They were synthesized by mixing the aluminosilicate with solutions of sodium metasilicate and KOH followed by adding 45 wt. % of ground-granulated blast furnace slag. The influence of the aluminosilicate source, its activation temperature, and the order of mixing raw materials were studied on the workability of the blending paste, the microstructure, and the Vickers hardness of the geopolymer samples. The polymeric material is completely amorphous according to x-ray diffraction. Solid-state ^27Al and ^29Si magic-angle-spinning nuclear magnetic resonance showed that the geopolymer consists of AlO_4 and SiO_4 tetrahedra linked together through a polymeric network constituted by branched entities SiQ^4(4Al) and SiQ^4(3Al), but also by less-polymerized silicates SiQ^1 and SiQ^2. Scanning electron microscopy showed a homogeneous polymeric gel matrix containing unreacted slag (and quartz) grains; thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry exhibited a high content of water and an elevated melting point (1260°C). Vickers hardness values are in the range of 200 MPa.
Quantal analysis of transmitter release at an inhibitory synapse in the central nervous system of the leech.

The quantal nature of transmitter release has been analysed at central inhibitory synapses in the leech nervous system between an interneurone (HN) and a motoneurone (HE) that regulate the heartbeat. 1. Ganglia were bathed in leech Ringer fluid containing 20 mM‐Mg and 1.8 mM‐Ca and the membrane of the presynaptic HN interneurone was hyperpolarized by current injection. Under these conditions successive inhibitory potentials in the HE motoneurone, evoked by impulses in the HN interneurone, showed striking fluctuations in amplitude. 2. Assuming a Poisson distribution of the i.p.s.p.s and estimating the number of failures from the amplitude histograms of the observed responses, the mean size of the quantal unit was estimated as 0.25 +/‐ 0.015 mV (S.E. of mean, n = 26). When m, the mean number of quanta released per trial, was varied by changing the membrane potential of the presynaptic HN cell (Nicholls & Wallace, 1978), the experimentally observed amplitude distributions could be predicted by the Poisson theory. 3. An independent estimate of the unit size was obtained by noise analysis. A long subthreshold depolarizing pulse applied to the presynaptic HN interneurone evoked a sustained hyperpolarization of the HE motoneurone, apparently caused by an increase in the rate of on‐going release of quanta by the HN cell terminals. From the mean change in membrane potential and the increase in variance, the size of the unit was calculated as 0.21 +/‐ 0.039 mV (S.E. of mean, n = 11). For ten pairs of cells an estimate of unit amplitude was made both from the Poisson analysis and the analysis of variance, again with good agreement. For these cells the estimated unit sizes were 0.24 +/‐ 0.023 mV (S.E. of mean, n = 10) from the failures and 0.21 +/‐ 0.043 m V (S.E. of mean, n = 10) from the noise. 4. A similar analysis was made of the inhibitory synaptic potentials evoked in one HN interneurone by stimulation of its contralateral homologue. Transmission again appeared to be qualtal; the mean unit amplitude from Poisson analysis was 0.31 +/‐ 0.022 mV (S.E. of mean, n = 19) and from the noise 0.29 +/‐ 0.027 mV (S.E. of mean, n = 3). 5. We conclude that transmitter is released from the terminals of the HN interneurone in quantal units that evoke miniature i.p.s.p.s of about 0.25 mV in the post‐synaptic cells. Furthermore, modulation of transmission proudced by variation in the presynaptic resting potential and during presynaptic inhibition results from changes in the mean number of quanta released by each impulse.
Nowcasting of Earthquake Consequences Using Big Social Data

Messages posted to social media in the aftermath of a natural disaster have value beyond detecting the event itself. Mining such deliberately dropped digital traces allows a precise situational awareness, to help provide a timely estimate of the disaster’s consequences on the population and infrastructures. Yet, to date, the automatic assessment of damage has received little attention. Here, the authors explore feeding predictive models by tweets conveying on-the-ground social sensors’ observations, to nowcast the perceived intensity of earthquakes.
: some personal recollections

For each of us, it is a great pleasure to come together in this tribute to Michael Thompson’s remarkable contributions to nonlinear statics and dynamics over the best part of half a century. Although having been friends and colleagues for many years, we have never written anything together, so it is entirely fitting that this should be happening for the first time in this piece. Each of us had Michael as an inspirational research supervisor over a different period in his research career: between us we must span, as close colleagues and collaborators, most of his lifetime of research. Mentoring is of course a hot topic these days, but as we hope to demonstrate in this piece, Michael is a natural mentor. And when it works, the mentor–mentee relationship extends over a considerably longer period than the initial duration of the PhD. We have both read with great interest and some nostalgia Michael’s article in this Theme Issue, giving advice to up-and-coming young researchers [1]. What we each can testify from personal experience is the absolute importance of choosing the right supervisor or advisor. One enters the business without knowing much about the world of research, and it is an enormous leap into the unknown to pick a problem and start working on it. How important is it then to have best guidance? As with many other things in life timing in research is crucial, and especially at the beginning it is critical to be in the right place at the right time, as ideas start to germinate and collaborations develop. Michael Thompson’s expertise and experience is the absolute reason for this Theme Issue, and is reflected in his contribution to it. We have an addendum: there is nothing like finding the right supervisor at the right time, as each of us separately will be describing below. But let us begin with the man himself. Figure 1 shows a rather grainy and out-of-focus photograph, taken perhaps in 1975 or thereabouts (nice shirt). We
Historical Documents Modernization

Abstract Historical documents are mostly accessible to scholars specialized in the period in which the document originated. In order to increase their accessibility to a broader audience and help in the preservation of the cultural heritage, we propose a method to modernized these documents. This method is based in statistical machine translation, and aims at translating historical documents into a modern version of their original language. We tested this method in two different scenarios, obtaining very encouraging results.
Mechatronics in Design of Monitoring and Diagnostic Systems

Nowadays development of computer engineering in area of hardware and software gives new possibilities of monitoring and diagnostics system design. The paper presents analysis of new possible solutions for design of monitoring and diagnostic systems including; smart sensor design, modular software design and communication modules. New concept of monitoring system based on home page server solution (nano-server) is presented. Smart sensor design concept with embedded hardware for diagnostic application is shown. New software concept for monitoring and diagnostics automation and examples of applications of new design for condition monitoring based on proposed solution are carefully discussed.