Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fast Space Optimal Leader Election in Population Protocols

The model of population protocols refers to the growing in popularity theoretical framework suitable for studying pairwise interactions within a large collection of simple indistinguishable entities, frequently called agents. In this paper the emphasis is on the space complexity in fast leader election via population protocols governed by the random scheduler, which uniformly at random selects pairwise interactions within the population of n agents. The main result of this paper is a new fast and space optimal leader election protocol. The new protocol utilises O(log^2 n) parallel time (which is equivalent to O(n log^2 n) sequential pairwise interactions), and each agent operates on O(log log n) states. This double logarithmic space usage matches asymptotically the lower bound 1/2 log log n on the minimal number of states required by agents in any leader election algorithm with the running time o(n/polylog n). Our solution takes an advantage of the concept of phase clocks, a fundamental synchronisation and coordination tool in distributed computing. We propose a new fast and robust population protocol for initialisation of phase clocks to be run simultaneously in multiple modes and intertwined with the leader election process. We also provide the reader with the relevant formal argumentation indicating that our solution is always correct, and fast with high probability.
Pruning Neighborhood Graph for Geodesic Distance Based Semi-Supervised Classification

Recently semi-supervised learning has been gain a surge of interests, but there is a few of research on semi- supervised learning using geodesic distance. The simplest semi-supervised classification algorithm is geodesic nearest neighbors (GNN). However the naive implementation of GNN algorithm is sensitive to the neighborhood scale parameter and suffers from the dilemma of neighborhood scale parameter selection. In this paper, instead of searching for the best neighborhood parameter, we propose a pruned-GNN, which utilize the non-negative reconstructing coefficients to prune the neighborhood graph in order to facilitate the selection of neighborhood scale parameter. Experimental results on several benchmark databases have shown that the proposed pruned-GNN can produce promising accuracies.
Stabilization of Industrial by-Products Using Alkali Activation

With increase in the growth of industrialization, proper disposal of wastes is one of the major issues nowadays that has to be handled with seriously Research has sprung to full pace in recent years on utilization of wastes. Geopolymerization is the latest trend in that path. The requirements for the synthesis of any geopolymer are alkali solution and aluminosilicate material. So the by-products which are rich in Silica and Alumina can be used as aluminosilicate sources. In the present work, four by-products namely ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), fly ash, rice husk ash (RHA) and red mud were taken as raw materials. All the materials except rice husk ash constitute alumina along with silica. These materials were activated by NaOH with varying percentages i.e. 5%, 10%, 15% of raw material. Light compaction tests were conducted for each addition of chemical to the raw material. The effect of different percentages of NaOH on the strength of raw materials was investigated by unconfined compressive tests. For each combination of raw material and percentage of NaOH, three samples were prepared at optimum moisture content (OMC) and maximum dry density (MDD) and kept for curing at ambient temperature for prefixed periods (i.e. 0day, 7days, and 28 days). Mineralogical analysis of the samples was done by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The results show that with increase in percentages of NaOH, the strength of GGBFS and fly ash increases. But the strength of alkali activated RHA on 7th day of curing decreases from the immediate strength due to presence of carbon in the material. The strength of red mud with 5% NaOH on 7th day is higher than the immediate strength and for other percentages, the strength decreases. The reaction between alkali and slag is quick which completes with 7 days of curing. Reaction products were found to be sodium aluminium silicate in GGBFS, fly ash, and RHA from XRD analysis.
Smart coatings for corrosion protection by adopting microcapsules

For decades, iron and steel have been two of the most important materials in our daily lives due to their good mechanical properties, availability and relatively reasonable cost. However, iron does not exist in nature as iron, but as a compound such as iron oxide. In order to get a usable material, these compounds must be refined and processed from their natural state. The conversion process (reduction, eq. 1) of iron from iron ore is undertaken by heating, therefore providing energy, with carbon under careful control, in order to prevent the reverse reaction.
Condition Monitoring of Slow‐Speed Shafts and Bearings with Acoustic Emission

Abstract: For various rotating machinery applications, condition monitoring using high‐frequency Acoustic emission (AE) technology has remained a subject of intense study since the late 1960s. This paper demonstrates the results of an investigation for detecting and monitoring natural crack initiation and propagation in slow‐speed rotating machinery with the AE technology. In addition to highlighting previous work published by the authors [ 1–3 ] on condition monitoring of slow‐speed rotating machinery, this paper presents experimental results on accelerated bearing fatigue under starved lubricating conditions. For these investigations, purpose‐built test rigs were employed for generating natural degradation on both a bearing and a shaft. It is concluded that crack initiation and propagation on slow‐speed bearings and shafts can be detected with the AE technology.
Inhibition of exportin-1 function results in rapid cell cycle-associated DNA damage in cancer cells

Selective inhibitors of nuclear export (SINE) are small molecules in development as anti-cancer agents. The first-in-class SINE, selinexor, is in clinical trials for blood and solid cancers. Selinexor forms a covalent bond with exportin-1 at cysteine-528, and blocks its ability to export cargos. Previous work has shown strong cell cycle effects and drug-induced cell death across many different cancer-derived cell lines. Here, we report strong cell cycle-associated DNA double-stranded break formation upon the treatment of cancer cells with SINE. In multiple cell models, selinexor treatment results in the formation of clustered DNA damage foci in 30-40% of cells within 8 hours that is dependent upon cysteine-528. DNA damage strongly correlates with G1/S-phase and decreased DNA replication. Live cell microscopy reveals an association between DNA damage and cell fate. Cells that form damage in G1-phase more often die or arrest, while those damaged in S/G2-phase frequently progress to cell division. Up to half of all treated cells form damage foci, and most cells that die after being damaged, were damaged in G1-phase. By comparison, non-transformed cell lines show strong cell cycle effects but little DNA damage and less death than cancer cells. Significant drug combination effects occur when selinexor is paired with different classes of agents that either cause DNA damage or that diminish DNA damage repair. These data present a novel effect of exportin-1 inhibition and provide a strong rationale for multiple combination treatments of selinexor with agents that are currently in use for the treatment of different solid cancers.
Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis as Risk and Premorbid Factors of IBD and IBS Along the Childhood–Adulthood Transition

Abstract:Gastrointestinal disorders, although clinically heterogeneous, share pathogenic mechanisms, including genetic susceptibility, impaired gut barrier function, altered microbiota, and environmental triggers (infections, social and behavioral factors, epigenetic control, and diet). Gut microbiota has been studied for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in either children or adults, while modifiable gut microbiota features, acting as risk and premorbid factors along the childhood-adulthood transition, have not been thoroughly investigated so far. Indeed, the relationship between variations of the entire host/microbiota/environmental scenario and clinical phenotypes is still not fully understood. In this respect, tracking gut dysbiosis grading may help deciphering host phenotype–genotype associations and microbiota shifts in an integrated top–down omics-based approach within large-scale pediatric and adult case-control cohorts. Large-scale gut microbiota signatures and host inflammation patterns may be integrated with dietary habits, under genetic and epigenetic constraints, providing gut dysbiosis profiles acting as risk predictors of IBD or IBS in preclinical cases. Tracking dysbiosis supports new personalized/stratified IBD and IBS prevention programmes, generating Decision Support System tools. They include (1) high risk or flare-up recurrence -omics-based dysbiosis profiles; (2) microbial and molecular biomarkers of health and disease; (3) -omics-based pipelines for laboratory medicine diagnostics; (4) health apps for self-management of score-based dietary profiles, which can be shared with clinicians for nutritional habit and lifestyle amendment; (5) -omics profiling data warehousing and public repositories for IBD and IBS profile consultation. Dysbiosis-related indexes can represent novel laboratory and clinical medicine tools preventing or postponing the disease, finally interfering with its natural history.
A Visual Analytics Framework for Exploring Uncertainties in Reservoir Models

Geological uncertainty is an essential element that affects the prediction of hydrocarbon production. The standard approach to address the geological uncertainty is to generate a large number of random 3D geological models and then perform flow simulations for each of them. Such a brute-force approach is not efficient as the flow simulations are computationally costly and as a result, domain experts cannot afford running a large number of simulations. Therefore, it is critically important to be able to address the uncertainty using a few geological models, which can reasonably represent the overall uncertainty of the ensemble. Our goal is to design and develop a visual analytics framework to filter the geological models and to only select models that can potentially cover the uncertain space. This framework is based on the mutual information for the calculation of the distance between the models and clustering for the grouping of similar models. Interactive visualization tasks have also been designed to make the whole process more understandable. Finally, we evaluated our results by comparing with the existent brute force approach.
Opinion-driven communities' detection

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the challenge of opinion mining in text documents to perform further analysis such as community detection and consistency control. More specifically, we aim to identify and extract opinions from natural language documents and to represent them in a structured manner to identify communities of opinion holders based on their common opinions. Another goal is to rapidly identify similar or contradictory opinions on a target issued by different holders. Design/methodology/approach – For the opinion extraction problem we opted for a supervised approach focusing on the feature selection problem to improve our classification results. On the community detection problem, we rely on the Infomap community detection algorithm and the multi-scale community detection framework used on a graph representation based on the available opinions and social data. Findings – The classification performance in terms of precision and recall was significantly improved by adding a set.
Pitting Corrosion of TiN Coated Dental Cast Alloy with Casting Methods

In order to investigate the pitting corrosion of TiN coated dental cast alloy with casting methods, three casting alloys(A:63Co-27Cr-5.5Mo, B:63Ni-16Cr, C:63Co-30Cr-5Mo) were prepared for fabricating partial denture frameworks with various casting methods. The casting morphologies were analyzed using field emission scanning electron microscopy(FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy(EDS), and optical microscopy(OM). TiN coatings were carried out by using RF-sputtering. The pitting corrosion properties of the samples were examined through electrochemical method in 0.9% NaCl solutions at 36.5 . The casting defects of alloy decreased in the order of centrifugal casting, high frequency induction casting, and vacuum pressure casting. In the case of 63Co-27Cr-5.5Mo and 63Co-30Cr-5Mo alloy, α-Co and ε-Co were appeared at matrix and γ’-Ni2Cr second phase showed in 63Ni-16Cr alloy. The corrosion potential and pitting potential of the TiN coated alloy are comparatively higher than that of non coated alloys. Especially, pitting potential and surface stability with casting methods increased in the order of vacuum pressure casting, high frequency induction casting, and centrifugal casting method.
Research and progress on ClC-2

Chloride channel 2 (ClC-2) is one of the nine mammalian members of the ClC family. The present review discusses the molecular properties of ClC-2, including CLCN2, ClC-2 promoter and the structural properties of ClC-2 protein; physiological properties; functional properties, including the regulation of cell volume. The effects of ClC-2 on the digestive, respiratory, circulatory, nervous and optical systems are also discussed, in addition to the mechanisms involved in the regulation of ClC-2. The review then discusses the diseases associated with ClC-2, including degeneration of the retina, Sjögren's syndrome, age-related cataracts, degeneration of the testes, azoospermia, lung cancer, constipation, repair of impaired intestinal mucosa barrier, leukemia, cystic fibrosis, leukoencephalopathy, epilepsy and diabetes mellitus. It was concluded that future investigations of ClC-2 are likely to be focused on developing specific drugs, activators and inhibitors regulating the expression of ClC-2 to treat diseases associated with ClC-2. The determination of CLCN2 is required to prevent and treat several diseases associated with ClC-2.
Mutualism in Metapopulations of Legumes and Rhizobia

Coevolution in mutualisms may result in a stable mosaic pattern of spatial differentiation, with regions occupied by different coadapted pairs of mutualists each being resistant to invasion by organisms with alternative phenotypes. The evolution of geographic mosaic patterns was analyzed for symbioses of legume plants and root‐nodule bacteria (rhizobia), where plants are commonly polymorphic for genes affecting mutualism specificity. Typically, some alleles confer broad compatibility, and others restrict the set of bacterial genotypes accepted by plants as mutualist partners. Metapopulation simulation models with genetic assumptions matching the observed form of symbiotic specificity show that selection can generate a stable geographic mosaic if certain conditions are satisfied regarding competitive abilities, fitness benefits from mutualism, and migration rates. The structure of geographic variation in natural populations of the annual legume Amphicarpaea bracteata, together with patterns of variation in symbiotic fitness, is consistent with the interpretation that a mosaic pattern of differentiation may exist. Experimental and observational studies necessary to test more rigorously for mosaic distributions are outlined.
Influence of Environment on Durability of Fly Ash Cement Mortars

In this study, the durability-related properties of mortars prepared using two types of cement with different contents of fly ash were tested. One of the most important ways of ingress of aggressive substances in cementitious materials is through water. Therefore, to characterize their durability, the capillary suction and the resistance against chloride ingress of the fly ash mortars were studied. The mortars were exposed to four different constant temperatures and relative humidities (RHs) for 365 days. The measured properties of both cement types were affected by the hardening environment. For each environment studied, the durability-related parameters of the fly ash cement mortars studied were quite similar at high hardening ages, independent of their fly ash content. In spite of the different resistance classes of cements used, the durability related properties of both cement types were similar at high hardening ages, regardless of the environment.
Competence of Aedes aegypti, Ae. albopictus, and Culex quinquefasciatus Mosquitoes as Zika Virus Vectors, China

In China, the prevention and control of Zika virus disease has been a public health threat since the first imported case was reported in February 2016. To determine the vector competence of potential vector mosquito species, we experimentally infected Aedes aegypti, Ae. albopictus, and Culex quinquefasciatus mosquitoes and determined infection rates, dissemination rates, and transmission rates. We found the highest vector competence for the imported Zika virus in Ae. aegypti mosquitoes, some susceptibility of Ae. albopictus mosquitoes, but no transmission ability for Cx. quinquefasciatus mosquitoes. Considering that, in China, Ae. albopictus mosquitoes are widely distributed but Ae. aegypti mosquito distribution is limited, Ae. albopictus mosquitoes are a potential primary vector for Zika virus and should be targeted in vector control strategies.
Analysis and Design of a Single-Stage Isolated AC–DC LED Driver With a Voltage Doubler Rectifier

In order to reduce the cost and volume of small-medium power ac–dc light-emitting diode (LED) lighting systems, single-stage LED drivers are often used to drive LEDs with constant current. In this paper, a single-stage isolated high-power factor ac–dc LED driver is proposed and analyzed in detail, which is composed of a buck–boost power factor correction unit operating in discontinuous conduction mode and an isolated dc/dc unit with a voltage doubler rectifier, and the two units are integrated together by sharing the same power switch. Very high input power factor is achieved since the PFC unit operates with almost fixed duty ratio during half period of the utility line voltage. Since a voltage doubler rectifier is included in the isolated dc/dc unit, magnetic core size of the transformer and voltage stress of the secondary side diodes are reduced remarkably. First, the operating principle and performance of the LED driver are analyzed. Then, the main parameters are quantitatively calculated out in detail. Finally, a comparative analysis is presented and a 120 W experimental prototype with 1 A output current is built according to the calculated parameters and the experimental results are presented to verify the correctness of the theoretical analysis and parameter design.
Favored local structures in amorphous colloidal packings measured by microbeam X-ray diffraction

Significance Local structure and symmetry in amorphous materials and glasses may play a critical role in their formation and properties yet are notoriously hard to measure. Here, we demonstrate a direct method for measuring the proportions of polyhedra with different local point symmetries in amorphous colloidal packings, using small-volume transmission diffraction patterns. We show that local order is tuned by the interaction potential between microspheres and the method of preparation. This methodology can be readily applied to a broad range of disordered materials and packings to probe for universal features in their structure. It also has the potential to quantify local order in liquid, undercooled, and liquid–crystal systems approaching a phase transition. Local structure and symmetry are keys to understanding how a material is formed and the properties it subsequently exhibits. This applies to both crystals and amorphous and glassy materials. In the case of amorphous materials, strong links between processing and history, structure and properties have yet to be made because measuring amorphous structure remains a significant challenge. Here, we demonstrate a method to quantify proportions of the bond-orientational order of nearest neighbor clusters [Steinhardt, et al. (1983) Phys Rev B 28:784–805] in colloidal packings by statistically analyzing the angular correlations in an ensemble of scanning transmission microbeam small-angle X-ray scattering (μSAXS) patterns. We show that local order can be modulated by tuning the potential between monodisperse, spherical colloidal silica particles using salt and surfactant additives and that more pronounced order is obtained by centrifugation than sedimentation. The order in the centrifuged glasses reflects the ground state order in the dispersion at lower packing fractions. This diffraction-based method can be applied to amorphous systems across decades in length scale to connect structure to behavior in disordered systems with a range of particle interactions.
Automatic Skin Tone Extraction for Visagism Applications

In this paper we propose a skin tone classification system on three skin colors: dark, medium and light. We work on two methods which don’t require any camera or color calibration. The first computes color histograms in various color spaces on representative facial sliding patches that are further combined in a large feature vector. The dimensionality of this vector is reduced using Principal Component Analysis a Support Vector Machine determines the skin color of each region. The skin tone is extrapolated using a voting schema. The second method uses Convolutional Neural Networks to automatically extract chromatic features from augmented sets of facial images. Both algorithms were trained and tested on publicly available datasets. The SVM method achieves an accuracy of 86.67%, while the CNN approach obtains an accuracy of 91.29%. The proposed system is developed as an automatic analysis module in an optical visagism system where the skin tone is used in an eyewear virtual try-on software that allows users to virtually try glasses on their face using a mobile device with a camera. The system proposes only esthetically and functionally fit frames to the user, based on some facial features –skin tone included.
The role played by oxidative stress in evoking the exercise pressor reflex in health and simulated peripheral artery disease

Ligating the femoral artery of a rat for 72 h, a model for peripheral artery disease, causes an exaggerated exercise pressor reflex in response to muscle contraction. Likewise, the hindlimb muscles of rats with ligated femoral arteries show increased levels of reactive oxygen species. Infusion of tiron, a superoxide scavenger, attenuated the exaggerated pressor reflex and reduced reactive oxygen species production in rats with ligated femoral arteries. Conversely, we found no effect of tiron infusion on the pressor reflex in rats with patent femoral arteries. These results suggest a role of reactive oxygen species with respect to causing the exaggerated pressor response to contraction seen in rats with ligated arteries and peripheral artery disease.