Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Cellular Automata Model for Fire Spreading Prediction

The modeling of fire spread in a flammable area is an interesting and challenging issue, widely studied in literature. Some of the models used for fire front evolution prediction are based on Cellular Automata (CA) approach, and they have shown a good agreement with other models and with experimental data. In this paper, the authors propose a new approach to this kind of models, introducing an “ignition probability” in the transition rules. This probability depends on several parameters, such as number of burning neighbors, wind direction and speed, land slope, fuel typology, etc. As a starting approach, the number of neighbors that already burn seems to be the more interesting parameter to be considered in the ignition probability. Thus, the evolution of each single cell is governed by the presence of burning cells in its neighbourhood and, according to reality, the simulated fire spread does not present a regular shape of the fire front. Key-Words: Cellular automata, fire spread, environmental impact, modeling.
Osteoclast cell-surface changes during the egg-laying cycle in Japanese quail

The medullary bone serves as a source of labile calcium mobilized during calcification of the egg shell in birds. Quantitative histological methods demonstrate that the numbers of medullary bone osteoclasts and nuclei per osteoclast remain unchanged during the egg cycle in the Japanese quail (Coturnix). Therefore, cyclic changes in bone resorption cannot be explained by modulations of osteoclasts from and into other bone cells, a mechanism previously suggested for certain species of birds. Rather, dramatic changes in osteoclast cell-surface features occur during the egg cycle, which might account for cyclic variations in resorptive activity. During egg shell calcification, osteoclasts with ruffled borders are closely apposed to bone surfaces; the cytoplasm is rich in vacuoles that contain mineral crystals and seem to derive from the ruffled border. At the completion of egg shell calcification, the ruffled borders and vacuoles move away from the bone surface, although the osteoclast remains attached to the bone along the filamentous or "clear" zone. Associated with the disappearance of the ruffled borders is the appearance of extensive interdigitated cell processes along the peripheral surface of the osteoclast away from the bone. These unusual structures, which may serve as a reservoir of membrane, largely disappear when ruffled borders and associated structures reappear. Therefore, in these hens, the osteoclasts modulate their cell surface rather than their population during the egg cycle.
Properties and morphology of polystyrene and linear low density polyethylene polyblend and polyalloy

A co-rotating twin screw extruder was employed in melt mixing and reactive extrusion of polystyrene/linear low density polyethylene (PS/PE) blends. Blends of PS/PE in the ratio of 9: 1 were prepared under different conditions of shear mixing and with different concentrations of dicurnlyl peroxide (DP) and triallyl isocyanurate (TALC) coupling agent. The Charpy impact strength of unnotched samples of melt blends was found to be lower than that of the polystyrene and was not affected much by the different conditions of melt mixing at different rates of extrusion, screw speeds, and screw configurations. In the case of reaction-extruded blends, the impact strength initially deteriorated with small addition of TAIC/DP, but improved with further increase in the level of TAIC/DP, exceeding that of polystyrene at an optimum concentration. With even further increase in TAIC/DP concentration, the impact strength again decreased. This was attributed to the different extents of coupling reactions of PE-TAIC-PE, PE-TAIC-PS, and PS-TAIC-PS with different levels of TAIC/DP. The interfacial adhesion of the incompatible PS-PE was postulated to be improved by the graft copolymers formed during reactive extrusion. This observation was supported by melt rheology, thermal characterization, molecular weight, and fracture surface morphology studies.
Relationship between outdoor and indoor air quality in eight French schools.

UNLABELLED In the frame of the French national research program PRIMEQUAL (inter-ministry program for better air quality in urban environments), measurements of outdoor and indoor pollution have been carried out in eight schools in La Rochelle (France) and its suburbs. The buildings were naturally ventilated by opening the windows, or mechanically ventilated, and showed various air permeabilities. Ozone, nitrogen oxides (NO and NO(2)), and airborne particle (particle counts within 15 size intervals ranging from 0.3 to 15 mum) concentrations were continuously monitored indoors and outdoors for two 2-week periods. The indoor humidity, temperature, CO(2) concentration (an indicator of occupancy), window openings and building permeability were also measured. The temporal profiles of indoor and outdoor concentrations show ozone and nitrogen oxides behave differently: NO and NO(2) indoor/outdoor concentration ratios (I/O) were found to vary in a range from 0.5 to 1, and from 0.88 to 1, respectively, but no correlation with building permeability was observed. On the contrary, I/O ratios of ozone vary in a range from 0 to 0.45 and seem to be strongly influenced by the building air-tightness: the more airtight the building envelope, the lower the ratio. Occupancy, through re-suspension of previously deposited particles and possible particle generation, strongly influences the indoor concentration level of airborne particles. However, this influence decreases with particle size, reflecting the way deposition velocities vary as a function of size. The influence of particle size on deposition and penetration across the building envelope is also discussed by analyzing the I/O ratios measured when the buildings were unoccupied, by comparing the indoor concentrations measured when the buildings were occupied and when they were not (O/U ratios), and by referring to previously published studies focussing on this topic. Except one case, I/O were found to vary in the range from 0.03 to 1.79. All O/U are greater than one and increase up to 100 with particle size. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Assessing children's total exposure requires the knowledge of outdoor and indoor air contaminant concentrations. The study presented here provides data on compared outdoor and indoor concentration levels in school buildings, as well as information on the parameters influencing the relationship between outdoor and indoor air quality. It may be used as a basis for estimating indoor concentrations from outdoor concentrations data, or as a first step in designing buildings sheltering children against atmospheric pollution.
Feedback-Aware Social Event-Participant Arrangement

Online event-based social networks (EBSNs) and studies on global event-participant arrangement strategies for EBSNs are becoming popular recently. Existing works measure satisfaction of an arrangement by a linear combination of few factors, weights of which are predefined and fixed, and do not allow users to provide feedbacks on whether accepting the arrangement or not. Besides, most of them only consider offline scenarios, where full information of users is known in advance. However, on real-world EBSN platforms, users can dynamically log in the platform and register for events on a first come, first served basis. In other words, online scenarios of event-participant arrangement strategies should be considered. In this work, we study a new event-participant arrangement strategy for online scenarios, the Feedback-Aware Social Event-participant Arrangement (FASEA) problem, where satisfaction scores of an arrangement are learned adaptively and users can choose to accept or reject the arranged events. Particularly, we model the problem as a contextual combinatorial bandit setting and use efficient and effective algorithms to solve the problem. The effectiveness and efficiency of the solutions are evaluated with extensive experimental studies and our findings indicate that the state-of-the-art Thompson Sampling that is reported to work well under basic multi-armed bandit does not perform well under FASEA.
Down-Regulation of Rad51 Expression Overcomes Drug Resistance to Gemcitabine in Human Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer Cells

Gemcitabine (2′,2′-difluorodeoxycytidine), a deoxycytidine analog, and erlotinib, an epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor, are used clinically to treat patients with non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the molecular mechanisms for the drug resistance of gemcitabine in NSCLC cells are poorly understood. In this study, we used constructs containing human Rad51 cDNA or specific Rad51 small interfering RNA (siRNA) to examine the role of Rad51 in chemoresistance of gemcitabine in three different human NSCLC cell lines. Exposure of human NSCLC cell lines to gemcitabine increased the phosphorylation levels of mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (MKK) 1/2-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) 1/2 and AKT in a time- and dose-dependent manner, which was accompanied by an induction of Rad51 mRNA and protein expression. Gemcitabine increased the expression of Rad51 by increasing its mRNA and protein stability. Blockage of ERK1/2 or AKT activation by 1,4-diamino-2,3-dicyano-1,4-bis(methylthio)butadiene (U0126; MKK1/2 inhibitor) or 2-(4-morpholinyl)-8-phenyl-4H-1-benzopyran-4-one (LY294002; phosphatidyl inositol 3-kinase inhibitor), respectively, decreased the gemcitabine-induced Rad51 expression. Gemcitabine-induced cytotoxicity was significantly increased using siRNA depletion of Rad51 or blockage of ERK1/2 and AKT activation. Erlotinib enhanced the gemcitabine-induced cytotoxicity via the inactivation of ERK1/2 and AKT and the down-regulation of Rad51. Enforced expression of constitutively active MKK1/2 or AKT recovered cell viability and Rad51 protein levels that were decreased by the combination of erlotinib and gemcitabine. Suppression of Rad51 expression or the inactivation of ERK1/2 or AKT signaling may be considered potential therapeutic modalities for gemcitabine-resistant lung cancer.
Extended tailing of bacteria following breakthrough at the Narrow Channel Focus Area, Oyster, Virginia

Extended tailing of low bacterial concentrations following breakthrough at the Narrow Channel focus area was observed for 4 months. Bacterial attachment and detachment kinetics associated with breakthrough and extended tailing were determined by fitting a one‐dimensional transport model to the field breakthrough‐tailing data. Spatial variations in attachment rate coefficient (kƒ) were observed under forced gradient conditions (i.e., kƒ decreased as travel distance increased), possibly because of decreased bacterial adhesion with increased transport distance. When pore water velocity decreased by an order of magnitude at 9 days following injection, apparent bacterial attachment rate coefficients did not decrease with velocity as expected from filtration theory, but, instead, increased greatly for most of the wells. The coincidence of the increase in apparent attachment rate coefficient with the occurrence of protist blooms suggested that the loss of bacteria from the aqueous phase during the protist blooms was not governed by filtration but rather was governed by predation. Simulations were performed to examine the transport distances achieved with and without detachment, using attachment and detachment rate coefficients similar to those obtained in this field study. Simulations that included detachment showed that transport distances of bacteria may significantly increase because of detachment under the conditions examined.
XRD Analysis of Calcium Phosphate and Biocomposite Calcium Phosphate/Bioresorbable Polymer

Composite biomaterials based on calcium phosphate ceramic due to their high bioactivity are of interest for biological application and bone tissue repair. Structural and microstructural parameters of inorganic constituent of these materials are very important for the synthesis and characterization of composites. Quantitative and qualitative content, crystallite size of phases, as well as the degree of crystallinity have a great influence on the quality of composites, their application and bone tissue repair. X-ray diffractometry was employed to investigate the components of biocomposite materials, calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramic and poly-DL-lactide-coglycolide (DLPLG) polymer, as well as the biocomposite obtained from the mentioned components. Composite biomaterial was obtained by modified emulsion process. Using the Rietveld refinement, we analyzed CaP as an inorganic component of the composite, whence we have determined structural and microstructural properties of ceramic component of the investigated composite. The results obtained by structure refinement show that calcium phosphate ceramic materials synthesized at room temperature contain hydroxyapatite HAp as a predominant phase. The calculated Ca/P ratio is 1.667. The Rietveld analysis revealed lattice parameters a(Å)=9.4324(7) and c(Å)=6.8785(6) that are in agreement with the theoretical values.
Columnar Crystal Growth of Ti46Al0.5W0.5Si Alloys Directional Solidified by Rectangular Cold Crucible

This paper has systematically studied the evolving process of column crystals of Ti46Al0.5W0. 5Si alloys that is directionally solidified by rectangular cold crucible. The results showed that: the solid/liquid interface presented convex to the liquid metal due to the complicated influences by cold crucible. Overheating temperature and new crystal nucleus had great effects on the growth continuity and the stability of column crystals. Furthermore, the precipitation phases have been studied. As a result, the methods for controlling growing process of columnar crystals have been submitted, which are playing a critical role in optimizing experimental parameters and devising the construction-elements of cold crucible.
Innate Visual Learning through Spontaneous Activity Patterns

Patterns of spontaneous activity in the developing retina, LGN, and cortex are necessary for the proper development of visual cortex. With these patterns intact, the primary visual cortices of many newborn animals develop properties similar to those of the adult cortex but without the training benefit of visual experience. Previous models have demonstrated how V1 responses can be initialized through mechanisms specific to development and prior to visual experience, such as using axonal guidance cues or relying on simple, pairwise correlations on spontaneous activity with additional developmental constraints. We argue that these spontaneous patterns may be better understood as part of an “innate learning” strategy, which learns similarly on activity both before and during visual experience. With an abstraction of spontaneous activity models, we show how the visual system may be able to bootstrap an efficient code for its natural environment prior to external visual experience, and we continue the same refinement strategy upon natural experience. The patterns are generated through simple, local interactions and contain the same relevant statistical properties of retinal waves and hypothesized waves in the LGN and V1. An efficient encoding of these patterns resembles a sparse coding of natural images by producing neurons with localized, oriented, bandpass structure—the same code found in early visual cortical cells. We address the relevance of higher-order statistical properties of spontaneous activity, how this relates to a system that may adapt similarly on activity prior to and during natural experience, and how these concepts ultimately relate to an efficient coding of our natural world.
Impaired Limb Shortening following Stroke: What’s in a Name?

Background Difficulty advancing the paretic limb during the swing phase of gait is a prominent manifestation of walking dysfunction following stroke. This clinically observable sign, frequently referred to as ‘foot drop’, ostensibly results from dorsiflexor weakness. Objective Here we investigated the extent to which hip, knee, and ankle motions contribute to impaired paretic limb advancement. We hypothesized that neither: 1) minimal toe clearance and maximal limb shortening during swing nor, 2) the pattern of multiple joint contributions to toe clearance and limb shortening would differ between post-stroke and non-disabled control groups. Methods We studied 16 individuals post-stroke during overground walking at self-selected speed and nine non-disabled controls who walked at matched speeds using 3D motion analysis. Results No differences were detected with respect to the ankle dorsiflexion contribution to toe clearance post-stroke. Rather, hip flexion had a greater relative influence, while the knee flexion influence on producing toe clearance was reduced. Conclusions Similarity in the ankle dorsiflexion, but differences in the hip and knee, contributions to toe clearance between groups argues strongly against dorsiflexion dysfunction as the fundamental impairment of limb advancement post-stroke. Marked reversal in the roles of hip and knee flexion indicates disruption of inter-joint coordination, which most likely results from impairment of the dynamic contribution to knee flexion by the gastrocnemius muscle in preparation for swing. These findings suggest the need to reconsider the notion of foot drop in persons post-stroke. Redirecting the focus of rehabilitation and restoration of hemiparetic walking dysfunction appropriately, towards contributory neuromechanical impairments, will improve outcomes and reduce disability.
Provable Virus Detection: Using the Uncertainty Principle to Protect Against Malware

Protecting software from malware injection is the holy grail of modern computer security. Despite intensive efforts by the scientific and engineering community, the number of successful attacks continues to increase. We have a breakthrough novel approach to provably detect malware injection. The key idea is to use the very insertion of the malware itself to allow for the systems to detect it. This is, in our opinion, close in spirit to the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The attackers, no matter how clever, no matter when or how they insert their malware, change the state of the system they are attacking. This fundamental idea is a game changer. And our system does not rely on heuristics; instead, our scheme enjoys the unique property that it is proved secure in a formal and precise mathematical sense and with minimal and realistic CPU modification achieves strong provable security guarantees. Thus, we anticipate our system and formal mathematical security treatment to open new directions in software protection.
Antioxidants Block Prostate Cancer in Lady Transgenic Mice

The development of chemopreventive agents against prostate cancer would benefit from conclusive evidence of their efficacy in animal models that emulate human disease. To date there has been little in vivo evidence supporting their preventive capabilities. The 12T-10 Lady transgenic model spontaneously develops localized prostatic adenocarcinoma and neuroendocrine cancer followed by metastases, recapitulating the natural history of human prostate cancer in many respects. Using male Lady version of the transgenic adenocarcinoma of the mouse prostate mice, we show that administration of antioxidants (vitamin E, selenium, and lycopene) in the diet dramatically inhibits prostate cancer development and increases the disease free survival. Treatment of animals with the antioxidants resulted in a 4-fold reduction in the incidence of prostate cancer compared with the untreated animals. Prostate cancer developed in 73.68% (14 of 19) and 100% (19 of 19) of the animals from the standard and high fat diet, respectively. In contrast, only 10.53% (2 of 19) and 15.79% (3 of 19; P < 0.0001) of the animals in the standard and high fat diets supplemented with antioxidants developed tumors. The micronutrients were well tolerated with no evidence of antioxidant-related toxicity. Histopathological analysis confirmed absence of cancer in the additive treated groups. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated a strong correlation between disease-free state and increased levels of the prognostic marker p27Kip1 and a marked decrease in proliferating cell nuclear antigen expression. These observations provide support for the chemopreventive effect of these micronutrients and some clues as to their mechanism of action.
Hybrid time synchronization implemented through special ring array for mesh or torus

In this paper, we present a new efficient hybrid time synchronization scheme for a mesh or torus interconnection networks, called ROCTS. ROCTS comprises two levels, one for the lower level that is implemented over a special high-speed ring array, one for the mesh or torus network. In ROCTS, the second network we construct is different from the past, which is a ring array with each ring not connected to any other. We can implement ROCTS in a distributed and fault-tolerant way. On the other hand, we combine the advantages of hardware and linear-envelope methods so that we can improve the performance of time synchronization even if the work load on a mesh or torus network is not uniform or even the blocked nodes occur.
Induction of DNA damage and apoptosis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by a yeast killer toxin

The cellular response of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to a linear plasmid encoded killer toxin from Pichia acaciae was analysed. As for the Kluyveromyces lactis zymocin, such toxin was recently shown to bind to the target cell's chitin and probably acts by facilitating the import of a toxin subunit. However, as distinct from zymocin, which arrests cells in G1, it provokes S‐phase arrest and concomitant DNA damage checkpoint activation. Here, we report that such novel toxin type causes cell death in a two‐step process. Within 4 h in toxin, viability of cells is immediately reduced to approximately 30%. Elevated mutation rates at the CAN1 locus prove DNA damaging mediated by the toxin. Cells arrested artificially in G1 or G2/M are very rapidly affected, while cells arrested in S loose their viability at a slower rate. S‐phase arrest is, thus, a response of target cells to cope with DNA damage induced by the toxin. A second decline in viability requiring metabolically active target cells emerges upon toxin exposure over 10 h. During this phase, toxin treated cells develop abnormal nuclear morphology and react positive to terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase‐mediated nick end‐labelling (TUNEL), indicative of DNA fragmentation. Furthermore, as judged from staining with fluorescein conjugated annexinV, cells expose phosphatidylserine at the outer membrane face and the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is increased. ROS formation and concomitant cell death was heavily suppressed in a rho‐ derivative of the tester strain, while immediate reduction of viability was indistinguishable from the wild type. As a strain lacking the cellular target because of defects in the major chitinsynthase (Chs3) did not display such characteristic changes, the chitin binding and DNA‐damaging P. acaciae toxin constitutes an apoptosis inducing protein. Both, DNA‐damaging and apoptosis induction are unique features of this novel toxin type.