Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of abnormal repolarization in the mechanism of cardiac arrhythmia

In cardiac patients, life‐threatening tachyarrhythmia is often precipitated by abnormal changes in ventricular repolarization and refractoriness. Repolarization abnormalities typically evolve as a consequence of impaired function of outward K+ currents in cardiac myocytes, which may be caused by genetic defects or result from various acquired pathophysiological conditions, including electrical remodelling in cardiac disease, ion channel modulation by clinically used pharmacological agents, and systemic electrolyte disorders seen in heart failure, such as hypokalaemia. Cardiac electrical instability attributed to abnormal repolarization relies on the complex interplay between a provocative arrhythmic trigger and vulnerable arrhythmic substrate, with a central role played by the excessive prolongation of ventricular action potential duration, impaired intracellular Ca2+ handling, and slowed impulse conduction. This review outlines the electrical activity of ventricular myocytes in normal conditions and cardiac disease, describes classical electrophysiological mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmia, and provides an update on repolarization‐related surrogates currently used to assess arrhythmic propensity, including spatial dispersion of repolarization, activation–repolarization coupling, electrical restitution, TRIaD (triangulation, reverse use dependence, instability, and dispersion), and the electromechanical window. This is followed by a discussion of the mechanisms that account for the dependence of arrhythmic vulnerability on the location of the ventricular pacing site. Finally, the review clarifies the electrophysiological basis for cardiac arrhythmia produced by hypokalaemia, and gives insight into the clinical importance and pathophysiology of drug‐induced arrhythmia, with particular focus on class Ia (quinidine, procainamide) and Ic (flecainide) Na+ channel blockers, and class III antiarrhythmic agents that block the delayed rectifier K+ channel (dofetilide).
Scaling laws in image gradient fields and texture retrieval

Under image scaling transform, two interaction models of image intensity gradient fields display unusual power scaling laws. These scalings are very universal in texture images and images of natural scenes, and robust against noise and image local deformation. An image similarity measure is developed in terms of these scaling laws. This similarity measure has graceful properties such as invariance under rotation, scaling and translation transformation, invariance under global image intensity adjustment and robustness against noise and image local deformation. A example of texture retrieval shows that the performance of this similarity measure is very promising, achieving 90% recognition rate in a test on a small image database.
AC/DC: In-Database Learning Thunderstruck

We report on the design and implementation of the AC/DC gradient descent solver for a class of optimization problems over normalized databases. AC/DC decomposes an optimization problem into a set of aggregates over the join of the database relations. It then uses the answers to these aggregates to iteratively improve the solution to the problem until it converges. The challenges faced by AC/DC are the large database size, the mixture of continuous and categorical features, and the large number of aggregates to compute. AC/DC addresses these challenges by employing a sparse data representation, factorized computation, problem reparameterization under functional dependencies, and a data structure that supports shared computation of aggregates. To train polynomial regression models and factorization machines of up to 154K features over the natural join of all relations from a real-world dataset of up to 86M tuples, AC/DC needs up to 30 minutes on one core of a commodity machine. This is up to three orders of magnitude faster than its competitors R, MadLib, libFM, and TensorFlow whenever they finish and thus do not exceed memory limitation, 24-hour timeout, or internal design limitations.
Effects of air pollution on the skin: A review

The increase in air pollution over the years has had major effects on the human skin. Various air pollutants such as ultraviolet radiation, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, oxides, particulate matter, ozone and cigarette smoke affect the skin as it is the outermost barrier. Air pollutants damage the skin by inducing oxidative stress. Although human skin acts as a biological shield against pro-oxidative chemicals and physical air pollutants, prolonged or repetitive exposure to high levels of these pollutants may have profound negative effects on the skin. Exposure to ultraviolet radiation has been associated with extrinsic skin aging and skin cancers. Cigarette smoke contributes to premature aging and an increase in the incidence of psoriasis, acne and skin cancers. It is also implicated in allergic skin conditions such as atopic dermatitis and eczema. Polyaromatic hydrocarbons are associated with extrinsic skin aging, pigmentation, cancers and acneiform eruptions. Volatile organic compounds have been associated with atopic dermatitis. Given the increasing levels of air pollution and its detrimental effects on the skin, it is advisable to use strategies to decrease air pollution.
The consequences of polyandry for sibship structures, distributions of relationships and relatedness, and potential for inbreeding in a wild population

The evolutionary benefits of simultaneous polyandry (female multiple mating within a single reproductive event) remain elusive. One potential benefit could arise if polyandry alters sibship structures and consequent relationships and relatedness among females’ descendants, and thereby intrinsically reduces future inbreeding risk (the ‘indirect inbreeding avoidance hypothesis’). However such effects have not been quantified in naturally complex reproductive systems that also encompass iteroparity, overlapping generations, sequential polyandry, and polygyny. We used long-term social and genetic pedigree data from song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) to quantify cross-generational consequences of simultaneous polyandry for offspring sibship structures and distributions of relationships and relatedness among possible mates. Simultaneous polyandry decreased full-sibships and increased half-sibships on average, but such effects varied among females and were smaller than would occur in the absence of sequential polyandry or polygyny. Further, while simultaneous polyandry decreased the overall frequencies of possible matings among adult full-sibs, it increased the frequencies of possible matings among adult half-sibs and more distant relatives. These results imply that the intrinsic consequences of simultaneous polyandry for inbreeding risk could cause weak indirect selection on polyandry, but the magnitude and direction of such effects will depend on complex interactions with other mating system components and the form of inbreeding depression.
Maltilex: A Computational Lexicon for Maltese

The project described in this paper, which is still in the preliminary phase, concerns the design and implementation of a computational lexicon for Maltese, a language very much in current use but so far lacking most of the infrastructure required for NLP. One of the main characteristics of Maltese, a source of many difficulties, is that it is an amalgam of different language types (chiefly Semitic and Romance), as illustrated in the first part of the paper. The latter part of the paper describes our general approach to the problem of constructing the lexicon.
Social inequalities in tooth loss: A multinational comparison

OBJECTIVES To conduct cross-national comparison of education-based inequalities in tooth loss across Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand and the United States. METHODS We used nationally representative data from Australia's National Survey of Adult Oral Health; Canadian Health Measures Survey; Chile's First National Health Survey Ministry of Health; US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey; and the New Zealand Oral Health Survey. We examined the prevalence of edentulism, the proportion of individuals having <21 teeth and the mean number of teeth present. We used education as a measure of socioeconomic position and measured absolute and relative inequalities. We used random-effects meta-analysis to summarize inequality estimates. RESULTS The USA showed the widest absolute and relative inequality in edentulism prevalence, whereas Chile demonstrated the largest absolute and relative social inequality gradient for the mean number of teeth present. Australia had the narrowest absolute and relative inequality gap for proportion of individuals having <21 teeth. Pooled estimates showed substantial heterogeneity for both absolute and relative inequality measures. CONCLUSIONS There is a considerable variation in the magnitude of inequalities in tooth loss across the countries included in this analysis.
An Implicit SPH Formulation for Incompressible Linearly Elastic Solids

We propose a novel smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) formulation for deformable solids. Key aspects of our method are implicit elastic forces and an adapted SPH formulation for the deformation gradient that—in contrast to previous work—allows a rotation extraction directly from the SPH deformation gradient. The proposed implicit concept is entirely based on linear formulations. As a linear strain tensor is used, a rotation‐aware computation of the deformation gradient is required. In contrast to existing work, the respective rotation estimation is entirely realized within the SPH concept using a novel formulation with incorporated kernel gradient correction for first‐order consistency. The proposed implicit formulation and the adapted rotation estimation allow for significantly larger time steps and higher stiffness compared to explicit forms. Performance gain factors of up to one hundred are presented. Incompressibility of deformable solids is accounted for with an ISPH pressure solver. This further allows for a pressure‐based boundary handling and a unified processing of deformables interacting with SPH fluids and rigids. Self‐collisions are implicitly handled by the pressure solver.
LQG Control and Sensing Co-Design

We investigate a linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) control and sensing codesign problem, where one jointly designs sensing and control policies. We focus on the realistic case where the sensing design is selected among a finite set of available sensors, where each sensor is associated with a different cost (e.g., power consumption). We consider two dual problem instances: sensing-constrained LQG control, where one maximizes a control performance subject to a sensor cost budget, and minimum-sensing LQG control, where one minimizes a sensor cost subject to performance constraints. We prove that no polynomial time algorithm guarantees across all problem instances a constant approximation factor from the optimal. Nonetheless, we present the first polynomial time algorithms with per-instance suboptimality guarantees. To this end, we leverage a separation principle, which partially decouples the design of sensing and control. Then, we frame LQG codesign as the optimization of approximately supermodular set functions; we develop novel algorithms to solve the problems; and we prove original results on the performance of the algorithms and establish connections between their suboptimality and control-theoretic quantities. We conclude the article by discussing two applications, namely, sensing-constrained formation control and resource-constrained robot navigation.
Evaluation of Ultrasonic Attenuation in Mortars Structures Using the Argand Diagram

The work presents a new method that tracks the total attenuation of the ultrasonic waves in a mortar during hydration. The method is based on a representation in the complex plane of reflection coefficient of waves backscattered by the mortar layer which takes the form of a circle in the vicinity of a resonance. Monitoring the diameter of the circle during all stages of hydration shows its sensitivity to changes in the microstructure of the material. A strong correlation exists between the diameter of the Argand circle and attenuation on samples with different compositions and at different temperatures. The correlation shows the ability of the parameter to detect the physical and chemical changes in the material and its accuracy for differentiating the phases of hydration.
Primary user signal modulation type recognition algorithm based on joint cyclostationary PCA with RVM

To solve the problems of the low accuracy on detection and modulation type recognition of the weak primary users in low signal-to-noise ratio, a novel signal recognition method based on cyclostationary principal component analysis and relevant vector machine is proposed under the low signal to noise ratio environment in cognitive radio. The method combining principal component analysis with the relevant vector machine classification algorithm is applied to solve detection and modulation type recognition problem. Firstly, a set of cyclic spectrum features are calculated, and the principal component analysis is applied to extract the most discriminate feature vector as training samples and testing samples for classification. Secondly, the relevant vector machine is trained by the training samples. Finally, we utilize the trained relevant vector machine to detect and decide the modulation type of the primary user. It is observe that the maximum increase of the probability of detection on the proposed algorithm can increase 62% compared with artificial neural network, support vector machine and maximum-minimum eigenvalue. Simulation results show the proposed algorithm has high performance to recognition and the PUs can be detected effectively.
Condition monitoring on grease lubrication of rolling bearing using AE technology

We use acoustic emission (AE) technology to monitor the lubrication state of rolling bearing. Firstly, it is to collect the continuous signal of the poorly lubricated rolling bearings on the rotating machinery through the acoustic emission acquisition system, and then the analysis of RMS and other parameters is carried out. Finally, the experimental results show that RMS and total energy are effective parameters to detect the lubrication condition of rolling bearings and to determine the optimal amount of grease for rolling bearings, which can also be used for on-line monitoring.
Developmental variation in floral volatiles composition of a fragrant orchid Zygopetalum maculatum (Kunth) Garay

Abstract Emitted scent volatile profile of an orchid species Zygopetalum maculatum was studied using dynamic headspace sampling technique with four different adsorbent matrices, namely Porapak Type Q polymer (mesh size: 80/100), Tenax (mesh size: 60/80), activated charcoal and graphite. In addition, developmental variations in scent emissions and endogenous volatile levels were also investigated. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis revealed the presence of 21 volatile compounds in the headspace, which was predominantly enriched with benzenoid compounds. Among these benzenoids, o-diethylbenzene and p-diethylbenzene were the major compounds followed by benzyl acetate and methyl salicylate. Among the phenylpropanoid compounds, 2-phenylethyl acetate was the major volatile. However, as compared to benzenoids, the quantity was much lesser, indicating the inclination of phenylalanine flux towards benzenoid pathway. The outcome of this study has the implications in enhancing fragrance and vase life of orchids of the Sikkim Himalaya region and thus may further help to meet the growing market demand.
Reconstruction of group-IV semiconductor surfaces : origin, energetics and consequences

This work presents extensive first-principles studies of the energetics and the reconstructions of the clean low-index (111), (110), (100) and high-index (113) surfaces of the three group- IV semiconductors diamond, silicon, and germanium. The calculations have been performed within density-functional-theory (DFT) using the local-density-approximation (LDA) and the repeated-slab approximation. Different reconstructions including the largest ones observed experimentally such as Si(111)7? 7 and Si(110)16? 2 have been investigated. The atomic geometries have been optimized in order to find the minimum of the total energy. For these atomic structures the electronic band structures have also been calculated. For the most interesting surface reconstructions scanning-tunneling-microscopy (STM) images have been simulated in order to make a comparison with experimentally observed surface images. Presented results highlight the physical origins of the reconstruction behavior in dependence on surface orientation and size of the group-IV atoms. Clear evidence for an opposite reconstruction behavior of diamond and Si or Ge surfaces is shown. Adatoms, interstitials, and symmetry-breaking distortions are unlikely for diamond as a consequence of the short interatomic distances and strong bonds. However, such elements of the surface reconstruction occur on Si and Ge surfaces. The complicated interplay of bonding, resulting atomic geometry, and accompanying electronic structure has been derived and used to discuss driving forces for the surface reconstruction. A rather complete data base of absolute surface energies of group-IV semiconductors is presented. For all the elements, there is a strong tendency to reduce substantially surface energies by taking into account surface reconstructions. The absolute surface energies have been used to discuss the equilibrium shapes of diamond, silicon and germanium.
NANOSPHERE LITHOGRAPHY AND ITS APPLICATION IN RAPID AND ECONOMIC FABRICATION OF PLASMONIC HYDROGENATED AMORPHOUS SILICON PHOTOVOLTAIC DEVICES

7 Chapter 1: Introduction . 8 1.1. Motivation and hypothesis . 8 1.2. Outline of the dissertation . 9 1.3. Photovoltaic and solar cell background . 10 1.4. Plasmonic light trapping in a-Si:H thin film solar cell. 14 1.4. 1. Light scattering from metallic nanoparticles . 15 1.4. 2. Surface plasmon polariton (SPP) and gratings. 18 1.4. 3. Embedded plasmonic concentrators . 20 1.5. Nanosphere lithography and applications . 21 2. Fabricating Ordered 2-D Nano-Structure Array Using Nanosphere Lithography . 25 2.1. Motivation . 25 2.2. Methodology and discussion . 27 2.2.1. Spin coating . 27 2.2.2. Angled interface coating . 38 2.3. Conclusion . 50 3. Leveraging plasmonic enhancement in amorphous silicon solar cell via hexagonal array . 51 3.1. Motivation . 51 3.2. Methodology . 55 3.2.1. Cross section model . 55 5 3.2.2. Solar cell model . 57 3.3. Results and discussion . 60 3.4. Conclusion . 75 4. Hexagonal plasmonic array enhanced a-Si:H solar cell . 76 4.
Weakly Supervised Medical Diagnosis and Localization from Multiple Resolutions

Diagnostic imaging often requires the simultaneous identification of a multitude of findings of varied size and appearance. Beyond global indication of said findings, the prediction and display of localization information improves trust in and understanding of results when augmenting clinical workflow. Medical training data rarely includes more than global image-level labels as segmentations are time-consuming and expensive to collect. We introduce an approach to managing these practical constraints by applying a novel architecture which learns at multiple resolutions while generating saliency maps with weak supervision. Further, we parameterize the Log-Sum-Exp pooling function with a learnable lower-bounded adaptation (LSE-LBA) to build in a sharpness prior and better handle localizing abnormalities of different sizes using only image-level labels. Applying this approach to interpreting chest x-rays, we set the state of the art on 9 abnormalities in the NIH's CXR14 dataset while generating saliency maps with the highest resolution to date.
NAD Kinases: Metabolic Targets Controlling Redox Co-enzymes and Reducing Power Partitioning in Plant Stress and Development

NAD(H) and NADP(H) are essential co-enzymes which dominantly control a number of fundamental biological processes by acting as reducing power and maintaining the intracellular redox balance of all life kingdoms. As the only enzymes that catalyze NAD(H) and ATP to synthesize NADP(H), NAD Kinases (NADKs) participate in many essential metabolic reactions, redox sensitive regulation, photosynthetic performance and also reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis of cells and therefore, play crucial roles in both development and stress responses of plants. NADKs are highly conserved enzymes in amino acid sequences but have multiple subcellular localization and diverse functions. They may function as monomers, dimers or multimers in cells but the enzymatic properties in plants are not well elucidated yet. The activity of plant NADK is regulated by calcium/calmodulin and plays crucial roles in photosynthesis and redox co-enzyme control. NADK genes are expressed in almost all tissues and developmental stages of plants with specificity for different members. Their transcripts can be greatly stimulated by a number of environmental factors such as pathogenic attack, irritant applications and abiotic stress treatments. Using transgenic approaches, several studies have shown that NADKs are involved in chlorophyll synthesis, photosynthetic efficiency, oxidative stress protection, hormone metabolism and signaling regulation, and therefore contribute to the growth regulation and stress tolerance of plants. In this review, the enzymatic properties and functional mechanisms of plant NADKs are thoroughly investigated based on literature and databases. The results obtained here are greatly advantageous for further exploration of NADK function in plants.
Towards a paradigm shift in marketing? An examination of current marketing practices

In recent years, the traditional Transaction approach to marketing has been challenged to the point where a number of authors have suggested that a “paradigm shift” is occurring. The “newparadigm” is commonly referred to as Relationship Marketing, and has been used to reflect a number of different types of relational marketing activity, including Database, Interaction and Network marketing. This paper investigates current marketing practice to clarify the relevance of these alternative approaches using four case studies and a survey of 134 firms. The results do not support the notion of a complete “paradigm shift”. Rather, the findings show that for many firms, transactional marketing is relevant and practised concurrently with various types of relational marketing. It is concluded that while relational marketing issues are currently receiving attention from academics and practitioners alike, the role of transactional marketing should not be ignored or underestimated.
Relationship between plating and magnetron sputtering for metallic films

Au/NiCr/Ta multi-layered metal films were deposited on Al_2O_3 substrate by magnetron sputtering and then Au film was chemically plated.The crystal orientation,residual stress and surface morphology were investigated,and comparison was made between plating and magnetron sputtering technology by X-ray diffractrometry and(atomic) force microscopy.Au grain increases from 60 to 400nm after plating.The results indicate that the plating technology can inherit the crystal orientation from magnetron sputtering,enlarge the preferred orientation,and harmonize the residual stress.The surface roughness of Au films increases after plating.