Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contribution à une gestion durable de structures en béton armé soumises à la pénétration des ions chlorure

A l'heure actuelle, des multiples contraintes economiques, sociales et environnementales transforment l'optimisation de la planication des travaux de maintenance en un defi majeur pour les concepteurs, les proprietaires et les utilisateurs des infrastructures. Cette etude se concentre sur la gestion des structures en beton arme placees dans des environnements marins. Dans ces conditions d'exposition, la penetration des ions chlorure genere la corrosion des armatures en reduisant la durabilite du beton arme. Par consequent, la modelisation des processus de degradation ainsi que des actions de maintenance realisees au cours de la duree de vie operationnelle devient primordiale pour la formulation d'une strategie de maintenance durable. L'objectif principal de cette these est de developper une nouvelle methodologie pour l'optimisation de la performance des strategies de maintenance des structures en beton arme sujettes a la corrosion. La gestion des infrastructures est principalement basee sur des contraintes economiques. Cette etude propose une extension a des criteres environnementaux pour trouver des solutions inscrites dans le cadre du developpement durable. Le modele de gestion combine : un modele etendu de penetration des chlorures, des processus de Markov et la theorie de la decision. L'alea lie aux proprietes des materiaux, au modele et aux actions environnementales ainsi que les effets des inspections imparfaites sont egalement integres au modele. Etant donne que la strategie de maintenance durable doit minimiser les couts et l'impact environnemental, une approche multicritere pour la prise de decision est egalement mise en oeuvre. Plusieurs exemples numeriques et des etudes de cas reels illustrent les points ci-dessus dans ce memoire. Il est demontre que la methode proposee peut etre utile pour ameliorer la performance environnementale et les couts d'une strategie de maintenance donnee en assurant des niveaux appropries de service et de surete
Diverse histories, shared social issues: the Australian and

Introduction As recognised by social policy scholars, social policy in Korea is a relatively new field of governance and practice (Chang-sik & Shaw, 2003; Huck-Ju, 1997; Sung, 2003). Owing to its relatively recent industrialisation, democratisation and consequent dramatic changes in demography and society (Lee, 1999, 2004; Chang, 2004), the state of the Republic of Korea has recently turned its attention to some core social problems and democratically driven demands to which most Western industrialised states have had to develop responses for over a century.
Ballast 3D reconstruction by a matching pursuit based stereo matcher

In the last years the railway association spent much money to check the railway infrastructure. The railway infrastructure is a particular field in which the periodical surface inspection of rolling plane can help the operator to prevent critical situations. The maintenance and monitoring of this infrastructure is an important aspect for railway association. In this paper we describe a visual system able to detect defect where the ballast bed has an anomalous behaviour. The proposed system is a stereo rig, based on two high resolution line scanner TV cameras, installed under the train. To detect defect of the layer ballast we developed stereo vision techniques use matching pursuit method to extract features from images and the similarity function to execute the correspondence between left and right images. Visual inspection can help to increase the control quality and reduce costs to maintenance.
Practical lessons from protein structure prediction

Despite recent efforts to develop automated protein structure determination protocols, structural genomics projects are slow in generating fold assignments for complete proteomes, and spatial structures remain unknown for many protein families. Alternative cheap and fast methods to assign folds using prediction algorithms continue to provide valuable structural information for many proteins. The development of high-quality prediction methods has been boosted in the last years by objective community-wide assessment experiments. This paper gives an overview of the currently available practical approaches to protein structure prediction capable of generating accurate fold assignment. Recent advances in assessment of the prediction quality are also discussed.
Determining the most appropriate spinning reserve depending on demand

In the deregulated power industry, effective procurement of the Ancillary Services (AS) is essential in order to both reliable supply to customer and power system security. AS are used in order to operate the system reliably within enterprise safety along with the criteria regarding supply quality and operating conditions. Demand decrease set Spinning Reserve (SR) for power systems and capital cost investments and for all plants. Influential control of SR supply important cost decrease for large power systems. This study propose that set a reserve with the governor action and load shedding function depending on demand. This make possible the reliability of individual units and the uncertainty of the load forecast to the considered for short-term scheduling. While it is easy to implement decisive criterion, this situation does not conform to the structure prediction problems. Thus, the technique have been proposed for determining SR capacity depending on demand.
The Role of Pulmocutaneous Baroreceptors in the Control of Lymphatic Heart Rate in the Toad Bufo marinus

The influence of increased pulmocutaneous arterial systolic pressure on amphibian lymph heart activity was determined in Bufo marinus. Arginine vasotocin–induced increases in systolic arterial pressure of greater than 0.5 kPa significantly ( \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \normalfont \selectfont} \DeclareTextFontCommand{\textcyr}{\cyr} \pagestyle{empty} \DeclareMathSizes{10}{9}{7}{6} \begin{document} \landscape $$P< 0.0002$$ \end{document} ) decreased lymph heart rate. Denervation of the recurrent laryngeal nerve led to an increase in arterial pressure of 3.88 kPa in test animals compared to control animals. Denervation abolished lymph heart response to increased arterial pressure for an average of 38 min. Direct stimulation to the recurrent laryngeal nerve stopped lymph heart activity without an increase in arterial pressure. These data indicate that baroreceptors in the pulmocutaneous artery can decrease lymph heart rate during periods of either direct stimulation or elevated arterial pressure. The data also support lymph hearts as effectors for aortic and carotid baroreceptors.
Conseil d'administration, stratégie et performance financière

Le conseil d'administration, a travers les systemes de controle qu'il developpe, peut a la fois etre considere comme un systeme de contraintes qui influence la nature des decisions strategiques prises par les dirigeants et comme un organe qui contribue a la mise en oeuvre de la strategie. Il existe donc une relation d'influence reciproque entre la strategie poursuivie par la firme et le conseil d'administration. En outre, la strategie et le conseil d'administration ont chacun un impact sur la performance de la firme. La strategie est apprehendee a travers la strategie de diversification, l'intensite des depenses de recherche et developpement et le mode de croissance. Trois facteurs moderateurs interviennent dans la relation conseil d'administration strategie performance. La strategie d'enracinement du dirigeant : ce dernier cherche a influencer la strategie et la composition du conseil d'administration pour se rendre indispensable a la firme. Les actionnaires, conformement a la theorie de l'agence, en fonction du pouvoir qu'ils detiennent, controlent le dirigeant et la strategie qu'il developpe. Plus le controle des actionnaires est fort, mieux ils peuvent amener le dirigeant a agir dans leur interet. L'environnement exerce une influence sur la composition du conseil d'administration, en fonction de sa plus ou moins grande incertitude, conformement a la theorie de la dependance envers les ressources. Nous avons adopte une methodologie statistique originale en finance. Nous avons elabore un modele d'equations structurelles. C'est la strategie de diversification qui influence la composition du conseil d'administration et les controles qu'il utilise et non l'inverse. La relation la plus robuste porte sur l'influence de l'enracinement du dirigeant sur le type de controle exerce par le conseil d'administration et sur la composition du conseil d'administration.
Differentiation of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells and the Regulation of Protein Kinase C-α

Abstract Dedifferentiation and proliferation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are important features of atherosclerosis. The molecular mechanisms are largely unclear; however, protein kinase C (PKC) is a key enzyme in the intracellular signaling pathways that mediate this process. We studied the activity and immunoreactivity of PKC-α in primary cultures of VSMCs from rat aortas under different conditions of growth and differentiation. PKC-α was determined under the following conditions: (1) during the growth phase and after confluence of cultured (passages 1 through 3) VSMCs, (2) before and after induction of differentiation in VSMCs by retinoic acid, and (3) in primary cultures of VSMCs from spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats during early passages. PKC activity was measured by in vitro substrate phosphorylation. PKC-α immunoreactivity was assessed by Western blot using specific polyclonal antibodies and by immunostaining with confocal microscopy. Cell proliferation w.
State estimation for nonlinear systems with unknown inputs

This paper describes an unknown input filtering framework for the state estimation of nonlinear systems with arbitrary unknown inputs. It is known that the celebrated extended Kalman filter (EKF) may have poor performance due to the lack of the true dynamics of the unknown input. A possible remedy to improve the performance is to apply an EKF-like nonlinear version of the recently developed ERTSF (NERTSF), which however may encounter implementation problem because it may be prohibitively difficult or impossible to obtain all the Jacobians and Hessians of complex nonlinear systems. In this paper, a general derivative-free version of the NERTSF is further proposed to avoid the need for the calculation of model partial derivatives. Simulation results illustrate that this new nonlinear filter may have comparable performance to the NERTSF.
The relative risks of sensitivity to grass pollen, house dust mite and cat dander in the development of childhood asthma

The associations between skin sensitivity to various common allergens and the development of childhood asthma were ascertained in a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of New Zealand children up to the age of 13 years. Of 714 children skin‐tested, 45.8% were sensitive to at least one of 11 allergens, the most common responses being to rye grass pollen (32.5%), house dust mite (30.1%) and cat dander (13.3%). Allergen‐specific relative risk analysis, controlled for the effect of sensitivity to other allergens, demonstrated that sensitivity to house dust mite and to cat dander were highly significant independent risk factors associated with the development of asthma (whether defined as recurrent typical respiratory symptoms, increased airway responsiveness, or the concurrent presence of both), whereas grass sensitivity was not a significant independent risk factor for asthma.
Comparative Analysis of Two-Coil and Three-Coil Structures for Wireless Power Transfer

With the development of electric vehicles and consumer electronics, wireless power transfer (WPT) is becoming a popular technology. Recently, magnetic resonant coupling has been considered to be the most effective and attractive WPT approach, and the two-coil structure is the most widely used for magnetic resonant coupling. It has been recently reported that the system's energy efficiency can be improved by a three-coil structure. In this paper, the three-coil structure is compared with the two-coil structure based on circuit theory. Simplified circuit models of the two- and three-coil structures are proposed to give a more intuitive and comprehensive analysis of the energy efficiency differences between the two structures. With the simplified model, the condition for a three-coil structure obtaining higher energy efficiency over its two-coil counterpart is derived, and the analysis shows that the WPT system with higher energy efficiency within a wider range of loads can be achieved by properly designed three-coil systems. Additionally, it also shows that the three-coil system has the significant advantage of reducing the current stress and the electromagnetic field emission that is caused by misalignments. The theoretical analysis is confirmed by both simulation and experimental results.
Free Insulin-Like Growth Factor I: Are We Hunting a Ghost?

During the last decade, there has been an increasing number of publications reporting concentrations of free dissociable insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) in serum or plasma. The goal for attempting to measure free IGF-I in a serum sample in vitro has been to obtain information about the bioactivity of IGF-I in target tissues, and thus relate a measurable parameter to biological responses such as longitudinal growth or glucose disappearance rate. In this review, the serum free IGF-I approach is placed into a physiological perspective. In addition, methodological aspects are discussed and suggestions for the validation of free IGF-I assays are presented.
Influence of Psychosocial Factors on Self-Care Behaviors and Glycemic Control in Turkish Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Purpose: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the direct and indirect effects of psychosocial factors on self-care behavior and glycemic control in Turkish patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Method: The study used a cross-sectional questionnaire survey design (N = 350). Data were collected using the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities Scale and the Multidimensional Diabetes Questionnaire. The relationship between the study variables was analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and structural equation modeling. Results: Self-efficacy was associated with social support, outcome expectancies, perceived interference, educational level, and self-care and A1C. According to the structural equation model, self-efficacy was the predictor variable that influenced both self-care and glycemic control. Conclusions: Self-efficacy in achieving desired health outcomes was found to play a central role in Turkish patients. Although interventions are planned and implemented to achieve and maintain self-management in individuals with diabetes, strengthening psychosocial factors, particularly self-efficacy, may contribute to adjustment to disease and good glycemic control in the long term.
Aliskiren improves insulin resistance and ameliorates diabetic vascular complications in db/db mice.

BACKGROUND Aliskiren is a direct renin inhibitor (DRI) and provides an organ-protective effect in human and animal experiments. However, there is no current evidence of the effect of DRI on insulin resistance and metabolic abnormalities in type 2 diabetic animals. Methods. We investigated the effects and molecular mechanism of aliskiren in db/db mice and cultured mesangial cells (MCs). RESULTS Aliskiren treatment for 3 months at a dose of 25 mg/kg/day via an osmotic mini-pump did not induce significant changes in blood glucose levels, systolic blood pressure, serum creatinine and electrolyte levels. However, aliskiren treatment improved insulin resistance confirmed by insulin tolerance test and various biomarkers including homeostasis model assessment index levels and lipid abnormalities. The treated group also exhibited significant improvement in cardiac functional and morphological abnormalities including left ventricular hypertrophy, and induced phenotypic changes in adipose tissue. Aliskiren treatment also markedly decreased urinary albumin excretion, glomerulosclerosis and suppressed profibrotic and proinflammatory cytokine synthesis and improved renal lipid metabolism. In cultured MCs, high glucose stimulation increased MC renin concentration. Furthermore, renin treatment directly up-regulates synthesis of proinflammatory and profibrotic cytokines, which were abolished by prior treatment with aliskiren and angiotensin receptor (AT1) antagonist. These results suggest that the beneficial effect of aliskiren is mediated by an angiotensin-dependent mechanism. CONCLUSIONS Together, these results imply that aliskiren provides an organ-protective effect through improvement in insulin resistance and lipid abnormality, as well as direct anti-fibrotic effect in target organ in db/db mice. Aliskiren may be a useful new therapeutic agent in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and diabetic nephropathy.
Plasmodium vivax infection during pregnancy: an important problem in need of new solutions.

Plasmodium vivax the most widespread parasite causing human malaria is responsible for an estimated 130-435 million infections annually and is the major cause of malaria in most of Asia and Latin America. Although P. vivax infection is commonly considered to be much more benign than Plasmodium falciparum infection historical evidence suggests significant mortality associated with P. vivax malaria in the pre-antimalarial era and death caused by P. vivax malaria has been increasingly recognized over the past few years. In this issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases Poespoprodjo et al. report the impact of P. vivax infection on pregnancy outcomes in Papua Indonesia. Of 50 million pregnancies occurring each year in countries where malaria is endemic approximately one-half occur in areas where P. vivax malaria is endemic. P. falciparum malaria during pregnancy is a well-known cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Each year an estimated 10000 maternal deaths result from malarial anemia and 60-200000 infant deaths result from malaria-associated low birth weight in Africa. In areas of low transmission such as in many areas of Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region (and where adults migrate from malaria-free areas to areas of endemicity) pregnant women may have limited prepregnancy immunity and may be susceptible to symptomatic and severe disease. Symptomatic malaria may lead to preterm delivery and fetal loss and neonates of nonimmune mothers may be at a particular risk of congenital malaria resulting from transplacental passage of parasites. (excerpt)
Ontologies for Reasoning about Failures in AI Systems

Brittleness is a common problem among AI systems. Autonomous systems, including those that learn, may be faced with unanticipated situations that cause decreased performance, or in the worstcase, catastrophic failures from which the system cannot recover. In this paper, we describe a construct called the metacognitive loop (MCL) that allows AI systems to monitor their own behavior, generate expectations about their own progress and performance, and verify that they are met. When expectations are violated, the metacognitive loop attempts to reason in a domain-general way about why expectations were not met and how to recover. The basis for reasoning is a set of ontologies that encode abstract diagnosic and prescriptive processes for coping with failures.diagnosic and prescriptive processes for coping with failures.
Mining Traffic Congestion Correlation between Road Segments on GPS Trajectories

Traffic congestion is a major concern in many cities around the world. Previous work mainly focuses on the prediction of congestion and analysis of traffic flows, while the congestion correlation between road segments has not been studied yet. In this paper, we propose a three-phase framework to study the congestion correlation between road segments from multiple real world data. In the first phase, we extract congestion information on each road segment from GPS trajectories of over 10,000 taxis, define congestion correlation and propose a corresponding mining algorithm to find out all the existing correlations. In the second phase, we extract various features on each pair of road segments from road network and POI data. In the last phase, the results of the first two phases are input into several classifiers to predict congestion correlation. We further analyze the important features and evaluate the results of the trained classifiers. We found some important patterns that lead to a high/low congestion correlation, and they can facilitate building various transportation applications. The proposed techniques in our framework are general, and can be applied to other pairwise correlation analysis.
Purification of Mycobacterium bovis BCG Tokyo antigens by chromatofocusing, lectin-affinity chromatography, and hydrophobic interaction chromatography

A combination of chromatofocusing, lectin-affinity chromatography, and hydrophobic interaction chromatography resulted in a simple purification of protein antigens of Mycobacterium bovis BCG Tokyo culture filtrate. Identification was established on the basis of chromatographic separation, sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis determination of molecular weights, and N-terminal amino acid determination. Chromatofocusing on PBE 94 accomplished the separation of BCG85B from other BCG85 complex antigens and partial separation of MPB64 and MPB70 antigens. Subsequently, MPB64 and MPB70 were completely separated on a high-performance liquid chromatography TSK Phenyl 5PW hydrophobic interaction chromatography column. This column also separated BCG85B from a 17-kDa protein with an N-terminal amino acid sequence of A-V-P-I-T-G-K-L-G-S-E-L-T-M-T-D-( )-V-G-Q, which is similar to the sequence of MPT63. Concanavalin A-Sepharose-affinity chromatography separated MPB64 from a 43- and 47-kDa doublet with an amino acid sequence of D-P-E-P-A-P-P-V-P-P-V-P-A-( )-A-A-S-P, which is similar to the sequence of MPT32 and which appears to be glycosylated.
Automated Translation Machines: Challenges and a Proposed Solution

Automated translation (MT) tools have become an urgent need in a multilingual environment. Although there are any available tools on the market, unfortunately, a robust MT tool is still a dream. This purpose of this paper is to discuss challenging issues in MT tool developments, the state of art of he MT tools and propose a framework for a semantic-based translation. The focus of this paper is English to Arabic translation MT.