Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A new high-strength spinodal alloy

Preliminary investigations of a new high-strength alloy of composition Fe_30Ni_20Mn_25Al_25 (at.%) are described in this paper. The as-cast alloy consisted of a periodic two-phase microstructure of interconnected, ∼50-nm-wide rods with fully coherent {100} interfaces, strongly suggestive of formation by a B2 to [(B2 + body-centered cubic (bcc)] spinodal decomposition. The (Ni,Al)-rich B2 and (Fe,Mn)-rich bcc phases differed in lattice parameter by <0.5%. Hardness and yield strength of the as-cast alloy were found to be approximately 500 VPN and 1500 MPa, respectively, and increased by more than 50% after annealing at 550 °C for several days. (Fe,Mn)-rich precipitates with a β–Mn structure were observed in the annealed material.
Graph Algorithms in the Internet Age

This dissertation addresses a series of graph problems inspired by the computational issues with face with the Internet, a massive distributed network of autonomous agents. There are several levels to this problem. From a systems perspective, what can we do to facilitate computation over massive graphs? From a modeling perspective, what do natural graphs look like and what features are useful? From a game theoretic perspective, the graphs often represent individuals or systems with their own goals and agendas. Can we understand how these systems compete and when these competitions are fair or can be manipulated? These questions are addressed. For the first, we consider the problem of streaming graph partitioning and show it is feasible. For the second, we study the joint degree distribution of a graph and show it is combinatorially easy to work with. Finally, we address questions about tournament design and manipulation.
Thermoelectric Properties of CoSb3-Based Skutterudites

Solid state cooling and power generation based on thermoelectric principles are regarded as one of the technologies with the potential of solving the current energy crisis. Thermoelectric devices could be widely used in waste heat recovery, small scale power generation and refrigeration. It has no moving parts and is environmental friendly. The limitation to its application is due to its low efficiency. Most of the current commercialized thermoelectric materials have figure of merit (ZT) around 1. To be comparable with kitchen refrigerator, ZT 3 ≈ is required at room temperature. Skutterudites have emerged as member of the novel materials, which potentially have a higher ZT. In the dissertation, my investigation will be focused on the optimization of CoSb3-based skutterudites. Starting with Co and Sb elements, CoSb3 will form through a high energy ball mill. Unfortunately, even after 20 hours, only a small percentage of the powders have transformed in into CoSb3. Then the powders will be compacted into bulk samples by DC-controlled hot press. CoSb3 single phase will form after press. Characterization of the structure and thermoelectric properties will be presented with details. The effects of synthesis conditions on thermoelectric properties of skutterudites were studied and discussed. Several possible methods of improving the ZT of N type skutterudites were applied. The highest obtained ZT thus far is ~1.2 from Yb doped CoSb3. For a group of samples with nominal composition YbxCo4Sb12, the increased Yb concentration in our samples not only enhanced the power factor due to electron doping effect but also decreased the thermal conductivity due to a stronger rattling effect. In addition, the increased grain boundary density per unit volume due to the small grains in our bulk skutterudite materials may have also helped to enhance the phonon scattering and thus to reduce the thermal conductivity. Single and double doping methods with different combinations were also tried. So far, none of them have surpassed ZT=1.2. Mixing different materials with Yb0.35Co4Sb12 so far to increase the phonon scattering was also performed. No dramatic thermal conductivity reduction was observed. Small amounts of Fe/Mn substitution on Co sites will decrease the power factor to undesired degrees. Some results with Nd filled P type sample will be briefly introduced. P type samples are also obtained through substitution on Sb site. Preliminary work on preparing the electrode for CoSb3 will be presented in the dissertation. CoSi2 has low resistivity, and a similar coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) as of doped CoSb3. It is good electrode candidate. DC-controlled hot press is used to make the contact. Thermal stability of the contact was tested. Small cracks will form in the contact area, further improvement is necessary. Finally, my previous work on ZnO nanowire growth is briefly introduced. Large throughput of ZnO nanowire could be obtained with NaCl as the support to promote the conversion of Zn powder to ZnO.
The challenges of licensing drugs for use in pregnancy

Most recommended obstetric therapeutic agents are not licensed for their purpose. There is a lack of funding for research and little development of new therapeutic agents for use in the treatment of pregnancy-related disorders. Current therapeutics used in maternal health and their licensing status are reviewed and suggestions for these shortfalls together with possible solutions considered.
Increased MicroRNA-1 and MicroRNA-133a Levels in Serum of Patients With Cardiovascular Disease Indicate Myocardial Damage

Background— Recently, elevation of circulating muscle-specific microRNA (miRNA) levels has been reported in patients with acute myocardial infarction. However, it is still unclear from which part of the myocardium or under what conditions miRNAs are released into circulating blood. The purpose of this study was to identify the source of elevated levels of circulating miRNAs and their function in cardiovascular diseases. Methods and Results— Serum levels of miRNA (miR)-1 and miR-133a were increased significantly in patients not only with acute myocardial infarction but also with unstable angina pectoris and Takotsubo cardiomyopathy without elevation of serum creatine phosphokinase or cardiac troponin. MicroRNA microarray analysis of the heart from a mouse model of myocardial infarction indicated that the levels of miR-1, miR-133a, miR-208a, and miR-499 were significantly reduced in the infarcted myocardium. In situ hybridization of miR-133a also showed that miR-133a levels were very low in the infarcted and peri-infarcted myocardium. It has been shown that circulating miRNAs are localized inside exosomes, which are released after Ca2+ stimulation. We stimulated H9c2 cardiomyoblasts with A23187 and measured miR-133a levels in the exosome fraction of the culture medium. A23187 induced a dose-dependent release of miR-133a, and significant elevation was observed only at concentrations where dead cells were detected. We also found that miR-133a–containing exosomes reduced the luciferase activity of 293FT cells transfected with an miR-133a sensor vector. Conclusions— These results suggest that elevated levels of circulating miR-133a in patients with cardiovascular diseases originate mainly from the injured myocardium. Circulating miR-133a can be used as a marker for cardiomyocyte death, and it may have functions in cardiovascular diseases.
Enforcing Access Control in Virtual Organizations Using Hierarchical Attribute-Based Encryption

Virtual organizations are dynamic, interorganizational collaborations that involve systems and services belonging to different security domains. Several solutions have been proposed to guarantee the enforcement of the access control policies protecting the information exchanged in a distributed system, but none of them addresses the dynamicity characterizing virtual organizations. In this paper we propose a dynamic hierarchical attribute-based encryption (D-HABE)scheme that allows the institutions in a virtual organization to encrypt information according to a policy in such a way that only users with appropriate attributes can decrypt it. In addition, we introduce a key management scheme that determines which user is entitled to receive which attribute key from which domain authority.
On the solute-defect interaction in the framework of a defactant concept

Abstract It will be shown that there is an analogy between surfactants in liquids which stabilize structures with large surface areas such as foams or microemulsions, and certain components in a crystalline solid, which stabilize defects such as grain boundaries and dislocations. These components are then called defactants. In the presence of defactants microstructural changes may occur because some of the defects compete more successfully for segregation of the defactants than others. Thus voids are formed at grain boundaries of Cu – Bi alloys because the formation energy of voids is provided by the interaction energy of Bi-atoms of the newly created surface. Or the beneficial role of rhenium on the high temperature creep of superalloys may be interpreted as a deficiency of defactants stabilizing dislocations and/or vacancies. These examples are discussed in the present work after a general treatment of the role of defactants.
Marine Microbial Metagenomics: From Individual to the Environment

Microbes are the most abundant biological entities on earth, therefore, studying them is important for understanding their roles in global ecology. The science of metagenomics is a relatively young field of research that has enjoyed significant effort since its inception in 1998. Studies using next-generation sequencing techniques on single genomes and collections of genomes have not only led to novel insights into microbial genomics, but also revealed a close association between environmental niches and genome evolution. Herein, we review studies investigating microbial genomics (largely in the marine ecosystem) at the individual and community levels to summarize our current understanding of microbial ecology in the environment.
Dynamic Workload Management for Very Large Data Warehouses: Juggling Feathers and Bowling Balls

Workload management for business intelligence (BI) queries poses different challenges than those addressed in the online transaction processing (OLTP) context. The fundamental problem is that the execution times of BI queries can range from milliseconds to hours, and it is difficult to estimate these times accurately. Key challenges raised by this problem are how to identify queries that are not performing properly and what to do about them. We propose here a workload management system for controlling the execution of individual queries based on realistic customer service level objectives. In order to validate our proposal, we have implemented an experimental system that includes a dynamic execution controller that leverages fuzzy logic. We present results from a number of experiments that we ran using workloads based on actual industrial workloads and customer objectives that we gathered by interviewing industry practitioners. Our experiments show that even a handful of moderately mis-behaving problem queries can have a significant impact on a workload consisting of thousands of queries. We were surprised when our experiments also demonstrated that false positives -- incorrectly identifying a normal query as a problem -- can also have significant consequences. For those reasons, it is very important that an execution controller be as accurate as possible -- avoiding both false positives and false negatives. Our experiments also validate that our execution controller can markedly improve the execution of a workload that includes problem queries.
Continuous real-world gait monitoring in community-based older adults

This paper describes the collection of real-world gait data in a cohort of 7 community living older adults, who have fallen at least once in the previous year, while they live in a smart apartment for four days. It describes the approach used to collect various gait metrics, from inertial sensors placed on the lower shanks, where gait bouts can be contextualised by smart home data. Results from this study are presented with a brief discussion into the smart-home based contextualisation of outliers in the gait data. Future work will investigate the normative ranges of various gait metrics, and how such real-world gait data may be integrated into clinical practice.
Development of a thin, soft, single segment conductance catheter for monitoring left ventricular pressure and volume

Knowledge of the leftventricular (LV) pressure-volume relation, along withparameters derived from this relation, have led to newpossibilities for the characterisation of cardiac pumpfunction, in both experimental studies and clinicalsettings.The pressure-volume diagram is apowerful tool for visualising LV performance, but in order tobe clinically useful it is necessary to make plots continuouslyand on-line. The conductance catheter technique offers thispossibility. The conductance catheter system has experiencedgrowing interest among cardiologists, physiologists, surgeons,and anaesthesiologists around the world as a powerful newresearch tool, but the invasiveness of this technique has beena limiting factor for most clinical applications. The catheterneeds to be thinner and softer in order to make this techniquemore suitable for human use.This thesis reports of a newthin and soft conductance catheter for continuously and on-linemeasurements of LV pressure and volume.One way to reduce both cathetersize and stiffness is to decrease the number of electrodes onthe catheter. Theoretical calculations shown in this thesisproves that it is possible to obtain the same performance witha single segment catheter as with a five-segment catheter. Thethin catheter has been tested and compared to a commercialfive-segment conductance catheter in animal studies.We conclude that the thin singlesegment conductance catheter can measure left ventricularvolume and pessure. The regression coefficient between the twomethods is good independent of loading condition and duringbaseline conditions the catheters produce very similar volumecurves. During preload reduction the estimated volume reductionis different in the two systems.Our thin catheter does notdisturb the heart's normal electrophysiology, neither by thecatheter current nor by any mechanical stimuli. The resultsdemonstrates that our thin, soft, single segment conductancecatheter has performance characteristics which warrant furtherdevelopment, with the goal to make the method available forhuman use.
Increased acetylcholine and glutamate efflux in the prefrontal cortex following intranasal orexin‐A (hypocretin‐1)

Orexin/hypocretin neurons of the lateral hypothalamus and perifornical area are integrators of physiological function. Previous work from our laboratory and others has shown the importance of orexin transmission in cognition. Age‐related reductions in markers of orexin function further suggest that this neuropeptide may be a useful target for the treatment of age‐related cognitive dysfunction. Intranasal administration of orexin‐A (OxA) has shown promise as a therapeutic option for cognitive dysfunction. However, the neurochemical mechanisms of intranasal OxA administration are not fully understood. Here, we use immunohistochemistry and in vivo microdialysis to define the effects of acute intranasal OxA administration on: (i) activation of neuronal populations in the cortex, basal forebrain, and brainstem and (ii) acetylcholine (ACh) and glutamate efflux in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) of Fischer 344/Brown Norway F1 rats. Acute intranasal administration of OxA significantly increased c‐Fos expression, a marker for neuronal activation, in the PFC and in subpopulations of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. Subsequently, we investigated the effects of acute intranasal OxA on neurotransmitter efflux in the PFC and found that intranasal OxA significantly increased both ACh and glutamate efflux in this region. These findings were independent from any changes in c‐Fos expression in orexin neurons, suggesting that these effects are not resultant from direct activation of orexin neurons. In total, these data indicate that intranasal OxA may enhance cognition through activation of distinct neuronal populations in the cortex and basal forebrain and through increased neurotransmission of ACh and glutamate in the PFC.
Operative outcomes of adult living donor liver transplantation and deceased donor liver transplantation: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) has emerged as an alternative to deceased donor liver transplantation (DDLT) because of the increasing number of patients waiting for liver transplantation (LT). However, whether it can achieve operative outcomes similar to those achieved with DDLT for adult patients remains controversial. We conducted this meta‐analysis to compare the operative outcomes of LDLT and DDLT recipients. A literature search was performed to identify clinical controlled studies comparing LDLT and DDLT that were published before October 2013. Four perioperative outcomes [duration of the recipient operation (DRO), red blood cell (RBC) transfusion requirement, length of the hospital stay, and cold ischemia time (CIT)] and 5 postoperative complication outcomes (biliary complications, vascular complications, intra‐abdominal bleeding, perioperative death, and retransplantation) were the main outcomes assessed. Nineteen studies with a total of 5450 patients were included in the meta‐analysis. In comparison with DDLT, LDLT was associated with a significantly longer DRO and a shorter CIT. We found that biliary complications [odds ratio (OR) = 3.08, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.97‐4.81, P < 0.001], vascular complications (OR = 2.16, 95% CI = 1.32‐3.54, P = 0.002), and retransplantation (OR = 1.76, 95% CI = 1.09‐2.83, P = 0.02) occurred more frequently for LDLT recipients, and the subgroup analysis indicated that the biliary complication rate decreased dramatically with greater LDLT experience. No significant difference was observed in RBC transfusion requirements, the lengths of hospital stays, intra‐abdominal bleeding rates, or perioperative mortality between LDLT and DDLT recipients. In conclusion, LDLT is associated with a higher rate of surgical complications after transplantation. A reduction of postoperative complication rates can be achieved as centers gain greater experience with LDLT. However, LDLT is still an excellent alternative to DDLT because it facilitates access to LT. Liver Transpl 20:425‐436, 2014. © 2014 AASLD.
Intelligent Data Analysis: Issues and Challenges

Today with the advances of technology, mountainous amounts of data are now available in science, business, industry and many other areas. Evaluation of these collected data may lead to the discovery of trends and patterns hidden within the data that increase the working efficiency and improve the quality of decision making. Of course this advantage comes with a price. It is becoming more and more difficult to gain some valuable information when analysing with these increasing data sets. This paper attempts to discuss a wide range of problems that may appear while analysing the data, and suggests strategies to deal with them. Some of these problems and suggestions are examined with the results of data analysis on a real-life example of risk assessment of level crossing data.
De Novo Growth Zone Formation from Fission Yeast Spheroplasts

Eukaryotic cells often form polarized growth zones in response to internal or external cues. To understand the establishment of growth zones with specific dimensions we used fission yeast, which grows as a rod-shaped cell of near-constant width from growth zones located at the cell tips. Removing the cell wall creates a round spheroplast with a disorganized cytoskeleton and depolarized growth proteins. As spheroplasts recover, new growth zones form that resemble normal growing cell tips in shape and width, and polarized growth resumes. Regulators of the GTPase Cdc42, which control width in exponentially growing cells, also control spheroplast growth zone width. During recovery the Cdc42 scaffold Scd2 forms a polarized patch in the rounded spheroplast, demonstrating that a growth zone protein can organize independent of cell shape. Rga4, a Cdc42 GTPase activating protein (GAP) that is excluded from cell tips, is initially distributed throughout the spheroplast membrane, but is excluded from the growth zone after a stable patch of Scd2 forms. These results provide evidence that growth zones with normal width and protein localization can form de novo through sequential organization of cellular domains, and that the size of these growth zones is genetically controlled, independent of preexisting cell shape.
Comparative assessment of the quality of age-at-event reporting in three HIV cohort studies in sub-Saharan Africa

Objectives: To assess inconsistencies in reported age at first sex (AFS) and age at first marriage (AFM) in three African cohorts, and consider their implications for interpreting trends in sexual and marital debut. Methods: Data were analysed from population-based cohort studies in Zimbabwe, Uganda and South Africa with 3, 10 and 4 behavioural survey rounds, respectively. Three rounds over a similar time frame were selected from each site for comparative purposes. The consistency of AFS and AFM reports was assessed for each site by comparing responses made by participants in multiple surveys. Respondents were defined as unreliable if less than half of all their age-at-event reports were the same. Kaplan-Meier functions were used to describe the cumulative proportion (1) having had sex and (2) married by age, stratified by sex, birth cohort and site, to compare the influence of reporting inconsistencies on these estimates. Results: Among participants attending all three comparable rounds, the percentage with unreliable AFS reports ranged from 30% among South African women to 56% among Zimbabwean men, with similar patterns observed for AFM. Inclusion of unreliable reports had little effect on estimates of median age-at-event in all sites. There was some evidence from the 1960–9 birth cohort that women in Uganda and both sexes in South Africa reported later AFS as they aged. Conclusion: Although reporting quality is unlikely to affect comparisons of AFS and AFM between settings, care should be taken not to overinterpret small changes in reported age-at-event over time within each site.
Indeterminacy of Competitive Equilibrium with Risk of Default

We prove indeterminacy of competitive equilibrium in sequential economies, where limited commitment requires the endogenous determination of solvency constraints preventing debt repudiation (Alvarez and Jermann (2000)). In particular, we show that, for any arbitrary value of social welfare in between autarchy and (constrained) optimality, there exists an equilibrium attaining that value. Our method consists in restoring Welfare Theorems for a weak notion of (constrained) optimality. The latter, inspired by Malinvaud (1953), corresponds to the absence of Pareto improving feasible redistributions over finite (though indefinite) horizons.