Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of two regimes for artificially incubating kiwi eggs

Kiwi hatching success and chick survival were compared under two incubation protocols and two chick-rearing procedures, to fine-tune the procedure and determine best practice in terms of hatching rate, chick survival and growth. Analysis of the combined 1998/1999 and 1999/2000 data show 10 live chicks from 12 eggs incubated under Protocol 1, compared with 7 live chicks from 13 eggs under Protocol 2, suggesting that the old incubation protocol (Protocol 1) is more successful than the new one (Protocol 2). This impression is misleading because there were more cracked eggs in Protocol 2 (8 from 13) than in Protocol 1 (4 from 11) that may have contributed to several embryo deaths under Protocol 2. Two embryos placed into Protocol 2 were severely deformed (almost certainly prior to removal from the wild) and would not have survived under any protocol. When these factors are taken into account, there appears to be little difference between the success rates of the two protocols. There was no significant difference in the average length of artificial incubation between Protocol 1 (old) and Protocol 2 (new). There was also little difference in the duration of hatching between the two, or in chick hatch weight. Modifications needed to define the best protocol include: Improve egg recovery and transportation to reduce the number of cracked eggs arriving at Rainbow. Continue to modify and improve one standard artificial incubation protocol to attempt to minimise the time chicks spend hatching, and also assess the benefits of forced air incubation. Improve the palatability and nutrient content of the artificial diet to reduce the time taken for chicks to regain hatch weight. Transfer chicks to outside pens at 400 g when possible. Release chicks to the wild as soon as possible after they reach 1000 g.
Burst detection and location in water distribution networks

An algorithm for the detection and location of sudden bursts in water distribution networks combining both continuous monitoring of pressure and hydraulic transient computation is presented. The approach is designed for medium and large bursts that are the result of the sudden rupture of the pipe wall or other physical element in the network and are accompanied by the transient pressure wave that propagates throughout the network. The burst-induced transient wave arrival times and magnitudes measured at two or more points are used to find the location of a burst. The wave arrival times and magnitudes are detected using the modified cumulative sum (CUSUM) change detection test. Results of validation on a real network show the potential of the proposed burst detection and location technique to be used in water distribution systems.
Secure Secret Key Distribution and Storage in Wireless Sensor Networks

Security in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is commonly bootstrapped by cryptographic key distribution among nodes. In this scenario, one of the greatest research challenges is to ensure secure keys storage by sensors due to their constrained resources and major exposure to tampering attempts. The main contribution of this work is to propose and analyze a mechanism for secure symmetric key distribution solving the stored key exposure problem. Additionally, a tampering attempt alarm for sensors is designed in order to isolate compromised nodes or keys from the network. Hence, this approach aims to increase the system's security against the tampering and compromising of sensor nodes.
Mineral Metabolic Abnormalities and Mortality in Dialysis Patients

The survival rate of dialysis patients, as determined by risk factors such as hypertension, nutritional status, and chronic inflammation, is lower than that of the general population. In addition, disorders of bone mineral metabolism are independently related to mortality and morbidity associated with cardiovascular disease and fracture in dialysis patients. Hyperphosphatemia is an important risk factor of, not only secondary hyperparathyroidism, but also cardiovascular disease. On the other hand, the risk of death reportedly increases with an increase in adjusted serum calcium level, while calcium levels below the recommended target are not associated with a worsened outcome. Thus, the significance of target levels of serum calcium in dialysis patients is debatable. The consensus on determining optimal parathyroid function in dialysis patients, however, is yet to be established. Therefore, the contribution of phosphorus and calcium levels to prognosis is perhaps more significant. Elevated fibroblast growth factor 23 levels have also been shown to be associated with cardiovascular events and death. In this review, we examine the associations between mineral metabolic abnormalities including serum phosphorus, calcium, and parathyroid hormone and mortality in dialysis patients.
On Girard's "Candidats de Reductibilité"

We attempt to elucidate the conditions required on Girard's candidates of reducibility (in French, "candidats de reductibilitk") in order to establish certain properties of various typed lambda calculi, such as strong normalization and Church-Rosser property. We present two generalizations of the candidates of reducibility, an untyped version in the line of Tait and Mitchell, and a typed version which is an adaptation of Girard's original method. As an application of this general result, we give two proofs of strong normalization for the second-order polymorphic lambda calculus under pq-reduction (and thus under P-reduction). We present two sets of conditions for the typed version of the candidates. The first set consists of conditions similar to those used by Stenlund (basically the typed version of Tait's conditions), and the second set consists of Girard's original conditions. We also compare these conditions, and prove that Girard's conditions are stronger than Tait's conditions. We give a new proof of the Church-Rosser theorem for both P-reduction and pq-reduction, using the modified version of Girard's method. We also compare various proofs that have appeared in the literature (see section 11). We conclude by sketching the extension of the above results to Girard's higher-order polymorphic calculus Fw, and in appendix 1, to Fw with product types.
Monte Carlo Simulation of Pathogen Behavior during the Sprout Production Process

ABSTRACT Food-borne disease outbreaks linked to the consumption of raw sprouts have become a concern over the past decade. A Monte Carlo simulation model of the sprout production process was created to determine the most-effective points for pathogen control. Published literature was reviewed, and relevant data were compiled. Appropriate statistical distributions were determined and used to create the Monte Carlo model with Analytica software. Factors modeled included initial pathogen concentration and prevalence, seed disinfection effectiveness, and sampling of seeds prior to sprouting, sampling of irrigation water, or sampling of the finished product. Pathogen concentration and uniformity of seed contamination had a large effect on the fraction of contaminated batches predicted by the simulation. The model predicted that sprout sampling and irrigation water sampling at the end of the sprouting process would be more effective in pathogen detection than seed sampling prior to production. Day of sampling and type of sample (sprout or water) taken had a minimal effect on rate of detection. Seed disinfection reduced the proportion of contaminated batches, but in some cases it also reduced the ability to detect the pathogen when it was present, because cell numbers were reduced below the detection limit. Both the amount sampled and the pathogen detection limit were shown to be important variables in determining sampling effectiveness. This simulation can also be used to guide further research and compare the levels of effectiveness of different risk reduction strategies.
Applying Differential Evolution to the Reporting Cells problem

The location management problem corresponds to the management of the network configuration with the objective of minimizing the costs involved. It can be defines using several different schemes that principally consider the location update and the paging costs. The location area and reporting cells are two common strategies used to solve the location management problem. In this paper we present a new approach that uses the differential evolution algorithm applied to the reporting cells planning problem, with the objective of minimizing the involved location management costs. With this work we want to define the best values to the differential evolution parameters and respective scheme, using 12 distinct test networks, as well as compare our results with the ones obtained by other authors. The final results obtained with this approach are very encouraging.
Asymmetric multihop communication in large sensor networks

With the growing interest in wireless sensor networks, energy efficient communication infrastructures for such networks are becoming increasingly important. In this paper, we compare and simulate asymmetric and symmetric communication in sensor networks. We do this by extending LEACH, a well-known TDMA cluster-based sensor network architecture, to use asymmetric communication. The extension makes it possible to scale up the network size beyond what is feasible with LEACH and its variants LEACH-C and LEACH-F.
Adaptive online data compression

Quickly transmitting large datasets in the context of distributed computing on wide area networks can be achieved by compressing data before transmission, However such an approach is not efficient when dealing with higher speed networks. Indeed, the time to compress a large file and to send it is greater than the time to send the uncompressed file. In this paper we explore and enhance an algorithm that allows us to overlap communications with compression and to automatically adapt the compression effort to currently available network and processor resources.
Correntropy supervised non-negative matrix factorization

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is a powerful dimension reduction method and has been widely used in many pattern recognition and computer vision problems. However, conventional NMF methods are neither robust enough as their loss functions are sensitive to outliers, nor discriminative because they completely ignore labels in a dataset. In this paper, we proposed a correntropy supervised NMF (CSNMF) to simultaneously overcome aforementioned deficiencies. In particular, CSNMF maximizes the correntropy between the data matrix and its reconstruction in low-dimensional space to inhibit outliers during learning the subspace, and narrows the minimizes the distances between coefficients of any two samples with the same class labels to enhance the subsequent classification performance. To solve CSNMF, we developed a multiplicative update rules and theoretically proved its convergence. Experimental results on popular face image datasets verify the effectiveness of CSNMF comparing with NMF, its supervised variants, and its robustified variants.
Memory and Disk Bandwidth Management in Video-on-demand Servers

In this paper, we propose the so-called generalized relay mechanism to exploit semiconductor memory to upgrade the service capacity of video-on-demand servers. The design of the generalized relay mechanism is aimed at optimizing allocation and tradeoo of the memory resource and the disk bandwidth resource. It is expected that exploiting semiconductor memory to upgrade the service capacity of video-on-demand servers will become a favorite approach in the future as advances in semiconductor technologies continue to increase the density of memory chips and cut the costs at a fast pace.
Surface Treatments and Functional Coatings for Biocompatibility Improvement and Bacterial Adhesion Reduction in Dental Implantology

Surface modification of dental implants is a key process in the production of these medical devices, and especially titanium implants used in the dental practice are commonly subjected to surface modification processes before their clinical use. A wide range of treatments, such as sand blasting, acid etching, plasma etching, plasma spray deposition, sputtering deposition and cathodic arc deposition, have been studied over the years in order to improve the performance of dental implants. Improving or accelerating the osseointegration process is usually the main goal of these surface processes, but the improvement of biocompatibility and the prevention of bacterial adhesion are also of considerable importance. In this review, we report on the research of the recent years in the field of surface treatments and coatings deposition for the improvement of dental implants performance, with a main focus on the osseointegration acceleration, the reduction of bacterial adhesion and the improvement of biocompatibility.
Mineralogy of the Nili Fossae region with OMEGA/Mars Express data: 1. Ancient impact melt in the Isidis Basin and implications for the transition from the Noachian to Hesperian

[1] The Nili Fossae region located on the northwestern quadrant of the Isidis Basin, Mars, displays superb exposures of bedrock outcrops that reveal mineralogy and composition of the crust. Previous work has shown that this region exhibits the largest exposures of olivine-dominated rock units on Mars. Visible-infrared imaging spectrometer data acquired by OMEGA were calibrated to surface reflectance and analyzed to determine surface mineralogy. The dominant minerals identified are iron-bearing mafic silicates (low- and high-calcium pyroxene, olivine) and water-bearing phyllosilicate (iron-rich smectite clay). The strength and position of mineral absorption features were used to produce mineral indicator maps for the dominant species, and the maps were integrated with high-resolution imaging from the THEMIS, MOC, and HRSC instruments, and MOLA topography. We show that olivine and phyllosilicate occur in spatially distinct outcrops; the olivine-bearing rock unit is a meters- to tens of meters-thick cap unit resting on phyllosilicate-bearing bedrock, and the phyllosilicate units predate the Isidis basin-forming event. On the basis of superposition, crosscutting, and geomorphic relationships, we interpret the emplacement of the olivine-bearing units as having been contemporaneous with the Isidis impact event. By analogy with the Orientale basin on the Moon, we propose that the olivine-bearing unit represents the surface exposure of the impact melt from the Isidis impact event. These results demonstrate that large regions of crust had been altered in the presence of water prior to the date of the Isidis basin-forming event in the Late Noachian (≈3.96 Ga).
He Could Be Undocumented: Striving to Be Sensitive to Student Documentation Status in a Rural Community

This case study takes place in a Midwestern, politically conservative rural community shortly after a highly contested presidential election. Like other communities, Paisano has experienced demographic change in a relatively short time. Meat processing plants and construction jobs proliferate, attracting migrant workers. One day, secondary school Principal Kate Robertson notices a sign that reads, “Illegal aliens are TERRORISTS. Deport them! ” Rumors that immigration enforcement authorities are in the community have started circulating. A parent soon removes her son from school, and he does not return. Principal Robertson seeks information about the family but hesitates to draw attention to their potential lack of legal status.
Low-latency sound-source-separation using non-negative matrix factorisation with coupled analysis and synthesis dictionaries

For real-time or close to real-time applications, sound source separation can be performed on-line, where new frames of incoming data for a mixture signal are processed as they arrive, at very low delay. We propose an approach which generates the separation filters for short synthesis frames to achieve low latency source separation, based on a compositional model mixture of the audio to be separated. Filter parameters are derived from a longer temporal context than the current processing frame through use of a longer analysis frame. A pair of dictionaries are used, one for analysis and one for reconstruction. With this approach we are able to increase separation performance at low latencies whilst retaining the low-latency provided by the use of short synthesis frames. The proposed data handling scheme and parameters can be adjusted to achieve real-time performance, given sufficient computational power. Low-latency output allows a human listener to use the results of such a separation scheme directly, without a perceptible delay. With the proposed method, separated source-to-distortion ratios (SDRs) can be improved by over 1 dB for latencies below 20 ms, without any affect on latency.
Initiation of simple and complex spikes in cerebellar Purkinje cells

Cerebellar Purkinje cells produce two distinct forms of action potential output: simple and complex spikes. Simple spikes occur spontaneously or are driven by parallel fibre input, while complex spikes are activated by climbing fibre input. Previous studies indicate that both simple and complex spikes originate in the axon of Purkinje cells, but the precise location where they are initiated is unclear. Here we address where in the axon of cerebellar Purkinje cells simple and complex spikes are generated. Using extracellular recording and voltage‐sensitive dye imaging in rat and mouse Purkinje cells, we show that both simple and complex spikes are generated in the proximal axon, ∼15–20 μm from the soma. Once initiated, simple and complex spikes propagate both down the axon and back into the soma. The speed of backpropagation into the soma was significantly faster for complex compared to simple spikes, presumably due to charging of the somatodendritic membrane capacitance during the climbing fibre synaptic conductance. In conclusion, we show using two independent methods that the final integration site of simple and complex spikes is in the proximal axon of cerebellar Purkinje cells, at a location corresponding to the distal end of the axon initial segment.
Real-time projection and dynamics analysis of quadruped robot

Mobility and stability of quadruped robot need to be explored. A novel real-time leg trajectory projection method is proposed based on Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum and virtual leg algorithm. Instead of only planning landing position, optimized Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum method employs three simple factors, touchdown angle, liftoff angle and foot landing position, to control velocity of robot with multi-joint leg. Without extra torque, swing motion of torso is determined by current status of robot passively. Whole body dynamics are discussed. Feedback, feedforward and balance controllers are employed to generate desired torque. Trotting simulation shows the proposed methods are sufficient to achieve trotting at a speed of 1m/s. Experiment at the same speed indicates a desirable mobility and stability. Results help us have a better understanding about the principle of quadruped mammals moving. The proposed method is an expansion of virtual leg algorithm, which can be applied to various quadruped robots with bionic structure.
Automatic Chord estimation on seventhsbass Chord vocabulary using deep neural network

This paper proposes an automatic chord estimation (ACE) system with a two-layer architecture. The first layer performs chord smoothing with "GMM + HMM" approach. Then given the results of the first layer, the second layer performs chord estimation using a deep neural network, which is trained on a well chord-type balanced dataset. The system accepts exactly the "SeventhsBass" vocabulary. Three approaches with different configurations of the system are compared with Chordino, which is probably the only both MIREX evaluated and "SeventhsBass" acceptable ACE system. Evaluation results on "The Beatles" dataset show that the best approach outperforms Chordino in the most difficult "SeventhsBass" metric in a significant way.
Formation and Composition of the Bacillus anthracis Endospore

ABSTRACT The endospores of Bacillus anthracis are the infectious particles of anthrax. Spores are dormant bacterial morphotypes able to withstand harsh environments for decades, which contributes to their ability to be formulated and dispersed as a biological weapon. We monitored gene expression in B. anthracis during growth and sporulation using full genome DNA microarrays and matched the results against a comprehensive analysis of the mature anthrax spore proteome. A large portion (∼36%) of the B. anthracis genome is regulated in a growth phase-dependent manner, and this regulation is marked by five distinct waves of gene expression as cells proceed from exponential growth through sporulation. The identities of more than 750 proteins present in the spore were determined by multidimensional chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. Comparison of data sets revealed that while the genes responsible for assembly and maturation of the spore are tightly regulated in discrete stages, many of the components ultimately found in the spore are expressed throughout and even before sporulation, suggesting that gene expression during sporulation may be mainly related to the physical construction of the spore, rather than synthesis of eventual spore content. The spore also contains an assortment of specialized, but not obviously related, metabolic and protective proteins. These findings contribute to our understanding of spore formation and function and will be useful in the detection, prevention, and early treatment of anthrax. This study also highlights the complementary nature of genomic and proteomic analyses and the benefits of combining these approaches in a single study.
Seamless access of home theater personal computers for mobile devices

This paper presents the MoMPt project, an open source project developed to allow access to multimedia content and to control multiple HTPCs remotely using mobile devices. The main contribution in the context of this project is its reference design, which allows the access of HTPC functionalities using different technologies, such as UPnP and XML-RPC. In this paper the reference design as well as its main components are detailed. Also, we describe one developed solution for the MediaPortal HTPC. It is discussed how it was developed, and the evaluation scenario with mobile devices, more specifically an Internet Tablet.
Modeling non-harmonic behavior of materials from experimental inelastic neutron scattering and thermal expansion measurements

Based on thermodynamic principles, we derive expressions quantifying the non-harmonic vibrational behavior of materials, which are rigorous yet easily evaluated from experimentally available data for the thermal expansion coefficient and the phonon density of states. These experimentally-derived quantities are valuable to benchmark first-principles theoretical predictions of harmonic and non-harmonic thermal behaviors using perturbation theory, ab initio molecular-dynamics, or Monte-Carlo simulations. We illustrate this analysis by computing the harmonic, dilational, and anharmonic contributions to the entropy, internal energy, and free energy of elemental aluminum and the ordered compound FeSi over a wide range of temperature. Results agree well with previous data in the literature and provide an efficient approach to estimate anharmonic effects in materials.