Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Silicon Carbide (SiC) Reinforcement on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Laser Deposited Al-Sn-SiC/Ti-6Al-4V Composite Coatings

Titanium and titanium alloys have a large array applications attributed to its low density, good corrosion resistance and high specific strength. Damage to the surface can be improved by surface modification for extended application. Direct laser metal deposition (DLMD) technique can be used to address the limitations associated with titanium alloy. This is mostly achieved by integration of reinforcement materials into the main matrix to form coating. Thereby inducing microstructural changes to the material. The morphology and also the hardness property of the various composite coatings were examined. The hardness of the composite coating was found to range between 450.64 and 638.22 HV, and the hardness obtained for 10% SiC reinforcement coating was 638.22 HV. For all the coatings, the hardness was established to be much higher than that of the substrate, which was averaged 304.21 HV. Hardness value increases with increase in SiC content. The enhanced hardness values were due to refined grains and intermetallics in the microstructure of the coatings. Moreover, the highest tensile and yield strengths was found at 10 wt. % SiC due to the uniform particle dispersion that can impede dislocation movement. The uniform distribution of SiC particles in the Al-Sn matrix had a good effect on its mechanical properties.
Automatic registration of user drawn graphical passwords

This paper reports on a recognition based graphical authentication system where the users provide their pass images as simple drawings. Previous such systems have relied on a human administrator to register the images with the system, which limits their scale. We have replaced the administrator with software that both guides the user through the registration process and then automatically corrects any errors in the image files submitted to the system. We also investigate two ways of implementing these systems, by drawing on paper and scanning in the images, and using a computer paint program to create the images. We conducted a user study with 40 effective users. Our software was able to correct all the errors made by the users, extracting usable images in all cases. We also found that our users strongly preferred using the paint system to the system that required the use of a scanner. This research has implications for authentication with mobile phones, where the camera can replace the scanner and finger drawing apps replace the paint program.
Replication in bandwidth-symmetric BitTorrent networks

The popular and well-known BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol offers fast file distribution in a highly scalable way. Several studies have investigated the properties of this protocol, mostly focusing on heterogeneous end-user environments such as the Internet, with asymmetric connections. In this paper however, we focus on the usage of the BitTorrent protocol in homogeneous local environments with symmetric bandwidth properties. Compared with a traditional client-server setup, the use of BitTorrent in such settings can offer huge benefits in performance and scalability, allowing bandwidth sharing and high speed file distribution. We aim to improve the performance of such networks with a novel mechanism for replication using so-called replicators, which replicate a subset of the files in the system. A mathematical model of the resulting Replicated BitTorrent is presented and validated by emulation. Furthermore, we present simulation results that provide insight in the performance of Replicated BitTorrent networks with dynamic peer arrivals and departures. The results show that Replicated BitTorrent significantly improves download times in local bandwidth-symmetric BitTorrent networks.
A Riemann–Hilbert approach to the Akhiezer polynomials

In this paper, we study those polynomials, orthogonal with respect to a particular weight, over the union of disjoint intervals, first introduced by N. I. Akhiezer, via a reformulation as a matrix factorization or Riemann–Hilbert problem. This approach complements the method proposed in a previous paper, which involves the construction of a certain meromorphic function on a hyperelliptic Riemann surface. The method described here is based on the general Riemann–Hilbert scheme of the theory of integrable systems and will enable us to derive, in a very straightforward way, the relevant system of Fuchsian differential equations for the polynomials and the associated system of the Schlesinger deformation equations for certain quantities involving the corresponding recurrence coefficients. Both of these equations were obtained earlier by A. Magnus. In our approach, however, we are able to go beyond Magnus' results by actually solving the equations in terms of the Riemanni Θ-functions. We also show that the related Hankel determinant can be interpreted as the relevant τ-function.
Comparative evaluation of CC chemokine‐induced migration of murine CD8α+ and CD8α− dendritic cells and their in vivo trafficking

Murine CD11c+CD8α− and CD11c+CD8α+ dendritic cells (DCs) differentially regulate T cell responses. Although specific chemokines that recruit immature (i) or mature (m) CD8α− DCs have been identified, little is known about the influence of chemokines on CD8α+ DCs. iDCs and mDCs isolated from spleens of fms‐like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand‐treated B10 mice were compared directly for migratory responses to a panel of CC chemokines or following local or systemic administration. In vitro assays were performed using Transwell® chambers. iDCs did not respond to any CC chemokines tested. Both subsets of mDCs migrated to CCL19 and CCL21, with consistently lower percentages of CD8α+ DCs migrating. Chemokine receptor mRNA and protein expression were analyzed, but no correlation between expression and function was demonstrated. In vivo trafficking of fluorochrome‐labeled DCs (B10; H2b) was assessed by immunohistochemistry and by rare‐event flow cytometric analysis of allogeneic recipient (BALB/c; H2d) draining lymph node (DLN) and spleen cells. Twenty‐four hours after intravenous injection, chloromethylfluorescein diacetate‐positive CD8α+ and CD8α− mDCs were detected by immunohistochemistry in spleens in similar numbers (that decreased over time). Following subcutaneous injection, both DC subsets were detected in DLN at 24 h, but only CD8α− DCs were evident by flow analysis at 48 h. Although CD8α+ DCs migrate from peripheral tissues to T cell areas of (allogeneic) secondary lymphoid organs, they appear to mobilize as mDCs and less efficiently than CD8α− mDCs.
A reinvestigation of the multisite phosphorylation of the transcription factor c‐Jun

We have used phospho‐specific antibodies to re‐examine the multisite phosphorylation of c‐Jun in murine RAW macrophages and embryonic fibroblasts. Our results indicate that JNK isoforms are required and sufficient for the phosphorylation of Thr91 and Thr93, as well as the phosphorylation of Ser63 and Ser73, in response to LPS or anisomycin in macrophages and TNFα or anisomycin in fibroblasts. However, the phorbol ester (TPA) and EGF‐induced phosphorylation of Ser63 and Ser73 is mediated by ERK1/ERK2, as well as JNK1/JNK2, in fibroblasts from wild‐type mice and by ERK1/ERK2 alone in fibroblasts from JNK‐deficient mice. The phosphorylation of Thr239 is catalysed by GSK3 and the phosphorylation of Ser243 by an as yet unidentified protein kinase. The inhibition of GSK3 is not required for the dephosphorylation of Thr239 in response to LPS, and nor is the phosphorylation of Thr91 and Thr93 required for the TPA‐ or EGF‐induced dephosphorylation of Thr239 in fibroblasts. The agonist‐induced dephosphorylation of Thr239 may involve a conformational change that exposes Thr239 to dephosphorylation and/or the activation of a Thr239 phosphatase.
Choice Functions in the Intersection of Matroids

We prove a common generalization of two results, one on rainbow fractional matchings and one on rainbow sets in the intersection of two matroids: Given $d=r\lceil k\rceil -r+1$ functions of size (=sum of values) $k$ that are all independent in each of $r$ given matroids, there exists a rainbow set of $supp(f_i), ~i \le d$, supporting a function with the same properties.
The pathogenic activation of calpain: a marker and mediator of cellular toxicity and disease states

Over‐activation of calpain, a ubiquitous calcium‐sensitive protease, has been linked to a variety of degenerative conditions in the brain and several other tissues. Dozens of substrates for calpain have been identified and several of these have been used to measure activation of the protease in the context of experimentally induced and naturally occurring pathologies. Calpain‐mediated cleavage of the cytoskeletal protein spectrin, in particular, results in a set of large breakdown products (BDPs) that are unique in that they are unusually stable. Over the last 15 years, measurements of BDPs in experimental models of stroke‐type excitotoxicity, hypoxia/ischemia, vasospasm, epilepsy, toxin exposure, brain injury, kidney malfunction, and genetic defects, have established that calpain activation is an early and causal event in the degeneration that ensues from acute, definable insults. The BDPs also have been found to increase with normal ageing and in patients with Alzheimer's disease, and the calpain activity may be involved in related apoptotic processes in conjunction with the caspase family of proteases. Thus, it has become increasingly clear that regardless of the mode of disturbance in calcium homeostasis or the cell type involved, calpain is critical to the development of pathology and therefore a distinct and powerful therapeutic target. The recent development of antibodies that recognize the site at which spectrin is cleaved has greatly facilitated the temporal and spatial resolution of calpain activation in situ. Accordingly, sensitive spectrin breakdown assays now are utilized to identify potential toxic side‐effects of compounds and to develop calpain inhibitors for a wide range of indications including stroke, cerebral vasospasm, and kidney failure.
Active commuting to school: Associations with environment and parental concerns.

PURPOSE This study examined the association of objective and perceived neighborhood environmental characteristics and parent concerns with active commuting to school, investigated whether parental concerns varied by environmental characteristics, and compared the association of the perceived environment, parental concerns, and objective environment on the outcome active commuting to school. METHODS Randomly selected parents of children (aged 5-18 yr), in neighborhoods chosen for their variability in objectively measured walkability and income, completed questionnaires about their neighborhood environment, concerns about children walking to school, and children's behavior (N = 259). Objective measures of the environment were available for each participant and each neighborhood. Logistic regression analyses were used to investigate the relationships among environment, parental concerns, and walking or biking to or from school at least once a week. RESULTS A parental concerns scale was most strongly associated with child active commuting (odds ratio: 5.2, 95% CI: 2.71-9.96). In high-income neighborhoods, more children actively commuted in high-walkable (34%) than in low-walkable neighborhoods (23%) (odds ratio: 2.1, 95% CI: 1.12-3.97), but no differences were noted in low-income neighborhoods. Parent concerns and neighborhood aesthetics were independently associated with active commuting. Perceived access to local stores and biking or walking facilities accounted for some of the effect of walkability on active commuting. CONCLUSION Both parent concerns and the built environment were associated with children's active commuting to school. To increase active commuting to school, interventions that include both environmental change and education campaigns may be needed.
Fast Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Algorithms Using Projected Gradient Approaches for Large-Scale Problems

Recently, a considerable growth of interest in projected gradient (PG) methods has been observed due to their high efficiency in solving large-scale convex minimization problems subject to linear constraints. Since the minimization problems underlying nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) of large matrices well matches this class of minimization problems, we investigate and test some recent PG methods in the context of their applicability to NMF. In particular, the paper focuses on the following modified methods: projected Landweber, Barzilai-Borwein gradient projection, projected sequential subspace optimization (PSESOP), interior-point Newton (IPN), and sequential coordinate-wise. The proposed and implemented NMF PG algorithms are compared with respect to their performance in terms of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) and elapsed time, using a simple benchmark of mixed partially dependent nonnegative signals.
Self-presentational sources of competitive stress during performance.

A qualitative investigation was conducted to identify sources of stress and the self-presentational mechanism that may underpin them during competition. Twenty athletes described factors they perceived as stressful during competition. Content analysis revealed eight general sources of stress, including significant others, competitive anxiety and doubts, perceived readiness, and the nature of the competition (e.g., importance). Two thirds (67.3%) of all stress sources appeared to heighten the athletes’ need to present themselves in a favorable way to the audience. Factors that increased perceived likelihood of poor personal performance lowered the athletes’ ability to convey a desired image to their audience. Social evaluation and self-presentation was also identified as a general source of stress in its own right. These findings suggest that (a) these athletes were sensitive about the impressions people form of them during competition, and (b) stress responses maybe triggered by factors that primarily inf.
Succinct Coverage Oracles

In this paper, we identify a fundamental algorithmic problem that we term succinct dynamic covering (SDC), arising in many modern-day web applications, including ad-serving and online recommendation systems in eBay and Netflix. Roughly speaking, SDC applies two restrictions to the well-studied Max-Coverage problem: Given an integer k, X={1,2,. ,n} and I={S_1, . , S_m}, S_i a subset of X, find a subset J of I, such that |J| <= k and the union of S in J is as large as possible. The two restrictions applied by SDC are: (1) Dynamic: At query-time, we are given a query Q, a subset of X, and our goal is to find J such that the intersection of Q with the union of S in J is as large as possible; (2) Space-constrained: We don't have enough space to store (and process) the entire input; specifically, we have o(mn), and maybe as little as O((m+n)polylog(mn)) space. The goal of SDC is to maintain a small data structure so as to answer most dynamic queries with high accuracy. We call such a scheme a Coverage Oracle. We present algorithms and complexity results for coverage oracles. We present deterministic and probabilistic near-tight upper and lower bounds on the approximation ratio of SDC as a function of the amount of space available to the oracle. Our lower bound results show that to obtain constant-factor approximations we need Omega(mn) space. Fortunately, our upper bounds present an explicit tradeoff between space and approximation ratio, allowing us to determine the amount of space needed to guarantee certain accuracy.
An Invisible Zero Watermarking Algorithm using Combined Image and Text for Protecting Text Documents

—Authentication and copyright protection for digital contents over the Internet can be achieved through digital watermarking. The major components of the Internet are textual contents. Hence protection of plain text documents requires more attention. In this paper, we propose an invisible watermarking algorithm based on the occurrence of non-vowel ASCII characters that uses combined image and text watermark for protection of the text document. The watermark is logically embedded in the text and a watermark key is generated. Later the watermark is extracted to prove the identity. The experiments show that the new method is efficient as well as effective for protecting text documents.
Efficient data collection for wireless networks: Delay and energy tradeoffs

We study efficient data collection in wireless sensor networks. We present efficient distributed algorithms with approximately the minimum delay, or the minimum number of messages to be sent by all nodes, or the minimum total energy costs by all nodes. We analytically prove that all proposed methods are either optimum or within constants factor of the optimum. We then investigate the possibility of designing one universal method such that the delay, the messages sent by nodes, and the total energy costs by all nodes are all optimum or within constants factor of optimum. Given a method A for data collection let ρ<sub>T</sub>, ρ<sub>M</sub>, and ρ<sub>E</sub> be the approximation ratios of A in terms of time complexity, message complexity, and energy complexity respectively. We show that, for data collection, there are networks of n nodes and maximum degree Δ, such that ρ<sub>M</sub>ρ<sub>E</sub> = Ω(Δ) for any algorithm.
Autonomic response to stress in interstitial cystitis.

PURPOSE Previous studies have documented elevations in indices of sympathetic activity in cats and humans with interstitial cystitis (IC). To examine potential autonomic dysregulation in IC we examined the effects of a laboratory mental stress challenge on blood pressure and heart rate (HR) in patients with IC and healthy controls. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 14 female patients with IC and 14 age matched controls participated in a laboratory session, including a 25-minute mental stress challenge. Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and HR were measured at intervals before, during and following the stressor. The level of chronic stress, symptom severity and pain at voiding were assessed. RESULTS Mean age was 49 years (range 32 to 66). The resting HR of patients with IC (82.02 bpm) was significantly higher than that of controls (63.31 bpm, p = 0.0001). There was also suggested evidence of elevated resting DBP in patients with IC (p = 0.07) but no significant difference in mean resting SBP. Autonomic arousal elicited by the laboratory stressor did not differ between the groups and subjects in each group perceived the task as equally stressful. Patients with IC had significantly elevated HR at each time point compared with controls (p <0.0001) with an average mean difference +/- SD between the groups of 19.5 +/- 4.0 (main effect for group p <0.0001). Although consistent increases in SBP and DBP were observed in patients after baseline, these differences were not significant. CONCLUSIONS Patients with IC had an increased HR at baseline and throughout a laboratory mental stress challenge compared to healthy age matched women. No differences in HR or blood pressure reactivity were observed between the 2 groups.
Surrogate Light Chain Expressing Human Peripheral B Cells Produce Self-reactive Antibodies

Human B cells that coexpress surrogate and conventional light chains (V-preB+L+) show an unusual heavy and light chain antibody repertoire that display evidence of receptor editing. However, it is unclear whether V-preB+L+ B cells have been silenced by receptor editing or still express autoreactive antibodies. Here we report that 68% of the antibodies expressed by V-preB+L+ B cells are autoreactive. A majority of these autoantibodies are true antinuclear antibodies (ANA), and 50% of the ANAs are also reactive with a diverse group of antigens that include dsDNA, ssDNA, immunoglobulin, insulin, and bacterial lipopolysaccharide. Such antibodies are rarely encountered among conventional B cells. We conclude that V-preB+L+ B cells are a unique subset of normal circulating human B cells that escape central tolerance mechanisms and express self-reactive antibodies including potentially harmful ANAs.
The distribution system simulation model of each zone freight transportation movement based on unlimited the gravity model algorithm

The simulation model of freight transportation distribution is indispensable to estimate and predict the growth of freight transportation movement in accordance with the development of influenced variables. Every zone has the characteristics of i generation production and movement distribution that is under the influenced of time and change region development. The simulation model of freight transportation distribution can be done by gravity model algorithm. Socio-economic development in the zones that have the characteristics of commodity goods generation production requires the alignment of infrastructure and means of transportation variables. More wider zone development would require a very large matrix form. The simulation model of transportation movement distribution that has been built up from matrix method of gravity model algorithm will facilitate and develop the more wider each zone interaction and more complex variables. Based on zone growth development and characteristics of resulted commodities goods production thus movement distribution prediction will be easy to be estimated and modeled.
Automated Classification of Epiphyses in the Distal Radius and Ulna using a Support Vector Machine

The aim of this study was to automatically classify epiphyses in the distal radius and ulna using a support vector machine (SVM) and to examine the accuracy of the epiphyseal growth grades generated by the support vector machine. X‐ray images of distal radii and ulnae were collected from 140 Chinese teenagers aged between 11.0 and 19.0 years. Epiphyseal growth of the two elements was classified into five grades. Features of each element were extracted using a histogram of oriented gradient (HOG), and models were established using support vector classification (SVC). The prediction results and the validity of the models were evaluated with a cross‐validation test and independent test for accuracy (PA). Our findings suggest that this new technique for epiphyseal classification was successful and that an automated technique using an SVM is reliable and feasible, with a relative high accuracy for the models.
Dynamic Task Scheduling Scheme for a GPGPU Programming Framework

The computational power and the physical memory size of a single GPU device are often insufficient for large-scale problems. Using CUDA, the user must explicitly partition such problems into several tasks repeating the data transfer and kernel execution. To use multiple GPUs, explicit device switching is also needed. Furthermore, low-level hand optimizations such as load balancing and determining task granularity are required to achieve high performance. To handle large-scale problems without any additional user code, we introduce an implicit dynamic task scheduling scheme to our CUDA variation MESI-CUDA. MESI-CUDA is designed to abstract the low-level GPU features, virtual shared variables and logical thread mappings hide the complex memory hierarchy and physical characteristics. On the other hand, explicit parallel execution using kernel functions is the same as in CUDA. In our scheme, each kernel invocation in the user code is translated into a job submission to the runtime scheduler. The scheduler partitions a job into tasks considering the device memory size and dynamically schedules them to the available GPU devices. Thus the user can simply specify kernel invocations independent of the execution environment. The evaluation result shows that our scheme can automatically utilize heterogeneous GPU devices with small overhead.