Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maximal Tractable Fragments of the Region Connection Calculus: A Complete Analysis

We present a general method for proving tractability of reasoning over disjunctions of jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint relations. Examples of these kinds of relations are Allen's temporal interval relations and their spatial counterpart, the R.CC8 relations by Randell, Cui, and Colin. Applying this method does not require detailed knowledge about the considered relations; instead, it is rather sufficient to have a subset of the considered set of relations for which path-consistency is known to decide consistency. Using this method, we give a complete classification of tractability of reasoning over RCC8 by identifying two large new maximal tractable subsets and show that these two subsets together with H∞, the already known maximal tractable subset, are the only such sets for RCC8 that contain all base relations. We also apply our method to Allen's interval algebra and derive the known maximal tractable subset.
Association of FMR1 Genotypes with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Outcomes Based on Ethnicity/Race

The FMR1 gene, mapping to an area of the X chromosome closely associated with autoimmunity also affects ovarian reserve, with specific genotypes associated with distinct ovarian aging patterns. They, therefore, could also be associated with differences of in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcomes, reported between races/ethnicities. We analyzed 339 consecutive IVF patients, 232 Caucasian, 59 African and 48 Asian, for FMR1 genotypes, and tested by multiple logistic regressions for associations between race/ethnicity, FMR1 genotype, autoimmunity and pregnancy chances with IVF. FMR1 genotypes were predictive of pregnancy (P = 0.046), het-norm/low most significantly and with decreasing chance in comparison to norm genotypes (OR 0.44; 95% CI 0.23–0.85; P = 0.014). Race/ethnicity was, overall, independently associated (P = 0.03), African demonstrating decreased odds in comparison to Caucasian (OR 0.33. 95%CI 0.13–0.79; P = 0.014). Autoimmunity did not differ but interaction of autoimmunity with FMR1 genotype almost reached significance (P = 0.07). Logistic regression with race/ethnicity and interaction between FMR1 genotype and autoimmunity in the model, demonstrated 2.5-times the odds of being associated with autoimmune positivity (OR 2.5, 1.34–4.55; P = 0.004). FMR1 genotypes offer a possible explanation for differences in IVF outcomes between races/ethnicities.
Correlations between Mechanical Properties of High-Strength Concrete

This paper discusses some important engineering properties of plain concrete for a wide range of compressive strength. A large volume of selected experimental data has been collected from existing literature and then analyzed. Particular emphasis has been given to studying the effects of concrete strength on the modulus of elasticity, tensile strength (flexural and splitting tensile), and Poisson’s ratio of concrete. Study on the effect of the size of specimens on the compressive strength and modulus of elasticity of concrete has also been included. The adequacy of some of the familiar relationships for predicting the modulus of elasticity and tensile strengths of concrete has been critically examined, and suitable expressions are suggested to cover concrete strength up to 120 MPa.
Design and Implementation of FPGA-based Systolic Array for LZ Data Compression

Hardware implementation of data compression algorithms is receiving increasing attention due to exponentially expanding network traffic and digital data storage usage. Among lossless data compression algorithms for hardware implementation, Lempel-Ziv algorithm is one of the most widely used. The main objective of this paper is to enhance the efficiency of systolic-array approach for implementation of Lempel-Ziv algorithm. The proposed implementation is area and speed efficient. The compression rate is increased by more than 40% and the design area is decreased by more than 30%. The effect of the selected buffer's size on the compression ratio is analyzed. An FPGA implementation of the proposed design is carried out. It verifies that data can be compressed and decompressed on-the-fly.
Applying association rules to information navigation

In this paper, an information navigation agent is proposed as a new interface for obtaining Web information in a mobile environment. A central task of information retrieval systems developed up to now has been to narrow down a great deal of information by displaying search results to a user, followed by refinement of queries on the basis of these results. These have been methods suitable for use in a desktop environment. In contrast, the authors' agent can navigate toward incrementally better information by generating approximating solutions based on constraints on the attributes of the search object and obtaining further information by dialogue with the user. A scheme in which the agent resolves search conditions by using association rules between keywords and adds new search conditions has been proposed. In addition, since a navigation failure occurs if the association rules are used inappropriately, refining the association rules by using statistical tests and graphic analyses has been proposed and its effectiveness has been verified. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 34(4): 12–20, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10120
Relative increase of record high maximum temperatures compared to record low minimum temperatures in the U.S.

The current observed value of the ratio of daily record high maximum temperatures to record low minimum temperatures averaged across the U.S. is about two to one. This is because records that were declining uniformly earlier in the 20th century following a decay proportional to 1/n (n being the number of years since the beginning of record keeping) have been declining less slowly for record highs than record lows since the late 1970s. Model simulations of U.S. 20th century climate show a greater ratio of about four to one due to more uniform warming across the U.S. than in observations. Following an A1B emission scenario for the 21st century, the U.S. ratio of record high maximum to record low minimum temperatures is projected to continue to increase, with ratios of about 20 to 1 by mid‐century, and roughly 50 to 1 by the end of the century.
Distribution Loss Reduction by Household Consumption Coordination in Smart Grids

In this work, we address the problem of optimizing the electrical consumption patterns for a community of closely located households, with a large degree of flexible consumption, and further some degree of local electricity production from solar panels. We describe optimization methods for coordinating consumption of electrical energy within the community, with the purpose of reducing grid loading and active power losses. For this we present a simplified model of the electrical grid, including system losses and capacity constraints. Coordination is performed in a distributed fashion, where each consumer optimizes his or her own consumption pattern, taking into account both private objectives, specific to each individual consumer, as well as objectives common to all consumers. In our work, the common objective is to minimize active losses in the grid, and ensure that grid capacity limits are obeyed. These objectives are enforced by coordinating consumers through a nonlinear penalty on power consumption. We present simulation test-cases, illustrating that significant reduction of active losses, can be obtained by such coordination. The distributed optimization algorithm employs the alternating directions method of multipliers.
CO2 Emissions and Regional Economic Growth: From the Perspective of Energy Consumption in China

This paper examines the relationship between carbon emissions per capita and economic growth, carbon emissions intensity and economic growth from the perspective energy consumption for the period 1990-2008 respectively. Empirical results reveal that there exist long term cointegration between carbon emissions, regional economy growth and energy consumption in China. We apply dynamic and static panel data model to estimate the curved shape of the relationship between economy and carbon emissions while considering energy consumption respectively. We find that the curved shape is inverted “N” in static panel data model and dynamic panel data model, rather than inverted “U”. Finally this paper gives some suggestions that policy-makers can take different implementation of energy reduction and promote low carbon economic development.
Characterization of an Immunodominant Antigenic Epitope from Trypanosoma cruzi as a Biomarker of Chronic Chagas' Disease Pathology

ABSTRACT Nowadays, the techniques available for chronic Chagas' disease diagnosis are very sensitive; however, they do not allow discrimination of the patient's clinical stages of the disease. The present paper describes that three out of the five different repeats contained in the Trypanosoma cruzi TcCA-2 membrane protein (3972-FGQAAAGDKPPP, 6303-FGQAAAGDKPAP, and 3973-FGQAAAGDKPSL) are recognized with high sensitivity (>90%) by sera from chronic Chagas' disease patients and that they are not recognized by sera from patients in the acute phase of the disease. A total of 133 serum samples from chagasic patients and 50 serum samples from healthy donors were tested. In addition, sera from 15 patients with different autoimmune diseases, 43 serum samples from patients suffering an infectious disease other than Chagas' disease, and 38 serum samples from patients with nonchagasic cardiac disorders were also included in this study. The residue 3973 peptide shows a specificity of >98%, as it is not recognized by individuals with autoimmune and inflammatory processes or by patients with a nonchagasic cardiomyopathy. Remarkably, the levels of antibody against the 3973 epitope detected by the sera from Chagas' disease patients in the symptomatic chronic phase, involving cardiac or digestive alterations, are higher than those detected by the sera from Chagas' disease patients in the indeterminate phase of the disease. It is suggested that the diagnostic technique described could also be used to indicate the degree of pathology. The amino acids F, Q, and DKP located in the peptide at positions 1, 3, and 8 to 10, respectively, are essential to conform to the immunodominant antigenic epitope.
A Dimensionality Reduction-Based Multi-Step Clustering Method for Robust Vessel Trajectory Analysis

The Shipboard Automatic Identification System (AIS) is crucial for navigation safety and maritime surveillance, data mining and pattern analysis of AIS information have attracted considerable attention in terms of both basic research and practical applications. Clustering of spatio-temporal AIS trajectories can be used to identify abnormal patterns and mine customary route data for transportation safety. Thus, the capacities of navigation safety and maritime traffic monitoring could be enhanced correspondingly. However, trajectory clustering is often sensitive to undesirable outliers and is essentially more complex compared with traditional point clustering. To overcome this limitation, a multi-step trajectory clustering method is proposed in this paper for robust AIS trajectory clustering. In particular, the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), a similarity measurement method, is introduced in the first step to measure the distances between different trajectories. The calculated distances, inversely proportional to the similarities, constitute a distance matrix in the second step. Furthermore, as a widely-used dimensional reduction method, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is exploited to decompose the obtained distance matrix. In particular, the top k principal components with above 95% accumulative contribution rate are extracted by PCA, and the number of the centers k is chosen. The k centers are found by the improved center automatically selection algorithm. In the last step, the improved center clustering algorithm with k clusters is implemented on the distance matrix to achieve the final AIS trajectory clustering results. In order to improve the accuracy of the proposed multi-step clustering algorithm, an automatic algorithm for choosing the k clusters is developed according to the similarity distance. Numerous experiments on realistic AIS trajectory datasets in the bridge area waterway and Mississippi River have been implemented to compare our proposed method with traditional spectral clustering and fast affinity propagation clustering. Experimental results have illustrated its superior performance in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluations.
CD‐ROM: an effective use of technology?

Abstract. The correct use of information systems implies, in part, the effective delivery and use of information. In situations where, as has frequently been the case in recent years, CD‐ROMs form a part of an information system, there is very little that users can do to regulate or control the quality of the information being supplied. Poor information cannot be effectively used. This paper discusses the effective use of the medium and questions whether all publishers are paying sufficient attention to quality.
An Iterative Reweighted Least Squares Algorithm with Finite Series Approximation for a Sparse Signal Recovery

SUMMARY This letter deals with a sparse signal recovery problem and proposes a new algorithm based on the iterative reweighted least squares (IRLS) algorithm. We assume that the non-zero values of a sparse signal is always greater than a given constant and modify the IRLS algorithm to satisfy this assumption. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm recovers a sparse vector e ﬃ ciently.
Software Defined based smart grid architecture

The diversity, continuous expansion and the large number of smart grid resources increase the complexity of such systems and arise the need to find a new way to manage these resources and, at the same time, reduce the complexity in the control and monitoring operations. Moreover, smart grid Systems are considered critical systems requiring reliable and real time data delivery and an efficient, flexible, scalable control solution to satisfy the system requirements. Thus, in this paper, we introduce a new architecture model for smart grid networks based on the Software Defined Systems (SDSys) paradigm. The main idea behind the SDSys revolves around abstracting the control plane out of the data plane and setting it at a separate layer in the middleware. Different forms of SDSys like Software Defined Network (SDN), Software Defined Storage (SDStore), Software Defined Security (SDSec) and Software Defined Internet of Things (SDIoT) are used to provide a comprehensive smart grid control solution which hide the complexity that exists in traditional control techniques. Meanwhile, we show how the proposed model can provide an accurate, reliable, secure, extensible and network-aware architecture design for smart grid network. Furthermore, we explain how it can provide a single point of view for all smart grid resources and a programmable interface to adapt the network for any sudden changes.
On robust modifications for repetitive learning control

In this paper, we develop two algorithms to robustify repetitive learning control (RLC), which deals with periodic tracking tasks for nonlinear dynamical systems with nonparametric uncertainties. The first robustification algorithm is to apply a projection operator to the control input signals directly. The second robustification algorithm is to add a damping term to the learning law. Both algorithms ensure the boundedness of the learning signals. The effectiveness of the proposed robust algorithms are verified through theoretical analysis and validated through a numerical example.
MASTICATION AND FOOD TEXTURE PERCEPTION: VARIATION WITH AGE

Mastication is the first transformation process to which food is subjected during feeding. During this in-mouth process, most of sensory properties of the food such as texture, flavour and taste are perceived. Analysing the chewing patterns and their adaptation to the food structure, allows some understanding of the dynamics of texture perception. The intra-oral food manipulation that occurs during the opening phase of chewing cycles is believed to participate in texture perception although its role is difficult to demonstrate. In contrast, close relationships between muscle activity during the closing phase and the mechanical properties of food are established, and occur as early as the first bite. Strong evidence suggests that muscle activity could act as a sensory clue for certain food sensory properties such as tenderness of meat. Aging in healthy dentate subjects induces moderate alterations in neuro-muscular activity which could be partly compensated by changes in chewing behaviour such as lengthening of the chewing sequence. As a consequence, texture perception appears well preserved during healthy aging.
Inferring protein interactions from phylogenetic distance matrices

Finding the interacting pairs of proteins between two different protein families whose members are known to interact is an important problem in molecular biology. We developed and tested an algorithm that finds optimal matches between two families of proteins by comparing their distance matrices. A distance matrix provides a measure of the sequence similarity of proteins within a family. Since the protein sets of interest may have dozens of proteins each, the use of an efficient approximate solution is necessary. Therefore the approach we have developed consists of a Metropolis Monte Carlo optimization algorithm which explores the search space of possible matches between two distance matrices. We demonstrate that by using this algorithm we are able to accurately match chemokines and chemokine-receptors as well as the tgfbeta family of ligands and their receptors.
Interaction characterization of PA1010/PP blends using PP-g-AA as compatibilizer

The morphology of polyamidelOlO/polypropylene blends was found to significantly depend upon the concentration of the compatibilizer[polypropylene-grafted-acrylic acid (PP-g-AA)]. A significant reduction in phase size was observed because of the interaction that existed between the PP-g-AA and polyamide. These interactions have been confirmed by several methods. The tensile mechanical properties and impact behavior of the prepared blends were investigated and correlated with scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of the fracture surfaces. It was found that PP-g-AA as the compatibilizer has a profound effect upon the properties of the blends. This behavior is attributed to a series of chemical and physico-chemical interactions taking place between the two components.
Sequence-specific RNA Recognition by the Xenopus Y-box Proteins

The Xenopus Y-box protein FRGY2 has a role in the translational silencing of masked maternal mRNA. Here, we determine that FRGY2 will recognize specific RNA sequences. The evolutionarily conserved nucleic acid-binding cold shock domain is required for sequence-specific interactions with RNA. However, RNA binding by FRGY2 is facilitated by N- and C-terminal regions flanking the cold shock domain. The hydrophilic C-terminal tail domain of FRGY2 interacts with RNA independent of the cold shock domain but does not determine sequence specificity. Thus, both sequence-specific and nonspecific RNA recognition domains are contained within the FRGY2 protein.
ECG Authentication for Mobile Devices

Traditional mobile login methods, like numerical or graphical passwords, are vulnerable to passive attacks. It is common for intruders to gain access to personal information of their victims by watching them enter their passwords into their mobile screens from a close proximity. With this in mind, a mobile biometric authentication algorithm based on electrocardiogram (ECG) is proposed. With this algorithm, the user will only need to touch two ECG electrodes (lead I) of the mobile device to gain access. The algorithm was tested with a cell phone case heart monitor in a controlled laboratory experiment at different times and conditions with ten subjects and also with 73 records obtained from the Physionet database. The obtained results reveal that our algorithm has 1.41% false acceptance rate and 81.82% true acceptance rate with 4 s of signal acquisition. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach on mobile authentication that uses ECG biometric signals and it shows a promising future for this technology. Nonetheless, further improvements are still needed to optimize accuracy while maintaining a short acquisition time for authentication.
Event-related Potentials in Clinical Research: Guidelines for Eliciting, Recording, and Quantifying Mismatch Negativity, P300, and N400

Potenciais relacionados a eventos em pesquisa clínica: diretrizes para eliciar, gravar, e quantificar o MMN, P300 e N400 Event-Related Potentials (ERP) refer to electrical responses generated by the thalamus, auditory cortex and cortical association areas and involve discrimination, integration and attention tasks. Furthermore, they consist of a series of positive and negative peaks which take place from 50 ms after the stimulus onset and can be useful in investigating neural mechanisms related to auditory perception (1,2). The objective was to discuss the use of Event-Related Potentials (ERP) in clinical research for psychiatric and neurological disorders. Techniques for obtaining, recording and analyzing P300, MMN and N-400 responses are presented in the article, especially the application of each of these potentials in the central nervous system pathology research. The authors concentrate efforts on providing subsidies to the recommendation, clear and secure standardization of used methodologies, in order to facilitate comparison between laboratories, and strengthen research in the area. Therefore, it is relevant material for Brazilian researchers interested in using these methods. ERP reflect the reception and processing of sensory information related to selective attention, memory upgrade, semantic understanding and other cognitive activities (3). The latency informs course time of processing activity in milliseconds and the amplitude indicates the extent of neural allocation of resources involved in cognitive processes. Mismatch negativity (MMN), one of its components, is elicited by any discriminated change in auditory stimulation and can be obtained in the absence of the participant's attention, which makes it useful in evaluating children or adults with cognitive and linguistic changes, such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, cerebrovascular accident, dyslexia and monitoring of coma. This potential is generated from bilateral auditory cortex, with contributions of the right frontal cortex, and extracted from the discrepancy of acoustic characteristics of two sounds. It is recorded from the waveform difference, obtained by subtracting the standard stimulus mean from the deviant stimulus mean. For the record, in general, we use 5-10 active electrodes positioned at Fz, Cz, C3, C4, and mastoid, with the reference electrode placed on the nose. Another potential, P300, is used to investigate conditions in which cognition is impaired and it is mostly used in clinical research since it informs on discrimination of stimuli when a process is active and operating. It has proven useful in the assessment of dementia, schizophrenia, psychiatric disorders, attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity and dyslexia. P300 is a high and broad positive …