Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Firing frequency of leaky integrate-and-reneurons with synaptic current dynamicsNicolas

We consider a model of an integrate-and-re neuron with synaptic current dynamics, in which the synaptic time constant 0 is much smaller than the membrane time constant. We calculate analytically the ring frequency of such a neuron for inputs described by a random Gaussian process. We nd that the rst order correction to the frequency due to 0 is proportional to the square root of the ratio between these time constants, p 0 ==. This implies that the correction is important even when the synaptic time constant is small compared to that of the potential. The frequency of a neuron with 0 > 0 can be reduced to that of the basic IF neuron (corresponding to 0 = 0) using anèeective' threshold which has a linear dependence on p 0 ==. Numerical simulations show a very good agreement with the analytical result, and permit an extrapolation of thèeeective' threshold to higher orders in p 0 ==. The obtained frequency agrees with simulation data for a wide range of parameters.
Fault Detection of a Roller-Bearing System through the EMD of a Wavelet Denoised Signal

This paper investigates fault detection of a roller bearing system using a wavelet denoising scheme and proper orthogonal value (POV) of an intrinsic mode function (IMF) covariance matrix. The IMF of the bearing vibration signal is obtained through empirical mode decomposition (EMD). The signal screening process in the wavelet domain eliminates noise-corrupted portions that may lead to inaccurate prognosis of bearing conditions. We segmented the denoised bearing signal into several intervals, and decomposed each of them into IMFs. The first IMF of each segment is collected to become a covariance matrix for calculating the POV. We show that covariance matrices from healthy and damaged bearings exhibit different POV profiles, which can be a damage-sensitive feature. We also illustrate the conventional approach of feature extraction, of observing the kurtosis value of the measured signal, to compare the functionality of the proposed technique. The study demonstrates the feasibility of wavelet-based de-noising, and shows through laboratory experiments that tracking the proper orthogonal values of the covariance matrix of the IMF can be an effective and reliable measure for monitoring bearing fault.
Atomistic modeling of thermomechanical properties of SWNT/Epoxy nanocomposites

Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to compute thermomechanical properties of cured epoxy resins reinforced with pristine and covalently functionalized carbon nanotubes. A DGEBA-DDS epoxy network was built using the ‘dendrimer’ growth approach where 75% of available epoxy sites were cross-linked. The epoxy model is verified through comparisons to experiments, and simulations are performed on nanotube reinforced cross-linked epoxy matrix using the CVFF force field in LAMMPS. Full stiffness matrices and linear coefficient of thermal expansion vectors are obtained for the nanocomposite. Large increases in stiffness and large decreases in thermal expansion were seen along the direction of the nanotube for both nanocomposite systems when compared to neat epoxy. The direction transverse to nanotube saw a 40% increase in stiffness due to covalent functionalization over neat epoxy at 1 K whereas the pristine nanotube system only saw a 7% increase due to van der Waals effects. The functionalized SWNT/epoxy nanocomposite showed an additional 42% decrease in thermal expansion along the nanotube direction when compared to the pristine SWNT/epoxy nanocomposite. The stiffness matrices are rotated over every possible orientation to simulate the effects of an isotropic system of randomly oriented nanotubes in the epoxy. The randomly oriented covalently functionalized SWNT/Epoxy nanocomposites showed substantial improvements over the plain epoxy in terms of higher stiffness (200% increase) and lower thermal expansion (32% reduction). Through MD simulations, we develop means to build simulation cells, perform annealing to reach correct densities, compute thermomechanical properties and compare with experiments.
A fast, lock-free approach for efficient parallel counting of occurrences of k-mers

MOTIVATION Counting the number of occurrences of every k-mer (substring of length k) in a long string is a central subproblem in many applications, including genome assembly, error correction of sequencing reads, fast multiple sequence alignment and repeat detection. Recently, the deep sequence coverage generated by next-generation sequencing technologies has caused the amount of sequence to be processed during a genome project to grow rapidly, and has rendered current k-mer counting tools too slow and memory intensive. At the same time, large multicore computers have become commonplace in research facilities allowing for a new parallel computational paradigm. RESULTS We propose a new k-mer counting algorithm and associated implementation, called Jellyfish, which is fast and memory efficient. It is based on a multithreaded, lock-free hash table optimized for counting k-mers up to 31 bases in length. Due to their flexibility, suffix arrays have been the data structure of choice for solving many string problems. For the task of k-mer counting, important in many biological applications, Jellyfish offers a much faster and more memory-efficient solution. AVAILABILITY The Jellyfish software is written in C++ and is GPL licensed. It is available for download at http://www.cbcb. umd.edu/software/jellyfish.
New parallel prefix algorithms

New families of computation-efficient parallel prefix algorithms for message-passing multicomputers are presented. The first family improves the communication time of a previous family of parallel prefix algorithms; both use only half-duplex communications. Two other families adopt collective communication operations to reduce the communication times of the former two, respectively. These families each provide the flexibility of either fewer computation time steps or fewer communication time steps to achieve the minimal running time depending on the ratio of the time required by a communication step to the time required by a computation step.
Building E-Governance through Reform: the Korean Experience

This paper looks at the historical experiences in formulating Korea's e-Governance since 1980s. It is cited as one of the most frequently mentioned success cases in the global community. Korea's e-Governance has achieved a surprising growth over past two decades. Such an achievement is believed to be the result of consistent and proper formulation and implementation of IT policies linked to government reform. The e-Governance of Korea, evolving in three stages, was successfully achieved through the consistent leadership of successive presidents since 1987. In addition, the timely vision and objectives, established with consideration of efficiency and effectiveness, were appropriately applied and progressed in sync with the development of back-office management, front-office service, and e-governance infrastructure. The expansion of mass public services and transparency in the administrative process as well as the participatory governance also reinforced the advancement of the sound e-Governance. Such a rapid progress was achieved through the formation of the appropriate implementation organizations, flexible distribution of financial resources of the Informatization Promotion Fund, and the provision of a technical support network by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) and the National Information Society Agency (NIA).
Servant-minded leadership and work satisfaction in Islamic organizations: A correlational mixed study

The theory of servant leadership resonates with Muslims, and the founder of Islam exemplified servant leadership. Muslim organizations, however, are not necessarily in optimal health. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to determine the extent to which job satisfaction was correlated with perceptions of servant leadership in Muslim centers and schools in southeast Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. The literature review explored Muslim understanding of servant leadership. The Organizational Leadership Assessment (OLA) survey, designed by Laub (1999), was completed by 271 individuals. The instrument had previously been used in only Christian-centric studies with a Western cultural bias. Muslim organizations have almost excellent organizational health according to an OLA report. Developing people and providing leadership are necessary to improve Michigan and Toledo, Ohio organizations to excellent or optimal health. The results from the study may be applicable to other organizations given the high response rate (85%). Twenty-five individuals, representing 9.2% of the surveyed population, participated in a post-survey interview; 92% identified servant leaders in their organizations. The data collected was based on grounded theory methodology, and the findings indicated the importance of communication, empowerment, sound governance, high trust, and motivation.
On a Conjecture Concerning Dyadic Oriented Matroids

A rational matrix is totally dyadic if all of its nonzero subdeterminants are in $\{\pm 2^k\ :\ k \in {\bf Z}\}$. An oriented matriod is dyadic if it has a totally dyadic representation $A$. A dyadic oriented matriod is dyadic of order $k$ if it has a totally dyadic representation $A$ with full row rank and with the property that for each pair of adjacent bases $A_1$ and $A_2$ $$2^{-k} \le \left| { {\det(A_1)} \over {\det(A_2)}}\right|\le 2^k. $$ In this note we present a counterexample to a conjecture on the relationship between the order of a dyadic oriented matroid and the ratio of agreement to disagreement in sign of its signed circuits and cocircuits (Conjecture 5.2, Lee (1990)).
Systematic Identification of Weak Connections between Clusters in Biological Network

The knowledge of interactions between biological molecules has been accumulated rapidly. One of the remarkable features of biological network is that some vertices have a huge number of connections, but almost all vertices are connected only with few vertices [1]. In the network structure, the vertices are grouped into some clusters, and the connections are divided into ’strong connection’ within clusters, and ’weak connection’ between clusters. The ’weak connection’ is considered to play a important role in many networks [4]. In this work, we consider the problem of finding the weak connections in the networks. We develop our method to find the weak connection between clusters, and then our method is applied to the observed protein-protein network. Finally we evaluate the weak connection found by our method in terms of biological knowledge.
On Universal Composable Security of Time-Stamping Protocols

Time-stamping protocols, which assure that a document was existed at a certain time, are applied to some useful and practical applications such as electronic patent applications and so on. There are two major time-stamping protocols, the simple protocol and the linking protocol. In the former, a time-stamp authority issues a time-stamp token that is the digital signature of the concatenated value of a hashed message and the present time. In the latter, the time-stamp authority issues a time-stamp token that is the hash value of the concatenated value of a hashed message and the previous hash value. Although security requirements and analysis for above time-stamping protocols has been discussed, there are no strict cryptographic security notions for them. In this paper, we reconsider the security requirements for time-stamping protocols and define security notions for them, in a universally composable security sense, which was proposed by Canetti. We also show that these notions can be achieved using combinations of a secure key exchange protocol, a secure symmetric encryption scheme, and a secure digital signature scheme.
Recent Progress Toward Hydrogen Medicine: Potential of Molecular Hydrogen for Preventive and Therapeutic Applications

Persistent oxidative stress is one of the major causes of most lifestyle-related diseases, cancer and the aging process. Acute oxidative stress directly causes serious damage to tissues. Despite the clinical importance of oxidative damage, antioxidants have been of limited therapeutic success. We have proposed that molecular hydrogen (H2) has potential as a “novel” antioxidant in preventive and therapeutic applications [Ohsawa et al., Nat Med. 2007: 13; 688-94]. H2 has a number of advantages as a potential antioxidant: H2 rapidly diffuses into tissues and cells, and it is mild enough neither to disturb metabolic redox reactions nor to affect reactive oxygen species (ROS) that function in cell signaling, thereby, there should be little adverse effects of consuming H2. There are several methods to ingest or consume H2, including inhaling hydrogen gas, drinking H2-dissolved water (hydrogen water), taking a hydrogen bath, injecting H2-dissolved saline (hydrogen saline), dropping hydrogen saline onto the eye, and increasing the production of intestinal H2 by bacteria. Since the publication of the first H2 paper in Nature Medicine in 2007, the biological effects of H2 have been confirmed by the publication of more than 38 diseases, physiological states and clinical tests in leading biological/medical journals, and several groups have started clinical examinations. Moreover, H2 shows not only effects against oxidative stress, but also various anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects. H2 regulates various gene expressions and protein-phosphorylations, though the molecular mechanisms underlying the marked effects of very small amounts of H2 remain elusive.
Agent control and the acquisition of event culmination in Basque, Dutch, English, Spanish and Mandarin

In this paper we investigate if there is a connection between the acceptance of non-culmination in child language and a seemingly similar phenomenon in certain adult languages. In Mandarin, among other languages, adults accept telic-perfective clauses for non-culminating situations. The types of verbs that allow such readings are referred to as non-culminating accomplishments. Recently, novel developments in semantic theory have established that subject type plays a role in the acceptance of non-culmination in these languages. According to the Agent Control hypothesis (Demirdache & Martin 2015), denying the result as encoded by such accomplishment verbs is easier when the subject’s referent is an intentional Agent than when it is an inanimate Cause. Our study revisits non-target-like acceptance of non-culmination in learners by asking: does non-culmination in child language reflect the same cause as non-culmination in languages like Mandarin?
Monitoring and Securing New Functions Deployed in a Virtualized Networking Environment

Network operators are currently very cautious before deploying a new network equipment. This is done only if the new networking solution is fully monitored, secured and can provide rapid revenues (short Return of Investment). For example, the NDN (Named Data Networking) solution is admitted as promising but still uncertain, thus making network operators reluctant to deploy it. Having a flexible environment would allow network operators to initiate the deployment of new network solutions at low cost and low risk. The virtualization techniques, appeared a few years ago, can help to provide such a flexible networking architecture. However, with it, emerge monitoring and security issues which should be solved. In this paper, we present our secure virtualized networking environment to deploy new functions and protocol stacks in the network, with a specific focus on the NDN use-case as one of the potential Future Internet technology. As strong requirements for a network operator, we then focus on monitoring and security components, highlighting where and how they can be deployed and used. Finally, we introduce our preliminary evaluation, with a focus on security, before presenting the test bed, involving end-users consuming real contents, that we will set up for the assessment of our approach.
VASTvis - Visual analytics with multiple coordinated views: VAST 2010 Mini Challenge 2 award: Good analytic process and explanation

We present a multiple coordinated view system VASTvis with a central view and several mini-views around the side. Each view is coordinated together, where operations are linked between windows. Furthermore, the user can perform sequential queries on the data through a series of brushing operations. The tool was used to analyse the VAST 2010 Mini Challenge 2 dataset of Hospitalisation Records. In this article we describe how the tool was used to characterise the Pandemic Spread.
Cell proliferation in the liver and thyroid of C57Bl/10J mice after dietary administration of chlordane.

Chlordane is a polychlorinated hydrocarbon that causes liver enlargement and induces mixed-function oxidases similar to those induced by phenobarbitone in the mouse. We have assessed the hepatocarcinogenicity (after 2 years) and the time course (over 6 months) of liver and thyroid cell proliferation in C57Bl/10J mice exposed to chlordane at 50 ppm in the diet, using the same batch of food for both carcinogenicity and cell proliferation studies. In the bioassay, 15/39 survivors had hepatocellular adenomas and a further 5/59 had carcinomas, compared with less than 5% incidence of primary hepatic tumors in concurrent controls. Among unscheduled deaths, 1/40 adenomas and 2/40 carcinomas were recorded. There were no macroscopically observed thyroid lesions. In the proliferation study, mice were killed on days 4, 5, 8, 15, 29, 99, and 190 after the start of dosing. Withdrawal groups were included from days 29 to 99 and from days 190 to 247. Replicating cells were labeled via bromodeoxyuridine delivered by osmotic minipump for 3 days before necropsy. In the thyroid, the peak labeling index (LI) was seen on day 5 (LI = 5.99 +/- 2.90% versus 1.00 +/- 20% in controls), while in the liver the peak was on day 8 (9.0 +/- 1.6% versus 0.5 +/- 0.4% in controls). Both organs had an elevated LI for the first month of dosing, but while the thyroid follicular LI was similar to control at 99 and 190 days, the liver LI was significantly elevated at all time points except in the withdrawal groups. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
New generation of compact low voltage IGBT converter for traction applications

This paper deals with innovative compact converters for use in local transit vehicles. Utilising the latest generation of low voltage IGBT modules, a compact and low cost design of the entire converter system is achieved. Due to the high switching frequency of IGBTs a simple PWM modulation strategy can be applied with no need of complex transitions between different modulation strategies. The control system is set up with a new in-house platform (OPCoDe platform) using FPGA technology at a high speed level (< 25 mus) and a slower MATLABreg/Simulinkreg based programming environment at lower speed levels (50 mus range and slower). Thanks to these advanced tools, high-quality software can be provided and modifications can be easily carried out, even during operation
Coordinate‐based (ALE) meta‐analysis of brain activation in patients with fibromyalgia

There are an increasing number of neuroimaging studies that allow a better understanding of symptoms, neural correlates and associated conditions of fibromyalgia. However, the results of these studies are difficult to compare, as they include a heterogeneous group of patients, use different stimulation paradigms, tasks, and the statistical evaluation of neuroimaging data shows high variability. Therefore, this meta‐analytic approach aimed at evaluating potential alterations in neuronal brain activity or structure related to pain processing in fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) patients, using quantitative coordinate‐based “activation likelihood estimation” (ALE) meta‐analysis. 37 FMS papers met the inclusion criteria for an ALE analysis (1,264 subjects, 274 activation foci). A pooled ALE analysis of different modalities of neuroimaging and additional analyses according functional and structural changes indicated differences between FMS patients and controls in the insula, amygdala, anterior/mid cingulate cortex, superior temporal gyrus, the primary and secondary somatosensory cortex, and lingual gyrus. Our analysis showed consistent results across FMS studies with potential abnormalities especially in pain‐related brain areas. Given that similar alterations have already been demonstrated in patients with other chronic pain conditions and the lack of adequate control groups of chronic pain subjects in most FMS studies, it is not clear however, whether these findings are associated with chronic pain in general or are unique features of patients with FMS. Hum Brain Mapp 37:1749–1758, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Kinetics and Mechanisms of Phosphorus Adsorption in Soils from Diverse Ecological Zones in the Source Area of a Drinking-Water Reservoir

On-site soils are increasingly used in the treatment and restoration of ecosystems to harmonize with the local landscape and minimize costs. Eight natural soils from diverse ecological zones in the source area of a drinking-water reservoir in central China are used as adsorbents for the uptake of phosphorus from aqueous solutions. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometric and BET (Brunauer-Emmett-Teller) tests and the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectral analyses are carried out to investigate the soils’ chemical properties and their potential changes with adsorbed phosphorous from aqueous solutions. The intra-particle diffusion, pseudo-first-order, and pseudo-second-order kinetic models describe the adsorption kinetic processes. Our results indicate that the adsorption processes of phosphorus in soils occurred in three stages and that the rate-controlling steps are not solely dependent on intra-particle diffusion. A quantitative comparison of two kinetics models based on their linear and non-linear representations, and using the chi-square (χ2) test and the coefficient of determination (r2), indicates that the adsorptive properties of the soils are best described by the non-linear pseudo-second-order kinetic model. The adsorption characteristics of aqueous phosphorous are determined along with the essential kinetic parameters.
Thermal modeling and experimental validation of human hair and skin heated by broadband light

In recent years, selective photothermolysis (PT) based on broadband light and assisted by skin vacuum (Photopneumatic Technology or PPx, by Aesthera) was introduced into the aesthetic market for epilation (hair removal) procedures. The present study aims to: (a) determine the overall effect of PPx on skin humidity and associated skin optical properties, and; (b) develop a PT numerical model to study the spatial and temporal hair and skin temperature variations during PPx epilation.
Proceedings of the 2 nd Workshop on Metallization for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells – Status , trends and new directions –

The contact formation on high efficiency solar cells using a high temperature process is the subject of this research. Thermal gravimetric analyses were used to study the chemical reactions between ink components and solar cell during the firing process. The mechanism behind the etching process and the opening of the dielectric layer are explained and the influence of the glass concentration on the contact quality is given. Based on these studies, a seed layer ink was developed, optimized and tested on silicon solar cells. The developed ink was applied on high efficiency solar cells with printed and fired front contacts and compared with photolithographically defined and evaporated front contacts. At the rear side, we used a firing stable passivation layer consisting of Al2O3 and SiOx. After evaporation of aluminum and applying laser fired contacts at the rear and light induced silver plating at the front, cell efficiencies of η = 21.5% and fill factors of 81% could be measured.