Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combining expression trees

The paper aims at comparing and evaluating combined classifiers constructed from expression trees induced through applying gene expression programming. Several combined classifiers proposed in earlier papers of the authors are briefly described and explained. An extensive computational experiment in which the proposed combined classifiers are compared with a number of well-known classification algorithms from WEKA Environment shows that constructing combined classifiers taking advantage of the collective computational techniques brings a very good result in terms of the solution quality.
Purification of extracellular lipase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Lipase (triacylglycerol acylhydrolase, EC 3.1.1.3) was excreted by Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAC1R during the late logarithmic growth phase. Characterization of cell-free culture supernatants by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis revealed the presence of significant amounts of lipopolysaccharide, part of which seemed to be tightly bound to lipase. After concentration of culture supernatants by ultrafiltration, lipase-lipopolysaccharide complexes were dissociated by treatment with EDTA-Tris buffer and subsequent sonication in the presence of the zwitterionic detergent 3-[(3-cholamidopropyl)dimethylammonio]-1-propanesulfonate. The solubilized lipase was purified by isoelectric focusing in an agarose gel containing the same detergent; the lipase activity appeared in a single peak corresponding to a distinct band in the silver-stained gel. The isoelectric point was 5.8. Analysis of purified lipase by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and scanning revealed an apparent molecular weight of 29,000 and a specific activity of 760 mu kat/mg of protein. Estimations based on these data showed that a single P. aeruginosa cell excreted about 200 molecules of lipase, each having a molecular activity of 2.2 X 10(4) per s.
Effect of Bacteriophage Application on Campylobacter jejuni Loads in Commercial Broiler Flocks

ABSTRACT Campylobacteriosis is the most frequent food-borne human enteritis. The major source for infection with Campylobacter spp. is broiler meat. Risk assessments consider the reduction of Campylobacter in primary production to be most beneficial for human health. The aim of this study was to test the efficacy of a bacteriophage application under commercial conditions which had proved to be effective in previous noncommercial studies under controlled experimental conditions. A phage cocktail for Campylobacter reduction was tested on three commercial broiler farms each with a control and an experimental group. Colonization of Campylobacter was confirmed prior to phage application in fecal samples. Subsequently, a phage cocktail was applied via drinking water in the experimental group (log10 5.8 to 7.5 PFU/bird). One day after phage application, Campylobacter counts of one experimental group were reduced under the detection limit (<50 CFU/g, P = 0.0140) in fecal samples. At slaughter, a significant reduction of >log10 3.2 CFU/g cecal content compared to the control was still detected (P = 0.0011). No significant reduction was observed in the experimental groups of the other trials. However, a significant drop in cecal Campylobacter counts occurred in a phage-contaminated control. These results suggest that maximum reduction of Campylobacter at the slaughterhouse might be achieved by phage application 1 to 4 days prior to slaughter.
Hot carrier solar cells

We present our investigations of a novel concept for increasing the efficiency of solid state photovoltaic devices. We propose that hot photogenerated carriers can reduce radiative recombination in a p-i-n device structure that has an intrinsic superlattice absorption region. The reduced radiative recombination leads to higher photovoltage and conversion efficiency. We present experimental results on P-i(SL)-N devices fabricated from GaAs/AlGaAs, along with predictions of idealized hot carrier solar cell behavior obtained using a rigorous energy balance device model.
Hot Corrosion of Protective Coatings

Abstract Abstract Improvement in efficiencies of gas turbine engines requires a significant increase of gas inlet temperatures. This results in an increased service temperature for blade materials and consequently in enhanced oxidation and hot corrosion attack of the blade coatings, which are usually of MCrAlY type where M is Ni, Co or NiCo. This type of coating can provide protection against oxidation and hot corrosion and act as a bond coat for thermal barrier coating systems. In both cases slow growth rates and optimum adherence of the alumina scales forming on the MCrAlY coatings during high temperature exposure are significant for component life. The above mentioned properties for the alumina scales strongly depend on the coating base composition as well as on the presence of minor alloying elements. In the present paper the performance of existing superalloys during hot corrosion is briefly described followed by the results obtained on hot corrosion of MCRAlY type coatings explaining the effect of trace elements on the life of coatings in the presence of NaCl and vanadium containing environments. Optimum thickness to improve the life of superalloys with NiCoCrAlY as a bond coat and yttria stabilized zirconia thermal barrier coatings has been identified. Based on the results, an electrochemical mechanism is proposed and shows that hot corrosion of protective coatings is an electrochemical phenomenon. Hence electrochemical techniques appear to be quite useful in evaluating the coatings for hot corrosion resistance.
Nano-coating with controllable reflectance spectrum

We consider the possibilities of developing smart nano-structured coverings that allow one dynamically change their color in the reflected light by modify spectral position of their reflection coefficient. The suggested technology is based on the recent progresses in the field of photonics and the fabrication of silicon-compatible photonic band gap (PBG) materials, photonic crystals. It is suggested to compose the PBG structures of porous silicon and infiltrate them with active nano-compounds whose optical features can be changed by the application of the electric field, current or illumination. As a result, the controlled change of color of the composed structure can be achieved.
Element reduction in phased arrays using dual-mode self-scanning elements

A method for reducing the number of elements in phased arrays that uses dual-mode array elements such as horns or microstrip patches is introduced. It is shown that the excitation of the second mode can be used to locate preferentially a null on the element radiation pattern. In particular, when the null is moved to the array grating lobe location, it causes its cancellation and permits selection of large interelement spacings. The number of array elements can therefore be reduced. The method is then applied to both triangular and rectangular lattice structures having uniform or tapered excitation. It is found that the method can reduce the number of elements by as much as 26% for the triangular lattice and by 45% for the rectangular lattice.
Epithelial Ca 2 and Mg 2 Channels in Health and Disease

A near constancy of the extracellular Ca 2 and Mg 2 concentration is required for numerous physiologic functions at the organ, tissue, and cellular levels. This suggests that minor changes in the extracellular concentration of these divalents must be detected to allow the appropriate correction by the homeostatic systems. The maintenance of the Ca 2 and Mg 2 balance is controlled by the concerted action of intestinal absorption, renal excretion, and exchange with bone. After years of research, rapid progress was made recently in identification and characterization of the Ca 2 and Mg 2 transport proteins that contribute to the delicate balance of divalent cations. Expression-cloning approaches in combination with knockout mice models and genetic studies in families with a disturbed Mg 2 balance revealed novel Ca 2 and Mg 2 gatekeeper proteins that belong to the super family of the transient receptor potential (TRP) channels. These epithelial Ca 2 (TRPV5 and TRPV6) and Mg 2 channels (TRPM6 and TRPM7) form prime targets for hormonal control of the active Ca 2 and Mg 2 flux from the urine space or intestinal lumen to the blood compartment. This review describes the characteristics of epithelial Ca 2 and Mg 2 transport in general and highlights in particular the distinctive features and the physiologic relevance of these new epithelial Ca 2 and Mg 2 channels in (patho)physiologic situations.
Expert Systems With Applications

This study comparatively evaluates the effectiveness of three visualization methods (list, matrix, network) and the inﬂuence of data complexity, task type, and user characteristics on decision performance in the context of business ecosystem analysis. We pursue this objective using an exploratory study with 14 prototypical users (e.g. executives, analysts, investors, and policy makers). The results show that in low complexity contexts, decision performance between visual representations differ but not substantially. In high complexity contexts, however, decision performance suffers signiﬁcantly if visual representations are not appropriately matched to task types. Our study makes several theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, we extend cognitive ﬁt theory by investigating the impact of business ecosystem task type and complexity. Managerially, our study contributes to the relatively underexplored, but emerging area of the design of business ecosystem intelligence tools and presentation of business ecosystem data for the purpose of decision making. We conclude with future research opportunities.
Diabetes Distress but Not Clinical Depression or Depressive Symptoms Is Associated With Glycemic Control in Both Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analyses

OBJECTIVE To determine the concurrent, prospective, and time-concordant relationships among major depressive disorder (MDD), depressive symptoms, and diabetes distress with glycemic control. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In a noninterventional study, we assessed 506 type 2 diabetic patients for MDD (Composite International Diagnostic Interview), for depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression), and for diabetes distress (Diabetes Distress Scale), along with self-management, stress, demographics, and diabetes status, at baseline and 9 and 18 months later. Using multilevel modeling (MLM), we explored the cross-sectional relationships of the three affective variables with A1C, the prospective relationships of baseline variables with change in A1C over time, and the time-concordant relationships with A1C. RESULTS All three affective variables were moderately intercorrelated, although the relationship between depressive symptoms and diabetes distress was greater than the relationship of either with MDD. In the cross-sectional MLM, only diabetes distress but not MDD or depressive symptoms was significantly associated with A1C. None of the three affective variables were linked with A1C in prospective analyses. Only diabetes distress displayed significant time-concordant relationships with A1C. CONCLUSIONS We found no concurrent or longitudinal association between MDD or depressive symptoms with A1C, whereas both concurrent and time-concordant relationships were found between diabetes distress and A1C. What has been called “depression” among type 2 diabetic patients may really be two conditions, MDD and diabetes distress, with only the latter displaying significant associations with A1C. Ongoing evaluation of both diabetes distress and MDD may be helpful in clinical settings.
Utilization of Palm Oil Fuel Ash in High-Strength Concrete

This paper presents use of improved palm oil fuel ash (POFA) as a pozzolanic material in producing high-strength concrete. The POFA was ground by ball mill until the median particle size was reduced to about 10μm. It was used to replace portland cement, ASTM Type I, by 10, 20, and 30% by weight of cementitious materials to make high-strength concrete. It was found that high-strength concrete can be achieved by using ground POFA to replace portland cement Type I up to 30%. At the age of 28days, concretes containing 10, 20, and 30% of ground POFA gave compressive strengths of 81.3, 85.9, and 79.8MPa, respectively. Concrete with 20% replacement of ground POFA had the highest strength. It is slightly higher than that of concrete containing 5% condensed silica fume and about 92–94% that of 10% condensed silica fume concrete. The ground POFA content up to 30% had slightly effect on lowering the modulus of elasticity of concrete. In addition, the use of ground POFA reduced the peak temperature rise of concrete u.
Exploiting sparseness of backing-off language models for efficient look-ahead in LVCSR

In this paper, we propose a new method for computing and applying language model look-ahead in a dynamic network decoder, exploiting the sparseness of backing-off n-gram language models. Only partial (sparse) look-ahead tables are computed, with a size that depends on the number of words that have an n-gram score in the language model for a specific context, rather than a constant, vocabulary dependent size. Since high order backing-off language models are inherently sparse, this mechanism reduces the runtime- and memory effort of computing the look-ahead tables by magnitudes. A modified decoding algorithm is required to apply these sparse LM look-ahead tables efficiently. We show that sparse LM look-ahead is much more efficient than the classical method, and that full n-gram look-ahead becomes favorable over lower order look-ahead even when many distinct LM contexts appear during decoding.
Ad Hoc Monitoring of Vocabulary Shifts over Time

Word meanings change over time. Detecting shifts in meaning for particular words has been the focus of much research recently. We address the complementary problem of monitoring shifts in vocabulary over time. That is, given a small seed set of words, we are interested in monitoring which terms are used over time to refer to the underlying concept denoted by the seed words. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for monitoring shifts in vocabulary over time, given a small set of seed terms. We use distributional semantic methods to infer a series of semantic spaces over time from a large body of time-stamped unstructured textual documents. We construct semantic networks of terms based on their representation in the semantic spaces and use graph-based measures to calculate saliency of terms. Based on the graph-based measures we produce ranked lists of terms that represent the concept underlying the initial seed terms over time as final output. As the task of monitoring shifting vocabularies over time for an ad hoc set of seed words is, to the best of our knowledge, a new one, we construct our own evaluation set. Our main contributions are the introduction of the task of ad hoc monitoring of vocabulary shifts over time, the description of an algorithm for tracking shifting vocabularies over time given a small set of seed words, and a systematic evaluation of results over a substantial period of time (over four decades). Additionally, we make our newly constructed evaluation set publicly available.
Preparation and Characterization of Albendazole Nanosuspensions for Oral Delivery

ABSTRACT During the last 10 years, the formulation of drugs as nanocrystals has rapidly evolved into a mature drug delivery strategy, with currently five products on the market. The major characteristic of these systems is the rapid dissolution velocity, enabling bioavailability enhancement after oral administration. Albendazole, a lipophilic anthelmintic drug, has low solubility and bioavailability. This study describes the preparation of an albendazole nanosuspension achieved by high-pressure homogenization and the lyophilized/spray-dried nanocrystal powder. The aim was to obtain a stable nanosuspension/nanocrystal with an increased drug saturation solubility and dissolution velocity. The effect of the process parameters, such as pressure and number of cycle on particle size distribution and polydispersity index of the nanosuspension, was investigated. The homogenization procedure was optimized with regard to particle size and long-term stability. The effect of type and ratio of stablizer were also stud.
Chapter 17: Analytical Methods in VLSI Placement

Placement becomes easy if we allow the cells to overlap. Analytical placement works with this relaxation, minimizing a function that estimates netlength. Overlaps are then removed successively by partitioning the chip area and the set of cells, and assigning the cells to smaller and smaller regions. The first successful analytical placers combined quadratic placement with bipartitioning. Later, algorithms for geometric quadrisection and multisection have been found that scale equally well and lead to better solutions. This approach is used intensively in industry. ∗Research Institute for Discrete Mathematics, University of Bonn, Lennéstr. 2, 53113 Bonn, Germany
Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward

Background Refined sugars (e.g., sucrose, fructose) were absent in the diet of most people until very recently in human history. Today overconsumption of diets rich in sugars contributes together with other factors to drive the current obesity epidemic. Overconsumption of sugar-dense foods or beverages is initially motivated by the pleasure of sweet taste and is often compared to drug addiction. Though there are many biological commonalities between sweetened diets and drugs of abuse, the addictive potential of the former relative to the latter is currently unknown. Methodology/Principal findings Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin. The preference for saccharin was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar. Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction. Conclusions Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.
Naringin administration inhibits platelet aggregation and release by reducing blood cholesterol levels and the cytosolic free calcium concentration in hyperlipidemic rabbits

This study investigated the effects of naringin on platelet aggregation and release in hyperlipidemic rabbits, and the underlying mechanisms. The safety of naringin was also investigated. The rabbits were orally administered 60, 30 or 15 mg/kg of naringin once a day for 14 days after being fed a high fat/cholesterol diet for four weeks. Following the two weeks of drug administration, the degree of platelet aggregation induced by arachidonic acid, adenosine diphosphate and collagen was significantly reduced by naringin at certain doses compared with those in the rabbits of the model group (P<0.01). The levels of P-selectin and platelet factor 4 (PF4) also decreased following treatment with naringin compared with those of the model group. Certain doses of naringin significantly reduced the total cholesterol (TC) levels and elevated the ratio of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to TC compared with those in the model group, and significantly decreased the cytosolic free calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i). No significant difference in the coagulation function was observed between the control and drug-treatment groups. These results indicate that naringin improved platelet aggregation and inhibited the excessive release of P-selectin and PF4 in hyperlipidemic rabbits. This study suggests that the antiplatelet effect of naringin may be due to its ability to regulate the levels of blood cholesterol and [Ca2+]i in platelets. Naringin also did not cause bleeding in the hyperlipidemic rabbits.
Towards the automatic extraction of fujisaki model parameters for Mandarin

The generation of naturally-sounding F0 contours in TTS enhances the intelligibility and perceived naturalness of synthetic speech. In earlier works the first author developed a linguistically motivated model of German intonation based on the quantitative Fujisaki model of the production process of F0, and an automatic procedure for extracting the parameters from the F0 contour which, however, was specific to German. As has been shown by Fujisaki and his co-workers, parametrization of F0 contours of Mandarin requires negative tone commands, as well as a more precise control of F0 associated with the syllabic tones. This paper presents an approach to the automatic parameter estimation for Mandarin, as well as first results concerning the accuracy of estimation. The paper also introduces a recently developed tool for editing Fujisaki parameters featuring resynthesis which will soon be publicly available.
Micromechanical Modelling of Advanced Ceramics with Statistically Representative Synthetic Microstructures

Advanced ceramics are a class of material used in extreme conditions, such as high speed turning of aerospace alloys and rock drilling. Their high hardness makes them suitable for these uses, however their lower toughness means that failure due to fracture and chipping is a problem. They are composed of micron-sized particles of a primary hard phase together with either a ceramic or metallic matrix material. A combined experimental-numerical method was used to investigate the role of microstructure on the fracture of advanced ceramics. Two dimensional, statistically representative microstructures of the advanced ceramics are created using Voronoi tessellation. The synthetic microstructures are compared to real microstructures in terms of particle size distribution and particle aspect ratio. Simulation results indicate that the computed elastic parameters are within the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds and agree closely with analytical predictions made with the Eshelby-Mori-Tanaka method. It is found that the local stress and strain distribution within the model is significantly affected by the underlying microstructure, which in turn affects fracture properties. Hence, tailoring the microstructure can optimise the bulk strength parameters of the material.