Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Energy Efficiency and Demand Response Programs on the U.S. Electricity Market

This study analyzes the impact of the energy efficiency (EE) and demand response (DR) programs on the grid and the consequent level of production. Changes in demand caused by EE and DR programs affect the dispatch of existing plants and new generation technologies, the retirements of old plants, and the finances of the market. To find the new equilibrium in the market, we use the Oak Ridge Competitive Electricity Dispatch Model (ORCED) developed to simulate the operations and costs of regional power markets depending on various factors including fuel prices, initial mix of generation capacity, and customer response to electricity prices. In our analysis, we show changes in generation, price, revenue, and CO2 emissions across regions.
Handwritten Digit Recognition : Investigation and Improvement of the Inferred Motor Program Algorithm

Handwritten digit recognition is a classic problem in machine learning. It has been studied intensely by many authors for decades. The existence of standardized, publicly available MNIST training and test data [1] has led to extensive benchmarking of varied approaches to the problem. The methods of approach and their error rates are compiled at [1]. The best performance thus far [3], acheived using a convolutional neural net with cross-entropy and elastic distortions of the training set, is 0.4% error on the test set. The wealth of research that has gone into the digit recognition problem makes it difficult to improve on the best accuracy so far acheived. It is interesting, however, to understand the workings of one existing approach to the problem and to apply different ideas from machine learning to improve on this approach. We chose to investigate the inferred motor program method of Hinton and Nair [2]. This approach uses a generative model consisting of two sets of opposing springs whose stiffnesses are controlled by a motor program. Neural networks are then trained to infer the motor programs required to reconstruct the handwritten digits. Our aim is to understand the approach in [2] and to identify improvements to it. To do the latter, we will implement a version of the inferred motor program algorithm in MATLAB and implement modified versions. We will compare the performance of both on the MNIST database.
Performance enhancement of multistage interconnection networks with unit step buffering

Multistage interconnection networks (MINs) have been widely used for parallel computer systems, and also recognized as an efficient switching fabric for digital communication. In this paper, we propose a new switching mechanism for MINs called unit step buffering (USB) which significantly improves the network performance. Here each cell is allowed to move only one buffer entry position using short network cycle. The proposed USB scheme is compared to the traditional scheme by analytical modeling and computer simulation. They reveal that throughput and delay are improved about 60%-80% for practical size MINs with reasonable traffic in the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching environment. Improvement on parallel computer systems with larger size packets is more significant at about 100%. More importantly, the scheme does not require any additional hardware or operational overhead.
Value Stream Mapping the Emergency

Value stream mapping has become a valuable tool to model and evaluate work and process flow in industry. This tool can also be indispensable in the health care environment. One of the key elements in its use is the identification not only of process and flow, but of value added. This paper describes value stream map development in the large emergency department (ED) at York Hospital. An “as is” map was developed and reviewed by key personnel in the ED. Lean principles are now being applied to develop an appropriate “to be” map that will be reviewed for implementation
Hourly wage, monthly working hours and pension coverage: Are labor unions in China effective in improving workers' welfare?

In this article, we study the impact of unions in China on three important aspects of workers’ welfare, namely, hourly wage, monthly working hour, and pension coverage. Without taking into account the endogeneity of unionization, SUR model estimates show that unions have significant effects on all three aspects. Yet, once the simultaneity between these welfare aspects and unionization is introduced, unions’ impact on working hours is no longer significant, but their influence on wage and pension coverage increase. The estimated unions’ effects on pension coverage are especially large, which indicates that pension is more sensitive than wages and hours, and that unions can play a more significant role in gaining this and other fringe benefits for workers. The results do not support the hypothesis that migrant workers are discriminated against, but can not reject the hypothesis that exporting companies are under intense pressure from foreign markets to cut down their costs and their welfare expenditure. A switching model estimate further verifies unions’ effects on wages, additionally, it shows a considerable negative effect of wage markup on unionization.
hERG classification model based on a combination of support vector machine method and GRIND descriptors.

The human Ether-a-go-go Related Gene (hERG) potassium channel is one of the major critical factors associated with QT interval prolongation and development of arrhythmia called Torsades de Pointes (TdP). It has become a growing concern of both regulatory agencies and pharmaceutical industries who invest substantial effort in the assessment of cardiac toxicity of drugs. The development of in silico tools to filter out potential hERG channel inhibitors in early stages of the drug discovery process is of considerable interest. Here, we describe binary classification models based on a large and diverse library of 495 compounds. The models combine pharmacophore-based GRIND descriptors with a support vector machine (SVM) classifier in order to discriminate between hERG blockers and nonblockers. Our models were applied at different thresholds from 1 to 40 microm and achieved an overall accuracy up to 94% with a Matthews coefficient correlation (MCC) of 0.86 ( F-measure of 0.90 for blockers and 0.95 for nonblockers). The model at a 40 microm threshold showed the best performance and was validated internally (MCC of 0.40 and F-measure of 0.57 for blockers and 0.81 for nonblockers, using a leave-one-out cross-validation). On an external set of 66 compounds, 72% of the set was correctly predicted ( F-measure of 0.86 and 0.34 for blockers and nonblockers, respectively). Finally, the model was also tested on a large set of hERG bioassay data recently made publicly available on PubChem ( http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/assay/assay.cgi? aid=376) to achieve about 73% accuracy ( F-measure of 0.30 and 0.83 for blockers and nonblockers, respectively). Even if there is still some limitation in the assessment of hERG blockers, the performance of our model shows an improvement between 10% and 20% in the prediction of blockers compared to other methods, which can be useful in the filtering of potential hERG channel inhibitors.
Early detection of lung cancer: role of biomarkers

Early detection of lung cancer requires none or few invasive techniques. Distal lung cancer (40% of the cases in most European countries) can be sensitively detected by spiral computed tomography. Theoretically, in 60% of cases, the proximal lesions (main to segmental bronchi, accessible by bronchoscopy) should be able to be detected by sputum cytology. Unfortunately, this very specific technique has a low sensitivity and is time consuming. Fluorescent bronchoscopy increases the detection rate of early or micro-invasive lesions and may be proposed in highly selected populations, but not as a screening test. Biomarkers in blood and sputum have not yet been clinically validated. However, the amount of data generated from studies first on resected tumours, then on early bronchial lesions and more recently on blood and sputum offer a wide field for investigation. Lung carcinogenesis is a multistep process characterised by the accumulation of successive molecular genetic and epigenetic abnormalities, resulting in selection of clonal cells with uncontrolled growth capacities throughout the whole respiratory tract (field cancerisation). Molecular lesions far precede morphological transformation of preneoplastic bronchial lesions (dysplasia) or alveolar lesions (atypical alveolar hyperplasia). Genetic and epigenetic abnormalities in the genes involved in cell cycle, senescence, apoptosis, repair, differentiation and cell migration control may be detected on bronchial biopsies, on respiratory cells from the sputum and even in the circulating deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The key genes involved include those in the P53- retinoblastoma (Rb) pathways. The balance between cyclin-dependent kinases and their inhibitors regulates the level of Rb phosphorylation and its function at G1-S transition; P53 plays at least two functions (cell cycle and apoptosis control). The balance of bax-bcl2 is important in the control of apoptosis as well as loss of fragile histidine triad expression. O(6)-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase seems to be important in DNA repair control, the RARβ receptor in differentiation, and cadherin H and E and different metalloproteases genes in cell migration. The demonstration of hyperexpression or silencing of these genes needs different validated techniques: immunohistochemistry on biopsies or cytological preparations, molecular biology techniques for mutations, loss of heterozygosity and aberrant methylation abnormalities. Automation and miniaturisation of these techniques will allow early detection and may be widely applied once clinically validated.
Factors associated with transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome among health-care workers in Singapore

Between 1 and 22 March 2003, a nosocomial outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) occurred at the Communicable Disease Centre in Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore, the national treatment and isolation facility for patients with SARS. A case-control study with 36 cases and 50 controls was conducted of factors associated with the transmission of SARS within the hospital. In univariate analysis, contact with respiratory secretions elevated the odds ratio to 6·9 (95% CI 1·4–34·6, P=0·02). Protection was conferred by hand washing (OR 0·06, 95% CI 0·007–0·5, P=0·03) and wearing of N95 masks (OR 0·1, 95% CI 0·03–0·4, P=0·001). Use of gloves and gowns had no effect. Multivariate analysis confirmed the strong role of contact with respiratory secretions (adjusted OR 21·8, 95% CI 1·7–274·8, P=0·017). Both hand washing (adjusted OR 0·07, 95% CI 0·008–0·66, P=0·02) and wearing of N95 masks (adjusted OR 0·1, 95% CI 0·02–0·86, P=0·04) remained strongly protective but gowns and gloves had no effect.
IC identification circuit using device mismatch

Non-alterable identification is required for tracking work in progress, detecting part rebranding, radio frequency identification (RFID), IP protection, and transaction validation. Wafer-level techniques such as laser link cutting, and circuit-level EPROM techniques, require expensive machinery or special wafer processing. Integrated circuit identification (ICID) extracts unique and repeatable information from the randomness inherent in silicon processing. No external programming or special process steps are needed, and the technique may be used with any standard submicron CMOS process.
Topological defects for the free boson CFT

Two different conformal field theories can be joined together along a defect line. We study such defects for the case where the conformal field theories on either side are single free bosons compactified on a circle. We concentrate on topological defects for which the left- and right-moving Virasoro algebras are separately preserved, but not necessarily any additional symmetries. For the case where both radii are rational multiples of the self-dual radius we classify these topological defects. We also show that the isomorphism between two T-dual free boson conformal field theories can be described by the action of a topological defect, and hence that T-duality can be understood as a special type of order–disorder duality.
Parameters Identification for Smart Dampers based on Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithm

The research for MR dampers has been an extremely hot topic in the recent area of the structural vibration control. It has been the newly intellectual install in vibration controlling for the civil engineering structures now. But, how to build the mathematic model for the damper, and choose the proper algorithm to identify and optimize the parameters of the model is the key for the problem. In the lecture, the Bouc-Wen model is used in the calculation. And the genetic algorithm used before is simply introduced. The calculating process of the simulated annealing algorithm is designed in details. Then the fine parameters of theirs are determined by changing the conditions. For the identification of the damper parameters, the optimal solutions of the simulated annealing algorithm and genetic algorithm are both calculated out. At last, the results calculated separately by them are shown and the optimal solutions are in contrast. Their efficiencies in optimization are also discussed separately in the paper
Free Fermi and Bose Fields in TQFT and GBF

We present a rigorous and functorial quantization scheme for linear fermionic and bosonic field theory targeting the topological quantum field theory (TQFT) that is part of the general boundary formulation (GBF). Motivated by geometric quantization, we generalize a previous axiomatic characterization of classical linear bosonic field theory to include the fermionic case. We proceed to describe the quantization scheme, combining a Fock space quantization for state spaces with the Feynman path integral for amplitudes. We show rigorously that the resulting quantum theory satisfies the axioms of the TQFT, in a version generalized to include fermionic theories. In the bosonic case we show the equivalence to a previously developed holomorphic quantization scheme. Remarkably, it turns out that consistency in the fermionic case requires state spaces to be Krein spaces rather than Hilbert spaces. This is also supported by arguments from geometric quantization and by the explicit example of the Dirac field theory. Contrary to intuition from the standard formulation of quantum theory, we show that this is compatible with a consistent probability interpretation in the GBF. Another surprise in the fermionic case is the emergence of an algebraic notion of time, already in the classical theory, but inherited by the quantum theory. As in earlier work we need to impose an integrability condition in the bosonic case for all TQFT axioms to hold, due to the gluing anomaly. In contrast, we are able to renormalize this gluing anomaly in the fermionic case.
The Relationship between Beginning Secondary Teachers' Conceptions of English and Their Instructional Practices: Two Case Studies.

Case studies of two novices at a large midwestern university trace their development from student teacher to first-year teacher in secondary English classrooms, focusing primarily on their conceptions of literature and the relationship of these conceptions to their classroom practices. Data included in-depth, semi-structured interviews, observation in student teaching seminars and during student teaching and first year of teaching, and written artifacts. Both subjects pointed to several major influences on their development as teachers of English: their students, their English education coursework, their peers from those methods courses and from their student teaching seminar, and their colleagues in school settings. Although "Maureen" rarely mentioned professional development activities, "Jenny" believed that local workshops and publications were important. To a lesser degree, Maureen said that her cooperating teacher played a role in her development; in contrast, Jenny felt that her relationship with her cooperating teacher was not useful. Jenny felt that her college English classes had little impact on her development; and the teaching styles of most of Maureen's college English professors clashed with her own developing teaching style. Implications for teacher educators include: (1) provide students opportunities to identify and examine their beliefs about teaching; (2) help beginning teachers understand that their attitudes toward students can have a powerful impact on their instructional decisions; and (3) help prospective teachers when their ideas "clash" with what they experience in the school context. Contains 58 references. (RS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made f:om the original document. **********************w************************************************
A Finite Volume-Complete Flux Scheme for a Polluted Groundwater Site

We present a model of a polluted groundwater site. The model consists of a coupled system of advection-diffusion-reaction equations for the groundwater level and the concentration of the pollutant. We use the complete flux scheme for the space discretization in combination with the -method for time integration and we prove a new stability result for the scheme. Numerical results are computed for the Guarani Aquifer in South America and they show good agreement with results in literature.
High Cleavage Efficiency of a 2A Peptide Derived from Porcine Teschovirus-1 in Human Cell Lines, Zebrafish and Mice

When expression of more than one gene is required in cells, bicistronic or multicistronic expression vectors have been used. Among various strategies employed to construct bicistronic or multicistronic vectors, an internal ribosomal entry site (IRES) has been widely used. Due to the large size and difference in expression levels between genes before and after IRES, however, a new strategy was required to replace IRES. A self-cleaving 2A peptide could be a good candidate to replace IRES because of its small size and high cleavage efficiency between genes upstream and downstream of the 2A peptide. Despite the advantages of the 2A peptides, its use is not widespread because (i) there are no publicly available cloning vectors harboring a 2A peptide gene and (ii) comprehensive comparison of cleavage efficiency among various 2A peptides reported to date has not been performed in different contexts. Here, we generated four expression plasmids each harboring different 2A peptides derived from the foot-and-mouth disease virus, equine rhinitis A virus, Thosea asigna virus and porcine teschovirus-1, respectively, and evaluated their cleavage efficiency in three commonly used human cell lines, zebrafish embryos and adult mice. Western blotting and confocal microscopic analyses revealed that among the four 2As, the one derived from porcine teschovirus-1 (P2A) has the highest cleavage efficiency in all the contexts examined. We anticipate that the 2A-harboring cloning vectors we generated and the highest efficiency of the P2A peptide we demonstrated would help biomedical researchers easily adopt the 2A technology when bicistronic or multicistronic expression is required.
A glaucoma-associated mutant of optineurin selectively induces death of retinal ganglion cells which is inhibited by antioxidants.

PURPOSE Mutations in the coding region of the OPTN gene are associated with certain glaucomas. Although the function of the optineurin protein is yet to be elucidated, the most common mutation, E50K, is associated with a severe phenotype. This study explores some functional features of optineurin and its mutants. METHODS Plasmids expressing normal or wild-type (WT) and E50K, R545Q, H26D, and H486R mutant optineurin were transfected into HeLa, Cos-1, IMR32, and the rat retinal ganglion cell (RGC) line RGC-5, and their effects on cell survival monitored by morphologic observation of cells were studied. Expression of optineurin and its mutants was monitored by immunofluorescence staining of cells and by Western blotting. RESULTS The E50K mutant of optineurin selectively induced the death of retinal ganglion cells but not of the other cell lines tested. Although the expression of optineurin and E50K mutant suppressed cell death induced by tumor necrosis factor-alpha in HeLa cells, they potentiated this cell death in retinal ganglion cells. Cell death induced by the optineurin mutant in retinal ganglion cells was inhibited by the antioxidants N-acetylcysteine and Trolox. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) were produced upon expression of E50K, which were reduced by antioxidants. Coexpression of manganese superoxide dismutase with the E50K mutant abolished ROS production and inhibited cell death. CONCLUSIONS The E50K mutation of optineurin acquired the ability to induce cell death selectively in retinal ganglion cells. This cell death was mediated by oxidative stress. The present findings raise the possibility of antioxidant use for delaying or controlling some forms of glaucoma.
Dichotomy in the NRT Gene Families of Dicots and Grass Species

A large proportion of the nitrate (NO3 −) acquired by plants from soil is actively transported via members of the NRT families of NO3 − transporters. In Arabidopsis, the NRT1 family has eight functionally characterised members and predominantly comprises low-affinity transporters; the NRT2 family contains seven members which appear to be high-affinity transporters; and there are two NRT3 (NAR2) family members which are known to participate in high-affinity transport. A modified reciprocal best hit (RBH) approach was used to identify putative orthologues of the Arabidopsis NRT genes in the four fully sequenced grass genomes (maize, rice, sorghum, Brachypodium). We also included the poplar genome in our analysis to establish whether differences between Arabidopsis and the grasses may be generally applicable to monocots and dicots. Our analysis reveals fundamental differences between Arabidopsis and the grass species in the gene number and family structure of all three families of NRT transporters. All grass species possessed additional NRT1.1 orthologues and appear to lack NRT1.6/NRT1.7 orthologues. There is significant separation in the NRT2 phylogenetic tree between NRT2 genes from dicots and grass species. This indicates that determination of function of NRT2 genes in grass species will not be possible in cereals based simply on sequence homology to functionally characterised Arabidopsis NRT2 genes and that proper functional analysis will be required. Arabidopsis has a unique NRT3.2 gene which may be a fusion of the NRT3.1 and NRT3.2 genes present in all other species examined here. This work provides a framework for future analysis of NO3 − transporters and NO3 − transport in grass crop species.