Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fabrication and characterisation of bismuth nanowires

Single- and polycrystalline bismuth nanowires were created by electrochemical deposition in ion track-etched polycarbonate membranes. Wires fabricated potentiostatically possess a strong texture which becomes more pronounced for wires deposited at lower overpotentials, at higher temperatures, and in nanopores of smaller diameters. By applying reverse pulses, wires that are textured can be grown where the texture increases for shorter pulses and higher anodic potentials. Infrared spectroscopic microscopy on single bismuth nanowires reveals an absorption whose onset is blueshifted with decreasing wire diameter. The observed effect may be attributed either to an increase of the direct band gap at the L-point of the Brillouin zone caused by quantum-size effects, or to a blueshift of the plasma frequency produced by surface defects acting as dopants. In addition, electrical resistance of single bismuth nanowires, embdedded in the template, has been measured as a function of both wire crystallinity and temperature. The results demonstrate that finite-size effects affect the wire resistivity which is higher than the bulk value and depends on the mean grain size. Measurements as a function of temperature demonstrate that the charge carrier mobility saturates at low temperatures because of electron scattering at grain boundaries, resulting in a non-monotonic resistance versus temperature behaviour. Further, measurements of the electrical resistance of wire arrays as a function of the magnetic field show a rising magnetoresistance with increasing diameter and growing mean grain size.
Reliable routing in wireless sensor networks for smart grid environments

The environmental conditions, e.g., fading, multi-path, obstructions, in smart grid environment, prevent reliable and successful packet transmissions for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology. To provide reliable communications with WSN, to overcome the harsh environmental conditions of smart grid, and to prolong the network life time, reliable link quality estimation should be made and routing algorithms which consider multiple conditions, e.g., energy consumption, shortest path and link quality, should be used. In this paper, the performances of routing algorithms which can address this need are compared in terms of average delay, network lifetime and packet delivery rate in smart grid substation environment. Moreover, WSN-based smart grid applications and the challenges in estimation of link quality are briefly explained.
Distributed and fault-tolerant thread management for parallel computations ( draft version )

Application of distributed computations becomes more attractive with the advances in computer networks. Lemick is an environment for automation of real-time distributed programming expressed in the terms of more traditional multithreaded programming. This paper gives a brief introduction into the implementation of Lemick distributed threads. A focus is made on the mechanisms employed to support fault tolerant execution environment.
Texture, Microstructure, and Surface Mechanical Properties of AZ31 Magnesium Alloys Processed by ECASD

The current work presents the results on Mg AZ31B alloy sheets subject to four passes using Equal Channel Angular Sheet Drawing (ECASD) at various temperatures (25, 100, and 200 °C). Textures are determined by laboratory X‐ray diffraction and EBSD. EBSD allows the evaluation of the evolution of crystal sizes in function of the distance to the surface and the presence of twinning. Twinning is evident by the analysis of the textures, which show mainly two components, one due to the spin induced by the shearing of ECASD and the other one as a direct product of twinning. Micro‐hardness, by Knoop tests on the lateral face of the sheets, are performed, allowing the determination of the influence of SPD on the hardness from surface to surface, going through the center of the sheet. Almost 50% increase on hardening, with respect to the non‐processed material, is obtained near to the surface after four and six passes. The effectiveness as a hardening technique declined after the first four passes.
Fast Vehicle Detection in Aerial Imagery

In recent years, several real-time or near real-time object detectors have been developed. However these object detectors are typically designed for first-person view images where the subject is large in the image and do not directly apply well to detecting vehicles in aerial imagery. Though some detectors have been developed for aerial imagery, these are either slow or do not handle multi-scale imagery very well. Here the popular YOLOv2 detector is modified to vastly improve it's performance on aerial data. The modified detector is compared to Faster RCNN on several aerial imagery datasets. The proposed detector gives near state of the art performance at more than 4x the speed.
Ethical and effective: Approaches to residential care for people with dementia

New knowledge underpins calls for change in approaches to the care of people with dementia. Person-centred care is considered essential, whereas purpose-built facilities and environmental design are reported to enhance safety and to have a positive effect on behaviour. Research findings have highlighted the inappropriate use of antipsychotic drugs and there is debate about their value in ‘managing’ symptoms. This paper presents the combination of approaches used to enable residents of two secure dementia units to live life within their ability and without antipsychotic drugs. Essential to the success of the change process was staff education, knowledge of the person, a varied leisure activity programme and a supportive environment. Evidence of the positive difference these strategies made includes statistics that show a decline in falls and behavioural issues, and feedback from family members. In light of the evidence, this article posits that it is ethically wrong to give people with dementia antipsychotic medications because their behaviour is deemed to be unacceptable, when there are other viable options.
SGLT-2 inhibitors and cardiovascular risk: Proposed pathways and review of ongoing outcome trials

Given the multi-faceted pathogenesis of atherosclerosis in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), it is likely that interventions to mitigate this risk must address cardiovascular (CV) risk factors beyond glucose itself. Sodium glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors are newer antihyperglycaemic agents with apparent multiple effects. Inherent in their mode of action to decrease glucose reabsorption by the kidneys by increasing urinary glucose excretion, these agents improve glycaemic control independent of insulin secretion with a low risk of hypoglycaemia. In this review, we outline those CV risk factors that this class appears to influence and provide the design features and trial characteristics of six ongoing outcome trials involving more than 41,000 individuals with T2DM. Those risk factors beyond glucose that can potentially be modulated positively with SGLT-2 inhibitors include blood pressure, weight, visceral adiposity, hyperinsulinaemia, arterial stiffness, albuminuria, circulating uric acid levels and oxidative stress. On the other hand, small increases in low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-cholesterol levels have also been observed for the class, which theoretically might offset some of these benefits. The potential translational impact of these effects is being tested with outcome trials, also reviewed in this article, powered to assess both macrovascular as well as certain microvascular outcomes in T2DM. These are expected to begin to report in late 2015.
In Vitro and In Vivo High-Throughput Assays for the Testing of Anti-Trypanosoma cruzi Compounds

Background The two available drugs for treatment of T. cruzi infection, nifurtimox and benznidazole (BZ), have potential toxic side effects and variable efficacy, contributing to their low rate of use. With scant economic resources available for antiparasitic drug discovery and development, inexpensive, high-throughput and in vivo assays to screen potential new drugs and existing compound libraries are essential. Methods In this work, we describe the development and validation of improved methods to test anti-T. cruzi compounds in vitro and in vivo using parasite lines expressing the firefly luciferase (luc) or the tandem tomato fluorescent protein (tdTomato). For in vitro assays, the change in fluorescence intensity of tdTomato-expressing lines was measured as an indicator of parasite replication daily for 4 days and this method was used to identify compounds with IC50 lower than that of BZ. Findings This method was highly reproducible and had the added advantage of requiring relatively low numbers of parasites and no additional indicator reagents, enzymatic post-processes or laborious visual counting. In vivo, mice were infected in the footpads with fluorescent or bioluminescent parasites and the signal intensity was measured as a surrogate of parasite load at the site of infection before and after initiation of drug treatment. Importantly, the efficacy of various drugs as determined in this short-term (<2 weeks) assay mirrored that of a 40 day treatment course. Conclusion These methods should make feasible broader and higher-throughput screening programs needed to identify potential new drugs for the treatment of T. cruzi infection and for their rapid validation in vivo.
Usage patterns and latent semantic analyses for task goal inference of multimodal user interactions

This paper describes our work in usage pattern analysis and development of a latent semantic analysis framework for interpreting multimodal user input consisting speech and pen gestures. We have designed and collected a multimodal corpus of navigational inquiries. Each modality carries semantics related to domain-specific task goal. Each inquiry is annotated manually with a task goal based on the semantics. Multimodal input usually has a simpler syntactic structure than unimodal input and the order of semantic constituents is different in multimodal and unimodal inputs. Therefore, we proposed to use semantic analysis to derive the latent semantics from the multimodal inputs using latent semantic modeling (LSM). In order to achieve this, we parse the recognized Chinese spoken input for the spoken locative references (SLR). These SLRs are then aligned with their corresponding pen gesture(s). Then, we characterized the cross-modal integration pattern as 3-tuple multimodal terms with SLR, pen gesture type and their temporal relation. The inquiry-multimodal term matrix is then decomposed using singular value decomposition (SVD) to derive the latent semantics automatically. Task goal inference based on the latent semantics shows that the task goal inference accuracy on a disjoint test set is of 99%.
Co-curator: designing for mobile ideation in groups

We introduce Co-Curator, a prototype mobile app designed to support collection and sharing of referential sources of inspiration in face-to-face design ideation meetings. The design of the app stems from both ideas of repurposing mobile devices in everyday mundane tasks and existing practice amongst designers to share and collate sources of inspiration during the early stages of collaborative design projects. The findings from a trial show that the app was positively received and that people felt that it supported creating a collection of sources, as well as the task of sharing within design ideation meetings. Furthermore, the trial suggests that the synchronised gesture required to share sources seemingly alleviates the awkwardness arising from public gesture performance. Finally, from the findings we also highlight further considerations that need to be given to better support coordination and focus within these meetings.
Muscle-tendon unit morphology, architecture and stiffness in relation to strength and responses to strength training

This thesis examined the change in skeletal muscle architecture with contractile force production, the relationship of architecture with muscle strength parameters and if muscle tendinous tissue stiffness determines in vivo explosive strength (i.e. rate of torque development, RTD). Muscle and tendinous tissue adaptations to contrasting strength training regimes, and the potential capacity of these tissues to adapt following chronic strength training were also explored. Quadriceps femoris fascicle length (FL) decreased, while the pennation angle (PA) increased in a curvi-linearly manner from rest to maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) torque. Consequently, effective physiological cross-sectional area (effPCSA) during MVC was 27% greater than at rest, although effPCSA measured at rest and during MVC had similar correlations to maximal strength. In the earliest phase of contraction, FL, but not PA, was negatively related (R2=0.187) to voluntary RTD. Neither FL nor PA was related to maximal isometric or dynamic strength. Muscle-tendon unit (MTU) and patellar tendon (PT) stiffness were unrelated to voluntary and evoked RTD. Relative PT stiffness was also unrelated to relative RTD, although relative MTU stiffness was related to voluntary RTD (25-55%MVT, R2≤0.188) and evoked RTD (5-50%MVT, R2≤0.194). MTU stiffness increased after sustained-contraction (SCT, +21%), though not explosive-contraction strength training (ECT). PT stiffness increased similarly after ECT (+20%) and SCT (+16%), yet neither induced tendon hypertrophy. SCT produced modest muscle (+8%) and aponeurosis (+7%) hypertrophy. Chronic strength trained (CST: >3 years) males had substantially greater muscle and aponeurosis size, but similar tendon size as untrained controls (UNT) and short-term (12 weeks) strength trained (STT) individuals. Between these groups, at the highest common force, MTU stiffness was indifferent, while PT stiffness was similarly greater in STT and CST than UNT. These results suggest FL and PA have little influence on muscle strength and tendon stiffness has no influence on RTD. Maximum strength negated any qualitative influence of MTU stiffness on in vivo RTD. Component MTU tissues (muscle-aponeurosis vs. external tendon) adapt differentially depending on the strength training regime. Specifically, free tendon appeared to adapt to high magnitude loading, while loading duration is also an important stimulus for the muscle-aponeurosis. However, chronic strength training was not concordant with greater higher force MTU stiffness, and does not further increase higher force PT stiffness beyond the adaptations that occur after 12 weeks of strength training. Finally, no evidence was found for tendon hypertrophy in response to strength training.
Program instrumentation for debugging and monitoring with AspectC++

Monitoring is a widely-used technique to check assumptions about the real-time behavior of a system, debug the code, or enforce the system to react if certain deadlines are passed. Program instrumentation is needed to insert monitoring code fragments into the monitored system if the monitor is implemented without hardware support. This paper describes a language-based approach to automated program instrumentation using the general purpose aspect language AspectC++. The language is an extension to the C/C++ programming language. It provides language features that allow a highly modular and thus easily configurable implementation of monitoring tasks and supports re-use of common implementations. Even though the AspectC++ language provides a convenient level of abstraction no overhead is imposed on the system in comparison to pure C/C++ code.
Efficient de-interlacing technique by inter-field information

This paper presents an efficient method based on inter-field information for video de-interlacing. The basic idea is to classify the field dynamically to background or foreground area. The proposed method interpolates missing pixels using temporal information in the background area, and then interpolates remaining pixels using spatial and temporal information in the foreground area. Extensive simulations conducted for video sequences show that the performance of the proposed method is superior to the previous methods based on the ELA and the line averaging method in terms of the objective and subjective image qualities. Moreover, our proposed algorithm requires lower computational complexity and provides high-quality video sequences on the progressive devices.
Left in limbo: patients' views on care across the primary/secondary interface.

OBJECTIVES: To discover the views of patients about their experiences across the interface between primary and secondary health care, including referral from general practitioners, outpatient and inpatient care, discharge, and aftercare. DESIGN: A qualitative study involving individual and focus group interviews of patients and interviews of carers. SUBJECTS: 33 patients who had attended at least one outpatient appointment or had been an inpatient between two and four months previously, and eight carers of patients with chronic conditions. SETTING: Three acute hospitals and one community health service in Leicestershire. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Common themes in the views of patients and carers towards their experiences of care. RESULTS: Five themes emerged. The first four were: "getting in" (access to appropriate care), "fitting in" (orientation of care to the patient's requirements), "knowing what's going on" (provision of information), and "continuity" (continuity of staff and coordination and communication among professionals). The fifth theme was "limbo" (difficulty in making progress through the system), which was influenced by failures in care in relation to the other four themes. CONCLUSIONS: The concept of progress is central to patients' views of care. It involves both progress through the healthcare system and progress towards recovery or adjustment to an altered health state. Patients' views on how well they progress through the healthcare system may be an appropriate indicator for monitoring health service performance.
On Factoring Integers and Evaluating Discrete Logarithms

We present a survey of the state of two problems in mathematics and computer science: factoring integers and solving discrete logarithms. Included are applications in cryptography, a discussion of algorithms which solve the problems and the connections between these algorithms, and an analysis of the theoretical relationship between these problems and their cousins among hard problems of number theory, including a new randomized reduction from factoring to composite discrete log. In conclusion we consider several alternative models of complexity and investigate the problems and their relationship in those models.
Identification of potent inhibitors against snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMP) using molecular docking and molecular dynamics studies

Snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMP) (Echis coloratus (Carpet viper) is a multifunctional enzyme that is involved in producing several symptoms that follow a snakebite, such as severe local hemorrhage, nervous system effects and tissue necrosis. Because the three-dimensional (3D) structure of SVMP is not known, models were constructed, and the best model was selected based on its stereo-chemical quality. The stability of the modeled protein was analyzed through molecular dynamics (MD) simulation studies. Structure-based virtual screening was performed, and 15 potential molecules with the highest binding energies were selected. Further analysis was carried out with induced fit docking, Prime/MM–GBSA (ΔGBind calculations), quantum-polarized ligand docking, and density functional theory calculations. Further, the stability of the lead molecules in the SVMP-active site was examined using MD simulation. The results showed that the selected lead molecules were highly stable in the active site of SVMP. Hence, these molecules could potentially be selective inhibitors of SVMP. These lead molecules can be experimentally validated, and their backbone structural scaffold could serve as building blocks in designing drug-like molecules for snake antivenom.
German broadcast news transcription

We describe a newly created broadcast news (BN) corpus based on programs of seven different German and Austrian TV stations and the development of a German BN transcription system based on this corpus. We report on a series of experiments addressing the fact that German is less suited than English for word-based trigram language models. Furthermore, we investigate various phoneme sets and examine the difference between a transregional standard (Bavarian dialect spoken in southern Germany and Austria) and standard German (Hochdeutsch) on the word error rate.
Meal-induced oxygen desaturation and dyspnea in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

OBJECTIVE To study arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2) obtained by pulse oximetry and dyspnea during active eating (AE) and passive eating (PE) in patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). DESIGN Patients were studied on two consecutive days with AE and PE, which occurred in random order. SpO2 was recorded for 20 mins before and during eating, and dyspnea was recorded by the patient using a 10 cm visual analogue scale before and upon completion of eating. SETTING Subjects were in-patients at an intermediate care facility who were hospitalized for pulmonary rehabilitation or for convalescence after an exacerbation of COPD. POPULATION STUDIED Thirty-five patients with severe COPD (forced expiratory volume in 1 s [FEV1] less than 50% predicted, FEV1 to forced vital capacity ratio less than 65%) were studied. Mean age was 70.5 7.1 years. MAIN RESULTS Mean SpO2 decreased significantly (P<0.05) from 91.7 3.4% to 90.1 4.0% during AE, and 91.7 3.2% to 90. 8 3.6% during PE. Mean lowest SpO2 was lower and percentage of time with SpO2 less than 90% was greater during eating compared with corresponding control periods during both AE and PE. Dyspnea increased significantly (P<0.05) from 1.4 1.2 to 3.3 2.3 cm during AE, and from 1.5 1.5 to 2.4 2.2 cm during PE. The increase in dyspnea was significantly greater during AE than PE. CONCLUSIONS Eating is an activity that can adversely affect SpO2 and increase dyspnea in patients with severe COPD. Oxygen desaturation and particularly increased dyspnea may at least in part relate to the recruitment of upper extremity muscles during eating.
AUDIMUS - SISTEMA DE RECONHECIMENTO DE FALA CONT INUA PARA O PORTUGUÊS EUROPEU

Neste artigo apresentamos o trabalho desenvolvido na realiza c~ao do AUDIMUS, um sistema de reconhecimento de fala cont nua para o Português europeu. Para a realiza c~ao de um sistema deste tipo foi necess ario recolher e desenvolver os diferentes componentes que s~ao dependentes da l ngua, como sejam uma base de dados de fala e respectiva segmenta c~ao e etiquetagem, grandes quantidades de texto, dicion arios de pronuncia c~ao e modelos de linguagem. De seguida treinaram-se os modelos ac usticos baseados no perceptr~ao multicamada que interligados com um descodi cador baseado nos modelos de Markov n~ao-observ aveis resultou num sistema h brido MLP/HMM. O est agio actual de desenvolvimento deste sistema j a nos permitiu obter um bom n vel de desempenho, sendo, no entanto, ainda pass vel de melhorias. Por outro lado, o desenvolvimento de um sistema deste tipo permite-nos lan car novas linhas de investiga c~ao na procura de solu c~oes tanto independentes da l ngua como outras onde se procura utilizar o conhecimento espec co da l ngua.