Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Particle Modeling for Complex Multi-Phase System with Internal Structures using DEM : Annual Report of the Earth Simulator Center April 2007-March 2008

Authors Hide Sakaguchi Institute for Research on Earth Evolution, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Shigeo Wada Department of Mechanical Science and Bioengineering, Osaka University Masanori Nakamura The Center for Advanced Medical Engineering and Informatics, Osaka University Kenichi Tsubota Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chiba University Yosuke Imai Department of Biomechanics and Robotics, Tohoku University
Production Economics of Private Forestry: A Comparison of Industrial and Nonindustrial Forest Owners

This paper compares the production behavior of industrial and nonindustrial private forestland owners in the southeastern U.S. using a restricted profit function. Profits are modeled as a function of two outputs, sawtimber and pulpwood, one variable input, regeneration effort, and two quasi-fixed inputs, land and growing stock. Although an identical profit function is rejected, the results indicate behavior consistent with profit-maximizing motives under both ownerships. The two ownerships have similar responses to input and output price changes, both in the short-run and in the long-run. However, nonindustrial owners appear to place a higher value on their standing timber and forestland than do industrial owners. The difference in estimated shadow values indicates that significant nonmarket benefits are being captured by nonindustrial owners and the benefits are reflected in their production behavior.
Gratitude, Positive Emotion, and Satisfaction with Life: A Test Of Mediated Effect

I examined the relationships among gratitude, positive emotion, and satisfaction with life, and whether positive emotion mediated associations between gratitude and satisfaction with life. Participants were 375 university students in Taiwan, who completed 3 instruments assessing the above constructs. Based on structural equation modeling, results showed that gratitude was positively associated with both positive emotion and satisfaction with life. Further, the effect of gratitude on satisfaction with life was found to be partially mediated by positive emotion. The findings thus suggest that gratitude not only has a direct impact on satisfaction with life but also indirectly affects satisfaction with life via the experience of positive emotion.
The HIB database of annotated UniGene clusters

SUMMARY The HumanInfoBase (HIB) is a database of putative human gene transcripts. UniGene clusters are assembled, and the resulting consensus sequences are submitted to the PEDANT software system (Frishman,D., Albermann,K., Hani,J., Heumann,K., Metanomski,A., Zollner,A. and Mewes,H.-W., 2001, Bioinformatics, 17, 44--57) for fully automatic sequence analysis and annotation. Predicted transcripts are classified using a variety of functional and structural categories, and hyperlinks to various databases are provided for additional information. A WWW-based graphical user interface represents the assembly process as well as functionally important sites in the putative transcripts.
Computational identification of tissue-specific alternative splicing elements in mouse genes from RNA-Seq

Tissue-specific alternative splicing is a key mechanism for generating tissue-specific proteomic diversity in eukaryotes. Splicing regulatory elements (SREs) in pre-mature messenger RNA play a very important role in regulating alternative splicing. In this article, we use mouse RNA-Seq data to determine a positive data set where SREs are over-represented and a reliable negative data set where the same SREs are most likely under-represented for a specific tissue and then employ a powerful discriminative approach to identify SREs. We identified 456 putative splicing enhancers or silencers, of which 221 were predicted to be tissue-specific. Most of our tissue-specific SREs are likely different from constitutive SREs, since only 18% of our exonic splicing enhancers (ESEs) are contained in constitutive RESCUE-ESEs. A relatively small portion (20%) of our SREs is included in tissue-specific SREs in human identified in two recent studies. In the analysis of position distribution of SREs, we found that a dozen of SREs were biased to a specific region. We also identified two very interesting SREs that can function as an enhancer in one tissue but a silencer in another tissue from the same intronic region. These findings provide insight into the mechanism of tissue-specific alternative splicing and give a set of valuable putative SREs for further experimental investigations.
Enhancement of posterior brain functional networks in bilingual older adults

Abstract Bilingualism has been said to improve cognition and even delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This research aimed to investigate whether bilingualism leaves a neurophysiological trace even when people are highly educated. We expected bilinguals to present better preserved brain functional networks, which could be a trace of higher cognitive reserve. With this purpose, we conducted a magnetoencephalographic study with a group of healthy older adults. We estimated functional connectivity using phase-locking value and found five clusters in parieto-occipital regions in which bilinguals exhibited greater functional connectivity than monolinguals. These clusters included brain regions typically implicated in language processing. Furthermore, these functional changes correlated with caudate volumes (a key region in language shifting and control) in the bilingual sample. Interestingly, decreased Functional Connectivity between posterior brain regions had already been identified as an indicator of aging/preclinical AD but, according to our study, bilingualism seems to exert the opposite effect.
Dynamic real-time prediction of flood inundation probabilities

Abstract The Bayesian Generalised Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) methodology, previously used in rainfall-runoff modelling, is applied to the distributed problem of predicting the space and time varying probabilities of inundation of all points on a flood plain. Probability estimates are based on conditioning predictions of Monte Carlo realizations of a distributed quasi-two-dimensional flood routing model using known levels at sites along the reach. The methodology can be applied in the flood forecasting context for which the N-step ahead inundation probability estimates can be updated in real time using telemetered information on water levels. It is also shown that it is possible to condition the Nstep ahead forecasts in real time using the (uncertain) on-line predictions of the downstream water levels at the end of the reach obtained from an adaptive transfer function model calibrated on reach scale inflow and outflow data.
The popularity of movies predict system based on data mining technology for CDN

In order to guide the strategy of distributing movies on the CDN system, this paper proposes a method which uses data mining techniques to predict the popularity of movies. The popularity of movies which is predicted is more suitable to the current CDN system. We compare the performance of the Bayesian Network and Decision Tree, and find that the Bayesian Network model is more suitable to CDN.
Demographic Change and the Future of State Income Taxes

Four factors suggest that population aging will have a larger fiscal impact in states with a high reliance on income taxes than in states with a high reliance on other taxes. First, as postulated by life-cycle consumption models, retirement has a larger impact on income than consumption. This life-cycle effect causes income tax receipts to fall more than sales tax receipts. Second, slower macroeconomic growth, which may occur because of population aging, will disproportionately impact income tax receipts. Third, preferences accorded elderly taxpayers substantially decrease income tax receipts. Fourth, the migration of high-income elderly taxpayers has an especially large impact on state income tax receipts.
The implementation of Joint QRS Detection and Data Compression Scheme for Web Based High Accuracy ECG Detection and Healthcare System

This paper presents the design of a complete package for an embedded programmable ECG monitoring system and detection of ECG characteristic points using joint QRS detection and data compression technique. The system also detects and monitors the other important parameters related to the human body, such as blood pressure and body temperature and displays it on the LCD screen. This system is expected to work more conveniently and accurately for the doctor to monitor the patient's condition sitting in his own office without being physically present near to the patient's bed. A low-voltage and high performance analog signal conditioning circuit is built to insure high signal quality. A joint approach for QRS detection and lossless data compression (JQDC) will result in lower overall system complexity. By sharing the computational load among multiple essential signal-processing tasks, the average complexity per task can be kept at low level. The algorithm for joint QRS detection and lossless data compression is based on an adaptive linear data prediction scheme which achieves high sensitivity and positive prediction (+P). Lower system complexity and better performance will make this algorithm suitable for portable ECG application. The web based wireless transmission technique is used so that the detected human body parameters can be transmitted to the doctor remotely. The system is built using ARM 7 processor which ensures high accuracy performance and consistent result in the timing operation of the system.
An automatic media-adventitia border segmentation approach for IVUS images

In image processing, segmentation is considered one of the most important and hardest operations. The media-adventitia segmentation, in Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) images, is one of the first steps for a vase 3D reconstruction, and it is an important operation for many applications: measurements of its border circumference, area and radius; for studies about the mechanical properties and anatomical structures of vessels; which consequently will infer about therapy plans and evaluations; localization of pathologies. The purpose here is to segment the media-adventitia in IVUS images with high accuracy by combining a set of imaging-processing techniques: Speckle Reducing Anisotropic Diffusion (SRAD), Wavelet, Otsu and Mathematical Morphology. Firstly, SRAD is applied to attenuate the speckle noises. Next, the vessel and plaque features are extracted by performing Wavelet Transform. Optimal thresholding is carried out by Otsu to create a binarized version of these features. Then, Mathematical Morphology is used to obtain an adventitia shape. Finally, this approach is evaluated by segmenting 100 challenging images, obtaining an average of True Positive (TP(%)) = 92.83±4.91, False Positive (FP(%)) = 3.43±3.47, False Negative (FN(%)) = 7.17±4.91, Max False Positive (MaxFP (mm)) = 0.27±0.22, Max False Negative (MaxFN(mm)) = 0.31±0.2. Furthermore, its effectiveness is demonstrated by comparing this result with a recent one in the literature.
Coherence for weak units

We define weak units in a semi-monoidal 2-category C as cancellable pseudo-idempotents: they are pairs (I,α) where I is an object such that tensoring with I from either side constitutes a biequivalence of C, and α : I ⊗ I → I is an equivalence in C. We show that this notion of weak unit has coherence built in: Theorem A: α has a canonical associator 2-cell, which automatically satisfies the pentagon equation. Theorem B: every morphism of weak units is automatically compatible with those associators. Theorem C: the 2- category of weak units is contractible if non-empty. Finally we show (Theorem E) that the notion of weak unit is equivalent to the notion obtained from the definition of tricategory: α alone induces the whole family of left and right maps (indexed by the objects), as well as the whole family of Kelly 2-cells (one for each pair of objects), satisfying the relevant coherence axioms.
Executive pay and corporate financial performance. An exploratiove data analysis

The relationship between executive pay and corporate financial performance continues to attract wide academic, media and policy attention. The very high salaries enjoyed by senior executives in corporations in the US are often contrasted with the relatively low pay received by executives in Europe and Asia. Empirical research on executive pay has mainly concentrated on the pay-performance relationship. Although the adopted data sets were very different within and across countries, the results are very similar and show very low payfor- performance elasticities. Despite the similar results, several methodological issues are still uncovered. Almost all studies assume linear or semi-log linear pay functions without applying a test of the adequate functional form. Most models do not allow for variations across corporations, industries, countries and time. It it assumed that pay functions are homogeneous across corporations, variations are captured by the fixed effects in the constants and assumption about the errors. The purpose of the paper is to circumvent these possible misspecifications by adopting an explorative data analysis using nonparametric methods which impose rather weak restrictions on the model. We start with the most general model but use methods that allow for a stepwise closer look by specifying the various objectives of investigation or the model we deduce from the previous results. In particular, we study heterogeneity between various industry groups. The results show quite clearly that all this methodological issues matter empirically, e.g. industry effects are important, assumptions of additivity crucial and nonlinearities strong and leads to underestimations of the elasticities in a standard parametric model. In sum, the results might have far reaching implications for further empirical studies on executive pay. At least, it weakens the concern expressed by many in that field that strong pay-forperformance incentives for executives are missing.
Creation of a genetic model of obesity in a teleost

The adipostat is the mechanism by which the brain detects and maintains constant levels of energy stored in adipocytes in the form of lipids. Key elements of the adipostat include the adipocyte‐derived hormone leptin that is expressed in proportion to energy levels and serves to communicate this information to the central nervous system and the central circuits, which sense and respond to leptin. Blockade of one of these circuits, the central melanocortin system, disrupts leptin action and causes a distinct obesity syndrome in mice and humans, characterized by increased adiposity as well as increased linear growth. We show here that transgenic zebrafish overexpressing the endogenous melanocortin antagonist agouti‐related protein (AgRP) also exhibit obesity, increased linear growth, and adipocyte hypertrophy. These findings demonstrate that key elements of the adipostat originated before the evolution of mammals. Furthermore, transgenic overexpression of AgRP in zebrafish yields a new model system for the genetic analysis of energy homeostasis in a simple vertebrate system. –Song, Y. , Cone, R. D. Creation of a genetic model of obesity in a teleost. FASEB J. 21, 2042–2049 (2007)
Real-Time Implementation of a Wavelet Based Speed Controller for Induction Motor Drives

This paper presents a real-time implementation of a wavelet-based multiresolution proportional-integral-derivate (PID) controller for accurate speed control of an induction motor drive under system uncertainties. A field oriented induction motor drive model is used to decouple the flux and torque components of the motor dynamics. The discrete wavelet transform is used to decompose the error signal between the actual and estimated speed into different frequency components at various scales. The wavelet-transformed coefficients of different scales, which represent many underlying phenomena such as process dynamics, measurement noise, and effects of external disturbances, are scaled by its respective gain and then added together to generate the control signal. The performance of this newly devised wavelet controller is evaluated by simulation results as well as by experimental results. The complete vector control scheme incorporating the proposed controller is successfully implemented in real-time using the DS1102 digital signal processor board for the laboratory 1-hp induction motor. In order to prove the superiority of the proposed controller over the conventional controllers, a comparison between the proposed and the conventional proportional-integral (PI) controller based systems is made at different dynamic operating conditions.
Appendix To: Bayesian Estimation of an Open Economy Model with Incomplete Pass-Through

The open economy DSGE model of the euro area developed and estimated in Adolfson et al. (2005) assumes the absence of feedback effects from the rest of the world to the Euro area. This note sheds some light on the reasonableness of this simplifying assumption. It also provides information about convergence in our estimations.
Magnetic quenching of alpha and diffusity tensors in helical turbulence

The e ﬀ ect of a dynamo-generated mean magnetic ﬁeld of Beltrami type on the mean electromotive force is studied. In the absence of the mean magnetic ﬁeld the turbulence is assumed to be homogeneous and isotropic, but it becomes inhomogeneous and anisotropic with this ﬁeld. Using the testﬁeld method the dependence of the alpha and turbulent di ﬀ usivity tensors on the magnetic Reynolds number Re M is determined for magnetic ﬁelds that have reached approximate equipartition with the velocity ﬁeld. The tensor components are characterized by a pseudoscalar α and a scalar turbulent magnetic di ﬀ usivity η t . Increasing Re M from 2 to 600 reduces η t by a factor ≈ 5, suggesting that the quenching of η t is, in contrast to the 2-dimensional case, only weakly dependent on Re M . Over the same range of Re M , however, α is reduced by a factor ≈ 14, which can qualitatively be explained by a corresponding increase of a magnetic contribution to the α e ﬀ ect with opposite sign. The level of ﬂuctuations of α and η t is only 10% and 20% of the respective kinematic reference values.
Route planning for OSU-ACT autonomous vehicle in DARPA Urban Challenge

The 2007 urban challenge, hosted by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), featured autonomous vehicle technology in an urban environment. This paper presents the route planning module for the vehicle developed by the Ohio State University Autonomous City Transport (OSU-ACT) team. Based on given information of the urban road network, this module is able to search for optimal routes to direct the vehicle through a series of checkpoints. It is also capable of dealing with dynamically changing road networks, through real time re-planning with updated road information. Simulations and field tests have validated the performance of the route planner.
Diagnosis and Management of Spontaneous Lumbar Venous Retroperitoneal Hematoma in Setting of Deep Venous Thrombosis: A Case Report and Algorithm

Retroperitoneal hematoma is rare and benefits from a systematic approach to prevent morbidity and mortality. Management of such bleeds is based upon patient stability, the cause (spontaneous or posttraumatic), and source (arterial or venous). Herein, the authors describe a diagnostic and management algorithm for retroperitoneal hemorrhage with an example of a rare lumbar venous bleed under the complicated clinical setting of deep venous thrombosis.
Parallel and configurable turbo decoder implementation for 3GPP-LTE

An FPGA implementation of a highly parallel and configurable architecture for turbo decoding, compliant with the 3GPP-LTE standard is presented. This architecture can be integrated in reconfigurable platforms for software defined radio applications. A novel combination of the next iteration initialization method and the parallel and sliding window techniques is used in the MAP algorithm. This allows high throughput and reduced storage requirements, as compared to other solutions. Synthesis results on Altera FPGAs show that this architecture can reach 337.6 Mbps at 8 decoding iterations.
Loss of E-cadherin expression is not a prerequisite for c-erbB2-induced epithelial-mesenchymal transition

Recent research into the mechanisms of tumour cell invasiveness has highlighted the parallels between carcinogenesis and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), originally described as a developmental transdifferentiation program but also implicated in fibrosis and cancer. In a model system for mammary carcinogenesis, we previously observed that induced signalling from a homodimer of the c-erbB2 (HER2) receptor tyrosine kinase in an initially non-malignant mammary cell line caused EMT where i) cell scattering occurred before downregulation of the cell-cell adhesion molecule E-cadherin and ii) the progress of EMT was dramatically delayed when cells were grown at high density. Here, we have further analysed these phenomena. Ectopic expression of E-cadherin concomitant with c-erbB2 signalling was unable to impede the progression of EMT, suggesting that E-cadherin downregulation is not required for EMT. Furthermore, fibroblast-like cells isolated after EMT induced in the presence or absence of ectopic E-cadherin expression showed highly similar morphology and vimentin expression. E-cadherin expressed in these fibroblastic cells had a subcellular localisation similar to that found in epithelial cells, but it exhibited a much weaker attachment to the cytoskeleton, suggesting cytoskeletal rearrangements as an important mechanism in EMT-associated cell scattering. We also investigated whether density-dependent inhibition of EMT is mediated by E-cadherin as a sensor for cell-cell contact, by expressing dominant-negative E-cadherin. While expression of this mutant weakened cell-cell adhesion, it failed to facilitate EMT at high cell densities. These results indicate that loss of E-cadherin expression is a consequence rather than a cause of c-erbB2-induced EMT and that density-dependent inhibition of EMT is not mediated by E-cadherin signalling.
Enhancing computational power : DALI child agents generation ⋆

In this paper we introduce a novel feature of the DALI language: a DALI agent is now able to activate child agents and to feed them either with a goal to be reached or a result to be obtained. Each child agent is independent and can communicate with its father or with other agents. When the child finally reaches the given goal, it notifies the father. At any point, the latter may possibly decide to stop it. Then: (i) each child is aware of the identity of its father; (ii) each child will notify the father about its achievements; (iii) a child can be stopped by the father; (iv) the father may set a limited amount of time for children’s activities completion. We introduce the mechanisms for children generation and the corresponding operational semantics, and then present an example.
Effect of Cu and Li addition on the electrical properties of KNN ceramics

In this study, effects of copper oxide addition and lithium modification on the properties of potassium sodium niobate (K0.5Na0.5)NbO3 - KNN ceramics were investigated. XRD phase analysis showed that all samples crystallized in pure perovskite phase. CuO addition and Li modification was found to enhance densification of KNN samples. CuO addition was found to lead to higher coupling coefficient (kp) and mechanical quality factor (Qm), whereas Li modification caused an increase in dielectric constant and piezoelectric charge coefficient (d33), and stabilization of the tetragonal phase below room temperature.