Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simulation of Granular Flows and Pile Formation in a Flat-Bottomed Hopper and Bin, and Experimental Verification

Granular flows of 200 μm particles and the pile formation in a flat-bottomed hopper and bin in the presence of air and in a vacuum were predicted based on three-dimensional numerically empirical constitutive relations using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics and Computational Fluid Dynamics methods. The constitutive relations for the strain rate independent stress have been obtained as the functions of the Almansi strain including the large deformation by the same method as Yuu et al. [1]. The constitutive relations cover the elastic and the plastic regions including the flow state and represent the friction mechanism of granular material. We considered the effect of air on the granular flow and pile by the two-way coupling method. The granular flow patterns, the shapes of piles and the granular flow rates in the evolution are compared with experimental data measured under the same conditions. There was good agreement between these results, which suggests that the constitutive relations and the simulation method would be applicable for predicting granular flows and pile formation with complex geometry including free surface geometry. We describe the mechanisms by which the air decreases the granular flow rate and forms the convergence granular flow below the hopper outlet.
A New Animal Model of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy *

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with hippocampal sclerosis is a predominant form of acquired epilepsy, characterized by profound neuronal loss and gliosis in the hippocampal formation and by recurrent complex partial seizures. Retrospective studies suggest that the disease is related to an initial precipitating event, such as febrile seizures in early childhood. In rodents, TLE can be modeled by inducing a status epilepticus, either by prolonged electrical stimulation or by administration of drugs, such as pilocarpine or kainic acid, which produce a strong activation of the hippocampal formation. These treatments produce extensive bilateral lesions and lead to recurrent, generalized seizures following a latent period of several weeks. In this review, a new animal model is described, in which kainic acid is injected unilaterally into the hippocampus of adult mice to cause a small initial lesion. Thereafter, the lesion leads to a gradual , unilateral degeneration of the hippocampus CA1 area and to a marked dispersion of dentate gyrus granule cells, two features of the human pathology. Following a latent period of about 2 weeks, the mice develop focal, recurrent seizures interspaced with interictal spikes-and-waves lasting for the rest of the life of the animal. The clear temporal separation between the acute lesion, the latent phase, and the chronic seizures allows investigating morphological and functional changes underlying epileptogenesis and generation of recurrent focal seizures. We show that while kainic acid injection initially affects specific populations of GABA-ergic interneurons, there is a pronounced up-regulation of GABAergic transmission in the dentate gyrus during the chronic phase. The plasticity of the surviving GABA-ergic neurons might represent a compensatory adaptation to recurrent seizures. Un nouveau modèle animal de l'épilepsie du lobe temporal L'épilepsie du lobe temporal (ELT) avec sclérose hip-pocampale est une forme fréquente d'épilepsie acquise. Elle se caractérise par une perte importante de neuro-nes et une forte gliose dans l'hippocampe, ainsi que par des crises partielles complexes. Des études rétrospec-tives suggèrent que l'ELT soit liée à un événement déclenchant lors de la petite enfance, tel que la surve-nue d'une crise fébrile. Chez les rongeurs, il est possible de modéliser l'ELT en induisant un status epilepticus par des stimulations électriques répétées ou par l'injection systémique de substances excitotoxiques telles que la pilocarpine ou l'acide kaïnique. Ces traitements provo-quent de fortes lésions dans l'hippocampe et déclen-chent, après un temps de latence, des crises épilep-tiques généralisées spontanées. Dans le modèle d'ELT décrit ici, tout commence par une petite …
Fronts and fluctuations at a critical surface

The properties of a front between two different phases in the presence of a smoothly inhomogeneous external field that takes its critical value at the crossing point is analyzed. Two generic scenarios are studied. In the first, the system admits a bistable solution and the external field governs the rate in which one phase invades the other. The second mechanism corresponds to a second order transition that, in the case of reactive systems, takes the form of a transcritical bifurcation at the crossing point. We solve for the front shape and its response to external white noise, showing that static properties and also some of the dynamics features cannot distinguish between the two scenarios. The only reliable indicator turns out to be the fluctuation statistics. These take a Gaussian form in the bifurcation case and a double-peak shape in a bistable system. The results of a recent analysis of the morphogenesis process in Drosophila embryos are reanalyzed and we show, in contrast with the interpretation suggested by Krotov et. al., that the plausible underlying dynamics is bistable and not bifurcational.
Heterosubtype Neutralizing Responses to Influenza A (H5N1) Viruses Are Mediated by Antibodies to Virus Haemagglutinin

Background It is increasingly clear that influenza A infection induces cross-subtype neutralizing antibodies that may potentially confer protection against zoonotic infections. It is unclear whether this is mediated by antibodies to the neuraminidase (NA) or haemagglutinin (HA). We use pseudoviral particles (H5pp) coated with H5 haemagglutinin but not N1 neuraminidase to address this question. In this study, we investigate whether cross-neutralizing antibodies in persons unexposed to H5N1 is reactive to the H5 haemagglutinin. Methodology/Principal Findings We measured H5-neutralization antibody titers pre- and post-vaccination using the H5N1 micro-neutralization test (MN) and H5pp tests in subjects given seasonal vaccines and in selected sera from European elderly volunteers in a H5N1 vaccine trial who had detectable pre-vaccination H5N1 MN antibody titers. We found detectable (titer ≥20) H5N1 neutralizing antibodies in a minority of pre-seasonal vaccine sera and evidence of a serological response to H5N1 in others after seasonal influenza vaccination. There was excellent correlation in the antibody titers between the H5N1 MN and H5pp tests. Similar correlations were found between MN and H5pp in the pre-vaccine sera from the cohort of H5N1 vaccine trial recipients. Conclusions/Significance Heterosubtype neutralizing antibody to H5N1 in healthy volunteers unexposed to H5N1 is mediated by cross-reaction to the H5 haemagglutinin.
VEP Responses to Op-Art Stimuli

Several types of striped patterns have been reported to cause adverse sensations described as visual discomfort. Previous research using op-art-based stimuli has demonstrated that spurious eye movement signals can cause the experience of illusory motion, or shimmering effects, which might be perceived as uncomfortable. Whilst the shimmering effects are one cause of discomfort, another possible contributor to discomfort is excessive neural responses: As striped patterns do not have the statistical redundancy typical of natural images, they are perhaps unable to be encoded efficiently. If this is the case, then this should be seen in the amplitude of the EEG response. This study found that stimuli that were judged to be most comfortable were also those with the lowest EEG amplitude. This provides some support for the idea that excessive neural responses might also contribute to discomfort judgements in normal populations, in stimuli controlled for perceived contrast.
A Comprehensive Methodology to Visualize Articulations for the Physiological Human

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) account for the largest fraction of temporary and permanent disabilities. Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common MSDs which is characterized by a degeneration of articular cartilages. Understanding and preventing OA are of paramount importance in our aging yet very active society, and in this context, computer-assisted models of articulations are highly demanded by biomechanical and medical communities. To investigate the causes of some idiopathic OA, we have devised a unique comprehensive methodology to simulate musculoskeletal models of human articulations. Built from a rich variety of acquisition modalities (MRI, Motion capture, Body scanning, etc.) and innovative research, these models are fully subject-specific and account for anatomy, motion and biomechanical behavior of the articulations. This paper presents a complete overview of the methodology with medical validation and clinical case studies.
Governing moth and man

Ce texte analyse, dans la partie meridionale de l’ile de Gotland, situee sur la cote sud-est de la Suede, le traitement politique de l’invasion de la mite, un insecte provoquant des reactions allergiques chez l’homme. Compte tenu de cette nuisance et de ses effets possibles a terme sur le tourisme, la population affectee exigea l’aspersion de produits pour reduire et controler cet insecte. Cependant, on se prononca contre ce type de traitement, et ce en raison du manque de connaissances quant a ses repercussions ecologiques, notamment sur la biodiversite. Des entretiens furent menes avec des acteurs de premier plan afin de comprendre comment ils apprehendaient ce probleme et comment ils essayaient de le gerer. Le postulat de cette etude, c’est que la regulation ne porte pas seulement sur des objets specifiques mais qu’elle contribue aussi largement a creer ces objets. L’approche empirique s’interessera a la facon dont les acteurs percoivent le probleme et aux solutions qu’ils proposent. En depit des demandes des residents locaux pour que soient asperges des insecticides, les instances publiques n’entreprirent aucune action particuliere pour controler la population d’insectes mais choisirent deliberement de gerer les demandes formulees par la population locale. Le resultat en fut qu’on ne se contenta pas de gerer des mites mais qu’on gera aussi des hommes.
An Analysis of Inflation Expectations of the Turkish Private Manufacturing Industry

The main purpose of this paper is to make a detailed analysis of the quantified expected inflation series obtained from the Business Tendency Survey conducted by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Different representations of simple expectation formation mechanisms that appeared in the literature are discussed in the context of Turkey. In selecting the most appropriate mechanism, instead of an ad hoc and an arbitrary methodology, nested hypotheses and the sequential testing procedure are applied. A general first order extrapolative mechanism is found as a result of this procedure. But, the selected mechanism is far from being satisfactory. Therefore, a new augmented model. in which one lag of inflation, exchange rate, private sector capacity utilization rate, stock evaluations of the last three months and average cost expectations of the next three months are employed as explanatory variables, is proposed. Finally, taking into account problems regarding the tests of rationality, efficiency and orthogonality tests are carried out. As a result of these tests, rationality assumption cannot be rejected very powerfully. However, this is not stemmed from the accuracy of the expectations, but from the structure of the economy that precludes accurate short-term forecasting.
A pr 2 00 8 Geometrical Properties of Feynman Path Integrals

This model is one of the possible geometrical interpretations of Quantum Mechanics where found to every image Path correspondence the geodesic tra-jectory of classical test particles in the random geometry of the stochastic fields background. We are finding to the imagined Feynman Path a classical model of test particles as geodesic trajectory in the curved space of Projected Hilbert space on Bloch's sphere. In this model we describe the experimental microobjects as test particles with low mass and small size which get their quantum properties in the random curved space. In our model there is corresponds Feynman's Path Integrals to the geodesic trajectory of test particles in Projective Hilbert space named Pro-Hilbert space. We show that it is possible find to Feynman's description by imagined trajectories a classical model. We can to compare imagined Feynman Path and trajectories of test particles with classical action's function in random fields. In that case every trajectory in Feynman's Path Integrals corresponds to influence of single field from random fields background. Recent years a very fascinating idea to put QM into geometric language attracts the attention of many physicists [1]. The starting point for such an approach is the projective interpretation of the Hilbert space H as the space of rays. To illustrate the main idea it is convenient to decompose the Hermitian inner product ·|· in H into real and imaginary parts by putting for the two L 2 –vectors |ψ 1 = u 1 + ıv 1 and |ψ 2 = u 2 + ıv 2 : ψ 1 |ψ 2 = G (ψ 1 , ψ 2) − ıΩ (ψ 1 , ψ 2), (1) where G is a Riemannian inner product on H and Ω is a symplectic form, that is with (·, ·) denoting standard L 2 inner product. The symplectic form Ω revealed in (1) can acquire its dynamical content if one uses the special stochastic representation of QM. In our simulation of quantum trajectories we consider the behavior of classical test particles which get the property analogue to quantum-statistical property because the influence of random geometry. In our case we consider a differential equations with random coefficients. For example, the relative interval ℓ
Gauge fixing in (2+1)-gravity: Dirac bracket and spacetime geometry

We consider (2+1)-gravity with a vanishing cosmological constant as a constrained dynamical system. By applying Dirac's gauge fixing procedure, we implement the constraints and determine the Dirac bracket on the gauge-invariant phase space. The chosen gauge fixing conditions have a natural physical interpretation and specify an observer in the spacetime. We derive explicit expressions for the resulting Dirac brackets and discuss their geometrical interpretation. In particular, we show that specifying an observer with respect to two point particles gives rise to conical spacetimes, whose deficit angle and time shift are determined, respectively, by the relative velocity and minimal distance of the two particles.
Déterminants de l’évolution à court terme des soins hospitaliers et du devenir à long terme dans l’anorexie mentale sévère

L’anorexie mentale est une pathologie affectant a la fois la sante mentale et la sante physique. Les formes les plus severes alors qu’elles necessitent des soins hospitaliers longs, ont un taux d’echappement aux soins tres eleve (20% des adolescents et 60% des adultes) et sont celles presentant le plus mauvais pronostic. Or cet echappement aux soins (ou sortie prematuree) genere a la fois des rechutes et une chronicisation. Si le devenir a long terme de ces patients est documente, les etudes centrees sur les formes les plus severes sont peu nombreuses, et parmi elles, celles prenant en compte simultanement les aspects somatiques et psychiques de leur evolution sont quasi inexistantes. C’est pourquoi, apres une mise au point sur les donnees epidemiologiques, concernant l’anorexie mentale, nous avons choisi de centrer notre travail de these sur d’une part la recherche de facteurs expliquant l’echappement aux soins, et pouvant devenir des cibles therapeutiques, et d’autre part le devenir physique et psychique de ces sujets dix ans apres une hospitalisation.La premiere etude portant sur 180 patients issus de dix centres francais prenant en charge des patients anorexiques severes, s’est appuye sur une etude d’epidemiologie clinique prospective multicentrique appelee EVALHOSPITAM. Notre objectif etait d’identifier des facteurs predictifs de l’echappement premature aux soins lors d’une hospitalisation pour anorexie mentale. En effet, la prise en compte de tels facteurs des l’admission permettrait peut-etre de diminuer l’echappement premature aux soins en cours d’hospitalisation, et par la contribuerait a ameliorer le pronostic de ces sujets. La seconde etude expose les resultats d’une etude de devenir de ces patients hospitalises a l’adolescence neuf annees en moyenne apres une hospitalisation. Notre travail se centre sur le devenir somatique a long terme de patients ayant souffert d’anorexie mentale, son lien avec le devenir psychique et une comparaison avec un echantillon issu de la population generale de meme âge et de meme sexe.
Real-time Person Tracking in High-resolution Panoramic Video for Automated Broadcast Production

For enabling immersive user experiences for interactive TV services and automating camera view selection and framing, knowledge of the location of persons in a scene is essential. We describe an architecture for detecting and tracking persons in high-resolution panoramic video streams, obtained from the Omni Cam, a panoramic camera stitching video streams from 6 HD resolution tiles. We use a CUDA accelerated feature point tracker, a blob detector and a CUDA HOG person detector, which are used for region tracking in each of the tiles before fusing the results for the entire panorama. In this paper we focus on the application of the HOG person detector in real-time and the speedup of the feature point tracker by porting it to NVIDIA's Fermi architecture. Evaluations indicate significant speedup for our feature point tracker implementation, enabling the entire process in a real-time system.
A State-Space Calculus for Rational Probability Density Functions and Applications to Non-Gaussian Filtering

We propose what we believe to be a novel approach to performing calculations for rational density functions using state-space representations of the densities. By standard results from realization theory, a rational probability density function is considered to be the transfer function of a linear system with generally complex entries. The stable part of this system is positive-real, which we call the density summand. The existence of moments is investigated using the Markov parameters of the density summand. Moreover, explicit formulae are given for the existing moments in terms of these Markov parameters. Some of the main contributions of the paper are explicit state-space descriptions for products and convolutions of rational densities. As an application which is of interest in its own right, the filtering problem is investigated for a linear time-varying system whose noise inputs have rational probability density functions. In particular, state-space formulations are derived for the calculation of the prediction and update equations. The case of Cauchy noise is treated as an illustrative example.
Oxygen-mediated enhancement of primary hepatocyte metabolism, functional polarization, gene expression, and drug clearance

The liver is a major site for the metabolism of xenobiotic compounds due to its abundant level of phase I/II metabolic enzymes. With the cost of drug development escalating to over $400 million/drug there is an urgent need for the development of rigorous models of hepatic metabolism for preclinical screening of drug clearance and hepatotoxicity. Here, we present a microenvironment in which primary human and rat hepatocytes maintain a high level of metabolic competence without a long adaptation period. We demonstrate that co-cultures of hepatocytes and endothelial cells in serum-free media seeded under 95% oxygen maintain functional apical and basal polarity, high levels of cytochrome P450 activity, and gene expression profiles on par with freshly isolated hepatocytes. These oxygenated co-cultures demonstrate a remarkable ability to predict in vivo drug clearance rates of both rapid and slow clearing drugs with an R2 of 0.92. Moreover, as the metabolic function of oxygenated co-cultures stabilizes overnight, preclinical testing can be carried out days or even weeks before other culture methods, significantly reducing associated labor and cost. These results are readily extendable to other culture configurations including three-dimensional culture, bioreactor studies, as well as microfabricated co-cultures.
On the Voluntary and Involuntary Provision of Public Goods

This paper extends pre-existing results concerning voluntary private funding of public goods. The assumption that individuals care about themagnitude of their own contributions only insofar as these contributions affect the aggregate level of expenditures is shown to have untenable implications. The analysis suggests that a reexaminationof the factors that motivate individuals to make contributions is in order. Copyright 1986 by American Economic Association.
Temporal Characteristics of Gustatory Responses in Rat Parabrachial Neurons Vary by Stimulus and Chemosensitive Neuron Type

It has been demonstrated that temporal features of spike trains can increase the amount of information available for gustatory processing. However, the nature of these temporal characteristics and their relationship to different taste qualities and neuron types are not well-defined. The present study analyzed the time course of taste responses from parabrachial (PBN) neurons elicited by multiple applications of “sweet” (sucrose), “salty” (NaCl), “sour” (citric acid), and “bitter” (quinine and cycloheximide) stimuli in an acute preparation. Time course varied significantly by taste stimulus and best-stimulus classification. Across neurons, the ensemble code for the three electrolytes was similar initially but quinine diverged from NaCl and acid during the second 500ms of stimulation and all four qualities became distinct just after 1s. This temporal evolution was reflected in significantly broader tuning during the initial response. Metric space analyses of quality discrimination by individual neurons showed that increases in information (H) afforded by temporal factors was usually explained by differences in rate envelope, which had a greater impact during the initial 2s (22.5% increase in H) compared to the later response (9.5%). Moreover, timing had a differential impact according to cell type, with between-quality discrimination in neurons activated maximally by NaCl or citric acid most affected. Timing was also found to dramatically improve within-quality discrimination (80% increase in H) in neurons that responded optimally to bitter stimuli (B-best). Spikes from B-best neurons were also more likely to occur in bursts. These findings suggest that among PBN taste neurons, time-dependent increases in mutual information can arise from stimulus- and neuron-specific differences in response envelope during the initial dynamic period. A stable rate code predominates in later epochs.
Smart Distance Keeping: Modeling and Perspectives for Embedded Diagnosis

This paper presents a detailed description of an advanced Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system implemented on a Renault-Volvo Trucks vehicle. One of the main differences between this new system, which is called the Smart Distance Keeping (SDK), and the classical ACC is the choice of the safe distance. This later is the distance between the vehicle (with the ACC or the SDK system) and the front obstacle (which may be a vehicle). It is supposed fixe in the case of the ACC, while variable in the case of the SDK. The variation of this distance (in the case of SDK) depends essentially on the relative velocity between the vehicle and the front obstacle. The main contribution of this work is on the SDK system architecture, the design of its environment model, and the proposition of a detection and isolation strategy for some of the possible faults that may be produced on the system.