Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Single-walled carbon nanotube networks for flexible and printed electronics

Networks of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) can be processed from solution and have excellent mechanical properties. They are highly flexible and stretchable. Depending on the type of nanotubes (semiconducting or metallic) they can be used as replacements for metal or transparent conductive oxide electrodes or as semiconducting layers for field-effect transistors (FETs) with high carrier mobilities. They are thus competitive alternatives to other solution-processable materials for flexible and printed electronics. This review introduces the basic properties of SWNTs, current methods for dispersion and separation of metallic and semiconducting SWNTs and techniques to deposit and pattern dense networks from dispersion. Recent examples of applications of carbon nanotubes as conductors and semiconductors in (opto-)electronic devices and integrated circuits will be discussed.
Fabrication and Biological Properties of Bionic Structure Porous Alumina Ceramics with Spherical/Lamellar Pores

In order to solve the problem that low pore connectivity of the spherical porous ceramic, bionic structure porous alumina ceramics with spherical/lamellar pores were fabricated combining the adding pore-forming agent and two step freeze casting. The effects of fabrication parameters of the samples on morphologies, porosity and pore connectivity are investigated. The mechanical and biological properties of bionic structure porous alumina ceramics are also characterized. Results show that porous alumina ceramics with spherical/lamellar pores are obtained, and the lamellar pores pass through the spherical pores, which prove the pore connectivity reach 86.2 %. The mechanical properties are improved by porosity gradient from the inside (highly porous) to the outside (less porous) of porous alumina. Bionic structure porous alumina ceramics with spherical/lamellar pores have better cell growth and absorbance than those with spherical or lamellar pores only since its high pore connectivity.
Pricing and Design of Differentiated Services: Approximate Analysis and Structural Insights

We consider a model of a service system that delivers two nonsubstitutable services to a market of heterogenous users. The first service is delivered subject to a "guaranteed" (G) processing rate, and the second is a "best-effort" (BE) type service in which residual capacity not allocated to the guaranteed class isshared among BE users. Users, in turn, are sensitive to both price and congestion-related effects. The service provider's objective is to optimally design the system so as to extract maximum revenues. The design variables in this problem consist of a pair of static prices for the two services, a policy that controls admission of G users into the system, and the mechanism by which users are informed of the state of congestion in the system. Because these objectives are difficult to address using exact analysis, we pursue approximations that are tractable and lead to structural insights. Specifically, we first solve a deterministic relaxation of the original objective to obtain a "fluid-optimal" solution that is subsequently evaluated and refined to account for stochastic fluctuations. Using diffusion limits, we derive approximations that yield the following structural results: (1) pricing rules derived from the deterministic analysis are "almost" optimal, (2) the optimal operational regime for the system is close to heavy traffic, and (3) real-time congestion notification results in increased revenues. Numerical results illustrate the accuracy of the proposed approximations and validate the aforementioned structural insights.
University of Birmingham Hepatitis C Virus Envelope Glycoprotein Fitness Defines Virus Population Composition following Transmission to a New Host

Citation for published version (Harvard): Brown, RJP, Hudson, N, Wilson, G, Rehman, SU, Jabbari, S, Hu, K, Tarr, AW, Borrow, P, Joyce, M, Lewis, J, Zhu, LF, Law, M, Kneteman, N, Tyrrell, DL, McKeating, JA & Ball, JK 2012, 'Hepatitis C Virus Envelope Glycoprotein Fitness Defines Virus Population Composition following Transmission to a New Host', Journal of virology, vol. 86, no. 22, pp. 11956-66. https://doi.org/10.1128/JVI.01079-12
A randomized placebo-controlled clinical study of nab-paclitaxel as second-line chemotherapy for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer in China

We performed a randomized and placebo-controlled clinical study to investigate whether nab-paclitaxel can improve survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after unsuccessful first-line chemotherapy. Patients with stages III to IV advanced NSCLC after first-line platinum-based chemotherapy failure were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive second-line treatment of nab-paclitaxel or placebo. Ninety two eligible patients were enrolled in the study. The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 4.6 months (95% confidence interval (CI): 3.4–6.7 months) for nab-paclitaxel, compared with 2.0 months (95% CI: 0.9–4.3 months) for placebo, representing a 56% reduction in disease progression (hazard ratio: 0.62; 95% CI: 0.33–0.81; P<0.001). The median overall survival (OS) was 6.3 months (95% CI: 3.9–8.2 months) for nab-paclitaxel, compared with 4.9 months (95% CI: 2.1–5.9 months) for placebo, representing a 22% reduction in disease progression (hazard ratio: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.33–0.85; P<0.001). Adverse events (AEs) were also observed for nab-paclitaxel. Nab-paclitaxel can improve survival in patients with advanced NSCLC after unsuccessful first-line chemotherapy.
Preparation and characterization of epoxy nanocomposites containing surface‐modified graphene oxide

A three-step grafting procedure has been used to graft the epoxy monomers (DER332) and the curing agents (diamino diphenyl methane (DDM), onto graphene oxide (GO) surface. The surface modification of GO has been performed by grafting of Jeffamine D-2000, followed with subsequent grafting of DER332 and DDM, respectively. Fourier transform spectroscopy and thermogravimetric analysis indicate successful surface modification. The resulting modified GO, that is, (DED)-GO, can be well dispersed in the epoxy monomers. The epoxy nanocomposites containing different GO contents can then be prepared through curing processes. The dispersion of GO in the nanocomposites is characterized by transmission electron microscopy. It is found that the tensile strength and elongation at break of epoxy nanocomposite with only 0.2 wt % DED-GO are increased by 30 and 16% as compared with the neat epoxy resin, respectively. Dynamic mechanical analysis results show that 62% increase in storage modulus and 26°C enhancement in the glass transition temperature of the nanocomposite have been achieved with the incorporation of only 0.2 wt % of DED-GO into the epoxy. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 40236.
Efficacy, tolerability and safety of cannabis‐based medicines for chronic pain management – An overview of systematic reviews

Medicinal cannabis has already entered mainstream medicine in some countries. This systematic review (SR) aimed at evaluating the efficacy, acceptability and safety of cannabis‐based medicines for chronic pain management. Qualitative systematic review of SRs of randomized controlled trials with cannabis‐based medicines for chronic pain management. The Cochrane databases of SRs, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects and PubMed were searched for SR published in the period January 2009 to January 2017. Assessment of the methodological quality of SR was performed by the AMSTAR checklist. Out of 748 papers identified, 10 SRs met the inclusion criteria. The methodological quality was high in four and moderate in six SRs. There were inconsistent findings of four SRs on the efficacy of cannabis‐based medicines in neuropathic pain and of one SR for painful spasms in multiple sclerosis. There were consistent results that there was insufficient evidence of any cannabis‐based medicine for pain management in patients with rheumatic diseases (three SRs) and in cancer pain (two SRs). Cannabis‐based medicines undoubtedly enrich the possibilities of drug treatment of chronic pain conditions. It remains the responsibility of the health care community to continue to pursue rigorous study of cannabis‐based medicines to provide evidence that meets the standard of 21st century clinical care.
A predictable synchronisation algorithm

Interaction with physical objects often imposes latency requirements to multi-core embedded systems. One consequence is the need for synchronisation algorithms that provide predictable latency, in addition to high throughput. We present a synchronisation algorithm that needs at most 7 atomic memory operations per asynchronous critical section. The performance is competitive, at least, to locks.
Sleep duration and chronic diseases among U.S. adults age 45 years and older: evidence from the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine the effects of obesity and frequent mental distress (FMD) on the relationship of sleep duration with coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and diabetes. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Population-based surveillance. PARTICIPANTS There were 54,269 adults age 45 y or older who completed the 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey in 14 states. RESULTS Nearly one third (31.1% or an estimated 11.1 million) of respondents age 45 y and older reported being short sleepers (≤ 6 h), 64.8% being optimal sleepers (7-9 h), and 4.1% being long sleepers (≥ 10 h) in a 24-h period. Compared with the optimal sleep duration, both short and long sleep durations were significantly associated with obesity, FMD (mental health was not good ≥ 14 days during the past 30 days), CHD, stroke, and diabetes after controlling for sex, age, race/ethnicity, and education. The U-shaped relationships of sleep duration with CHD, stroke, and diabetes were moderately attenuated by FMD. The relationship between sleep duration and diabetes was slightly attenuated by obesity. CONCLUSIONS Sleep duration had U-shaped relationships with leading chronic diseases. Further prospective studies are needed to determine how mental health and maintenance of a normal weight may interact with sleep duration to prevent chronic diseases.
Novel two-step beam search method for multi user millimeter-wave communication

In this paper, we propose a novel two-step beam search method for multi-user in millimeter-wave communication and show the experimental evaluation. The numbers of search beams in the first and second steps are theoretically optimized. The evaluation results show the total number of beams for the proposed method can be reduced to about 80% compared with that of the conventional method. We also show the optimal combination without overlapping users in the first step, in which the definition is simplified, is almost the same as that with overlapping users. Moreover, the experimental evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in actual equipment.
Network-based intrusion detection systems go active!

In this work we investigate a new approach for detecting network-wide attacks that aim to degrade the network's Quality of Service (QoS). To this end, a new network-based intrusion detection system (NIDS) is proposed. In contrast to the passive approach which most contemporary NIDS follow and which relies solely on production traffic monitoring, the propose NIDS takes the active approach where special crafted probes are sent according to a known probability distribution in order to monitor the network for anomalous behavior. The proposed approach takes away much of the variability of network traffic that makes it so difficult to classify, and therefore can detect subtle attacks which would not be detected passively. Furthermore, the active probing approach allows the NIDS to be effectively trained using only examples of the network's normal states, hence enabling an effective detection of zero-day attacks. Preliminary results on a real-life ISP network topology demonstrate the advantages of the proposed NIDS.
Mining Compressed Frequent-Pattern Sets

A major challenge in frequent-pattern mining is the sheer size of its mining results. In many cases, a high min_sup threshold may discover only commonsense patterns but a low one may generate an explosive number of output patterns, which severely restricts its usage.In this paper, we study the problem of compressing frequent-pattern sets. Typically, frequent patterns can be clustered with a tightness measure δ (called δ-cluster), and a representative pattern can be selected for each cluster. Unfortunately, finding a minimum set of representative patterns is NP-Hard. We develop two greedy methods, RPglobal and RPlocal. The former has the guaranteed compression bound but higher computational complexity. The latter sacrifices the theoretical bounds but is far more efficient. Our performance study shows that the compression quality using RPlocal is very close to RPglobal, and both can reduce the number of closed frequent patterns by almost two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, RPlocal mines even faster than FPClose[11], a very fast closed frequent-pattern mining method. We also show that RPglobal and RPlocal can be combined together to balance the quality and efficiency.
Eco-friendly processing and methods for ceramic materials - A review

Restrictions regarding waste disposal and strict environmental regulations require eco-friendly technologies. Organics such as binders are used extensively in green body fabrication but they must be eliminated and/or decreased due to global problems because during heat treatment carbon dioxide and other hydrocarbon emissions take place after organic decomposition. If it is possible to remove these polymers fully or partially before heat treatment, then harmful gas evolution to the atmosphere can be eliminated and/or controlled. In the cases where the organic usage is imperative, they must be replaced with the low-toxic or non-toxic ones because toxic substances pose the greatest threat to human beings and the environment. It is also important to recycle the wastes from various sources in order to save energy. This paper reviews the efforts to find or explore new eco-friendly processes, modifications and chemical methods in order to replace currently used ones from the viewpoint of sustainable development.
Revisiting Pipelined Parallelism in Multi-Join Query Processing

Multi-join queries are the core of any integration service that integrates data from multiple distributed data sources. Due to the large number of data sources and possibly high volumes of data, the evaluation of multi-join queries faces increasing scalability concerns. State-of-the-art parallel multi-join query processing commonly assume that the application of maximal pipelined parallelism leads to superior performance. In this paper, we instead illustrate that this assumption does not generally hold. We investigate how best to combine pipelined parallelism with alternate forms of parallelism to achieve an overall effective processing strategy. A segmented bushy processing strategy is proposed. Experimental studies are conducted on an actual software system over a cluster of high-performance PCs. The experimental results confirm that the proposed solution leads to about 50% improvement in terms of total processing time in comparison to existing state-of-the-art solutions.
Security SLA Based Monitoring in Clouds

Nowadays, Cloud providers revise the terms of their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to include security provisions due to their criticality for their customers. In order to speed up their adoption by service providers and consumers and to make them more actionable, security SLAs monitoring should be described in a machine-processable, agile and extensible way. Several tools for SLA management are available on the market but most deal with performance metrics and do not refer to security properties. There are other tools for monitoring cloud security, in a non-SLA way. However, they are not associated with SLA management systems. We propose an extension to an SLA language (i.e., rSLA) to enable the description of security requirements in an SLA document. We also extend the rSLA framework by a security methodology that makes use of known tools and that enables continuously checking that the security requirements are respected during runtime according to the SLA document.
A New Algorithm for Computing All Solutions of an Absolute Value Equation

In this paper, a new strategy is put forward for solving the NP-hard absolute value equation (AVE) Ax—|x|=b which has 2n solutions. Via maths classified discussion, we can translate the AVE into 2n general linear equations, and solve each of these. Numerical results show that the strategy can be easy to get 2n solutions of the absolute value equation.
Design of endoscopic optical coherence tomography system

Optical coherence tomography (OCT), which bases on the principle of low-coherence interferometry, is an emerging cross-sectional imaging technology. With ultrahigh resolution, OCT is sensitive enough to detect early-stage tissue abnormalities associated with diseases such as early carcinoma. To detect pathologic change in gastrointestinal tract, we combine OCT with endoscopic technique. Later we call this technique as endoscopic optical coherence tomography (EOCT). Compared with time-domain OCT imaging technique, spectral OCT eliminates depth scan in the reference arm so increases the imaging speed. Basing on spectral OCT, EOCT can realize real-time imaging. The EOCT unit is comprised of an endoscopically compatible radially scanning probe as the sample arm. In this paper the principle of spectral OCT is introduced and the crucial parameters of experimental system are discussed. Also the design of a novel probe is presented. In our experiment, a mirror is used as a sample to test the validity of this method.
Layered approach to designing system test interfaces

The layered system design approach has shown its strength in the design of the network and other complex systems. In this paper, we apply this approach to the design of system testing interfaces. The system is partitioned into layers to maximize reuse, and ease the development. In this paper, we demonstrate this methodology by designing a low-overhead testing interface and circuitry for the Infiniband Architecture (IBA).
Event-triggered active disturbance rejection control for nonlinear stochastic systems

This paper investigates stabilization problem for a class of nonlinear systems subject to stochastic disturbance. An event-triggered active disturbance rejection controller is proposed to ensure that the closed-loop system's states are mean-square bounded. The controller only utilizes sampled states of extended state observer and updates its value unless the triggering condition is satisfied. To exclude the Zeno behavior of the sampling, we prove the existence of a lower bound of the minimum inter-event interval. A numerical example is included to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.
Analyzing Plan Diagrams of Database Query Optimizers

A "plan diagram" is a pictorial enumeration of the execution plan choices of a database query optimizer over the relational selectivity space. In this paper, we present and analyze representative plan diagrams on a suite of popular commercial query optimizers for queries based on the TPC-H benchmark. These diagrams, which often appear similar to cubist paintings, provide a variety of interesting insights, including that current optimizers make extremely fine-grained plan choices, which may often be supplanted by less efficient options without substantively affecting the quality; that the plan optimality regions may have highly intricate patterns and irregular boundaries, indicating strongly non-linear cost models; that non-monotonic cost behavior exists where increasing result cardinalities decrease the estimated cost; and, that the basic assumptions underlying the research literature on parametric query optimization often do not hold in practice.
A bilevel optimization approach to machine learning

A key step in many statistical learning methods used in machine learning involves solving a convex optimization problem containing one or more hyper-parameters that must be selected by the users. While cross validation is a commonly employed and widely accepted method for selecting these parameters, its implementation by a grid-search procedure in the parameter space effectively limits the desirable number of hyper-parameters in a model, due to the combinatorial explosion of grid points in high dimensions. A novel paradigm based on bilevel optimization approach is proposed and gives rise to a unifying framework within which issues such as model selection can be addressed. The machine learning problem is formulated as a bilevel program—a mathematical program that has constraints which are functions of optimal solutions of another mathematical program called the inner-level program. The bilevel program is transformed to an equivalent mathematical program with equilibrium constraints (MPEC). Two alternative bilevel optimization algorithms are developed to optimize the MPEC and provide a systematic search of the hyper-parameters. In the first approach, the equilibrium constraints of the MPEC are relaxed to form a nonlinear program with linear objective and non-convex quadratic inequality constraints, which is then solved using a general purpose nonlinear programming solver. In the second approach, the equilibrium constraints are treated as penalty terms in the objective, and the resulting non-convex quadratic program with linear constraints is solved using a successive linearization algorithm. The flexibility of the bilevel approach to deal with multiple hyper-parameters, makes it powerful approach to problems such as parameter and feature selection (model selection). In this thesis, three problems are studied: model selection for support vector (SV) classification, model selection for SV regression and missing value-imputation for SV regression. Extensive computational results establish that both algorithmic approaches find solutions that generalize as well or better than conventional approaches and are much more computationally efficient.
A torque sensing technique for robots with harmonic drives

The authors propose a joint torque sensing technique making use of the existing structural elasticity of robots. The technique provides joint torque sensing without reducing the stiffness of the robot or changing the mechanical structure of the joints. The elasticity of the flexsplines of the harmonic drives is utilized to measure the joint torque. The flexsplines are flexible thin cups, made from steel, in the harmonic drives that are driven by the wave generators. A finite-element analysis of the flexsplines shows that a special configuration of strain gauges, mounted on the flexspline, has to be employed to eliminate errors in sensor information due to rotation of the wave generator. Characteristics of the torque sensor are examined experimentally. The linearity and the dynamic response are almost the same as those of a conventional sensing technique. For a one-link robot arm, both theoretical and experimental investigations support the validity of the sensing technique. >
Containment control of discrete-time multi-agent systems based on delayed neighbours' information

This paper considers the containment control problem for multi-agent systems with multiple leaders. A distributed control protocol is designed so that the states of the followers converge to the smallest convex hull containing the states of all the leaders. The result is extended to the moving leaders case. Two level protocols are provided such that the leaders can achieve a formation while the followers converge into the convex hull formed by the leaders. The control protocols are based on neighbours' control inputs. A sufficient condition on the control gain is provided to guarantee the convergence. A numerical example is given to demonstrate the result.