Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An artificial intelligence paradigm in heuristic search of tensile behaviour of titanium alloys

Abstract Fracture properties of materials are strongly influenced by initial microstructure/texture, loading conditions, environment, notch geometry and phase transformations. The notch geometry effect on fracture properties of materials is very sensitive to the geometry of structure, scale effects and loading mode. A critical literature review is performed to understand several consensuses about the complexity of notch geometry in the deformation and fracture responses of materials. It is still not clear in these circumstances which variable is the most important to determine the mechanical properties of materials. This article deals with the quantitative methods for designing specimen geometry for different applications. However, microstructure alone is not a sufficient parameter for designing new alloys. In this work, the effect of notch geometry and temperature on the tensile properties of titanium alloys has been determined through a Bayesian computational framework under an artificial intelligence paradigm. The dataset considered for computation is essentially obtained from the elegant experimental research of Jenkins and Willard. Their analysis was performed on a physical basis and gives very clear indications to designers about the influence of temperature and specimen geometry on the mechanical properties of the alloys. The engineering significance of both the results is compared comprehensively. The present models have been applied to corroborate that the calculations are reasonable in the context of established solid mechanics and metallurgical theories. It has also been possible to gauge the isolated influence of particular variables such as elastic stress concentration factor, which exactly cannot in practice be varied independently. This highlights the ability of the technique to examine the new phenomena in cases where information cannot be accessed experimentally. This model will be instrumental for mechanical engineers to design critical industrial components.
Towards development of novel immunization strategies against leishmaniasis using PLGA nanoparticles loaded with kinetoplastid membrane protein-11

Background Vaccine development has been a priority in the fight against leishmaniases, which are vector-borne diseases caused by Leishmania protozoa. Among the different immunization strategies employed to date is inoculation of plasmid DNA coding for parasite antigens, which has a demonstrated ability to induce humoral and cellular immune responses. In this sense, inoculation of plasmid DNA encoding Leishmania kinetoplasmid membrane protein-11 (KMP-11) was able to confer protection against visceral leishmaniasis. However, recently the use of antigen delivery systems such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) nanoparticles has also proven effective for eliciting protective immune responses. Methods In the present work, we tested two immunization strategies with the goal of obtaining protection, in terms of lesion development and parasite load, against cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by L. braziliensis. One strategy involved immunization with plasmid DNA encoding L. infantum chagasi KMP-11. Alternatively, mice were primed with PLGA nanoparticles loaded with the recombinant plasmid DNA and boosted using PLGA nanoparticles loaded with recombinant KMP-11. Results Both immunization strategies elicited detectable cellular immune responses with the presence of both proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines; mice receiving the recombinant PLGA nanoparticle formulations also demonstrated anti-KMP-11 IgG1 and IgG2a. Mice were then challenged with L. braziliensis, in the presence of sand fly saliva. Lesion development was not inhibited following either immunization strategy. However, immunization with PLGA nanoparticles resulted in a more prominent reduction in parasite load at the infection site when compared with immunization using plasmid DNA alone. This effect was associated with a local increase in interferon-gamma and in tumor necrosis factor-alpha. Both immunization strategies also resulted in a lower parasite load in the draining lymph nodes, albeit not significantly. Conclusion Our results encourage the pursuit of immunization strategies employing nanobased delivery systems for vaccine development against cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by L. braziliensis infection.
A CMOS physiological monitoring frontend for wearable health applications

A prototype CMOS physiological monitoring frontend for wearable or portable health system is presented. It consists of three main modules for electrocardiography (ECG) recording, bioelectrical impedance (BI) measurement and body temperature (BT) measurement individually. The ECG recording module has a low-noise Instrumentation amplifier with rightleg driver, a notch filter for avoiding power-line interference and an AC-coupled programmable gain amplifier with 28-46 dB. The BI measurement module for body mass index measures the body bioelectrical impedance by a 300 μA/50 kHz AC excitation current. A multi-steps slope analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with sample rate of 500-1000 Sps is designed for digitalizing the analog ECG and BMI value. For power, size and overall cost reduction, electrodes multiplexing technique has been applied in system-level and circuit-level design. This front-end also provides a specified interface module for body temperature sensor DS18B20. Communication to this chip is accomplished using an UART interface. This prototype chip has been designed and fabricated in 0.18 μm 1P6M CMOS process with chip area of 1685×1600 μm2.
Crystal structure and enzymatic properties of a broad substrate-specificity psychrophilic aminotransferase from the Antarctic soil bacterium Psychrobacter sp. B6.

Aminotransferases (ATs) are enzymes that are commonly used in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for the synthesis of natural and non-natural amino acids by transamination reactions. Currently, the easily accessible enzymes from mesophilic organisms are most commonly used; however, for economical and ecological reasons the utilization of aminotransferases from psychrophiles would be more advantageous, as their optimum reaction temperature is usually significantly lower than for the mesophilic ATs. Here, gene isolation, protein expression, purification, enzymatic properties and structural studies are reported for the cold-active aromatic amino-acid aminotransferase (PsyArAT) from Psychrobacter sp. B6, a psychrotrophic, Gram-negative strain from Antarctic soil. Preliminary computational analysis indicated dual functionality of the enzyme through the ability to utilize both aromatic amino acids and aspartate as substrates. This postulation was confirmed by enzymatic activity tests, which showed that it belonged to the class EC 2.6. 1.57. The first crystal structures of a psychrophilic aromatic amino-acid aminotransferase have been determined at resolutions of 2.19 Å for the native enzyme (PsyArAT) and 2.76 Å for its complex with aspartic acid (PsyArAT/D). Both types of crystals grew in the monoclinic space group P21 under slightly different crystallization conditions. The PsyArAT crystals contained a dimer (90 kDa) in the asymmetric unit, which corresponds to the active form of this enzyme, whereas the crystals of the PsyArAT/D complex included four dimers showing different stages of the transamination reaction.
Spatially‐Resolved In‐Situ Structural Study of Organic Electronic Devices with Nanoscale Resolution: The Plasmonic Photovoltaic Case Study

A novel high spatial resolution synchrotron X-ray diffraction stratigraphy technique has been applied in-situ to an integrated plasmonic nanoparticle-based organic photovoltaic device. This original approach allows for the disclosure of structure-property relations linking large scale organic devices to length scales of local nano/hetero structures and interfaces between the different components.
A Mesh Warping Algorithm Based on Weighted Laplacian Smoothing

We present a new mesh warping algorithm for tetrahedral meshes based upon weighted laplacian smoothing. We start with a 3D domain which is bounded by a triangulated surface mesh and has a tetrahedral volume mesh as its interior. We then suppose that a movement of the surface mesh is prescribed and use our mesh warping algorithm to update the nodes of the volume mesh. Our method determines a set of local weights for each interior node which describe the relative distances of the node to its neighbors. After a boundary transformation is applied, the method solves a system of linear equations based upon the weights to determine the final position of the interior nodes. We study mesh invertibility and prove a theorem which gives sufficient conditions for a mesh to resist inversion by a transformation. We prove that our algorithm yields exact results for affine mappings and state a conjecture for more general mappings. In addition, we prove that our algorithm converges to the same point as both the local weighted laplacian smoothing algorithm and the Gauss-Seidel algorithm for linear systems. We test our algorithm’s robustness and present some numerical results. Finally, we use our algorithm to study the movement of the canine heart.
DODR : Delay On-Demand Routing

— As originally designed for wired networks, TCP (transmission control protocol) congestion control mechanism is triggered into action when packet loss is detected. This implicit assumption for packet loss mostly due to network congestion does not work well in Mobile Ad Hoc Network, where there is a comparatively high likelihood of packet loss due to channel errors and node mobility etc. Such non-congestion packet loss, when dealt with by congestion control mechanism, causes poor TCP performance in MANET. In this study, we continue to investigate the impact of the interaction between transport protocols and on-demand routing protocols on the performance and stability of 802.11 multihop networks. We evaluate the important wireless networking events caused routing change, and propose a cross layer method to delay the unnecessary routing changes, only need to add a sensitivity parameter α , which represents the on-demand routing’s reaction to link failure of MAC layer. Our proposal is applicable to the plain 802.11 networking environment, the simulation results that this method can remarkably improve the stability and performance of TCP without any modification on TCP and MAC protocol.
S1 sensitive sites in adenovirus DNA

S1 nuclease has been used as a probe for regions of DNA secondary structure in supercoiled recombinant plasmids containing adenovirus (Ad) DNA sequences. In the sequences examined two S1 sensitive sites were identified in the left-terminal 16.5% of Ad 12 DNA, one of which aligned approximately with an inverted repeat region in the DNA sequence. In addition an S1 sensitive site was dictated by a potential cruciform structure in the region of the Ad 2 major late promoter. In contrast to the expected cleavage site at the loop of the cruciform, cleavage occurred at the base of the stem in the region of the TATA box. All three S1 sensitive sites identified were more sensitive to S1 than the endogenous sites in the parent plasmids.
Cross-Domain Knowledge Transfer Using Structured Representations

Previous work in knowledge transfer in machine learning has been restricted to tasks in a single domain. However, evidence from psychology and neuroscience suggests that humans are capable of transferring knowledge across domains. We present here a novel learning method, based on neuroevolution, for transferring knowledge across domains. We use many-layered, sparsely-connected neural networks in order to learn a structural representation of tasks. Then we mine frequent sub-graphs in order to discover sub-networks that are useful for multiple tasks. These sub-networks are then used as primitives for speeding up the learning of subsequent related tasks, which may be in different domains.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: Time for research on psychological intervention?

Abstract The literature on psychological aspects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has explored quality of life, depression, anxiety, spirituality, hopelessness, and other constructs in an attempt to understand the patient's grief and other psychological responses to the disease. However, there is a lack of research on the efficacy of psychological interventions. We believe it is important to develop ‘best practices’ for the improvement of quality of life and the reduction of psychological distress related to ALS.
Diagnosing software using statecharts

It is important for any operational software system to be able to monitor itself for compliance with its specifications and to diagnose what went wrong in case of failures. In our previous work we presented a monitoring and diagnostic framework for verifying that a system is in compliance with its requirements [23, 24]. In this paper we extend our framework so that it can verify whether a software system complies with its other (and lower-level) specifications, namely its statechart. The framework monitors the software system's runtime behavior and identifies any failures that occur. We illustrate our framework with a medium-sized publicly available case study (an ATM simulation) and evaluate its performance through a series of experiments. The results demonstrate that our framework is scalable to industrial-size software systems with medium to large statecharts.
The effect of flow limitation on the cardiorespiratory response to arousal from sleep under controlled conditions of chemostimulation in healthy older adults

The influence of flow limitation on the magnitude of the cardiorespiratory response to arousal from sleep is of interest in older people, because they experience considerable flow limitation and frequent arousals from sleep. We studied older flow‐limiting subjects, testing the hypothesis that the cardiorespiratory activation response would be larger when arousal occurred during flow limitation, compared to no flow limitation, and chemical stimuli were controlled. In 11 older adults [mean ± standard deviation (SD) age: 68 ± 5 years] ventilation was stabilized using continuous positive airway pressure, and flow limitation was induced by dialling down the pressure. Partial pressure of end‐tidal carbon dioxide (PetCO2) was maintained by titration of the inspired CO2 and hyperoxia was maintained using 40% O2 balanced with nitrogen. Flow limitation at the time of arousal did not augment cardiovascular activation response (heart rate P = 0.7; systolic blood pressure P = 0.6; diastolic blood pressure P = 0.3), whereas ventilation was greater following arousals during flow limitation compared to no flow limitation (P < 0.001). The pre–post‐arousal differences in ventilation reflected significant pre‐arousal suppression (due to flow limitation) plus post‐arousal activation. In summary, the cardiovascular response to arousal from sleep is not influenced by flow limitation at the time of arousal, when chemical stimuli are controlled in older adults. This finding may contribute to the decreased cardiovascular burden associated with sleep‐disordered breathing reported in older adults, although our data do not exclude the possibility that flow limitation in the presence of mild hypoxic hypercapnia could increase the cardiovascular response to arousal.
Multiuser Two-Way Amplify-and-Forward Relay Processing and Power Control Methods for Beamforming Systems

In this paper, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay transceiver processing is proposed for multiuser two-way relay communications. The relay processing is optimized based on both zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) criteria under relay power constraints. Various transmit and receive beamforming methods are compared including eigen beamforming, antenna selection, random beamforming, and modified equal gain beamforming. Local and global power control methods are designed to achieve fairness among all users and to maximize the system signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Numerical results show that the proposed multiuser two-way relay processing can efficiently eliminate both co-channel interference (CCI) and self-interference (SI).
Verbal fluency in the detection of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease among Brazilian Portuguese speakers: the influence of education

ABSTRACT Background: Verbal fluency (VF) tasks are simple and efficient clinical tools to detect executive dysfunction and lexico-semantic impairment. VF tasks are widely used in patients with suspected dementia, but their accuracy for detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is still under investigation. Schooling in particular may influence the subject's performance. The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of two semantic categories (animals and fruits) in discriminating controls, MCI patients and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. Methods: 178 subjects, comprising 70 controls (CG), 70 MCI patients and 38 AD patients, were tested on two semantic VF tasks. The sample was divided into two schooling groups: those with 4–8 years of education, and those with 9 or more years. Results: Both VF tasks – animal fluency (VFa) and fruits fluency (VFf) – adequately discriminated CG from AD in the total sample (AUC = 0.88 ± 0.03, p < 0.0001) and in both education groups, and high educated MCI from AD (VFa: AUC = 0.82 ± 0.05, p < 0.0001; VFf: AUC = 0.85 ± 0.05, p < 0.0001). Both tasks were moderately accurate in discriminating CG from MCI (VFa: AUC = 0.68 ± 0.04, p < 0.0001; VFf: AUC = 0.73 ± 0.04, p < 0.0001) regardless of the schooling level, and MCI from AD in the total sample (VFa: AUC = 0.74 ± 0.05, p < 0.0001; VFf: AUC = 0.76 ± 0.05, p < 0.0001). Neither of the two tasks differentiated low educated MCI from AD. In the total sample, fruits fluency best discriminated CG from MCI and MCI from AD; a combination of the two improved the discrimination between CG and AD. Conclusions: Both categories were similar in discriminating CG from AD; the combination of both categories improved the accuracy for this distinction. Both tasks were less accurate in discriminating CG from MCI, and MCI from AD.
A Nonmonotonic Rule System using Ontologies

The development of the Semantic Web proceeds in layers. Currently the most advanced layer that has reached maturity is the ontology layer, in the form of the DAML+OIL language which corresponds to a rich description logic. The next step will be the the realization of logical rule systems on top of the ontology layer. Computationally simple nonmonotonic rule systems show promise to play an important role in electronic commerce on the Semantic Web. In this paper we show how nonmonotonic rule systems in the form of defeasible reasoning, can be built on top of description logics. The key idea is to use concept and role predicates in the antecedents of rules. We define a proof theory for this kind of reasoning, and derive some basic properties.
Hybrid Additive Manufacturing of Gamma Titanium Aluminide Space Hardware

A major part of laser additive manufacturing focuses on the fabrication of metallic parts for applications in the space and aerospace sector. Especially the processing of the very brittle titanium aluminides can be particularly challenging [1-2]. In the present paper a gamma titanium aluminide ( γ -TiAl) nozzle, manufactured via Electron Beam Melting (EBM), is extended and adapted via hybrid Laser Metal Deposition (LMD). The presented approach considers critical impacts like processing temperatures, temperature gradients and solidification conditions with particular regard to crucial material properties like the phenomena of lamellar interface cracking [3-6]. Furthermore, the potential of microstructural tailoring is going to be addressed by the process-specific manipulation of the composition and/or microstructure. In addition to this, selected destructive and non-destructive testing is performed in order to prove the material properties. Finally, post manufacturing and surface modification are briefly addressed.
Psychosis as a transdiagnostic and extended phenotype in the general population

A large body of research indicates that weak expressions of positive psychotic symptoms (“psychotic experiences”) can be measured in the general population, and likely represent the behavioural manifestation of distributed multifactorial (genetic and non‐genetic) risk for psychosis. Psychotic experiences are a transdiagnostic phenomenon: the majority of individuals with these experiences have a diagnosis of non‐psychotic disorder, particularly common mental disorder, in which psychotic experiences predict greater illness severity and poorer treatment response. Some of the people with common mental disorder and psychotic experiences will present to mental health services meeting criteria for “clinical high risk”. Treatment of the transdiagnostic dimension of psychosis in individuals with common mental disorder who meet “clinical high risk” criteria thus may improve outcome (which cannot be interpreted as prevention of “schizophrenia”). Subthreshold psychotic experiences are transitory in about 80% of individuals, while around 20% go on to develop persistent psychotic experiences and 7% a psychotic disorder, with an annual transition rate of 0.5‐1%. Persistence is associated, on the one hand, with environmental exposures, particularly childhood trauma, and, on the other, with network‐type dynamic interactions between psychotic experiences themselves (e.g., interactions between hallucinatory experiences and delusional ideation) and between symptom dimensions (e.g., interactions between affective symptoms and psychotic experiences, or interactions between subthreshold negative symptoms and psychotic experiences). The study of psychotic experiences is helping to elucidate the mechanisms by which environmental and genetic influences shape the transdiagnostic expression of psychosis proneness, that is mostly transitory but may first become persistent over time and eventually give rise to transition to a psychotic disorder.
Human-centric visual monitoring of multi-clients system behavior and BiT for trust computing

This paper proposes the trusted platform board monitoring TPBM system that enabled effectively detecting and managing abnormal phenomenon based on the trusted platform board not only for security but also for multiple clients connected on the web. In other words, TPBM strengthens weak points of the existing security and provides the function to monitor with human-centric method not only system resources and process status for remote multi-client systems that are operated based on hardware security but also behavior of multiple clients in the cloud computing environment. In addition, measuring instruction level behavior is potentially a more effective protection than a pure software approach. From program's run-time behavior, system state safety can also be analyzed. However, dynamic characteristic of program trace also introduces challenges on what to measure and how to measure. To solve such problems, branch instruction trace BiT profiling tool is introduced to measure processor's instruction level run-time behavior. However, the BiT has provided only the text results of logical error information but not the visual monitoring function by tracing abnormal branch at the level of instruction. In order to resolve this problem, this paper includes the human-centric visual monitoring function for information on abnormal branch trace to TPBM. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.