Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CONCURRENT ENGINEERING : Research and Applications Functional Product Life-cycle Simulation Model for Cost Estimation in Conceptual Design of Jet Engine Components

As functional (total care) products emerge in the jet engine industry, the need for product life-cycle models capable of definition and evaluation of life cycle properties increases, since functional products (FP) includes both hardware and service. Recent life-cycle models are intended for hardware products and mostly handle design and manufacturing knowledge. The aim of this article is to present a design approach that extends the evaluation capabilities beyond classical hardware design and manufacturing evaluation. The focus has been to introduce evaluation of manufacturing and post-manufacturing activities in evaluation of conceptual designs. For this purpose, a model has been proposed to handle the information flow between teams when developing structural jet engine components. A case study, in which the proposed model was used in cooperation with a jet engine component manufacturer, is presented. Aspects concerning design, manufacturing, performance, and maintenance of jet engine flanges were included in the example by means of a knowledge based engineering (KBE)-system coupled to databases and spreadsheets. The model is more suitable than recent work for the development of hardware parts of functional products (HFP), since knowledge from more product development disciplines is included. As the engineer changes the design and directly assesses the life-cycle cost (LCC) and how the changes impact the interface to other jet engine components, more knowledge on the impact of design decisions is available at hand for the engineering designer than without the model.
Left ventricular twist and untwist rate provide reliable measures of ventricular function in myocardial ischemia and a wide range of hemodynamic states

Although rotational parameters by speckle tracking echocardiography (STE) have been previously compared to sonomicrometry and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, few have examined the relationship between left ventricular (LV) rotational mechanics and intraventricular measures of load‐independent contractility, LV stiffness, or ventriculoarterial coupling. The aim of this study was to compare the changes in LV rotational indices to intraventricular pressure–volume (PV) relationships under a range of inotropic states induced by pharmacological interventions, acute ischemia, and changes in preload. In nine pigs, simultaneous echocardiographic imaging and LVPV measurements were performed during pharmacologically induced high or low inotropy and during acute ischemia by ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD). Maximal ventricular elastance (Emax), arterial elastance (Ea), ventricular–arterial coupling (Emax/Ea), dP/dt, tau, and other hemodynamic parameters were determined. Dobutamine and esmolol infusions led to inversely correlated changes in hemodynamic measurements of LV function. Apical but not basal rotation and diastolic rotation rate were decreased by esmolol and increased by dobutamine. The LV twist correlates well with Emax (r = 0.83) and Emax/Ea (r = 0.80). Apical diastolic rotation rate also correlates with dP/dtmin (r = −0.63), τ (r = −0.81), and LV stiffness (r = −0.52). LAD ligation decreased systolic and diastolic LV rotation in apical (P < 0.05), but not basal myocardium. Occlusion of the inferior vena cava, to reduce preload, increased apical rotation in systole and diastole. LV rotational parameters measured by STE provide quantitative and reproducible indices of global LV systolic and diastolic function during acute changes in hemodynamics.
Strong Discrepancies between Local Temperature Mapping and Interpolated Climatic Grids in Tropical Mountainous Agricultural Landscapes

Bridging the gap between the predictions of coarse-scale climate models and the fine-scale climatic reality of species is a key issue of climate change biology research. While it is now well known that most organisms do not experience the climatic conditions recorded at weather stations, there is little information on the discrepancies between microclimates and global interpolated temperatures used in species distribution models, and their consequences for organisms’ performance. To address this issue, we examined the fine-scale spatiotemporal heterogeneity in air, crop canopy and soil temperatures of agricultural landscapes in the Ecuadorian Andes and compared them to predictions of global interpolated climatic grids. Temperature time-series were measured in air, canopy and soil for 108 localities at three altitudes and analysed using Fourier transform. Discrepancies between local temperatures vs. global interpolated grids and their implications for pest performance were then mapped and analysed using GIS statistical toolbox. Our results showed that global interpolated predictions over-estimate by 77.5±10% and under-estimate by 82.1±12% local minimum and maximum air temperatures recorded in the studied grid. Additional modifications of local air temperatures were due to the thermal buffering of plant canopies (from −2.7°K during daytime to 1.3°K during night-time) and soils (from −4.9°K during daytime to 6.7°K during night-time) with a significant effect of crop phenology on the buffer effect. This discrepancies between interpolated and local temperatures strongly affected predictions of the performance of an ectothermic crop pest as interpolated temperatures predicted pest growth rates 2.3–4.3 times lower than those predicted by local temperatures. This study provides quantitative information on the limitation of coarse-scale climate data to capture the reality of the climatic environment experienced by living organisms. In highly heterogeneous region such as tropical mountains, caution should therefore be taken when using global models to infer local-scale biological processes.
Causal Relay Networks

In this paper, we study causal discrete memoryless relay networks. The network consists of multiple nodes, each of which can be a source, a relay, and/or a destination. In the network, there are two types of relays: 1) relays with one sample delay (strictly causal) and 2) relays without delay (causal) whose transmit signals depend not only on the past received symbols but also on the current received symbols. For this network, we derive two new cut-set bounds, one when every node has a message and the other when only the strictly causal relays have messages. Using the examples of a causal vector Gaussian two-way relay channel and a causal vector Gaussian relay channel, we show that the new cut-set bounds can be achieved by a simple amplify-and-forward type relaying. Our result for the causal relay channel strengthens the previously known capacity result for the same channel by El Gamal, Hassanpour, and Mammen.
Pituitary-Directed Therapies for Cushing’s Disease

Cushing’s disease (CD) is caused by a pituitary corticotroph neuroendocrine tumor inducing uncontrolled hypercortisolism. Transsphenoidal surgery is the first-line treatment in most cases. Nonetheless, some patients will not achieve cure even in expert hands, others may not be surgical candidates and a significant percentage will experience recurrence. Many patients will thus require medical therapy to achieve disease control. Pharmacologic options to treat CD have increased in recent years, with an explosion in knowledge related to pathophysiology at the molecular level. In this review, we focus on medications targeting specifically pituitary adrenocorticotropic hormone-secreting tumors. The only medication in this group approved for the treatment of CD is pasireotide, a somatostatin receptor ligand. Cabergoline and temozolomide may also be used in select cases. Previously studied and abandoned medical options are briefly discussed, and emphasis is made on upcoming medications. Mechanism of action and available data on efficacy and safety of cell cycle inhibitor roscovitine, epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitor gefitinib, retinoic acid, and silibinin, a heat shock protein 90 inhibitor are also presented.
Analysis of intrinsic cardiac neuron activity in relation to neurogenic atrial fibrillation and vagal stimulation

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS . vi LIST OF TABLES . xii LIST OF FIGURES . xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . 5 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION . 6 I.1. General physiology of the heart . 7 I.1. 1. Heart muscle . 7 I.1. 2. Cardiac action potential . 7 I.1. 2.1. Non-pacemaker cardiac cells action potential . 9 I.1. 2.2. Nodal cell action potential . 11 I.1. 2.3. Effective refractory period . 12 I.1. 2.4. Propagation of an action potential in cardiac cells . 12 I.1. 3. Sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes Cardiac action potential . 12 I.1. 4. Blood circulation . 13 I.2. Neurocardiology . 15 I.2.1. Autonomic nervous system . 15 I.2.2. Autonomic innervation of the heart . 17 I.2.3. Anatomy and function of intrinsic cardiac nervous system . 19 I.2.4. Right atrium ganglionated plexus . 22 I.2. 5. Intrathoracic autonomic neurons . 22
A Novel Formal Approach to Automatically Suggest Metrics in Software Measurement Plans

The software measurement is an integral part of the software engineering process. With the rise of the software system and their complexity distributed through diverse development phases, the software measurement process has to deal with more management and performance constraints. In fact, the current software measurement process is fixed and manually planned at the beginning of the project and has to manage a huge amount of data resulting from the complexity of the software. Thereby, measuring software becomes costly and heavy. In addition, the implementation of the measures is dependent on the developer and reduce the scalability, maintainability and the interoperability of the measurement process. It becomes expert-dependent and thus more costly. In order to tackle these difficulties, first, we propose in this paper a formal software measurement implementation model based on the standard measurement specification SMM. Then, a software measurement plan suggestion framework based on a learning-based automated analysis.
Injecting computational thinking into career explorations for middle school girls

Advances in technology are leading high schools to update computer science curricula; however there has been little analogous attention to technology-related education in middle schools. Middle school students are at a critical phase in life, when they are exploring more custom education options and starting to wonder “What do I want to be when I grow up? ” My research is investigating whether and how computing skills can be integrated with career exploration to provide middle school girls a positive learning experience.
Telling Stories about Dynamic Networks with Graph Comics

In this paper, we explore graph comics as a medium to communicate changes in dynamic networks. While previous re- search has focused on visualizing dynamic networks for data exploration, we want to see if we can take advantage of the visual expressiveness and familiarity of comics to present and explain temporal changes in networks to an audience. To understand the potential of comics as a storytelling medium, we first created a variety of comics during a 3 month structured design process, involving domain experts from public education and neuroscience. This process led to the definition of 8 design factors for creating graph comics and propose design solutions for each. Results from a qualitative study suggest that a general audience is quickly able understand complex temporal changes through graph comics, provided with minimal textual annotations and no training.
ARED: human AU-rich element-containing mRNA database reveals an unexpectedly diverse functional repertoire of encoded proteins

The adenylate uridylate-rich elements (AREs) mediate the rapid turnover of mRNAs encoding proteins that regulate cellular growth and body response to exogenous agents such as microbes, inflammatory and environmental stimuli. However, the full repertoire of ARE-containing mRNAs is unknown. Here, we explore the distribution of AREs in human mRNA sequences. Computational derivation of a 13-bp ARE pattern was performed using multiple expectation maximization for motif elicitations (MEME) and consensus analyses. This pattern was statistically validated for the specificity towards the 3'-untranslated region and not coding region. The computationally derived ARE pattern is the basis of a database which contains non-redundant full-length ARE-mRNAs. The ARE-mRNA database (ARED; http://rc.kfshrc.edu.sa/ared) reveals that ARE-mRNAs encode a wide repertoire of functionally diverse proteins that belong to different biological processes and are important in several disease states. Cluster analysis was performed using the ARE sequences to demonstrate potential relationships between the type and number of ARE motifs, and the functional characteristics of the proteins.
Analyses of parents' problems in clinicians' assessments for the Children's Court of Victoria on child protection matters

This research focused on analyses of expert clinicians’ assessments for child protection matters referred to the Children’s Court Clinic by the Children’s Court of Victoria in 2006-2007. Major aims were to examine the occurrence and co-occurrence of three forms of common parent problems; to analyse their association with clinicians’ identification of child-related issues and assessment issues and recommendations for placement decisions; and to examine the relationship between clinicians’ recommendations and subsequent court decisions about protection orders and the placement of children. The data were clinicians’ reports to the court that were analysed using content analytic techniques. The analyses focused on 138 families involving 250 children referred to the clinic by the court for expert psychosocial assessment. Domestic violence, substance abuse and mental health problems contribute to parents’ ability to provide adequate care for children and are frequently present in families that come to attention of protection authorities. The research was framed by the significance of these parent problems in relation to two fundamental guiding principles that are prominent in child protection research and practice: ‘good enough parenting’ and ‘the best interests of the child’. In two studies, content analysis of clinicians’ reports focused on distinctive patterns in clinicians’ mentions of domestic violence, substance abuse and mental health problems in relation to fathers and mothers, and on how these problems were related to clinicians’ mentions and concerns about child-related issues, assessment issues and recommendations. Study 1 revealed 11 distinct patterns in the parent problems of the 250 children. These patterns in the parent problems were associated with child-related issues and clinicians’ placement recommendations. In families where parents were dealing with multiple and complex issues with substance abuse children were likely to be recommended
A comparison of program transformation systems

Program transformation is a popular technique for attempting to improve the efficiency of a program. At a high level, program transformation is the process of taking an input program and transforming it into an improved version of the original, bearing the same constraints as the original, e.g. termination constraints. In this paper, we focus on three fold/unfold [3] based transformation systems, positive supercompilation [26, 25, 21, 2, 12] and distillation [8–11] and HOSC [19, 18]. We focus on derivatives of both that use labelled transition systems [12, 11] and we present these systems, their underlying theory, and implementations. Based upon these implementations we will present an analysis of how they compare to each other, and another transformation system, HOSC[19], when applied to a sample of real-world programs.
Study on Chinese Text Summarization Based on Extracting Sentences from Subtopics

In this paper, we propose a new method for Chinese text summarization. First, the document is segmented into several units in terms of the subtopics in the document. Then, the most representative sentences in each subtopic unit are selected as the summary sentences. By analyzing semantic structure of the documents first, the summary sentences are not redundancy and the coverage of each subtopic is balanced. Experimental results show that our approach is effective and efficient, and performance of the system is reliable.
Wave synchronizing crane control during water entry in offshore moonpool operations

A new strategy for active control in heavy-lift offshore crane operations is suggested, by introducing a new concept referred to as wave synchronization. Wave synchronization reduces the hydrodynamic forces by minimization of variations in the relative vertical velocity between payload and water using a wave amplitude measurement. Wave synchronization is combined with conventional heave compensation to obtain accurate control. Experimental results using a scale model of a semi-submerged vessel with a crane and moonpool shows that wave synchronization leads to significant improvements in performance. Depending on the sea state and payload, the results indicate that the reduction in the standard deviation of the wire tension may be up to 50%.
Low-component-count current-mode Universal Filter based on active-only Lossy and Lossless Integrators

An universal current-mode active-only filter using the biquadratic transfer function is proposed. The proposed circuit is realized by lossy and lossless integrators with minimize active components count without external passive elements. The different kinds of filter functions as lowpass, highpass, bandpass and band-reject response can be obtained without changing circuit topology. The proposed circuit implementation is realized by using MOS transistors, CMOS MO-OTAs, and CMOS OPAMPs. The parameters wp can be tuned electronically through adjusting the transconductance gains of the OTA or electronic resistor power supplies. The simulation results are given by PSpice.
A new soft-output detection method for the magnetic recording channel

We develop a new method for simple soft-output detection. Like other soft-output detectors, our approach also utilizes the trellis structure. However, in computing the state transition probabilities in the trellis, we model each bit as a linear regression of the channel outputs as well as the previous bits implied in the corresponding branch. The trellis depends not on the channel response but on the regression model parameter that is highly flexible. The resulting soft-output algorithm has a very simple structure, needing only a forward recursion. The amount of memory required is also small. Furthermore, this algorithm can easily handle colored/signal-dependent noise. We examine the performance of this algorithm for three ISI channels with different noise characteristics: additive white, colored, and colored and signal-dependent. To verify the quality of the soft decisions, an outer low-density parity check code is used. Results show that the proposed detector allows favorable complexity/performance tradeoffs in correlated/signal-dependent noise environment.
Evolutionary recruitment of biochemically specialized subdivisions of Family I within the protein superfamily of aminotransferases

It is generally accepted that ancient organisms must have possessed small genomes producing fewer gene products than contemporary organisms. Since the evolution of high specificity is surely a demanding process, primitive enzymes are likely to have been broad-specificity catalysts, utilizing a family of related substrates and producing a family of related products (67). Events of gene duplication could then have facilitated the differential narrowing of substrate specificities to produce the expanded repertoire of specialized enzymes seen in contemporary organisms. The gene recruitment hypothesis (27) states that the latter scenario is the basis for the emergence of gene families whose members catalyze a variety of related enzymatic reactions. The ever-enlarging database of deduced amino acid sequences is revealing the outlines of many large and stillgrowing gene families whose common ancestor may often have been a fundamental multipurpose unit in the primitive systems referred to above. Although numerous expected homology relationships have been confirmed, sometimes reasonable predictions of homology relationships have not been correct. For example, since the beta subunit of tryptophan synthase (TrpB) in Escherichia coli is a pyridoxal 59-phosphate (PLP)-dependent enzyme that can be replaced functionally by a constitutively expressed tryptophanase (also PLP dependent) and because both catalyze b-elimination reactions, homology was predicted (27). However, TrpB and tryptophanase appear to be analogous rather than homologous (1, 47). It is additionally striking that wholly unanticipated homologs of TrpB have surfaced (47), namely, threonine synthase, threonine dehydratase, and D-serine dehydratase (all PLP-dependent enzymes). Homolog relationships that are perhaps even more surprising have also emerged. For example, pyruvate oxidase (a peripheral-membrane redox flavoprotein) and the large catalytic subunit of acetohydroxyacid synthase isoenzymes (cytoplasmic proteins in the common pathway of isoleucine-valine biosynthesis) are homologs (4). In such instances of unforeseen homology, it has inevitably been possible to rationalize a common ancestor in terms of related mechanistic features of catalysis. Indeed, the elucidation of such relationships has been quite illuminating at both the biochemical and evolutionary levels. In this minireview the model of gene recruitment is used to analyze one section of aminotransferase homologs whose membership includes a large gene family of orthologous and paralogous proteins.
Triple material double gate TFET with optimized si film thickness

Triple material double gate (TMDG) tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) can be considered as a potential nominee for next generation low power high speed device fabrication. In this study, the effect of Si film thickness on performance of TMDG TFET is analyzed using two dimensional TCAD simulations. The tunneling current is substantially dependent on device thickness and the device physics regulating it is outlined. Potential and electric field distributions along film thickness reveal that double gate pairing in TMDG TFET structure can lower the tunneling barrier width at the middle of the device until an optimized silicon film thickness is achieved and provide maximum drain current.
On the Effects of Window-Limits on the Distance Profiles of Permutation Neighborhood Operators

Local search algorithms, such as simulated annealing, tabu search, and local hill climbers attempt to optimize a solution to a problem by making locally improving modifications to a candidate solution. They rely on a neighborhood operator to restrict the search to a typically small set of possible successor states. The genetic algorithm mutation operator, likewise, enables the exploration of the local neighborhood of candidate solutions within the genetic algorithm's population. In this paper, we profile window-limited variations of several commonly employed neighborhood operators for problems in which candidate solutions are represented as permutations. Window-limited neighborhood operators enable tuning the size of the local neighborhood--e.g., to balance cost of search step against likelihood of getting stuck in a local optima. Window limits potentially can even be adjusted dynamically during search--e.g., to give a stagnated search a "kick. " We provide profiles of the distance characteristics of window-limited variations of several of the more common permutation neighborhood operators.