Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental studies of the use of phase lead filters to compensate lags in head-coupled visual displays

Display lags degrade performance when using the head to track a target presented on a helmet-mounted display. These lags originate from delays in measuring the position of the head and the time required to generate the image of the target. This paper presents two laboratory studies on the use of phase lead filters to improve head tracking performance in the presence of display lags. In the preliminary study, the benefits of lag compensation by a phase lead filter were impeded by associated changes in filter gain. The frequency responses of two phase lead filters were then optimized to have near unity gain at frequencies below 0.7 Hz where there was most head motion. The main study showed that these optimized filters significantly improved head tracking performance with a system having a total lag of 140 ms. At frequencies above about 0.7 Hz, a greater than unity filter gain caused jittery image movement. Although this jittering degraded head tracking performance it was removed by an alternative lag compensation technique involving 'image deflection'. This deflection shifted the displayed image to its correct horizontal and vertical position relative to the head. Image deflection, combined with the phase lead filters, produced a tracking performance unaffected by lag.
DPP‐4 inhibitors and their potential role in the management of type 2 diabetes

The dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP‐4) inhibitors enhance the body's own ability to control blood glucose by increasing the active levels of incretin hormones in the body. Their mechanism of action is distinct from any existing class of oral glucose‐lowering agents. They control elevated blood glucose by triggering pancreatic insulin secretion, suppressing pancreatic glucagon secretion, and signalling the liver to reduce glucose production. The leading DPP‐4 inhibitors have shown clinically significant HbA1c reductions up to 1 year of treatment and offer many potential advantages over existing diabetes therapies including a low risk of hypoglycaemia, no effect on body weight, and the potential, based on animal and in vitro studies, for the regeneration and differentiation of pancreatic β‐cells. They are efficacious as monotherapy and also in combination with commonly prescribed antidiabetic agents and are suitable for once‐daily oral dosing. Consequently, many DPP‐4 inhibitors such as vildagliptin (Galvus; LAF‐237), sitagliptin (Januvia; MK‐0431), and saxagliptin (BMS‐477118) have advanced into late‐stage human clinical trials.
Building a Security Aware Cloud by Extending Internal Control to Cloud

Faced with today's innovative blow-up of cloud technologies, we are forced to rebuild services in terms of cloud. In the rebuilding, considering a facet of cloud as social infrastructure, security is a critical problem. Most of insecurity against clouds can be summarized as insecurity of management, which is classified into the multiple stakeholder problem, and the open space security problem. As a solution to these problems, we extend ISMS internal control to cloud by implementing trust base of security on IAM and key management. Because ISMS internal control is a source of trust, its extension to cloud can be an essential solution of security. Moreover, by controlling levels of quality of service and security by contract, we can optimize cost on service and security delegated to a cloud.
A Simple Oligonucleotide Biochip Capable of Rapidly Detecting Known Mitochondrial DNA Mutations in Chinese Patients with Leber’S Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON)

Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) is a maternally transmitted disease. Clinically, no efficient assay protocols have been available. In this study, we aimed to develop an oligonucleotide biochip specialized for detection of known base substitution mutations in mitochondrial DNA causing LHON and to investigate frequencies of LHON relevant variants in Anhui region of China. Thirty-two pairs of oligonucleotide probes matched with the mutations potentially linked to LHON were covalently immobilized. Cy5-lablled targets were amplified from blood DNA samples by a multiplex PCR method. Two kinds of primary mutations 11778 G > A and 14484 T > C from six confirmed LHON patients were interrogated to validate this biochip format. Further, fourteen Chinese LHON pedigrees and twenty-five unrelated healthy individuals were investigated by the LHON biochip, direct sequencing and pyrosequencing, respectively. The biochip was found to be able efficiently to discriminate homoplasmic and heteroplasmic mtDNA mutations in LHON. Biochip analysis revealed that twelve of eighteen LHON symptomatic cases from the 14 Chinese pedigree harbored the mutations either 11778G > A, 14484T > C or 3460G > A, respectively, accounting for 66.7%. The mutation 11778G > A in these patients was homoplasmic and prevalent (55.5%, 10 of 18 cases). The mutations 3460G > A and 3394T > C were found to co-exist in one LHON case. The mutation 13708G > A appeared in one LHON pedigree. Smaller amount of sampling and reaction volume, easier target preparation, fast and high-throughput were the main advantages of the biochip over direct DNA sequencing and pyrosequencing. Our findings suggested that primary mutations of 11778G > A, 14484T > C or 3460G > A are main variants of mtDNA gene leading to LHON in China. The biochip would easily be implemented in clinical diagnosis.
Low temperature limitation on the quality factor of quartz resonators

The quality factor (Q) for different resonators at several overtones has been determined between 1.5 K and 300 K. These measurements form the basis for an improved interpretation of the limitation on Q. It is concluded that between 6 K and 20 K the main limitation in Q is due to the crystal itself. Data for different overtones permit the elimination of damping effects of the crystal supports. Measurements have been carried out on crystals with different roughness characteristics. These roughness characteristics have been measured using optical interferometry. Better control of surface roughness and crystal quality could lead to a Q of about 100 million in the liquid helium region. This value would be for a 11-MHz, 7th overtone crystal having a diameter of 15 mm. <<ETX>>
Behavioral Immunity in Insects

Parasites can dramatically reduce the fitness of their hosts, and natural selection should favor defense mechanisms that can protect hosts against disease. Much work has focused on understanding genetic and physiological immunity against parasites, but hosts can also use behaviors to avoid infection, reduce parasite growth or alleviate disease symptoms. It is increasingly recognized that such behaviors are common in insects, providing strong protection against parasites and parasitoids. We review the current evidence for behavioral immunity in insects, present a framework for investigating such behavior, and emphasize that behavioral immunity may act through indirect rather than direct fitness benefits. We also discuss the implications for host-parasite co-evolution, local adaptation, and the evolution of non-behavioral physiological immune systems. Finally, we argue that the study of behavioral immunity in insects has much to offer for investigations in vertebrates, in which this topic has traditionally been studied.
Independent contact regions for frictional grasps on 3D objects

This paper presents an efficient algorithm to compute independent contact regions on the surface of complex 3D objects such that a finger contact anywhere inside each of these regions assures a force-closure grasp despite the exact contact position. Independent contact regions provide robustness in front of finger positioning errors during an object grasping, and give relevant information for finger repositioning during the object manipulation. The object is described with a mesh of surface points, so the procedure is applicable to objects of any arbitrary shape. The proposed approach uses information from the wrench space, and generates the independent regions by growing them around the contact points of a given starting grasp. A two-phase approach is also provided to find a locally optimum force-closure grasp that serves as starting grasp, considering as grasp quality measure the largest perturbation wrench that the grasp can resist with independence of the perturbation direction. The approach has been implemented and several examples are provided to illustrate its performance.
Evidence for Weak or Linear Conformity but Not for Hyper-Conformity in an Everyday Social Learning Context

Conformity is thought to be an important force in cultural evolution because it has the potential to stabilize cooperation in large groups, potentiate group selection and thus explain uniquely human behaviors. However, the effects of such conformity on cultural and biological evolution will depend much on the way individuals are influenced by the frequency of alternative behavioral options witnessed. Theoretical modeling has suggested that only what we refer to as ‘hyper-conformity’, an exaggerated tendency to perform the most frequent behavior witnessed in other individuals, is able to increase within-group homogeneity and between-group diversity, for instance. Empirically however, few experiments have addressed how the frequency of behavior witnessed affects behavior. Accordingly we performed an experiment to test for the presence of conformity in a natural situation with humans. Visitors to a Zoo exhibit were invited to write or draw answers to questions on A5 cards and potentially win a small prize. We manipulated the proportion of existing writings versus drawings visible to visitors and measured the proportion of written cards submitted. We found a strong and significant effect of the proportion of text displayed on the proportion of text in the answers, thus demonstrating social learning. We show that this effect is approximately linear, with potentially a small, weak-conformist component but no hyper-conformist one. The present experiment therefore provides evidence for linear conformity in humans in a very natural context.
A 0.035-pJ/bit/dB 20-Gb/s Adaptive Linear Equalizer With an Adaptation Time of 2.68 $\mu\text{s}$

A 20-Gb/s adaptive linear equalizer with a coefficient fast-converging method is presented. By using the asynchronous sampling technique, the power dissipation of the circuits, realizing the adaptation method, can be reduced. However, the equalization coefficients require a considerable amount of time to be determined. To shorten the asynchronous sampling time, the high-frequency gain of the linear equalizer is calibrated prior to the low-frequency one. With a 20-Gb/s pseudorandom binary sequence of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2^{7}-1$</tex-math></inline-formula>, the measured bit-error-rates are all less than 10<sup>−12</sup> for channel loss from −7.98 to −18.3 dB. Moreover, the equalization coefficients are determined within 2.68 <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu\text{s}$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Fabricated in a 40-nm CMOS technology, this equalizer totally consumes 12.8 mW from a 1.1-V supply, of which only 4.9 mW dissipates in the circuits, realizing the proposed method. The calculated figure-of-merit is 0.035-pJ/bit/dB.
Formal methods in PLC programming

A detailed generic model of the control design process is introduced and discussed. It is used for surveying different formal approaches in the context of PLC programming. The survey focuses on formal methods for verification and validation (V&V). The varying works in this area are categorized using three criteria: the general approach (A) to the task (model based, constraint based or without a model), the formalism (F) (Petri net, automata, etc.,) used to state the formal description, and the method (M) (model-checking, reachability analysis, etc.,) used to analyze the properties. Based on these three criteria (A-F-M) a three letter code for V&V approaches is introduced. Some works from the multitude of V&V research are presented and categorized using this new system.
Exploring business process modelling paradigms and design-time to run-time transitions

The business process management literature describes a multitude of approaches (e.g. imperative, declarative or event-driven) that each result in a different mix of process flexibility, compliance, effectiveness and efficiency. Although the use of a single approach over the process lifecycle is often assumed, transitions between approaches at different phases in the process lifecycle may also be considered. This article explores several business process strategies by analysing the approaches at different phases in the process lifecycle as well as the various transitions.
Restudy of segmental lengthening in Mandarin Chinese

This paper studies different types of segmental lengthening in Mandarin Chinese by clarifying temporal structure of various lengthened syllables. The discussion is mainly based on an investigation to a discourse speech corpus. The results show that there exist three types of syllable lengthening in spoken Chinese, and each type is matched with certain prosodic events and characterized by certain profile of temporal variation. Therefore, segmental lengthening may be a valuable source of information in understanding prosodic organization of speech. It should be of benefit to recognize the mechanism of speech production and perception, as well as improving in speech recognition, synthesis and natural language understanding.
Efficient Business Process Reengineering with

The business world is improving dramatically, and Global competitiveness and the need to have competitive advantage drive companies to adopt new technologies and apply it into company’s processes. The development of information technology stimulates organizations to re-design its business processes to better support organization’s mission and reduce costs. This paper presents Crowdsourcing approach as leverage for Business Process Reengineering (BPR). Crowdsourcing is a new on-line distributed problem solving approach that enables organizations to have their processes or tasks be done by large, distributed crowd of people through internet. This paper outlines how crowdsourcing is going to enhance Business Process Reengineering effectiveness by providing organizations with large groups of qualified workforce and efficient crossfunctional team who could evaluate organizations operations and customer satisfaction, analyze market needs and etc. Companies by using crowdsourcing for BPR could have faster and cheaper BPR project.
Properties of TiC Coating by Pulsed DC PACVD

In the PACVD technique, temperature and gas flow rate are two important parameters affecting the coating characteristics. Effect of these parameters on mechanical behaviors of TiC coating that was deposited on hot work tool steel (H13) was investigated in this paper. We analyzed TiC coating composition and structure with grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The mechanical properties of the coatings, such as microhardness, wear resistance, and surface roughness, were studied with Knoop hardness indentation, pin on disk wear tests, and atomic force microscopy, respectively. When the deposition temperature decreased from 490°C to 450°C and the CH4 to TiCl4 flow rate ratio was also increased from 1.5 to 6, TiC coating color changed from dark gray to silver. The best mechanical properties such as a high hardness (27 GPa), wear resistance, and low surface roughness were related to the coating that was deposited at 450°C.
Review of "Interpreting the CMMI: A Process Improvement Approach by Margaret K. Kulpa and Kent A. Johnson". Auerbach Publications 2003.

This work describes a new technique for analysis of Java 2, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) applications. In such applications, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) are commonly used to encapsulate the core computations performed on Web servers. Access to EJBs is protected by application servers, according to role-based access control policies that may be created either at development or deployment time. These policies may prohibit some types of users from accessing specific EJB methods. We present a static technique for analyzing J2EE access control policies with respect to security-sensitive fields of EJBs and other server-side objects. Our technique uses points-to analysis to determine which object fields are accessed by which EJB methods, directly or indirectly. Based on this information, J2EE access control policies are analyzed to identify potential inconsistencies that may lead to security holes.
Federated ALCI: Preliminary Report

We introduce F-ALCI, a federated version of the description logic ALCI. An F-ALCI ontology, like its package-based counterpart ALCIP-, consists of multiple ALCI ontologies that can import concepts or roles defined in other modules. Unlike ALCIP- which supports only contextualized negation, F-ALCI, supports contextualization of each of the logical connectives, a feature that allows more flexible reuse of knowledge from independently developed ontologies. We provide a new semantics for F-ALCI based on image domain relations and establish the conditions that need to be imposed on domain relations to ensure properties, such as preservation of unsatisfiability and monotonicity of inference, that are desirable in distributed web applications. We also establish the decidability of F-ALCI.
Differentially Private Event Sequences over Infinite Streams

Numerous applications require continuous publication of statistics or monitoring purposes, such as real-time traffic analysis, timely disease outbreak discovery, and social trends observation. These statistics may be derived from sensitive user data and, hence, necessitate privacy preservation. A notable paradigm for offering strong privacy guarantees in statistics publishing is e-differential privacy. However, there is limited literature that adapts this concept to settings where the statistics are computed over an infinite stream of "events" (i.e., data items generated by the users), and published periodically. These works aim at hiding a single event over the entire stream. We argue that, in most practical scenarios, sensitive information is revealed from multiple events occurring at contiguous time instances. Towards this end, we put forth the novel notion of w-event privacy over infinite streams, which protects any event sequence occurring in w successive time instants. We first formulate our privacy concept, motivate its importance, and introduce a methodology for achieving it. We next design two instantiations, whose utility is independent of the stream length. Finally, we confirm the practicality of our solutions experimenting with real data.
Influence of pH on Calcium Influx During Hypoxia in Rat Cortical Brain Slices

Background and Purpose Acidity of brain intracellular and extracellular fluids appears to increase brain injury from stroke, but low extracellular pH decreases the activity of AT-methyl-D-aspartate receptor ion channels and decreases calcium influx into isolated neurons. To further investigate the role of acid-base balance in hypoxic brain injury, we studied the influences of intracellular and extracellular pH on calcium influx in cortical brain slices during hypoxia. Methods Intracellular calcium ([Ca2+]i) and pH (pHi) were measured fluorometrically with the dyes fura-2 and biscarboxyethyl carboxyfluorescein, respectively, during two types of hypoxia: (1) slice perfusate equilibrated with N2/CO2 at pH 6.6 or 6.2 (“gaseous hypoxia”) or (2) perfusate equilibrated with 95% O2/5% CO2 plus 100 μmol/L NaCN at pH 7.3, 6.6, or 6.2 (“chemical hypoxia”). Results Changes in perfusate pH under aerobic conditions did not change [Ca2+]i. However, influx of calcium caused by gaseous or chemical hypoxia increased significantly with decreasing perfusate pH. During chemical hypoxia, the elevation in [Ca2+]i at perfusate pH 6.2 was twice that at perfusate pH 7.3. Change in [Ca2+]i was correlated with perfusate pH but not pHi. Conclusions These results, which differ from previous studies showing acid inhibition of calcium influx in isolated neurons, suggest that low extracellular pH may exacerbate cellular injury during severe hypoxia or ischemia in the intact brain.
Electroless Ni coatings for the improvement of wear resistance of bearings for lightweight rotary gear pumps

The possibility of improving the performances of current aluminium alloys in the bearings region of lightweight external gear pumps has been investigated. Two different electroless Ni-based coatings, one containing high percentages of P (10-14%) and the other modified with the addition of 25 wt% PTFE micrometric spheres, deposited on 2011 Al alloy, were characterised by scratch test and ball-on-disc tests. Comparison with an antifriction Sn-containing Al-alloy was performed. The PTFE-containing coating presents the lowest wear rate and friction against steel. However, the presence of PTFE spheres and the hardness mismatch with the substrate tends to favour tensile cracking of the coating.
Association of Polymorphisms in the Paraoxonase 1 Gene with Breast Cancer Incidence in the CPS-II Nutrition Cohort

Paraoxonase 1 (PON1) plays an important role in the high-density lipoprotein–mediated prevention of low-density lipoprotein oxidation and the metabolism of lipid-soluble radicals. In this study, we investigated the association of two common, nonsynonymous polymorphisms in the PON1 gene (Q192R and L55M) with breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women through a nested case-control study within the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. Using conditional logistic regression of genotyping results from 502 cases and 502 cancer-free controls matched on age, race/ethnicity, and date of blood draw, we found that the L55M single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was associated with an increased risk of breast cancer [odds ratio (OR), 1.58; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 1.05-2.37 for MM]. No association was found for the Q192R SNP. The L55M association with breast cancer was modified by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use. The association was limited to women who took NSAIDs and was somewhat stronger among women who reported regular (≥15 times per month) NSAID use (OR, 3.24; 95% CI, 1.17-9.00) than in those who reported any NSAID use (OR, 2.46; 95% CI, 1.39-4.36). These results suggest that genetic variation in PON1, particularly at the L55M SNP, may be associated with increased risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Furthermore, NSAID use seems to modify this risk. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006;15(6):1226–8)