Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design and Control of Three-DOF Dielectric Polymer Actuator

Smart polymer based actuators have demonstrated various benefits over the traditional electromagnetic or piezoelectric-material actuators. One of the most significant contributions of the polymers is its soft actuation mechanisms. Hence morphological freedom for actuator construction benefits production of either small scale complex mechanisms or human-like applications. Although many actuation paradigms of polymer actuators are presented in various publications, no significant contributions are made for investigation of modeling and control methods of the material. In the present work, a smart polymer based actuator is constructed. It is then modeled and analyzed for feasible control scheme selection.
Motor neglect associated with loss of action inhibition

Motor neglect, underuse of one side of the body not explained by weakness or sensory impairment, is a common consequence of stroke that is surprisingly little understood. Behavioural and neuroanatomical hallmarks of the disorder are investigated. Using a masked prime task, it was shown that when patients with left motor neglect plan to move their left hand, irrelevant right limb motor programmes intrude, causing delay. Lesion analysis reveals that such asymmetry of motor programming occurs after infarcts of the right putamen and motor association areas. This demonstration of failure to inhibit ipsilesional limb motor plans suggests potential benefit from interventions that might act to restore balance in action planning.
High-Efficiency Mirror Grinding of AlN by Ultra-Precision Plane Honing

Plane honing machining of aluminum nitride (AlN) was investigated in this study. AlN has advantageous thermal and dielectric characteristics and is in great demand as a semiconductor mounting board or packaging parts material. However, as AlN is a sintered material, the AlN grains readily detach during machining making it difficult to obtain fine surface roughness at high efficiency. In previous studies, we have developed a new plane honing method that makes it possible to grind hard and brittle materials. In this paper, plane honing experiments of AlN were carried out using a resinoid or vitrified bond wheel. Fine surface roughness could be obtained using the resinoid bond wheel but there was low-machining efficiency due to burying and detachment of abrasives. The vitrified bond wheel, however, enabled high efficiency grinding but resulted in traces of detached AlN grains forming at the machined surface. Highly efficient mirror grinding of AlN could be achieved by using a vitrified bond wheel for semi-finishing and a resinoid bond wheel for finishing.
Effect of Streptozotocin on Transaminases, Creatinine and Urea in Serum of Rats

This study investigates the diabetes-induced lesions in liver and kidney and in addition the possible side effects of the diabetogenic substance streptozotocin (SR) on these organs in non-diabetic animals. 5-week-old female Wistar rats were injected 65 or 130 mg SR/kg body mass. Some animals of the drug group did not become hyperglycemic; thus it was possible to separate the drug effect from the diabetic influence on liver and kidney. In serum investigations some metabolic changes concerning the activities of the liver enzymes aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase and the concentrations of urea and creatinine up to 30 days after drug application were studied. SR in hyperglycemic animals causes a time and dose dependent rise in all investigated parameters. Also in normoglycemic rats a significant increase in alkaline phosphatase and in creatinine was observed after 10 days. After 21 and 30 days there were no differences compared to untreated control rats, whereas elevated levels were observed in the hyperglycemic rats. Thus our results support the view of a short damaging effect of SR on liver and kidney without inducing a diabetic state; in hyperglycemic rats the damaging effect is more pronounced.
Tiotropium inhibits pulmonary inflammation and remodelling in a guinea pig model of COPD

Airway remodelling and emphysema are major structural abnormalities in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In addition, pulmonary vascular remodelling may occur and contribute to pulmonary hypertension, a comorbidity of COPD. Increased cholinergic activity in COPD contributes to airflow limitation and, possibly, to inflammation and airway remodelling. This study aimed to investigate the role of acetylcholine in pulmonary inflammation and remodelling using an animal model of COPD. To this aim, guinea pigs were instilled intranasally with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) twice weekly for 12 weeks and were treated, by inhalation, with the long-acting muscarinic receptor antagonist tiotropium. Repeated LPS exposure induced airway and parenchymal neutrophilia, and increased goblet cell numbers, lung hydroxyproline content, airway wall collagen and airspace size. Furthermore, LPS increased the number of muscularised microvessels in the adventitia of cartilaginous airways. Tiotropium abrogated the LPS-induced increase in neutrophils, goblet cells, collagen deposition and muscularised microvessels, but had no effect on emphysema. In conclusion, tiotropium inhibits remodelling of the airways as well as pulmonary inflammation in a guinea pig model of COPD, suggesting that endogenous acetylcholine plays a major role in the pathogenesis of this disease.
Character String Analysis and Customer Path in Stream Data

This purpose of this study is to propose a knowledge-discovery system that can abstract helpful information from character strings representing shopper visits to product sections associated with positive and negative purchasing events by applying character string parsing technologies to stream data describing customer purchasing behavior inside a store. Taking data that traced customers' movements we focus on the number of times customers stop by particular product sections, and by representing those visits in the form of character strings, we propose a way to efficiently handle large stream data. During our experiment, we abstract store-section visiting patterns that characterize customers who purchase a relatively larger volume of items, and are able to show the usefulness of these visiting patterns. In addition, we examine index functions, calculation time, and prediction accuracy, and clarify technological issues warranting further research. In the present study, we demonstrate the feasibility of employing stream data in the marketing field and the usefulness of the employing character parsing techniques.
A Simplified Model of User Experience for Practical Application

Today’s highly competitive mass markets of interactive products have led to a new perception of product quality by the users and providers of information technology. This new perception goes far beyond the concepts of pure functionality or usability, which are traditionally promoted by software engineering or HCI research. It also incorporates hard-to-grasp concepts from visual and industrial design, psychology, or marketing research, e.g. attractiveness, fun or the successful delivery of a brand proposition. Thus the achievement of this kind of a positive “user experience” (or UX) has become the design goal for numerous interdisciplinary UX teams at world’s leading IT manufacturers. However, although the term “user experience” is already widely adopted by practitioners and the industry, there is no scientific consensus on a definition or a theoretical model of UX yet. In this paper we therefore collect different views from scientific and practitioner literature and unify them in a simplified model of UX for practical application and as a theoretical framework for future UX-oriented endeavors. Author Keywords
Task Composition in Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has gained popularity in a variety of domains as an increasing number of jobs are "taskified" and completed independently by a set of workers. A central process in crowdsourcing is the mechanism through which workers find tasks. On popular platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, tasks can be sorted by dimensions such as creation date or reward amount. Research efforts on task assignment have focused on adopting a requester-centric approach whereby tasks are proposed to workers in order to maximize overall task throughput, result quality and cost. In this paper, we advocate the need to complement that with a worker-centric approach to task assignment, and examine the problem of producing, for each worker, a personalized summary of tasks that preserves overall task throughput. We formalize task composition for workers as an optimization problem that finds a representative set of k valid and relevant Composite Tasks (CTs). Validity enforces that a composite task complies with the task arrival rate and satisfies the worker's expected wage. Relevance imposes that tasks match the worker's qualifications. We show empirically that workers' experience is greatly improved due to task homogeneity in each CT and to the adequation of CTs with workers' skills. As a result task throughput is improved.
The Seeds of Lotus japonicus Lines Transformed with Sense, Antisense, and Sense/Antisense Galactomannan Galactosyltransferase Constructs Have Structurally Altered Galactomannans in Their Endosperm Cell Walls1

Galactomannan biosynthesis in legume seed endosperms involves two Golgi membrane-bound glycosyltransferases, mannan synthase and galactomannan galactosyltransferase (GMGT). GMGT specificity is an important factor regulating the distribution and amount of (1→6)-α-galactose (Gal) substitution of the (1→4)-β-linked mannan backbone. The model legume Lotus japonicus is shown now to have endospermic seeds with endosperm cell walls that contain a high-Gal galactomannan (mannose [Man]/Gal = 1.2-1.3). Galactomannan biosynthesis in developing L. japonicus endosperms has been mapped, and a cDNA encoding a functional GMGT has been obtained from L. japonicus endosperms during galactomannan deposition. L. japonicus has been transformed with sense, antisense, and sense/antisense (“hairpin loop”) constructs of the GMGT cDNA. Some of the sense, antisense, and sense/antisense transgenic lines exhibited galactomannans with altered (higher) Man/Gal values in their (T1 generation) seeds, at frequencies that were consistent with posttranscriptional silencing of GMGT. For T1 generation individuals, transgene inheritance was correlated with galactomannan composition and amount in the endosperm. All the azygous individuals had unchanged galactomannans, whereas those that had inherited a GMGT transgene exhibited a range of Man/Gal values, up to about 6 in some lines. For Man/Gal values up to 4, the results were consistent with lowered Gal substitution of a constant amount of mannan backbone. Further lowering of Gal substitution was accompanied by a slight decrease in the amount of mannan backbone. Microsomal membranes prepared from the developing T2 generation endosperms of transgenic lines showed reduced GMGT activity relative to mannan synthase. The results demonstrate structural modification of a plant cell wall polysaccharide by designed regulation of a Golgi-bound glycosyltransferase.
Intravitreal Ranibizumab and Bevacizumab: A Review of Risk

Ranibizumab (Lucentis®), a recombinant monoclonal antibody, blocks all active forms of vascular endothelial growth factor A and was the first treatment for age-related macular degeneration shown to improve visual acuity in a substantial percentage of patients rather than slowing visual loss. Bevacizumab (Avastin®) has a similar action, is related to the ranibizumab compound with respect to its structure, but has not been approved by the FDA for intravitreal use and therefore must be utilized only in an off-label setting. While ranibizumab was approved by the FDA at a dose of 0.5 mg per intravitreal injection, the manufacturer recently issued a letter to physicians warning of the increased risk of stroke at the FDA-approved dose as compared to a lower studied dose of 0.3 mg. An interim analysis of the ongoing SAILOR study revealed a 1.2% risk of stroke in the 0.5 mg arm versus 0.3% in the 0.3 mg arm (p = 0.02). It is unclear whether the trend toward a higher risk of stroke in patients receiving 0.5 mg dose of ranibizumab would persist in the final analysis, but details such as causality, topography, and severity of stroke in the SAILOR study should also be delineated. The risks of intraocular use of bevacizumab remain largely unknown at this time.
MicroRNAs as Haematopoiesis Regulators

The production of different types of blood cells including their formation, development, and differentiation is collectively known as haematopoiesis. Blood cells are divided into three lineages erythriod (erythrocytes), lymphoid (B and T cells), and myeloid (granulocytes, megakaryocytes, and macrophages). Haematopoiesis is a complex process regulated by several mechanisms including microRNAs (miRNAs). miRNAs are small RNAs which regulate the expression of a number of genes involved in commitment and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells. Evidence shows that miRNAs play an important role in haematopoiesis; for example, myeloid and erythroid differentiation is blocked by the overexpression of miR-15a. miR-221, miR-222, and miR-24 inhibit the erythropoiesis, whereas miR-150 plays a role in B and T cell differentiation. miR-146 and miR-10a are downregulated in megakaryopoiesis. Aberrant expression of miRNAs was observed in hematological malignancies including chronic myelogenous leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, multiple myelomas, and B cell lymphomas. In this review we have focused on discussing the role of miRNA in haematopoiesis.
Assembly and post-assembly manipulation of polyelectrolyte multilayers for control of bacterial attachment and viability

The overall goal of this thesis was to exploit the versatility of the polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) platform to consider bacteria‐substrata interactions by varying multilayer assembly and post‐assembly conditions. We developed multiple PEM systems to probe the ability of substrata to resist bacteria attachment or act as contact‐killing antimicrobials. In the first study, by varying the pH of assembly, we developed PEMs of identical chemical composition (polyallylamine hydrochloride (PAH) and polyacrylic acid (PAA)) with distinct mechanical moduli (1‐100 MPa). Once characterized, these PEMs showed that, under certain conditions, bacterial attachment correlated with increasing modulus. Thus, substrata stiffness was found to be an additional parameter to consider when studying bacterial attachment. The next project focused on PEMs of PAH and poly(sodium‐4‐styrene sulfonate) (SPS) assembled at high pH that showed a reversible swelling transition upon immersion in a low pH solution. These acid‐treated PEMs presented high positive charge density and mobility, and were capable of killing bacteria on contact. SPS/PAH PEMs were used as a model system to enumerate the design parameters that should be considered to create a cationic killing surface. A third PEM system was employed to further illustrate the effects of multilayer assembly and post‐assembly conditions on bacteria. Cross‐linked hydrogen‐ bonded PAA and poly(acrylamide) (PAAm) multilayers were modified post‐assembly by the adsorption of PAH at various pH values. These multilayers underwent a variety of morphological transitions depending on the pH of PAH adsorption. At mid‐range pH values, the film stiffened and promoted aqueous bacterial attachment. At high pH values, PAH adsorbed onto the surface with many unbound uncharged amine groups. When the multilayer was exposed to physiological pH values for bacteria assays, the amine groups became protonated and participated in a cationic‐killing effect. Finally, biofilm control was examined by investigating initial biofilm formation on films of various mechanical stiffness and surface charge. No differences were visible via optical microscopy. An alternative approach to biofilm control was considered whereby a dissociating multilayer region lifted‐off a contaminated layer, exposing a clean, unfouled underlying surface. Thesis Supervisor: Michael F. Rubner Title: TDK Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Perforator Patterns of the Ulnar Artery Perforator Flap

Background: Flaps based on the ulnar artery have never gained the same popularity as the radial forearm flap, despite several potential advantages. In this article, the authors describe a true ulnar artery perforator flap with perforator mapping. Methods: Thirty-eight consecutive patients who underwent ulnar artery perforator flap surgery were included in the study. The size, number, and location of perforators were recorded intraoperatively. Preoperative and postoperative grip strength was tested and compared. Results: One to three cutaneous perforators from the ulnar artery were identified and designated as A, B, and C from distal to proximal. Perforator A was present in 79 percent of cases and located 7.3 ± 1.1 cm from the pisiform. Perforator B was present in 95 percent of cases and located 11.4 ± 1.0 cm from the pisiform. Perforator C was present in 87 percent of cases and located 15.9 ± 1.8 cm from the pisiform. All patients had at least two perforators, and 61 percent had three perforators. All flaps were used for head and neck reconstruction and all were successful. Donor-site morbidity was minor. Grip testing demonstrated a transient decrease in grip strength during the postoperative period, and most recovered to the contralateral level by 3 months. Conclusions: At least two perforators are present in the ulnar artery perforator flap territory. This flap is reliable and easy to harvest and has minimal donor-site morbidity. It should be considered as an alternative to the radial forearm flap in select patients.
Quantifying Information Leaks in Outbound Web Traffic Kevin Borders

As the Internet grows and network bandwidth continues to increase, administrators are faced with the task of keeping confidential information from leaving their networks. Today’s network traffic is so voluminous that manual inspection would be unreasonably expensive. In response, researchers have created data loss prevention systems that check outgoing traffic for known confidential information. These systems stop naïve adversaries from leaking data, but are fundamentally unable to identify encrypted or obfuscated information leaks. What remains is a high-capacity pipe for tunneling data to the Internet. We present an approach for quantifying information leak capacity in network traffic. Instead of trying to detect the presence of sensitive data—an impossible task in the general case—our goal is to measure and constrain its maximum volume. We take advantage of the insight that most network traffic is repeated or determined by external information, such as protocol specifications or messages sent by a server. By filtering this data, we can isolate and quantify true information flowing from a computer. In this paper, we present measurement algorithms for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the main protocol for web browsing. When applied to real web browsing traffic, the algorithms were able to discount 98.5% of measured bytes and effectively isolate information leaks.
A hybrid adaptive routing protocol for ad hoc wireless networks

Ad hoc networks are characterized by dynamic topology caused by node mobility, multihop wireless connectivity and channel non-deterministic behavior (interference, multipath, hidden and exposed node problem make the wireless channel very difficult to predict). The behavior of ad hoc networks must be analyzed in detail as a result of the pairing of the selected MAC and routing protocols. We focus our studies in the routing layer while closely observing the developments in MAC layer. We present and examine the characteristics of a new hybrid adaptive routing protocol based on the ZRP protocol.
Color segmentation for historical documents using Markov random fields

Binarization is often used for pixel-wise document text extraction as preprocessing step for scanned historical documents. These documents are scanned in color and high resolution today. The reduction of color to grayscale images and the subsequent binarization implies a loss of information and often results in unsatisfying processing results. In this paper, a color segmentation instead of a binarization approach is used to segment text from background in historical manuscripts. A color segmentation approach based on Markov random fields with a reduced set of required parameters is presented to segment text written in different colors from noisy page background. First tests with historical Arabic manuscripts show promising results. In case of words written in light red color, our approach shows better results than a state-of-the-art binarization approach.
Efficient learning and evaluation of complex concepts in inductive logic programming

Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) is a subfield of Machine Learning with foundations in logic programming. In ILP, logic programming, a subset of first-order logic, is used as a uniform representation language for the problem specification and induced theories. ILP has been successfully applied to many real-world problems, especially in the biological domain (e.g. drug design, protein structure prediction), where relational information is of particular importance. The expressiveness of logic programs grants flexibility in specifying the learning task and understandability to the induced theories. However, this flexibility comes at a high computational cost, constraining the applicability of ILP systems. Constructing and evaluating complex concepts remain two of the main issues that prevent ILP systems from tackling many learning problems. These learning problems are interesting both from a research perspective, as they raise the standards for ILP systems, and from an application perspective, where these target concepts naturally occur in many real-world applications. Such complex concepts cannot be constructed or evaluated by parallelizing existing top-down ILP systems or improving the underlying Prolog engine. Novel search strategies and cover algorithms are needed. The main focus of this thesis is on how to efficiently construct and evaluate complex hypotheses in an ILP setting. In order to construct such hypotheses we investigate two approaches. The first, the Top Directed Hypothesis Derivation framework, implemented in the ILP system TopLog, involves the use of a top theory to constrain the hypothesis space. In the second approach we revisit the bottom-up search strategy of Golem, lifting its restriction on determinate clauses which had rendered Golem inapplicable to many key areas. These developments led to the bottom-up ILP system ProGolem. A challenge that arises with a bottom-up approach is the coverage computation of long, non-determinate, clauses. Prolog’s SLD-resolution is no longer adequate. We developed a new, Prolog-based, theta-subsumption engine which is significantly more efficient than SLD-resolution in computing the coverage of such complex clauses. We provide evidence that ProGolem achieves the goal of learning complex concepts by presenting a protein-hexose binding prediction application. The theory ProGolem induced has a statistically significant better predictive accuracy than that of other learners. More importantly, the biological insights ProGolem’s theory provided were judged by domain experts to be relevant and, in some cases, novel.