Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Control of Euler and Navier-Stokes equations: Applications to optimal shape design in aeronautics

Recently, shape design has been acquiring increasing relevance within the aeronautical community, both in the industrial sector as well as in research centers. This increasing interest stems from the speed and precision of computations which are being achieved with the use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) techniques.Optimal shape design aims at finding the minimum of a functional by controlling the PDE modelling the flow using surface (domain boundaries) deformation techniques. As a solution to the enormous computational resources required for classical shape optimization of functionals of aerodynamic interest, the best strategy is to use in a systematic way methods inspired in control theory. To do this one assumes that a given aerodynamic surface (typically a wing) is an element that produces lift or drag by controlling or modifying the flow. One of the key ingredients in the application of control theoretical methods relies on the use of the adjoint system techniques to simplify the computation of gradients. Some of the groundbreaking works in this field are due to J.-L. Lions [1], followed by the developments of O. Pironneau [2], who was a pioneer in the applications to CFD. A. Jameson [3] was the first to apply these techniques to the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in the field of aeronautical applications. In the present paper we will restrict our attention to optimal shape design in systems governed by the Euler or Navier-Stokes equations. We first review some standard facts on control theory applied to optimal shape design, and recall the Euler and Navier-Stokes equations in aerodynamical problems. We then study the adjoint formulation, providing a detailed exposition of how the derivatives of functionals may be obtained. Finally, the application of the Level Set methodology to optimal shape design is reviewed.
Design of H∞ command and control loops for unmanned aerial vehicles using static output-feedback

The aim of this paper is to design a helicopter position control system with guaranteed performance that allows tracking control of unmanned aerial vehicle positions - X, Y, Z, and yaw while preserving a structure that is generally accepted in the helicopter control community. The paper presents an approach for designing compensators for shaping the closed-loop inertial positions and yaw step response using Hinfin output-feedback design techniques. Simplified conditions are used which only require the solution of two coupled matrix design equations. Hinfin framework is utilized to pose the problem of stabilization as an outer position command loop and an inner control loop. Inner loop controls attitude rates along with roll and pitch and provides robustness and structure. This paper thereby presents a design for hover and station-keeping control of UAV helicopters. It is shown that the rotorcraft model can be first loop shaped to achieve desired characteristics about the hover operating condition. A numerically efficient solution algorithm to solve the Hinfin coupled design equations for both inner and outer loops is used. A major contribution is that an initial stabilizing gain is not needed. The efficacy of the control law and the disturbance accommodation properties are shown on a rotorcraft design example.
Hox patterning of the vertebrate rib cage

Unlike the rest of the axial skeleton, which develops solely from somitic mesoderm, patterning of the rib cage is complicated by its derivation from two distinct tissues. The thoracic skeleton is derived from both somitic mesoderm, which forms the vertebral bodies and ribs, and from lateral plate mesoderm, which forms the sternum. By generating mouse mutants in Hox5, Hox6 and Hox9 paralogous group genes, along with a dissection of the Hox10 and Hox11 group mutants, several important conclusions regarding the nature of the `Hox code' in rib cage and axial skeleton development are revealed. First, axial patterning is consistently coded by the unique and redundant functions of Hox paralogous groups throughout the axial skeleton. Loss of paralogous function leads to anterior homeotic transformations of colinear regions throughout the somite-derived axial skeleton. In the thoracic region, Hox genes pattern the lateral plate-derived sternum in a non-colinear manner, independent from the patterning of the somite-derived vertebrae and vertebral ribs. Finally, between adjacent sets of paralogous mutants, the regions of vertebral phenotypes overlap considerably; however, each paralogous group imparts unique morphologies within these regions. In all cases examined, the next-most posterior Hox paralogous group does not prevent the function of the more-anterior Hox group in axial patterning. Thus, the `Hox code' in somitic mesoderm is the result of the distinct, graded effects of two or more Hox paralogous groups functioning in any anteroposterior location.
An XA21-Associated Kinase (OsSERK2) Regulates Immunity Mediated by the XA21 and XA3 Immune Receptors

The rice XA21 immune receptor kinase and the structurally related XA3 receptor, confer immunity to Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), the causal agent of bacterial leaf blight. Here we report the isolation of OsSERK2 (rice somatic embryogenesis receptor kinase 2) and demonstrate that OsSERK2 positively regulates immunity mediated by XA21 and XA3 as well as the rice immune receptor FLS2 (OsFLS2). Rice plants silenced for OsSerk2 display altered morphology and reduced sensitivity to the hormone brassinolide. OsSERK2 interacts with the intracellular domains of each immune receptor in the yeast-two-hybrid system in a kinase activity dependent manner. OsSERK2 undergoes bidirectional trans-phosphorylation with XA21 in vitro and forms a constitutive complex with XA21 in vivo. Taken together, these results demonstrate an essential role for OsSERK2 in the function of three rice immune receptors and suggest that direct interaction with the rice immune receptors is critical for their function.
STAT5-induced self-renewal and impaired myelopoiesis of human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells involves down-modulation of C/EBP alpha

Previously, we demonstrated that enforced activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5A) in human cord blood (CB)–derived stem/ progenitor cells results in enhanced self-renewal and impaired myelopoiesis. The present study identiﬁes C/EBP (cid:1) as a critical component that is down-regulated by STAT5. Microarray and reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis on STAT5A 1*6 -transduced CD34 (cid:2) cells identiﬁed C/EBP (cid:1) as the most prominently down-regulated gene. To determine the cell-biological relevance of these observations,a4-OHT-inducibleC/EBP (cid:1) -ER proteinwasco-expressedwiththeSTAT5A
CXCL4 Contributes to the Pathogenesis of Chronic Liver Allograft Dysfunction

Chronic liver allograft dysfunction (CLAD) remains the most common cause of patient morbidity and allograft loss in liver transplant patients. However, the pathogenesis of CLAD has not been completely elucidated. By establishing rat CLAD models, in this study, we identified the informative CLAD-associated genes using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) proteomics analysis and validated these results in recipient rat liver allografts. CXCL4, CXCR3, EGFR, JAK2, STAT3, and Collagen IV were associated with CLAD pathogenesis. We validated that CXCL4 is upstream of these informative genes in the isolated hepatic stellate cells (HSC). Blocking CXCL4 protects against CLAD by reducing liver fibrosis. Therefore, our results indicated that therapeutic approaches that neutralize CXCL4, a newly identified target of fibrosis, may represent a novel strategy for preventing and treating CLAD after liver transplantation.
Spectro-Temporal Weighting of Loudness

Real-world sounds like speech or traffic noise typically exhibit spectro-temporal variability because the energy in different spectral regions evolves differently as a sound unfolds in time. However, it is currently not well understood how the energy in different spectral and temporal portions contributes to loudness. This study investigated how listeners weight different temporal and spectral components of a sound when judging its overall loudness. Spectral weights were measured for the combination of three loudness-matched narrowband noises with different center frequencies. To measure temporal weights, 1,020-ms stimuli were presented, which randomly changed in level every 100 ms. Temporal weights were measured for each narrowband noise separately, and for a broadband noise containing the combination of the three noise bands. Finally, spectro-temporal weights were measured with stimuli where the level of the three narrowband noises randomly and independently changed every 100 ms. The data consistently showed that (i) the first 300 ms of the sounds had a greater influence on overall loudness perception than later temporal portions (primacy effect), and (ii) the lowest noise band contributed significantly more to overall loudness than the higher bands. The temporal weights did not differ between the three frequency bands. Notably, the spectral weights and temporal weights estimated from the conditions with only spectral or only temporal variability were very similar to the corresponding weights estimated in the spectro-temporal condition. The results indicate that the temporal and the spectral weighting of the loudness of a time-varying sound are independent processes. The spectral weights remain constant across time, and the temporal weights do not change across frequency. The results are discussed in the context of current loudness models.
Physical and chemical effects of El Hadjar slag used as an additive in cement-based materials

ABSTRACT Granulated blast furnace slag is currently one of the most important sources of materials for the production of blended cements. Since 1999, the use of slag in France has increased by 52% while the increase in clinker production has not exceeded 13%. In times of shortage, the high demand for slag is not always easy to satisfy, and new sources of supply need to be found. The furnace slag of El Hadjar (Annaba, Algeria) comes into this category. The paper deals with the characteristics and reactivity of this slag. A comparison with European slags shows that, although it fulfills all Standards requirements, the El Hadjarslag has slow reaction kinetics. The activity, measured on the compressive strength of mortars whose binder contains 10 to 100% slag of four finenesses ranging from 2500 to 4000 cm2/g, strongly depends on the slag fineness. The activity is quantified by using an approach which separates the effect of cement dilution from the physical and chemical effects of the slag.
“Hidden semantics”: what can we learn from the names in an ontology?

Despite their flat, semantics-free structure, ontology identifiers are often given names or labels corresponding to natural language words or phrases which are very dense with information as to their intended referents. We argue that by taking advantage of this information density, NLG systems applied to ontologies can guide the choice and construction of sentences to express useful ontological information, solely through the verbalisations of identifier names, and that by doing so, they can replace the extremely fussy and repetitive texts produced by ontology verbalisers with shorter and simpler texts which are clearer and easier for human readers to understand. We specify which axioms in an ontology are "defining axioms" for linguistically-complex identifiers and analyse a large corpus of OWL ontologies to identify common patterns among all defining axioms. By generating texts from ontologies, and selectively including or omitting these defining axioms, we show by surveys that human readers are typically capable of inferring information implicitly encoded in identifier phrases, and that texts which do not make such "obvious" information explicit are preferred by readers and yet communicate the same information as the longer texts in which such information is spelled out explicitly.
Polymer Crystallization in complex conditions. Towards more realistic modelling of industrial processes

Crystallization plays an important role in processing many industrial polymers. Crystallinity controls mechanical and sorptional properties of solid materials and strongly affects rheological properties of polymer melts and solutions. Therefore, realistic modeling of technological processes involving crystallizable polymers (melt spinning, film blowing, injection molding, etc.) requires that crystallization in the course of processing is taken into account. In contrast to idealized laboratory conditions usually applied in academic studies, crystallization in processing conditions covers wide range of rapidly changing temperatures and pressures. Simple models of non-isothermal, and stress-induced crystallization kinetics are discussed. Consideration of crystallization in the computer model of melt spinning reveals new effects, absent in earlier models, in which crystallization was ignored.
All-optical switching in holographic polymer dispersed azobenzene liquid-crystal gratings

We report an all-optical switching transmission grating fabricated by holographic polymer dispersed liquid crystal (HPDLC) technique. The all-optical switching ability is achieved by doping the nematic LC with azobenzene. The trans-cis deformation of doped azobenzene under the irradiation of pumping light induces the phase transformation of the phaseseparated LC microdomains and further creates an index modulation environment to switch the grating efficiency. We also observe the grating formation by monitoring the diffracted intensity at different writing laser power. An optimum of writing power (150 mW/cm2) is required to get maximum diffraction efficiency.
Mandatory Reporting of Elder Abuse: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

PURPOSE Despite mandated reporting laws that require physicians to report elder abuse, physicians have low rates of reporting. The purpose of this study was to identify physician’s perspectives on mandated reporting of elder abuse. METHODS Individual, semistructured interviews were conducted with 20 primary care physicians practicing in a variety of settings and caring for a diverse patient population in the Los Angeles area. Interviewers collected information on physicians’ perspectives about factors that may influence physicians’ likelihood to report elder abuse. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analyzed using a grounded theory approach based on the constant comparative method and the emergence of the core category of paradox to best account for the most problematic elder abuse situations faced by physicians. RESULTS During the interviews 3 paradoxes were expressed by physicians about the mandatory reporting of elder abuse. Specifically, mandatory reporting was related to both perceptions of increases and decreases in physician-patient rapport, patient quality of life, and physician control or ability to decide what is in the best interest of the patient. These paradoxes appear to be primarily hidden or unconscious, yet they influence the conscious decision process of whether to report. CONCLUSIONS Primary care physicians appear to be subject to paradoxes of reporting that contribute to the underreporting of elder abuse. These paradoxes and alternative modes of managing paradoxes are important and should be addressed in educational and training programs for physicians, and systematic evaluation of these issues may help to inform future legislation in this area. Further studies are needed to assess the generalizability of these findings to other groups of clinicians.
Life logging practice for human behavior modeling

With the fast progress of mobile computing, personal lifelogging gets easier taking a little effort for automation. However data-recalling services to help a user locate or remind the event in her lifelogs still lacks supports in major aspects due to the difficulty in creating a useful environment for users. This is because a collection of lifelog streams needs high-level behavior analysis techniques to create the meaningful summary of person's daily life. The challenging problem is that such knowledge depends on the types of data proprietarily created by the sensors where a complex knowledge on human activity patterns is not easy to apply for real-life event modeling and detection. This paper addresses many aspects of related lifelog research topics and technical challenges. We also studied the way to first handle disparate sensor data and showed the case study to put them on the table for lifelog data analysis and exploration.
Energy-Efficient Wake-Up Scheduling for Data Collection and Aggregation

A sensor in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) periodically produces data as it monitors its vicinity. The basic operation in such a network is the systematic gathering (with or without in-network aggregation) and transmitting of sensed data to a base station for further processing. A key challenging question in WSNs is to schedule nodes' activities to reduce energy consumption. In this paper, we focus on designing energy-efficient protocols for low-data-rate WSNs, where sensors consume different energy in different radio states (transmitting, receiving, listening, sleeping, and being idle) and also consume energy for state transition. We use TDMA as the MAC layer protocol and schedule the sensor nodes with consecutive time slots at different radio states while reducing the number of state transitions. We prove that the energy consumption by our scheduling for homogeneous network is at most twice of the optimum and the timespan of our scheduling is at most a constant times of the optimum. The energy consumption by our scheduling for heterogeneous network is at most ¿ (log Rmax/Rmin) times of the optimum. We also propose effective algorithms to construct data gathering tree such that the energy consumption and the network throughput is within a constant factor of the optimum. Extensive simulation studies show that our algorithms do considerably reduce energy consumption.
LKB1 Is an Essential Regulator of Spermatozoa Release during Spermiation in the Mammalian Testis

LKB1 acts as a master upstream protein kinase regulating a number of kinases involved in diverse cellular functions. Recent studies have suggested a role for LKB1 in male fertility. Male mice with reduced total LKB1 expression, including the complete absence of the major splice variant in testis (LKB1S), are completely infertile. We sought to further characterise these mice and determine the mechanism underlying this infertility. This involved expression studies of LKB1 in developing germ cells, morphological analysis of mature spermatozoa and histological studies of both the testis and epididymis using light microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. We conclude that a defect in the release of mature spermatids from the seminiferous epithelium (spermiation) during spermatozoan development is a major cause of the infertility phenotype. We also present evidence that this is due, at least in part, to defects in the breakdown of the junctions, known as ectoplasmic specialisations, between the sertoli cells of the testis epithelium and the heads of the maturing spermatids. Overall this study uncovers a critical role for LKB1 in spermiation, a highly regulated, but poorly understood process vital for male fertility.
Brain Activation in Response to a Tactile Stimulation: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Versus Cognitive Analysis

Objective. The aim of this study was to compare fMRI analysis of somatosensory areas activated by passive touch, to cognitive analysis of the psychological profile of human subjects. Methods. The study was carried out on 21 females, after informed consent. Two artificial textures (smooth and rough), and two natural textures (the skin of an operator modified or not by a cosmetic product), were applied on the fingers of the subjects. A period of imagination to be touched was also included in the study. MR images of the somatosensory cortex were acquired on a 1.5T MRI system during the different behavioral conditions. Series of images were first processed to compensate for the inter‐frame motions and then activation was assessed with a statistical method based on conditional analysis. After the MRI protocol, each subject was interviewed following a questionnaire from which psychological descriptors were extracted. Results. 1) Activations were quite similar for all textures in the contralateral sensory areas 2) In the ipsilateral sensory areas, activations were more important in response to a stimulation with the skin of an operator than with artificial textures. The activation was even more important after application of a cosmetic product on the skin. 3) Imagination of the tactile stimulation resulted in an activation mostly localized in the ipsilateral cortex. 4) A PLS analysis assessed that 2 psychological descriptors, rationality and sensorial reactivity, were related to an activation in the contralateral cortex, while 2 others, imagination and sensitivity, were related to ipsilateral areas activation. Conclusion. fMRI and cognitive analysis allowed us to map the physical component of the tactile perception in the contralateral cortex. This study also gave rise to a better understanding of the activation in ipsilateral areas, which was found to be mainly related to the subjective component of the stimulation.
Role of oxidative enzymatic treatments on enzymatic hydrolysis of softwood

The impact of oxidative modification and partial removal of lignin by laccase–mediator treatments on the enzymatic hydrolysis of steam‐pretreated softwood (SPS) was evaluated. Two mediators, N‐hydroxy‐N‐phenylacetamide (NHA) and its acetylated precursor, were oxidized by the laccase from Trametes hirsuta, and their effects on the activity of cellulolytic enzymes and on the hydrolysis yield of SPS were examined. Both simultaneous and sequential combinations of laccase–mediator treatments with commercial cellulases increased the sugar yield in the enzymatic hydrolysis of SPS. The maximal increase was 21% when a sequential treatment was applied. Laccase treatment alone was also shown to improve hydrolysis. NHA oxidized by laccase inhibited significantly the cellulases of Trichoderma reesei, but the presence of the solid substrate protected the activities against oxidative inactivation. Surface analysis of the lignocellulosic substrate before and after the laccase and cellulase treatments revealed an enrichment of lignin and an increase of carboxylic groups on the surface of the hydrolysis residue. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Toward Affordance-Aware Planning

Planning algorithms for non-deterministic domains are often intractable in large state spaces due to the well-known “curse of dimensionality. ” Existing approaches to address this problem fail to prevent the planner from considering many actions which would be obviously irrelevant to a human solving the same problem. We formalize the notion of affordances [7] as knowledge added to an MDP that prunes actions in a stateand rewardgeneral way. This pruning significantly reduces the number of state-action pairs the agent needs to evaluate in order to act optimally. We demonstrate our approach in the Minecraft domain, showing significant increase in speed and reduction in state-space exploration during planning. Further, we provide a learning framework that enables an agent to learn affordances through experience, removing the agent’s dependence on the expert. We provide preliminary results indicating that the learning process effectively produces affordances that help solve an MDP faster.