Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of Boiler ’ s Tubes Life , Artificial Neural Networks Approach

The analysis of creep-damage processes is becoming more and more important in engineering practice due to the fact that the exploitation condition like temperature and pressure are increasing while the weight of the structure should decrease. In the same time the safety standards are increasing too. The accuracy of the mechanical state estimation (stresses, strains and displacements) mainly depends on the introduced constitutive equations and on the chosen structural analysis model.This paper is devoted to the prediction of boiler’s tube life using of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique. Training data used were obtained from Kapar power station technical reports. Predicted values of the remnant tube life were compared to the experimentally collected data to verify the success of the algorithm; average absolute error obtained was 1.667%. Results obtained show that the designed network is capable of predicting the remnant life of the boiler’s tube successfully.Predicting boiler’s tube life successfully presented using this method will help maintenance engineers to schedule preventive maintenance procedure in order to minimize maintenance cost and to prevent any consequences of disasters which may happen if the necessary precautions were not taken.
Human Guidance : Suggesting Walking Pace Under Workload ⋆

This paper presents a comparison between two different approaches to control human walking cadence, with the further aim to assess if the users can synchronize to the suggested rhythm with low efforts while performing other tasks. Elastic haptic bands are used to suggest walking-pace during an exercise aimed at reproducing real industrial or human-robot cooperation task. The proposed system consists of two wearable interfaces for providing timing information to the users, and a pressure sensor to estimate the real gait pattern, thus resulting in a combination of walking-state monitoring and vibro-tactile stimuli to regulate the walking pace. Vibrational stimuli with a constant presentation interval are alternately and repeatedly given to the right and left side of the human body, in accordance with the desired walking cadence. We tested two different interface placements: wrists and ankles. The guidance system has been evaluated under mental and manual workload using an additional task: balancing a small sphere in the center of a flat surface. Experimental results revealed that subjects prefer the ankle position for what concerns wearability, comfort and easiness in task execution. Examples of the proposed approach in daily use are training and coaching in sports, rehabilitation, and human-robot cooperation and interaction.
Static and Dynamic Yield Stresses of Aerosil ® 200 Suspensions in Polypropylene Glycol

© Appl. Rheol. 20 (2010) 22787 DOI: 10.3933/ApplRheol-20-22787 Abstract: Fumed silica suspensions in low molecular weight liquids are used in many photonic and microelectronic applications, playing its rheology a major role in the effectiveness of their usage. Particle-particle and particle-liquid medium interactions of suspensions of hydrophilic fumed silica in low molecular weight polar media, polypropylene glycol of 400 and 750 g/mol, concretely, have been already investigated. There, the affinity between polar solvent molecules and fumed silica particles prevents the formation of a 3D gel network. In this work it has been found that fumed silica can develop a flocculated suspension when it is dispersed in polypropylene glycol with a molecular weight of 2000 g/mol. Besides, it has been found that this suspension exhibits time dependent behaviour within its reversible shear thinning region, which is related to thixoelasticity. The experimental method, proposed theoretically by Cheng in 1986 to obtain the dynamic yield stress in thixotropic systems has been here extended successfully to a thixoelastic system.
Testing of the Semicircular Canal Function in Vertigo and Dizziness

Testing the function of the semicircular canals (SCC) in vertigo and dizziness is an important step towards a diagnosis. There are different vestibular tests available: rotatory testing, bithermal caloric irrigation (CI) and the video-head-impulse test (vHIT). This chapter describes the basic methods, the current knowledge and economic aspects focused on the vHIT and CI. After a general section, common vertigo diseases are discussed with respect to the functional tests. From this chapter, it is clear that not only one method has to be applied to test vestibular function but a battery including the CI and the vHIT in three dimensions.
Scheduling with machine-learning-based flow detection for packet-switched optical data center networks

A scalable, low-latency, high-speed, and energy- efficient data center network is a key element in the deployment of future large-scale data centers, and photonic switching has recently been recognized as a promising solution to fulfill these goals. In this study, we present a packet-switched optical network (PSON) architecture with centralized control for intra-data-center connectivity. For efficient PSON operation, intelligent yet low-complexity bandwidth-scheduling algorithms are critical. To align with realistic traffic flows in a data center, we consider “mice flow,” which occurs frequently but carries a small number of bytes, and “elephant flow,” which occurs occasionally but has a huge number of bytes. To classify traffic flows with different characteristics, we investigate various machine-learning (classification) techniques, such as C4.5 and Naïve Bayes Discretization, and compare their performance in terms of accuracy and classification speed. We also develop a priority-aware scheduling algorithm for packet switching, which is optimized for PSON, and is adaptive to flow classification under a dynamic traffic scenario. Numerical simulations show that our proposed scheduling algorithm assisted by flow-classification techniques can outperform a benchmark algorithm in terms of average delay and packet-loss ratio.
Craving behavioral intervention for internet gaming disorder: remediation of functional connectivity of the ventral striatum

Psychobehavioral intervention is an effective treatment of Internet addiction, including Internet gaming disorder (IGD). However, the neural mechanisms underlying its efficacy remain unclear. Cortical‐ventral striatum (VS) circuitry is a common target of psychobehavioral interventions in drug addiction, and cortical‐VS dysfunction has been reported in IGD; hence, the primary aim of the study was to investigate how the VS circuitry responds to psychobehavioral interventions in IGD. In a cross‐sectional study, we examined resting‐state functional connectivity of the VS in 74 IGD subjects (IGDs) and 41 healthy controls (HCs). In a follow‐up craving behavioral intervention (CBI) study, of the 74 IGD subjects, 20 IGD subjects received CBI (CBI+) and 16 IGD subjects did not (CBI−). All participants were scanned twice with similar time interval to assess the effects of CBI. IGD subjects showed greater resting‐state functional connectivity of the VS to left inferior parietal lobule (lIPL), right inferior frontal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus, in positive association with the severity of IGD. Moreover, compared with CBI−, CBI+ showed significantly greater decrease in VS‐lIPL connectivity, along with amelioration in addiction severity following the intervention. These findings demonstrated that functional connectivity between VS and lIPL, each presumably mediating gaming craving and attentional bias, may be a potential biomarker of the efficacy of psychobehavioral intervention. These results also suggested that non‐invasive techniques such as transcranial magnetic or direct current stimulation targeting the VS‐IPL circuitry may be used in the treatment of Internet gaming disorders.
Determinants of Antibacterial Spectrum and Resistance Potential of the Elongation Factor G Inhibitor Argyrin B in Key Gram-Negative Pathogens

ABSTRACT Argyrins are natural products with antibacterial activity against Gram-negative pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia multivorans, and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. We previously showed that argyrin B targets elongation factor G (FusA). Here, we show that argyrin B activity against P. aeruginosa PAO1 (MIC = 8 μg/ml) was not affected by deletion of the MexAB-OprM, MexXY-OprM, MexCD-OprJ, or MexEF-OprN efflux pump. However, argyrin B induced expression of MexXY, causing slight but reproducible antagonism with the MexXY substrate antibiotic ciprofloxacin. Argyrin B activity against Escherichia coli increased in a strain with nine tolC efflux pump partner genes deleted. Complementation experiments showed that argyrin was effluxed by AcrAB, AcrEF, and MdtFX. Argyrin B was inactive against Acinetobacter baumannii. Differences between A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa FusA proteins at key residues for argyrin B interaction implied that natural target sequence variation impacted antibacterial activity. Consistent with this, expression of the sensitive P. aeruginosa FusA1 protein in A. baumannii conferred argyrin susceptibility, whereas resistant variants did not. Argyrin B was active against S. maltophilia (MIC = 4 μg/ml). Spontaneous resistance occurred at high frequency in the bacterium (circa 10−7), mediated by mutational inactivation of fusA1 rather than by amino acid substitutions in the target binding region. This strongly suggested that resistance occurred at high frequency through loss of the sensitive FusA1, leaving an alternate argyrin-insensitive elongation factor. Supporting this, an additional fusA-like gene (fusA2) is present in S. maltophilia that was strongly upregulated in response to mutational loss of fusA1.
A dumbbell probe-mediated rolling circle amplification strategy for highly sensitive microRNA detection

We herein report the design of a dumbbell-shaped DNA probe that integrates target-binding, amplification and signaling within one multifunctional design. The dumbbell probe can initiate rolling circle amplification (D-RCA) in the presence of specific microRNA (miRNA) targets. This D-RCA-based miRNA strategy allows quantification of miRNA with very low quantity of RNA samples. The femtomolar sensitivity of D-RCA compares favorably with other existing technologies. More significantly, the dynamic range of D-RCA is extremely large, covering eight orders of magnitude. We also demonstrate miRNA quantification with this highly sensitive and inexpensive D-RCA strategy in clinical samples.
Motion sensing of a wind turbine prototype using a bistatic FMCW Doppler radar sensor

Mechanical vibrations are widely used in structural health monitoring systems to evaluate the structure's stability and to detect changes in the dynamic behaviour that are potentially related to a structural damage. Radar technology is used in recent years to measure structural vibrations at stand-off distance. This paper reports on an experimental case study in which a frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar sensor operating in the frequency band from 33.4 GHz to 36.0 GHz was used to detect the mechanical motion of a wind turbine structure in a laboratory environment. Besides the radar system we present pulse based transient signal processing that show the feasibility of our approach.
PR ] 7 D ec 2 01 6 DECOUPLING INEQUALITIES FOR THE GINZBURG-LANDAU ∇ φ MODELS

We consider a class of of massless gradient Gibbs measures, in dimension greater or equal to three, and prove a decoupling inequality for these fields. As a result, we obtain detailed information about their geometry, and the percolative and non-percolative phases of their level sets, thus generalizing results obtained in [24], to the non-Gaussian case. Inequalities of similar flavor have also been successfully used in the study of random interlacements [27], [21]. A crucial aspect is the development of a suitable sprinkling technique, which relies on a particular representation of the correlations in terms of a random walk in a dynamic random environment, due to Helffer and Sjöstrand. The sprinkling can be effectively implemented by studying the Dirichlet problem for the corresponding Poisson equation, and quantifiying in how far a change in boundary condition along a sufficiently “small” part of the boundary affects the solution. Our results allow for uniformly convex potentials, and extend to non-convex perturbations thereof. Department of Mathematics December 2016 University of California, Los Angeles 520, Portola Plaza, MS 6172 Los Angeles, CA 90095 rodriguez@math.ucla. edu
The Impact of Fatigue on Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

ABSTRACT: Although fatigue is recognized as a symptom of MS, there have been insufficient methods for evaluating this symptom. We administered the Fatigue Impact Scale to 85 MS patients and 20 hypertensive patients. Neurologic impairment, mental health, and general health status were also assessed. MS patients reported significantly higher fatigue impact than hypertensive patients. Most MS patients reported fatigue as either their worst (14%), or one of their worst (55%) symptoms. Disease classification and neurologic impairment had little bearing on Fatigue Impact Scale scores in the MS sample. The best predictive models for mental health and general health status in the MS sample both included the Fatigue Impact Scale as a significant factor. This study demonstrates that: 1) fatigue is a very prevalent and severe problem in MS, 2) fatigue impact cannot be predicted by clinical measures of neurologic impairment, 3) fatigue has a significant effect on the mental health and general health status of MS patients.
Outcomes of the Multimodal Treatment of Malignant Pleural Mesiothelioma: The Role of Surgery

Background The treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is challenging, and multimodal treatment including surgery is recommended; however, the role of surgery is debated. The treatment outcomes of MPM in Korea have not been reported. We analyzed the outcomes of MPM in the context of multimodal treatment, including surgery. Methods The records of 29 patients with pathologically proven MPM from April 1998 to July 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. The treatment outcomes of the surgery and non-surgery groups were compared. Results The overall median survival time was 10.6 months, and the overall 3-year survival rate was 25%. No postoperative 30-day or in-hospital mortality occurred in the surgery group. Postoperative complications included tachyarrhythmia (n=4), pulmonary thromboembolism (n=1), pneumonia (n=1), chylothorax (n=1), and wound complications (n=3). The treatment outcomes between the surgery and non-surgery groups were not significantly different (3-year survival rate: 31.3% vs. 16.7%, respectively; p=0.47). In a subgroup analysis, there was no significant difference in the treatment outcomes between the extrapleural pneumonectomy group and the non-surgery group (3-year survival rate: 45.5% vs. 16.7%, respectively; p=0.23). Conclusion Multimodal treatment incorporating surgery did not show better outcomes than non-surgical treatment. A nationwide multicenter data registry and prospective randomized controlled studies are necessary to optimize the treatment of MPM.
Defensins in Viral Infections

Defensins are antimicrobial peptides important to innate host defense. In addition to their direct antimicrobial effect, defensins modulate immune responses. Increasing evidence indicates that defensins exhibit complex functions by positively or negatively modulating infections of both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses. The effects of defensins on viral infections appear to be specific to the defensin, virus and target cell. Regulation of viral infection by defensins is achieved by multiple mechanisms. This review focuses on the interplay between defensins and viral infections, the mechanisms of action of defensins and the in vivo studies of the role of defensins in viral infections.
From Conception to Refinement in Mechatronics Systems Engineering

The complexity of mechatronic systems increases constantly due to market requirements. Traditional engineering approaches have troubles coping with the desired functionality. A major problem is the early and continuous integration and coordination of engineering disciplines (i.e. mechanic, electric, and software). To address this situation and to enable a concurrent engineering of participating disciplines, a model-based approach to early conception and subsequent refinement of mechatronic systems is proposed in this paper. This approach allows specifying a high-level mechatronic concept within a single editor and the refinement of this concept by integrating it with established engineering tools. In particular, the paper outlines the technical and methodical integration of discipline-specific tools such that refinement steps can be tested automatically and continuously. The suitability of the approach is shown along selected examples. Finally, the paper finishes with a reflection on the current state and an outlook on future research activities.
Trapping of propelled colloidal particles

A trapping mechanism for propelled colloidal particles based on an inhomogeneous drive is presented and studied analytically as well as by computer simulations. In experiments this method can be realized using photophoretic Janus particles driven by a light source, which shines through a shading mask and leads to an accumulation of the particles in the shaded part. In an overdamped scenario for colloidal particles, valid for self-propelled particles like microswimmers, the shading causes an inhomogeneous diffusion constant which results in accumulation. For propelled colloidal particles with a finite mass inertia causes a finite penetration depth of particles impinging from the illuminated part of the system into the shaded part, which increases accumulation.
FP-AMR: A Reconfigurable Fabric Framework for Adaptive Mesh Refinement Applications

Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is one of the most widely used methods in High Performance Computing accounting a large fraction of all supercomputing cycles. AMR operates by dynamically and adaptively applying computational resources non-uniformly to emphasize regions of the model as a function of their complexity. Because AMR generally uses dynamic and pointer-based data structures, acceleration is challenging, especially in hardware. As far as we are aware there has been no previous work published on accelerating AMR with FPGAs. In this paper, we introduce a reconfigurable fabric framework called FP-AMR. The work is in two parts. In the first FP-AMR offloads the bulk per-timestep computations to the FPGA; analogous systems have previously done this with GPUs. In the second part we show that the rest of the CPU-based tasks–including particle mesh mapping, mesh refinement, and coarsening–can also be mapped efficiently to the FPGA. We have evaluated FP-AMR using the widely used program AMReX and found that a single FPGA outperforms a Xeon E5-2660 CPU server (8 cores) by from 21x -23x depending on problem size and data distribution.
EVALUATION OF RUPTURE DIRECTIVITY EFFECTS ON STRONG GROUND MOTION BASED ON HYBRID SIMULATION METHOD

The effect of rupture directivity on pseudo velocity response spectra is evaluated by ground motion simulation based on the hybrid simulation method. In order to examine the influence of the rupture directivity on attenuation relationships, a directivity effect factor D is introduced, which is the ratio of the amplitude of the simulated motion to the average amplitude of the attenuation relation. The results indicate that, for earthquakes with unilateral faulting, there are strong directivity effects on pseudo velocity response spectra, especially for those with the periods longer than 0.5 sec. A comparison of the results with the observed records of the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake shows that the simulated directivity effect factor D well matches the observed one. The distribution of the D value is represented by simple functions. By using the factor, the pseudo velocity response spectra predicted by an attenuation relationship can be corrected considering the rupture directivity effects.
Towards a seamless digital Europe: the SSEDIC recommendations on digital identity management

The SSEDIC ("Scoping the Single European Digital Identity Community") thematic network has concluded an intensive 3-year consultation period together with over 200 European and international digital identity management experts and many stakeholder organizations to establish recommendations that address key issues regarding the usability and interoperability of electronic identity management solutions. The resulting recommendations are presented in this paper and should support the European Commission as well as other public and private stakeholders to set priorities for the path towards a Single European Digital Identity Community and the Horizon 2020. The key areas that need to be addressed as a priority are: mobile identity, attribute usage, authentication, and liability.
Optimization of a Broadband Discone Antenna Design and Platform Installed Radiation Patterns Using a GPU-Accelerated Savant / WIPL-D Hybrid Approach

Traditional design guidelines for broadband antenn as do not always produce satisfactory performance for the desired frequency range of inte res . In addition, the accurate prediction of the f reespace antenna performance is not sufficient to dete rmin if the antenna will meet a larger system requirement because the performance of the antenna ca change significantly when it is installed on a platform. Antenna design software, such as WIPL-D, addresses the difficulties of designing antennas wi th broadband performance by providing optimization sof tware that can automatically resize the various antenna dimensions until a desired performance crit rion is met. At high-frequencies, the electrically large size of the platform makes it computationally difficult, or impossible, to directly consider the interactions between the antenna and the platform w hen designing the antenna in a full-wave solver. Th is paper describes an approach for the design and opti miza on of a discone antenna and then the subseque nt installation on a large commercial aircraft. The an ten a design will be optimized across a wide freque ncy range using WIPL-D Optimizer. The resulting discone antenna design is then imported into SavantHybrid, a hybrid asymptotic and full-wave solver, a nd the installed antenna performance is simulated using GPU acceleration at multiple potential antenn a locations to determine the location that provides th least-degraded installed antenna performance.
J un 2 01 4 Propulsion via beam extrusion at low Reynolds number

Inspired by microscopic paramecies which use trichocyst extrusion to propel themselves away from thermal aggressions, we propose a macroscopic experiment to study the stability of a slender beam extruded in a highly viscous fluid. Piano wires were extruded axially at constant speed in a tank filled with corn syrup. The force necessary to extrude the wire was measured to increase linearly at first until the compressive viscous force causes the wire to buckle. A numerical model, coupling a lengthening elastica formulation with resistive force theory, predicts a similar behaviour. The model is used to study the dynamics at large time when the beam is highly deformed. It is found that at large time, a large deformation regime exists in which the force necessary to extrude the beam at constant speed becomes constant and length-independent. With a proper dimensional analysis, the beam can be shown to buckle at a critical length based on the extrusion speed, the bending rigidity and the dynamic viscosity of the fluid. Hypothesising that the trichocysts of paramercies must be sized to maximise their thrust per unit volume as well as avoid buckling instabilities, we predict that their bending rigidity must be about 3 × 10 N · μm. The verification of this prediction is left for future work.