Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Guidelines for Use of Modified Binders

The Superpave mix design procedure improved mixture quality; however, it still remains a volumetric design devoid of performance tests. A mixture produced for high traffic volumes (above 10 million ESALs), results in low design asphalt content due to the increased gyrations. The lower binder content, although enhancing the rutting performance, might increase the cracking susceptibility of the mix. Modified asphalts have gotten a lot of attention during the past few years due to the promise of enhanced mixture performance. This study consolidated work done in Florida with polymer-modified asphalts - mainly Ground Tire Rubber (GTR) and Styrene Butadiene Styrene (SBS). Issues with the use of modifiers as well as their relative performance have been examined and summarized. Information reviewed included data from the Heavy Vehicle Simulator (HVS), laboratory experiments--Asphalt Pavement Analyzer (APA), Servopac, and Indirect Tension Test (IDT)--as well as field results. Test results clearly show that SBS-modified mixtures outperform control mixtures in rutting experiments, and laboratory information indicates that the same holds for cracking. The basic benefit of GTR is that it can increase binder content without drain-down; the increased binder content subsequently improves cracking resistance. Use of SBS-modified asphalts appears warranted and cost effective. SBS-modified asphalt is highly recommended for intersections (high volume, slow moving traffic) and open-graded friction courses (OGFC); however, environmental benefit of the use of rubber in pavements cannot be overlooked. A project to investigate a hybrid binder--a combination of SBS polymer with rubber--is already under way.
What do prosecutors maximize? An analysis of the federalization of drug crimes

Recent legislation has expanded the jurisdiction of the federal government over crimes that were traditionally prohibited only by state law. We model the decision-making process of state and federal prosecutors, and the determinants of prosecutors` decisions to allocate drug cases to the state versus the federal systems. Using 1991 surveys of state and federal inmates incarcerated for drug crimes, we find that individuals who hire private attorneys and who are high-human-capital and successful in the legitimate sector are more likely to end up in the federal system. This is consistent with the model in which prosecutors maximize both the payoffs from eliminating crime and their private human capital.
Author ' s personal copy Pressure-driven water flow through carbon nanotubes : Insights from molecular dynamics simulation

Pressure-driven water flow through carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is examined using molecular dynamics simulation. The results are compared to reported experimental flow rate measurements through similarly sized CNTs and larger carbon nanopipes. By using molecular dynamics simulation to predict the variation of water viscosity and slip length with CNT diameter, we find that flow through CNTs with diameters as small as 1.66 nm can be fully understood using continuum fluid mechanics. Potential mechanisms to explain the differences between the flow rates predicted from simulation and those measured in experiments are identified and discussed. 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
The Proteasome Inhibitor Carfilzomib Functions Independently of p53 to Induce Cytotoxicity and an Atypical NF-κB Response in Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Cells

Purpose: The proteasome consists of chymotrypsin-like (CT-L), trypsin-like, and caspase-like subunits that cleave substrates preferentially by amino acid sequence. Proteasomes mediate degradation of regulatory proteins of the p53, Bcl-2, and nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) families that are aberrantly active in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). CLL remains an incurable disease, and new treatments are especially needed in the relapsed/refractory setting. We therefore investigated the effects of the proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib (CFZ) in CLL cells. Experimental Design: Tumor cells from CLL patients were assayed in vitro using immunoblotting, real-time polymerase chain reaction, and electrophoretic mobility shift assays. In addition, a p53 dominant-negative construct was generated in a human B-cell line. Results: Unlike bortezomib, CFZ potently induces apoptosis in CLL patient cells in the presence of human serum. CLL cells have significantly lower basal CT-L activity compared to normal B and T cells, although activity is inhibited similarly in T cells versus CLL. Co-culture of CLL cells on stroma protected from CFZ-mediated cytotoxicity; however, PI3K inhibition significantly diminished this stromal protection. CFZ-mediated cytotoxicity in leukemic B cells is caspase-dependent and occurs irrespective of p53 status. In CLL cells, CFZ promotes atypical activation of NF-κB evidenced by loss of cytoplasmic IκBα, phosphorylation of IκBα, and increased p50/p65 DNA binding, without subsequent increases in canonical NF-κB target gene transcription. Conclusions: Together, these data provide new mechanistic insights into the activity of CFZ in CLL and support phase I investigation of CFZ in this disease. Clin Cancer Res; 19(9); 2406–19. ©2013 AACR.
IRIT at INEX 2012: Tweet Contextualization

In this paper, we describe an approach for tweet contextualization developed in the context of the INEX 2012. The task was to provide a context up to 500 words to a tweet from the Wikipedia. As a baseline system, we used TF-IDF cosine similarity measure enriched by smoothing from local context, named entity recognition and part-of-speech weighting presented at INEX 2011. We modified this method by adding bigram similarity, anaphora resolu- tion, hashtag processing and sentence reordering. Sentence ordering task was modeled as a sequential ordering problem, where vertices corresponded to sen- tences and sequential constraints were represented by sentence time stamps.
Long-term stability of PDMS-based microfluidic systems used for biocatalytic reactions

This paper reports on the changes of PDMS interface characteristics due to the long-term influence of aqueous alkaline solutions, which are frequently used fluids in biocatalytic reactions. Soft lithographic techniques were used to produce polymeric microfluidic systems containing a fluidic layer with multiple cavities for biocatalytic reactions and a pneumatic control layer. The surface energy, the surface roughness and the absorption of liquids on PDMS are analysed as they are important factors affecting the microfluidic current. The results obtained can be used to provide design guidelines for adapting PDMS-based microfluidic devices in long-term bio catalysis reactions.
Analysis and Design of Robust Feedback Control Systems for a Nonlinear Two-Wheel Inverted Pendulum System

Two-wheel inverted pendulum is an open loop unstable system, and is a nonlinear system. But can use at many practice application, like SEGWAY etc. This paper research the theorems nonlinear property of the two-wheel inverted pendulum model and simulation its nonlinear output response. Simulation results show that system has robustness. Can maintain stable when suffer nonlinear inference and not change controller gain, And if we design a gain compensator controller cause by nonlinear property influence, simulation result show can improve the two-wheel inverted pendulum output response.
Comparison of bioactive coils and bare platinum coils for treatment of intracranial aneurysms: a matched-pair analysis.

OBJECT The primary goal of this matched-pair analysis was to evaluate the durability of the treatment results with Cerecyte coils in comparison with that of bare platinum coils in terms of angiographic occlusion rates at follow-up. METHODS Eighty aneurysms treated with Cerecyte coils were included in this study to carry out a matched-pair analysis. Every aneurysm treated with Cerecyte coils was matched with an aneurysm treated with bare platinum coils. Matching of the aneurysms was done according to the aneurysm size, location, neck size, initial occlusion grade, and clinical presentation. RESULTS The initial treatment results were similar in both groups as part of a matching protocol. Subgroup analysis revealed a significant difference in the durability of occlusion in aneurysms that showed Raymond Class I obliteration on follow-up angiograms (69 [86.2%] in the Cerecyte group vs 51 [63.8%] in the control group, p = 0.002). Further thrombosis to Raymond Class I occlusions was higher in the Cerecyte group (17 [77.3%] of 22 vs 8 [36.4%] of 22 aneurysms). CONCLUSIONS Cerecyte coils provide further thrombosis and more durable results than bare platinum coils following coil embolization of cerebral aneurysms.
Magnetic resonance imaging findings of the cervical spine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. A cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES To investigate by magnetic resonance (MR) imaging the occurrence of cervical spine (CS) involvement in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. METHODS Fifty-one consecutive unselected patients, who fulfilled the revised American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA, were investigated. All patients had a complete physical and laboratory evaluation. Radiological evaluation included hand and wrist x-rays, as well as CS radiographs in anteroposterior, lateral and lateral in full flexion views. In addition, MR (Spin Echo T2-weighted sagittal scans [neutral and flexion position], plain and contrast enhanced T1-weighted sagittal and axial scans) was performed in all patients. Hand x-rays were evaluated according to the Larsen's criteria, while CS radiographs were evaluated according to Winfield classification. Disease activity was assessed by disease activity score for 28 joint indices (DAS-28). RESULTS There were 42 females and 9 males with a mean age of 56.5 +/- 10.4 years and mean disease duration 12.4 +/- 8.5 years. Thirty-three patients (64.7%) had positive IgM rheumatoid factor (RF). Thirty patients presented clinical findings, mainly cervical pain and stiffness of CS (25 with positive and 5 with negative MR), while, radiological findings of CS involvement were found in 40 patients. Forty-four patients (86.2%) presented MR findings of CS involvement (peridental pannus 88%; dens erosion 23.5%; atlantoaxial subluxation 13.7%; subaxial subluxations 10%; brainstem compression 5.9%). Peridental pannus correlated with high DAS-28, positive IgM RF and advanced erosive changes of the wrist and hand (p < 0.05) in the univariate analysis. However, multivariate logistic regression analysis did not confirm such correlation. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that the frequency of CS involvement in Greek RA patients is high but the destructive changes are mild. However, in patients with active erosive peripheral disease it is very probable to also have some changes in CS. These may be clinically important and in such cases, MR may offer valuable information.
A fast non-local disparity refinement method for stereo matching

This paper presents a fast non-local disparity refinement method based on disparity belief propagation. The disparity belief fast propagated on a minimum spanning tree only need two sequential passes, first from leaf nodes to root, then from root to leaf nodes. Computational complexity of each pixel at all disparity levels is O(1). Performance evaluation on standard Middlebury data sets shows that the proposed method outperforms local refinement method both in accuracy and speed. Compared with the existing nonlocal disparity refinement method, the proposed method shows about maximum 15× faster speed at almost the same accuracy.
Part II : Proposed research 1 Introduction and research context

Computational methods for generating language are lagging behind computational methods for analysing language in several ways, most obviously in that they have barely been us d commercially. The main reasons for this are that systems for generating language take inordinate amounts of time to b uild, yet once built cannot be reused, and tend to be severely lacking in language variation which is easily perceived as l cking in quality. The current situation in language genera tion research is reminiscent of language analysis research in th e late 1980s, when symbolic and statistical methods briefly formed entirely separate research paradigms. Language ana lysis soon moved towards a paradigm merger, realising that symbolic methods lacked the efficiency and robustness that p robabilistic methods could provide, which in turn would benefit from the accuracy and subtlety of symbolic methods. A similar development is currently underway in the field of machine translation where — after several years of purely st atistical methods dominating the field — researchers are now beginning to bring linguistic knowledge back in. The experi ence from these research fields suggests that higher quality can be achieved when the symbolic and statistical paradigms join forces. Recent research shows that this is likely to be true for language generation too. The aim of the Prodigy project is to develop, for the first time, a comprehensive, linguistically informed, probabilistic methodology for g enerating language that substantially improves developme nt time, reusability and variation in language generation systems, and thereby enhances their commercial viability.
Best post-transforms selection in a rate-distortion sense

This paper deals with the optimization of a new technique of image compression. After the wavelet transform of an image, blocks of coefficients are further linearly decomposed using a basis selected in a dictionary. This dictionary is known by both the encoder and the decoder. This approach is a generalization of the bandelet transform. This paper investigates the problem of the best basis selection. On each block of wavelet coefficients, this selection is made by minimization of a Lagrangian rate-distortion criterion. Theoretical expressions of the optimal Lagrangian multiplier can be computed based on asymptotic hypotheses. A nearly exhaustive search of the optimal Lagrangian multiplier is done for the compression of high resolution satellite images. This numerical study validates the asymptotic theoretical expressions but as well provides a refined expression of the Lagrangian multiplier. At last, the compression results obtained using those different expressions are compared to the optimal compression results obtained with the exhaustive search.
Comprehensive Genetic Analysis of Paralogous Terminal Septin Subunits Shs1 and Cdc11 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Septins are a family of GTP-binding proteins considered to be cytoskeletal elements because they self-assemble into filaments and other higher-order structures in vivo. In budding yeast, septins establish a diffusion barrier at the bud neck between a mother and daughter cell, promote membrane curvature there, and serve as a scaffold to recruit other proteins to the site of cytokinesis. However, the mechanism by which any septin engages a partner protein has been unclear. The two most related and recently evolved subunits appear to be Cdc11 and Shs1, and the basic building blocks for assembling septin structures are hetero-octameric rods (Cdc11–Cdc12–Cdc3–Cdc10–Cdc10–Cdc3–Cdc12–Cdc11 and Shs1–Cdc12–Cdc3–Cdc10–Cdc10–Cdc3–Cdc12–Shs1). Loss of Cdc11 is not normally tolerated, whereas cells lacking Shs1 do not appear grossly abnormal. We established several different sensitized genetic backgrounds wherein Shs1 is indispensable, which allowed us to carry out the first comprehensive and detailed genetic analysis of Shs1 in vivo. Our analysis revealed several novel insights, including: (i) the sole portion of Shs1 essential for its function is a predicted coiled-coil-forming segment in its C-terminal extension (CTE); (ii) the CTE of Cdc11 shares this function; (iii) this role for the CTEs of Cdc11 and Shs1 is quite distinct from that of the CTEs of Cdc3 and Cdc12; and (iv) heterotypic Cdc11 and Shs1 junctions likely occur in vivo. Related article in GENETICS: Finnigan, G. C. et al., 2015 The Carboxy-Terminal Tails of Septins Cdc11 and Shs1 Recruit Myosin-II Binding Factor Bni5 to the Bud Neck in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Genetics 200: 843–862.
The complexity of domino tiling

In this paper, we study the problem of how to tile a layout with dominoes. For non-coloured dominoes, this can be determined easily by testing whether the layout graph has a perfect matching. We study here tiling with coloured dominoes, where colours of adjacent dominoes must match. It was known that this problem is NP-hard when the layout graph is a tree. We first strengthen this NP-hardness result in two ways: (1) we can use a path instead of a tree, or (2) we can force that exactly all given dominoes are used. However, both these reductions (as well as the existing one) use an unbounded numbers of colours, which is not realistic for domino tiling. As our main interest, we hence study domino tiling with a constant number of colours. We show that this is NP-hard even with 3 colours.
An Engineer Asks: Is it Really More Important that Paint Stays Stuck on the Outside of an Aircraft than that Glue Stays Stuck on the Inside?

The purpose of this article is to draw attention to two problems encountered with modern aircraft: the difficulties in making adhesive and paint adhere to composite substrates and the lack of any after-the-fact inspection that can prove that there will not be any interfacial failures at some time during the service life. It is also observed that the response to paint peeling off is more rapid and thorough than to a discovery of separations between internal components that were once believed to have been bonded together. Because there is so much similarity between the processes of making paint and adhesive adhere, it is suggested that some of the efforts to improve adhesion of the paint might also help improve the processes for making adhesives stick. The article focuses on a series of anecdotes about problems and their resolutions, with the hope that the solutions might help others solve or avoid future such problems. It is pointed out that the cost of improving the adhesion of both paint and adhesive has always been insignificant in comparison with the sometimes enormous costs incurred as a result of fleet-wide occurrences of what were perceived to be bond “failures” but which should more properly be characterized as initially undetected nonbonds. A critical issue is the acknowledged absence of any nondestructive inspection capable of distinguishing between bonds that will “fail” in service and those that will not. Experience has shown that none of the apparent interfacial failures to date have occurred on grit-blasted surfaces. Equally, it must be conceded that not all of the bonded composite structures made using peel-ply surfaces can be expected to fail, even though those associated with released peel plies or prebond moisture probably will, because these conditions have been associated with so many of the past failures. The distinction between interfacial failures and impact damage to properly bonded structures is that the former can extend throughout the entire structure, whereas the broken fibers and interlaminar matrix failures associated with the latter will not extend far beyond the impact area. This is one reason why it is so important to use only surface preparations that ensure the absence of interfacial failures. It is also noted that there is no counterpart, for the bonding of composite structures, of the peel-type test that was so instrumental in solving the equivalent bonding problem that was widespread in bonded metal structures some 30 years ago. It is recommended that there should be, because the use of only shear-load tests has been found to be insufficient to ensure bond durability for both metallic and composite structures.
Real-Time Error in Location Modeling for Ubiquitous Computing

No matter which technologies or techniques a ubiquitous location system uses, its measurements will have some amount of quantifiable error. Unfortunately, error information is often conveyed arbitrarily or simply for performance evaluation instead of as an online characteristic of system behavior. Terms such as accuracy, precision, granularity, and resolution are overloaded with various meanings. In this short paper, we argue that real-time error distributions provide a concise quantitative summarization of system accuracy and are useful in applications, simulation, and sensor fusion.
Consumption of Distinct Dietary Lipids during Early Pregnancy Differentially Modulates the Expression of microRNAs in Mothers and Offspring

Diet during pregnancy and lactation influences the offspring’s health in the long-term. Indeed, human epidemiological studies and animal experiments suggest that different type of fatty acids consumption during pregnancy affect offspring development and susceptibility to metabolic disorders. Epigenetic changes are thought to be elicited by dietary factors during critical timing of development. microRNAs (miRNAs) are versatile regulators of gene expression. Thus, we aimed to determine the influence of different fatty acids on miRNA expression in offspring when given during early pregnancy. We fed pregnant either soybean (SO), olive (OO), fish (FO), linseed (LO), or palm-oil (PO) diets from conception to day 12 of gestation; and standard diet thereafter. miRNA expression was assessed in liver an adipose tissue of pregnant rats and their virgin counterparts. While liver concentrations of fatty acids in pregnant or virgin rats replicated those of the diets consumed during early pregnancy, their pups’ liver tissue marginally reflected those of the respective experimental feeds. By contrast, the liver fatty acid profile of adult offsprings was similar, regardless of the diet fed during gestation. Different parental miRNAs were modulated by the different type of fatty acid: in adult offspring, miR-215, miR-10b, miR-26, miR-377-3p, miR-21, and miR-192 among others, were differentially modulated by the different fatty acids fed during early pregnancy. Overall, our results show that maternal consumption of different types of fatty acids during early pregnancy influences miRNA expression in both maternal and offspring tissues, which may epigenetically explain the long-term phenotypic changes of the offspring.
The classification and associative memory capability of stack filters

The notion of the on-set of a positive Boolean function is used to classify stack filters into three different types, called decreasing, increasing, and mixed. The associative memory capability of each of these three types of stack filters is then investigated. The associative memory of a stack filter is defined to be the set of root signals of that filter. In a class of stack filters in which each filter's root set contains a desired set of patterns, those filters whose root sets have the smallest cardinality are said to be minimal among all filters in that class for that set of patterns. Some learning schemes are proposed to find minimal decreasing and increasing stack filters. It is also shown that, for any specified set of patterns, there is always a mixed stack filter which is minimal when one considers all stack filters which preserve those patterns. In this sense, mixed stack filters are always at least as good as decreasing or increasing stack filters. >