Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A voxel based multiresolution technique for soft tissue deformation

Real time tissue deformation is an important aspect of interactive virtual reality (VR) environments such as medical trainers. Most approaches in deformable modelling use a fixed space discretization. A surgical trainer requires high plausibility of the deformations especially in the area close to the instrument. As the area of intervention is not known a priori, adaptive techniques have to be applied.We present an approach for real time deformation of soft tissue based on a regular FEM mesh of cube elements as opposed to a mesh of tetrahedral elements used by the majority of soft tissue simulators. A regular mesh structure simplifies the local refinement operation as the elements topology and stiffness are known implicitly. We propose an octree-based adaptive multiresolution extension of our basic approach.The volumetric representation of the deformed object is created automatically from medical images or by voxelization of a surface model. The resolution of the volumetric representation is independent of the surface geometry resolution. The surface is deformed according to the simulation performed on the underlying volumetric mesh.
Sorption of Fe (Hydr)Oxides to the Surface of Shewanella putrefaciens: Cell-Bound Fine-Grained Minerals Are Not Always Formed De Novo

ABSTRACT Shewanella putrefaciens, a gram-negative, facultative anaerobe, is active in the cycling of iron through its interaction with Fe (hydr)oxides in natural environments. Fine-grained Fe precipitates that are attached to the outer membranes of many gram-negative bacteria have most often been attributed to precipitation and growth of the mineral at the cell surface. Our study of the sorption of nonbiogenic Fe (hydr)oxides revealed, however, that large quantities of nanometer-scale ferrihydrite (hydrous ferric oxide), goethite (α-FeOOH), and hematite (α-Fe2O3) adhered to the cell surface. Attempts to separate suspensions of cells and minerals with an 80% glycerin cushion proved that the sorbed minerals were tightly attached to the bacteria. The interaction between minerals and cells resulted in the formation of mineral-cell aggregates, which increased biomass density and provided better sedimentation of mineral Fe compared to suspensions of minerals alone. Transmission electron microscopy observations of cells prepared by whole-mount, conventional embedding, and freeze-substitution methods confirmed the close association between cells and minerals and suggested that in some instances, the mineral crystals had even penetrated the outer membrane and peptidoglycan layers. Given the abundance of these mineral types in natural environments, the data suggest that not all naturally occurring cell surface-associated minerals are necessarily formed de novo on the cell wall.
Intersecting race and gender stereotypes: Implications for group-level attitudes

Two studies examined the relationship between explicit stereotyping and prejudice by investigating how stereotyping of minority men and women may be differentially related to prejudice. Based on research and theory related to the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008), we hypothesized that stereotyping of minority men would be more strongly related to prejudice than stereotyping of minority women. Supporting our hypothesis, in both the United Kingdom (Study 1) and the United States (Study 2), when stereotyping of Black men and women were entered into the same regression model, only stereotyping of Black men predicted prejudice. Results were inconsistent in regard to South Asians and East Asians. Results are discussed in terms of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) and the gendered nature of the relationship between stereotyping and attitudes.
Sprinkler: Maximizing resource utilization in many-chip solid state disks

Resource utilization is one of the emerging problems in many-chip SSDs. In this paper, we propose Sprinkler, a novel device-level SSD controller, which targets maximizing resource utilization and achieving high performance without additional NAND flash chips. Specifically, Sprinkler relaxes parallelism dependency by scheduling I/O requests based on internal resource layout rather than the order imposed by the device-level queue. In addition, Sprinkler improves flash-level parallelism and reduces the number of transactions (i.e., improves transactionallocality) by over-committing flash memory requests to specific resources. Our extensive experimental evaluation using a cycle-accurate large-scale SSD simulation framework shows that a many-chip SSD equipped with our Sprinkler provides at least 56.6% shorter latency and 1.8 -2.2 times better throughput than the state-of-the-art SSD controllers. Further, it improves overall resource utilization by 68.8% under different I/O request patterns and provides, on average, 80.2% more flash-level parallelism by reducing half of the flash memory requests at runtime.
Assessing the Average Sodium Content of Prepacked Foods with Nutrition Declarations: The Importance of Sales Data

Processed foods are recognized as a major contributor to high dietary sodium intake, associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Different public health actions are being introduced to reduce sodium content in processed foods and sodium intake in general. A gradual reduction of sodium content in processed foods was proposed in Slovenia, but monitoring sodium content in the food supply is essential to evaluate the progress. Our primary objective was to test a new approach for assessing the sales-weighted average sodium content of prepacked foods on the market. We show that a combination of 12-month food sales data provided by food retailers covering the majority of the national market and a comprehensive food composition database compiled using food labelling data represent a robust and cost-effective approach to assessing the sales-weighted average sodium content of prepacked foods. Food categories with the highest sodium content were processed meats (particularly dry cured meat), ready meals (especially frozen pizza) and cheese. The reported results show that in most investigated food categories, market leaders in the Slovenian market have lower sodium contents than the category average. The proposed method represents an excellent tool for monitoring sodium content in the food supply.
H Control for Production Networks of Autonomous Work Systems with Time-Varying Delays

This paper considers the problem of local capacity ∞ H control for a class of production networks of autonomous work systems with time-varying delays in the capacity changes. The system under consideration is modelled in a discrete-time singular form. Attention is focused on the design of a controller gain for the local capacity adjustments which maintains the work in progress (WIP) in each work system in the vicinity of planned levels and guarantees the asymptotic stability of the system and reduces the effect of the disturbance input on the controlled output to a prescribed level. In terms of a matrix inequality, a sufficient condition for the solvability of this problem is presented using an appropriate Lyapunov function, which depends on the size of the delay and is solved by existing convex optimization techniques. When this matrix inequality is feasible, the controller gain can be found by using LMI Toolbox Matlab. Finally, numerical results are provided to demonstrate the proposed approach.
Towards Verifiable Model Transformations : A Finite-State Example

Embedded software in automotive applications is often used in safety critical applications, where the reliability of the system is of utmost importance. If a model-based development is followed, models of the code are often verified using techniques like model checking, but this in itself does not ensure that the generated code is also verified. Also, design models are often different from analysis models as the design and analysis languages used to express the models are different. Hence the need emerges for verifying model transformations that transform design models into analysis models and into code. This paper introduces a technique called “goal-directed certification” that provides a pragmatic solution to the verification problem, and illustrates its use for a particular example in the finite-state system domain.
New Functions for an Active Learning System to Improve Students Self-Learning and Concentration

In our previous work, it has been shown that the students can improve the learning process by using smartphones. For the professors of the university, it is difficult to offer all necessary information to the students. In addition, they cannot provide the information to satisfy all students because the quantity of knowledge of each student attending a lecture is different. Therefore, for the lectures of a higher level than intermediate level, the students should study the learning materials by themselves. In the previous work, we presented an interactive learning process in order to improve the students learning motivation and the self-learning time. Also, to improve the progress speed of a lecture, we proposed an Active Learning System (ALS). In this paper, to improve student's self-learning procedure, we propose some new functions for ALS.
On Randomness and the Genetic Behavior of Cellular Automata

We investigate a new approach in utilizing a given classification to cellular automata to search for a particular behavior cellular automaton with a genetic algorithm. This investigation leads to the formation of two new concepts. The first is creating a new method to measure randomness in finite binary sequences depending on iterations in patterns. The second is the sculpturing of the term chromosomity. As defined in this paper, a property is said to be chromosomic (i.e. has chromosomity or shows a genetic behavior) if it can be searched for with a genetic algorithm.
Axonal wiring defects and critical period plasticity in the postnatal motor system

This thesis investigates the postnatal consequences of axon miswiring in the spinal motor system and mechanisms of plasticity that allow for their compensation. I showed that depletion of Npn1 from motor neurons causes severe postnatal defects due to loss of motor axons from the radial nerve. Defective Sema3A-Npn1 binding does not induce the same defects, suggesting that additional binding partners for Npn1 might allow for the compensation of these deficits. Furthermore, I introduced Sema3F mutants as a new, non-injury based model to explore postnatal adaptive plasticity in the motor system. I found evidence for a critical period in which locomotor stimulation can induce neuroanatomical and behavioral adaptations.
M 2 M Communications in 3 GPP LTE / LTE-A Networks : Architectures , Service Requirements , Challenges , and Applications

Machine to machine (M2M) communication is an emerging technology to provide ubiquitous connectivity among devices without human intervention. The cellular networks are considered as a ready-to-use infrastructure to implement M2M communications. However, M2M communications over cellular pose significant challenges to cellular networks due to different data transactions, diverse applications, and a large number of connections. To support such a large number of devices, M2M system architecture should be extremely power and spectrum efficient. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on M2M communications in the context of third generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) and long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A). More specifically, this paper presents architectural enhancements for providing M2M services in 3GPP LTE/LTE-A networks and reviews the features and requirements of M2M applications. In addition, the signal overheads and various quality-of-service (QoS) requirements in M2M communications deserve our attention too. We address M2M challenges over 3GPP LTE/LTE-A and also identify the issues on diverse random access overload control to avoid congestion caused by random channel access of M2M devices. Different application scenarios are considered to illustrate futuristic M2M applications. Finally, we present possible enabling technologies and point out the directions for M2M communications research.
HBV Life Cycle: Entry and Morphogenesis

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of liver disease. HBV primarily infects hepatocytes by a still poorly understood mechanism. After an endocytotic process, the nucleocapsids are released into the cytoplasm and the relaxed circular rcDNA genome is transported towards the nucleus where it is converted into covalently closed circular cccDNA. Replication of the viral genome occurs via an RNA pregenome (pgRNA) that binds to HBV polymerase (P). P initiates pgRNA encapsidation and reverse transcription inside the capsid. Matured, rcDNA containing nucleocapsids can re-deliver the RC-DNA to the nucleus, or be secreted via interaction with the envelope proteins as progeny virions.
Using Architectural Constraints to Drive Software Component Reuse While Adding and Enhancing Features: In a Global Software Engineering Team

We develop integrated systems that consist of software and hardware components with a lifespan ranging from 10-15 years. During the life span of these systems, market needs change significantly due to technological advancements, environmental needs, and cultural preferences. Cost of change of software vis-à-vis hardware is a big driver which often leads to the introduction of change to software for meeting evolving market expectations. The biggest advantage of software-'easy adaptability'-is also its biggest drawback, because it makes software susceptible tochange. Hence, designing software is extremely challenging specially in Globally Distributed Software Development (GDSD). In this practice paper, we share our approach of leveraging the constraints of software architecture, the challenges encountered and lessons learnt which enabled higher software reuse when adding and enhancing features while reducing overall costs and shrinking time to market for a Globally Distributed Software Development team.
Utang dan Nilai Perusahaan

Penelitian ini menguji hubungan antara utang dengan nilai perusahaan, adapun proksi yang digunakan untuk mengukur nilai perusahaan adalah laba bersih perusahaan. Sampel yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah perusahaan manufaktur di Indonesia, sedangkan periode amatan yang digunakan adalah dari tahun 2000 sampai dengan tahun 2014. Kemudian, untuk alat analisa yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah model regresi linear sederhana. Adaoun hasil dari penelitian ini menyatakan bahwa utang berpengaruh positif terhadap nilai perusahaan. Hasil penelitian memberikan konfirmasi pada fenomena penggunaan utang di Indonesia yang selama 5 (lima) tahun terakhir ini selalu menunjukkan peningkatan.
At Home with Nature

The nearby natural environment plays a far more significant role in the well-being of children residing in poor urban environments than has previously been recognized. Using a premove/postmove longitudinal design, this research rules out the effects of various extraneous variables that have plagued previous studies and explores the linkage between the naturalness or restorativeness of the home environment and the cognitive functioning of low-income urban children. Both before and after relocation, objective measures of naturalness are employed along with a standardized instrument measuring the children’s cognitive functioning. Results indicate that children whose homes improved the most in terms of greenness following relocation also tended to have the highest levels of cognitive functioning following the move. The implications with respect to policy and design are also discussed.
Sampling control in environmental monitoring systems using recurrent neural networks

Minimization of energy consumption of environmental monitoring systems is important to ensure their extended operational lifetime and low maintenance costs. One possible way to conserve energy is the use of low-frequency analog-to-digital conversion devices and associated data sampling techniques. In this paper, a new approach to lowering sampling frequency using model-based data imputation is proposed and discussed. Recorded data is used to develop models based on time-delay recurrent neural network. While sampling at low frequencies, the models are used to predict future and missing values. The models are updated when predicted values differ significantly from the actual measurements. The proposed approach is demonstrated using actual measurements sampled at different frequencies. The results are thoroughly analyzed from the perspective of approximation error and energy savings.
A Cost Model for Virtual Machine Storage in Cloud IaaS Context

This paper proposes a storage system cost model for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud. The proposed cost model takes into account the virtualization environment, the storage system characteristics in addition to energy and QoS related parameters (Service Level Agreement and penalties). We show that those parameters are relevant and allow us to predict an accurate estimation of the overall cost of the IaaS infrastructure. We validate this cost model against real measures and we show less than 10% of error in most cases. Designers and administrators can use this cost model to perform optimization, load balancing, configuration and pricing of the Cloud infrastructure.
A constraint-based layout manager for Eiffel Master

EiffelVision 2 is an object-oriented library for developing graphical user interfaces in Eiffel. It offers several strategies to organise widgets in windows, and each strategy has its own specific language and features. The goal of this master thesis is to design and implement a more abstract language to develop user interfaces that is based on the mathematical model of linear programming. The resulting framework is seamlessly integrated in EiffelVision 2 and offers developers a valid alternative to existing layout managers.
Reserve Price Optimization at Scale

Online advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry largely responsible for keeping most online content free and content creators ("publishers") in business. In one aspect of advertising sales, impressions are auctioned off in second price auctions on an auction-by-auction basis through what is known as real-time bidding (RTB). An important mechanism through which publishers can influence how much revenue they earn is reserve pricing in RTB auctions. The optimal reserve price problem is well studied in both applied and academic literatures. However, few solutions are suited to RTB, where billions of auctions for ad space on millions of different sites and Internet users are conducted each day among bidders with heterogenous valuations. In particular, existing solutions are not robust to violations of assumptions common in auction theory and do not scale to processing terabytes of data each hour, a high dimensional feature space, and a fast changing demand landscape. In this paper, we describe a scalable, online, real-time, incrementally updated reserve price optimizer for RTB that is currently implemented as part of the AppNexus Publisher Suite. Our solution applies an online learning approach, maximizing a custom cost function suited to reserve price optimization. We demonstrate the scalability and feasibility with the results from the reserve price optimizer deployed in a production environment. In the production deployed optimizer, the average revenue lift was 34.4% with 95% confidence intervals (33.2%, 35.6%) from more than 8 billion auctions over 46 days, a substantial increase over non-optimized and often manually set rule based reserve prices.
An overview and examination of digital PDA devices under forensics toolkits

Personal Digital Assistants most commonly known as PDAs are becoming more and more fashionable and affordable in the working environment. With the advent and rapidly increasing technology these handled devices are now targeted by a lot of person with criminal intentions. But unfortunately crime does not choose its technology and nowadays those ultra light handhelds are getting more and more involved in crimes. This therefore become an onerous task for the forensics examiners who needs the proper forensics tools to investigate the information held on these devices. The purpose of this report will browse the current forensics toolkits available and analyze some targeted PDAs.
Mobile WiMAX performance measurements with focus on different QoS targets

The performance evaluation of mobile communication systems for time varying environments poses a major challenge. To address this issue, in this paper we propose an approach which extends a common laboratory environment by a fading channel emulator. Hereby, we analyze OFDM based links under complex and realistic radio channel conditions including upper layer protocols. By means of this setup, the influence of velocity on the data rate and Packet Error Rate (PER) of a Mobile WiMAX system is investigated for various Signal to Noise Ratios (SNR) assuming vehicular and pedestrian channel models defined by the ITU. As a result, we analyzed the performance of Mobile WiMAX for Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) dependent on the QoS target, the channel model, the user velocity and the SNR. Hereby, we assumed two partially contrary QoS targets, high data rate and target PER.
Eve: A Scalable Network Client Emulator

Client emulation tools play a central role in the performance evaluation, capacity planning, and workload characterization of servers. However, traditional emulation tools, because of their limited scalability and extensibility, fail to keep up with servers as they increase in complexity and performance. In this paper, we propose Eve, a scalable client emulation tool that is capable of stress-testing powerful servers. Eve relies on an open and modular architecture that provides a simple and extensible programming environment. By incorporating I/O call handing into its user-thread library, Eve is capable of simultaneously emulating thousands of clients. Furthermore, Eve uses a distributed shared variable (DSV) core to facilitate communication between different clients, thus enhancing scalability to multiple machines.
PRESENCE FOR VR EXPOSURE THERAPY THROUGH 3 D ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATION

This paper reports on the effect of 3D architectural visualization in VR and its possible effect on the sense of presence. The problem definition was tested by use of a between subjects design. Two groups were randomly formed. One group evaluated the 3D visualized virtual environment, and the other the 2D visualized virtual environment. Afterwards the Igroup Presence Questionnaire was used to evaluate the sense of presence. This questionnaire covers three subscales (spatial presence, involvement, and experienced realism) and one additional general item (“sense of being there”) not belonging to a subscale. Two out of three subscales showed a significant improvement of the 3D visualized virtual environment. Involvement and the general item showed no significant difference. It is evident that the 3D architectural visualization provides us with a promising perceptual component for reaching a higher sense of presence for VR exposure therapy.