Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Experimental demonstration of the modification of the resonances of a simplified self-sustained wind instrument through modal active control.

This paper reports the experimental results of modifying the resonances of wind instruments using modal active control. Resonances of a simplified bass clarinet without holes (a cylindrical tube coupled to a bass clarinet mouthpiece including a reed) are adjusted either in frequency or in damping in order to modify its playing properties (pitch, strength of the harmonics of the sound, transient behaviour). This is achieved using a control setup consisting of a co-located loudspeaker and microphone linked to a computer with data acquisition capabilities. Software on the computer implements an observer (which contains a model of the system) and a controller. Measuring and adjusting the transfer function between the speaker and microphone of the control setup enables modifications of the input impedance and the radiated sound of the instrument.
Generating Fundus Fluorescence Angiography Images from Structure Fundus Images Using Generative Adversarial Networks

Fluorescein angiography can provide a map of retinal vascular structure and function, which is commonly used in ophthalmology diagnosis, however, this imaging modality may pose risks of harm to the patients. To help physicians reduce the potential risks of diagnosis, an image translation method is adopted. In this work, we proposed a conditional generative adversarial network(GAN) - based method to directly learn the mapping relationship between structure fundus images and fundus fluorescence angiography images. Moreover, local saliency maps, which define each pixel's importance, are used to define a novel saliency loss in the GAN cost function. This facilitates more accurate learning of small-vessel and fluorescein leakage features.
Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework for Factor Investing

Deep Learning for ﬁnance has always been applied through a wealth of techniques and network architectures to try to predict the evolution of ﬁnancial instruments and speciﬁcally stock markets. A diversity of new sources such as tweets have also being used to gain superior predictive power. We suggest in this document to apply feature knowledge used factor investing to evaluate if a Q-learning network can better identify investments opportunities in the equity markets
Government Spending and Economic Growth: Contemporary Literature Review

This article reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between government spending and economic growth. The article aims to add to the current debate on this relationship. The article finds that neither the theoretical literature nor the empirical literature provides conclusive evidence about the nature of this relationship. The theoretical literature can be divided into six schools of thought: the neutral impact (Ricardian Equivalence Hypothesis), the impact runs from the economic growth to government spending (Wagner’s Law), the positive impact (Keynesians School), the negative impact (Neo-Classical School), the positive effect under condition (Barro’s School), and the nonlinear impact. Although the majority of empirical studies support the positive impact, there is a growing of empirical evidence of the nonlinearity. Overall, the theoretical and empirical literature yield inconclusive results due to a set of various factors such as the selection of the sample of countries, the level of development of countries, the time frames, the control variables included, the methodology used. Thus, the most advanced methods should be employed in future research to reach more reliable results.
The Association between Marital Status and Psychological Well-being: Variation across Negative and Positive Dimensions

Marital status is associated with psychological well-being, with the married faring better than the formerly and never-married. However, this conclusion derives from research focusing more on negative than positive well-being. We examine the association between marital status and negative well-being, measured as depressive symptoms, and positive well-being, measured as autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, self-acceptance, and purpose in life. Using Wave 2 of Midlife in the United States (2004–2006; n = 1,711), we find that the continuously married fare better on the negative dimension than do the formerly married. The results for some measures of positive well-being also reveal an advantage for the continuously married, compared with the formerly and the never-married. However, results for other positive measures indicate that the unmarried, and the remarried, fare better—not worse—than the continuously married. Further, some results suggest greater benefits for remarried or never-married women than men.
Building Provably Secure Block Ciphers from Cryptographic Hash Functions

This paper presents a proposal for the construction of provably secure block ciphers based on cryptographic hash functions. The core idea consists of using a hash function to generate pseudorandom strings to be combined with the message blocks. Each one of these strings depend on the previous ciphertext block (or the initialization vector, in the case of the ﬁrst message block), the secret key k and a block key derived from k . One of the main features of the proposed construction is that it allows keys of arbitrary length, since the key itself is never directly combined with the message. Furthermore, even if an adversary manages to guess all of the block keys, he can’t efﬁciently retrieve the master secret key or the message, provided that the underlying hash function is cryptographically secure. Finally, the proposal also embeds an authentication tag in the initialization vector. Hence, instead of being randomly chosen, the IV is always dependent on the key and the message, which is crucial to generate confusion, diffusion and avalanche effect, since any minor change in the key or in the message will cause the IV to be drastically different, due to the properties of the HMAC, and because of the chained nature of the construction, this change will propagate to all ciphertext blocks.
Properties of Bethe Free Energies and Message Passing in Gaussian Models

We address the problem of computing approximate marginals in Gaussian probabilistic models by using mean field and fractional Bethe approximations. We define the Gaussian fractional Bethe free energy in terms of the moment parameters of the approximate marginals, derive a lower and an upper bound on the fractional Bethe free energy and establish a necessary condition for the lower bound to be bounded from below. It turns out that the condition is identical to the pairwise normalizability condition, which is known to be a sufficient condition for the convergence of the message passing algorithm. We show that stable fixed points of the Gaussian message passing algorithm are local minima of the Gaussian Bethe free energy. By a counterexample, we disprove the conjecture stating that the unboundedness of the free energy implies the divergence of the message passing algorithm.
Algae to capture CO2

Global warming's effects can be seen worldwide, and many experts believe it's only going to get worse as CO2 emissions continue to rise. Global warming is caused by the emission of greenhouse gases. 72% of the totally emitted greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide (CO2), 18% Methane and 9% Nitrous oxide (NOx). Carbon dioxide emissions therefore are the most important cause of global warming. CO2 is inevitably created by burning fuels like e.g. oil, natural gas, diesel, organicdiesel, petrol, organic-petrol, ethanol. That's the bad news. The good news is that researchers have found that algae is not only a great source of alternative of natural bio energy but it also has the ability to capture CO2.
Synthesis and Supercapacitive Performance of Three-Dimensional Graphene Macroform

In recent years, three-dimensional graphene networks have attracted much attention for both fundamental science and applied research in environment, energy, sensing fields as adsorbents, electrochemical double-layer capacitors or electrode material, owing to its high specific surface areas, large pore volumes, strong mechanical strengths and fast mass and electron transport. Assembling micrometers size graphene oxide sheets into macroscopic architectures is a challenge for graphene fabrication. In this work, a mild method for preparation of three-dimensional graphene macroform (3D-RGM) is developed via an in situ self-assembly of reduced graphene nanosheets at 90 o C under atmosphere pressure without stirring. The morphology and composition of 3D-RGM was characterized via scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy(TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) and Raman spectra. The as-synthesized 3D-RGM possesses interconnected open pore structure of mesoporous and macroporous and the pore wall is composed of flaky reduced graphene sheets with wrinkles. What’s more, 3D-RGM has strong mechanical strength and compressibility. In addition, the work electrodes of materials for supercapacitor were prepared by direct tabletting and the supercapacitive performances of the electrodes were tested by using a three electrodes system. The results show that the specific capacitance of 3D-RGM can reached 150 F/g at the current density of 0.1 A/g and the interface resistance is about 1.3 Ω. 收稿日期:2018-06-07 作者简介:王 森(1989-),男,山东枣庄,硕士,研究方向:石墨烯材料在生物电化学方面的应用研究。 E-mail: wangsen@sdu.edu. cn 通信联系人:李金霞, E-mail: lijinxia@ecust.edu. cn
Fog Network Task Scheduling for IoT Applications

In the Internet of Things (IoT) networks, the data traffic would be very bursty and unpredictable. It is therefore very difficult to analyze and guarantee the delay performance for delay-sensitive IoT applications in fog networks, such as emergency monitoring, intelligent manufacturing, and autonomous driving. To address this challenging problem, a Bursty Elastic Task Scheduling (BETS) algorithm is developed to best accommodate bursty task arrivals and various requirements in IoT networks, thus optimizing service experience for delay-sensitive applications with only limited communication resources in time-varying and competing environments. To better describe the stability and consistence of Quality of Service (QoS) in realistic scenarios, a new performance metric "Bursty Service Experience Index (BSEI)" is defined and quantified as delay jitter normalized by the average delay. Finally, the numeral results shows that the performance of BETS is fully evaluated, which can achieve 5 − 10 times lower BSEI than traditional task scheduling algorithms, e.g. Proportional Fair (PF) and the Max Carrier-to-Interference ratio (MCI), under bursty traffic conditions. These results demonstrate that BETS can effectively smooth down the bursty characteristics in IoT networks, and provide much predictable and acceptable QoS for delay-sensitive applications. © Chongchong Zhang, Fei Shen, Jiong Jin, and Yang Yang; licensed under Creative Commons License CC-BY 2nd Workshop on Fog Computing and the IoT (Fog-IoT 2020).
2D to 3D Animation Style Transfer

This project aims to transfer 3D animation style onto 2D animated frames. We train various style transfer models, including feedforward neural style transfer, Pix2Pix, and CycleGAN on the captured frames of various 2D and 3D animated clips. We then evaluate the performance of these models on their ability to transfer 3D style onto new 2D frames. We found that the feedforward model had the best results only when the style image is similar to the content image. Otherwise, the Pix2Pix model was able to capture the style best.
Restorative Dentistry Associated with a Prosthesis on Unitary Implant in Aesthetic Rehabilitation: Case Report

Fernanda Ferreira Jassé1, Kalena De Melo Maranhão2, Julyanne Vaz Aramayo3, Lia Enoly Monteiro Alves3 and Ana Cássia De Souza Reis4* 1School of Dentistry, School Superior of Amazonia (ESAMAZ), Belém-PA, Brazil 2Post Graduate Student, School of Dentistry, School Mauricio of Nassau (UNINASSAU), Belém-PA, Brazil 3Graduation Student School Superior of Amazonia (ESAMAZ), Belém-PA, Brazil 4Post Graduate Student, School of Dentistry, School Superior of Amazonia (ESAMAZ), Belém-PA, Brazil
Exploring Disease Interactions Using Markov Networks

Network medicine is an emerging paradigm for studying the co-occurrence between diseases. While diseases are often interlinked through complex patterns, most of the existing work in this area has focused on studying pairwise relationships between diseases. In this paper, we use a state-of-the-art Markov network learning method to learn interactions between musculoskeletal disorders and cardiovascular diseases and compare this to pairwise approaches. Our experimental results confirm that the sophisticated structure learner produces more accurate models, which can help reveal interesting patterns in the co-occurrence of diseases.
Response Time Analysis of Systems with Real-Time and non Real-Time Processing

Most real-world automation systems (AS) require both real-time (RT) as well as non real-time (NRT) functionality. Modern AS are more frequently realized as a single platform solution in order to reduce their development time. This trend is driven by the advances in processor technology. The interoperability between RT and NRT processing is an important parameter in a single platform solution. This paper focuses on the modeling of the RT-NRT interoperability based on response time analysis (RTA) which is extended by the context switches between RT and NRT. Our extended RTA is now able to derive the NRT load distribution in dependency on the RT load, and important interoperability parameter such as NRT utilization and maximum NRT suspension time can be computed. We apply our model on a complex AS system (PUMA Open) that uses dedicated operating systems for RT and NRT processing, respectively.
Gaze-based Command Activation Technique Robust Against Unintentional Activation using Dwell-then-Gesture

We show a gaze-based command activation technique that is robust to unintentional command activations using a series of manipulation of dwelling on a target and performing a gesture (dwell-then-gesture manipulation). The gesture we adopt is a simple two-level stroke, which consists of a sequence of two orthogonal strokes. To achieve robustness against unintentional command activations, we design and ﬁne-tune a gesture detection system based on how users move their gaze revealed through three experiments. Although our technique seems to just combine well-known dwell-based and gesture-based manipulations and to not be enough success rate, our work will be the ﬁrst work that enriches the vocabulary, which is as much as mouse-based interaction.
Enriching Knowledge Bases with Interesting Negative Statements

Knowledge bases (KBs), pragmatic collections of knowledge about notable entities, are an important asset in applications such as search, question answering and dialogue. Rooted in a long tradition in knowledge representation, all popular KBs only store positive information, but abstain from taking any stance towards statements not contained in them. In this paper, we make the case for explicitly stating interesting statements which are not true. Negative statements would be important to overcome current limitations of question answering, yet due to their potential abundance, any eﬀort towards compiling them needs a tight coupling with ranking. We introduce two approaches towards automatically compiling negative statements. (i) In peer-based statistical inferences , we compare entities with highly related entities in order to derive potential negative statements, which we then rank using supervised and unsupervised features. (ii) In pattern-based query log extraction , we use a pattern-based approach for harvesting search engine query logs. Experimental results show that both approaches hold promising and complementary potential. Along with this paper, we publish the ﬁrst datasets on interesting negative information, containing over 1.4M statements for 130K popular Wikidata entities.
REVIEW ON CALPAIN MEDIATED POST-MORTEM AGEING ON THE QUALITY OF PRE-COOKED BREAST FILLETS FROM BREEDER BROILERS

Chicken breast fillet is a versatile meat product in India, and has wider acceptability throughout the world. However, there is very little information on the effect of calpain mediated post-mortem ageing on the quality of pre-cooked breast fillets from breeder broilers. So, efforts were made to best utilize the breast fillets from breeder broilers by applying different post-mortem aging methods, optimization of marinade and adopting variety of cooking techniques. The storability study and cost of economics for pilot scale processing of breast fillets were also carried out to evaluate the feasibility and commercial viability of products with a view to transferring the technology to small entrepreneurs.
Predicting Ionic Liquid Materials Properties from Chemical Structure

Ionic liquids, a class of room-temperature molten salts, are of interest in a variety of materials applications. Accurate prediction of their physiochemical properties enables high throughput screening and acceleration of their practical application in tangible technologies. In this work, a published neural-fingerprinting algorithm was adapted to predict melting point and viscosity of ionic liquids based the component anion and cation chemical structures. Both algorithms share a base message passing neural network and successive dense layers to encode and combine information from each ion. Outputs are then passed through property-specific network heads for final prediction. Comparing the true and predicted values, the final viscosity model resulted in an R dev = 0.89 and the final melting point model resulted in an R 2 dev = 0.64. Transfer learning was also attempted between the viscosity and melting point models, resulting in lower absolute performance but also lower apparent variance.
Localization of Ischemic Brain Region After Mouse Embryonic Stem Cell Transplantation

We induced middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in rats using silicone-coated vascular embolus. We transplanted mouse embryonic stem cells after MCAO. Rats were tested behaviorally using motor and sensory function with neurological assessment. Functional effectiveness of the mES transplanted was gradually improved the function of sensory neuron and motor neuron. This study demonstrated that the transplanted cells have synaptic connection in the recipient brain. We suggested that stem cell transplantation can have a positive effect on behavioral recovery and reduction of infarct size in focal ischemic rats. Therefore, we concluded that mES cells may have useful tool for treatment in neurological diseases.
SENSITIVITY ENHANCEMENT IN DOUBLE GATE FIELD EFFECT TRANSISTOR pH SENSOR

In this paper, we compare the pH sensitivity of a double gate pH sensor based on front-gate operation and the back-gate operation. Numerical and compact modeling illustrates a simple way to enhance the sensitivity of double-gate field effect transistor (DGFET) sensor. The simulation approach is presented to improve the pH sensitivity. Field effect devices are used for biomolecule detection and pH sensitivity. The model is derived from Poisson’s equation in each region and it found the back gated operation of DGFET allows significant signal amplification compare with conventional ISFET. This simulation work concludes with finding the higher pH sensitivity of DGFET sensor.
Effect of pelleting temperature, probiotic and wheat grain on intestinal pH, cecal microbial population and intestinal morphometry in broiler chickens

The main objective of the present study was to examine the effects of dietary probiotic and wheat inclusion and pelleting die temperature (70 or 85 °C) on intestinal pH, cecal microbial population, and intestinal morphology. A 2×2×2 factorial arrangement in the completely randomized design was applied that included wheat inclusion, probiotic supplementation and conditioning temperature as the main factors. Wheat addition significantly increased pH of jejunum content. Probiotic supplementation and die temperature had no main and interaction effects on pH of digesta. There was no significant difference for main effects of different factors on the population of lactobacillus and Bacillus counts. The interaction between probiotic supplementation and die temperature had a significant effect on the population of lactobacillus and Bacillus counts. Wheat inclusion increased, probiotic supplementation decreased and higher die temperature increased the population of E. coli in the cecal content. Main effects and interactions were not different on jejunal villus height, crypt depth and villus height: crypt depth ratio. Probiotic supplementation increased (P<0.05) and higher die temperature decreased the goblet cell count. It was suggested that inclusion of low non starch polysaccharide wheat grain as pellet binder and energy source can perform alone or in combination with probiotics at die temperature of 70 °C.
Safety, Immunogenicity, and Protective Efficacy of Intradermal Immunization with Aseptic, Purified, Cryopreserved Plasmodium falciparum Sporozoites in Volunteers under Chloroquine Prophylaxis: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Immunization of volunteers under chloroquine prophylaxis by bites of Plasmodium falciparum sporozoite (PfSPZ)–infected mosquitoes induces > 90% protection against controlled human malaria infection (CHMI). We studied intradermal immunization with cryopreserved, infectious PfSPZ in volunteers taking chloroquine (PfSPZ chemoprophylaxis vaccine [CVac]). Vaccine groups 1 and 3 received 3× monthly immunizations with 7.5 × 104 PfSPZ. Control groups 2 and 4 received normal saline. Groups 1 and 2 underwent CHMI (#1) by mosquito bite 60 days after the third immunization. Groups 3 and 4 were boosted 168 days after the third immunization and underwent CHMI (#2) 137 days later. Vaccinees (11/20, 55%) and controls (6/10, 60%) had the same percentage of mild to moderate solicited adverse events. After CHMI #1, 8/10 vaccinees (group 1) and 5/5 controls (group 2) became parasitemic by microscopy; the two negatives were positive by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). After CHMI #2, all vaccinees in group 3 and controls in group 4 were parasitemic by qPCR. Vaccinees showed weak antibody and no detectable cellular immune responses. Intradermal immunization with up to 3 × 105 PfSPZ-CVac was safe, but induced only minimal immune responses and no sterile protection against Pf CHMI.