Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Study of the Effect of Using Different Solar Tracking Time-Steps on the Central Tower Receiver Power Plant

In central receiver solar power plant, heliostat tracking accuracy affects the optical efficiency and the amount of energy received at the target. In the present article, an analysis of the effect of using different solar tracking time-steps on the energy consumption and power losses of a central receiver system. The drive system energy consumption is calculated by using a Solidworks model of the heliostat mechanical drive system. This Solidworks model is interfaced to a Labview model containing the model of the electrical drive and control systems. The power collected at the receiver is calculated using solar radiation mathematical model and Monte Carlo ray tracing software.
Optoacoustic Imaging Detects Hormone-Related Physiological Changes of Breast Parenchyma

Abstract Purpose Optoacoustic imaging with ultrasound (OPUS) can assess in-vivo perfusion/oxygenation through surrogate measures of oxy, deoxy and total hemoglobin content in tissues. The primary aim of our study was to evaluate the ability of OPUS to detect physiological changes in the breast during the menstrual cycle and to determine qualitative/quantitative metrics of normal parenchymal tissue in pre-/post-menopausal women. The secondary aim was to assess the technique’s repeatability. Materials and Methods We performed a prospective ethically approved study in volunteers using OPUS (700, 800 and 850 nm wavelengths) in the proliferative/follicular and secretory phase of the menstrual cycle. Regions of interest (ROIs) were drawn on the most superficial region of fibroglandular tissue and same-day intra-observer repeatability was assessed. We used t-tests to interrogate differences in the OPUS measurements due to hormonal changes and interclass correlation coefficients/Bland-Altman plots to evaluate the repeatability of mean ROI signal intensities. Results 22 pre-menopausal and 8 post-menopausal volunteers were recruited. 21 participants underwent repeatability examinations. OPUS intensity values were significantly higher (p < 0.0001) at all excitation wavelengths in the secretory compared to the proliferative/follicular phase. Post-menopausal volunteers showed similar optoacoustic values to the proliferative/follicular phase of pre-menopausal volunteers. The repeatability of the technique was comparable to other handheld ultrasound modalities. Conclusion OPUS detects changes in perfusion/vascularity related to the menstrual cycle and menopausal status of breast parenchyma.
Compact Bandstop Half-Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide Filter Based on a Broadside-Coupled Open Split-Ring Resonator

A shunt RLC resonant circuit obtained from a broadside-coupled open split ring resonator (BC-OSRR) is proposed. This BC-OSRR cell allows a parallel connection with planar waveguides. Hence, it has been applied to a half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) section. The analysis of the frequency response and electromagnetic field distribution of the HMSIW structure loaded with an appropriate BC-OSRR cell have shown two main behaviors. The first characteristic is a high-pass frequency response inherent to the HMSIW and the second is a transmission zero in the passband of the HMSIW, which is due to the resonance of the BC-OSRR cell. The First- and second-order prototypes have been designed and fabricated. The measured bandstop HMSIW filters using BC-OSRR achieve a 3-dB stopband bandwidth around 10% with more than 21-dB insertion loss. This BC-OSRR cell with low undesired radiation loss can be a new alternative for the implementation of compact bandstop filters in the planar technology.
Weak dynamic monopolies in social graphs

Dynamic monopolies were already defined and studied for the formulation of the phenomena of the spread of influence in social networks such as disease, opinion, adaptation of new product and etc. The elements of the network which have been influenced (e.g. infected or adapted an opinion) are called active vertices. It is assumed in these models that when an element is activated, it remains active until the end of the process. But in some phenomena of the spread of influence this property does not hold. For example in some diseases the infection lasts only a limited period of time or consider the spread of disease or propagation of computer virus together with some quarantination or decontamination methods. Dynamic monopolies are not useful for the study of these latter phenomena. For this purpose, we introduce a new model for such diffusions of influence and call it weak dynamic monopoly. A social network is represented by a graph $G$. Assume that any vertex $v$ of $G$ has a threshold $\tau(v)\in \Bbb{N}$. Then a subset $D\subseteq V(G)$ is said to be a weak dynamic monopoly if $V(G)$ can be partitioned into $D_0=D, D_1, \ldots, D_k$ such that for any $i$, any vertex $v$ of $D_i$ has at least $\tau(v)$ neighbors in $D_{i-1}$. In this definition, by the size and the processing time of $D$ we mean $|D|$ and $k$, respectively. We first investigate the relationships between weak dynamic monopolies and other related concepts and then obtain some bounds for the smallest size of weak dynamic monopolies. Next we obtain some results concerning the processing time of weak dynamic monopolies in terms of some graph parameters. Finally, a hardness result concerning inapproximibility of the determining the smallest size of weak dynamic monopolies in general graphs is obtained.
325 to 500 GHz vector network analysis system

This paper describes a novel and compact WR-02.2 millimeter wave frequency extension transmission/reflection (T/R) module for use with a vector network analyzer. The WR-02.2 T/R module extends the measurement capabilities of a microwave vector network analyzer to 500 GHz. Full 2-port S-parameter measurements with 40 dB or greater system dynamic range is realized in the 325 to 500 GHz frequency range. The stimulus millimeter wave signal is generated via multipliers with an external microwave synthesizer input. The reference and test response are down-converted to an Intermediate Frequency (IF) via millimeter wave harmonic mixers. The response is shown on the microwave vector network analyzer display.
Investigation of Shorting Vias for Suppressing the Open Stopband in an SIW Periodic Leaky-Wave Structure

Shorting vias loading in a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) periodic leaky-wave structure is investigated for suppressing the open stopband. The SIW periodic leaky-wave structure with transverse slots can have the beam scanned in the backward and in the forward directions, but suffers from a large open stopband in which the reflection coefficient is increased and the gain drops drastically. A set of shorting vias are adopted to load the structure in each unit cell for suppressing the open stopband. The working principle of the technique is explained, with approximate equivalent circuits. When the slot and the shorting vias are spaced by a quarter guided wavelength, the series inductance in the slot can be canceled out by the shunt inductance in the shorting vias, and therefore, the open stopband can be suppressed. An antenna based on the via-loaded periodic structure is designed for validation. Simulation and measured results validate that the open stopband is successfully suppressed with the loading of shorting vias.
An analysis of EEG based on information flow with SD method

We propose and examine methods for analyzing an EEG (electroencephalogram) during music listening in particular based on information flow combined with the source derivation (SD) method. The relationship between EEG and music cognition is also discussed. Music can be regarded as input to the brain system which influences human mentality. Since music cognition has many emotional aspects, it is expected that the EEG recorded during music listening may reflect the electrical activity of brain regions related to those emotional aspects. The brain system consists of dozens of functional subsystems and we agree with the hypothesis that their cooperative process enables high level recognition such as music listening. From the point of view of informational neurobiology, we extracted the spatial and temporal frequency patterns from the EEG. First, the SD method was applied to the raw data of EEGs as pre-processing. The SD method is a powerful technique to avoid noises which are evoked and overlapped from other regions of the brain. We improved this method for realizing higher accuracy. Then, we calculated the information flow between EEG channels by directional coherence analysis. In this paper, we especially focused on the directional coherence analysis and spatial patterns of the brain's activated area in response to the music structure. Several observations have shown that there were differences in activated areas between relaxing and music listening conditions.
Geo-Distributed BigData Processing for Maximizing Profit in Federated Clouds Environment

Managing and processing BigData in geo-distributed datacenters gain much attention in recent years. Despite the increasing attention on this topic, most efforts have been focused on user-centric solutions, and unfortunately much less on the difficulties encountered by Cloud providers to improve their profits. Highly efficient framework for geo-distributed BigData processing in cloud federation environment is a crucial solution to maximize profit of the cloud providers. The objective of this paper is to maximize the profit for cloud providers by minimizing costs and penalty. This work proposes to transfer compute (computations) to geo-distributed data and outsourcing only the desired data to idles resources of federated clouds in order to minimize job costs; and proposes a jobs reordering dynamic approach to minimize the penalties costs. The performance evaluation proves that our proposed algorithm can maximize profit, reduce the MapReduce jobs costs and improve utilization of clusters resources.
Components of day-to-day variability of cerebral perfusion measurements – Analysis of phase contrast mapping magnetic resonance imaging measurements in healthy volunteers

Purpose The aim of the study was to investigate the components of day-to-day variability of repeated phase contrast mapping (PCM) magnetic resonance imaging measurements of global cerebral blood flow (gCBF). Materials and methods Two dataset were analyzed. In Dataset 1 duplicated PCM measurements of total brain flow were performed in 11 healthy young volunteers on two separate days applying a strictly standardized setup. For comparison PCM measurements obtained from a previously published study (Dataset 2) were analyzed in order to assess long-term variability in an aged population in a less strictly controlled setup. Global CBF was calculated by normalizing total brain flow to brain volume. On each day measurements of hemoglobin, caffeine and glucose were obtained. Linear mixed models were applied to estimate coefficients of variation (CV) of total (CVt), between-subject (CVb), within-subject day-to-day (CVw), and intra-session residual variability (CVr). Results In Dataset 1 CVt, CVb, CVw and CVr were estimated to be 11%, 9.4%, 4% and 4.2%, respectively, and to 8.8%, 7.2%, 2.7% and 4.3%, respectively, when adjusting for hemoglobin and plasma caffeine. In Dataset 2 CVt, CVb and CVw were estimated to be 25.4%, 19.2%, and 15.0%, respectively, and decreased to 16.6%, 8.2% and 12.5%, respectively, when adjusting for the same covariates. Discussion Our results suggest that short-term day-to-day variability of gCBF is relatively low compared to between-subject variability when studied in standardized conditions, whereas long-term variability in an aged population appears to be much larger when studied in less a standardized setup. The results further showed that from 20% to 35% of the total variability in gCBF can be attributed to the effects of hemoglobin and caffeine.
Deviance-Aware Discovery of High Quality Process Models

Despite performance-oriented process mining techniques have been successfully employed in numerous application contexts, they hardly produce models with a satisfactory level of accuracy, generality, and readability when applied to processes featuring complex and heterogeneous behaviors. In particular, the presence of deviant (i.e. anomalous/exceptional) traces often lead to cumbersome models with misleading performance statistics. Noise/outlier filtering solutions help alleviate this problem, and discover a better model for “normal“ executions, but do not provide insight on the nature and impact of deviant ones. The discovery approach proposed here tries to recognize and describe both a normal execution scenario and a number of deviant ones for a business process, by inducing two different kinds of models from a given execution log of the process: (i) a list of readable clustering rules defining the deviance scenarios; (ii) a performance model for each discovered deviance scenario, and a “distilled” one for the “normal” cases that do not fall in any deviant scenario. Technically, these models are found by mainly exploiting a conceptual clustering method, which greedily tries to identify groups of traces that maximally deviate from a current normality model. Tests on real-life logs confirmed the validity of the approach, and its ability to both find good performance models and support the analysis of deviant process instances.
Lens regeneration: a historical perspective

The idea of regenerating injured body parts has captivated human imagination for centuries, and the topic still remains an area of extensive scientific research. This review focuses on the process of lens regeneration: its history, our current knowledge, and the questions that remain unanswered. By highlighting some of the milestones that have shaped our understanding of this phenomenon and the contributions of scientists who have dedicated their lives to investigating these questions, we explore how regeneration enquiry evolved into the science it is today, and how technological advances accelerated our understanding of these remarkable processes.
Converged Network-Cloud Service Composition with End-to-End Performance Guarantee

The crucial role of networking in cloud computing calls for federated management of both computing and networking resources for end-to-end service provisioning. Application of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in both cloud computing and networking enables a convergence of network and cloud service provisioning. One of the key challenges to high performance converged network-cloud service provisioning lies in composition of network and cloud services with end-to-end performance guarantee. In this paper, we propose a QoS-aware service composition approach to tackling this challenging issue. We first present a system model for network-cloud service composition and formulate the service composition problem as a variant of Multi-Constrained Optimal Path (MCOP) problem. We then propose an approximation algorithm to solve the problem and give theoretical analysis on properties of the algorithm to show its effectiveness and efficiency for QoS-aware network-cloud service composition. Performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through extensive experiments and the obtained results indicate that the proposed method achieves better performance in service composition than the best current MCOP approaches.
Las expectativas y las medidas de importancia: elaborando una agenda estratégica en el comercio electrónico B2C

En la actualidad existen dos campos académicos y profesionales de relevante importancia estratégica para las empresas: el comercio electrónico B2C (business to consumer) y la Gestión de la Calidad Total (enfoque directivo que pretende satisfacer al cliente mediante una acción organizativa global). Su confluencia en el panorama actual suscita grandes oportunidades y retos que necesitan ser abordados. Recogiendo este testigo, el presente artículo analiza el valor de diagnóstico de las medidas de expectativas e importancia, es decir, la información diferencial que aportan respecto a las puntuaciones de percepciones. Con los datos empíricos obtenidos, se avala la utilidad de diagnóstico de tales medidas en los estudios de calidad en el comercio electrónico B2C. Palabras clave: comercio electrónico B2C, calidad, expectativas, importancia, diagnóstico.
Treatment of Angina: Where Are We?

Ischaemic heart disease is a major cause of death and disability worldwide, while angina represents its most common symptom. It is estimated that approximately 9 million patients in the USA suffer from angina and its treatment is challenging, thus the strategy to improve the management of chronic stable angina is a priority. Angina might be the result of different pathologies, ranging from the “classical” obstruction of a large coronary artery to alteration of the microcirculation or coronary artery spasm. Current clinical guidelines recommend antianginal therapy to control symptoms, before considering coronary artery revascularization. In the current guidelines, drugs are classified as being first-choice (beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, and short-acting nitrates) or second-choice (ivabradine, nicorandil, ranolazine, trimetazidine) treatment, with the recommendation to reserve second-line modifications for patients who have contraindications to first-choice agents, do not tolerate them, or remain symptomatic. However, such a categorical approach is currently questioned. In addition, current guidelines provide few suggestions to guide the choice of drugs more suitable according to the underlying pathology or the patient comorbidities. Several other questions have recently emerged, such as: is there evidence-based data between first- and second-line treatments in terms of prognosis or symptom relief? Actually, it seems that newer antianginal drugs, which are classified as second choice, have more evidence-based clinical data that are more contemporary to support their use than what is available for the first-choice drugs. It follows that actual guidelines are based more on tradition than on evidence and there is a need for new algorithms that are more individualized to patients, their comorbidities, and pathophysiological mechanism of chronic stable angina.
Lack of an association between interleukin-6 gene promoter polymorphisms ( 174 G / C , 572 G / C ) and ischemic heart disease and / or ischemic stroke : A meta-analysis

The association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms 174G/C (rs1800795) and 572G/C (rs1800796) in the interleukin-6 (IL-6) gene promoter region and ischemic heart disease (IHD)/ischemic stroke (IS) remains controversial and ambiguous. In this study, we performed amore precise estimation of the relationship by a meta-analysis based on currently available evidence from literature. To assess the effect of IL-6 polymorphisms ( 174G/C, 572G/C) on IHD/IS susceptibility, a meta-analysis of 30 available studies was performed through May 2010. Summary odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals for IL-6 polymorphisms and IHD/ISwere estimated using fixedand random-effectsmodelswhen appropriate. Heterogeneity and publication bias were evaluated. When available studies were pooled into the meta-analysis, there was no significant association between IL-6 polymorphisms ( 174G/C, 572G/C) and IHD/IS in any comparison model (CC vs GG, GC vs GG, dominant, and recessivemodels). Subgroup analyses resultswere consistentwith the main analyses by ethnicity, ischemic types, quality score, and genotyping methods. Ethnicity (European studies) and quality score (low-quality studies) might be important sources of heterogeneity for 174G/C. However,metaregression analysis did not reveal that the foregoing characteristics could explain the 2 in any comparison model. We could not identify the sources of heterogeneity for 572G/C. The present metaanalysis suggests that IL-6 promoter polymorphisms ( 174G/C, 572G/C) were unlikely to be associated with risk of IHD and/or IS. 2011 American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Walking backwards into the future: the need for a holistic evolutionary approach in Pacific health research

Abstract Context: The Pacific region has had a complex human history. It has been subject to multiple major human dispersal and colonisation events, including some of the earliest Out-of-Africa migrations, the so-called Austronesian expansion of people out of Island Southeast Asia, and the more recent arrival of Europeans. Despite models of island isolation, evidence suggests significant levels of interconnectedness that vary in direction and frequency over time. The Pacific Ocean covers a vast area and its islands provide an array of different physical environments with variable pathogen loads and subsistence opportunities. These diverse environments likely caused Pacific peoples to adapt (both genetically and culturally) in unique ways. Differences in genetic background, in combination with adaptation, likely affect their susceptibility to non-communicable diseases. Objectives: Here we provide an overview of some of the key issues in the natural and human history of the Pacific region which are likely to impact human health. We argue that understanding the evolutionary and cultural history of Pacific peoples is essential for the generation of testable hypotheses surrounding potential causes of elevated disease susceptibility among Pacific peoples.
Health-related quality of life in patients with psoriatic and rheumatoid arthritis: data from the prospective multicentre NOR-DMARD study compared with Norwegian general population controls

Objectives To compare (1) Short Form-36 (SF-36) Physical Component Summary (PCS) and Mental Component Summary (MCS), scale scores and Short Form-6 dimensions (SF-6D) between patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and Norwegian general population controls and (2) improvements in these measures between patients with RA and PsA. Methods Analyses of covariance were performed to compare SF-36 measures between first-time enrolled patients with RA (n=3898) and PsA (n=1515) from the prospective observational multicentre NORwegian-Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drug study (6 months follow-up) and general population controls (n=2323). Results In age and gender-adjusted analyses, patients with PsA compared with patients with RA had similar PCS, MCS and SF-6D (p≥0.14), worse vitality and general health, but better physical functioning at 0/6 months (p≤0.03). With additional 28-joint disease activity scores adjustment as a proxy for joint inflammation, PCS, most scale scores and SF-6D were worse in patients with PsA than patients with RA at 0/3/6 months (p≤0.01). PCS was more impaired than MCS both in RA and PsA compared with general population controls (p≤0.001). Mean 3-month and 6-month improvements after disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug treatment were larger in patients with RA than patients with PsA for bodily pain, vitality and mental health (p≤0.02). Conclusions Health-related quality of life was overall similar in patients with RA and patients with PsA—with a tendency to worse scores in PsA—and worse compared with Norwegian general population controls.