Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel DC-Link Voltage Control for Small-Scale Grid-Connected Wind Energy Conversion System

This paper proposed a novel DC-link voltage control method for small-scale grid-connected three-phase power converters in variable-speed wind energy conversion systems to minimize the fluctuation in the DC-link voltage caused by wind power variations. In a typical three-phase PWM converter, DC-link capacitors are normally used as an energy buffer to balance the power difference between the input and output, but the voltage across the capacitors varies significantly under rapidly changing working conditions. Hence, a proper DC-link voltage control is essential to perform fast DC-link voltage regulation to minimize these fluctuations. The proposed DC-link voltage control method estimates the input power of the converter using a state observer and integrates with a conventional PI controller, combining the advantages of the robustness of a PI controller and the fast-transient response and disturbance rejection capability offered by the observer-based feed-forward compensation but without additional measurement components. The comparison between the proposed control algorithm and a conventional PI controller is presented in both simulations and experiments in this paper to verify the effectiveness and the advantages of the proposed observer-based DC-link control algorithm.
Towards new hybrid approach of the reverse engineering of UML sequence diagram

To fully understand the behavior of a program, it is important to have automatic techniques that generate UML (Unified Modeling Language) models representing the behavior of the system. Reverse engineering techniques, either through dynamic analysis of the running application or static analysis of the source code, are used to help gain this understanding. Each type of technique has its limitations. The major limitation of dynamic analysis is the need of a system expert user who knows the different behaviors of the system. Static analysis has also limits especially with dynamic links and polymorphism states. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically extract UML sequence diagrams from object-oriented programming languages. Our approach combines dynamic and static analyses to get the best of both approaches. Our method uses static analysis to identify all different system entries values that can be used to guide the dynamic analysis.
Indoor localization with multi sensor data fusion in Ad Hoc mobile scenarios

In this paper, we describe an Indoor Positioning System based on a proper combination of data from Inertial, Magnetic, Pressure sensors and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio. The system is able to provide accurate and reliable localization of Mobile Agents in GPS denied environments and the architecture is based on a typical anchor free approach where UWB is used in order to provide ranging and communications. The new developed architecture combines the previously mentioned data and increases the performance in comparison with a system based on single sensor approach (i.e. dead reckoning Inertial Systems, UWB Systems).
SuperWASP observations of pulsating Am stars

We have studied over 1600 Am stars at a photometric precision of 1 mmag with SuperWASP photometric data. Contrary to previous belief, we find that around 200 Am stars are pulsating δ Sct and γ Dor stars, with low amplitudes that have been missed in previous, less extensive studies. While the amplitudes are generally low, the presence of pulsation in Am stars places a strong constraint on atmospheric convection, and may require the pulsation to be laminar. While some pulsating Am stars have been previously found to be δ Sct stars, the vast majority of Am stars known to pulsate are presented in this paper. They will form the basis of future statistical studies of pulsation in the presence of atomic diffusion.
Ferulic acid improves self‐renewal and differentiation of human tendon‐derived stem cells by upregulating early growth response 1 through hypoxia

We aimed to investigate the potential beneficial effect of ferulic acid (FA) on stemness of human tendon‐derived stem cells (hTSCs) in vitro and to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanism. The self‐renewal ability of hTSCs was evaluated by colony formation and cell proliferation was determined by CCK‐8 kit. Adipogenesis, osteogenesis, and chondrogenesis were determined by Oil Red O, Alizarin Red, and Alcian Blue stainings, respectively. Relative mRNA levels of PPARγ, Col2A1, Acan, Runx2, HIF1α, and EGR1 were measured with real‐time PCR. Protein levels of HIF1α and EGR1 were detected by western blot. Direct binding of HIF1α with EGR1 promoter was analyzed by ChIP assay. Hypoxia‐induced expression of EGR1 was interrogated by luciferase reporter assay. We demonstrated that FA treatment improved both self‐renewal ability and multi‐differentiation potential of hTSCs. FA induced hypoxia which in turn upregulated EGR1 expression via direct association with its hypoxia response element consensus sequence. Furthermore, we showed that both HIF1α and EGR1 were required for the enhancing effects of FA on hTSC self‐renewal and differentiation. We hereby characterize the beneficial effect of FA on the stemness of hTSCs and highlight the critical role of HIF1α‐EGR1 axis in this process.
Clinical features of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus according to health-related quality of life, entity of pain, fatigue and depression: a cluster analysis.

OBJECTIVES To identify the distribution of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in clusters according to the levels of health-related quality of life (HRQoL), entity of pain, fatigue and depression. METHODS We performed a hierarchical cluster analysis. The following measures were used as clustering variables, after canonical transformation: the SF36 physical and mental component summary (PCS and MCS), the Beck Depression Inventory II (entity of depression), the Facit-Fatigue, all assessed during the last visit. Consecutive SLE patients were enrolled from two Italian cohorts. Lupus remission was retrospectively assessed over a period of 5 years before the last visit and was defined as a continuative period of no clinical disease activity according to SLEDAI2K and the maximum dose of prednisone allowed of 5 mg/day. RESULTS We enrolled 130 female SLE patients. We identified three clusters. The first cluster (43 patients) was characterised by the highest levels of MCS and PCS and the lowest entity of pain, fatigue and depression. Cluster 2 (35 patients) was defined by a reduction of MCS and increase of pain, fatigue and depression; conversely, PCS levels were similar to cluster 1. In cluster 3 (52 patients) we found a reduction of MCS and increase of depression and fatigue (similar to cluster 2) but also a decrease in PCS levels and Bodily Pain (meaning increase in pain). In cluster 3 we found a decreased prevalence of remission ≥5 years. CONCLUSIONS Identification of clusters of patients according to HRQoL levels could be useful to improve SLE management, aiming at personalised medicine.
[The advances in the treatment of drug-resistant tuberculous meningitis].

结核性脑膜炎（TBM）是由MTB引起的中枢神经系统感染性疾病，是一种严重的肺外结核，以脑膜、脑实质受累为主，同时可累及脊髓、脊膜，若治疗不及时可导致死亡或遗留终生残疾。 随着耐药及耐多药结核病的流行，耐药性TBM患者逐渐增多，由于血-脑屏障的影响，耐药TBM治疗方案和药物选择存在困难，使治疗效果不理想，影响了TBM的预后。
Sleep and breathing disorders

A major focus of this issue of JSR is devoted to the topic of respiratory sleep medicine—as many as seven papers stem from this discipline of clinical sleep medicine. Agha and Johal (2017), probably for the first time ever, present a systematic review and meta-analysis on facial phenotypes in obstructive sleep apnea–hypopnea syndrome (OSAS). Interestingly, and as expected, for neck circumference five studies with a total of 906 participants (included in the analysis) showed increased mean differences compared to control subjects. However, the authors noted extensive heterogeneity between the analysed studies. Only two studies, with a sum of 467 participants, looked at other parameters such as mandible length, mandible width, lower facial height and anterior mandible height parameters. The pooled results demonstrated that OSAS was coupled with larger parameters than controls. Summarizing, this systematic review and metaanalysis can be seen as a first step in the right direction— combining data from several studies and meta-analysing them is usually very useful to bring structure into a field and to evaluate which findings are stable or not. Concluding, it might be said that further research is necessary, especially according to well-devised guidelines on how to measure facial phenotype, in order to develop a more solid data base. Two papers in this issue (Chang et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2017) look at the relationship between snoring, sleep apnea and atherosclerosis. Kim et al. measured carotid intimamedia thickness (IMT) in a sample of 180 non-apneic and non-snorers (snoring was recorded objectively by a microphone). The study showed that mean carotid IMT increased with the severity of snoring in females, but not in males. Thus, the authors conclude that ‘snoring during at least one-fourth of a night’s sleep is associated independently with sub-clinical changes in carotid intima-media thickness in women but not in men’. Chang et al. measured, among other parameters, carotid IMT in 121 OSA patients (without metabolic syndrome) and 27 controls. It was shown that, in the patients with OSA, mean systolic blood pressure and other parameters correlated independently with carotid IMT. This is worth noting, because the investigated sample of patients with OSA was selected specifically for not having a metabolic syndrome.
Do Transferrin Levels Predict Haemodialysis Adequacy in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease?

Background: Since haemodialysis is a lifesaving therapy, adequate control measures are necessary to evaluate its adequacy and to constantly adjust the dose to reduce hospitalisation and prolong patient survival. Malnutrition is common in haemodialysis patients and closely related to morbidity and mortality. Patients undergoing haemodialysis have a high prevalence of protein-energy malnutrition and inflammation, along with abnormal iron status. The haemodialysis dose delivered is an important predictor of patient outcome. Aim: To evaluate through haemodialysis adequacy, which parameter(s), if any, better predict Kt/V, among those used to assess nutritional status, inflammation response, and iron status. Methods: We retrospectively studied 78 patients undergoing haemodialysis due to end-stage renal disease. As parameters of nutritional status, geriatric nutritional risk index (GNRI), transferrin levels, lymphocyte count, and albumin concentration were analysed. As signs of inflammation, C reactive protein (CRP) levels and ferritin concentrations were studied as well. Iron status was evaluated by both transferrin and ferritin levels, as well as by haemoglobin (Hb) concentration. Results: The core finding of our retrospective study is that transferrin levels predict the adequacy of haemodialysis expressed as Kt/V; the latter is the only predictor (P = 0.001) when adjusting for CRP concentrations, a solid marker of inflammation, and for ferritin levels considered an iron-storage protein, but also a parameter of inflammatory response. Discussion and Conclusion: In keeping with the results of this study, we underline that the use of transferrin levels to assess haemodialysis quality combine into a single test the evaluation of the three most important factors of protein-energy wasting.
Implant survival rate in calvarial bone grafts: A retrospective clinical study with 10 year follow-up.

BACKGROUND In this study, we present medium- and long-term data on implant survival in a cohort of patients with severe maxillary atrophy rehabilitated using reconstructive implant site development with calvarial bone grafts. MATERIALS AND METHODS We obtained clinical records from patients treated with implant rehabilitation supported by calvaria bone grafts in the Oral Surgery Department of IRCSS San Raffaele (Milan, Italy). Implant and prosthetic survival and success rates were retrospectively evaluated. Graft survival and postoperative complications were also assessed. RESULTS A total of 207 implants placed in 32 patients were evaluated for a mean period of 10.0 years from loading. After 10 years, the cumulative survival rate was 97.10%, the implant success rate was 92.75%, and the prosthetic complication rate was 9.76%. A graft survival percentage of 96.88% was observed, and postoperative complications occurred in 28.13% of cases. CONCLUSIONS The 10-year survival rate and prosthetic complications for patients treated with implant rehabilitation supported by calvarial bone grafts are excellent, as implant loss was relatively rare, although limited subjects were available for the 10-year follow-up.
Synchronization in Networks of Identical Nonlinear Systems via Dynamic Dead Zones

In this letter, we consider the problem of synchronization of a network of nonlinear systems with high-frequency noise affecting the exchange of information. We modify the classic (linear) diffusive coupling by adding dynamic dead zones with the aim of reducing the impact of the noise. We show that the proposed redesign preserves asymptotic synchronization if the noise is not active and we establish a desired input-to-state stability property. Simulation results show that, in the presence of noise, the dynamic dead zones highly improve the rejection properties.
Post Training Weight Compression with Distribution-based Filter-wise Quantization Step

Quantization of models with lower bit precision is a promising method to develop lower-power and smaller-area neural network hardware. However, 4- or lower bit quantization usually requires additional retraining with labeled dataset for backpropagation to improve test accuracy. In this paper, we propose a quantization scheme with distribution-based filter-wise quantization step without labeled dataset. ResNet-50 model with 8-bit activation and 3.04-bit weight precision quantized with the proposed techniques achieves top-1 inference accuracy of 74.3 % on ImageNet.
The Durability of Concrete Modified by Waste Limestone Powder in the Chemically Aggressive Environment

The idea of sustainable development assumes that natural resources must be treated as limited goods and that waste must be managed rationally. This idea and the constant striving to reduce production costs make the use of waste materials as substitutes for traditionally used raw materials from non-renewable sources increasingly popular. In cement concrete technology, there are many possibilities to use waste as components of mortars and concretes. The subject of this paper is a fine-grained material, obtained as a by-product during the preparation of aggregate for mineral-asphalt mixtures. The aim of the research was to test the suitability of the selected type of powder, namely limestone powder, as a component of cement composites. The paper presents an evaluation of the potential of using the limestone powder as a substitute for the fine aggregate, focusing on the impact of such a modification on aspects of durability. The sulfate degradation and chloride ion diffusion in concrete were investigated. The overall desirability function has been determined. It was demonstrated that the satisfactory value of the general desirability can be attributed to most of the investigated concretes. Positive test results support the potential of replacing part of natural fine aggregate with the tested waste limestone dust without a negative impact on the durability of concrete.
From Snake Venom’s Disintegrins and C-Type Lectins to Anti-Platelet Drugs

Snake venoms are attractive natural sources for drug discovery and development, with a number of substances either in clinical use or in research and development. These drugs were developed based on RGD-containing snake venom disintegrins, which efficiently antagonize fibrinogen activation of αIIbβ3 integrin (glycoprotein GP IIb/IIIa). Typical examples of anti-platelet drugs found in clinics are Integrilin (Eptifibatide), a heptapeptide derived from Barbourin, a protein found in the venom of the American Southeastern pygmy rattlesnake and Aggrastat (Tirofiban), a small molecule based on the structure of Echistatin, and a protein found in the venom of the saw-scaled viper. Using a similar drug discovery approach, linear and cyclic peptides containing the sequence K(R)TS derived from VP12, a C-type lectin protein found in the venom of Israeli viper venom, were used as a template to synthesize Vipegitide, a novel peptidomimetic antagonist of α2β1 integrin, with anti-platelet activity. This review focus on drug discovery of these anti-platelet agents, their indications for clinical use in acute coronary syndromes and percutaneous coronary intervention based on several clinical trials, as well as their adverse effects.
Generational Distance Indicator-Based Evolutionary Algorithm With an Improved Niching Method for Many-Objective Optimization Problems

With the number of objectives increasing, the traditional multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) will lead to a reduction of convergence pressure. Specifically, the number of non-dominated solutions in many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs) accounts for the majority of the population. Generational distance (GD) is originally designed to calculate the sum of adjacent distances of solution sets obtained by different algorithms and thus GD is a credible indicator to measure the convergence of many-objective evolutionary algorithms (MaOEAs). In this paper, a GD indicator-based evolutionary algorithm is proposed to solve many-objective optimization problems. First, for the same rank of non-dominated solutions, their adjacent distances are introduced to be the indicator for the selection of the potentially appropriate individuals. Second, in order to maintain good diversity at the same time, an improved niching method based on the angles of candidate solutions is proposed. One solution can only compare the adjacent distance with the solutions in its niche. Solutions are assigned new ranks according to the niching method. Third, in order to eliminate the influence of the order of comparison and assign a higher rank to the solutions with good diversity, a new comparison method is proposed to solve the problem. Finally, the simulation results show that compared with the state of the art algorithms, the proposed algorithm is effective.
UL16-Binding Protein 1 Induced HTR-8/SVneo Autophagy via NF-κB Suppression Mediated by TNF-α Secreted through uNK Cells

UL16-binding protein 1(ULBP1) has been reported to inhibit trophoblast invasion through the modification of secretion functions of uNK cells in the previous study, but its mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the related mechanism by which upregulated ULBP1 expression impaired trophoblast invasion. We found that conditioned media with ULBP1 increased autophagy in HTR-8/SVneo, and anti-TNF-α-neutralizing antibody rescued the autophagy caused by the conditioned medium. We further found TNF-α induced autophagy in trophoblast cells in a dose-dependent way and accompanied by a decreased activity of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB). Inhibition of NF-κB activation by chemical inhibitor augmented these autophagic responses to TNF-α in the cells. In addition, interruption NF-κB caused a significant decrease in HTR-8/SVneo invasion and enhanced the inhibition effect of TNF-α on HTR-8/SVneo invasion. Taken together, these findings suggest that TNF-α is able to regulate autophagic activity via suppressing NF-κB, which might be the mechanism related to ULBP1 in preeclampsia pathogenesis.
Machine Learning Inspired Hybrid Precoding for Wideband Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO Systems

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has already been considered as a promising solution to meet the requirement of the higher data rate for the future Internet of Things (IoTs). Hybrid precoding is an effective solution for the mmWave massive MIMO systems to significantly decrease the number of radio frequency (RF) chains without an apparent sum-rate loss. However, the current literature on hybrid precoding considers either the high-resolution (HR) phase shifters (PSs) with high power consumption or the impractical narrowband mmWave channel model. To this end, in this paper, we investigate an energy-efficient hybrid precoding scheme using one-bit PSs for practical frequency-selective wideband mmWave massive MIMO systems. Specifically, we provide the energy consumption analysis to reveal the fact that the energy consumed by the one-bit PSs is much lower than that by the HR-PSs, and the array gain loss incurred by using one-bit PSs is minimal. Moreover, motivated by the cross-entropy optimization (CEO) algorithm evolved for machine learning, we propose the CEO-based hybrid precoding scheme to maximize the achievable sum-rate of the considered system. In the CEO-based hybrid precoding, we update the probability distributions of the elements in the hybrid precoder to minimize the cross-entropy between the two probability distributions so that we can generate the final solution close to the optimal one. Furthermore, we extend the proposed CEO-based hybrid precoding scheme from the case with one-bit PSs to the general case with HR-PSs to show that our solution can also be applied in other scenarios. The performance evaluation demonstrates that our proposed scheme can obtain near-optimal sum-rate and considerably higher energy efficiency than some existing solutions.
A study of voltage feedforward under weak grid conditions

The voltage feedforward (VF) is widely used in grid-tied inverter to improve the inverter’s starting performance, disturbance rejection performance and suppress the effect of grid voltage harmonics. However, under weak grid conditions, VF has negative effect on system stability and disturbance-resistant performance. In this paper, taking the L-filtered grid-tied inverter as an object, the influence mechanism of the VF on the inverter in weak grid is clarified by the equivalent transformations of the control block diagram. It is pointed out that root cause of the VF’s negative effect is the control delay in VF path. Therefore, the method that incorporates a lead-lag compensator in the VF path is proposed. The proposed method improves not only the system stability but also the ability of suppressing the low order current harmonics. Simulation and experiment result verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Adaptive Passivity Based Control of DC-DC Power Electronic Converters

Application of power electronic converters and their controls play a vital role in modern industry. Advanced nonlinear controls with adaptation are required to control these converters when all or some of the system parameters are unknown or uncertain. Design of a passivity based nonlinear adaptive controller to control the output voltage of power electronic converter is proposed in this paper. Unlike most of the other adaptive controllers which require the input voltage information of the converter, the proposed controller require neither input voltage information nor output load resistance. Taking the duty cycle as the control input of the boost converter, the adaptive passivity based controller is designed to regulate the output voltage of the converter to a desired value. However, the proposed approach can be easily extended to control any other DC-DC converter without loss of generality. Simulation and experimental verifications were carried out to analyze the performance and the effectiveness of the proposed controller.