Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When turtle distribution tells European history: mtDNA haplotypes of Emys orbicularis reflect in Germany former division by the Iron Curtain

FRITZ ,U . , GUICKING ,D . , LENK ,P . , JOGER ,U . W ISSN 0006-3088. The mitochondrial DNA haplotypes of 75 wild caught Emys orbicularis from Germany have been determined. Eleven different haplotypes belonging to six clades were identified. Only turtles bearing a haplotype endemic to eastern Germany and neighbouring western Poland are considered to be native. They are restricted today to the German federal states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. An individual of a recently exterminated Saxon population bears this haplotype, too. The majority of German turtles exhibit other haplotypes from different parts of the species’ range. The haplotype distribution reflects the previous division of Germany by the Iron Curtain. In former East Germany, haplotypes from East Block countries accessible to GDR citizens predominate; whereas in former West Germany a greater variety of haplotypes was found. This mirrors the greater extent of the West German pet trade and, surely, also the destinations of countless East and West German tourists in Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean. Some turtles in East and West Germany bear a haplotype naturally occurring in former parts of Germany now belonging to Poland and Russia. They could either represent introductions from these areas and adjacent eastern countries prior to World War II or recently smuggled individuals from Poland or the former
Linear CMOS power amplifier at Ka-band with ultra-wide video bandwidth

A highly linear power amplifier (PA) with ultra-wide video bandwidth is designed at a Ka-band for 5G application. To get a high linearity with high efficiency, a deep class-AB topology with 2nd harmonic control circuits is employed, reducing the 3rd order nonlinearity. Further, an efficient low-drop out (LDO) regulator is proposed to suppress the memory effect generated by the envelope and fundamental nonlinear mixing. The PA, composed of 3 cascaded common-source (CS) stages, achieves peak PAE of 21.8% at output power of 14 dBm with 22 dB gain. The 3rd order inter-modulation distortion (IMD3) at an output power of 5 dBm is under −30 dBc for a video bandwidth of 1 GHz. The PA and LDO are fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS process and occupy 0.53 mm2.
The performance impact evaluation on bias of gyro and accelerometer for foot-mounted INS

Foot-mounted inertial navigation system (INS) composed of MEMS-based inertial sensors is widely used in pedestrian navigation. The bias of gyro and accelerometer are the most important parameter which mainly determines the performance and the price of the device. How does the bias impact the performance of foot-mounted INS? How do we choose the suitable inertial sensors in the design of foot-mounted INS? This paper established the error state model and error observation model for foot-mounted INS and several typical constrains. Through the observability analysis of the error state variables, we deduced the conclusion that the east bias and north bias of accelerometer is the most important factor which impact navigation performance. An experiment designed specially verifies the correctness of the conclusion. The evaluation conclusion is very significant and helpful for the design of foot-mounted INS in pedestrian navigation.
High density impulse noise reduction by denoising neighbor pixels

A new method based on adaptive median filtering is proposed in this paper to remove high density impulse noise. This method replaces central noisy pixel having gray scale value 0 or 255 by median value of 3×3 window. Algorithm is proposed to replace the noisy neighbor pixels in the window. The clean pixels are then used to calculate the median value, which then replaces noisy central pixel. Proposed method has been tested on images which were contaminated by impulse noise of different densities, and results are compared with existing simple median filter with window size of 3 × 3, 5 × 5, and adaptive median filter. Results shows that Proposed method gives better Mean Square Error (MSE), Universal Quality Index (UQI), and Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), when compared with the simple and adaptive median filter.
OpenModelica Support for Figaro Extensions Regarding Fault Analysis

The practical result of this thesis is an extension to OpenModelica that transforms Modelica into Figaro. Modelica is an equation-based object-oriented modeling language. OpenModelica is an open source implementation of Modelica. Figaro is a language used for reliability modeling. Figaro is a general representation formalism that can be transformed into reliability models like fault trees. Figaro was designed for fault analysis. Modelica was designed to model the behavior of physical systems and run dynamic simulations. Because of that, you cannot just break components and analyze what happens to a system. This work enables us to have fault analysis in OpenModelica by transforming our Modelica model into a Figaro model and invoke the Figaro compiler. This lets us break particular components and see what happens to the system. This work is part of an ongoing effort to integrate several modeling environments.
Assessment of Aquatic Toxicity of River Keya Using Daphnia magna

This study assessed the aquatic toxicity of the River Keya during its passage through the Hsin Chu City, Taiwan. The River Keya receives effluent from the Union Wastewater Treatment Plant of Hsin Chu Science Industrial Park (UWTP-HCSIP) primarily covering more than 500 semiconductors-related high-tech industries. Although the effluent from the UWTP-HCSIP has met the current environmental regulations of Taiwan, the aquatic environment of the River Keya was frequently subjected to unknown interferences. The aim of present study was to assess the acute toxicity of the River Keya using Daphnia magna. Six sampling sites were arranged where four were at downstream from the confluence of the effluent from the UWTP-HCSIP to the River Keya, and the other two were at the upstream to serve as references. Daphnia magna was employed to test the static 24-h acute toxicity, and the data obtained were further analyzed using the Probit and Spearman-Karber statistical models. Results showed a significant increase of the electric conductivity, BOD5, and COD in those sampling sites downstream of the confluence point. The toxicity unit (TU) of the river water showed an increase-then-decrease fashion, and up to a 3-fold increase of TU was found downstream the UWTP-HCSIP effluent convergent to the River Keya. In comparison with the TU of the samples taken at the discharge point of the UWTP-HCSIP and the downstream of the convergence, the former is two times higher than the latter. These comparative results revealed that the aquatic toxicity effect is close related to the effluent from the UWTP-HCSIP, and a carry capacity of River Keya, especially for aquatic toxicity should be established.
Involvement of Calcium and Vitamin C in Type 2 Diabetes

The diabetes type 2 or diabetes mellitus (type 2DM) is an increasing at a frightening rate both national level and worldwide, with more than 3 million new cases per year diagnosed in the United States alone. Diabetes is the third leading cause of death in the United States, and it is also a major cause of significant morbidity. Although our current methods of treating type 2 DM and its complications have improved, prevention of the disease is preferable. Indeed, epidemiology suggest that 4 out of 5 cases of type 2 DM could be attributed to habits and forms of the modifiable behavior like obesity, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy eating habits, family history and genetics, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Although weight loss has been shown to be successful in delaying diabetes type 2, it is difficult to achieve and maintain for long term. Therefore, identification of environmental and easily modified risk factors is needed to prevent development of diabetes type 2. The major and most well-known function of vitamin C is to maintain calcium and potassium homeostasis and promote bone mineralization. However, recent evidence suggests that vitamin C and calcium homeostasis may also be important for a variety of non-skeletal outcomes and provide neutralizing oxygen free radicals in the body. Based on basic studies, vitamin C and calcium have also been suspected as modifiers of diabetes risk. More recently, there is accumulating evidence to suggest that altered vitamin C and calcium homeostasis may also play a role in the growth of diabetes type 2. The purpose of our systematic review was to examine: 1) the association between vitamin C & calcium status and risk of diabetes type 2. 2) The effect of vitamin C and calcium supplementation on glucose metabolism 1
Remotely operated active integrated photonic antenna array

Taking advantage of the broad bandwidth and the low attenuation of optical waveguides, photonic antennas can be remotely fed. We present an active integrated photonic antenna array with an photonic feeding network that can be fed over tens of kilometers using single-mode fiber. The influence of dispersive effects in optical domain on the antenna pattern is researched and discussed. Measurement results are presented. Additionally, error-free data transmission over such a system is demonstrated.
Exploring Foursquare-derived features for crime prediction in New York City

Crime prediction based on traditional socio-demographic data is of limited value because it fails to capture the complexity and dynamicity of human activity in cities. With the rise of ubiquitous computing, there is the opportunity to improve crime prediction models with crowdsourced data that make for better proxies of human activity. In this paper, we propose the use of Foursquare data for crime prediction. We employ feature selection techniques to investigate the power of diﬀerent features derived from Foursquare check-ins in predicting crime counts in New York over a period of 5 years. Our study shows that the number of venues (as a metric of neighborhood popularity) and the venues entropy (as a metric of neighborhood diversity) are the most discriminative features when considering all incidents. The number of users and their interactions with the venues in form of check-ins in speciﬁc types of venues (as proxies for the functional decomposition of the neighborhood) become relevant for certain types of incidents.
COMPARATIVE ANALGESIC AND ANTI-INFLAMMATORY EFFECT OF ANGELICA SINENSIS PIECES AND ITS PRODUCTS IN MICE

Radix Angelica sinensis has been widely used for the treatment of blood illness, because of its good curative effect in many aspects. In this study, we have established a new platform to evaluate the analgesic and anti-inflammatory effect of Angelica sinensis pieces and its products (crude AS pieces, AS formula granule, liquored AS pieces) in mice. In the AS experiment, the hot plate test and the writhing test were performed to assess the analgesic effect, and the ear edema test was to detect the anti-inflammatory effect. The analysis demonstrated that the three AS decoctions own perfect effect in prolonging the latency of pain and narrowing the deviation between the weight of ears. Liquored AS pieces and AS formula granule had better analgesic and anti-inflammatory effect than crude AS pieces and no obvious difference between liquored AS pieces and AS formula granule.
Nonlinear Semi-Supervised Hyperspectral Unmixing Via Semantic Spectral Representation

This paper proposes a new hyperspectral unmixing method for nonlinearly mixed hyperspectral data using a semantic representation in a semi-supervised fashion, assuming the availability of a spectral reference library. Existing semisupervised unmixing algorithms select members from an endmember library that are present at each of the pixels; most such methods assume a linear mixing model. However, those methods will fail in the presence of nonlinear mixing among the observed spectra. To address this issue, we develop an endmember selection method using a recently proposed semantic spectral representation obtained via non-homogeneous hidden Markov chain (NHMC) model for a wavelet transform of the spectra. The semantic representation can encode spectrally discriminative features for any observed spectrum and, therefore, our proposed method can perform endmember selection without any assumption on the mixing model. Experimental results show that in the presence of sufficiently nonlinear mixing our proposed method outperforms dictionary-based sparse unmixing approaches based on linear models.
Estrogens Involvement in the Physiopathology of Articular Cartilage

Life expectancy increases in developed countries and results in a high prevalence of agerelated diseases namely in women. Elderly subjects generate a huge demand on the social and health services linked to their disability and dependence. Besides the own effects of aging, the estrogenic deficiency, especially during menopause, is the major cause of degenerative diseases such as osteoporosis, skin aging, Alzheimer’s disease and osteoarthritis (OA) (Antonicelli et al., 2008; Candore et al., 2006; Elders, 2000; Felson & Nevitt, 1998; Pietschmann et al., 2008; Stovall & Pinkerton, 2008). OA is a worldwide public health problem which may affect different sites of the skeleton. In the Western world, at least 10% of the population has OA symptoms and 80% of the population will be potentially affected after the age of 70 years. Knee OA represents one of the major causes of morbidity and disability in relation to the worsening of quality of life (Elders, 2000). Pathogenesis of knee OA involves multiple factors including gender, weight, and genetics. Although agedependent degenerative pathologies, especially OA, involve complex mechanisms in which the imbalance of the cytokines/growth factors plays a crucial role, it is more and more obvious that estrogens participate, with their receptors and modulators, to all of these diseases affecting connective tissues (Calleja-Agius & Brincat, 2009). Estrogens are steroidal hormones irreversibly synthesized from androgens via a crucial enzyme of steroidogenesis called aromatase, a member of cytochrome P450 superfamily, encoded by the CYP19 gene and being expressed in both sexes of many species (Simpson, 2003). Although non genomic action of estrogens is now recognized but these sexual hormones act often as signaling molecules that exert their effects by binding to estrogen receptors (ER) within the cells. The estrogen-receptor complex interacts then with DNA to change the expression of estrogen-responsive genes. The two known estrogen receptors, ER and ER, are present in numerous tissues other than those associated with reproduction, including bone, liver, heart, brain and cartilage and being selectively expressed in some targets; for instance ER is selectively expressed in lung and intestine. The presence of ER and ER was detected in articular chondrocytes of different species, especially in human, rat, pig, cow and rabbit
Fact Sheet Use of nanomaterials in coatings 1

Automobiles, planes, ships, machinery, facades and the interior of buildings, furniture, household appliances, magazines, posters and data storage devices: The list of products covered with lacquers and paints is sheer endless. In 2012 about 2.6 million tons of lacquer, paint and printing ink were produced in Germany (VdL 2013). This shows how important these products are in our daily lives. Surfaces are coated with lacquer or paint to protect them against mechanical, chemical and weather-related impacts but also to improve their aesthetic appearance. To meet the ever-growing demands on modern coatings, the paint industry continuously strives to improve their products. Therefore, over the past years nanotechnology has become more and more important in the development of coatings. The German Paint and Printing Ink Industry Association (VdL) assumes that within the next 10 years in Germany about 20 % of the turnover of the branch will come from the use of nanotechnology, in the form of so-called „smart coatings2“ (VdL 2010).
Quantifying Bandwidth Gain of Triage QoS Protocol and Mobility Effects

In previous work we presented the Triage protocol, an end-to-end (E2E) QoS approach, where packet scheduling is biased by priority class, the severity of distress in meeting E2E QoS goals, and the likelihood of meeting those goals if service rates are altered. In this work, we present improvements to the heuristics used to determine the Triage distress in the per-hop behavior, simulation results showing a 22% bandwidth gain through use of the Triage QoS protocol. Finally, we also show that significant gains are obtained even under high mobility conditions
Isolation and characterization of a new porcine epidemic diarrhea virus variant that occurred in Korea in 2014

Outbreaks of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) have resulted in significant economic losses in the swine industry, and another PED outbreak occurred in 2014 in Korea. Isolating and culturing PED virus (PEDV) allow investigations into its pathogenesis and the development of vaccines and diagnostic assays. In this study, we successfully isolated two PEDV isolates (QIAP1401 and QIAP1402) from naturally infected piglets at Jeju-do, Korea. Viral propagation was confirmed in Vero cells based on cytopathic effect, immunofluorescence assay, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and electron microscopic analyses. The QIAP401 isolate propagated well in Vero cells for 70 passages, with titers of 106.5 to 107.0 50% tissue culture infectious dose/mL, which increased gradually with passaging. The nucleotide and amino acid sequences of the QIAP1401 isolate were determined and compared with those of other PEDV isolates. The QIAP1401 isolate was determined to be closely related to the USA/Minnesota271/2014 strain (> 99.9% nucleotide similarity) that was isolated in the USA in 2014. Phylogenetic analysis based on several PEDV genes suggested that a new PEDV variant is circulating in the Korean swine industry, with 93.08% similarity to the SM98 strain isolated in 1998. In addition, the QIAP1401 strain showed strong virulence in 3-day-old piglets and 11-week-old growing pigs.
Development of an intelligent cybernetic load control for power distribution management in vehicular power nets

In recent years, both the power demand and the loads' dynamics in vehicular power grids have increased. Establishing a power distribution management enables the guarantee of voltage stability. For instance, in order to provide enough power for high priority loads, lower priority loads can be shut down for a short time. Due to the complexity of vehicular power grids it is reasonable to use a distributed control based on cybernetics. In this paper, intelligent loads, that are able to autonomously stabilize the power net voltage by controlling their power consumption, are developed. The developed control algorithm meets automotive demands such as low processing power, low bus traffic, and the compensation of measurement or communication errors.
Polarization switching to the gain disfavored mode in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

We report on the experimental observation of current-induced polarization switching in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers which is accompanied by a decrease of the total output power at the switching point. The relaxation oscillation frequency also decreases. This switching is interpreted as a switching event from the mode with higher (unsaturated) net gain to the gain disfavored mode. The experimental observations are in qualitative agreement with a nonlinear dynamical model taking into account spin degrees of freedom of carriers in a semiconductor quantum well. Within the framework of this model, we propose an explanation for the origin of a minimum in the effective dichroism observed at the switching point, which might also be relevant for other experiments.
Successive localization of mobile sensor nodes using non-parametric belief propagation

In this article, we propose a method for positioning networked sensor nodes that include mobile ones. When nodes can measure the relative distances to their neighbor ones, we can estimate the absolute position of each node. Once distributed static nodes are positioned, we can position a mobile node for each time that moves through the distributed ones and measures the relative distances to the distributed ones. By using these distances, we can improve the estimated positions of the distributed nodes. For this estimation, we employ the non-parametric belief propagation. Simulation results showed that the proposed method successively improved the estimated positions.
The Reliability of [C II] as a Star Formation Rate Indicator

Abstract We present a calibration of the star formation rate (SFR) as a function of the [C II] 157.74 μm luminosity for a sample of 24 star-forming galaxies in the nearby universe. In order to calibrate the SFR against the line luminosity, we rely on both GALEX FUV data, which is an ideal tracer of the unobscured star formation, and Spitzer MIPS 24 μm, to probe the dust-enshrouded fraction of star formation. For this sample of normal star-forming galaxies, the [C II] luminosity correlates well with the star formation rate. However, the extension of this relation to more quiescent (Hα EW≤10 Å) or ultra luminous galaxies (LTIR ≥1012 L⊙) should be handled with caution, since these objects show a non-linearity in the L[C II]-to-LFIR ratio as a function of LFIR (and thus, their star formation activity). Two possible scenarios can be invoked to explain the tight correlation between the [C II] emission and the star formation activity on a global galaxy-scale. The first interpretation could be that the [C II] emission from photo dissociation regions arises from the immediate surroundings of actively star-forming regions and contributes a more or less constant fraction on a global galaxy-scale. Alternatively, we consider the possibility that the [C II] emission is associated to the cold interstellar medium, which advocates an indirect link with the star formation activity in a galaxy through the Schmidt law.
A planar equiangular spiral antenna array for the V-/W-band

This work presents a spiral antenna array, which can be used in the V- and W-Band. An array equipped with Dolph-Chebychev coefficients is investigated to address issues related to the low gain and side lobe level of the radiating structure. The challenges encountered in this achievement are to provide an antenna that is not only good matched but also presents an appreciable effective bandwidth at the frequency bands of interest. Its radiation properties including the effective bandwidth and the gain are analyzed for the W-Band.
Combining a novel feeding operator and recent advances to improve the fish school search

In this work, we propose a new version of Fish School Search Algorithm named FSS-CS. This release has three major changes. First, it has an improved feeding mechanism to enhance the barycenter calculation. Secondly, it promotes exploration by using a state-of-art non-greedy strategy. Finally, it incorporates a promising existent elliptic steps decay. Five benchmark optimization problems were employed to evaluate the performance of our proposal. The results show that the proposed version outperformed in most cases the FSS versions for mono-modal optimization.
DETERMINATION OF KINETIC AND STOICHIOMETRIC PARAMETERS OF ACTIVATED SLUDGE MODELS

An overview of methods aiming at the determination of selected parameters of activated sludge models has been presented. The attention was paid to the model parameters being the most sensitive and dependent on the composition of biomass and/or substrate. These parameters should be determined experimentally. Methods based on the measurements of oxygen uptake rate are widespread use in this area. For the parameters associated with ordinary heterotrophic organisms the method is wellknown and regarded as standard. At the same time for many parameters associated with polyphosphate accumulating organisms the procedures have not been elaborated so far.