Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heme Oxygenase-1 Is Upregulated during Differentiation of Keratinocytes but Its Expression Is Dispensable for Cornification of Murine Epidermis

The epidermal barrier of mammals is initially formed during embryonic development and continuously regenerated by the differentiation and cornification of keratinocytes in postnatal life. Cornification is associated with the breakdown of organelles and other cell components by mechanisms which are only incompletely understood. Here, we investigated whether heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1), which converts heme into biliverdin, ferrous iron and carbon monoxide, is required for normal cornification of epidermal keratinocytes. We show that HO-1 is transcriptionally upregulated during the terminal differentiation of human keratinocytes in vitro and in vivo. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated expression of HO-1 in the granular layer of the epidermis where keratinocytes undergo cornification. Next, we deleted the Hmox1 gene, which encodes HO-1, by crossing Hmox1-floxed and K14-Cre mice. The epidermis and isolated keratinocytes of the resulting Hmox1f/f K14-Cre mice lacked HO-1 expression. The genetic inactivation of HO-1 did not impair the expression of keratinocyte differentiation markers, loricrin and filaggrin. Likewise, the transglutaminase activity and formation of the stratum corneum were not altered in Hmox1f/f K14-Cre mice, suggesting that HO-1 is dispensable for epidermal cornification. The genetically modified mice generated in this study may be useful for future investigations of the potential roles of epidermal HO-1 in iron metabolism and responses to oxidative stress.
Optimal Biquadratic Approximation of the Fractional-Order Laplacian Operator Yielding Improved Constant-Phase Behavior

This paper deals with the biquadratic approximation of the fractional-order Laplacian operator $s^{\mathfrak{a}}$, where, $\alpha\in(0,1)$. The coefficients of the proposed rational function are optimally determined using an efficient constrained evolutionary algorithm. The proposed design constraint helps to attain the theoretical phase value of $\alpha\pi/2$ radians at the center frequency. Results showcase improved constant phase behavior for the proposed optimal approximants as compared to the models based on two different versions of the continued fraction expansion technique and the Sanathanan-Koerner curve-fitting method.
Prescribed Performance Control-Based Semi-Active Vibration Controller for Seat Suspension Equipped with an Electromagnetic Damper

Seat suspension plays a vital role in improving riding comfort and protecting drivers’ health. This paper develops semi-active seat suspension that equips a controllable electromagnetic damper (EMD) and proposes a prescribed performance control-based semi-active vibration controller with experimental validation. The semi-active EMD mainly consists of a permanent magnet synchronous motor, a ball screw, a three-phase rectifier, and a controllable external resistor, which can vary its damping from 90 to 800 N·s/m by tuning the controllable external resistor in real-time. The EMD is applied to seat suspension, and a semi-active controller is proposed for the EMD seat suspension. In order to control the seat suspension vibration, a prescribed performance method is applied to obtain a desired control force and then a force-tracking strategy is designed to make the EMD track the desired control force. Finally, the semi-active seat suspension with the proposed controller is tested in experiments with different vibration conditions. The semi-active seat suspension performs excellently for the bump, sine wave and random vibration. The root mean square (RMS) acceleration, the frequency-weighted RMS acceleration and the acceleration’s fourth power vibration dose value were reduced by 17.5%, 39.9%, and 25.4%, respectively, in the random vibration, compared with a passive system.
On open mappings, II

Let X and Y be topological spaces and let f be a continuous mapping of X onto Y. f is said to be open if the image of every open subset of X is open in Y. A. H. Stone 9] has obtained conditions under which the image of an open continuous mapping of a metric space becomes metrizable. In this note, we shall obtain some results concerning the images of the open continuous mappings of metric spaces. 1. By the open image, we mean the image of an open continuous mapping. We begin with proving the following theorem. Theorem 1. If X is a T-space which satisfies the first countability axiom, then X is an open image of a metric space. Proof. Let [U. la2] be the open basis of X. For each point x of X, let [ U.I i-1, 2, a2] be an open neighborhood basis of x, then a----(a, a2, .)N(9), where N(2) is the generalized Baire’s zero-dimensional space introduced by K. Morita 4J. Now let A denote the set of all such a. If we define a mapping f of A into X by f(a)-x, then it is evident that f(A)--X. We shall next prove that f is an open continuous mapping. Let V be any open neighborhood of x such that f(a)--x, then, since {U.li--1, 2,--. } is an open neighborhood basis of x, there exists a U. such that U.V. Then
Hard X-Ray Focusing with Curved Reflective Multilayers

This paper provides a comprehensive overview on the utilization of curved graded multilayer coatings as focusing elements for hard X-rays. It concentrates on the Kirkpatrick-Baez (KB) focusing setup that has been developed at 3rd generation synchrotron sources worldwide. The optical performance of these devices is evaluated applying analytical and numerical approaches. The essential role of the multilayer coating and its meridional d-spacing gradient are discussed as well as important technological issues. Experimental data and examples of operational KB focusing devices and applications complement the work.
Metal-Based Nanoparticles and Their Relevant Consequences on Cytotoxicity Cascade and Induced Oxidative Stress

Emerging nanoscience allows us to take advantage of the improved evolutionary components and apply today’s advanced characterization and fabrication techniques to solve environmental and biological problems. Despite the promise that nanotechnology will improve our lives, the potential risks of technology remain largely uncertain. The lack of information on bio-impacts and the absence of consistent standards are the limitations of using metal-based nanoparticles (mNPs) for existing applications. To analyze the role played by the mNPs physicochemical characteristics and tactics to protect live beings, the field of nanotoxicology nowadays is focused on collecting and analyzing data from in vitro and in vivo investigations. The degree of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidative stress caused by material nanoparticles (NPs) depends on many factors, such as size, shape, chemical composition, etc. These characteristics enable NPs to enter cells and interact with biological macromolecules and cell organelles, resulting in oxidative damage, an inflammatory response, the development of mitochondrial dysfunction, damage to genetic material, or cytotoxic effects. This report explored the mechanisms and cellular signaling cascades of mNPs-induced oxidative stress and the relevant health consequences.
Sound Produced by a Vortex Ring Interacting with an Aperture of Variable Radius

An analysis is made of the sound generated when a vortex ring approaches an aperture of time dependent radius in a thin rigid wall. This is possibly the simplest model problem for elucidating the acoustic significance of glottis oscillations in the production of voiced speech. The aperture is acoustically equivalent to a monopole source whose strength is determined by the unsteady volume flux induced by the vortex. The unsteady working of suction forces at the edge of a contracting aperture in an ideal fluid transforms the transmitted, positive acoustic pressure pulse predicted for a constant radius aperture into a large amplitude expansion wave. The suppression of large suction forces in a real fluid by viscosity is examined by the imposition of a Kutta condition, leading to vortex shedding and ‘jetting’ from the aperture. The shed vorticity is found to increase further the resistance of the closing aperture to the induced flux, and results in an expansion wave of greatly increased amplitude.
Visual Loop Closure Detection: a fast convolutional auto-encoder based approach

For a large-scale visual simultaneous localization and mapping (vSLAM) system, robust and fast loop closure detection is very indispensable. It can provide more effective information for back-end optimization, eliminate the drift problem caused by accumulated errors, and provide the relocation function after the tracking algorithm is lost. In this paper, we propose a lightweight unsupervised loop closure detection scheme. The model is built on a convolutional autoencoder network to reconstruct the Sector-ring histogram of oriented gradients (SRHOG) descriptor, not the raw image. SRHOG, which preserves invariance to image geometry and lighting while having good rotation invariance. When deploying, only the encoder vector of low dimensional space is used for image representation. A fast search method of locality-sensitive hashing is adopted, which reduces the query time. We implement our method on the state-of-the-art (SOTA) unsupervised scheme CALC, and through experiments on three datasets, the results show that our proposed method outperforms existing methods.
Optimal robustness in the gap metric

It is shown that the problem of robustness optimization in the gap metric is equivalent to robustness optimization for normalized coprime factor perturbations. The proof of this result involves showing that a ball of uncertainty in the gap metric, of a given radius, is equal to a ball of uncertainty, of the same radius, defined by perturbations of a normalized right coprime fraction, provided the radius is sufficiently small for a controller to be found to stabilize the ball. The relationship between balls of uncertainty defined by perturbations of left fractions with those defined by perturbations of right fractions is investigated. It is shown that these are, in general, different, although it turns out that a controller stabilizes all plants in the left ball if and only if it stabilizes all plants in the right ball. The problem of combined plant and controller uncertainty is also addressed. The plant and controller are shown to play reciprocal roles with respect to uncertainty in the gap. The minimal amount of combined plant and controller uncertainty that may cause instability is determined. A detailed summary of the main properties of the gap metric is given, and a dual metric called the T-gap metric is introduced. The extension of the results to infinite dimensional systems is discussed. <<ETX>>
Investigation of carrier lifetime instabilities in Cz-grown silicon

In the literature it is well known that the low-injection bulk carrier lifetime of boron-doped Cz-grown silicon is not a constant material property but, depending on previous thermal treatments and light exposure, varies between two states corresponding to a high and a low lifetime value. The upper state is obtained by means of low-temperature annealing, while illumination degrades the lifetime towards the value of the lower state. In order to improve the understanding of this phenomenon, we performed comprehensive carrier lifetime measurements on solar- and electronic-grade boron, gallium, and phosphorus doped Cz wafers obtained from different manufacturers. Based on the experimental results, a new model is introduced which attributes the disappointingly low stable lifetimes of illuminated boron-doped Cz silicon with resistivity around 1 /spl Omega/cm to boron-oxygen pairs. From this model, simple recipes are derived which might lead to an improvement of the efficiency of commercial Cz silicon solar cells.
Polyvinyl Butyral Polymeric Host Material-Based Fluorescent Thin Films to Achieve Highly Efficient Red and Green Colour Conversion for Advanced Next-Generation Displays

Rare-earth element-free fluorescent materials are eco-friendlier than other traditional fluorescent precursors, such as quantum dots and phosphors. In this study, we explore a simple and facile solution-based technique to prepare fluorescent films, which are highly stable under ordinary room conditions and show hydrophobic behaviour. The proposed hybrid material was designed with hybrid composites that use polyvinyl butyral (PVB) as a host doped with organic dyes. The red and green fluorescent films exhibited quantum yields of 89% and 80%, respectively, and both are very uniform in thickness and water resistant. Additionally, PVB was further compared with another polymeric host, such as polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), to evaluate their binding ability and encapsulation behaviour. Next, the effect of PVB on the optical and chemical properties of the fluorescent materials was studied using UV spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The analysis revealed that no new bond was formed between the host material and fluorescent precursor during the process, with intermolecular forces being present between different molecules. Moreover, the thickness of the fluorescent film and quantum yield relation were evaluated. Finally, the hydrophobic nature, strong binding ability, and optical enhancement by PVB provide a powerful tool for fabricating a highly efficient fluorescent film with enhanced stability in an external environment based on its promising encapsulation properties. These efficient fluorescent films have a bright potential in colour conversion for next-generation display applications.
Effect from Autoclave Sterilization and Usage on the Fracture Resistance of Heat-Treated Nickel–Titanium Rotary Files

This study aimed to assess the effect of mechanical loading and heating on the cyclic fatigue and torsional fracture resistances of heat-treated nickel–titanium files after usage and autoclaving. Sixty files (One Curve) were tested for cyclic fatigue and torsional fracture resistances using customized devices. The files were divided into three groups according to the test conditions (n = 10); new (group-N), used for simulated canal shaping (group-U), and sterilized after use (group-S). For cyclic fatigue resistances, the files were freely rotated in a curved metal canal under body temperature; the time elapsed to fracture was recorded and the numbers of cycles to fracture (NCF) were calculated. For the torsional resistances, the file tip was fixed and rotated until the file fractured. The maximum torsional load and distortion angle were recorded. The toughness was calculated. Fracture fragments were examined with a scanning electron microscope. Data were analyzed using a one-way analysis of variance and Tukey’s post hoc test at the significance level of 95%. Group-U showed significantly higher NCF than group-S (p < 0.05). However, there was no significant differences between groups-N and -S in the NCF (p > 0.05). Group-N showed a significantly bigger distortional angle and higher torsional toughness than groups-U and -S, but the ultimate torsional strength did not have significant difference between the groups. Under the limitation of this study, autoclave sterilization after single-usage did not improve the fracture resistance of heat-treated One Curve nickel–titanium files.
Dirichlet Process-based Prediction of Gasholder Level with Self-learning Scheme in Steel Enterprises

Gasholder level prediction is very important for the workers to perform energy scheduling in steel enterprises. The gasholder level model is time-varying due to environmental disturbance. Since the traditional gasholder level prediction are often based on off-line model without the consideration of the change of working conditions, the prediction results may be inaccurate. This paper proposes a gasholder level prediction method with self-learning based on Dirichlet process, to deal with the multi-conditions structure of gas system. The Dirichlet process is introduced as a priori distribution so as to automatically decide the number of feature clusters, and then realize the automatic clustering algorithm for multiple working conditions of gasholder. Compared with other state of the art prediction methods, the advantage of this method is that the number of clusters need not to be specified in advance. The experimental results show that the method in this paper achieves better performance in the accuracy of gasholder prediction.
Dielectric Properties of Phase Change Thin Films at Millimeter Waves

We present the characterization of the dielectric permittivity and loss tangent of germanium telluride (GeTe) and germanium antimonium telluride [Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST)] phase change thin films (less than <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1 \mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> thicknesses) in the millimeter-wave (mmW) domain. The dielectric permittivities in the amorphous (insulator) state of GeTe and GST were measured using two independent differential methods: a wide bandwidth characterization based on the measurement of the propagation constant of a coplanar waveguide (CPW) and a single frequency characterization based on the measurement of the resonant frequency of a planar resonator. This differential approach allows addressing the challenges linked to thin-film dielectric characteristics estimation at mmWs without the need of an absolute knowledge of other parameters of the measurement circuit like the conductivity and the thickness of the metals as well as the permittivity and losses of the substrate. The extracted mean values range between 20 and 22 for the GeTe and 30 and 34 for the GST. These values are rather constant over the frequency range from 10 to 60 GHz. Additionally, the loss tangent at 30 GHz of both compositions was extracted giving values of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.4\times 10^{-2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$3.2\times 10^{-1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> for the GeTe and GST, respectively. These values are among the first reported ones regarding the electromagnetic (EM) properties of GeTe and GST in this frequency band.
Recent advances in the identification of related factors and preventive strategies of hip fracture

Hip fracture is the most devastating type of osteoporosis-related fracture, and is a major worldwide public health problem with a high socioeconomic burden, morbidity rate, and mortality rate. Thus, it is crucial to uncover the risk factors and protective factors to create a hip fracture prevention strategy. In addition to a briefly review of some well accepted risk and protective factors of hip fracture, this review mainly summarized the recent advances in the identification of emerging risk or protective factors for hip fracture, in terms of regional differences in medical services, diseases, drugs, mechanical load, neuromuscular mass, genes, blood types, cultural differences. This review provides a comprehensive review of the associated factors and effective prevention measures for hip fracture, and discusses issues that need further investigation. These issues include the determination of the influencing mechanism of risk factors triggering hip fracture and their interlinked correlation with other factors, as well as the confirmation or correction of emerging factors associated with hip fracture, particularly those that are still controversial. These recent findings will aid in optimizing the strategy for preventing hip fracture.
Networked and Multimodal 3D Modeling of Cities for Collaborative Virtual Environments

3D city-scale models are useful in a number of applications, including education, city planning, navigation systems, artificial intelligence training, and simulations. However, final models need to be immersive and interactive, which requires a mixed reality (XR) environment design that combines e.g., a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) VR system with the Microsoft Hololens2 in a networked and multimodal setting. In this paper, we propose a pipeline to convert a city-scale point cloud into a finalized city-scale textured mesh in which, a number of XR devices can share the same environment and co-exist in a shared space for model interactions. Specifically, we use input point clouds obtained from wide area motion imagery systems or off-the-shelf drones pertaining to Albuquerque, New Mexico, but the pipeline is generalized so that other input can be used. Using four different traditional algorithms and an additional deep learning method, we create meshes for the model interactions. For each mesh produced, we map high-resolution textures onto them, producing a more accurate city, which is then passed into the shared/networked Unity environment. Ten participants provided their assessment of mesh quality and interactivity of the networked environment during exploration of different city reconstructions with the CAVE and laptop device modalities. Results on the perceptual immersive quality of the Point2Mesh deep learning meshes highlights the need for improvements to handle large city scale point clouds.
Iterative sampling of expensive simulations for faster deep surrogate training *

Deep neural network (DNN) surrogates of expensive physics simulations are enabling a rapid change in the way that common experimental design and analysis tasks are approached. Surrogate models allow simulations to be performed in parallel and separately from downstream tasks, thereby enabling analyses that would be impossible with the simulation in‐the‐loop; surrogates based on DNNs can effectively emulate diverse non‐scalar data of the types collected in fusion and laboratory‐astrophysics experiments. The challenge is in training the surrogate model, for which large ensembles of physics simulations must be run, preferably without wasting computational effort on uninteresting simulations. In this paper, we present an iterative sampling scheme that can preferentially propose simulations in interesting regions of parameter space without neglecting unexplored regions, allowing high‐quality and wide‐ranging surrogate models to be trained using 2–3 times fewer simulations compare to space‐filling designs. Our approach uses an explicit importance function defined on the simulation output space, balanced against a measure of simulation density which serves as a proxy for surrogate accuracy. It is easy to implement and can be tuned to find interesting simulations early in the study, allowing surrogates to be trained quickly and refined as new simulations become available; this represents an important step towards the routine generation of deep surrogate models quickly enough to be truly relevant to experimental work.
Nonorthogonal image expansion by restoration with application to template matching

A novel approach for template matching is presented in this paper. This matching scheme is a specialized implementation of a general method for signal expansion by non-orthogonal bases. The basic principle is called expansion matching and involves signal expansion into a set of non-orthogonal template-similar basis functions. It is demonstrated that this matching technique is quite robust in conditions of noise, superposition, and severe occultation. A new and more practical discriminative signal-to-noise ratio for matching is proposed, and it is shown that expansion matching maximizes this ratio. Theoretical and experimental comparisons of expansion matching and the widely used correlation matching, (also known as matched filtering) demonstrate the superiority of our approach. It is also shown that the special case of expansion with a dense set of self-similar basis functions is equivalent to signal restoration. The generalized non-orthogonal expansion as well as the expansion matching can be implemented by our recently developed lattice architectures. Expansion matching can be implemented by restoration techniques as well. The lattice architectures are based on the central limit and can perform multiple-scale Gaussian smoothing of signals in parallel realtime. An adaptive configuration of these lattices is used to expand signals into any arbitrary bases set composed of Gaussian sets arranged in a wavelet configuration.