SIRIS-Lab/unlabelled-sti-corpus huggingface dataset:
Transcription factor-mediated neuronal cell fate programming in human stem cells

The discovery of pluripotent stem cells has expanded the working modes in biology towards the reverse engineering of specific cell types. Unlike studying developmental phenomena in vivo, we are now theoretically able to mimic some of these processes in a dish. The use of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells facilitates studying the genesis of human cell types in an ethically approved setting. However, exploiting the full potency of stem cells is only possible with very few differentiated cell types. In particular, the generation of neurons is in its infancy: of the many neuronal types present in the brain, only a few types have been generated in vitro. So far, neuronal differentiation protocols are multifaceted and tailored to individual cell types. The molecular events that occur during reprogramming remain enigmatic. Hence, we cannot confer these protocols easily on producing different neurons of interest. Therefore, we plan to induce transcription factors as differentiation control buttons in human iPS cells in order to explore in vitro neurogenesis systematically. First, we will apply a human transcription factor library to conditional fluorescent iPS reporter lines, facilitating high-throughput isolation and analysis of induced neurons. Second, the underlying gene regulatory networks will be revealed using RNA-sequencing over the entire differentiation period to identify the biological rules of in vitro neuronal differentiation. We will combine these in-depth transcriptomic analyses with morphological, anatomical, and functional characterizations. Finally, based on our discoveries, we will engineer human photoreceptors that can be applied to cell transplantation experiments in retinal degeneration diseases. Conceptually, our approach paves the way for targeted “forward” programming of human iPS cells to neurons.
Laboratory measurements of non-Darcy flow coefficients in natural and artificial unconsolidated porous media

Abstract The estimation of non-Darcy flow regime is often a critical issue in petroleum engineering, as it is a key parameter to estimate and predict the correct production performances and behavior of hydrocarbon reservoirs. Non-Darcy flow is typically observed in gas wells when the fluids converging to the wellbore attains the velocity peculiar of turbulent flow. As a consequence, pressure drop around the wellbore cannot be estimated from the classic Darcy's law, where the pressure gradient is a linear function of the flow velocity. In fact, the use of Darcy's law would lead to inaccurate production performances evaluation. The most commonly used tool to approximate the non-linear behavior of the flow velocity is the well-known Forchheimer equation, deploying the “inertial” coefficient β that can be estimated experimentally, by means of direct measurements on core samples. In gas wells the inertial coefficient β is usually estimated by means of indirect measurements, through the analysis of multi-rate pressure tests performed on site during the routine well testing programmed after well completion. Unfortunately, such data are not easily available in many cases, and new measurements are very expensive, since well testing is accomplished by gas production shutdown for several tens of hours or days. So, it is a common practice to use particular theoretical and empirical correlations that can be derived by exploiting experimental values of the inertial coefficient. This experimental study reports non-Darcy flow laboratory investigations performed on natural and artificial unconsolidated porous media (glass beads and loose natural sands of different grain size). The inertial coefficient β and permeability has been calculated for several samples (with both peaked and flat grain size distribution, obtained by sieving glass beads and sand); experimental data suggest that also β is to some extent affected by pore structure. Moreover, the Forchheimer number has been calculated and its non-linearity with respect to superficial velocity has been checked. In the light of the above, specific laboratory equipment has been devised in order to rely on a wide range of flow rates under appropriate pressure gradients.
A note to TOPSIS method in MADM problems under fuzzy environment

TOPSIS method has been widely used to solve various multiple attribute decision making and multiple criteria decision making problems since Hwang and Yoon first introduced it in 1981. The ranking results of TOPSIS are proved to be relatively convincing in many practical areas. However, in recent research we find that the traditional fuzzy TOPSIS method could not distinguish all of the alternatives in some circumstances. As stated later in this paper, several counter examples in triangular fuzzy number format will be demonstrated, where the fuzzy TOPSIS method fails to give alternatives respective rankings. And the reason for that phenomenon will be further discussed. Then a revised procedure is suggested in order to fully differentiate all of the alternatives. Finally a numerical example is given so as to testify the revised procedure.
Testing Application of Geographical Information Systems, Forensic Geomorphology and Electrical Resistivity Tomography to Investigate Clandestine Grave Sites in Colombia, South America

Colombian forensic investigators required assistance locating clandestine burials of missing persons related to human right atrocities from 14 years ago. Geoscientific search methods were trialled, including a predictive spatial statistical model, using various input and database information, to select the most likely grave locations in difficult mountainous terrain. Groundwork using forensic geomorphology, near-surface geophysics (ERT) and subsequent probing identified suspect burial positions. One site was in mountainous terrain and the other in former school grounds, both difficult to access and in poor weather conditions. In the mountainous area, a negative resistivity anomaly area was identified and intrusively investigated, found to be a buried rock. In school grounds, after MESP and intelligence were used to identify a burial site, surface depressions were identified, and ERT datasets collected over the highest priority depression; intrusive investigations discovered a hand-dug pit containing animal bones. This approach is suggested for Latin American searches.
METHOD FOR CONVEYING A LIQUID INTO A CONTAINER

The invention relates to method for conveying a liquid into a container by means of a conveying device. The conveying device comprising a liquid reservoir, a pump and a tap. The liquid is supplied by the pump from the liquid reservoir via a tap inlet to the tap. The liquid emerges from a tap outlet of the tap and flows into the container arranged below the tap outlet. An outlet volume flow rate of the liquid flowing from the tap outlet is controlled in such a way that at first the liquid is conveyed with an initial volume flow rate until an initial delivery volume has been conveyed and then the liquid is conveyed with a final volume flow rate, the final volume flow rate being greater than the initial volume flow rate.
Autonomous lightweight agricultural vehicle

Farming is rough. A farmer is both a slave to his occupation and yet has freedom to do what he wants, in a way that he prefers. These days, people find happiness in a lavish and comfortable life, lived in urbanised areas while enjoying job security and the absence of hard physical labour. For this reason young people do not want to become farmers anymore: resulting in almost 60% of all farmers throughout Europe being over the age of 55. 

This combined with recent trends such as increased with rising populations, increasing demand for food and labour shortage during seasonal peaks, the future for Europe’s agricultural sector is at risk. To cope with these challenges and increase productivity, farmers increasingly use heavier machines and resource-intensive farming systems, causing massive negative environmental impact such as soil compaction.

In this project AgXeed presents the Autonomous Lightweight Agricultural Vehicle (ALAV). As a single unit or as part of a fleet, the ALAV is able to execute all operations throughout the cultivation cycle, completely independent and in a safe and efficient way due to robotics precision. Additionally, the ALAV stays under the irreversible soil compaction threshold, eliminating further degradation of the soil in comparison with conventional increasingly heavy machinery, leading to healthier crops and higher yields. The ALAV comes with a cloud based operating portal and a road compliant transportation module, is designed as a platform and can be connected with conventional implements already in use by farmers. In being autonomous, the ALAV eliminates labour shortages during seasonal peaks and generates tremendous savings for farmers in terms of labour and operational costs. The ALAV takes the first steps in shifting the essence of being a farmer from executing tasks manually to the monitoring and management of his agricultural business.
Responses to Stanley and Schlenker

I am grateful to Jason Stanley and Philippe Schlenker for their careful exposition and penetrating criticisms of my work on intentionality, assertion and presupposition. I have learned a lot from both of them from these papers as well as others, and from discussion over the years since each was a graduate student at MIT. Some of their points have led me to modify my views; others have shown the need for elaboration and clarification, which I will try to provide. I will begin with Stanley's discussion of my general project, and then look at more specific issues, discussed by both Stanley and Schlenker, about the model of discourse that I have defended.
Capital Structure and Financial Performance of Insurance Industries in Ethiopia

An appropriate capital structure is a critical decision for any business organization to be taken by business organization for maximization of shareholders wealth and sustained growth. Thus, the major focus of this study is to investigate empirically firm specific factors such as, firm leverage, growth opportunities, size, risk, tangibility and liquidity were impacts on performance in Ethiopian insurance companies from 2004-2013 annual reports. The results show that firm leverage, Size, tangibility and business risk are significant impact on performance of insurance companies in Ethiopia. While firm growth and liquidity are not clear and statistical proved relationship are obtained from the regression analysis. The results provide strong evidence in support of the pecking order theory of capital structure which asserts that leverage is a significant determinant of firmsâ€™ performance. A significant negative relationship is established between leverage and performance. From the findings the researcher recommended that the sample of insurance companies in Ethiopia use more equity than debt in financing their business activities, this because if the value of business can be enhanced with debt capital, it is dangerous for the firm.
Synthesis, film morphology and hydrophobicity of novel fluorinated polyacrylate emulsion and solution on silicon wafer

Abstract Novel fluorinated polyacrylate emulsion (CFBDH) and solution (SFBDH) were synthesized by polymerization of dodecafluoroheptyl methacrylate (DFMA) with butyl acrylate (BA), dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate (DM) and 2-hydroxypropyl acrylate (HpA) via seeded emulsion polymerization and solution polymerization, respectively. Chemical structure, particle morphology, glass transition temperature and thermal property of resultant CFBDH and SFBDH were characterized by FT-IR, 1H NMR, TEM, DSC and TGA, respectively. The as-prepared products were utilized to treat the clean silicon wafers and form films on it, and then morphology and hydrophobicity of films were investigated by SEM, AFM, contact angle meter, etc. Results showed that the CFBDH particles had uniform spherical core–shell structure with an average diameter of 126 nm. Core–shell CFBDH film thus had two Tg and SFBDH film only had one Tg. Their thermal properties were improved. The SFBDH film seemed less level and continuous than the CFBDH film by SEM at an amplification of 1000 and the observation rule of 20 μm. However, as the observation rule decreased to 3 nm, both the CFBDH and SFBDH films were inhomogeneous and existed in a phase-separated state with many low or high peaks in AFM images. The higher bright peaks in CFBDH film were much more and distributed uniformer than those in SFBDH film, but the roughness of CFBDH film was less than that of SFBDH film, the average roughness (Rq) of the CFBDH and SFBDH films reached to 0.205 nm and 0.336 nm in 1 μm2 scanning field, respectively. In addition, contact angles on CFBDH/Sil and SFBDH/Sil surfaces separately attained 104.3° and 98.5°.
Research on macroeconomic fluctuations and trade

The proposal is divided into three strands whose main goals are to i) study macroeconomic fluctuations, ii) identify the mechanisms that drive and propagate these fluctuations, and iii) use the empirical findings to inform and formulate models that can be used for quantitative policy and positive analysis.

The first strand will exploit a new dataset to study housing markets during the build-up and aftermath of the crisis. We will document a robust pattern of history dependence in housing markets and investigate four main channels to potentially explain this pattern: Down payment requirements; matching quality; learning; and anchoring. Using these results we will build and structurally estimate a model with the aim to use in policy and positive analysis.

The second strand studies an unexplored mechanism for the transmission of monetary policy. A main winner from monetary policy expansions in most countries is the government, which sees a reduction in the value of its debt and typically, better borrowing terms. We will investigate how public spending, revenues, and debt management react to changes in monetary policy; the extent to which the response of activity is driven by the public sector; the interactions between public and private sector responses; and the (intra- and inter-generational) distributional effects from monetary policy interventions. We will then formulate a DSGE model embedding a careful description of the government’s role in the transmission mechanism.

The third strand studies the effect of terms-of-trade fluctuations on agricultural production and trade. We will focus on the distribution of gains from trade in markets characterized by oligopsonies buying from small farmers and exporting in international markets. We will study how this configuration, characteristic of agricultural markets in low-income economies, alters the gains from trade and the effects of terms-of-trade changes vis-a-vis the standard framework of perfect competition.
METHOD OF JOINING THREADED NON-FERROUS PIPE SECTIONS

A sealing system (10) is provided for composite fabricated pipe sections (12, 14, 16) having threaded connections on the end thereof with said connections being of composite material for use in assembling pipe sections in a piping system. A two component thermoset polysulfide elastomer (20) in the material's flowable unpolymerized state is coated upon the entire area of the connection threads. The pipe sections (12, 14, 16) are then assembled in a normal fashion with the elastomer (20) prepared connectors to produce the sealing system (10). With time, the polysulfide material (20) crosslinks and forms an uncompressed elastomeric seal along the entire helix length of the threaded connection producing pipe sections (12, 14, 16) with threaded connections that possess greater hydrostatic pressure capacities. Without the requirement of compressing the elastomer to form the hydrostatic seal, the sealing system (10) produces effective seals with a wide range of assemblage torques for the interconnection of the pipe sections; ranging from hand tight to power tight engagements of the connections. The sealing system (10) allows the connection of pipe sections (12, 14, 16) with or without the aid of tools. Without a determined interconnection engagement length required to form the seal in the connection, pipe sections may be placed into any rotational positioning to facilitate the assemblage of the piping system. The sealing system also provides the means to seal the connections of pipe sections with adversely damaged threads.
Distributed and massively parallel graph algorithms

With the rapidly growing size of the data and the pervasiveness of distributed systems and networks, it is a certainty that distributed and parallel computations will play a vital role in the computations of the future. This project aims to advance our understanding of the foundational aspects of these areas. We tackle some of the central questions in distributed algorithms and massively parallel algorithms for graph problems, which require us to go well-beyond the current state of the art. Our research plan involves three directions:

- Developing efficient and particularly polylogarithmic-time deterministic distributed algorithms for some of the central graph problems of the area. Our hope is to do this through a general derandomization method that removes the randomness from efficient randomized algorithms. This question underlies some of the well-known open problems of the area.

- Developing improved and particularly sublogarithmic-time randomized distributed algorithms for some of the central local graph problems of the area, thus hopefully narrowing or ideally closing this decade old gap to the respective lower bounds.

- Developing improved massively parallel algorithms for some of the fundamental graph problems, with a special focus on the challenging regime of lower memory machines, which remains widely open.

Given the high risk nature of these questions, in each direction, besides our plan of attack on the bigger and more ambitious objectives, we also explain a number of smaller problems, which should be more feasible, and which would serve as stepping stones toward the bigger goal. Moreover, we are hopeful that the simultaneous study of distributed algorithms and massively parallel will lead to a strengthening of the connections between these two areas and would also bring the related scientific communities closer to each other.
Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis in Asian children

Background Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) are rare but severe drug reactions. There have been few reviews of SJS and TEN in children. Objectives To evaluate the clinical profile and treatment outcomes of 15 pediatric patients with SJS or TEN. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the case notes of all patients diagnosed with SJS or TEN admitted to a tertiary care pediatric hospital from 2001 to 2006. Results We identified 13 cases of SJS, 1 case of SJS/TEN overlap and 1 case of TEN. Four patients were treated with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), 5 patients were treated with systemic corticosteroids, and 6 patients were treated with supportive therapy only. The time to cessation of progression of disease was not significantly different in these 3 groups of patients. The duration of hospital stay was longer for patients treated with IVIG compared with those treated with systemic corticosteroids or supportive therapy. The only death was the patient with TEN treated with IVIG. Limitations This was a retrospective study with a very small number of patients. Conclusion The use of intravenous immunoglobulins or systemic corticosteroids did not improve the outcome of SJS and TEN.
CARRY-ON PASSENGER SEAT

A carry-on passenger seat adapted to mount upon a support pedestal in an aircraft, the seat including a seatback pivotably connected to a seat bottom such that the seatback is configured to fold against the seat bottom, and an elongate slot formed in an underside of the seat bottom, an elongate member of the support pedestal adapted to be received through the elongate slot and rotated relative thereto to prevent the seat bottom from being pulled apart from the support pedestal.
HMM-Based Human Fall Detection and Prediction Method Using Tri-Axial Accelerometer

Falls in the elderly have always been a serious medical and social problem. To detect and predict falls, a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based method using tri-axial accelerations of human body is proposed. A wearable motion detection device using tri-axial accelerometer is designed and realized, which can detect and predict falls based on tri-axial acceleration of human upper trunk. The acceleration time series (ATS) extracted from human motion processes are used to describe human motion features, and the ATS extracted from human fall courses but before the collision are used to train HMM so as to build a random process mathematical model. Thus, the outputs of HMM, which express the marching degrees of input ATS and HMM, can be used to evaluate the risks to fall. The experiment results show that fall events can be predicted 200-400 ms ahead the occurrence of collisions, and distinguished from other daily life activities with an accuracy of 100%.
A Survey regarding Physician Preferences in End-of-Life Practices in Intensive Care across Scotland

Despite the large proportion of intensive care patients whose care is ultimately terminal, there is a lack of evidence to support best clinical practice caring for these patients. Ninety-seven consultants covering intensive care day sessions across Scotland were invited to take part in a web-based questionnaire. Fifty-eight respondents (60%) completed the questionnaire. Non-escalation of therapy and abrupt withdrawal appear to be the preferred methods of limiting treatment at the end of life. This was achieved most commonly by a reduction in FiO 2 and cessation of inotropic support. Extubation was not favoured, with only four respondents claiming it as routine practice. Practical efforts made to determine futility appear to be made by at least two intensive care consultants. Of respondents, 24% consider non-escalation of treatment and active withdrawal to be ethically different and 15% held the view that there was moral equivalence between withdrawing treatment and the active shortening of the dying process. There are wide variations in clinician preferences for the methods used to limit treatment at the end of life. Consensus, therefore, may prove to be a challenge to achieve.
On the design problem of two-level IP networks

In this paper, we propose to tackle the design problem of two-level metropolitan Internet protocol (IP) networks with modular routers including the design of the points of presence. We first propose a model that deals with selecting the number of routers and their types to install in each point of presence, selecting the interface card types to install in each router, finding the access and the backbone networks, interconnecting the routers in each point of presence, selecting the link types and finally, routing the traffic. The objective is to find the minimum cost network. Moreover, we consider that a minimum information rate (in bps) is guaranteed between each pair of clients for the normal state of the network and for the failure scenarios of interest to the network planner. A tabu search metaheuristic algorithm is proposed to find near-optimal approximate solutions of the model. Finally, we present numerical results to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm.
Gypsum-filled foam material used as thermal insulation or soundproofing

Gypsum-filled foam material - contains at least one elastic polymer with an inorganic main chain or network structure. Also claimed are (i) foams filled with up to 65 wt.% gypsum, and (ii) the preparation of the foam material in which (a) gypsum is added to the uncured elastic polymer or one of its components ; (b) further optional constituents are added, eg. fibres, silicone oil or paraffin oil ; (c) a propellent is optionally added ; (d) all the components are optionally mixed together ; and (e) the material is cured in a mould.