Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reconciling observations of global temperature change

It is suggested that the much publicized discrepancy between observed surface global mean temperature and global mean atmospheric temperature from 1979 to the present may be due to the fact that the atmosphere underwent a jump in temperature in 1976 (before the satellite temperature series began), and that the surface response was delayed for about a decade due to the ocean heat capacity. The ocean delay depends on both climate sensitivity and vertical heat transport within the ocean. It is shown that the observed delay is best simulated when sensitivity to doubling of CO2 is less than about 1C.
Innovation in management consulting firms through informal knowledge sharing

– The purpose of this paper is to describe the main obstacles for innovation in Dutch consultancy firms by focusing on the strength of informal knowledge sharing as an avenue for innovation. , – This paper is the result of an empirical study based on in‐depth interviews with 29 consultants in the Netherlands. , – The process of innovation can be problematic in consultancy firms. Consultants do simply not find the time to innovate, since they are mainly rewarded for client related work (billable hours). In order to innovate consultants need to share knowledge with clients, colleague consultants and their experienced superiors. The knowledge sharing routes the consultant can use, as described in this paper, are: codified, formal knowledge and informal knowledge sharing. This paper claims that the most fruitful route to innovation is informal knowledge sharing. , – The importance of informal knowledge is supported by Hofstede's description of the Dutch business culture as being feminine, cultivating low power distance (low degree of inequality) and being highly individualistic. However, despite the support of the Dutch cultural setting, which supports informal knowledge sharing, this research describes the lack of management support in the innovation process as one of the main barriers to innovation.
QoE estimation models for tele-immersive applications

Tele-immersive applications, which are regarded as the next generation distributed multimedia applications, are highly interactive and aims to offer an immersive experience to its users. A challenge with such applications is to provide the best possible quality of experience (QoE) under changing conditions. In particular, it would be highly desirable to be able to predict the QoE perceived by users in response to adaptation, prior to actual deployment. However, there are no QoE prediction models for tele-immersive applications. Instead QoE is evaluated after deployment using either objective or subjective assessment techniques. Unfortunately, objective assessment lacks the accuracy of human perception. At the same time, subjective assessment requires human-provided ratings of the applications, which is time consuming and thus not cost-effective. In this paper, we propose QoE prediction models that will accurately predict the user-perceived QoE of a tele-immersive conferencing application. The proposed models are cost-effective and lend themselves to fast evaluation cycles, because the models does not involve human-provided ratings. We validate our models using results from subjective assessment experiments. The models can be used for real-time monitoring of user-perceived QoE, in addition to designing QoE-driven adaptation for tele-immersive applications.
An adaptive clustering routing algorithm for energy harvesting-wireless sensor networks

In order to address the influence caused by unstable and uneven harvested energy among sensor nodes for clustering routing in energy harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs), a novel clustering routing algorithm (CREW) is proposed in this work. The CREW is composed by cluster building phase and data transmission phase. In cluster building phase, the CREW uses two new concepts, Network Gradient and Waiting Time for cluster head Competition, to divide the network into unequal clusters and select the cluster heads based on residual energy and energy gain of nodes, respectively. In data transmission phase, it adopts an adaptive inter-cluster communication mechanism, to sufficiently store and utilize the harvesting energy. Finally, to verify the effectiveness of the proposed CREW, a series of experiments are conducted and compared with other related clustering routings for the EH-WSNs. Simulation results manifest that the CREW can provide effective clustering routing for the EH-WSNs and highlight the better performance of the proposed approach than that of similar techniques.
Fine‐needle aspiration of squamous‐lined cysts of the pancreas

Squamous‐lined cysts (SLC) in the pancreas are rare and include lymphoepithelial cysts (LEC), dermoid cysts (DC), and epidermoid cysts in heterotopic spleen (EC). Previously only rare case reports and small case series have been published describing the FNA findings in these entities. The departmental archives were searched for surgically excised SLC from the pancreas. Twenty‐five specimens were identified: 20 LEC, four EC, and one DC. Eight corresponding FNA specimens taken prior to resection were identified and available for review: seven LEC and one EC. A junior and senior pathologist reviewed the cases individually and then together for consensus. On morphological review, all lesions contained single nucleated and anucleated mature squamous cells, macrophages, and varying amounts of lymphocytes. Benign squamous fragments were found in half of all specimens. Amorphous debris was found in all cases. Keratin was found in all but two cases and its appearance varied among cases. Half of all cases contained cholesterol crystals. No nuclear atypia or necrosis was noted. Inspissated mucin, a potentially misleading finding, was seen in three cases. The most important goal in evaluating pancreatic cystic lesions is to exclude a mucin‐producing neoplasm. If features of a SLC are present, the differential diagnosis should include LEC, DC, and EC. Only 38% (3/8) cases had the most specific features of an SLC present (squamous fragments, cholesterol crystals, keratin, and squamous cells), which suggests that most cases will not be specifically identified on FNA even by experienced cytopathologists. Diagn. Cytopathol. 2014;42:592–599. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Histamine Regulates the Inflammatory Profile of SOD1-G93A Microglia and the Histaminergic System Is Dysregulated in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a late-onset motor neuron disease where activated glia release pro-inflammatory cytokines that trigger a vicious cycle of neurodegeneration in the absence of resolution of inflammation. Given the well-established role of histamine as a neuron-to-glia alarm signal implicated in brain disorders, the aim of this study was to investigate the expression and regulation of the histaminergic pathway in microglial activation in ALS mouse model and in humans. By examining the contribution of the histaminergic system to ALS, we found that particularly via H1 and H4 receptors, histamine promoted an anti-inflammatory profile in microglia from SOD1-G93A mice by modulating their activation state. A decrease in NF-κB and NADPH oxidase 2 with an increase in arginase 1 and P2Y12 receptor was induced by histamine only in the ALS inflammatory environment, but not in the healthy microglia, together with an increase in IL-6, IL-10, CD163, and CD206 phenotypic markers in SOD1-G93A cells. Moreover, histaminergic H1, H2, H3, and H4 receptors, and histamine metabolizing enzymes histidine decarboxylase, histamine N-methyltransferase, and diamine oxidase were found deregulated in spinal cord, cortex, and hypothalamus of SOD1-G93A mice during disease progression. Finally, by performing a meta-analysis study, we found a modulated expression of histamine-related genes in cortex and spinal cord from sporadic ALS patients. Our findings disclose that histamine acts as anti-inflammatory agent in ALS microglia and suggest a dysregulation of the histaminergic signaling in ALS.
Diverse novel functions of neutrophils in immunity, inflammation, and beyond

Neutrophils have long been considered simple suicide killers at the bottom of the hierarchy of the immune response. That view began to change 10–20 yr ago, when the sophisticated mechanisms behind how neutrophils locate and eliminate pathogens and regulate immunity and inflammation were discovered. The last few years witnessed a new wave of discoveries about additional novel and unexpected functions of these cells. Neutrophils have been proposed to participate in protection against intracellular pathogens such as viruses and mycobacteria. They have been shown to intimately shape the adaptive immune response at various levels, including marginal zone B cells, plasmacytoid dendritic cells and T cell populations, and even to control NK cell homeostasis. Neutrophils have been shown to mediate an alternative pathway of systemic anaphylaxis and to participate in allergic skin reactions. Finally, neutrophils were found to be involved in physiological and pathological processes beyond the immune system, such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, and thrombus formation. Many of those functions appear to be related to their unique ability to release neutrophil extracellular traps even in the absence of pathogens. This review summarizes those novel findings on versatile functions of neutrophils and how they change our view of neutrophil biology in health and disease.
Learning Word Embeddings from Speech

In this paper, we propose a novel deep neural network architecture, Sequence-to-Sequence Audio2Vec, for unsupervised learning of fixed-length vector representations of audio segments excised from a speech corpus, where the vectors contain semantic information pertaining to the segments, and are close to other vectors in the embedding space if their corresponding segments are semantically similar. The design of the proposed model is based on the RNN Encoder-Decoder framework, and borrows the methodology of continuous skip-grams for training. The learned vector representations are evaluated on 13 widely used word similarity benchmarks, and achieved competitive results to that of GloVe. The biggest advantage of the proposed model is its capability of extracting semantic information of audio segments taken directly from raw speech, without relying on any other modalities such as text or images, which are challenging and expensive to collect and annotate.
Draft Genome Sequence of the First NDM-1-Producing Providencia stuartii Strain Isolated in Portugal

ABSTRACT We report here the draft genome sequence of the first NDM-1-producing Providencia stuartii strain isolated in Portugal. Sequence analyses revealed the presence of an incompatibility group A/C2 (IncA/C2) plasmid and of diverse acquired genes conferring resistance to β-lactams, aminoglycosides, tetracycline, macrolides, chloramphenicol, and sulfonamides. This sequence contributes to the evaluation of the spread of NDM-1 producers.
Surface layer properties of ultrasonic impact–treated AA7075 aluminum alloy

In this work, surface layer properties of AA7075 aluminum alloys’ ultrasonic impact peened at different treatment times are investigated. Three different layers were found on the ultrasonic impact–treated surface of AA7075 aluminum alloys. The thicknesses of the layers increase with an increase in the treatment time or deformation amount. X-ray diffraction patterns indicate that the treated surfaces have no different phases from base material and are in the face-centered cubic phase. The highest hardness values of all treated AA7075 aluminum alloys were determined in nanocrystallization layer, which is the top layer of the surface because of the grain refinement and work hardening. A sharp increase at the residual stresses occurs, increasing the deformation time and amount because of the surface enlargement.
Injection of the subacromial-subdeltoid bursa: blind or ultrasound-guided?

Background Blind injection of the subacromial-sub-deltoid bursa (SSB) for diagnostic purposes (Neer test) or therapeutic purposes (corticosteroid therapy) is frequently used. Poor response to previous blind injection or side effects may be due to a misplaced injection. It is assumed that ultrasound (US)-guided injections are more accurate than blind injections. In a randomized study, we compared the accuracy of blind injection to that of US-guided injection into the SSB. Patients and methods 20 consecutive patients with impingement syndrome of the shoulder were randomized for blind or US-guided injection in the SSB. Injection was performed either by an experienced orthopedic surgeon or by an experienced musculoskeletal radiologist. A mixture of 1 m’L methylprednisolone acetate, 4 mL prilocaine hydrochloride and 0.02 mL (0.01 mmol) Gadolinium DTPA was injected. Immediately after injection, a 3D-gradient T1-weighted magnetic resonance scan of the shoulder was performed. The location of the injected fluid was independently assessed by 2 radiologists who were blinded as to the injection technique used. Results The accuracy of blind and US-guided injection was the same. The fluid was injected into the bursa in all cases. Interpretation Blind injection into the SSB is as reliable as US-guided injection and could therefore be used in daily routine. US-guided injections may offer a useful alternative in difficult cases, such as with changed anatomy postoperatively or when there is no effective clinical outcome.
Multiagent coverage algorithms with gossip communication: Control systems on the space of partitions

Deployment, coverage and partitioning are fundamental tasks for robotic networks. Recently proposed algorithms achieve these tasks under a critical assumption: information is exchanged synchronously among all agents and long-range communication is possibly required. This work proposes novel deployment and partitioning algorithms that require only asynchronous pairwise (so-called gossip) communication. Which robot pair communicates at any given time may be selected deterministically or randomly. A key novel idea is the description of the coverage control problem as a control system on the space of partitions - in other words, we study the evolution of the regions assigned to each agent, rather than the evolution of the agents' positions. The novel gossip algorithms are shown to converge to multicenter Voronoi partitions through various results of independent interest: we establish the compactness of the space of partitions, the continuity of certain geometric maps (e.g., the Voronoi and the centroid maps), and two convergence theorems for switching dynamical systems on metric spaces.
Preventive treatment of alveolar pulmonary edema of cardiogenic origin

Objective To evaluate the efficacy of preventive treatment (PT) on alveolar pulmonary edema (APE) of cardiogenic origin using a monitor based on principles of internal thoracic impedance (ITI) measurements. Methods We conducted blinded clinical trials on patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and monitored whether the condition would progress to APE. ITI was measured non-invasively by the Edema Guard Monitor (EGM, model RS-207) every 30 min. The measurement threshold for the diagnosis of APE was fixed at > 12% decrease in ITI from baseline as described in our methodology. The patients were divided into one group that received standard treatment after the appearance of clinical signs of APE without considering the prediction of APE by EGM devise (Group 1), and another group of asymptomatic patients in whom development of APE was predicted by using only EGM measurements (Group 2). The latter participants' PT consisted of furosemide, intravenous nitroglycerine and supplemental oxygen. Results One-hundred and fifty patients with acute STEMI were enrolled into this study. Group 1 included 100 patients (53% males, age 64.1 ± 12.6 years). Treatment was started after the clinical appearance of overt signs of APE. Group 2 included 50 patients (54% males, age 65.2 ± 11.9 years) who received PT based on EGM measurements. Group 2 had significantly fewer cases of APE (n = 4, 8%) than Group 1 (n = 100, 100%) (P > 0.001). While APE was lethal in six (6%) Group 1 patients, PT resulted in prompt resolution of APE in all four (8%) Group 2 patients. Conclusion ITI is a useful modality for early diagnosis and PT of pulmonary edema of cardiogenic origin.
2 Results on the number of maximal independent sets : 1-DISes

We study the existence and the number of k-dominating independent sets in certain graph families. While the case k = 1 namely the case of maximal independent sets which is originated from Erdős and Moser is widely investigated, much less is known in general. In this paper we settle the question for trees and prove that the maximum number of kdominating independent sets in n-vertex graphs is between ck · 2k √ 2 n and ck · k+1 √ 2 n if k ≥ 2, moreover the maximum number of 2-dominating independent sets in n-vertex graphs is between c · 1.22 and c′ · 1.246. Graph constructions containing a large number of kdominating independent sets are coming from product graphs, complete bipartite graphs and finite geometries. The product graph construction is associated with the number of certain MDS codes.
CD40L induces inflammation and adipogenesis in adipose cells – a potential link between metabolic and cardiovascular disease

Summary CD40L figures prominently in atherogenesis. Recent data demonstrate elevated levels of sCD40L in the serum of patients with the metabolic syndrome (MS). This study investigated the role of CD40L in pro-inflammatory gene expression and cellular differentiation in adipose tissue to obtain insight into mechanisms linking the MS with atherosclerosis. Human adipocytes and preadipocytes expressed CD40 but not CD40L. Stimulation with recombinant CD40L or membranes over-expressing CD40L induced a time- and dose-dependent expression of IL-6, MCP-1, IL-8, and PAI-1. Supernatants of CD40L-stimulated adipose cells activated endothelial cells, suggesting a systemic functional relevance of our findings. Neutralising antibodies against CD40L attenuated these effects substantially. Signalling studies revealed the involvement of mitogen-activated protein kinases and NFκB. Furthermore, stimulation with CD40L resulted in enhanced activation of C/EBPα and PPARγ and promoted adipogenesis of preadipose cells in the presence and absence of standard adipogenic conditions. Finally, patients suffering from the metabolic syndrome with high levels of sCD40L also displayed high levels of IL-6, in line with the concept that CD40L may induce the expression of inflammatory cytokines in vivo in this population. Our data reveal potent metabolic functions of CD40L aside from its known pivotal pro-inflammatory role within plaques. Our data suggest that CD40L may mediate risk at the interface of metabolic and atherothrombotic disease.
Acrolein, an α,β-Unsaturated Aldehyde, Irreversibly Inhibits the Acetylation of Aromatic Amine Xenobiotics by Human Arylamine N-Acetyltransferase 1

Acrolein is an electrophilic α,β-unsaturated aldehyde of industrial, pharmaceutic, and toxicologic importance to which we are exposed in environmental, occupational, and therapeutic situations. Acrolein is known to exert different biologic effects through reactions with cellular macromolecules such as DNA, certain proteins, or glutathione. In many situations (such as in tobacco smoke or other fumes), exposure to acrolein occurs concomitantly with other compounds such as aromatic amine chemicals. Interestingly, it has been shown that acrolein could impact the cellular metabolism of aromatic xenobiotics through an indirect mechanism based on the transcriptional induction of phase II xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes. Here we report a novel mechanism by which acrolein acts on the metabolism of aromatic foreign chemicals. We provide molecular, kinetic, and cellular evidence that acrolein can react directly and irreversibly with arylamine N-acetyltransferases, a major family of xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes involved in the metabolization of aromatic amine chemicals. Formation of an acrolein adduct with a catalytic cysteine residue in the active site is responsible for the impairment of aromatic amine acetylation by the enzyme. This biochemical process may represent an additional mechanism by which acrolein impacts the metabolism and fate of aromatic amine drugs and pollutants.
Histogram-based search: A comparative study

Histograms represent a popular means for feature representation. This paper is concerned with the problem of exhaustive histogram-based image search. Several standard histogram construction methods are explored, including the conventional approach, Huangpsilas method, and the state-of-the-art integral histogram. In addition, we present a novel multiscale histogram-based search algorithm, termed the distributive histogram, that can be evaluated exhaustively in a fast and memory efficient manner. An extensive systematic empirical evaluation is presented that explores the computational and storage consequences of altering the search image and histogram bin sizes. Experiments reveal up to an eight-fold decrease in computation time and hundreds- to thousands-fold decrease of memory use of the proposed distributive histogram in comparison to the integral histogram. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on the relative merits between the various approaches considered in the paper.
Mutual Coupling Reduction in Patch Antenna Arrays Using a UC-EBG Superstrate

Reducing mutual coupling between elements of an antenna array is one of the main topics in array designs. The use of electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures built by microstrip technology is an attractive way to mitigate the mutual coupling problem. This letter describes a novel configuration of uniplanar compact electromagnetic band-gap (UC-EBG) structures to reduce mutual coupling between the radiating elements. The idea is to use the UC-EBG structures placed on top of the antenna layer. The main objective is to reduce both the element separation and the mutual coupling between the patch antennas, which in turn increases antenna directivity. The proposed configuration eliminates drawbacks of similar structures presented in previous works.