Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Image enhancement variational methods for enabling strong cost reduction in OLED‐based point‐of‐care immunofluorescent diagnostic systems

Immunofluorescence diagnostic systems cost is often dominated by high‐sensitivity, low‐noise CCD‐based cameras that are used to acquire the fluorescence images. In this paper, we investigate the use of low‐cost CMOS sensors in a point‐of‐care immunofluorescence diagnostic application for the detection and discrimination of 4 different serotypes of the Dengue virus in a set of human samples. A 2‐phase postprocessing software pipeline is proposed, which consists in a first image‐enhancement stage for resolution increasing and segmentation and a second diagnosis stage for the computation of the output concentrations. We present a novel variational coupled model for the joint super‐resolution and segmentation stage and an automatic innovative image analysis for the diagnosis purpose. A specially designed forward backward–based numerical algorithm is introduced, and its convergence is proved under mild conditions. We present results on a cheap prototype CMOS camera compared with the results of a more expensive CCD device, for the detection of the Dengue virus with a low‐cost OLED light source. The combination of the CMOS sensor and the developed postprocessing software allows to correctly identify the different Dengue serotype using an automatized procedure. The results demonstrate that our diagnostic imaging system enables camera cost reduction up to 99%, at an acceptable diagnostic accuracy, with respect to the reference CCD‐based camera system. The correct detection and identification of the Dengue serotypes have been confirmed by standard diagnostic methods (RT‐PCR and ELISA).
Na+ absorption by Claudius' cells is regulated by purinergic signaling in the cochlea

Abstract Conclusion: Claudius' cells absorb Na+ through the amiloride-sensitive epithelial sodium channel (ENaC). Transepithelial ion transport through ENaC and possibly a Cl– secretory pathway is regulated by P2Y purinergic signaling. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate ion transport in Claudius' cells and its purinergic regulation. Methods: Young adult Sprague–Dawley rats and gerbils were studied. The Claudius' cell layer on the basilar membrane was dissected from the basal turn of the cochlea. A voltage-sensitive vibrating probe was used to measure transepithelial short circuit current (Isc ). The baseline Isc of Claudius' cells was measured in the perilymph-like control solution and the change of Isc after application of amiloride (10 μM) or uridine triphosphate (UTP, 100 μM). Results: A negative baseline Isc was observed in the control solution (–12.50 ± 3.95 μA/cm2, n = 8) and the addition of amiloride resulted in a decrease of Isc by 75.8%. The application of UTP, an agonist for P2Y purinergic receptors, led to a partial inhibition of Isc (by 38.2 ± 3.2%, n = 5), and subsequent addition of amiloride abolished the remaining Isc.
Second-line chemotherapy versus supportive cancer treatment in advanced gastric cancer: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Many patients with refractory or relapsed gastric cancer after first-line chemotherapy have received salvage chemotherapy in routine clinical practice. However, there was no evidence to support this treatment until recent phase III trials demonstrated substantial prolongation of overall survival. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis of these trials and investigated whether second-line chemotherapy was more effective than best supportive care. PATIENTS AND METHODS We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, Issue 1, 2013), MEDLINE (1950 to March week 4, 2013) and EMBASE (1980-2013, week 13). In addition, we searched all abstracts and virtual meeting presentations from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conferences held between 2004 and 2013. RESULTS The search process yielded 578 studies, two of which were randomized phase III trials that compared chemotherapy with supportive care. From the abstracts and virtual meeting presentations of ASCO held between 2004 and 2013, 127 abstracts were identified that evaluated second-line chemotherapy; only one relevant abstract was included in the meta-analysis. A total of 410 patients were eligible for analysis, of whom 150 received docetaxel chemotherapy, and 81 received irinotecan chemotherapy. A significant reduction in the risk of death [HR = 0.64, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.52-0.79, P < 0.0001] was observed with salvage chemotherapy. When the analysis was restricted to irinotecan or docetaxel, there was still significant reduction in the risk of death with each chemotherapeutic agent. The HR was 0.55 (95% CI 0.40-0.77, P = 0.0004) for irinotecan and 0.71 (95% CI 0.56-0.90, P = 0.004) for docetaxel. CONCLUSION This meta-analysis demonstrated evidence to support second-line chemotherapy in advanced gastric cancer.
Primary Cholesteatoma of the External Auditory Canal: Is the Epithelial Migration Defective?

Objective: Primary cholesteatoma of the external auditory canal (EACC) is a rare disease, characterized by osteonecrosis with formation of sequesters and ingrowth of keratinizing squamous epithelium in the bony EAC. The aetiology and pathogenesis are unknown, but an earlier study has demonstrated abnormal epithelial migration in such ears. The present study explored whether this interesting result can be reproduced. Study Design: The epithelial migration in 10 ears with EACC was studied using the ink-dot method. Two ears with minor lesions were studied before treatment, and 8 ears were studied after operation or conservative treatment. The results were compared with the migration in 15 normal ears examined in a previous study using the same method. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Main Outcome Measures: 1) Presence or absence of epithelial migration; 2) change of the normal centrifugal pattern; and 3) estimated migration speed compared with normal ears. Results: A qualitatively normal centrifugal migration was present on intact (unaffected or healed) skin in all 10 ears with EACC and was only missing directly on crust-covered lesions. The estimated migration speed was similar to the speed in normal ears, that is, approximately 150 &mgr;m/d. Conclusion: Ears with EACC seem to have qualitatively and quantitatively normal epithelial migration except directly on crust-covered lesions. It is unlikely that an abnormal epithelial migration is involved in the pathogenesis of this disease. These observations have implications for EAC disorders with similar clinical features that involve bony invasion, including osteoradionecrosis.
Informal caregiving in patients with brain tumors.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To explore the experience of informal caregivers of patients with a primary brain tumor by identifying themes of the caregiving experience specific to this population. RESEARCH APPROACH Qualitative study employing Parse's descriptive exploratory method. SETTING National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in a major city in the southern United States. PARTICIPANTS 20 patients with primary brain tumors and their caregivers. METHODOLOGIC APPROACH Data collection involved a tape-recorded dialogue with caregivers using Story Theory. Patient and caregiver demographic information was collected. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Concepts of commitment, expectation management, role negotiation, self-care, new insight, and role support. FINDINGS Caregivers of patients with primary brain tumors used the energy sources identified by the Model of Informal Caregiving Dynamics. Commitment is sustained through enduring patient cognitive and behavioral decline. Expectations are based on a realistic understanding of the disease trajectory and known mortality, and allow caregivers to hope for the ability to manage declining patients. Caregivers express difficulty in gauging the behavior of cognitively impaired patients. Healthcare providers support caregivers by supplying information and listening to caregivers' stories. In contrast to a similar study involving caregivers of bone marrow transplantation recipients, these caregivers reported negative perceptions. CONCLUSIONS Commitment, expectation management, role negotiation, self-care, new insight, and role support motivate informal caregivers of patients with primary brain tumors in a unique way. INTERPRETATION Healthcare providers can support the caregiving experience by validating efforts, providing information, and listening to frustrations. Additional research should explore interventions aimed at assisting caregivers.
Abundance of fluorescent biological aerosol particles at temperatures conducive to the formation of mixed-phase and cirrus clouds

Abstract. Some types of biological particles are known to nucleate ice at warmer temperatures than mineral dust, with the potential to influence cloud microphysical properties and climate. However, the prevalence of these particle types above the atmospheric boundary layer is not well known. Many types of biological particles fluoresce when exposed to ultraviolet light, and the Wideband Integrated Bioaerosol Sensor takes advantage of this characteristic to perform real-time measurements of fluorescent biological aerosol particles (FBAPs). This instrument was flown on the National Center for Atmospheric Research Gulfstream V aircraft to measure concentrations of fluorescent biological particles from different potential sources and at various altitudes over the US western plains in early autumn. Clear-air number concentrations of FBAPs between 0.8 and 12 µm diameter usually decreased with height and generally were about 10–100 L−1 in the continental boundary layer but always much lower at temperatures colder than 255 K in the free troposphere. At intermediate temperatures where biological ice-nucleating particles may influence mixed-phase cloud formation (255 K ≤ T ≤ 270 K), concentrations of fluorescent particles were the most variable and were occasionally near boundary-layer concentrations. Predicted vertical distributions of ice-nucleating particle concentrations based on FBAP measurements in this temperature regime sometimes reached typical concentrations of primary ice in clouds but were often much lower. If convection was assumed to lift boundary-layer FBAPs without losses to the free troposphere, better agreement between predicted ice-nucleating particle concentrations and typical ice crystal concentrations was achieved. Ice-nucleating particle concentrations were also measured during one flight and showed a decrease with height, and concentrations were consistent with a relationship to FBAPs established previously at the forested surface site below. The vertical distributions of FBAPs measured on five flights were also compared with those for bacteria, fungal spores, and pollen predicted from the EMAC global chemistry–climate model for the same geographic region.
Activation of Constitutive Androstane Receptor Ameliorates Renal Ischemia-Reperfusion–Induced Kidney and Liver Injury

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is associate with high mortality. Despite evidence of AKI-induced distant organ injury, a relationship between AKI and liver injury has not been clearly established. The goal of this study is to investigate whether renal ischemia-reperfusion (IR) can affect liver pathophysiology. We showed that renal IR in mice induced fatty liver and compromised liver function through the downregulation of constitutive androstane receptor (CAR; −90.4%) and inhibition of hepatic very-low-density lipoprotein triglyceride (VLDL-TG) secretion (−28.4%). Treatment of mice with the CAR agonist 1,4-bis[2-(3,5 dichloropyridyloxy)] benzene (TCPOBOP) prevented the development of AKI-induced fatty liver and liver injury, which was associated with the attenuation of AKI-induced inhibition of VLDL-TG secretion. The hepatoprotective effect of TCPOBOP was abolished in CAR−/− mice. Interestingly, alleviation of fatty liver by TCPOBOP also improved the kidney function, whereas CAR ablation sensitized mice to AKI-induced kidney injury and lethality. The serum concentrations of interleukin-6 (IL-6) were elevated by 27-fold after renal IR, but were normalized in TCPOBOP-treated AKI mice, suggesting that the increased release of IL-6 from the kidney may have mediated the AKI responsive liver injury. Taken together, our results revealed an interesting kidney-liver organ cross-talk in response to AKI. Given the importance of CAR in the pathogenesis of renal IR–induced fatty liver and impaired kidney function, fatty liver can be considered as an important risk factor for kidney injury, and a timely management of hepatic steatosis by CAR activation may help to restore kidney function in patients with AKI or kidney transplant.
Blends of poly(2,6‐dimethyl‐1,4‐phenylene oxide)/polyamide 6 toughened by maleated polystyrene‐based copolymers: Mechanical properties, morphology, and rheology

Poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide)/polyamide 6 (PPO/PA6 30/70) blends were impact modified by addition of three kinds of maleated polystyrene-based copolymers, i.e., maleated styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene copolymer (SEBS-g-MA), maleated methyl methacrylate-butadiene-styrene copolymer (MBS-g-MA), and maleated acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (ABS-g-MA). The mechanical properties, morphology and rheological behavior of the impact modified PPO/PA6 blends were investigated. The selective location of the maleated copolymers in one phase or at interface accounted for the different toughening effects of the maleated copolymer, which is closely related to their molecular structure and composition. SEBS-g-MA was uniformly dispersed in PPO phase and greatly toughened PPO/PA6 blends even at low temperature. MBS-g-MA particles were mainly dispersed in the PA6 phase and around the PPO phase, resulting in a significant enhancement of the notched Izod impact strength of PPO/PA6 blends from 45 J/m to 281 J/m at the MBS-g-MA content of 20 phr. In comparison, the ABS-g-MA was mainly dispersed in PA6 phase without much influencing the original mechanical properties of the PPO/PA6 blend. The different molecule structure and selective location of the maleated copolymers in the blends were reflected by the change of rheological behavior as well.
Compact low-cost five-band RF energy harvester using system-in-package integration

A compact five-band radio-frequency (RF) energy harvester (EH) using a system-in-package technique to take advantages of different technologies is proposed in this work. The RF EH is composed of five matching networks realized on a low-loss integrated-passive-devices (IPD) carrier and five rectifiers on a 0.18-μm CMOS chip. The CMOS chip is flipped and bonded to the IPD carrier through low-loss interconnects so that each on-chip rectifier can be integrated with an on-carrier matching network to support one of five band operations. High-g IPD passive components are employed to realize the matching networks. This not only provides a compact and low-cost solution, but the matching network can also give a high voltage gain to enhance the EH dc-to-RF conversion efficiency η. Native devices with a low threshold voltage provided by the 0.18-μm CMOS technology are chosen to improve the rectifier sensitivity. The proposed RF EH can give measured output voltages of 1.75, 1.77, 1.23, 1.19, and 1.26 V with n of 15.4, 15.7, 7.6, 7.1, and 8.0% at 0.74, 0.89, 1.8, 2.12, and 2.36 GHz, respectively, as the input RF power is −14 dBm and the load resistance is 500 kΩ. The proposed RF EH only occupies a 16.56 mm2 area.
Robust Automatic Speech Recognition Features using Complex Wavelet Packet Transform Coefficients

To improve the performance of phoneme based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) in noisy environment; we developed a new technique that could add robustness to clean phonemes features. These robust features are obtained from Complex Wavelet Packet Transform (CWPT) coefficients. Since the CWPT coefficients represent all different frequency bands of the input signal, decomposing the input signal into complete CWPT tree would also cover all frequencies involved in recognition process. For time overlapping signals with different frequency contents, e. g. phoneme signal with noises, its CWPT coefficients are the combination of CWPT coefficients of phoneme signal and CWPT coefficients of noises. The CWPT coefficients of phonemes signal would be changed according to frequency components contained in noises. Since the numbers of phonemes in every language are relatively small (limited) and already well known, one could easily derive principal component vectors from clean training dataset using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). These principal component vectors could be used then to add robustness and minimize noises effects in testing phase. Simulation results, using Alpha Numeric 4 (AN4) from Carnegie Mellon University and NOISEX-92 examples from Rice University, showed that this new technique could be used as features extractor that improves the robustness of phoneme based ASR systems in various adverse noisy conditions and still preserves the performance in clean environments.
Sensing and actuating behaviours of piezoelectric layers with debonding in smart beams

This paper presents an analytical model for investigating the effect of debonding between piezoelectric actuators/sensors and the host beam on the sensing and actuating behaviour. In this model, both flexural and longitudinal displacements of the host beam and the piezoelectric layers are considered using classical beam theory. For the adhesive layer, only through-thickness peel strain and transverse shear strain are taken into account, and they are assumed to be constant across the adhesive thickness. When a debonding occurs between the host beam and an actuator or sensor, the stresses transferred via the adhesive layer are assumed to be zero. Using this model, the effects of debonding on the sensing and actuating behaviour are examined. Numerical results reveal that debonding can have remarkable effects on the distributions of strains and internal forces as well as frequency spectrum and charge output.
A Visualization-based Approach for the TaxonomyBrowser Interface

The process of collecting biological data is a continuous activity, specially in field work for research projects or teaching activities. Data obtained from these collecting activities need to be properly stored in order to be readily available for future analysis. TaxonomyBrowser is a biodiversity information system mainly developed to manage data collected by biologists during field work. It stores such data on a database organized according the taxonomic tree of leaving species. This work describes a new approach for the TaxonomyBrowser's user interface, focusing on providing an easier and more intuitive method of managing and visualizing the information stored in such databases. The approach was assessed by means of a survey conducted with users from the field of study as well as users with no knowledge on biodiversity information systems. The participants considered the application to be good and mostly provided positive feedback.
Mechanical Properties and Durability of Ultra High Strength Concrete Incorporating Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

In this work, the effect of the addition of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on the mechanical properties and durability of ultra high strength concrete (UHSC) is reported. First, the MWCNTs were dispersed by a nano sand-mill in the presence of a surfactant in water. The UHSC specimens were prepared with various amounts of MWCNTs, ranging from 0% to 0.15% by weight of cement (bwoc). Results indicated that use of an optimal percentage of MWCNTs (0.05% bwoc) caused a 4.63% increase in compressive strength and a 24.0% decrease in chloride diffusion coefficient of UHSC at 28 days curing. Moreover, the addition of MWCNTs also improved the flexural strength and deformation ability. Furthermore, a field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) was used to observe the dispersion of MWCNTs in the cement matrix and morphology of the hardened cement paste containing MWCNTs. FE-SEM observation revealed that MWCNTs were well dispersed in the matrix and no agglomerate was found and the reinforcing effect of MWCNTs on UHSC was thought to be pulling out and microcrack bridging of MWCNTs, which transferred the load in tension.
Relational Experiences in School-Based Mentoring

In this study, we examined associations between mentoring relationship quality, rejection sensitivity, and youth outcomes. Participants (N = 446) were part of a national, random assignment evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America school-based mentoring programs. Youth in more trusting mentoring relationships demonstrated reductions in teacher-reported behavioral evidence of rejection sensitivity. These reductions, in turn, were positively associated with youth’s assertiveness with peers and prosocial behavior. Percentile bootstrap confidence intervals testing indirect effects demonstrated that rejection sensitivity mediated the association between mentoring relationship trust and teacher-reported assertiveness and prosocial behavior. Implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed.
Regional contributions to particulate matter concentration in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea: seasonal variation and sensitivity to meteorology and emissions inventory

Abstract. The impact of regional emissions (e.g., domestic and international) on surface particulate matter (PM) concentrations in the Seoul metropolitan area (SMA), South Korea, and its sensitivities to meteorology and emissions inventories are quantitatively estimated for 2014 using regional air quality modeling systems. Located on the downwind side of strong sources of anthropogenic emissions, South Korea bears the full impact of the regional transport of pollutants and their precursors. However, the impact of foreign emissions sources has not yet been fully documented. We utilized two regional air quality simulation systems: (1) a Weather Research and Forecasting and Community Multi-Scale Air Quality (CMAQ) system and (2) a United Kingdom Met Office Unified Model and CMAQ system. The following combinations of emissions inventories are used: the Intercontinental Chemical Transport Experiment-Phase B, the Inter-comparison Study for Asia 2010, and the National Institute of Environment Research Clean Air Policy Support System. Partial contributions of domestic and foreign emissions are estimated using a brute force approach, adjusting South Korean emissions to 50 %. Results show that foreign emissions contributed ∼ 60 % of SMA surface PM concentration in 2014. Estimated contributions display clear seasonal variation, with foreign emissions having a higher impact during the cold season (fall to spring), reaching ∼ 70 % in March, and making lower contributions in the summer, ∼ 45 % in September. We also found that simulated surface PM concentration is sensitive to meteorology, but estimated contributions are mostly consistent. Regional contributions are also found to be sensitive to the choice of emissions inventories.