Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Notice of RetractionExperimental analysis of the single-phase heat transfer and friction factor inside the horizontal internally micro-fin tube

To increase heat transfer, internally micro-fin tubes are widely used in commercial HVAC applications. It is commonly understood that the micro-fin enhances heat transfer but at the same time increases the pressure drop as well. In the previous studies, majority of the works were focused on the development of correlations in a particular flow regime, especially in the turbulent region. There are only a few works that fundamentally studied the continuous change in the characteristic behavior of heat transfer and pressure drop from laminar to transition and eventually the turbulent regions. Therefore, more in-depth study is necessary. In this study, heat transfer and pressure drop were measured simultaneously in a single test section and compared with the data of a plain tube. From the results, the transition from laminar to turbulent was clearly established. The transition from laminar to turbulent was found to be inlet dependent. Furthermore, it was observed that the buoyancy effect is present in the laminar region. The efficiency index (the ratio of the heat transfer and the friction factor of enhanced tube to those variables for the plain tube) was examined and it was found to have a value larger than one when Reynolds number is larger than 5000 regardless of the type of inlet configuration used. Therefore, the application of the micro-fin tube used in this study is suitable when Reynolds number is larger than 5000.
A survey of etiologic hypotheses among testicular cancer researchers

Basic research results can provide new ideas and hypotheses to be examined in epidemiological studies. We conducted a survey among testicular cancer researchers on hypotheses concerning the etiology of this malignancy. All researchers on the mailing list of Copenhagen Testis Cancer Workshops and corresponding authors of PubMed‐indexed articles identified by the search term ‘testicular cancer’ and published within 10 years (in total 2750 recipients) were invited to respond to an e‐mail‐based survey. Participants of the 8th Copenhagen Testis Cancer Workshop in May 2014 were subsequently asked to rate the plausibility of the suggested etiologic hypotheses on a scale of 1 (very implausible) to 10 (very plausible). This report describes the methodology of the survey, the score distributions by individual hypotheses, hypothesis group, and the participants’ major research fields, and discuss the hypotheses that scored as most plausible. We also present plans for improving the survey that may be repeated at a next international meeting of experts in testicular cancer. Overall 52 of 99 (53%) registered participants of the 8th Copenhagen Testis Cancer Workshop submitted the plausibility rating form. Fourteen of 27 hypotheses were related to exposures during pregnancy. Hypotheses with the highest mean plausibility ratings were either related to pre‐natal exposures or exposures that might have an effect during pregnancy and in post‐natal life. The results of the survey may be helpful for triggering more specific etiologic hypotheses that include factors related to endocrine disruption, DNA damage, inflammation, and nutrition during pregnancy. The survey results may stimulate a multidisciplinary discussion about new etiologic hypotheses of testicular cancer.
Evaluation of Candidate Genes from Orphan FEB and GEFS+ Loci by Analysis of Human Brain Gene Expression Atlases

Febrile seizures, or febrile convulsions (FEB), represent the most common form of childhood seizures and are believed to be influenced by variations in several susceptibility genes. Most of the associated loci, however, remain ‘orphan’, i.e. the susceptibility genes they contain still remain to be identified. Further orphan loci have been mapped for a related disorder, genetic (generalized) epilepsy with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+). We show that both spatially mapped and ‘traditional’ gene expression data from the human brain can be successfully employed to predict the most promising candidate genes for FEB and GEFS+, apply our prediction method to the remaining orphan loci and discuss the validity of the predictions. For several of the orphan FEB/GEFS+ loci we propose excellent, and not always obvious, candidates for mutation screening in order to aid in gaining a better understanding of the genetic origin of the susceptibility to seizures.
“I pick you”: the impact of fairness and race on infants’ selection of social partners

By 15 months of age infants are sensitive to violations of fairness norms as assessed via their enhanced visual attention to unfair versus fair outcomes in violation-of-expectation paradigms. The current study investigated whether 15-month-old infants select social partners on the basis of prior fair versus unfair behavior, and whether infants integrate social selections on the basis of fairness with the race of the distributors and recipients involved in the exchange. Experiment 1 demonstrated that after witnessing one adult distribute toys to two recipients fairly (2:2 distribution), and another adult distribute toys to two recipients unfairly (1:3 distribution), Caucasian infants selected fair over unfair distributors when both distributors were Caucasian; however, this preference was not present when the fair actor was Asian and the unfair actor was Caucasian. In Experiment 2, when fairness, the race of the distributor, and the race of the recipients were fully crossed, Caucasian infants’ social selections varied as a function of the race of the recipient advantaged by the unfair distributor. Specifically, infants were more likely to select the fair distributor when the unfair recipient advantaged the Asian (versus the Caucasian) recipient. These findings provide evidence that infants select social partners on the basis of prior fair behavior and that infants also take into account the race of distributors and recipients when making their social selections.
Speech disruptions in the narratives of English-speaking children with specific language impairment.

PURPOSE This study examined the types, frequencies, and distribution of speech disruptions in the spoken narratives of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their age-matched (CA) and language-matched (LA) peers. METHOD Twenty 4th-grade children with SLI, 20 typically developing CA children, and 20 younger typically developing LA children were included in this study. Speech disruptions (i.e., silent pauses and vocal hesitations) occurring in the narratives of these children were analyzed. RESULTS Children with SLI exhibited speech disruption rates that were higher than those of their age-matched peers but not higher than those of their language-matched peers. The difference in disruption rates between the SLI and CA groups was restricted to silent pauses of 500-1000 ms. Moreover, children with SLI produced more speech disruptions than their peers before phrases but not before sentences, clauses, or words. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that there is a relationship between language ability and speech disruptions. Higher disruption rates at phrase boundaries in children with SLI than in their age-matched peers reflect lexical and syntactic deficits in children with SLI.
Problem Girls: Understanding and Supporting Troubled and Troublesome Girls and Young Women

Introduction: Why We Need a Book about Problem Girls 1. Not Knowing their Place: Girls' Classroom Behaviour 2. Feeling Under Pressure: Low-Income Girls Negotiating School Life 3. Girls' Mental Health Problems: Often Hidden, Sometimes Unrecognised 4. Exploring the Psychological Landscape of 'Problem' Girls: Embodiment, Relationship and Agency 5. 'Violent Girls': Same or Different from 'Other' Girls 6. Growing Up Mean: Covert Aggression and the Policing of Girlhood 7. The Trouble With Sex: Sexuality and Subjectivity in the Lives of Teenage Girls 8. Black Femininities Go to School: How Young Black Females Navigate Race and Gender 9. Girls in Trouble in the Child Welfare and Criminal Justice System 10. 'EBD Girls': A Critical View 11. 'I Was Never Really There': Reflecting on Girls' Non-Participation in School 12. Engaging Girls' Voices: Learning as Social Practice 13. "My Special Little House": Reforming the Risky Geographies of Middle School Girls at Clifftop College. Afterword: 'Problem' Girls - A Complex Picture
Does pancreaticosplenectomy contribute to better survival?

BACKGROUND/AIMS This study was conducted to clarify the impact of pancreaticosplenectomy on the prognosis of patients with gastric carcinoma. METHODOLOGY Two hundred and seventy-two patients who underwent total gastrectomy with distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS Lymph node metastases at the splenic hilum (#10) and along the splenic artery (#11) occurred in 12.4% and 19.2% of cases, respectively. The 5-year survival rate of those without metastasis at #10 was 62.8%. Once nodal metastasis occurred, the prognosis became very poor; only 18.2% in those with a single positive node and 15.4% of those with two or more positive nodes at this location survived 5 years. Similar trends in survival were observed with respect to nodes at #11. When stratified by nodal status as currently determined by microscopic examination, pancreaticosplenectomy saved 4.5% of patients with positive nodes, but was insufficient in 17.3% of cases and was not necessary in the 78.2% of cases who were node negative at these locations. CONCLUSIONS The data indicate that pancreaticosplenectomy can save some patients with positive nodes in these regions; however, the small survival benefit does not provide a basis for the general application of this highly morbid procedure. To further evaluate these results in a randomized study, selection of a subset of patients who are likely to have metastasis is the key.
Handbook of Knowledge Representation Edited Knowledge Representation and Question Answering

20.1 Introduction Consider an intelligence analyst who has a large body of documents of various kinds. He would like answers to some of his questions based on the information in these documents, general knowledge available in compilations such as fact books, and com-monsense. A search engine or a typical information retrieval (IR) system like Google does not go far enough as it takes keywords and only gives a ranked list of documents which may contain those keywords. Often this list is very long and the analyst still has to read the documents in the list. Other reasons behind the unsuitability of an IR system (for an analyst) are that the nuances of a question in a natural language cannot be adequately expressed through keywords, most IR systems ignore synonyms, and most IR systems cannot reason. What the intelligence analyst would like is a system that can take the documents and the analyst's question as input, that can access the data in fact books, and that can do commonsense reasoning based on them to provide answers to questions. Such a system is referred to as a question answering system or a QA system. Systems of this type are useful in many domains besides intelligence analysis. Examples include a Biologist who needs answers to his questions, say about a particular set of genes and what is known about their functions and interactions, based on the published literature; a lawyer looking for answers from a body of past law cases; and a patent attorney looking for answers from a patent database. A precursor to question answering is database querying where one queries a database using a database query language. Question Answering takes this to a whole other dimension where the system has increasing body of documents (in natural languages, possibly including multimedia objects and possibly situated in the web and described in a web language) and it is asked a query in natural language. It is expected to give an answer to the question, not only using the documents, but also using appropriate com-monsense knowledge. Moreover, the system needs to be able to accommodate new additions to the body of documents. The interaction with a question answering system
TLR9 Activation Is Triggered by the Excess of Stimulatory versus Inhibitory Motifs Present in Trypanosomatidae DNA

DNA sequences purified from distinct organisms, e.g. non vertebrate versus vertebrate ones, were shown to differ in their TLR9 signalling properties especially when either mouse bone marrow-derived- or human dendritic cells (DCs) are probed as target cells. Here we found that the DC-targeting immunostimulatory property of Leishmania major DNA is shared by other Trypanosomatidae DNA, suggesting that this is a general trait of these eukaryotic single-celled parasites. We first documented, in vitro, that the low level of immunostimulatory activity by vertebrate DNA is not due to its limited access to DCs' TLR9. In addition, vertebrate DNA inhibits the activation induced by the parasite DNA. This inhibition could result from the presence of competing elements for TLR9 activation and suggests that DNA from different species can be discriminated by mouse and human DCs. Second, using computational analysis of genomic DNA sequences, it was possible to detect the presence of over-represented inhibitory and under-represented stimulatory sequences in the vertebrate genomes, whereas L. major genome displays the opposite trend. Interestingly, this contrasting features between L. major and vertebrate genomes in the frequency of these motifs are shared by other Trypanosomatidae genomes (Trypanosoma cruzi, brucei and vivax). We also addressed the possibility that proteins expressed in DCs could interact with DNA and promote TLR9 activation. We found that TLR9 is specifically activated with L. major HMGB1-bound DNA and that HMGB1 preferentially binds to L. major compared to mouse DNA. Our results highlight that both DNA sequence and vertebrate DNA-binding proteins, such as the mouse HMGB1, allow the TLR9-signaling to be initiated and achieved by Trypanosomatidae DNA.
Simon congruency effects based on stimulus and response numerosity

Three choice reaction time experiments documented a Simon-type congruence effect involving the numbers of stimuli and responses. In Experiment 1 the stimulus consisted of one or two high- or low-pitch tones, and participants were required to respond with one or two taps of a response key depending on stimulus pitch. Responses were faster when the number of tones matched the required number of response taps than when these numbers mismatched. Experiment 2 showed that a weaker version of this effect can also be obtained using visual stimuli, and Experiment 3 showed that the analogous effect can even be obtained, albeit very weakly, with bimodal stimuli. There was also evidence that the number of stimuli affected the rate of emitting the two-tap response. These results indicate that stimulus numerosity is processed automatically to the level at which it can affect the selection and possibly the execution of a varying number of responses.
Synergy of fosmidomycin (FR-31564) and other antimicrobial agents

Fosmidomycin (FR-31564), a phosphonic acid derivative, was combined with cefazolin, cephalexin, ampicillin, carbenicillin, ticarcillin, gentamicin, and trimethoprim. Synergy between fosmidomycin and penicillins or cephalosporins was found for 37 to 52% of the Enterobacteriaceae tested. Synergy with trimethoprim was found against 55% of bacteria isolated, but only 17% of the strains showed synergy between formidomycin and gentamicin. Synergy between fosmidomycin and ticarcillin was shown for 35% of the Pseudomonas isolates. Cefazolin-, ampicillin-, and gentamicin-resistant isolates of various species were synergistically inhibited by fosmidomycin, as were ticarcillin- and gentamicin-resistant isolates. Antagonism was not encountered. This study illustrates another example of synergistic activity of compounds which attack different mechanisms in bacterial cells.
Balanced Excitation and Inhibition Determine Spike Timing during Frequency Adaptation

In layer 4 (L4) of the rat barrel cortex, a single whisker deflection evokes a stereotyped sequence of excitation followed by inhibition, hypothesized to result in a narrow temporal window for spike output. However, awake rats sweep their whiskers across objects, activating the cortex at frequencies known to induce short-term depression at both excitatory and inhibitory synapses within L4. Although periodic whisker deflection causes a frequency-dependent reduction of the cortical response magnitude, whether this adaptation involves changes in the relative balance of excitation and inhibition and how these changes might impact the proposed narrow window of spike timing in L4 is unknown. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that spike output in L4 is determined precisely by the dynamic interaction of excitatory and inhibitory conductances. Furthermore, we show that periodic whisker deflection results in balanced adaptation of the magnitude and timing of excitatory and inhibitory input to L4 neurons. This balanced adaptation mediates a reduction in spike output while preserving the narrow time window of spike generation, suggesting that L4 circuits are calibrated to maintain relative levels of excitation and inhibition across varying magnitudes of input.
Chloroplast Retrograde Regulation of Heat Stress Responses in Plants

It is well known that intracellular signaling from chloroplast to nucleus plays a vital role in stress responses to survive environmental perturbations. The chloroplasts were proposed as sensors to heat stress since components of the photosynthetic apparatus housed in the chloroplast are the major targets of thermal damage in plants. Thus, communicating subcellular perturbations to the nucleus is critical during exposure to extreme environmental conditions such as heat stress. By coordinating expression of stress specific nuclear genes essential for adaptive responses to hostile environment, plants optimize different cell functions and activate acclimation responses through retrograde signaling pathways. The efficient communication between plastids and the nucleus is highly required for such diverse metabolic and biosynthetic functions during adaptation processes to environmental stresses. In recent years, several putative retrograde signals released from plastids that regulate nuclear genes have been identified and signaling pathways have been proposed. In this review, we provide an update on retrograde signals derived from tetrapyrroles, carotenoids, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and organellar gene expression (OGE) in the context of heat stress responses and address their roles in retrograde regulation of heat-responsive gene expression, systemic acquired acclimation, and cellular coordination in plants.
A High Performance Biometric System Based on Image Morphological Analysis

At present, many of the algorithms used and proposed for digital imaging biometric systems are based on mathematical complex models, and this fact is directly related to the performance of any computer implementation of these algorithms. On the other hand, as they are conceived for general purpose digital imaging, these algorithms do not take advantage of any common morphological features from its given domains. In this paper we developed a novel algorithm for the segmentation of the pupil and iris in human eye images, whose improvement’s hope lies in the use of morphological features of the images of the human eye. Based on the basic structure of a standard biometric system we developed and implemented an innovation for each phase of the system, avoiding the use of mathematical complex models and exploiting some common features in any digital image of the human eye from the dataset that we used. Finally, we compared the testing results against other known state of the art works developed over the same dataset.
Generalized string topology operations

We show that the Chas–Sullivan loop product, a combination of the Pontrjagin product on the fiber and the intersection product on the base, makes sense on the total space homology of any fiberwise monoid E over a closed oriented manifold M. More generally, the Thom spectrum E−TM is a ring spectrum. Similarly, a fiberwise module over E defines a module over E−TM. Fiberwise monoids include adjoint bundles of principal bundles, and the construction is natural with respect to maps of principal bundles. This naturality implies homotopy invariance of the algebra structure on H*(LM) arising from the loop product. If M=BG is the infinite‐dimensional classifying space of a compact Lie group, then we get a well‐defined pro‐ring spectrum, which we define to be the string topology of BG. If E has a fiberwise action of the little n‐cubes operad then E−TM is an En‐ring spectrum. This gives homology operations combining Dyer–Lashof operations on the fiber and the Poincaré duals of Steenrod operations on the base. We give several examples where the new operations give homological insight, borrowed from knot theory, complex geometry, gauge theory, and homotopy theory.
IRF4-Dependent and IRF4-Independent Pathways Contribute to DC Dysfunction in Lupus

Interferon Regulatory Factors (IRFs) play fundamental roles in dendritic cell (DC) differentiation and function. In particular, IRFs are critical transducers of TLR signaling and dysregulation in this family of factors is associated with the development of autoimmune disorders such as Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). While several IRFs are expressed in DCs their relative contribution to the aberrant phenotypic and functional characteristics that DCs acquire in autoimmune disease has not been fully delineated. Mice deficient in both DEF6 and SWAP-70 (= Double-knock-out or DKO mice), two members of a unique family of molecules that restrain IRF4 function, spontaneously develop a lupus-like disease. Although autoimmunity in DKO mice is accompanied by dysregulated IRF4 activity in both T and B cells, SWAP-70 is also known to regulate multiple aspects of DC biology leading us to directly evaluate DC development and function in these mice. By monitoring Blimp1 expression and IL-10 competency in DKO mice we demonstrate that DCs in these mice exhibit dysregulated IL-10 production, which is accompanied by aberrant Blimp1 expression in the spleen but not in the peripheral lymph nodes. We furthermore show that DCs from these mice are hyper-responsive to multiple TLR ligands and that IRF4 plays a differential role in in these responses by being required for the TLR4-mediated but not the TLR9-mediated upregulation of IL-10 expression. Thus, DC dysfunction in lupus-prone mice relies on both IRF4-dependent and IRF4-independent pathways.