Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of the Characters of Chitosans Used and Regeneration Conditions on the Yield and Physicochemical Characteristics of Regenerated Products

The objective of this study was to explore the effect of the character of chitosans used, and the regeneration conditions employed on, the yield and physicochemical characteristics of regenerated products. Different concentrations of acetic acid were used to dissolve chitosans of 61.7% and 94.9% degree of deacetylation (DD), and weight-average molecular weight (Mw) of 176 and 97 kDa, respectively; they were then precipitated with an 8 N NaOH solution, followed by washing and neutral and freeze drying to get the regenerated products. Yields of regenerated products and their physicochemical properties, such as ash content, bulk density, Mw, polydispersity index (PDI), DD, and crystallinity were measured. A higher concentration of acetic acid used resulted in a higher yield. The purity of the regenerated product increased significantly, whereas the bulk density and crystallinity decreased significantly after regeneration. The regeneration process showed its merits of narrowing down the PDI of regenerated products. The DD and structure of chitosan was changed insignificantly after the regeneration process.
Medical databases in studies of drug teratogenicity: methodological issues

More than half of all pregnant women take prescription medications, raising concerns about fetal safety. Medical databases routinely collecting data from large populations are potentially valuable resources for cohort studies addressing teratogenicity of drugs. These include electronic medical records, administrative databases, population health registries, and teratogenicity information services. Medical databases allow estimation of prevalences of birth defects with enhanced precision, but systematic error remains a potentially serious problem. In this review, we first provide a brief description of types of North American and European medical databases suitable for studying teratogenicity of drugs and then discuss manifestation of systematic errors in teratogenicity studies based on such databases. Selection bias stems primarily from the inability to ascertain all reproductive outcomes. Information bias (misclassification) may be caused by paucity of recorded clinical details or incomplete documentation of medication use. Confounding, particularly confounding by indication, can rarely be ruled out. Bias that either masks teratogenicity or creates false appearance thereof, may have adverse consequences for the health of the child and the mother. Biases should be quantified and their potential impact on the study results should be assessed. Both theory and software are available for such estimation. Provided that methodological problems are understood and effectively handled, computerized medical databases are a valuable source of data for studies of teratogenicity of drugs.
Effective safety property checking using simulation-based sequential ATPG

In this paper, we present a successful application of a simulation-based sequential Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) for safety property verification, with the target on verifying safety property of large, industrial-strength, hardware designs for which current formal methods fail. Several techniques are developed to increase the effectiveness and efficiency during state exploration and justification of the test generator for verification, including (1) incorporation of a small combinational ATPG engine, (2) reset signal masking, (3) threshold-value simulation, and (4) weighted Hamming distance. Experimental results on both ISCAS89 benchmark circuits and real industry circuits have shown that this simulation-based verifier achieves better or comparable results to current state-of-the-art formal verification tools BINGO and CHAFF.
Dual role for mitogen-activated protein kinase (Erk) in insulin-dependent regulation of Fra-1 (fos-related antigen-1) transcription and phosphorylation.

Insulin regulates the activity of the AP-1 (activator protein-1) transcriptional complex in several cell types. One component of the AP-1 complex is the transcription factor Fra-1 (fos-related antigen-1), and we have demonstrated previously that insulin stimulates the expression of Fra-1 mRNA in CHO.T cells [Griffiths, Black, Culbert, Dickens, Shaw, Gillespie and Tavaré (1998) Biochem. J. 335, 19-26]. Here we demonstrate that insulin stimulates the activity of a fra-1 promoter linked to a luciferase reporter gene, indicating that the ability of insulin to induce expression of Fra-1 mRNA is due, at least in part, to an increase in gene transcription. Furthermore, we found that insulin induces the serine phosphorylation of Fra-1 and reduces its mobility during SDS/PAGE as a result of phosphorylation. The ability of insulin to induce the accumulation of Fra-1 mRNA, stimulate the fra-1 promoter and stimulate phosphorylation of Fra-1 all require the mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase cascade, which leads to the activation of extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (Erk) 1/2. Consequently, our results demonstrate that the Erk cascade plays a dual role in the co-ordinated regulation of the transcription and the phosphorylation of Fra-1 by insulin.
Smartphone use and smartphone addiction among young people in Switzerland

Background and Aims Smartphone addiction, its association with smartphone use, and its predictors have not yet been studied in a European sample. This study investigated indicators of smartphone use, smartphone addiction, and their associations with demographic and health behaviour-related variables in young people. Methods A convenience sample of 1,519 students from 127 Swiss vocational school classes participated in a survey assessing demographic and health-related characteristics as well as indicators of smartphone use and addiction. Smartphone addiction was assessed using a short version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale for Adolescents (SAS-SV). Logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate demographic and health-related predictors of smartphone addiction. Results Smartphone addiction occurred in 256 (16.9%) of the 1,519 students. Longer duration of smartphone use on a typical day, a shorter time period until first smartphone use in the morning, and reporting that social networking was the most personally relevant smartphone function were associated with smartphone addiction. Smartphone addiction was more prevalent in younger adolescents (15–16 years) compared with young adults (19 years and older), students with both parents born outside Switzerland, persons reporting lower physical activity, and those reporting higher stress. Alcohol and tobacco consumption were unrelated to smartphone addiction. Discussion Different indicators of smartphone use are associated with smartphone addiction and subgroups of young people have a higher prevalence of smartphone addiction. Conclusions The study provides the first insights into smartphone use, smartphone addiction, and predictors of smartphone addiction in young people from a European country, which should be extended in further studies.
Hardness Estimation of Minerals, Rocks and Ceramic Materials

1. Introduction. 2. Hardness in Materials Estimation. 3. Introduction to Crystallochemical Theory of Minerals and Crystalline Phase Hardness. 4. Classification of Hardness Test Methods according to the Mode of Action on Sample under Test. 5. Hardness as Influenced by Chemical and Phase Composition and by Structure and Texture. 6. Mechanical Destruction of Materials under Load and the Influence on Interpretation and Results of Measurement. 7. Hardness Anisotropy. 8. Usefulness of Impact Abrasion Hardness Method. 9. Non-Destructive Sonic Method for Hardness Measurement of Brittle Materials. 10. Useful Hardness Measurement Methods for Hard Materials in Grit Form. List of Symbols. Appendix. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.
Strengths and toughnesses of some PM steels consolidated by rotary forging and sintering

Abstract Tensile properties, impact energies, and resistances to crack propagation have been assessed for some common PM steels which have been consolidated by rotary compaction and sintering. Relative densities of 0·93 to 0·98 were obtained. Properties were in accord with those of the same materials produced by other means to the same densities. Relationships between yield strengths and toughnesses fit neither with extrapolations from lower densities nor with expectations for fully dense steels. Potential reasons for this observation are proposed.
Adjusting the Outputs of a Classifier to New a Priori Probabilities May Significantly Improve Classification Accuracy: Evidence from a multi-class problem in remote sensing

In the present study, we introduce a simple iterative procedure that allows to correct the outputs of a classifier with respect to the new a priori probabilities of a new data set to be scored, even when these new a priori probabilities are unknown in advance. We also show that a significant increase in classification accuracy can be observed when using this procedure properly. More specifically, by applying the correcting procedure to the outputs of a simple logistic regression model, we observe an increase of 5.8% of classification rate on a difficult real-world multi-class problem – the automatic labeling of geographical maps based on remote sensing information. Moreover, the resulting classifier – the logistic regression model whose outputs have been adjusted according to our procedure – outperformed by more that 4% all of our previous models in terms of classification accuracy, including Bagfs (a multiple classifier system based on C4.5 decision trees), the best obtained model up-to-now.
Video summarization by curve simplification

Abstract : A video sequence can be represented as a trajectory curve in a high dimensional feature space. This video curve can be analyzed by tools similar to those developed for planar curves. In particular, the classic binary curve splitting algorithm has been found to be a useful tool for video analysis. With a splitting condition that checks the dimensionality of the curve segment being split, the video curve can be recursively simplified and represented as a tree structure, and the frames that are found to be junctions between curve segments at different levels of the tree can be used as keyframes to summarize the video sequences at different levels of detail. These keyframes can be combined in various spatial and temporal configurations for browsing purposes. We describe a simple video player that displays the keyframes sequentially and lets the user change the summarization level on the fly with a slider. We also describe an approach to automatically selecting a summarization level that provides a concise and representative set of keyframes.
Reliability of Synaptic Transmission at the Synapses of Held In Vivo under Acoustic Stimulation

Background The giant synapses of Held play an important role in high-fidelity auditory processing and provide a model system for synaptic transmission at central synapses. Whether transmission of action potentials can fail at these synapses has been investigated in recent studies. At the endbulbs of Held in the anteroventral cochlear nucleus (AVCN) a consistent picture emerged, whereas at the calyx of Held in the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB) results on the reliability of transmission remain inconsistent. In vivo this discrepancy could be due to the difficulty in identifying failures of transmission. Methods/Findings We introduce a novel method for detecting unreliable transmission in vivo. Based on the temporal relationship between a cells' waveform and other potentials in the recordings, a statistical test is developed that provides a balanced decision between the presence and the absence of failures. Its performance is quantified using simulated voltage recordings and found to exhibit a high level of accuracy. The method was applied to extracellular recordings from the synapses of Held in vivo. At the calyces of Held failures of transmission were found only rarely. By contrast, at the endbulbs of Held in the AVCN failures were found under spontaneous, excited, and suppressed conditions. In accordance with previous studies, failures occurred most abundantly in the suppressed condition, suggesting a role for inhibition. Conclusions/Significance Under the investigated activity conditions/anesthesia, transmission seems to remain largely unimpeded in the MNTB, whereas in the AVCN the occurrence of failures is related to inhibition and could be the basis/result of computational mechanisms for temporal processing. More generally, our approach provides a formal tool for studying the reliability of transmission with high statistical accuracy under typical in vivo recording conditions.
3Dlite

We present 3DLite1, a novel approach to reconstruct 3D environments using consumer RGB-D sensors, making a step towards directly utilizing captured 3D content in graphics applications, such as video games, VR, or AR. Rather than reconstructing an accurate one-to-one representation of the real world, our method computes a lightweight, low-polygonal geometric abstraction of the scanned geometry. We argue that for many graphics applications it is much more important to obtain high-quality surface textures rather than highly-detailed geometry. To this end, we compensate for motion blur, auto-exposure artifacts, and micro-misalignments in camera poses by warping and stitching image fragments from low-quality RGB input data to achieve high-resolution, sharp surface textures. In addition to the observed regions of a scene, we extrapolate the scene geometry, as well as the mapped surface textures, to obtain a complete 3D model of the environment. We show that a simple planar abstraction of the scene geometry is ideally suited for this completion task, enabling 3DLite to produce complete, lightweight, and visually compelling 3D scene models. We believe that these CAD-like reconstructions are an important step towards leveraging RGB-D scanning in actual content creation pipelines.
Intra- and intermolecular interactions in small bioactive molecules: cooperative features from experimental and theoretical charge-density analysis.

The topological features of the charge densities, rho(r), of three bioactive molecules, 2-thiouracil [2,3-dihydro-2-thioxopyrimidin-4(1H)-one], cytosine [4-aminopyrimidin-2(1H)-one] monohydrate and salicylic acid (2-hydroxybenzoic acid), have been determined from high-resolution X-ray diffraction data at 90 K. The corresponding results are compared with the periodic theoretical calculations, based on theoretical structure factors, performed using DFT (density-functional theory) at the B3LYP/6-31G** level. The molecules pack in the crystal lattices via weak intermolecular interactions as well as strong hydrogen bonds. All the chemical bonds, including the intra- and intermolecular interactions in all three compounds, have been quantitatively described by topological analysis based on Bader's quantum theory of 'Atoms In Molecules'. The roles of interactions such as C-H.O, C-H.S, C-H.pi and pi.pi have been investigated quantitatively in the presence of strong hydrogen bonds such as O-H.O, N-H.O and N-H.S, based on the criteria proposed by Koch and Popelier to characterize hydrogen bonds and van der Waals interactions. The features of weak intermolecular interactions, such as S.S in 2-thiouracil, the hydrogen bonds generated from the water molecule in cytosine monohydrate and the formation of the dimer via strong hydrogen bonds in salicylic acid, are highlighted on a quantum basis. Three-dimensional electrostatic potentials over the molecular surfaces emphasize the preferable binding sites in the structure and the interaction features of the atoms in the molecules, which are crucial for drug-receptor recognition.
A case–control study of epidemiological factors associated with leptospirosis in South Gujarat region

Background: The current study was planned to identify the epidemiological factors associated with leptospirosis in South Gujarat region using neighborhood controls. Methods: A total of 100 cases of leptospirosis occurred in South Gujarat region during the year 2012 were selected using simple random sampling. Three neighbors of the selected cases formed the controls (n = 300). A pretested structured questionnaire was used for data collection and data were analyzed using Epi Info 2007. Results: There was significant association of illiteracy (odds ratio [OR] =1.82, 95% confidence interval [CI] =1.14–2.89), working in waterlogged fields during the reference season (OR = 4.6, 95% CI = 1.6–17.9), swimming/bathing in canals, open air defecation practices, storage of cow dung in or surrounding house, residence in the house made up of cow dung walls, households with access of food to rodents, injuries over hands/foot during the endemic season (OR = 3, 95% CI = 1.8–4.8), and history of skin disease during the endemic season (OR = 4.2, 95% CI = 2–8.5), with leptospirosis. Only 10% of individuals had gumboots for protection. A total of 83 (83%) cases and 240 (80%) controls had taken oral doxycycline chemoprophylaxis (P > 0.05). Cases had taken chemoprophylaxis for a median 4 weeks (range: 1–8) while controls had taken the same for median 8 weeks (range = 1–8) (P < 0.002). Conclusions: Although the commonly established factors appear to be associated with leptospirosis, the role of host factors seems to play a more important role in determining susceptibility to leptospirosis in exposed individuals.
Part II: Differences between Sexually Victimized and Nonsexually Victimized Male Adolescent Sexual Abusers and Delinquent Youth: Further Group Comparisons of Developmental Antecedents and Behavioral Challenges

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, we assessed the differences between sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers (Burton, Duty, & Leibowitz, 2011). We found that the sexually victimized group had more severe developmental antecedents (e.g., trauma and early exposure to pornography) and behavioral difficulties (sexual aggression, arousal, pornography use, and nonsexual offenses). The present study compares sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized adolescent sexual abusers with a group of nonsexually victimized delinquent youth. Findings included that delinquent youth had fewer behavioral and developmental problems than the comparison groups. In addition, sexually victimized sexual abusers had the highest mean scores on trauma and personality measures. Implications for research and treatment are offered.
Dating the origins of the maize-adapted strain of maize streak virus, MSV-A

Maize streak virus (MSV), which causes maize streak disease (MSD), is one of the most serious biotic threats to African food security. Here, we use whole MSV genomes sampled over 30 years to estimate the dates of key evolutionary events in the 500 year association of MSV and maize. The substitution rates implied by our analyses agree closely with those estimated previously in controlled MSV evolution experiments, and we use them to infer the date when the maize-adapted strain, MSV-A, was generated by recombination between two grass-adapted MSV strains. Our results indicate that this recombination event occurred in the mid-1800s, ∼20 years before the first credible reports of MSD in South Africa and centuries after the introduction of maize to the continent in the early 1500s. This suggests a causal link between MSV recombination and the emergence of MSV-A as a serious pathogen of maize.
Oxidative stress in chronic lymphoedema.

BACKGROUND Chronic lymphoedema is one of the most frequent and debilitating complications after surgical and radiological tumour treatment. Prevention and therapy of lymphoedema is therefore an important problem of the rehabilitation of those patients. AIM To investigate whether chronic lymphoedema results in increased oxidative stress. DESIGN Prospective case-control study. METHODS We obtained venous blood samples from patients (n=38) with chronic lymphoedema and determined biomarkers of prooxidative reactions and of antioxidative defense system in the erythrocytes or blood plasma: reduced and oxidized glutathione (GSH and GSSG), and lipid peroxidation products such as malondialdehyde (MDA) and 4-hydroxynonenal (HNE). Healthy volunteers (n=90) and patients who had undergone surgical and/or radiotherapeutic treatment of tumours without consequent lymphoedema (n=20) acted as controls. RESULTS The blood of patients with chronic lymphoedema contained lower concentrations of GSH and higher levels of GSSG and of MDA and HNE, compared with the control group. MDA was increased by about three-fold in the serum of the lymphoedema patients. Accelerated free radical formation and lipid peroxidation processes were further demonstrated by the liberation of MDA and HNE into the blood serum after manual lymph drainage. DISCUSSION Our data demonstrate enhanced formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and accelerated lipid peroxidation processes in chronic lymphoedematous tissue. The strengthening of antioxidative defense mechanisms could be useful in the therapy of chronic lymphoedema.
Plastic Load of Precracked Polyethylene Miter Pipe Bends Subjected to In-Plane Bending Moment

The main purpose of the present paper is to investigate the effect of crack depth on the limit load of miter pipe bends (MPB) under in-plane bending moment. The experimental work is conducted to investigate multi miter pipe bends, with a bend angle 90 o , pipe bend factor h=0.844, standard dimension ratio SDR=11,and three junctions under a crosshead speed 500 mm/min. The material of the investigated pipe is a high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which is used in natural gas piping systems. The welds in the miter pipe bends are produced by butt-fusion method. The crack depth varies from intrados to extrados location according to the in-plane opening/closing bending moment respectively. For each in-plane bending moment the limit load is obtained by the tangent intersection (TI) method from the load deflection curves produced by the testing machine specially designed and constructed in the laboratory 1 . The study reveals that increasing the crack depth leads to a decrease in the stiffness and limit load of (MPB) for both inplane closing and opening bending moment. Higher values of the limit load are reached in case of opening bending moment. This behavior is true for all investigated crack depths.
EEG repetition effect to high and low arousal emotional stimuli.

In the present EEG study the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of twenty-four young women were recorded while subjects made old/new recognition judgments about emotionally charged pictures. Pleasant, neutral and unpleasant pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) were presented twice and differed in emotional intensity (high vs. low arousal). Three time windows were investigated (200-400 ms, 400-600 ms, and 600-100 ms after stimulus onset). Compared to neutral pictures ERP positivity was greater in the early stadium (200-400 ms) for pleasant and unpleased stimuli. Also the positive amplitude of ERPs increased with the intensity of emotional stimuli (i.e. arousal) in all three time ranges and was most pronounced at centro-parietal electrode position with the presence of left hemisphere trend. The old/new effect had a fronto-central bilateral distribution (more present for negative pictures) during 400-600 ms after the stimulus onset and a right anterior distribution in the time window of 600-1000 ms after the stimulus onset for both positive and negative stimuli.