Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seasonal variations and modes of riverine input of organic pollutants to the coastal zone: 1. Flux of detergent-derived pollutants to Tokyo Bay

In order to discuss seasonal variations and modes of riverine input of organic pollutants to the coastal zone, linear alkylbenzenesulfonates (LAS) and linear alkylbenzenes (LABs) were determined for the Tamagawa Riser water at 2-week intervals for 2 years. The sampling site, Chofu Dam, is located at the boundary between freshwater and brackish zones. LAS flux was ca. 5 times higher in winter than in summer. LAS with longer homologues and external isomers were more depleted in summer.
From syn- to post-orogenic Tertiary extension in the north Aegean region: constraints on the kinematics in the eastern Rhodope–Thrace, Bulgaria–Greece and the Biga Peninsula, NW Turkey

Abstract The Aegean region experienced back-are extension related to the Hellenic subduction system at least from the latest Oligocene to the present. We document Tertiary extension-related kinematics in the north Aegean, in the eastern Rhodope–Thrace of Bulgaria–Greece and the Biga Peninsula of NW Turkey. A regionally consistent NNE–SSW- to NE–SW-oriented kinematic direction, delineated in both areas by stretching lineations and associated ductile–brittle shear fabrics in exhumed metamorphic domes beneath detachments, suggests that they were kinematically coupled during the Tertiary extension. This kinematic framework, combined with regional geochronological data and the stratigraphic record in hanging-wall supradetachment basins, defines an extensional history that includes syn- and post-orogenic episodes from Paleocene to Miocene times. Paleocene–early Eocene synorogenic extension in the Kemer micaschists of the northern Biga Peninsula and in the Kesebir–Kardamos dome in Rhodope–Thrace accommodated gravitationally induced hinterland-directed exhumation of the orogenic stack, coeval with the closure of the Vardar Ocean. Then, following collision within the region, it was succeeded by latest Oligocene–Early Miocene extension as recorded in the Kazda&gcaron; Massif in the southern Biga Peninsula, which overlaps the Aegean back-arc post-orogenic extension, widely recognized in the central Aegean and southern Greek Rhodope. The protracted record of extension is interpreted to reflect progressive exhumation of the orogenic wedge along the Eurasian plate margin. Southward migration of extension and magmatism across the study areas accounts for sequential shift and roll-back of the subduction boundary at that margin, from the latest Cretaceous in the Rhodope to its present position at the Hellenic trench. The results allow recognition of the investigated areas as an important extensional domain in the north Aegean region, which underwent Tertiary syn- and post-orogenic extension.
Reliability testing of a sun exposure questionnaire for the Northern Ireland population

Background Sunbathing and other types of exposure to ultraviolet radiation are the major preventable risk factors for skin cancer. Due to the continued increase in incidence of melanoma in Northern Ireland, we have conducted a questionnaire survey in an attempt to gather information about sunbathing habits and other forms of ultraviolet light exposure amongst the Northern Ireland population.
Hepatic Arterial Infusion of Low-Density Lipoprotein Docosahexaenoic Acid Nanoparticles Selectively Disrupts Redox Balance in Hepatoma Cells and Reduces Growth of Orthotopic Liver Tumors in Rats.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Dietary intake of the natural omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) has been implicated in protecting patients with viral hepatitis B or C from developing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Little is known about the effects of DHA on established solid tumors. Here we describe a low-density lipoprotein-based nanoparticle that acts as a transporter for unesterified DHA (LDL-DHA) and demonstrates selective cytotoxicity toward HCC cells. We investigated the ability of LDL-DHA to reduce growth of orthotopic hepatomas in rats. METHODS AxC-Irish (ACI) rats were given intrahepatic injections of rat hepatoma cells (H4IIE); 24 tumor-bearing rats (mean tumor diameter, ∼1 cm) were subject to a single hepatic artery injection of LDL nanoparticles (2 mg/kg) loaded with DHA (LDL-DHA), triolein (LDL-TO), or sham surgery controls. Tumor growth was measured by magnetic resonance imaging and other methods; tumor, liver, and serum samples were collected and assessed by histochemical, immunofluorescence, biochemical, and immunoblot analyses. RESULTS Three days after administration of LDL-TO or sham surgery, the control rats had large, highly vascularized tumors that contained proliferating cells. However, rats given LDL-DHA had smaller, pale tumors that were devoid of vascular supply and >80% of the tumor tissue was necrotic. Four to 6 days after injection of LDL-DHA, the tumors were 3-fold smaller than those of control rats. The liver tissue that surrounded the tumors showed no histologic or biochemical evidence of injury. Injection of LDL-DHA into the hepatic artery of rats selectively deregulated redox reactions in tumor tissues by increasing levels of reactive oxygen species and lipid peroxidation, depleting and oxidizing glutathione and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate, and significantly down-regulating the antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase-4. Remarkably, the redox balance in the surrounding liver was not disrupted. CONCLUSION LDL-DHA nanoparticle selectively kills hepatoma cells and reduces growth of orthotopic liver tumors in rats. It induces tumor-specific necrosis by selectively disrupting redox balance within the cancer cell.
The Development of Second-order Social Cognition and its Relation with Complex Language Understanding and Memory

In this study, the development of second-order social cognition and its possible relationship with language and memory were investigated. For this reason two second-order false belief tasks (FBT_2), a short term memory task (WST), a complex working memory task (LST), a linguistic perspective-taking test (PTT) and a double-embedded relative clause task (REL_2) were used with 21 Turkish kindergarten children (aged 4-5 years), 47 primary school children (aged 612 years) and 10 adults. A general developmental trend was found for all tasks. However, a multiple linear regression showed that once age was partialed out, none of the other tasks could predict FBT_2 scores. Our findings are consistent with the modularity view that Theory of Mind (ToM) is a faculty of the human mind that does not share intrinsic content with other faculties such as language and memory (Leslie et al., 2004) and also with Apperly's (2011) 'twosystems' account of Theory of Mind. However, it develops together with those other faculties which may constrain the expression of children’s false belief reasoning as a manifestation of their social cognitive abilities.
Alternative Methods of Anesthesia for the Repair of Open-Globe Injuries: Ophthalmologists' Perspective

Open-globe injury which is defined as a a full thickness defect in the cornea and/or sclera is a common cause of visual loss. It is an ocular emergency and surgical repair should be performed as early as possible in order to restore the structural and functional integrity of the eye. Anesthesia plays a vital role for the success of the surgery for open-globe injuries. Numerous issues must be considered for the selection of anesthesia technique. General anesthesia is the gold standard method of anesthesia and regional anesthesia has conventionally been considered to be contraindicated in patients with open-globe injuries. However, local anaesthetic techniques such as sub-tenon, topical, intracamaral, peribulbar and retrobulbar anesthesia are started to become popular for the surgery of openglobe injuries for selected patients. The aim of the present review is to describe and discuss the ophthalmologists’ perspective related to the alternative methods of anesthesia for the repair of open-globe injuries.
Recovery of Empty Nodes in Parse Structures

In this paper, we describe a new algorithm for recovering WH-trace empty nodes. Our approach combines a set of hand-written patterns together with a probabilistic model. Because the patterns heavily utilize regular expressions, the pertinent tree structures are covered using a limited number of patterns. The probabilistic model is essentially a probabilistic context-free grammar (PCFG) approach with the patterns acting as the terminals in production rules. We evaluate the algorithm’s performance on gold trees and parser output using three different metrics. Our method compares favorably with state-of-the-art algorithms that recover WH-traces.
Particle size distributions in an expanding plume undergoing simultaneous coagulation and condensation

In previous work [Turco and Yu, 1997, 1998], analytical solutions of the equations describing aerosol coagulation in an expanding plume were derived. Those solutions were shown to depend on a single dimensionless time-dependent number, NT, which is related to the particle coagulation kernel and the plume volume. Here these results are extended to the case in which a vapor, either primary or secondary, is also condensing on the aerosol. We show that for several important regimes of condensation encountered in the atmosphere, relatively simple empirical relations can be deduced that accurately describe the evolving particle size distribution, again in terms of NT. In addition, the effects on the plume aerosol of entrained background particles and gases are explicitly treated. These new analytical solutions offer insights into the physics governing the evolution of aerosol plumes under atmospheric conditions, lead to a simple methodology for carrying out sensitivity studies, allow objective testing and validation of numerical codes and provide a useful means of extrapolating from plume scales to the scales appropriate for regional and global modeling.
Error-Rate Analysis of FHSS Networks Using Exact Envelope Characteristic Functions of Sums of Stochastic Signals

In this paper, we present a novel approach to analytically study and evaluate the error probability of frequency- hopping spread-spectrum (FHSS) systems with intentional or nonintentional interference over the additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh-fading channels. The new approach is based on the derivation of new formulas for the exact envelope characteristic function (EECF) of the general sum of n stochastic sinusoidal signals, with each of the n signals having different random amplitude and phase angle. The envelope probability density function (pdf) is obtained from the characteristic function (CF), which, in the important cases of interest, is shown to also give simpler formulas in terms of the Fourier transform (FT) of the Bessel functions. Previously, the Ricean envelope density had only been verified for the very special case where n = 1, and the phase is uniform and independent of amplitude. Here, a new formula for the exact density of the envelope of noisy stochastic sinusoids (EDENSS) is presented, which leads to the generalization of the Ricean envelope-density (GRED) formula under the most general conditions, namely, n ges 1 signals, dependent amplitudes, and phases having an arbitrary joint pdf. The EDENSS and GRED formulas are applied to compute the pdfs needed in noncoherent detection under noise. The derived formulas also lead to the exact formulas for the error probability of the FHSS networks using M-ary amplitude shift keying (MASK) without setting limits on the number of interferers or the symbol alphabet. The power of our EECF and FT methods is further demonstrated by their ability to give an alternative derivation of the exact general envelope-density (EGED) formula, which has previously been reported by Maghsoodi. The comparative numerical results also support the analytical findings.
Task control with remote center of motion constraint for minimally invasive robotic surgery

Minimally invasive surgery assisted by robots is characterized by the restriction of feasible motions of the manipulator link constrained to move through the entry port to the patient's body. In particular, the link is only allowed to translate along its axis and rotate about the entry point. This requires constraining the manipulator motion with respect to a point known as Remote Center of Motion (RCM). The achievement of any surgical task inside the patient's body must take into account this constraint. In this paper we provide a new, general characterization of the RCM constraint useful for task control in the minimally invasive robotic surgery context. To show the effectiveness of our formalization, we consider first a visual task for a manipulator with 6 degrees of freedom holding an endoscopic camera and derive the kinematic control law allowing to achieve the visual task while satisfying the RCM constraint. An example of application of the proposed kinematic modeling to a motion planning problem for a 9 degrees of freedom manipulator with assigned path for the surgical tool is then proposed to illustrate the generality of the approach.
A metapopulation modelling framework for gonorrhoea and other sexually transmitted infections in heterosexual populations

Gonorrhoea continues to be a public health problem in the UK, and is the second most common bacterial sexually transmitted infection (STI) after chlamydia. In the UK, gonorrhoea is disproportionately concentrated in epidemiologically distinct subpopulations, with much higher incidence rates in young people, some ethnic minorities and inner city subpopulations. The original model of STI transmission proposed by Hethcote and Yorke explained some of these features through the concept of the ‘core group’. Since then, several authors have modified the original model approach to include multiple sexual activity classes, but found this modelling approach to be inadequate when applied to low-prevalence settings such as the UK. We present a metapopulation framework for modelling gonorrhoea and other STIs. The model proposes that the epidemiology of gonorrhoea is largely driven by subpopulations with higher than average concentrations of individuals with high sexual risk activity. We show how this conceptualization of gonococcal epidemiology overcomes key limitations associated with some of the prior efforts to model gonorrhoea. We also use the model to explain several epidemiological features of gonorrhoea, such as its asymmetric distribution across subpopulations, and the contextual risk experienced by members of at-risk subpopulations. Finally, we extend the model to explain the distribution of other STIs, using chlamydia as an example of a more ubiquitous bacterial STI.
Murine cardiac images obtained with focusing pinhole SPECT are barely influenced by extra-cardiac activity

Ultra-high-resolution SPECT images can be obtained with focused multipinhole collimators. Here we investigate the influence of unwanted high tracer uptake outside the scan volume on reconstructed tracer distributions inside the scan volume, for 99mTc-tetrofosmin myocardial perfusion scanning in mice. Simulated projections of a digital mouse phantom (MOBY) in a focusing multipinhole SPECT system (U-SPECT-II, MILabs, The Netherlands) were generated. With this system differently sized user-defined scan volumes can be selected, by translating the animal in 3D through the focusing collimators. Scan volume selections were set to (i) a minimal volume containing just the heart, acquired without translating the animal during scanning, (ii) a slightly larger scan volume as is typically applied for the heart, requiring only small XYZ translations during scanning, (iii) same as (ii), but extended further transaxially, and (iv) same as (ii), but extended transaxially to cover the full thorax width (gold standard). Despite an overall negative bias that is significant for the minimal scan volume, all selected volumes resulted in visually similar images. Quantitative differences in the reconstructed myocardium between gold standard and the results from the smaller scan volume selections were small; the 17 standardized myocardial segments of a bull's eye plot, normalized to the myocardial mean of the gold standard, deviated on average 6.0%, 2.5% and 1.9% for respectively the minimal, the typical and the extended scan volume, while maximum absolute deviations were respectively 18.6%, 9.0% and 5.2%. Averaged over ten low-count noisy simulations, the mean absolute deviations were respectively 7.9%, 3.2% and 1.9%. In low-count noisy simulations, the mean and maximum absolute deviations for the minimal scan volume could be reduced to respectively 4.2% and 12.5% by performing a short survey scan of the exterior activity and focusing the remaining scan time at the organ of interest. We conclude that reconstructed tracer distribution in the myocardium can be influenced by activity in surrounding organs when a too narrow scan volume is used. With slightly larger scan volumes this problem is adequately suppressed. This approach produced a smaller mean deviation and may be more effective than employing a narrow scan volume with an additional survey scan.
Feather degradation by strains of Bacillus isolated from decomposing feathers

Feather waste is generated in large amounts as a by-product of commercial poultry processing. This residue is almost pure keratin, which is not easily degradable by common proteolytic enzymes. Eight strains of Bacillus, isolated from decomposing feathers were tested for the hydrolysis of feather wastes in the laboratory. Among these strains, Bacillus cereus KB043 was the best feather degrading organism when grown on basal medium containing 1% hen feather as sole source of carbon and nitrogen. It caused 78.16 ± 0.4 % degradation with a significant release of soluble protein (1206.15 ± 14.7 µg mL-1) and cysteine (20.63 ± 0.4 µg mL-1) in the cultivation fluid. The strain also showed the highest level of keratinase activity (39.10 ± 0.4 U mL-1). These data indicates that the Bacillus cereus KB043 could be useful in management of poultry wastes.
Preferential Attachment Model with Degree Bound and Its Application to Key Predistribution in WSN

Preferential attachment models have been widely studied in complex networks, because they can explain the formation of many networks like social networks, citation networks, power grids, and biological networks, to name a few. Motivated by the application of key predistribution in wireless sensor networks (WSN), we initiate the study of preferential attachment with degree bound. Our paper has two important contributions to two different areas. The first is a contribution in the study of complex networks. We propose preferential attachment model with degree bound for the first time. In the normal preferential attachment model, the degree distribution follows a power law, with many nodes of low degree and a few nodes of high degree. In our scheme, the nodes can have a maximum degree dmax, where dmax is an integer chosen according to the application. The second is in the security of wireless sensor networks. We propose a new key predistribution scheme based on the above model. The important features of this model are that the network is fully connected, it has fewer keys, has larger size of the giant component and lower average path length compared with traditional key predistribution schemes and comparable resilience to random node attacks. We argue that in many networks like key predistribution and Internet of Things, having nodes of very high degree will be a bottle-neck in communication. Thus, studying preferential attachment model with degree bound will open up new directions in the study of complex networks, and will have many applications in real world scenarios.
Multisensory perception of the six basic emotions is modulated by attentional instruction and unattended modality

Previous studies have shown that the perception of facial and vocal affective expressions interacts with each other. Facial expressions usually dominate vocal expressions when we perceive the emotions of face–voice stimuli. In most of these studies, participants were instructed to pay attention to the face or voice. Few studies compared the perceived emotions with and without specific instructions regarding the modality to which attention should be directed. Also, these studies used combinations of the face and voice which expresses two opposing emotions, which limits the generalizability of the findings. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the emotion perception is modulated by instructions to pay attention to the face or voice using the six basic emotions. Also we examine the modality dominance between the face and voice for each emotion category. Before the experiment, we recorded faces and voices which expresses the six basic emotions and orthogonally combined these faces and voices. Consequently, the emotional valence of visual and auditory information was either congruent or incongruent. In the experiment, there were unisensory and multisensory sessions. The multisensory session was divided into three blocks according to whether an instruction was given to pay attention to a given modality (face attention, voice attention, and no instruction). Participants judged whether the speaker expressed happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, or surprise. Our results revealed that instructions to pay attention to one modality and congruency of the emotions between modalities modulated the modality dominance, and the modality dominance is differed for each emotion category. In particular, the modality dominance for anger changed according to each instruction. Analyses also revealed that the modality dominance suggested by the congruency effect can be explained in terms of the facilitation effect and the interference effect.
Hydrogel Contact Lens Dehydration in Controlled Environmental Conditions

Purpose: To ascertain the impact of environmental conditions on hydrogel contact lens dehydration. Methods: Six young adult subjects wore an ACUVUE lens in one eye and a Proclear lens in the other eye for 200 minute sessions in arid, temperate, and arctic conditions, maintained in a purpose-built environmental chamber in an aerospace medical facility. Dehydration was determined by measuring lens water content before and after each session using a soft contact lens refractometer. Comfort of the lenses was assessed at the conclusion of each session. Results: Lens dehydration was similar for the three environmental conditions (F2 = 0.3, P = 0.75). There was less dehydration with the Proclear lens compared with ACUVUE lens (F1 = 43.0, P = 0.001). No differences were detected with respect to lens comfort between the three environmental conditions (F2 =2.0, P = 0.18) or the two lens types (F1 = 1.4, P = 0.29). Conclusion: Soft contact lens dehydration is unaffected by environmental extremes.
Direct Demonstration of an Adaptive Constraint

The role of constraint in adaptive evolution is an open question. Directed evolution of an engineered β-isopropylmalate dehydrogenase (IMDH), with coenzyme specificity switched from nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP), always produces mutants with lower affinities for NADP. This result is the correlated response to selection for relief from inhibition by NADPH (the reduced form of NADP) expected of an adaptive landscape subject to three enzymatic constraints: an upper limit to the rate of maximum turnover (kcat), a correlation in NADP and NADPH affinities, and a trade-off between NAD and NADP usage. Two additional constraints, high intracellular NADPH abundance and the cost of compensatory protein synthesis, have ensured the conserved use of NAD by IMDH throughout evolution. Our results show that selective mechanisms and evolutionary constraints are to be understood in terms of underlying adaptive landscapes.