Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
3D Elbow Kinematics with Monoplanar Fluoroscopy: In Silico Evaluation

An in-silico assessment of the performance of 3D video-fluoroscopy for the analysis of the kinematics of long bones is proposed. A reliable knowledge of in-vivo joints kinematics in physiological conditions is fundamental in the clinical field. 3D video-fluoroscopy theoretically permits a mm/deg level of accuracy in joint motion analysis, but the optimization algorithm for the pose estimation is highly dependent on the geometry of the bone segment analyzed. An automated technique based on distance maps and tangency condition was applied to the elbow bones. The convergence domain was explored to quantify and optimize measurement accuracy in terms of bias and precision. By conditioning the optimization algorithm using simple image features, the estimation error had small dispersion (interquartile range within 0.5 and 0.025 mm/deg for out-of-plane and in-plane pose parameters, resp.), but with occasional bias and outliers. 3D video-fluoroscopy produced promising results for the elbow joint, but further in-vitro validation studies should be carried out.
Identification and Characterization of Novel Salmonella Mobile Elements Involved in the Dissemination of Genes Linked to Virulence and Transmission

The genetic diversity represented by >2,500 different Salmonella serovars provides a yet largely uncharacterized reservoir of mobile elements that can contribute to the frequent emergence of new pathogenic strains of this important zoonotic pathogen. Currently, our understanding of Salmonella mobile elements is skewed by the fact that most studies have focused on highly virulent or common serovars. To gain a more global picture of mobile elements in Salmonella, we used prediction algorithms to screen for mobile elements in 16 sequenced Salmonella genomes representing serovars for which no prior genome scale mobile element data were available. From these results, selected mobile elements underwent further analyses in the form of validation studies, comparative analyses, and PCR-based population screens. Through this analysis we identified a novel plasmid that has two cointegrated replicons (IncI1-IncFIB); this plasmid type was found in four genomes representing different Salmonella serovars and contained a virulence gene array that had not been previously identified. A Salmonella Montevideo isolate contained an IncHI and an IncN2 plasmid, which both encoded antimicrobial resistance genes. We also identified two novel genomic islands (SGI2 and SGI3), and 42 prophages with mosaic architecture, seven of them harboring known virulence genes. Finally, we identified a novel integrative conjugative element (ICE) encoding a type IVb pilus operon in three non-typhoidal Salmonella serovars. Our analyses not only identified a considerable number of mobile elements that have not been previously reported in Salmonella, but also found evidence that these elements facilitate transfer of genes that were previously thought to be limited in their distribution among Salmonella serovars. The abundance of mobile elements encoding pathogenic properties may facilitate the emergence of strains with novel combinations of pathogenic traits.
The Production of Plasma Pulses With Convoluted Arc Columns in Atmospheric Pressure Air

Experimental results for the operation of a device which generates radially propagating pulses of plasma are reported. These are produced from a convoluted arc plasma column formed using a suitably configured magnetic field (B-field). Both quasi-steady-current and alternating-current arc plasmas in atmospheric pressure air have been studied. High-speed photographic records of the convoluted plasma column during the main arcing phase are presented along with video images of propagating plasma clouds formed when the B-field and arc current collapse. Measured time variations of current and arc voltage during the main current phase are correlated with features on the photographic records. Results are presented, showing the effect of different operating conditions upon the propagation rates of the plasma pulses.
Reduction of Magnet Eddy-Current Loss in Interior Permanent-Magnet Motors With Concentrated Windings

In this paper, we develop stator and rotor shapes of interior permanent-magnet motors with concentrated windings in order to reduce the eddy-current loss of the magnets at high rotational speeds under field-weakening control. First, the main factors that cause the magnet eddy-current loss in the motor are investigated from the results of the 3-D finite-element method. The magnet eddy-current loss is separated into three components due to their origins, and the largest component is specified. With this result, an automatic shape optimization is carried out to determine the stator and rotor shapes, which reduce the magnet eddy-current loss without significant decreases in the torque. Finally, the proposed stator and rotor are manufactured in order to confirm the characteristics. The advantages over the conventional motor are clarified.
Analysis and Modelling of Taste and Odour Events in a Shallow Subtropical Reservoir

Understanding and predicting Taste and Odour events is as difficult as critical for drinking water treatment plants. Following a number of events in recent years, a comprehensive statistical analysis of data from Lake Tingalpa (Queensland, Australia) was conducted. Historical manual sampling data, as well as data remotely collected by a vertical profiler, were collected; regression analysis and self-organising maps were the used to determine correlations between Taste and Odour compounds and potential input variables. Results showed that the predominant Taste and Odour compound was geosmin. Although one of the main predictors was the occurrence of cyanobacteria blooms, it was noticed that the cyanobacteria species was also critical. Additionally, water temperature, reservoir volume and oxidised nitrogen availability, were key inputs determining the occurrence and magnitude of the geosmin peak events. Based on the results of the statistical analysis, a predictive regression model was developed to provide indications on the potential occurrence, and magnitude, of peaks in geosmin concentration. Additionally, it was found that the blue green algae probe of the lake’s vertical profiler has the potential to be used as one of the inputs for an automated geosmin early warning system.
Spontaneous corticospinal axonal plasticity and functional recovery after adult central nervous system injury

Although it is believed that little recovery occurs after adult mammalian spinal cord injury, in fact significant spontaneous functional improvement commonly occurs after spinal cord injury in humans. To investigate potential mechanisms underlying spontaneous recovery, lesions of defined components of the corticospinal motor pathway were made in adult rats in the rostral cervical spinal cord or caudal medulla. Following complete lesions of the dorsal corticospinal motor pathway, which contains more than 95% of all corticospinal axons, spontaneous sprouting from the ventral corticospinal tract occurred onto medial motoneuron pools in the cervical spinal cord; this sprouting was paralleled by functional recovery. Combined lesions of both dorsal and ventral corticospinal tract components eliminated sprouting and functional recovery. In addition, functional recovery was also abolished if dorsal corticospinal tract lesions were followed 5 weeks later by ventral corticospinal tract lesions. We found extensive spontaneous structural plasticity as a mechanism correlating with functional recovery in motor systems in the adult central nervous system. Experimental enhancement of spontaneous plasticity may be useful to promote further recovery after adult central nervous system injury.
The Implementation of a State Machine Compiler

This paper describes VTIstate, VLSI Technology's state machine compiler. The compiler derives combinational logic and registers to make a state machine, and synthesizes the combinational logic with three optimization steps. The 1986 Design Automation conference synthesis benchmark set is used to compare the results with previously reported logic synthesis programs.
The murine homolog of the HIN 200 family, Ifi 204, is constitutively expressed in myeloid cells and selectively induced in the monocyte/macrophage lineage

To examine the expression of Ifi 200 genes in vivo and add new information about their function, polyclonal monospecific rabbit antibodies, designated N‐term or C‐term, were raised against both the N‐terminus and C‐terminus of the 204 protein (p204) respectively. Western blotting analysis demonstrated that p204 and D3, another member of the Ifi 200 gene family, are constitutively expressed, though at different degrees, in bone marrow, thymus and lymph nodes, and barely detectable in the spleen. Poly rI:rC treatment did not modulate their expression. Peritoneal resident macrophages (Mϕ) from untreated mice were negative, but displayed high levels of both p204 and D3 on poly rI:rC treatment. A significant increase of these proteins is also observed when Mϕ are cultured overnight in vitro with IFNs or LPS. Lung, kidney and brain were negative for p204 and D3 expression. These results, together with immunois‐tochemical analysis, demonstrate that the 204 gene has an expression pattern restricted to cells of the myelomonocytic lineage similar to that observed for the human homolog, the myeloid nuclear differentiation antigen (MNDA) suggesting its potential involvement in the differentiation and maturation of this cell lineage. J. Leukoc. Biol. 64: 608–614; 1998.
The Nature and Predictors of Elementary Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching.

This article explores elementary school teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching and the relationship between such knowledge and teacher characteristics. The Learning Mathematics for Teaching project administered a multiple-choice assessment covering topics in number and operation to a nationally representative sample of teachers (n = 625) and at the same time collected information on teacher and student characteristics. Performance did not vary according to mathematical topic (e.g., whole numbers or rational numbers), and items categorized as requiring specialized knowledge of mathematics proved more difficult for this sample of teachers. There were few substantively significant relationships between mathematical knowledge for teaching and teacher characteristics, including leadership activities and self-reported college-level mathematics preparation. Implications for current policies aimed at improving teacher quality are addressed.
Aerosol Optical Properties and Determination of Aerosol Size Distribution in Wuhan, China

Columnar aerosol volume size distributions from March 2012 to February 2013 in Wuhan, China, were investigated with a focus on monthly and seasonal variations in the aerosol optical depths (AODs) and Angstrom exponents. AOD is wavelength dependent, and for AOD at, for example, 500 nm, the seasonal averaged AOD value decreased in the order of winter (~0.84), spring (~0.83), summer (~0.76) and autumn (~0.55). The Angstrom exponent suggested that the aerosol sizes in summer (~1.22), winter (~1.14), autumn (~1.06) and spring (~0.99) varied from fine to coarse particles. The Angstrom exponent and AOD could provide a qualitative evaluation of ASD. Moreover, aerosol size distribution (ASD) was larger in winter than the other three seasons, especially from 1.0 µm to 15 µm due to heavy anthropogenic aerosol and damp climate. The ASD spectral shape showed a bimodal distribution in autumn, winter, and spring, with one peak ( 0.14) in the coarse mode range. However, there appeared to be a trimodal distribution during summer, with two peaks in the coarse mode, which might be due to the hygroscopic growth of the local particles and the generation of aerosol precursor resulting from the extreme-high temperature and relative humidity.
Shortened Activated Partial Thromboplastin Time May Help in Diagnosing Hereditary and Acquired Angioedema

Objective: To evaluate whether activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) could be used in the laboratory diagnosis of hereditary or acquired angioedema (HAE or AAE) with and without C1 inhibitor (C1-INH) deficiency. Methods: In a prospective investigation, APTT and other coagulation parameters were determined in 149 adult patients with various types of angioedema and in 26 healthy participants (HP). Results: Mean APTT was significantly shortened in HAE-C1-INH type I (p < 0.0001) and type II (p = 0.0017) and in AAE-C1-INH (p < 0.0001) compared to the HP. APTT was shortened under the reference range (26-36 s) in 33/45 (73.3%) patients with HAE-C1-INH, 10/15 (66.7%) patients with AAE-C1-INH, 4/27 (14.8%) patients with HAE with normal C1-INH, 1/32 (3.1%) patients with histaminergic angioedema, 4/30 (13.3%) patients with nonhistaminergic angioedema and in 2/26 (7.7%) HP. Thus, a shortened APTT was obtained in 8-9 times more patients with angioedema due to C1-INH deficiency when compared to patients with various forms of angioedema with normal C1-INH and also to HP. Conclusions: A shortened APTT may help to diagnose HAE-C1-INH and AAE-C1-INH when determination of C1-INH is not yet available.
Mining frequent patterns without candidate generation

Mining frequent patterns in transaction databases, time-series databases, and many other kinds of databases has been studied popularly in data mining research. Most of the previous studies adopt an Apriori-like candidate set generation-and-test approach. However, candidate set generation is still costly, especially when there exist prolific patterns and/or long patterns. In this study, we propose a novel frequent pattern tree (FP-tree) structure, which is an extended prefix-tree structure for storing compressed, crucial information about frequent patterns, and develop an efficient FP-tree-based mining method, FP-growth, for mining the complete set of frequent patterns by pattern fragment growth. Efficiency of mining is achieved with three techniques: (1) a large database is compressed into a highly condensed, much smaller data structure, which avoids costly, repeated database scans, (2) our FP-tree-based mining adopts a pattern fragment growth method to avoid the costly generation of a large number of candidate sets, and (3) a partitioning-based, divide-and-conquer method is used to decompose the mining task into a set of smaller tasks for mining confined patterns in conditional databases, which dramatically reduces the search space. Our performance study shows that the FP-growth method is efficient and scalable for mining both long and short frequent patterns, and is about an order of magnitude faster than the Apriori algorithm and also faster than some recently reported new frequent pattern mining methods.
Influence of Mechanically Activated Electric Arc Furnace Slag on Compressive Strength of Mortars Incorporating Curing Moisture and Temperature Effects

In this study, the influence of mechanically activated electric arc furnace slag (EAFS) was investigated through compressive strength tests on 50 mm mortar cubes. The objective was to convert the wasteful EAFS into a useful binding material to reduce the cement content in concrete without compromising strength and economy. Four different groups of mortar were cast which include control mortar, reference fly ash mortar, mortar containing EAFS to determine its optimum fineness and replacement with cement, mortar blend containing fly ash and EAFS of optimum fineness. EAFS were identified with respect to its fineness as slag ground (SG), slag-fine (SF) 100% passing 75 µm sieve, and slag-super-fine (SSF) 100% passing 45 µm sieve. Compressive strength was measured according to ASTM C109. Specimens were cured under different temperatures and moisture to incorporate the effects of normal and hot environmental conditions. Compressive strength of mortars increases with fineness of EAFS and its strength activity index matches the ASTM C989 blast furnace slag (BFS) Grade 80 up to 30% cement substitution and Grade 100 when 10% cement substituted with SSF. The influence of curing temperatures was also significant in mortars containing SG or 10% SF where strength decreased with increasing curing temperature. However, a 20–30% and 20% cement substitution with SF produced strength comparable to control and reference fly ash mortars under moderate (40 °C) and high curing temperature (60 °C), respectively. The utilization of EAFS as binder in concrete may reduce needs for cement, as well as save environment and natural resources from depletion.
The relation between the levels of osteoprotegerin and the degree of coronary artery disease in patients with acute coronary syndrome and stable angina pectoris.

BACKGROUND Osteoprotegerin (OPG), an inhibitor of osteoclastogenesis, has recently been under the spotlight in studies regarding the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis. AIM To evaluate the value of serum OPG in the diagnosis and severity in patients with stable angina pectoris (SA) and unstable angina pectoris/non ST elevation myocardial infarction. METHODS This study involved 160 patients, SA (n = 65), acute coronary syndrome (NSTE-ACS; n = 65), and a control group (n = 30). Blood samples were collected in the first hour, after 24 hours and on the fifth day. The prevalence of coronary artery atherosclerotic lesions was determined using the Gensini scoring system. RESULTS A statistically significant difference was observed in the first hour OPG levels between the control group and both the SA and NSTE-ACS group (p < 0.001). When the cut-off value was determined as 247.71 pg/mL, the sensitivity and specificity of the first hour OPG levels indicating coronary artery disease were 91.54% and 46.67%, respectively, while the positive predictive value was 88.1% and the negative predictive value was 56%. No correlations were observed between the first, 24th hour and the fifth day OPG levels and the Gensini scores. No relation was denoted between the OPG levels and number of diseased coronary arteries. CONCLUSIONS In our study, serum OPG level seemed to be unrelated to the severity or the degree of coronary artery disease in patients with SA and unstable angina pectoris/non ST elevation myocardial infarction. OPG may only be accepted as an indicator of coronary atherosclerosis.
Sphingosine Kinase 1 Mediation of Expression of the Anaphylatoxin Receptor C5L2 Dampens the Inflammatory Response to Endotoxin

The complement anaphylatoxin C5a has a pathogenetic role in endotoxin-induced lung inflammatory injury by regulating phagocytic cell migration and activation. Endotoxin and C5a activate the enzyme sphingosine kinase (Sphk) 1 to generate the signaling lipid sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), a critical regulator of phagocyte function. We assessed the function of Sphk1 and S1P in experimental lung inflammatory injury and determined their roles in anaphylatoxin receptor signaling and on the expression of the two C5a receptors, C5aR (CD88) and C5L2, on phagocytes. We report that Sphk1 gene deficient (Sphk1−/−) mice had augmented lung inflammatory response to endotoxin compared to wild type mice. Sphk1 was required for C5a-mediated reduction in cytokine and chemokine production by macrophages. Moreover, neutrophils from Sphk1−/− mice failed to upregulate the anaphylatoxin receptor C5L2 in response to LPS. Exogenous S1P restored C5L2 cell surface expression of Sphk1−/− mouse neutrophils to wild type levels but had no effect on cell surface expression of the other anaphylatoxin receptor, CD88. These results provide the first genetic evidence of the crucial role of Sphk1 in regulating the balance between expression of CD88 and C5L2 in phagocytes. S1P-mediated up-regulation of C5L2 is a novel therapeutic target for mitigating endotoxin-induced lung inflammatory injury.
Clever space saving—how the cerebral cortex folds

The human cerebral cortex controls complex cognitive behaviors. During mammalian evolution, the number of neurons increased in many lineages, requiring a larger cortical surface area to fit into a skull that did not scale proportionally. This space problem was solved by cortical folding, resulting in gyrencephalic (folded) brains. While several hypotheses have been proposed to explain cortical gyrification, we lack mechanistic insights to understand the process itself and in particular its underlying genomic changes, that lead to the appearance of cortical folds. In this issue of The EMBO Journal, de Juan Romero et al (2015) tackle the question using a transcriptomics approach to identify gene expression changes in the developing ferret brain prior to the onset of gyrification.
PRENATAL DIAGNOSIS OF SUCCINYL‐COENZYME A:3‐KETOACID COENZYME A TRANSFERASE DEFICIENCY

Succinyl‐CoA:3‐ketoacid CoA transferase (SCOT) deficiency is a rare disorder of ketone body catabolism. In the present study, we prenatally diagnosed SCOT deficiency in a fetus in a family of which the proband was the first patient with SCOT deficiency identified in Japan, by analysis of enzyme activity levels in samples of chorionic villi and cultured amniocytes. In the fetus of the family, SCOT activity was not detected in either chorionic villi or cultured amniocytes. Since the levels of SCOT activity in control chorionic villi were close to our minimal detectable level and were much lower than those in control cultured amniocytes, enzyme assay in cultured amniocytes was more feasible than that in chorionic villi for prenatal diagnosis of SCOT deficiency. No elevated accumulation of 3‐hydroxybutyrate or acetoacetate was detected in the amniotic fluid of the fetus. To our knowledge, this report is the first of prenatal diagnosis of SCOT deficiency.
Tailoring Persuasive Strategies in E-Commerce

E-commerce persuasive strategies are more effective when they are personalized. Using a sample size of 251 Amazon shoppers, we studied the effect of the persuasive strategies of the PSD framework on e-commerce customers based on 1) if they often review or rate products after purchase and 2) how long they have been customers of Amazon. Results of our analysis show that for the customers who often review and rate products, the system’s effectiveness influence their decision to continue using Amazon, unlike the customers who have never reviewed or rated a product who are influenced by the perceived credibility of the system and the social support they receive from the system. In addition, the customers who have used Amazon for over five years are influenced to continue shopping with Amazon by the effectiveness of the system, unlike the new customers who are influenced by the social support they receive from the system.