Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sweet buttermilk intake reduces colonisation and translocation of Listeria monocytogenes in rats by inhibiting mucosal pathogen adherence

The bovine milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) contains several antimicrobial components with proven efficacy in vitro, but in vivo evidence is scarce. The present study was performed to determine the efficacy of the bovine MFGM in vivo. Rats were fed diets based on bovine skimmed milk powder (low in MFGM) or bovine sweet buttermilk powder (high in MFGM). After dietary adaptation, rats were orally infected with Salmonella enteritidis or Listeria monocytogenes. Whereas sweet buttermilk powder did not protect rats against infection with S. enteritidis, it protected against L. monocytogenes, as shown by a lower colonisation and translocation of this pathogen. Protection coincided with higher listericidal capacity of gastric and caecal contents. The digestion products of phosphoglycerides and sphingomyelin are bactericidal in vitro. To study their role, rats were fed diets containing either 0·1 % phosphatidylcholine or sphingomyelin, or a control diet. After dietary adaptation, rats were infected with L. monocytogenes. Since Listeria colonisation was not affected by these diets, phosphoglycerides and sphingomyelin are not involved in the protective effect of sweet buttermilk. Additional in vitro experiments were performed to further explore the mechanism of the beneficial effects of sweet buttermilk. Inhibition of the adherence of L. monocytogenes to the intestinal mucosa is the most likely explanation, since sweet buttermilk powder inhibited the binding of L. monocytogenes in both a haemagglutination assay and a Caco-2 cell adherence assay. In conclusion, sweet buttermilk powder, which is rich in MFGM, protects against L. monocytogenes infection in rats, probably by preventing adherence of this pathogen to the intestinal mucosa.
Absence of Quantum Oscillations and Dependence on Site Energies in Electronic Excitation Transfer in the Fenna–Matthews–Olson Trimer

Energy transfer in the photosynthetic Fenna–Matthews–Olson (FMO) complex of green sulfur bacteria is studied numerically taking all three subunits (monomers) of the FMO trimer and the recently found eighth bacteriochlorophyll (BChl) molecule into account. The coupling to the non-Markovian environment is treated with a master equation derived from non-Markovian quantum state diffusion. When the excited-state dynamics is initialized at site eight, which is believed to play an important role in receiving excitation from the main light harvesting antenna, we see a slow exponential-like decay of the excitation. This is in contrast to the oscillations and a relatively fast transfer that usually occurs when initialization at sites 1 or 6 is considered. We show that different sets of electronic transition energies can lead to large differences in the transfer dynamics and may cause additional suppression or enhancement of oscillations.
Positive outcomes of oil palm phenolics on degenerative diseases in animal models

It is well established that plant phenolics elicit various biological activities, with positive effects on health. Palm oil production results in large volumes of aqueous by-products containing phenolics. In the present study, we describe the effects of oil palm phenolics (OPP) on several degenerative conditions using various animal models. OPP reduced blood pressure in a NO-deficient rat model, protected against ischaemia-induced cardiac arrhythmia in rats and reduced plaque formation in rabbits fed an atherogenic diet. In Nile rats, a spontaneous model of the metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, OPP protected against multiple aspects of the syndrome and diabetes progression. In tumour-inoculated mice, OPP protected against cancer progression. Microarray studies on the tumours showed differential transcriptome profiles that suggest anti-tumour molecular mechanisms involved in OPP action. Thus, initial studies suggest that OPP may have potential against several chronic disease outcomes in mammals.
Influence of types of alkali treatment on the mechanical properties of hemp fiber reinforced polyamide 1010 composites

In order to develop the new engineering materials such as structural materials and tribomaterials based on all plants-derived materials, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of types of alkali treatment on the mechanical and tribological properties of hemp fiber (HF) reinforced plants-derived polyamide 1010 (HF/PA1010) biomass composites. HF were surface-treated by four types of surface treatments: (a) alkali treatment by sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution, (b) alkali treatment by sodium chlorite (NaClO2) solution, (c) alkali treatment by NaOH solution and surface treatment by ureido silane coupling agent, and (d) alkali treatment by NaClO2 solution and surface treatment by ureido silane. The volume fraction of hemp fiber in the composites was fixed with 20vol. %. HF/PA1010 composites were extruded by a twin screw extruder and injection-molded. Mechanical properties such as tensile, bending and tribological properties by ring-on-plate type sliding wear testing were evaluated. It was foun.
Stability improvement of an accelerated android operating system for application observation

Application analysis is important for smartphone markets and application developers. However, dynamic analysis involving the execution of the actual application is highly time consuming; thus, reducing the observation time is important issue. In this study, we focus on the Android operating system, which is based on a Linux kernel, and a method for accelerating the time flow speed as recognized by the processes in the system. The method accelerates the speed by modifying the implementation of time management in the kernel, thereby reducing the time required to monitor the behavior of applications. We discuss the stability and accuracy of the method with high acceleration ratios. First, we evaluated the method with a variety of ratios. The evaluation demonstrated that the method does not function accurately and stably with high acceleration ratios, whereas it is effective with low ratios. Second, we investigated the reason for this instability and showed that accelerated time flow causes several timers to experience timeouts, which results in system restarts. Third. , we explored a method to prevent restarting, which we tested by disabling these timers and observing the system behavior.
Hyperdrive: A Systolically Scalable Binary-Weight CNN Inference Engine for mW IoT End-Nodes

Deep neural networks have achieved impressive results in computer vision and machine learning. Unfortunately, state-of-the-art networks are extremely compute-and memory-intensive which makes them unsuitable for mW-devices such as IoT end-nodes. Aggressive quantization of these networks dramatically reduces the computation and memory footprint. Binary-weight neural networks (BWNs) follow this trend, pushing weight quantization to the limit. Hardware accelerators for BWNs presented up to now have focused on core efficiency, disregarding I/O bandwidth and system-level efficiency that are crucial for deployment of accelerators in ultra-low power devices. We present Hyperdrive: a BWN accelerator dramatically reducing the I/O bandwidth exploiting a novel binary-weight streaming approach, and capable of handling high-resolution images by virtue of its systolic-scalable architecture. We achieve a 5.9 TOp/s/W system-level efficiency (i.e. including I/Os)—2.2x higher than state-of-the-art BNN accelerators, even if our core uses resource-intensive FP16 arithmetic for increased robustness.
Using Temporal Sensitivity to Predict Performance Under Latency in Teleoperation

Objective This article establishes a relationship between temporal sensitivity and task performance under one-way latency between input and response. Background As the latency between human input and telerobot response increases, performance (e.g., speed to complete task and accuracy) declines. Tools, such as predictive displays, have been developed to ameliorate performance costs. However, more work is needed to understand the relationship between individual differences and task performance. Temporal sensitivity in particular was the focus of this research. Method Participants completed two tasks. In the time estimation task, participants estimated the duration of a series of visual stimuli. In the second task, participants drove a remote-controlled (RC) car through a track. On each trial, there was a latency between the participant’s input into the controller and the response by the RC car, with latencies ranging from 400 to 1,000 milliseconds between trials. Completion time and the number of errors made were recorded. Results Temporal sensitivity predicted the total number of errors made during a trial but was not found to be a predictor of completion time. It was however predictive of error rate (i.e., errors per minute), suggesting a possible speed/accuracy trade-off. Conclusion This was an initial step in establishing a link between temporal sensitivity and performance with latency. Application The study has applications toward training teleoperators who may experience latency, such as astronauts and surgeons.
Relations between structural and EEG‐based graph metrics in healthy controls and schizophrenia patients

Our aim was to assess structural and functional networks in schizophrenia patients; and the possible prediction of the latter based on the former. The possible dependence of functional network properties on structural alterations has not been analyzed in schizophrenia. We applied averaged path‐length (PL), clustering coefficient, and density (D) measurements to data from diffusion magnetic resonance and electroencephalography in 39 schizophrenia patients and 79 controls. Functional data were collected for the global and theta frequency bands during an odd‐ball task, prior to stimulus delivery and at the corresponding processing window. Connectivity matrices were constructed from tractography and registered cortical segmentations (structural) and phase‐locking values (functional). Both groups showed a significant electroencephalographic task‐related modulation (change between prestimulus and response windows) in the global and theta bands. Patients showed larger structural PL and prestimulus density in the global and theta bands, and lower PL task‐related modulation in the theta band. Structural network values predicted prestimulus global band values in controls and global band task‐related modulation in patients. Abnormal functional values found in patients (prestimulus density in the global and theta bands and task‐related modulation in the theta band) were not predicted by structural data in this group. Structural and functional network abnormalities respectively predicted cognitive performance and positive symptoms in patients. Taken together, the alterations in the structural and functional theta networks in the patients and the lack of significant relations between these alterations, suggest that these types of network abnormalities exist in different groups of schizophrenia patients.
EVALUATION OF EVENT-RELATED DESYNCHRONIZATION ( ERD ) PRECEDING AND FOLLOWING VOLUNTARY SELF-PACED MOVEMENT

Since the first description of the central mu rhythm by Gastaut et al. in 1952, the behaviour of the rhythmic activity within the alpha band (RAAB) in relation to voluntary, selfpaced movement has been under scrutiny. In the past it was generally believed that a mu rhythm was present only in a small proport ion of normal or diseased humans (Chatrian 1976). Recently, improvements in automated EEG evaluation have led to suspect that mu activity is much more frequent than previously found (Schoppenhorst et al. 1977; Kuhlman 1978; Storm van Leeuwen et al. 1978): Recent reports from experiments in condit ioned movement in humans (Pfurtscheller et al. 1977) and in cats and baboons (Rougeul-Buser et al. 1977) indicated that blocking or at tenuation of RAAB, preceding and following movement, was present in all subjects or animals investigated. Therefore there is a need to develop adequate methods of automated EEG analysis to s tudy the t ime<iependent behaviour as well as the topography of changes of RAAB in the scalp EEG in relation to voluntary, self-paced movement. In the present report we describe one such method and some preliminary results obtained in normal human subjects.
Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia in an Indian tertiary care hospital : observational study on clinical epidemiology , resistance characteristics , and carriage of the Panton – Valentine leukocidin gene § Vandana

Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia in an Indian tertiary care hospital: observational study on clinical epidemiology, resistance characteristics, and carriage of the Panton–Valentine leukocidin gene Vandana Kalwaje Eshwara *, Frenil Munim , Chaitanya Tellapragada , Asha Kamath , Muralidhar Varma , Leslie Edward Lewis , Chiranjay Mukhopadhyay a a Department of Microbiology, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka 576104, India b Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India c Department of Medicine, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India d Department of Paediatrics, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India
Computational Approach to Musical Consonance and Dissonance

In sixth century BC, Pythagoras discovered the mathematical foundation of musical consonance and dissonance. When auditory frequencies in small-integer ratios are combined, the result is a harmonious perception. In contrast, most frequency combinations result in audible, off-centered by-products labeled “beating” or “roughness;” these are reported by most listeners to sound dissonant. In this paper, we consider second-order beats, a kind of beating recognized as a product of neural processing, and demonstrate that the data-driven approach of Recurrence Quantification Analysis (RQA) allows for the reconstruction of the order in which interval ratios are ranked in music theory and harmony. We take advantage of computer-generated sounds containing all intervals over the span of an octave. To visualize second-order beats, we use a glissando from the unison to the octave. This procedure produces a profile of recurrence values that correspond to subsequent epochs along the original signal. We find that the higher recurrence peaks exactly match the epochs corresponding to just intonation frequency ratios. This result indicates a link between consonance and the dynamical features of the signal. Our findings integrate a new element into the existing theoretical models of consonance, thus providing a computational account of consonance in terms of dynamical systems theory. Finally, as it considers general features of acoustic signals, the present approach demonstrates a universal aspect of consonance and dissonance perception and provides a simple mathematical tool that could serve as a common framework for further neuro-psychological and music theory research.
An Overview on the Use of Stability Parameters in Plant Breeding

Yield stability has always been considered as an important topic in plant breeding but will be more concern by the continued variation in climatic condition. The phenotype of an individual is a mixture of both genotype (G) and environment (E). As a consequence of G × E interaction, crop varieties may not show uniform performance across different environments. The term genotype refers to the genetic makeup of an organism while environment refers to biophysical factors that have an effect on the growth and development of a genotype.1 The G × E study is especially important in countries with various agro-ecologies. Significant G × E interaction is a consequence of variations in the extent of differences among genotypes in diverse environments (called as a qualitative or rank changes) or variations in the comparative ranking of the genotypes (called as a quantitative or absolute differences between genotypes). 2-4
Language Prediction Is Reflected by Coupling between Frontal Gamma and Posterior Alpha Oscillations

Readers and listeners actively predict upcoming words during language processing. These predictions might serve to support the unification of incoming words into sentence context and thus rely on interactions between areas in the language network. In the current magnetoencephalography study, participants read sentences that varied in contextual constraints so that the predictability of the sentence-final words was either high or low. Before the sentence-final words, we observed stronger alpha power suppression for the highly compared with low constraining sentences in the left inferior frontal cortex, left posterior temporal region, and visual word form area. Importantly, the temporal and visual word form area alpha power correlated negatively with left frontal gamma power for the highly constraining sentences. We suggest that the correlation between alpha power decrease in temporal language areas and left prefrontal gamma power reflects the initiation of an anticipatory unification process in the language network.
Compact model for flexible ion-sensitive field-effect transistor

This paper presents the theoretical modelling, and simulation of bending effects on an ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET), towards futuristic bendable integrated circuits and microsystems for biomedical applications. Based on variations of threshold voltage and drain current under different bending conditions and orientations of the channel of the device, the bendable ISFET macro-model has been implemented in Verilog-A, and compiled into the Cadence environment. The effects of bending on the behaviour of the device have been simulated over a user-defined range of pH, and sensitivities in a standard 0.18-μm CMOS technology. It has been found that the transfer curves (Id-Vg) of ISFET vary up to 4.46% for tensile and up to 5.15% for compressive bending stress at pH 2, and up to 4.99% for tensile and 5.61% for compressive bending stress at pH 12 with respect to its planar counterpart, while the sensitivity of the device has been found to remain the same irrespectively of the bending stress. The proposed model has been validated by comparing the results with those obtained by other macro-models and experimental results in literature.
PhaseNet for Video Frame Interpolation

Most approaches for video frame interpolation require accurate dense correspondences to synthesize an in-between frame. Therefore, they do not perform well in challenging scenarios with e.g. lighting changes or motion blur. Recent deep learning approaches that rely on kernels to represent motion can only alleviate these problems to some extent. In those cases, methods that use a per-pixel phase-based motion representation have been shown to work well. However, they are only applicable for a limited amount of motion. We propose a new approach, PhaseNet, that is designed to robustly handle challenging scenarios while also coping with larger motion. Our approach consists of a neural network decoder that directly estimates the phase decomposition of the intermediate frame. We show that this is superior to the hand-crafted heuristics previously used in phase-based methods and also compares favorably to recent deep learning based approaches for video frame interpolation on challenging datasets.
Wheat Antioxidants, Their Role in Bakery Industry, and Health Perspective

Wheat grains and its fractions contain significant level of antioxidant activity and many phytochemicals, such as phenolic acids (ferulic and vanillic acids), carotenoids, and tocopherol are beneficial in curing many disorders. The beneficial phytochemicals are mostly present in aleurone fraction of wheat bran. The phytochemicals and anti - oxidants present in wheat have several health benefits, such as their ability to act as antioxidants, immunoenhancers, and inhibitors of certain lesions, which have been demonstrated for phenolic. Many wheat antioxidants are similar to the antioxidants present in wheat, but their characteristics are also unique in nature. The regular con sumption of these antioxidant compounds in whole grains is associated with a reduced risk of many heart diseases and several forms of cancers and improves the regulation of blood glucose. Wheat antioxidants play a vital role in bakery industry mostly in bread industry. People are getting aware to use the bakery products that are prepared from the white flour due to proper nutrition, healthy lifestyle, improved nutritional composi tion, and functional properties. In nutshell, wheat antioxidants including phytochemi - cals synergistically improve the health status of consumers by consuming the products having complete nutrition. enhancement of caspase-3 activity; (3) downregulation of significantly increased the liver glycogen and lowered the glycosylated hemoglobin levels and blood glucose [76, 91 , 92
Structural clones: An evolution perspective

Structural clones are recurring patterns of simple code clones in software that represent a bigger picture of similarity in software (e.g. software design). Elevating the analysis of cloning to structural clone level helps in better clone management in terms of clone understanding, maintenance and evolution. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach to study structural clone evolution in software versions. We use our approach to analyze the evolutionary behavior of structural clones and also compare it with the evolution of simple clones. We performed experiments on different versions of three Java systems. Our analysis of structural clone evolution reveals interesting evolutionary characteristics of clones. For example, one finding is that simple clones are more frequently changed than structural clones whereas average lifetime of structural clones is less than that of simple clones. Study of clone evolution is helpful for identifying maintenance implications of clones and for devising better clone management systems.
Effect of silica fume on fracture properties of high-performance concrete containing fly ash

A parametric experimental study has been conducted to investigate the effect of silica fume on the fracture properties of high-performance concrete containing fly ash, with four silica fume contents (3%, 6%, 9% and 12%) used. By means of three-point bending method, the fracture toughness, fracture energy, effective crack length, critical crack opening displacement and maximum crack opening displacement of the specimen were measured, respectively. The results indicate that silica fume has great adverse effect on the fracture toughness, fracture energy, effective crack length, critical crack opening displacement and maximum crack opening displacement, and these fracture parameters decrease gradually when the content of silica fume increases from 3% to 12%. Besides, as the silica fume content increases from 3% to 12%, the relational curves between the vertical load and the mid-span deflection (PV–δ), crack mouth opening displacement (PV– CMOD ) and crack tip opening displacement (PV– CTOD ) are becoming thinner and thinner, which indicates that the capability of high-performance concrete containing fly ash to resist crack propagation is becoming weaker and weaker. It seems that the content of silica fume of high-performance concrete containing fly ash should be controlled strictly, and the silica fume content should be as low as possible on condition that the other properties of high-performance concrete can meet practical requirements.