Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An investigation of grain boundaries in submicrometer-grained Al-Mg solid solution alloys using high-resolution electron microscopy

High-resolution electron microscopy was used to examine the structural features of grain boundaries in Al–1.5% Mg and Al–3% Mg solid solution alloys produced with submicrometer grain sizes using an intense plastic straining technique. The grain boundaries were mostly curved or wavy along their length, and some portions were corrugated with regular or irregular arrangements of facets and steps. During exposure to high-energy electrons, grain boundary migration occurred to reduce the number of facets and thus to reduce the total boundary energy. The observed features demonstrate conclusively that the grain boundaries in these submicrometer-grained materials are in a high-energy nonequilibrium configuration.
Auditory processing disorders: an update for speech-language pathologists.

PURPOSE Unanswered questions regarding the nature of auditory processing disorders (APDs), how best to identify at-risk students, how best to diagnose and differentiate APDs from other disorders, and concerns about the lack of valid treatments have resulted in ongoing confusion and skepticism about the diagnostic validity of this label. This poses challenges for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who are working with school-age children and whose scope of practice includes APD screening and intervention. The purpose of this article is to address some of the questions commonly asked by SLPs regarding APDs in school-age children. This article is also intended to serve as a resource for SLPs to be used in deciding what role they will or will not play with respect to APDs in school-age children. METHOD The methodology used in this article included a computerized database review of the latest published information on APD, with an emphasis on the work of established researchers and expert panels, including articles from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and the American Academy of Audiology. CONCLUSIONS The article concludes with the authors' recommendations for continued research and their views on the appropriate role of the SLP in performing careful screening, making referrals, and supporting intervention.
Hearing loss in the elderly: History of occupational noise exposure

Summary Introduction: Noise exposure is one of the most common health risk factors, and workers are exposed to sound pressure levels capable of producing hearing loss. Aim: To assess the prevalence of hearing loss in the elderly and its possible association with a history of occupational noise exposure and with sex. Methods: A prospective study in subjects aged over 60 years. The subjects underwent anamnesis and audiological assessment. The Mann–Whitney test and multiple logistic regression, with 95% confidence interval and p < 0.05, were used for statistical analysis. Results: There were 498 subjects from both sexes, and the median age was 69 years. From the comparison between men and women, we obtained the medium hearing I (500, 1000, and 2000 Hz p = 0.8318) and the mean hearing II (3000, 4000, and 6000 Hz; p < 0.0001). Comparing the thresholds of individuals with and without a history of occupational noise exposure, we obtained the medium hearing I (p = 0.9542) and the mean hearing II (p = 0.0007). Conclusion: There was a statistically significant association between hearing loss at high frequencies and the risk factors being male and occupational noise exposure.
Relevance of oxidative injury in the pathogenesis of motor neuron diseases

Oxidative stress, which results from a complex interplay of pro‐ and anti‐oxidant forces, is generally considered to be the major effector of accumulation of oxidatively modified protein accumulation in cells, although reduced degradation due to impairment of proteolytic activity could also contribute. The discovery that a familial form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) results from mutations in the gene encoding Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD1), a major anti‐oxidant enzyme, stimulated considerable evaluation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and oxidative protein damage in both familial and sporadic forms of the disease. Mutations in SOD1 do not cause disease by compromising dismutating activity, but through some toxic gain of function. Although exacerbation of other copper‐catalyzed enzymatic activities has been demonstrated in vitro, there is little evidence substantiating that this property is responsible for toxicity in vivo. Studies of ROS generation and oxidative damage in vivo have produced mixed results, but collectively are consistent with oxidative stress playing a secondary role in pathogenesis of the disease. Studies of post‐mortem tissue from sporadic ALS patients has yielded more consistent evidence of accumulation of oxidative damage to proteins, lipids, and DNA, but the time course of accumulation cannot be determined and the initiating causes of the disease have not been identified. The interplay between motor neurons and glial cells is important in the clinical progression of both familial and sporadic motor neuron diseases and release of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species or cytokines from microglia could contribute to the demise of motor neurons. This review describes the general mechanisms of radical‐mediated cellular damage followed by the evidence for and against the contribution of oxidative injury to the pathogenesis of motor neuron diseases.
ROCK activity regulates functional tight junction assembly during blastocyst formation in porcine parthenogenetic embryos

The Rho-associated coiled-coil-containing protein serine/threonine kinases 1 and 2 (ROCK1 and ROCK2) are Rho subfamily GTPase downstream effectors that regulate cell migration, intercellular adhesion, cell polarity, and cell proliferation by stimulating actin cytoskeleton reorganization. Inhibition of ROCK proteins affects specification of the trophectoderm (TE) and inner cell mass (ICM) lineages, compaction, and blastocyst cavitation. However, the molecules involved in blastocyst formation are not known. Here, we examined developmental competence and levels of adherens/tight junction (AJ/TJ) constituent proteins, such as CXADR, OCLN, TJP1, and CDH1, as well as expression of their respective mRNAs, after treating porcine parthenogenetic four-cell embryos with Y-27632, a specific inhibitor of ROCK, at concentrations of 0, 10, 20, 100 µM for 24 h. Following this treatment, the blastocyst development rates were 39.1, 20.7, 10.0, and 0% respectively. In embryos treated with 20 µM treatment, expression levels of CXADR, OCLN, TJP1, and CDH1 mRNA and protein molecules were significantly reduced (P < 0.05). FITC-dextran uptake assay revealed that the treatment caused an increase in TE TJ permeability. Interestingly, the majority of the four-cell and morula embryos treated with 20 µM Y-27643 for 24 h showed defective compaction and cavitation. Taken together, our results indicate that ROCK activity may differentially affect assembly of AJ/TJs as well as regulate expression of genes encoding junctional proteins.
Protein synthesis in long-term stationary-phase cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

We are interested in characterizing the process of entry into and the maintenance of the stationary phase. To identify proteins that are induced during growth to stationary phase, we examined protein synthesis in long-term stationary-phase cultures using two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (2D-PAGE). Although the total rate of protein synthesis declined when growth ceased after the postdiauxic phase, the pattern of proteins synthesized remained similar throughout the experimental period (28 days), except at the diauxic shift. At the diauxic shift most proteins detectable by 2D-PAGE undergo a transient reduction in their relative rate of synthesis that ends when cells resume growth during the postdiauxic phase. We conclude from this that the transient repression of protein synthesis at the diauxic shift is not directly associated with stationary-phase arrest. A number of proteins that are synthesized after exponential phase have been identified by 2D-PAGE. These proteins could be divided into three temporal classes depending upon when their synthesis became detectable. One postexponential protein, designated p35, was induced later than all other proteins, and its relative rate of synthesis increased throughout stationary phase. Unlike most postexponential proteins, p35 was not regulated by heat shock or glucose repression. We also observed that a direct correlation between steady-state mRNA accumulation and protein synthesis for another postexponential protein (Ssa3p) or two closely related constitutive proteins (Ssa1p and Ssa2p) did not exist. We conclude from this result that synthesis of proteins in stationary phase is regulated by mechanisms other than the control of steady-state mRNA accumulation.
Quest for Low-Voltage and Low-Power Integrated Circuits: Towards a Sustainable Future

On recent decades, human society has continuously required more and more functions and performance for IT and electronics equipment, more traffic and connectivity for the Internet, and more convenience and security for household electronics and automobiles. These needs are realized by means of integrated circuits (ICs) with digital logic, memory, analog, RF, and power functions and optical transmitters and receivers.
Further studies of bootstrap variability for ROC analysis on large datasets

– The nonparametric two-sample bootstrap is successfully applied to computing the measurement uncertainties in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis on large datasets in areas such as biometrics, speaker recognition system, etc. To determine the number of bootstrap replications in our applications, the bootstrap variability related to standard error and two bounds of 95 % confidence interval was studied in a scenario where the statistic of interest was the true accept rate (TAR) of the genuine scores at a specified false accept rate (FAR) of the impostor scores. From the operational perspective, three more scenarios are of interest, in which the statistics are the TAR at a given threshold value, the FAR at a specified threshold value, and the equal error rate, respectively. Regarding the ROC analysis, the area under ROC curve is also of interest. In this article, the bootstrap variability was studied in all these five scenarios concerning both high-and low-accuracy matching algorithms. With the tolerance 0.02 of the coefficient of variation, which can be applied to all cases investigated, it is found that 2000 bootstrap replications are appropriate for ROC analysis on large datasets in order to reduce the bootstrap variance and ensure the accuracy of the computation.
A Survey of Digital Mosaic Techniques

Art often provides valuable hints for technological innovations especially in the field of Image Processing and Computer Graphics. In this paper we survey in an unified framework several methods to transform a raster input image into good quality mosaics. The common and different ideas among the methods are reported and described. Finally we try to address the evaluation problem of an NPR algorithm.
An empirical study on the effectiveness of images in Multimodal Neural Machine Translation

In state-of-the-art Neural Machine Translation (NMT), an attention mechanism is used during decoding to enhance the translation. At every step, the decoder uses this mechanism to focus on different parts of the source sentence to gather the most useful information before outputting its target word. Recently, the effectiveness of the attention mechanism has also been explored for multi-modal tasks, where it becomes possible to focus both on sentence parts and image regions that they describe. In this paper, we compare several attention mechanism on the multi-modal translation task (English, image → German) and evaluate the ability of the model to make use of images to improve translation. We surpass state-of-the-art scores on the Multi30k data set, we nevertheless identify and report different misbehavior of the machine while translating.
Circadian rhythms of behavioral cone sensitivity and long wavelength opsin mRNA expression: a correlation study in zebrafish

SUMMARY Using a behavioral assay based on visually mediated escape responses, we measured long-wavelength-sensitive red cone (LC) sensitivities in zebrafish. In a 24 h period, the zebrafish were least sensitive to red light in the early morning and most sensitive in the late afternoon. To investigate if the fluctuation of behavioral cone sensitivity correlates with opsin gene expression, we measured LC opsin mRNA expression at different times in the day and night under different lighting conditions. Under a normal light–dark cycle, the expression of LC opsin mRNA determined by real-time RT–PCR was low in the early morning and high in the late afternoon, similar to the fluctuation of behavioral cone sensitivity. This rhythm of LC opsin mRNA expression, however, dampened out gradually in constant conditions. After 24 h of constant light (LL), the expression of LC opsin mRNA dropped to levels similar to those determined in the early morning in control animals. By contrast, when the zebrafish were kept in constant dark (DD), the expression of LC opsin mRNA increased, to levels about 30-fold higher than the expression in the early morning in control animals. This day–night fluctuation in LC opsin mRNA expression was correlated to changes in opsin density in the outer segment of cone photoreceptor cells. Microspectrophotometry (MSP) measurements found significant differences in red cone outer segment optical density with a rhythm following the behavioral sensitivity. Furthermore, dopamine modulated the circadian rhythms in expression of LC opsin mRNA. Administration of dopamine increased LC opsin mRNA expression, but only in the early morning.
ONTOGENY OF MACROPHAGE RESISTANCE TO MOUSE HEPATITIS IN VIVO AND IN VITRO

Adult or weanling C3H mice were found to be genetically resistant to a strain of mouse hepatitis virus. Infant C3H mice, however, developed infection and died from mouse hepatitis virus when minimal infectious doses of virus were given to them. There was a delay in the time of death compared to that of the genetically susceptible strain, and the virus recovered from these mice had increased pathogenicity for C3H mice. The ontogeny of resistance to hepatitis in the C3H mice thus progresses from delayed susceptibility to complete resistance as the age of the host increases. It is reflected in increased resistance of macrophages derived in vitro from liver cultures of infant mice of different ages. This increase in resistance with age was reduced by maintaining the cultures for a longer period of time before inoculation, or by increasing the number of explants in a given culture. Resistant cells were uniformly furnished by mice age 16 days, or more. It is concluded that a process of maturation of resistance of the cells takes place after the mice are born, but that this does not continue under in vitro conditions, and that it may be modified by the environment of the cells.
Immunosuppressive therapy in connective tissue diseases-associated pulmonary arterial hypertension.

STUDY OBJECTIVE Immune and inflammatory mechanisms could play a significant role in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) genesis or progression, especially in patients with connective tissue diseases. Immunosuppressive therapy should be better evaluated in this setting. STUDY DESIGN Monocentric retrospective study. PATIENTS We reviewed the clinical and hemodynamic effects of immunosuppressants administered as first-line monotherapy to 28 consecutive patients with connective tissue disease-associated PAH. INTERVENTIONS All patients received a monthly IV bolus of cyclophosphamide, 600 mg/m2, for at least 3 months, and 22 of 28 patients received systemic glucocorticosteroids. Responders to immunosuppressive therapy were defined as patients who remained in New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class I or II with sustained hemodynamic improvement after at least 1 year of immunosuppressive therapy without addition of prostanoids, phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, or endothelin receptor antagonists. RESULTS Eight of 28 patients (systemic lupus erythematosus [SLE], n = 5; mixed connective tissue disease [MCTD], n = 3) [29%] were responders. These patients had a significantly improved 6-min walking distance (available in five patients) and a significant improvement in hemodynamic function. No patients with systemic sclerosis responded, while 5 of 12 patients with SLE and 3 of 8 patients with MCTD did respond. Survival analysis indicated that responders had a better survival than nonresponders. Patients with a lower baseline NYHA functional class and better baseline pulmonary hemodynamics (p < 0.05) were more likely to benefit from immunosuppressive therapy. CONCLUSION PAH associated with SLE or MCTD might respond to a treatment combining glucocorticosteroids and cyclophosphamide.
Modeling and Optimization of Process Parameters for Defect Toleranced Drilling of GFRP Composites

Drilling is a frequently practiced machining process for fiber-reinforced plastics (FRP) in industry owing to the need for component assembly in mechanical structures. Drilling experiments are performed on a (0/±45/90)2s 3-mm-thick glass fiber-reinforced laminate using 4-, 6- and 8-mm-diameter HSS drills. The machining response of the quasi-isotropic laminate was studied by monitoring the thrust and torque. The performance of the HSS drills for different cutting conditions was studied by measuring the tool wear. Delamination due to drilling is a major concern in machining a composite laminate and is analyzed by using linear elastic fracture mechanics, classical plate bending theory, and the mechanics of composites. A mechanical model for evaluating the critical thrust at which delamination is initiated at different ply locations has been used, and the critical thrust force at the onset of delamination has been found to be 70 N. The present work analyzes data on the thrust force, torque, and tool life by using a group method data handling (GMDH) algorithm. An optimization algorithm using simulated annealing with a performance index is then applied to search for the optimal process parameters for delaminatien constrained drilling.
New technologies in the management of risk and violence in forensic settings

Novel technological interventions are increasingly used in mental health settings. In this article, we describe 3 novel technological strategies in use for management of risk and violence in 2 forensic psychiatry settings in the United Kingdom: electronic monitoring by GPS-based tracking devices of patients on leave from a medium secure service in London, and closed circuit television (CCTV) monitoring and motion sensor technology at Broadmoor high secure hospital. A common theme is the use of these technologies to improve the completeness and accuracy of data used by clinicians to make clinical decisions. Another common thread is that each of these strategies supports and improves current clinical approaches rather than drastically changing them. The technologies offer a broad range of benefits. These include less restrictive options for patients, improved accountability of both staff and patients, less invasive testing, improved automated record-keeping, and better assurance reporting. Services utilizing technologies need also be aware of limitations. Technologies may be seen as unduly restrictive by patients and advocates, and technical issues may reduce effectiveness. It is vital that the types of technological innovations described in this article should be subject to thorough evaluation that addresses cost effectiveness, qualitative analysis of patients’ attitudes, safety, and ethical considerations.
Strategic intelligence on emerging technologies: Scientometric overlay mapping

This paper examines the use of scientometric overlay mapping as a tool of “strategic intelligence” to aid the governing of emerging technologies. We develop an integrative synthesis of different overlay mapping techniques and associated perspectives on technological emergence across geographical, social, and cognitive spaces. To do so, we longitudinally analyze (with publication and patent data) three case studies of emerging technologies in the medical domain. These are RNA interference (RNAi), human papillomavirus (HPV) testing technologies for cervical cancer, and thiopurine methyltransferase (TPMT) genetic testing. Given the flexibility (i.e., adaptability to different sources of data) and granularity (i.e., applicability across multiple levels of data aggregation) of overlay mapping techniques, we argue that these techniques can favor the integration and comparison of results from different contexts and cases, thus potentially functioning as a platform for “distributed” strategic intelligence for analysts and decision makers.
What Measure of Inflation Should a Central Bank Target?

This paper assumes that a central bank commits itself to maintaining an inflation target and then asks what measure of the inflation rate the central bank should use if it wants to maximize economic stability. The paper first formalizes this problem and examines its microeconomic foundations. It then shows how the weight of a sector in the stability price index depends on the sector's characteristics, including size, cyclical sensitivity, sluggishness of price adjustment, and magnitude of sectoral shocks. When a numerical illustration of the problem is calibrated to U.S. data, one tentative conclusion is that a central bank that wants to achieve maximum stability of economic activity should use a price index that gives substantial weight to the level of nominal wages.
Inaccuracy of regression results in replacing bivariate correlations

This manuscript considers discrepancies between the bivariate correlation and several indices of association estimated from regression results. These indices can be estimated from results typically reported in primary studies. In recent years, many researchers conducting meta‐analyses have used these indices in place of, or together with, the bivariate correlation. I illustrate the differences among these indices and the bivariate correlation. I demonstrate the inaccuracy of these indices as replacements for bivariate effects. Thus, I recommend discontinuing the use of these indices and partial effect sizes as replacement for the bivariate correlation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.