Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conceptual design and analysis by sketching

The ability of a CAD system to perceive a three-dimensional model depicted in a single freehand sketch presents the practical possibility of bringing numerous established analysis tools into the early stages of design to institute conceptual analysis. In this article we hypothesize that the key to enabling systems to reason and communicate about conceptual design is the language of sketching. We explore this approach, outline the basic algorithms required, and provide several examples of an implemented system.
Network of Endocardial Vessels

Background: Although there have been reports on threadlike structures inside the heart, they have received little attention. We aimed to develop a method for observing such structures and to reveal their ultrastructures. Methods:An in situ staining method, which uses a series of procedures of 0.2–0.4% trypan blue spraying and washing, was applied to observe threadlike structures on the surfaces of endocardia. The threadlike structures were isolated and observed by using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results: Networks of endocardial vessels (20 µm in thickness) with expansions (40–100 µm in diameter) were visualized; they were movable on the endocardium of the bovine atrium and ventricle. CLSM showed that (1) rod-shaped nuclei were aligned along the longitudinal direction of the endocardial vessel and (2) there were many cells inside the expansion. TEM on the endocardial vessel revealed that (1) there existed multiple lumens (1–7 µm in diameter) and (2) the extracellular matrices mostly consisted of collagen fibers, which were aligned along the longitudinal direction of the endocardial vessel or were locally organized in reticular structures. Conclusion: We investigated the endocardial circulatory system in bovine cardiac chambers and its ultrastructures, such as nucleic distributions, microlumens, and collagenous extracellular matrices.
A Qualitative Study of Various Improvements in Cluster Based Routing Protocols for WSN

— A wireless sensor network is comprised of hundreds and thousands of small tiny devices called sensor nodes which are distributed in such a way so as to monitor real environment conditions likewise temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. But most of the wireless sensor networks are constrained to their low network lifetime due to high energy consumption. In this paper a qualitative study has been made regarding various improvements carried out in Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) routing protocol.
Water Fluoridation: A Critical Review of the Physiological Effects of Ingested Fluoride as a Public Health Intervention

Fluorine is the world's 13th most abundant element and constitutes 0.08% of the Earth crust. It has the highest electronegativity of all elements. Fluoride is widely distributed in the environment, occurring in the air, soils, rocks, and water. Although fluoride is used industrially in a fluorine compound, the manufacture of ceramics, pesticides, aerosol propellants, refrigerants, glassware, and Teflon cookware, it is a generally unwanted byproduct of aluminium, fertilizer, and iron ore manufacture. The medicinal use of fluorides for the prevention of dental caries began in January 1945 when community water supplies in Grand Rapids, United States, were fluoridated to a level of 1 ppm as a dental caries prevention measure. However, water fluoridation remains a controversial public health measure. This paper reviews the human health effects of fluoride. The authors conclude that available evidence suggests that fluoride has a potential to cause major adverse human health problems, while having only a modest dental caries prevention effect. As part of efforts to reduce hazardous fluoride ingestion, the practice of artificial water fluoridation should be reconsidered globally, while industrial safety measures need to be tightened in order to reduce unethical discharge of fluoride compounds into the environment. Public health approaches for global dental caries reduction that do not involve systemic ingestion of fluoride are urgently needed.
Information Needs Prior to Breast Biopsy

Biopsy is the definitive diagnostic procedure for breast cancer. The fear of cancer may make the breast biopsy itself a distressing experience for women and their significant others. Information seeking is believed to be a primary mode of coping with distressful events. The purpose of this study was to describe the information needs of women and their significant others prior to a breast biopsy and to explore the influence of information on the breast biopsy experience. Semistructured, audiotape-recorded interviews with 11 women and 8 significant others were conducted prior to breast biopsy, and categories arising from the data were developed The primary information need identified by the participants was to know "Is it cancer? " Participants' uncertainty regarding the outcome of the biopsy led to feelings of distress. The major strategy used to reduce distress was information management, in which the amount and type of incoming information was controlled. Nursing interventions based on the study findings are presented.
Depression does not affect time perception and time-to-contact estimation

Depressed patients frequently report a subjective slowing of the passage of time. However, experimental demonstrations of altered time perception in depressed patients are not conclusive. We added a timed action task (time-to-contact estimation, TTC) and compared this indirect time perception task to the more direct classical methods of verbal time estimation, time production, and time reproduction. In the TTC estimation task, the deviations of the estimates from the veridical values (relative errors) revealed no differences between depressed patients (N= 22) and healthy controls (N= 22). Neither did the relative errors of the TTC estimates differ between groups. There was a weak trend toward higher variability of the estimates in depressed patients but only at the shortest TTC and at the fastest velocities. Time experience (subjective flow of time) as well as time perception in terms of interval timing (verbal estimation, time production, time reproduction) performed on the same subjects likewise failed to produce effects of depression. We conclude that the notion that depression has a sizeable effect on time perception cannot be maintained.
Inhibition deficit in the spatial tendency of the response in multiple-domain amnestic mild cognitive impairment. An event-related potential study

Longitudinal studies have shown that a high percentage of people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Prodromal AD is known to involve deficits in executive control processes. In the present study, we examined such deficits by recording EEG in 13 single-domain amnestic MCI (sdaMCI), 12 multiple-domain amnestic MCI (mdaMCI) and 18 healthy elderly (control group, CG) participants while they performed a Simon task. The Simon task demands deployment of executive processes because participants have to respond to non-spatial features of a lateralized stimulus and inhibit the more automatic spatial tendency of the response. We specifically focused on the negativity central contralateral (N2cc), an event-related potential (ERP) component related to brain activity that prevents the cross-talk between direction of spatial attention and manual response preparation. The reaction time (RT) was not significantly different among the three groups of participants. The percentage of errors (PE) was higher in mdaMCI than in CG and sdaMCI participants. In addition, N2cc latency was delayed in mdaMCI (i.e., delayed implementation of mechanisms for controlling the spatial tendency of the response). The N2cc latency clearly distinguished among mdaMCI and CG/sdaMCI participants (area under curve: 0.91). Longer N2cc was therefore associated with executive control deficits, which suggests that N2cc latency is a correlate of mdaMCI.
Funding Liquidity Risk and the Dynamics of Hedge Fund Lockups

Abstract We exploit the expiring nature of hedge fund lockups to create a new measure of funding liquidity risk that varies within funds. We find that hedge funds with lower funding risk generate higher returns, and this effect is driven by their increased exposure to equity-mispricing anomalies. Our results are robust to a variety of sampling criteria, variable definitions, and control variables. Further, we address endogeneity concerns in various ways, including a placebo approach and regression discontinuity design. Collectively, our results support a causal link between funding risk and the ability of managers to engage in risky arbitrage.
Adhesion and Cellular Compatibility of Silicone-Based Skin Adhesives

Pressure-sensitive adhesives based on silicone materials have emerging potential as adhesives in healthcare products, in particular for gentle skin adhesives. To this end, adhesion to rough skin and biocompatibility are crucial factors for a successful implementation. In this study, the mechanical, adhesive, and biological properties of the two-component poly(dimethylsiloxane) Soft Skin Adhesive MG 7-9800 (SSA, Dow Corning) have been investigated and compared to Sylgard 184. Different mixing ratios of SSA's components allow for tuning of the shear modulus, thereby modifying the adhesive properties of the polymer. To give a comprehensive insight, the authors have analyzed the interplay between pull-off stress, adhesion energy, and stretch of the adhesive films on smooth and rough surfaces. The focus is placed on the effects of substrate roughness and on low pressure oxygen plasma treatment of the adhesive films. SSA shows superior biocompatibility in in vitro cell culture experiments. High pull-off stresses in the range of 3 N cm−2 on a rough surface are achieved, promising broad application spectra for SSA-based healthcare products.
The rs2233678 Polymorphism in PIN1 Promoter Region Reduced Cancer Risk: A Meta-Analysis

Background Published evidence suggests that the rs2233678 (−842 G>C) polymorphism in the PIN1 (peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans somerase NIMA-interacting 1) promoter region may be associated with cancer risk; however, the conclusion is still inconclusive. Methods We conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether −842 G>C polymorphism was associated with cancer risk. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were used to assess the strength of association. Genotype distribution data and adjusted ORs were collected to calculate the pooled ORs. Meta-regression was conducted to detect the source of heterogeneity. Publication bias was evaluated by Egger’s test and Begg’s test. Results A total of 11 eligible studies, including 9280 participants, were identified and analyzed. Overall, we found that carriers of the −842 C allele were associated with significantly decreased cancer risk (C vs. G, OR = 0.750, 95% CI: 0.639–0.880, Pheterogeneity = 0.014, estimated by genotype distribution data; CC+GC vs. GG, OR = 0.668, 95% CI: 0.594–0.751, Pheterogeneity = 0.638, estimated by adjusted ORs). No evidence of publication bias was observed. Meta-regression revealed that ethnicities (p = 0.021) and sample size (p = 0.02) but not sources of control (p = 0.069) were the source of heterogeneity. Conclusion These results suggest that the PIN1 rs2233678 (−842 G>C) polymorphism significantly reduces cancer risk.
A biologically-inspired robotic vision system for tracking fast moving objects

We present a robotic vision system that is capable of tracking fast moving objects. We briefly describe the design and construction of the system and concentrate on the biological strategies we have implemented to improve the system's capabilities in terms of speed and accuracy. We have also explored new horizons in the area of artificial intelligence to propose some useful algorithms based on visual attention to scan the scene efficiently, and govern the system's behavior. The algorithm allows us to select regions of interest over which we force the fixations of the vision mechanism. Saliency maps are then created with characteristics, such as color, geometry, optical flow and intensity that highlight within the scene. The amount of maps that can be extracted in an image is huge, so we just use some of them to avoid high latencies that can harm the performance of our system. We use the Winner Take All algorithm to select the most salient region. We have evaluated the performance of our system on real environments.
Object-Oriented Modeling in CIS: Inheritance and Propagation*

The relational data model has proven to be too restrictive for applications with spatial data, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In particular, the absence of techniques to form complex objects and represent spatial objects at different abstraction levels makes it difficult to model geographic situations properly The object-oriented approach, which has been recently promoted for similar engineering applications, such as CAD/CAM, VLSI design, or molecular models in chemistry, seems to overcome some of the deficiencies By incorporating the abstrac tion mechanisms ycnt i-nlization and (lyyiryafion, the data model gets richer and more powerful than the relational model, and the application designer is given more and better tools to model complex situations. Both generalization and aggregation involve the derivation of attribute values at different levels of detail and abstraction. Two methods for the derivation of properties are introduced' (1) mix nt<inr< describing properties and methods of subclasses in is_a hierarchies, and (2) IIIU/HI(/tihdii deriving properties in part_of hierarchies While inheritance acts in a top-down fashion along the generalization hierarchy, propagation can derive values from parts to the aggregates (bottom-up). Frequently aggregate functions, such as SUM, MIN, or MAX are involved to pass on properties of composed objects to its parts.
NeuPL: Attention-based Semantic Matching and Pair-Linking for Entity Disambiguation

Entity disambiguation, also known as entity linking, is the task of mapping mentions in text to the corresponding entities in a given knowledge base, e.g. Wikipedia. Two key challenges are making use of mention's context to disambiguate (i.e. local objective), and promoting coherence of all the linked entities (i.e. global objective). In this paper, we propose a deep neural network model to effectively measure the semantic matching between mention's context and target entity. We are the first to employ the long short-term memory (LSTM) and attention mechanism for entity disambiguation. We also propose Pair-Linking, a simple but effective and significantly fast linking algorithm. Pair-Linking iteratively identifies and resolves pairs of mentions, starting from the most confident pair. It finishes linking all mentions in a document by scanning the pairs of mentions at most once. Our neural network model combined with Pair-Linking, named NeuPL, outperforms state-of-the-art systems over different types of documents including news, RSS, and tweets.
A Single Bivalent Efficiently Inhibits Cyclin B1 Degradation and Polar Body Extrusion in Mouse Oocytes Indicating Robust SAC during Female Meiosis I

The Spindle Assembly Checkpoint (SAC) inhibits anaphase until microtubule-to-kinetochore attachments are formed, thus securing correct chromosome separation and preventing aneuploidy. Whereas in mitosis even a single unattached chromosome keeps the SAC active, the high incidence of aneuploidy related to maternal meiotic errors raises a concern about the lower efficiency of SAC in oocytes. Recently it was suggested that in mouse oocytes, contrary to somatic cells, not a single chromosome but a critical mass of chromosomes triggers efficient SAC pointing to the necessity of evaluating the robustness of SAC in oocytes. Two types of errors in chromosome segregation upon meiosis I related to SAC were envisaged: (1) SAC escape, when kinetochores emit SAC-activating signal unable to stop anaphase I; and (2) SAC deceive, when kinetochores do not emit the signal. Using micromanipulations and live imaging of the first polar body extrusion, as well as the dynamics of cyclin B1 degradation, here we show that in mouse oocytes a single bivalent keeps the SAC active. This is the first direct evaluation of SAC efficiency in mouse oocytes, which provides strong evidence that the robustness of SAC in mammalian oocytes is comparable to other cell types. Our data do not contradict the hypothesis of the critical mass of chromosomes necessary for SAC activation, but suggest that the same rule may govern SAC activity also in other cell types. We postulate that the innate susceptibility of oocytes to errors in chromosome segregation during the first meiotic division may not be caused by lower efficiency of SAC itself, but could be linked to high critical chromosome mass necessary to keep SAC active in oocyte of large size.
Using video to analyze one's own teaching

Recently, interest in using video to facilitate teacher reflection has increased. Despite this increase, the frameworks employed to help teachers use video to reflect on their teaching are not based on the results of prior video analysis research. There is a need to better understand how and in what ways video has been used to reflect on one's own teaching. The purpose of this paper is to review past studies in order to help educators make more informed decisions as they establish their own video analysis processes. This review includes 63 studies where participants recorded their own teaching, examined their performance on video and reflected on the performance. Several dimensions of video analysis that varied across past studies are discussed: type of tasks, manner of facilitation, extent to which teachers reflect individually or collaboratively, length of video used, number of reflections and measurement. This paper summarizes reported findings regarding each of these dimensions and raises several questions that need further investigation. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Video is a powerful tool for teacher reflection. , Video enables teachers to more effectively 'see' their practice. , Teachers who engage in video reflection report recalling prior videos of their teaching during future teaching, enabling them to more effectively, 'reflect in practice. ', What this paper adds A unified synthesis of the literature on video used for teacher self-relfection. , A review of the tools used for facilitating teacher reflection via video and their effect on the reflective process. , Six different dimensions among which video-aided teacher reflection research varies. , Implications for practice and/or policy Teachers prefer to engage in video analysis for reflection in collaboration with colleagues over reflecting alone and feel that the most important recommended changes come from these collaborative groups. , In support of past research, teachers report that the use of a guiding framework (eg., rubric, checklist, teaching principles) helps to focus their reflection. However, most teachers actually prefer to choose their own focus. Thus, administrators should find a balance between the use of a predetermined reflection framework and teachers' choice of focus within that framework. , Video-aided teacher reflection has demonstrated posited change through varied measures (self-report, JOUR studies, lesson plans, pre-/posttest scores). However, we do not know which combination of these leads to the greatest or most impactful change. Future research needs to examine the ways in which video-aided teacher reflection can differentially impact teacher practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Do Psychological Birth Order Positions Predict Future Time Orientation in Romantic Relationships

Psychological birth order was examined as predictor of future time orientation in romantic relationships among Turkish people using a Turkish version (Kalkan, 2005) of the White-Campbell Psychological Birth Order Inventory (Campbell, White & Stewart, 1991) and the Future Time Orientation in Romantic Relationships Scale (Oner, 2000). A total of 407 university students from Ondokuz Mayis University participated in the study. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that psychologically first, middle and only positions predict future time orientation in romantic relationships. Gender, actual birth order, and psychologically young child position did not contribute significantly to the variation in future time orientation in romantic relationships. The results of the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient showed that psychological birth order positions were related to future time orientation in romantic relationships.
Ginsenoside Rb1 Enhances Atherosclerotic Plaque Stability by Improving Autophagy and Lipid Metabolism in Macrophage Foam Cells

Atherosclerosis (AS) is a lipid-driven disease in which macrophage foam cells play a critical role by increasing vascular lipid accumulation and contributing to plaque instability. Ginsenoside Rb1 (Rb1), the most abundant active component of ginseng, has been found potently to promote lipid metabolism and attenuate lipid accumulation. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, the effects of Rb1 on lipid accumulation and plaque stability were investigated both in vitro and in vivo by using primary peritoneal macrophages isolated from C57BL/6 mice and an AS model in ApoE-/- mice. The results showed that Rb1 reduced lipid accumulation both in macrophage foam cells and atherosclerotic plaques. Rb1 treatment promoted plaque stability by modifying plaque composition via the activation of autophagy both in vitro and in vivo. Transmission electron microscopy further showed an increased accumulation of autophagolysosomes in Rb1-treated macrophage foam cells. However, the modulation of lipid accumulation by Rb1 was attenuated by autophagy blockage using autophagy-related gene 5 (Atg5) small interfering RNA (siRNA) in vitro. In addition, Rb1 notably increased AMPK phosphorylation both in vitro and in vivo, and the AMPK inhibitor compound C abolished the Rb1-induced autophagy in macrophage foam cells. In conclusion, ginsenoside Rb1 reduced lipid accumulation in macrophage foam cells and enhanced atherosclerotic plaque stability by the induction of macrophage autophagy. Our study provides new evidence for the possible use of Rb1 in the prevention and treatment of AS.
Stainability of Esthetic Restorative Materials after Cyclic Immersion in Various Beverages

The objective of this study was to investigate the stainability effects of five beverages (apple cider, orange juice, Coca-Cola, coffee, and beer) on nanohybrid resin composite and giomer. Fifty specimens of each resin composite and giomer were prepared. Before immersion, baseline data of the color values were recorded. Five groups of discs (N = 10) were alternately immersed in 25 mL of each beverage for 5 seconds and in 25 mL of artificial saliva for 5 seconds for 10 cycles. Specimens were then stored in artificial saliva for 24 hours. This process was repeated everyday for 28 days. After immersion, specimens were evaluated and data were analyzed by two-way repeated ANOVA and Tukey’s HSD (α = 0.05). Color changes (ΔE* > 3.3) in both materials were significantly found after being immersed in the Coca-Cola, coffee, and orange juice groups (p < 0.05). In conclusion, the stainability effect of these beverages on both of the restorative materials also depended upon the chemical composition of the restorative materials and beverages.