Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The collagen structure of the tympanic membrane: collagen types I, II, and III in the healthy tympanic membrane, during healing of a perforation, and during infection.

OBJECTIVE To analyze the distribution of 3 collagen types in healthy tympanic membranes, during healing of a perforation, and during infection. DESIGN Immunohistochemical study of collagen types I, II, and III in the tympanic membranes of healthy rats as well as during healing of a perforation and in the presence of infection with Streptococcus pneumoniae at various time points. SETTING Laboratory research center at a university hospital. RESULTS Type II collagen was a main constituent of the lamina propria of the pars tensa, whereas type I collagen was found mainly in the pars flaccida. Collagen types I and III were found at the insertion to the malleus handle and in the loose connective tissue surrounding the main collagen layer of the pars tensa. After myringotomy, collagen types I and III were found at the perforation border and around dilated blood vessels early in the healing phase. During infection, the collagen layer was thickened and stained strongly for type II collagen. Collagen types I and III were found in the edematous connective tissue around the main collagen layer and around dilated blood vessels. Three months after perforation or infection, all 3 collagens were present in the lamina propria of the tympanic membrane. Extensive amounts of all 3 collagen types were present in the scar tissue in the tympanic membranes of rats that had undergone myringotomy during the presence of acute otitis media. CONCLUSIONS The lamina propria of the pars tensa is mainly made up of type II collagen, whereas type I collagen is found in the pars flaccida. Thus the fibrous structure of the pars tensa and flaccida is composed of diverse collagen types, which reflects the different physiological properties of these tissues. Collagen types I and III are present in the acute healing phase after myringotomy and infection, and the collagen content of the tympanic membrane is modified during the inflammatory and healing process.
Enabling correct interest forwarding and retransmissions in a content centric network

We show that the mechanisms used in the name data networking (NDN) and the original content centric networking (CCN) architectures may not detect Interest loops, even if the network in which they operate is static and no faults occur. Furthermore, we show that no correct Interest forwarding strategy can be defined that allows Interest aggregation and attempts to detect Interest looping by identifying Interests uniquely. We introduce SIFAH (Strategy for Interest Forwarding and Aggregation with Hop-Counts), the first Interest forwarding strategy shown to be correct under any operational conditions of a content centric network. SIFAH operates by having forwarding information bases (FIBs) store the next hops and number of hops to named content, and by having each Interest state the name of the requested content and the hop count from the router forwarding an Interest to the content. We present the results of simulation experiments using the ndnSIM simulator comparing CCN and NDN with SIFAH. The results of these experiments illustrate the negative impact of undetected Interest looping when Interests are aggregated in CCN and NDN, and the performance advantages of using SIFAH.
A systematic review of Lean Six Sigma for the manufacturing industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the most common themes within Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in the manufacturing sector, and to identify any gaps in those themes that may be preventing users from getting the most benefit from their LSS strategy. This paper also identifies the gaps in current literature and develops an agenda for future research into LSS themes. Design/methodology/approach – The following research is based on a review of 37 papers that were published on LSS in the top journals in the field and other specialist journals, from 2000 to 2013. Findings – Many issues have emerged in this paper and important themes have cited which are: benefits, motivation factors, limitations and impeding factors. The analysis of 19 case studies in the manufacturing sector has resulted in significant benefits cited in this paper. However, many gaps and limitations need to be explored in future research as there have been little written on LSS as a holistic strategy for business improvement. Practical i.
A Parallel English-Japanese Query Collection for the Evaluation of On-Line Help Systems

An experiment concerning the creation of parallel evaluation data for information retrieval is presented. A set of English queries was gathered for the domain of wordprocessing using Lotus Ami Pro. A set of Japanese queries was then created from these. The answers to the queries were elicited from eight respondents comprising four native speakers of each language. We first describe how the queries were created and the answers elicited. We then present analyses of the responses in each language. The results show a lower level of agreeement between respondents than was expected. We discuss a refinement of the elicitation process which is designed to address this problem as well as measuring the integrity of individual respondents.
Running backwards: soft landing–hard takeoff, a less efficient rebound

Human running at low and intermediate speeds is characterized by a greater average force exerted after ‘landing’, when muscle–tendon units are stretched (‘hard landing’), and a lower average force exerted before ‘takeoff’, when muscle–tendon units shorten (‘soft takeoff’). This landing–takeoff asymmetry is consistent with the force–velocity relation of the ‘motor’ (i.e. with the basic property of muscle to resist stretching with a force greater than that developed during shortening), but it may also be due to the ‘machine’ (e.g. to the asymmetric lever system of the foot operating during stance). Hard landing and soft takeoff—never the reverse—were found in running, hopping and trotting animals using diverse lever systems, suggesting that the different machines evolved to comply with the basic force–velocity relation of the motor. Here we measure the mechanical energy of the centre of mass of the body in backward running, an exercise where the normal coupling between motor and machine is voluntarily disrupted, in order to see the relevance of the motor–machine interplay in human running. We find that the landing–takeoff asymmetry is reversed. The resulting ‘soft landing’ and ‘hard takeoff’ are associated with a reduced efficiency of positive work production. We conclude that the landing–takeoff asymmetry found in running, hopping and trotting is the expression of a convenient interplay between motor and machine. More metabolic energy must be spent in the opposite case when muscle is forced to work against its basic property (i.e. when it must exert a greater force during shortening and a lower force during stretching).
Toward Defining the Foundation of the MD Degree: Core Entrustable Professional Activities for Entering Residency

Currently, no standard defines the clinical skills that medical students must demonstrate upon graduation. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education bases its standards on required subject matter and student experiences rather than on observable educational outcomes. The absence of such established outcomes for MD graduates contributes to the gap between program directors’ expectations and new residents’ performance. In response, in 2013, the Association of American Medical Colleges convened a panel of experts from undergraduate and graduate medical education to define the professional activities that every resident should be able to do without direct supervision on day one of residency, regardless of specialty. Using a conceptual framework of entrustable professional activities (EPAs), this Drafting Panel reviewed the literature and sought input from the health professions education community. The result of this process was the publication of 13 core EPAs for entering residency in 2014. Each EPA includes a description, a list of key functions, links to critical competencies and milestones, and narrative descriptions of expected behaviors and clinical vignettes for both novice learners and learners ready for entrustment. The medical education community has already begun to develop the curricula, assessment tools, faculty development resources, and pathways to entrustment for each of the 13 EPAs. Adoption of these core EPAs could significantly narrow the gap between program directors’ expectations and new residents’ performance, enhancing patient safety and increasing residents’, educators’, and patients’ confidence in the care these learners provide in the first months of their residency training.
The smoothed complexity of edit distance

We initiate the study of the smoothed complexity of sequence alignment, by proposing a semi-random model of edit distance between two input strings, generated as follows: First, an adversary chooses two binary strings of length d and a longest common subsequence A of them. Then, every character is perturbed independently with probability p, except that A is perturbed in exactly the same way inside the two strings. We design two efficient algorithms that compute the edit distance on smoothed instances up to a constant factor approximation. The first algorithm runs in near-linear time, namely d{1+ε} for any fixed ε > 0. The second one runs in time sublinear in d, assuming the edit distance is not too small. These approximation and runtime guarantees are significantly better than the bounds that were known for worst-case inputs. Our technical contribution is twofold. First, we rely on finding matches between substrings in the two strings, where two substrings are considered a match if their edit distance is relatively small, a prevailing technique in commonly used heuristics, such as PatternHunter of Ma et al. [2002]. Second, we effectively reduce the smoothed edit distance to a simpler variant of (worst-case) edit distance, namely, edit distance on permutations (a.k.a. Ulam's metric). We are thus able to build on algorithms developed for the Ulam metric, whose much better algorithmic guarantees usually do not carry over to general edit distance.
Does the Use of Psychiatrists as Sources of Information Improve Media Depictions of Mental Illness? A Pilot Study

Objective: The aim of this study is to determine whether mental illnesses are depicted in less negative ways in print media when psychiatrists rather than lay persons are the source of information. Method: Seven items from a special report on mental health, four derived from lay sources and three from psychiatrists, were subjected to a discourse analysis informed by knowledge of media practices. Results: The psychiatrists were clearly distinguished and deployed as experts in contrast to lay sources. Two of the psychiatrists presented mental illnesses in less negative ways than in the other items. These more positive depictions were undermined by the devices that the journalists used to give authority to the portrayals of mental illness and by the need to create ‘newsworthy’ items. Conclusion: If psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are to have a positive effect on how media depict mental illness, they will have to develop closer relationships with journalists and a better appreciation of media priorities and practices.
Wound Rotor Induction Generator With Sensorless Control and Integrated Active Filter for Feeding Nonlinear Loads in a Stand-Alone Grid

This paper describes a vector control scheme for a stand-alone generator based on a wound rotor induction machine with rotor side control. The stand-alone generator refers to an isolated grid feeding a local load. The primary objective of the control scheme is to maintain constant voltage and frequency at the output of the generator irrespective of prime mover speed variation. A novel, simple, and easily implementable sensorless control scheme is proposed. The issue of power quality, which is one of the main concerns of a stand-alone generation system, is also addressed. This is done by incorporating the active filter concept in the control scheme to cancel significant harmonics. A method of unit vector generation for field-oriented control is proposed. A laboratory prototype consisting of back-to-back insulated-gate bipolar transistor converters and a TMS320F240 DSP controller is developed. Detailed experimental results are presented which demonstrate and validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Raman Lidar Observations of Aerosol Optical Properties in 11 Cities from France to Siberia

In June 2013, a ground-based mobile lidar performed the ~10,000 km ride from Paris to Ulan-Ude, near Lake Baikal, profiling aerosol optical properties in the cities visited along the journey and allowing the first comparison of urban aerosols optical properties across Eurasia. The lidar instrument was equipped with N2-Raman and depolarization channels, enabling the retrieval of the 355-nm extinction-to-backscatter ratio (also called Lidar Ratio (LR)) and the linear Particle Depolarization Ratio (PDR) in the urban planetary boundary or residual layer over 11 cities. The optical properties of pollution particles were found to be homogeneous all along the journey: no longitude dependence was observed for the LR, with most values falling within the 67–96 sr range. There exists only a slight increase of PDR between cities in Europe and Russia, which we attribute to a higher fraction of coarse terrigenous particles lifted from bad-tarmac roads and unvegetated terrains, which resulted, for instance, in a +1.7% increase between the megalopolises of Paris and Moscow. A few lower LR values (38 to 50 sr) were encountered above two medium size Siberian cities and in an isolated plume, suggesting that the relative weight of terrigenous aerosols in the mix may increase in smaller cities. Space-borne observations from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), retrieved during summer 2013 above the same Russian cities, confirmed the prevalence of aerosols classified as “polluted dust”. Finally, we encountered one special feature in the Russian aerosol mix as we observed with good confidence an unusual aerosol layer displaying both a very high LR (96 sr) and a very high PDR (20%), even though both features make it difficult to identify the aerosol type.
Reproducibility in Machine Learning-Based Studies: An Example of Text Mining

Reproducibility is an essential requirement for computational studies including those based on machine learning techniques. However, many machine learning studies are either not reproducible or are difﬁcult to reproduce. In this paper, we consider what information about text mining studies is crucial to successful reproduction of such studies. We identify a set of factors that affect reproducibility based on our experience of attempting to reproduce six studies proposing text mining techniques for the automation of the citation screening stage in the systematic review process. Subsequently, the reproducibility of 30 studies was evaluated based on the presence or otherwise of information relating to the factors. While the studies provide useful reports of their results, they lack information on access to the dataset in the form and order as used in the original study (as against raw data), the software environment used, randomization control and the implementation of proposed techniques. In order to increase the chances of being reproduced, researchers should ensure that details about and/or access to information about these factors are provided in their reports.
Osteogenic potential of reamer irrigator aspirator (RIA) aspirate collected from patients undergoing hip arthroplasty

Intramedullary nailing preceded by canal reaming is the current standard of treatment for long‐bone fractures requiring stabilization. However, conventional reaming methods can elevate intramedullary temperature and pressure, potentially resulting in necrotic bone, systemic embolism, and pulmonary complications. To address this problem, a reamer irrigator aspirator (RIA) has been developed that combines irrigation and suction for reduced‐pressure reaming with temperature modulation. Osseous particles aspirated by the RIA can be recovered by filtration for use as an autograft, but the flow‐through is typically discarded. The purpose of this study was to assess whether this discarded filtrate has osteogenic properties that could be used to enhance the total repair potential of aspirate. RIA aspirate was collected from five patients (ages 71–78) undergoing hip hemiarthroplasty. Osseous particles were removed using an open‐pore filter, and the resulting filtrate (230 ± 200 mL) was processed by Ficoll‐gradient centrifugation to isolate mononuclear cells (6.2 ± 5.2 × 106 cells/mL). The aqueous supernatant contained FGF‐2, IGF‐I, and latent TGF‐β1, but BMP‐2 was below the limit of detection. The cell fraction included culture plastic‐adherent, fibroblastic cells that displayed a surface marker profile indicative of mesenchymal stem cells and that could be induced along the osteogenic, adipogenic, and chondrogenic lineages in vitro. When compared to outgrowth cells from the culture of osseous particles, filtrate cells were more sensitive to seeding density during osteogenic culture but had similar capacity for chondrogenesis. These results suggest using RIA aspirate to develop improved, clinically expeditious, cost‐effective technologies for accelerating the healing of bone and other musculoskeletal tissues. © 2008 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 27:42–49, 2009
White Matter Hyperintensities in Parkinson’s Disease: Do They Explain the Disparity between the Postural Instability Gait Difficulty and Tremor Dominant Subtypes?

Background Brain white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) commonly observed on brain imaging of older adults are associated with balance and gait impairment and have also been linked to cognitive deficits. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is traditionally sub-classified into the postural instability gait difficulty (PIGD) sub-type, and the tremor dominant (TD) sub-type. Considering the known association between WMHs and axial symptoms like gait disturbances and postural instability, one can hypothesize that WMHs might contribute to the disparate clinical sub-types of patients with PD. Methods 110 patients with PD underwent a clinical evaluation and a 3T MRI exam. Based on the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale, the patients were classified into motor sub-types, i.e., TD or PIGD, and scores reflecting PIGD and TD symptoms were computed. We compared white matter burden using three previously validated methods: one using a semi-quantitative visual rating scale in specific brain regions and two automated methods. Results Overall, MRI data were obtained in 104 patients. The mean WMHs scores and the percent of subjects with lesions in specific brain regions were similar in the two subtypes, p = 0.678. The PIGD and the TD scores did not differ even when comparing patients with a relatively high burden of WMHs to patients with a relatively low burden. Across most of the brain regions, mild to moderate correlations between WMHs and age were found (r = 0.23 to 0.41; p<0.021). Conversely, no significant correlations were found between WMHs and the PIGD score or disease duration. In addition, depressive symptoms and cerebro-vascular risk factors were similar among the two subtypes. Conclusions In contrast to what has been reported previously among older adults, the present study could not demonstrate any association between WMHs and the PIGD or TD motor sub-types in patients with PD.
Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide and Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide Inhibit Endotoxin-Induced TNF-a Production by Macrophages : In Vitro and In Vivo Studies 1

Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) is a neuropeptide synthesized by immune cells that can modulate several immune aspects, including the function of cells involved in the inflammatory response, such as macrophages and monocytes. The production and release of cytokines by activated phagocytes are important events in the pathogenesis of ischemia-reperfusion injury. There is abundant evidence that the proinflammatory cytokine TNF-a is an important mediator of shock and organ failure complicating Gram-negative sepsis. VIP has been shown to attenuate the deleterious consequences of this pathologic phenomenon. In this study we have investigated the effects of VIP and the structurally related neuropeptide pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP38) on the production of TNF-a by endotoxin-activated murine peritoneal macrophages. Both neuropeptides rapidly and specifically inhibit the LPS-stimulated production of TNF-a, exerting their action through the binding to VPAC1 receptor and the subsequent activation of the adenylate cyclase system. VIP and PACAP regulate the production of TNFa at a transcriptional level. In vitro results were correlated with an inhibition of both TNFa expression and release in endotoxemic mice in vivo. The immunomodulatory role of VIP in vivo is supported by the up-regulation of VIP release in serum and peritoneal fluid by LPS and proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF-a, IL-1 b, and IL-6. These findings support the idea that under toxicity conditions associated with high LPS doses, VIP and PACAP could act as protective mediators that regulate the excessive release of TNFa to reduce inflammation or shock. The Journal of Immunology,1999, 162: 2358–2367.
Role of Group 1 CD1-Restricted T Cells in Infectious Disease

The evolutionarily conserved CD1 family of antigen-presenting molecules presents lipid antigens rather than peptide antigens to T cells. CD1 molecules, unlike classical MHC molecules, display limited polymorphism, making CD1-restricted lipid antigens attractive vaccine targets that could be recognized in a genetically diverse human population. Group 1 CD1 (CD1a, CD1b, and CD1c)-restricted T cells have been implicated to play critical roles in a variety of autoimmune and infectious diseases. In this review, we summarize current knowledge and recent discoveries on the development of group 1 CD1-restricted T cells and their function in different infection models. In particular, we focus on (1) newly identified microbial and self-lipid antigens, (2) kinetics, phenotype, and unique properties of group 1 CD1-restricted T cells during infection, and (3) the similarities of group 1 CD1-restricted T cells to the closely related group 2 CD1-restricted T cells.