Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development of the Labyrinthine Efferent System a

The data presented here show that labyrinthine and facial branchiomotor efferent cells in the chicken and the mouse become postmitotic overlappingly, both spatially and temporally. Differential migration of labyrinthine efferents and facial motoneurons leads to the already described distinct distribution of labyrinthine efferents and facial motoneurons in adult brains. Differences exist between the chicken and the mouse with respect to the origin of labyrinthine efferents (rhombomere 4 and 5 for the chicken; rhombomere 4 alone for the mouse) and the way contralateral labyrinthine efferents form (migration across the floor plate in the chicken; extension of an axon across the floor plate in the mouse). The different routes taken by migrating motoneurons may all be mediated by substances released from the floor plate, some of which were recently characterized. Labyrinthine efferent axons and facial motoneuron axons segregate at distinctly different areas in the chicken and mouse: outside the brain in the former and inside the brain in the latter. Examination of the possible basis for pathway selection tends to support the idea that efferents use intact afferent fibers as highways for their navigation to distinct sensory epithelia.
Diffusion of proteins inside crowded structures generated using microemulsions

Microemulsions are thermodynamically stable mixtures of water, oil and surfactant. In the case of microemulsions based on sugar surfactants a cosurfactant as an additional component is necessary, most often a short-chain alcohol. In this thesis mainly pure surfactants are used. The focus is on n-nonyl-s-d-maltosid and n-dodecyl-s-d-maltosid as model systems for microemulsions based on technical grade surfactants. Depending on the ratio of the components microemulsion form different structures. In the bicontinuous phase continuous oil and water domains are present separated by a surfactant/co-surfactant film. At higher surfactant amounts the bicontinuous structure passes over to a droplet phase. The size of these structures is in the scale of up to 100nm, therefore microemulsions look transparent for the human eye. Bicontinuous microemulsions are a promising carrier medium for decontamination applications. Chemical warfare agents are mainly lipophilic, in contrast degradation agents are hydrophilic. A microemulsion is able to solubilize lipophilic and hydrophilic molecules. At the interface the warfare agent is close to the degradation agent and can be eliminated. The protein diisopropyl-fluorophosphatase (DFPase) is a promising candidate for decontamination applications and is able to degrade different warfare agents. Therefore, the knowledge of the dynamics and properties of enzymes inside a bicontinuous structure is of big importance. In this thesis different microemulsion systems based on C9G2 or C12G2, water, cyclohexane and 1-pentanol are systematically characterized by X-ray and neutron scattering experiments. By using an improved Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP+) as a counterpart of DFPase with a similar size, the diffusion inside a microemulsion can be studied with the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) method. Here, fluorescent impurities in the used components are a problem. By the choice of a suitable concentration of GFP+ and regarding the dynamics of the microemulsion structure, it could be shown that the protein is able to move inside the microemulsion structure. Hence, microemulsions are interesting model systems to produce crowding effects in a controlled way. This is probably the most important result of this thesis. In the C9G2 system a bicontinuous phase is present. At small oil/water ratios o/w with a high water amount big water domains exist with length scales of approximately 10nm, which allows protein diffusion. With increasing oil/water ratio the protein diffusion is more and more hindered. This results in an increase of the diffusion time and a decrease of the anomalous diffusion exponent. At even higher oil/water ratios the diffusion of the protein is nearly identical with the microemulsion dynamics. The length scales are too small to allow protein diffusion, therefore it is stuck in the structure. The C12G2 system shows an oil-in-water droplet phase which also hinders the GFP+ diffusion due to crowding effects. For small oil/water ratios nearly free diffusion is present, at o/w =…
A Treatment-Based Classification Approach to Examination and Intervention of Lumbar Disorders

Context: Low back injuries are a common occurrence in athletes and often result in missed competition and practice time. The examination of athletes with low back pain commonly involves diagnostic imaging, which rarely guides the clinician in selecting the appropriate interventions. Data Acquisition: All years of PubMed, CINAHL, PEDro, and SPORTDiscus were searched in December 2010. Keywords included treatment based classification and lumbar with the following terms: rehabilitation, treatment, athlete, low back pain, sports, and outcomes. Results: A treatment-based classification approach is preferred for the management of the athlete with low back pain. The treatment-based classification approach involves 3 steps. First is to screen the patient for potentially serious conditions that are not appropriate for conservative management. Second is staging the athlete (based on current disability ratings and ability to perform functional activities). Finally, treatment interventions are selected on the basis of the athlete’s signs and symptoms. Conclusion: The treatment-based classification scheme provides the clinician with a reliable algorithm for matching an athlete’s symptom presentation to the optimal intervention, potentially reducing participation loss. Managing individuals with low back pain using a treatment-based classification approach significantly reduces disability and pain compared with current clinical practice guideline standards.
Multiagent planning as control synthesis

This paper proposes a new multiagent planning approach to coordination synthesis that views distributed agents as discrete-event processes. The connection between discrete-event control synthesis and coordination planning is first established, thereby enabling the exploitation of the vast body of knowledge and associated software synthesis tools from ýThe Supervisory Control of Discrete-Event Systemsý for automatic coordination synthesis of distributed agents. Importantly, these coordinating agents designed collectively generate a behaviour guaranteed not to contradict any specified inter-agent constraint, is nonblocking and optimal. A simple planning methodology is proposed in terms of procedures supported by CTCT, an existing, freely available design tool developed based on the control synthesis framework.Asimple example illustrates the use of the CTCT-based methodology to synthesize coordination modules for distributed agents. Discussions in relation to previous work examine the relative significance of the new multiagent planning framework.
Human Wavelength Discrimination of Monochromatic Light Explained by Optimal Wavelength Decoding of Light of Unknown Intensity

We show that human ability to discriminate the wavelength of monochromatic light can be understood as maximum likelihood decoding of the cone absorptions, with a signal processing efficiency that is independent of the wavelength. This work is built on the framework of ideal observer analysis of visual discrimination used in many previous works. A distinctive aspect of our work is that we highlight a perceptual confound that observers should confuse a change in input light wavelength with a change in input intensity. Hence a simple ideal observer model which assumes that an observer has a full knowledge of input intensity should over-estimate human ability in discriminating wavelengths of two inputs of unequal intensity. This confound also makes it difficult to consistently measure human ability in wavelength discrimination by asking observers to distinguish two input colors while matching their brightness. We argue that the best experimental method for reliable measurement of discrimination thresholds is the one of Pokorny and Smith, in which observers only need to distinguish two inputs, regardless of whether they differ in hue or brightness. We mathematically formulate wavelength discrimination under this wavelength-intensity confound and show a good agreement between our theoretical prediction and the behavioral data. Our analysis explains why the discrimination threshold varies with the input wavelength, and shows how sensitively the threshold depends on the relative densities of the three types of cones in the retina (and in particular predict discriminations in dichromats). Our mathematical formulation and solution can be applied to general problems of sensory discrimination when there is a perceptual confound from other sensory feature dimensions.
Exercise Enhances Learning and Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Aged Mice

Aging causes changes in the hippocampus that may lead to cognitive decline in older adults. In young animals, exercise increases hippocampal neurogenesis and improves learning. We investigated whether voluntary wheel running would benefit mice that were sedentary until 19 months of age. Specifically, young and aged mice were housed with or without a running wheel and injected with bromodeoxyuridine or retrovirus to label newborn cells. After 1 month, learning was tested in the Morris water maze. Aged runners showed faster acquisition and better retention of the maze than age-matched controls. The decline in neurogenesis in aged mice was reversed to 50% of young control levels by running. Moreover, fine morphology of new neurons did not differ between young and aged runners, indicating that the initial maturation of newborn neurons was not affected by aging. Thus, voluntary exercise ameliorates some of the deleterious morphological and behavioral consequences of aging.
Enzymatic Assays for the Diagnosis of Bradykinin-Dependent Angioedema

Background The kinins (primarily bradykinin, BK) represent the mediators responsible for local increase of vascular permeability in hereditary angioedema (HAE), HAE I-II associated with alterations of the SERPING1 gene and HAE with normal C1-Inhibitor function (HAE-nC1INH). Besides C1-Inhibitor function and concentration, no biological assay of kinin metabolism is actually available to help physicians for the diagnosis of angioedema (AE). We describe enzymatic tests on the plasma for diagnosis of BK-dependent AE. Methods The plasma amidase assays are performed using the Pro-Phe-Arg-p-nitroanilide peptide substrate to evaluate the spontaneous amidase activity and the proenzyme activation. We analyzed data of 872 patients presenting with BK-dependent AE or BK-unrelated diseases, compared to 303 controls. Anti-high MW kininogen (HK) immunoblot was achieved to confirm HK cleavage in exemplary samples. Reproducibility, repeatability, limit of blank, limit of detection, precision, linearity and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) were used to calculate the diagnostic performance of the assays. Results Spontaneous amidase activity was significantly increased in all BK-dependent AE, associated with the acute phase of disease in HAE-nC1INH, but preserved in BK-unrelated disorders. The increase of the amidase activity was associated to HK proteolysis, indicating its relevance to identify kininogenase activity. The oestrogens, known for precipitating AE episodes, were found as triggers of enzymatic activity. Calculations from ROC curves gave the optimum diagnostic cut-off for women (9.3 nmol⋅min−1⋅mL−1, area under curve [AUC] 92.1%, sensitivity 80.0%, and specificity 90.1%) and for men (6.6 nmol·min−1⋅mL−1, AUC 91.0%, sensitivity 87.0% and specificity 81.2%). Conclusion The amidase assay represents a diagnostic tool to help physicians in the decision to distinguish between BK-related and –unrelated AE.
Toward reliable hybrid WDM/TDM passive optical networks

Individual users and enterprises are increasingly relying on the access to Internet services and cannot accept long interruption time as easily as before. Moreover, the main characteristics of next generation optical access (NGOA) networks, such as long reach and a large number of users per feeder line, turn the network reliability to an important design parameter to offer uninterrupted service delivery. In this regard, protection mechanisms become one of the crucial aspects that need to be considered in the design process of access networks. On the other hand, it should be noted that not all users can afford to pay a high extra cost for protection; hence, it is important to provide resilience in a costefficient way. A PON combining WDM and TDM technologies, referred to as hybrid WDM/TDM PON or HPON, is one of the most promising candidates for NGOA networks due to its ability to serve a large number of subscribers and offer high capacity per user. For these reasons, in this article, we propose HPON architecture offering different degrees of resilience depending on the user profiles (i.e., partial and full protection for residential and business access, respectively). Also, the investment cost of providing resilience for the proposed schemes is investigated considering various protection upgrade road maps. Our results confirm that protecting the shared part of network with a large number of users is required in order to keep the failure impact at an acceptable level, with less than 5 percent increase of investment cost compared to the unprotected case. Meanwhile, the proposed end-to-end protection for business users considerably reduces the risk of service interruption for this type of demanding user without a need to duplicate the deployment cost of an unprotected connection. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the impact of changes in business user percentage and protection upgrade time on the deployment cost. The results may be used as advice on cost-efficient deployment of reliable fiber access networks.
Evolution of Yield Loci for Aluminum Alloy AA6016 and Deep Drawing Steel DC06 under the Influence of Non-Linear Strain Paths

The application of modern materials plays an important role directly under the aspect of lightweight potential. To exploit these options effectively a numerical accurate reproduction of the material behavior is indispensable. Especially in the case of large deformations a directional and strain rate dependent hardening behavior can be observed. By disregarding this effect significant failure in the computed stress state can arise, which can conduct to a corruption of the spring-back forecast. Within this contribution a new test method for analyzing the evolution of subsequent yield loci under strain path changes for the aluminum alloy AA6016 and the deep drawing steel DC06 is presented. In the first stage of the experimental investigations, yield loci with linear strain paths were considered to characterize the material behavior for the initial condition. On further experiments with several stress states the strain path dependent hardening behavior of the material is determined. The non-linear strain paths are realized through uniaxial prestrained primary specimens with following extraction of secondary samples for following stress states, e.g. a modified ASTM simple shear test specimen. Subsequent yield loci are investigated and compared to the yield surfaces Hill48 and Barlat 2000 (Yld2000-2d) with an isotropic hardening behavior. With this study the evolution of the yield locus for prestrained specimens is evaluated. The research of the subsequent yield loci for strain path changes serves as basis for further scientific investigations with a view to assess different approaches of isotropic-kinematic hardening models in consideration of the analyzed steel and aluminum sheet metals.
A novel coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome.

BACKGROUND A worldwide outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) has been associated with exposures originating from a single ill health care worker from Guangdong Province, China. We conducted studies to identify the etiologic agent of this outbreak. METHODS We received clinical specimens from patients in seven countries and tested them, using virus-isolation techniques, electron-microscopical and histologic studies, and molecular and serologic assays, in an attempt to identify a wide range of potential pathogens. RESULTS None of the previously described respiratory pathogens were consistently identified. However, a novel coronavirus was isolated from patients who met the case definition of SARS. Cytopathological features were noted in Vero E6 cells inoculated with a throat-swab specimen. Electron-microscopical examination revealed ultrastructural features characteristic of coronaviruses. Immunohistochemical and immunofluorescence staining revealed reactivity with group I coronavirus polyclonal antibodies. Consensus coronavirus primers designed to amplify a fragment of the polymerase gene by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) were used to obtain a sequence that clearly identified the isolate as a unique coronavirus only distantly related to previously sequenced coronaviruses. With specific diagnostic RT-PCR primers we identified several identical nucleotide sequences in 12 patients from several locations, a finding consistent with a point-source outbreak. Indirect fluorescence antibody tests and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays made with the new isolate have been used to demonstrate a virus-specific serologic response. This virus may never before have circulated in the U.S. population. CONCLUSIONS A novel coronavirus is associated with this outbreak, and the evidence indicates that this virus has an etiologic role in SARS. Because of the death of Dr. Carlo Urbani, we propose that our first isolate be named the Urbani strain of SARS-associated coronavirus.
Cardiovascular risk factors and ultrasound evaluation of intima-media thickness at common carotids, carotid bulbs, and femoral and abdominal aorta arteries in patients with classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency.

CONTEXT In congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) due to 21-hydroxylase deficiency, a tendency for obesity, high insulin, and high 24-h blood pressure levels has been reported in children and adolescents. Increased intima-media thickness (IMT) is considered a measure of subclinical atherosclerosis and a predictor of myocardial infarction and stroke. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to evaluate glucose metabolism, lipid profile, IMT of the abdominal aorta, right and left common carotids, carotid bulbs, and common femoral arteries in adult CAH patients. SUBJECTS Nineteen (10 females, nine males; 28 +/- 3.5 yr) patients (12 salt wasting and seven simple virilizing) and 19 (10 females, nine males) healthy subjects matched for anthropometric parameters (age, sex, body mass index, smoking habit, waist to hip ratio, and blood pressure). METHODS Glucose metabolism was studied using the oral glucose tolerance test and the homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance. The echo-Doppler was used for arterial ultrasound. 17-Hydroxyprogesterone, androstenedione, testosterone, ACTH, plasma renin activity, total and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides were measured. RESULTS CAH patients had significantly higher fasting plasma insulin (11.6 +/- 6.20 microU/ml vs 5.18 +/- 2.4 microU/ml; P < 0.0001) and homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance than controls (2.46 +/- 1.92 vs 1.12 +/- 0.58; P = 0.0033). IMT of the studied arteries was higher in CAH patients than controls. There was no correlation between IMT and cumulative glucocorticoid doses and androgen levels. CONCLUSION A reduced insulin sensitivity and increased IMT were demonstrated in adults with CAH, who consequently need a follow-up for cardiovascular risk.
Online news recommender based on stacked auto-encoder

Because of the popularity of Internet and mobile Internet, people are facing serious information overloading problems nowadays. Recommendation engine is very useful to help people to reach the Internet news they want through the network. Collaborative filtering (CF), such as item-based CF, is the most popular branch in recommendation domain. But the data's high-dimension as well as data sparsity are always the main problems. A novel CF method is introduced in this article, which uses stacked auto-encoder with denoising, an unsupervised deep learning method, to extract the useful low-dimension features from the original sparse user-item matrices. Together with proper similarity computing algorithms, the method provided in this article is proved to be more precise than the methods based on SVD or item-based CF.
Chlorhexidine: beta-cyclodextrin inhibits yeast growth by extraction of ergosterol

Chlorhexidine (Cx) augmented with beta-cyclodextrin (β-cd) inclusion compounds, termed Cx:β-cd complexes, have been developed for use as antiseptic agents. The aim of this study was to examine the interactions of Cx:β-cd complexes, prepared at different molecular ratios, with sterol and yeast membranes. The Minimal Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) against the yeast Candida albicans (C.a.) was determined for each complex; the MICs were found to range from 0.5 to 2 μg/mL. To confirm the MIC data, quantitative analysis of viable cells was performed using trypan blue staining. Mechanistic characterization of the interactions that the Cx:β-cd complexes have with the yeast membrane and assessment of membrane morphology following exposure to Cx:β-cd complexes were performed using Sterol Quantification Method analysis (SQM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). SQM revealed that sterol extraction increased with increasing β-cd concentrations (1.71 ×103; 1.4 ×103; 3.45 ×103, and 3.74 ×103 CFU for 1:1, 1:2, 1:3, and 1:4, respectively), likely as a consequence of membrane ergosterol solubilization. SEM images demonstrated that cell membrane damage is a visible and significant mechanism that contributes to the antimicrobial effects of Cx:β-cd complexes. Cell disorganization increased significantly as the proportion of β-cyclodextrin present in the complex increased. Morphology of cells exposed to complexes with 1:3 and 1:4 molar ratios of Cx:β-cd were observed to have large aggregates mixed with yeast remains, representing more membrane disruption than that observed in cells treated with Cx alone. In conclusion, nanoaggregates of Cx:β-cd complexes block yeast growth via ergosterol extraction, permeabilizing the membrane by creating cluster-like structures within the cell membrane, possibly due to high amounts of hydrogen bonding.
Evaluated Material Properties for a Sintered alpha‐Alumina

Results of a data evaluation exercise are presented for a particular specification of sintered alpha-alumina (mass fraction of Al2O3, ≥0.995; relative density (rho/rhotheoretical), ≥0.98; and nominal grain size, 5 μm). A comprehensive set of material property data is established based on published physical, mechanical, and thermal properties of alumina specimens that conform to the constraints of the material specification. The criteria imposed on the properties are that the values should be derived from independent experimental studies, that the values for physically related properties should be mutually self-consistent, and that the sets of values should be compatible with established material property relations. The properties assessed in this manner include crystallography, thermal expansion, density, sound velocity, elastic modulus, shear modulus, Poisson's ratio, bulk modulus, compressive strength, flexural strength, Weibull characteristic strength, Weibull modulus, tensile strength, hardness, fracture toughness, creep rate, creep rate stress exponent, creep activation energy, friction coefficient, wear coefficient, melting point, specific heat, thermal conductivity, and thermal diffusivity.