Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High transmission of system "dielectric grating thin metal film - dielectric grating"

The analysis of transmission of system the dielectric grating-metal thin film-dielectric grating-substrate by the coupled wave method (CWM) is conducted. It is revealed that at certain parameters the system has the anomalous high transmittance and practically zero reflectance on defined wavelengths. For example, the silver film with thickness of 0.0385 mum placed between two gratings with certain parameters transmit more than 0.86 and 0.83 corresponding to TE and TM polarizations on wavelength of 1.5 mum. The silver film in vacuum with same thickness has the reflectance higher than 0.98 and transmittance less than 0.004. Transmission sharply drops at deviation of the wavelength from the defined value. The system the dielectric with high refraction coefficient-metallic thin film-dielectric with high refraction coefficient has the analogous spectrum characteristics
Effect of repeated freeze-thaw cycles on the resilient modulus for fine-grained subgrade soils with low plasticity index

The resilient modulus of the subgrade is an important material parameter for pavement design. This paper presents an unconfined laboratory testing method for resilient modulus under repeated freeze-thaw cycles. The method was validated by a standard testing method. Specimens of three types of fine-grained subgrade soil with a low plasticity index with five different levels of moisture were tested by the proposed testing procedure. The size of the specimen was 50 mm in diameter and 50 mm in height to more accurately illustrate the freeze-thaw conditions. The numbers of freeze-thaw cycles were designated 0, 3, 6, 9 and 12. The results indicate that all the soils exhibited a substantially reduced resilient modulus after the first three freeze-thaw cycles. After six freeze-thaw cycles, the decrease in the resilient modulus was not obvious. The resilient modulus due to six cycles was suggested for use in pavement design. The reduction coefficients for the freeze-thaw effect were also recommended. These reduction coefficients are 0.5–0.6 for specimens with optimum moisture content and 0.7–0.8 for specimens under dry conditions.
Brain Connectivity Related to Working Memory Performance

Several brain areas show signal decreases during many different cognitive tasks in functional imaging studies, including the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and a medial frontal region incorporating portions of the medial frontal gyrus and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (MFG/vACC). It has been suggested that these areas are components in a default mode network that is engaged during rest and disengaged during cognitive tasks. This study investigated the functional connectivity between the PCC and MFG/vACC during a working memory task and at rest by examining temporal correlations in magnetic resonance signal levels between the regions. The two regions were functionally connected in both conditions. In addition, performance on the working memory task was positively correlated with the strength of this functional connection not only during the working memory task, but also at rest. Thus, it appears these regions are components of a network that may facilitate or monitor cognitive performance, rather than becoming disengaged during cognitive tasks. In addition, these data raise the possibility that the individual differences in coupling strength between these two regions at rest predict differences in cognitive abilities important for this working memory task.
COMPARING LUNG FUNCTION OF TEXTILE WORKERS WITH THE HEALTHY PAKISTANI POPULATION.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to compare lung function of textile workers with healthy Pakistani population, compare predicted values based on the European Respiratory Society (ERS) equations with those based on the Pakistani equations, and to develop predictor equations for textile workers in Pakistan. METHODS This was a secondary analysis of data from two previous surveys where lung function of textile workers was compared with healthy Pakistani men. Spirometry was performed according to the American Thoracic Society guidelines. Independent sample t-test was used to compare the lung function parameters and multivariate linear regression was used to develop predictor equations. RESULTS There were significant differences in lung function of textile workers (FVC: 4.1 L, FEV1: 3.3 L and FEV1/FVC: 0.8) compared to healthy Pakistani men (FVC: 3.9 L, FEV1: 4.1 L and FEV1/FVC: 1.04). ERS reference equations tended to under-diagnose abnormal lung function, 16.9% versus 25.3% (p<0.01). Predictor equations for Pakistani textile workers were also developed. CONCLUSION Lung function of textile workers was significantly reduced compared to healthy population. Use of ERS reference equations for Pakistani textile workers may not provide appropriate interpretation.
The Arf family G protein Arl1 is required for secretory granule biogenesis in Drosophila

ABSTRACT The small G protein Arf like 1 (Arl1) is found at the Golgi complex, and its GTP-bound form recruits several effectors to the Golgi including GRIP-domain-containing coiled-coil proteins, and the Arf1 exchange factors Big1 and Big2. To investigate the role of Arl1, we have characterised a loss-of-function mutant of the Drosophila Arl1 orthologue. The gene is essential, and examination of clones of cells lacking Arl1 shows that it is required for recruitment of three of the four GRIP domain golgins to the Golgi, with Drosophila GCC185 being less dependent on Arl1. At a functional level, Arl1 is essential for formation of secretory granules in the larval salivary gland. When Arl1 is missing, Golgi are still present but there is a dispersal of adaptor protein 1 (AP-1), a clathrin adaptor that requires Arf1 for its membrane recruitment and which is known to be required for secretory granule biogenesis. Arl1 does not appear to be required for AP-1 recruitment in all tissues, suggesting that it is crucially required to enhance Arf1 activation at the trans-Golgi in particular tissues.
A Re-examination of Defining Moments in Vygotsky's Work and Their Implications for His Continuing Legacy

This article argues for the idea of different moments in Vygotsky's work while highlighting combinations of ideas and concepts that were particularly emphasized in distinct moments of his work. After Vygotsky's death, these moments were not considered a theoretical system in development, either in former Soviet psychology or in Western interpretations of his work. Vygotsky's legacy seems to have been mostly reduced to one concrete focus of his work, mistakenly identified as cultural-historical theory. The overemphasis of selected aspects of Vygotsky's work resulted in an overshadowing of other ideas that have remained relatively “unknown” until fairly recently. In this article, previously underemphasized elements in Vygotsky's psychology, such as emotions, fantasy, imagination, personality, and the generative character of human psyche, are emphasized. A consideration of these elements offers new and refreshing alternatives to Vygotsky's legacy. These previously underemphasized elements are markedly represented in Vygotsky's first and third moments. Furthermore, in the third and final moment of his work, the category of sense opened up a completely new perspective for a systemic and complex approach to understanding the human mind.
A Framework for Shape Analysis via Hilbert Space Embedding

We propose a framework for 2D shape analysis using positive definite kernels defined on Kendall's shape manifold. Different representations of 2D shapes are known to generate different nonlinear spaces. Due to the nonlinearity of these spaces, most existing shape classification algorithms resort to nearest neighbor methods and to learning distances on shape spaces. Here, we propose to map shapes on Kendall's shape manifold to a high dimensional Hilbert space where Euclidean geometry applies. To this end, we introduce a kernel on this manifold that permits such a mapping, and prove its positive definiteness. This kernel lets us extend kernel-based algorithms developed for Euclidean spaces, such as SVM, MKL and kernel PCA, to the shape manifold. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach over the state-of-the-art methods on shape classification, clustering and retrieval.
Mechanisms of Diastolic Dysfunction in Cardiovascular Disease Inhibition of late Na current , a novel target to improve diastolic function and electrical abnormalities in Dahl salt-sensitive rats

Chi L, Belardinelli L, Zeng A, Hirakawa R, Rajamani S, Ling H, Dhalla AK. Inhibition of late Na current, a novel target to improve diastolic function and electrical abnormalities in Dahl salt-sensitive rats. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 310: H1313–H1320, 2016. First published March 18, 2016; doi:10.1152/ajpheart.00863. 2015. —Late Na current (INaL) is enhanced in myocytes of animals with chronic heart failure and patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. To define the role of INaL in diastolic heart failure, the effects of GS-458967 (GS-967), a potent INaL inhibitor on mechanical and electrical abnormalities, were determined in an animal model of diastolic dysfunction. Dahl salt-sensitive (DSS) rats fed a high-salt (HS) diet for 8 wk, compared with a normal salt (NS) diet, had increased left ventricular (LV) mass (1,257 96 vs. 891 34 mg) and diastolic dysfunction [isovolumic relaxation time (IVRT): 26.8 0.5 vs. 18.9 0.2 ms; early transmitral flow velocity/early mitral annulus velocity (E/E’) ratio: 25.5 1.9 vs. 14.9 0.9]. INaL in LV myocytes from HS rats was significantly increased to 0.41 0.02 from 0.14 0.02 pA/pF in NS rats. The action potential duration (APD) was prolonged to 136 12 from 68 9 ms in NS rats. QTc intervals were longer in HS vs. NS rats (267 8 vs. 212 2 ms). Acute and chronic treatment with GS-967 decreased the enhanced INaL to 0.24 0.01 and 0.17 0.02 pA/pF, respectively, vs. 0.41 0.02 pA/pF in the HS group. Chronic treatment with GS-967 dosedependently reduced LV mass, the increases in E/E’ ratio, and the prolongation of IVRT by 27, 27, and 20%, respectively, at the 1.0 mg·kg ·day 1 dose without affecting blood pressure or LV systolic function. The prolonged APDs in myocytes and QTc of HS rats were significantly reduced with GS-967 treatment. These results indicate that INaL is a significant contributor to the LV diastolic dysfunction, hypertrophy, and repolarization abnormalities and thus, inhibition of this current is a promising therapeutic target for diastolic heart failure.
Variational Autoencoder for Semi-Supervised Text Classification

Although semi-supervised variational autoencoder (SemiVAE) works in image classification task, it fails in text classification task if using vanilla LSTM as its decoder. From a perspective of reinforcement learning, it is verified that the decoder's capability to distinguish between different categorical labels is essential. Therefore, Semi-supervised Sequential Variational Autoencoder (SSVAE) is proposed, which increases the capability by feeding label into its decoder RNN at each time-step. Two specific decoder structures are investigated and both of them are verified to be effective. Besides, in order to reduce the computational complexity in training, a novel optimization method is proposed, which estimates the gradient of the unlabeled objective function by sampling, along with two variance reduction techniques. Experimental results on Large Movie Review Dataset (IMDB) and AG's News corpus show that the proposed approach significantly improves the classification accuracy compared with pure-supervised classifiers, and achieves competitive performance against previous advanced methods. State-of-the-art results can be obtained by integrating other pretraining-based methods.
Rate distortion analysis of high dynamic range video coding techniques

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is a key technology envisioned to provide the end-users a sense of “being there”. With the advent of HDR displays in the near future, it is not clear if the existing content distribution environment will be capable of supporting HDR. Although it is generally argued that single-layer HDR coding solutions are superior to two-layer backward-compatible techniques, these coding strategies have not been fully investigated in terms of their rate distortion trade-off. In this paper, three main HDR coding techniques are implemented to analyze their performance and to evaluate the potential of HDR content distribution, while minimizing the impact on existing infrastructure, i.e., in terms of bitrate and HDR quality trade-off. The results reveal that backward-compatible solutions can outperform the single-layer approach achieving PSNR_DE improvements of up to 3.05dB on average. The HDR-VDP-2 quality indexes show similar improvements further confirming the superior performance of the backward-compatible solutions.
Primary stability of microscrews based on their diameter, length, shape and area of insertion. an experimental study with Periotest.

INTRODUCTION The high number of publications about microscrews is an evidence of their clinical success. Many authors recommend specific microscrews, diameter, length, shape and site of insertion for each case, nevertheless there is no scientific evidence to support those recommendations. AIM The aim of this study was to quantify the primary stability of microscrews using Periotest and evaluate the influence of diameter, length and shape in their primary stability. Material and methods. Seventy-two microscrews with different lengths, diameters and shapes were inserted into 6 lamb heads. Their primary stability was quantified using Periotest. The data analysis was carried out by the Statgraphics Plus software. RESULTS There were no statistical significant differences in the primary stability values of microscrews based on their diameter and length. But regarding to shape, conical microscrews provided more primary stability than cylindrical ones. CONCLUSIONS Neither the length ( 8 mm vs. 10 mm) nor the diameter (1.6 mm vs 2 mm) influences the primary stability of microscrews. When selecting the dimensions of microscrews for each case there are other factors to evaluate like cortical bone thickness. Conical microscrews provide more primary stability than cylindrical ones in lamb bone.
Nonviable Burkholderia mallei Induces a Mixed Th1- and Th2-Like Cytokine Response in BALB/c Mice

ABSTRACT Nonviable cell preparations of Burkholderia mallei, the causative agent of glanders, were evaluated as potential vaccine candidates in a BALB/c murine model. Three different B. mallei cell preparations plus Alhydrogel were evaluated: a heat-killed preparation, an irradiation-inactivated preparation, and a preparation of a capsule-negative mutant strain which had been irradiation inactivated. BALB/c mice were vaccinated twice with the different B. mallei preparations, and spleens and sera were collected to determine their cellular and humoral immune responses. All three bacterial cell preparations had essentially the same results in two cellular immune response assays. In a splenocyte proliferation assay, the amount of cell proliferation in response to the homologous immunogen, concanavalin A, or lipopolysaccharide was similar for all the cell preparations. Also, splenocytes from the inoculated mice expressed interleukin 2 (IL-2), gamma interferon, and small amounts of IL-4 and IL-5, and more IL-10 cytokine in the presence of the homologous antigen. When the immunoglobulin subclasses from these mice were examined, they all produced higher levels of IgG1 than IgG2a subclasses. The higher ratio of IgG1 to IgG2a was not due to the amount of the immunogen or the adjuvant (Alhydrogel) used in the BALB/c mice. The cell preparations did not protect the vaccinated mice from a live challenge (>300 50% lethal doses). Our results suggest that in BALB/c mice, a mixed T-helper-cell-like response to nonviable B. mallei is obtained, as demonstrated by a Th1- and Th2-like cytokine response and a Th2-like subclass immunoglobulin response. This may be the reason for the inability of the B. mallei cells that were examined as candidate vaccines to protect the mice from a live challenge.
Time‐resolved Microspectrofluorometry and Fluorescence Imaging Techniques: Study of Porphyrin‐mediated Cellular Uptake of Oligonucleotides

Time‐resolved confocal microspectrofluorometry and fluorescence microscopy imaging were applied to monitor the cellular uptake of fluorescent‐labeled oligonucleotides (ONs) delivered by a porphyrin molecule. The fate of porphyrin–ON complexes inside living cells has also been monitored. Due to intrinsic fluorescence of the porphyrin and sensitivity of its characteristics to microenvironment, multicomponent analysis of time‐resolved fluorescence provides unique information about stability of the porphyrin–ON complexes, ON interactions with their target sequences, and ON and porphyrin distributions after delivery inside the cells. Time‐resolved confocal microspectrofluorometry indeed delivers additional information compared with fluorescence confocal microscopy imaging widely employed to study ON uptake.
DCU-UvA Multimodal MT System Report

We present a doubly-attentive multimodal machine translation model. Our model learns to attend to source language and spatial-preserving CONV5,4 visual features as separate attention mechanisms in a neural translation model. In image description translation experiments (Task 1), we find an improvement of 2.3 Meteor points compared to initialising the hidden state of the decoder with only the FC7 features and 2.9 Meteor points compared to a text-only neural machine translation baseline, confirming the useful nature of attending to the CONV5,4 features.
A paradigm shift in the delivery of services for diagnosis of inherited retinal disease

Objectives Current technologies for delivering gene testing are labour-intensive and expensive. Over the last 3 years, new high-throughput DNA sequencing techniques (next generation sequencing; NGS), with the capability to analyse multiple genes or entire genomes, have been rapidly adopted into research. This study examines the possibility of incorporating NGS into a clinical UK service context. Methods The study applied NGS of 105 genes to 50 patients known to be affected by inherited forms of blindness in the setting of a UK National Health Service-accredited diagnostic molecular genetics laboratory. The study assessed the ability of an NGS protocol to identify likely disease-causing genetic variants when compared with current methodologies available through UK diagnostic laboratories. Results Conventional testing is only applicable to the minority of patients with inherited retinal disease and identifies mutations in fewer than one in four of those patients tested. By contrast, the NGS assay is directed at all patients with such disorders and identifies disease-causing mutations in 50–55%, which is a dramatic increase. This includes patients with apparently ‘sporadic’ disease, and those for whom clinical management and prognosis are altered as a consequence of defining their disease at a molecular level. Conclusions The new NGS approach delivers a step change in the diagnosis of inherited eye disease, provides precise diagnostic information and extends the possibility of targeted treatments including gene therapy. The approach represents an exemplar that illustrates the opportunity that NGS provides for broadening the availability of genetic testing. The technology will be applied to many conditions that are associated with high levels of genetic heterogeneity.
Differentiation stages of human natural killer cells in lymphoid tissues from fetal to adult life

Virtually all human granular lymphocytes expressed the HNK-1 differentiation antigen when examined in lymphoid compartments from adults, neonates, and fetuses. The HNK-1+ cells were distinguishable into three subsets having distinct antigenic phenotypes: HNK+T3-M1-, HNK+T3+M1-, and HNK+T3-M1+. Thus, greater than 70% of the HNK-1+ cells from 13-17 wk fetuses (less than 0.2% of nucleated cells) lacked T cell antigens (e.g., T3, T8, T4, and T6) and the M1 myeloid antigen. Morphologically, the HNK+T3-M1- cells consisted of three different types: small granular lymphocytes (less than 10% of HNK-1+ cells), agranular small lymphocytes with a narrow rim of cytoplasm (70-80%), and agranular giant cells (greater than 15 micrometers) with considerable neutrophilic cytoplasm (15%). The purified fetal HNK-1+ cells exhibited a low level of cytotoxicity against K562 target cells. On the other hand, almost all of HNK-1+ cells in neonatal tissues as well as adult bone marrow, lymph node, and thymus, exhibited the HNK+T3+M1- phenotype, contained sparse cytoplasmic granules, and had an intermediate level of NK functional activity. Only adult blood and spleen contained a majority of mature HNK-1+ cells. These cells had an HNK+T3-M1- phenotype, abundant cytoplasmic granules, and maximum NK function. We propose that human NK cells may generate from a separate cell lineage and that they alter their phenotype, morphology, and functional capability during differentiation.
TFA and EPA Productivities of Nannochloropsis salina Influenced by Temperature and Nitrate Stimuli in Turbidostatic Controlled Experiments

The influence of different nitrate concentrations in combination with three cultivation temperatures on the total fatty acids (TFA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) content of Nannochloropsis salina was investigated. This was done by virtue of turbidostatic controlled cultures. This control mode enables the cultivation of microalgae under defined conditions and, therefore, the influence of single parameters on the fatty acid synthesis of Nannochloropsis salina can be investigated. Generally, growth rates decreased under low nitrate concentrations. This effect was reinforced when cells were exposed to lower temperatures (from 26 °C down to 17 °C). Considering the cellular TFA concentration, nitrate provoked an increase of TFA under nitrate limitation up to 70% of the biological dry mass (BDM). In contrast to this finding, the EPA content decreased under low nitrate concentrations. Nevertheless, both TFA and EPA contents increased under a low culture temperature (17 °C) compared to moderate temperatures of 21 °C and 26 °C. In terms of biotechnological production, the growth rate has to be taken into account. Therefore, for both TFA and EPA production, a temperature of 17 °C and a nitrate concentration of 1800 μmol L−1 afforded the highest productivities. Temperatures of 21 °C and 26 °C in combination with 1800 μmol L−1 nitrate showed slightly lower TFA and EPA productivities.
An overview of biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the commonest progressive, dementing neurodegenerative disease in elderly, which affects innumerable people each year, and these numbers are likely to further increase as the population ages. In addition to the financial burden of AD on health care system, the disease has powerful emotional impact on caregivers and families of those afflicted. In this advancing era of AD research, with the availability of new treatment strategies having disease-modifying effects, there is growing need for the early diagnosis in AD, often hampered by paucity of biomarkers of AD. Various candidate biomarkers for AD have been developed that can detect patients with AD at an early stage. In the recent years, the search for an ideal biomarker has undergone a rapid evolution. Novel technologies in proteomics, genomics, and imaging techniques further expand the role of a biomarker not only in early diagnosis, but also in monitoring the response to various treatments. However, the availability of sensitive and specific biomarkers requires the method to be standardized so as to be able to compare the results across studies. Inspite of tremendous advances in this field the quest for an “ideal biomarker” still continues. In this review, we will discuss the various candidate markers in five spheres namely biochemical, neuroanatomical, metabolic, genetic and neuropsychological, and their current status and limitations in AD diagnosis.