Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship Between the MTHFR C677T Genotypes to Serum Anti-Müllerian Hormone Concentrations and In Vitro Fertilization/Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection Outcome.

BACKGROUND The expression of the 5,10-methylentetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) gene in human oocytes and preimplantation embryos suggests that the MTHFR gene is involved in folliculogenesis and female reproduction. Considering the importance of the MTHFR gene on female reproduction, the aim of this study was to evalu- ate the influence of MTHFR C677T polymorphism on ovarian marker reserve, particularly serum anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels, and ovarian response as well as clinical pregnancy rates after in vitro fertilization (IVF)/ intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). METHODS A total of 137 women who underwent ART treatment due to male factor infertility enrolled in this study. Genotyping of MTHFR C677T polymorphism and serum AMH concentrations were performed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) technique and an ultrasensitive enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RESULTS Women with the TT genotype showed significantly higher AMH levels (4.5 ± 3.2 ng/mL) compared to carriers of other genotypes after ovarian stimulation. We observed a nonsignificant trend towards lower clinical pregnancy rates in patients with the TT (23.1%) versus CT (48.4%) genotypes (p = 0.2). No significant differences existed in terms of miscarriage and live birth rates among the groups. Multivariable logistic regression revealed that the duration of infertility and AFC were important predictive variables for the live birth rate. CONCLUSIONS Our results confirmed that the presence of the T mutant allele of the 677 polymorphism in the MTHFR gene led to an increased trend in AMH levels. Interestingly, we observed that the numbers of oocytes retrieved decreased in the mutated genotypes. We have not observed this trend in relation to oocyte maturity. The influence of the MTHFR C677T polymorphism on embryo quality and pregnancy rate after ART cycles remains unclear.
Addison’s Disease Symptoms – A Cross Sectional Study in Urban South Africa

Background Addison’s disease is a potentially life-threatening disorder, and prompt diagnosis, and introduction of steroid replacement has resulted in near normal life-expectancy. There are limited data describing the clinical presentation of Addison’s disease in South Africa. It is hypothesised that patients may present in advanced state of ill-health, compared to Western countries. Patients A national database of patients was compiled from primary care, referral centres and private practices. 148 patients were enrolled (97 white, 34 mixed ancestry, 5 Asian and 12 black). Methods Demographic and clinical data were elicited using questionnaires. Biochemical data were obtained from folder reviews and laboratory archived results. Results The majority of the cohort was women (62%). The median and inter-quartile age range (IQR) of patients at enrolment was 46.0 (32.0–61.0) years, with a wide range from 2.8–88.0 years. The median and IQR age at initial diagnosis was 34.0 (20.0–45.0) years (range 0.02–77.0) years, indicating that at the time of enrolment, the patients, on average, were diagnosed with Addison’s disease 12 years previously. Hyperpigmentation was observed in 76%, nausea and vomiting occurred in more than 40%, and weight loss was noted in 25%. Loss of consciousness as a presenting feature was recorded in 20%. with a 95% confidence interval [CI] of (14–28%) and shock occurred in 5% CI (1.5–8.5%). Case-finding was recorded at 3.1 per million. Conclusions The usual constellation of hyperpigmentation, nausea, vomiting and weight loss suggests Addison’s disease, but a significant proportion present with an advanced state of ill-health and Addisonian crises. A lower prevalence rate, compared to Western countries is suggested.
Immature Human Dendritic Cells Express Asialoglycoprotein Receptor Isoforms for Efficient Receptor-Mediated Endocytosis1

In a search for genes expressed by dendritic cells (DC), we have cloned cDNAs encoding different forms of an asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGPR). The DC-ASGPR represents long and short isoforms of human macrophage lectin, a Ca2+-dependent type II transmembrane lectin displaying considerable homology with the H1 and H2 subunits of the hepatic ASGPR. Immunoprecipitation from DC using an anti-DC-ASGPR mAb yielded a major 40-kDa protein with an isoelectric point of 8.2. DC-ASGPR mRNA was observed predominantly in immune tissues. Both isoforms were detected in DC and granulocytes, but not in T, B, or NK cells, or monocytes. DC-ASGPR species were restricted to the CD14-derived DC obtained from CD34+ progenitors, while absent from the CD1a-derived subset. Accordingly, both monocyte-derived DC and tonsillar interstitial-type DC expressed DC-ASGPR protein, while Langerhans-type cells did not. Furthermore, DC-ASGPR is a feature of immaturity, as expression was lost upon CD40 activation. In agreement with the presence of tyrosine-based and dileucine motifs in the intracytoplasmic domain, mAb against DC-ASGPR was rapidly internalized by DC at 37°C. Finally, intracellular DC-ASGPR was localized to early endosomes, suggesting that the receptor recycles to the cell surface following internalization of ligand. Our findings identify DC-ASGPR/human macrophage lectin as a feature of immature DC, and as another lectin important for the specialized Ag-capture function of DC.
Storage Allocation Policies for Time-Dependent Multimedia Data

Multimedia computing requires support for heterogeneous data types with differing storage, communication and delivery requirements. Continuous media data types, such as audio and video, impose delivery requirements that are not satisfied by conventional physical storage organizations. In this paper, we describe a physical organization for multimedia data based on the need to support the delivery of multiple playout sessions from a single rotating-disk storage device. Our model relates disk characteristics to the different media recording and playback rates and derives their storage pattern. This storage organization guarantees that as long as a multimedia delivery process is running, starvation will never occur. Furthermore, we derive bandwidth and buffer constraints for disk access and present an approach to minimize latencies for non-continuous media stored on the same device. The analysis and numerical results indicate the feasibility of using conventional rotating magnetic disk storage devices to support multiple sessions for video-on-demand applications.
Domain adaptation of natural language processing systems

Statistical language processing models are being applied to an ever wider and more varied range of linguistic domains. Collecting and curating training sets for each different domain is prohibitively expensive, and at the same time differences in vocabulary and writing style across domains can cause state-of-the-art supervised models to dramatically increase in error. The first part of this thesis describes structural correspondence learning (SCL), a method for adapting linear discriminative models from resource-rich source domains to resource-poor target domains. The key idea is the use of pivot features which occur frequently and behave similarly in both the source and target domains. SCL builds a shared representation by searching for a low-dimensional feature subspace that allows us to accurately predict the presence or absence of pivot features on unlabeled data. We demonstrate SCL on two text processing problems: sentiment classification of product reviews and part of speech tagging. For both tasks, SCL significantly improves over state of the art supervised models using only unlabeled target data. In the second part of the thesis, we develop a formal framework for analyzing domain adaptation tasks. We first describe a measure of divergence, the HDH -divergence, that depends on the hypothesis class H from which we estimate our supervised model. We then use this measure to state an upper bound on the true target error of a model trained to minimize a convex combination of empirical source and target errors. The bound characterizes the tradeoff inherent in training on both the large quantity of biased source data and the small quantity of unbiased target data, and we can compute it from finite labeled and unlabeled samples of the source and target distributions under relatively weak assumptions. Finally, we confirm experimentally that the bound corresponds well to empirical target error for the task of sentiment classification.
Collaborative Learning of Ontology Fragments by Co-operating Agents

Collaborating agents require either prior agreement on the shared vocabularies that they use for communication, or some means of translating between their private ontologies. Thus, techniques that enable agents to build shared vocabularies allow them to share and learn new concepts, and are therefore beneficial when these concepts are required on multiple occasions. However, if this is not carried out in an effective manner then the performance of an agent may be adversely affected by the time required to infer over large augmented ontologies, so causing problems in time-critical scenarios such as search and rescue. In this paper, we present a new technique that enables agents to augment their ontology with carefully selected concepts into their ontology. We contextualise this generic approach in the domain of RoboCup Rescue. Specifically, we show, through empirical evaluation, that our approach saves more civilians, reduces the percentage of the city burnt, and spends the least amount of time accessing its ontology compared with other state of the art benchmark approaches.
Air-gap polycrystalline silicon thin-film transistors for fully integrated sensors

Air gap thin-film transistors (TFTs) were fabricated using a solid phase crystallization process. Undoped polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon) was used as the active layer and a highly doped polysilicon bridge was used as the gate, which promotes the air gap. These TFTs have comparable threshold voltage (V/sub T/) and subthreshold slope characteristics to TFTs fabricated using pulsed laser crystallization, and using silicon dioxide as gate insulator. The low value of V/sub T/ is very important for low power consumption. Moreover, the air-gap TFT fabrication process is compatible with low-temperature glass substrate technology, which allows the integration of sensors and electronics circuits.
Predicting bacterial transcription units using sequence and expression data

MOTIVATION A key aspect of elucidating gene regulation in bacterial genomes is identifying the basic units of transcription. We present a method, based on probabilistic language models, that we apply to predict operons, promoters and terminators in the genome of Escherichia coli K-12. Our approach has two key properties: (i) it provides a coherent set of predictions for related regulatory elements of various types and (ii) it takes advantage of both DNA sequence and gene expression data, including expression measurements from inter-genic probes. RESULTS Our experimental results show that we are able to predict operons and localize promoters and terminators with high accuracy. Moreover, our models that use both sequence and expression data are more accurate than those that use only one of these two data sources.
2+2 Architectural Views for SAA of Business Information Systems

Architectural views play an important role in software architecture analysis (SAA). For SAA of flexibility, architectural views are used to determine the effect of change scenarios. These scenarios represent possible changes to which the system has to be adapted, and determining the effect of these changes provides insight into the system’s flexibility. Most approaches to SAA use a single architectural view to evaluate the effect of change scenarios. We found that the effect of change scenarios may span several such views, and so SAA of flexibility requires multiple views. Based on our experience with SAA, we have identified four architectural views for analyzing the effect of change scenarios. These views are introduced in this paper by elaborating the analysis of a large information system, which we performed for the Dutch Tax Department. In addition, we present some guidelines on how to use these views for analyzing the effect of a given change scenario.
Real-Time Simultaneous Pose and Shape Estimation for Articulated Objects Using a Single Depth Camera

In this paper we present a novel real-time algorithm for simultaneous pose and shape estimation for articulated objects, such as human beings and animals. The key of our pose estimation component is to embed the articulated deformation model with exponential-maps-based parametrization into a Gaussian Mixture Model. Benefiting from this probabilistic measurement model, our algorithm requires no explicit point correspondences as opposed to most existing methods. Consequently, our approach is less sensitive to local minimum and handles fast and complex motions well. Moreover, our novel shape adaptation algorithm based on the same probabilistic model automatically captures the shape of the subjects during the dynamic pose estimation process. The personalized shape model in turn improves the tracking accuracy. Furthermore, we propose novel approaches to use either a mesh model or a sphere-set model as the template for both pose and shape estimation under this unified framework. Extensive evaluations on publicly available data sets demonstrate that our method outperforms most state-of-the-art pose estimation algorithms with large margin, especially in the case of challenging motions. Furthermore, our shape estimation method achieves comparable accuracy with state of the arts, yet requires neither statistical shape model nor extra calibration procedure. Our algorithm is not only accurate but also fast, we have implemented the entire processing pipeline on GPU. It can achieve up to 60 frames per second on a middle-range graphics card.
Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience Cellular Neuroscience

et al., 2009). This raises the question of how temporal encoding processes are affected when olfactory stimuli are presented in a manner that is both temporally and biologically realistic. Recent studies of the fl uid dynamic effects of the insect wing beat and behavioral responses (Justus et al., 2002) suggest that the olfac-tory systems of at least some insects may receive periodic olfactory input that is perhaps analogous to mammalian sniffi ng. This raises some intriguing, but as yet, unanswered questions. For example, how is an oscillating olfactory input refl ected in central representations within the fi rst synaptic relay, the antennal lobe (AL)? Are these temporal dynamics fi ltered out or possibly enhanced by local processing within the AL? Is there any functional consequence to receiving olfactory input in this periodic manner? That is, does periodic stimulation affect olfactory acuity in the behaving animal? To address the above questions we designed a series of physiological and behavioral experiments using the moth Manduca sexta. Manduca typically beats its wings at 18–20 Hz during tethered fl ight (Frye, 2001a,b; Sane and Jacobson, 2006), and up to ∼28 Hz during free fl ight within a wind tunnel (M. A. Willis, unpublished personal observation). We show that physiological measures of antennal input, as well as AL local fi eld potential (LFP) and unitary spiking patterns, " track " odorants pulsed up to and beyond the wing beat frequency range and that this tracking appears to be dependent on
Trade and Security,I: Anarchy

Market exchange is subject to an endogenously determined level of predation which impedes specialization and gains from trade. We construct a model in which utility-maximizing agents opt between careers in production and careers in predation. Three types of equilibria may emerge: autarky (with no predation and no defense), insecure exchange equilibria (with predation and defense), and secure exchange equilibria (in which defense completely deters predation). Trading equilibria, two-thirds of them secure, are supported only in a narrow range of security parameter values. Since changes in the technologies of defense and predation have terms of trade effects, some producers may be hurt by enhanced security. We show cases of immiserizing security' in which producers in large poor countries are harmed by increased security.
Antiangiogenic Activity of the MDM2 Antagonist Nutlin-3

Nutlin-3, a nongenotoxic activator of the p53 pathway, dose-dependently (range 0.1 to 10 &mgr;mol/L) inhibited the formation of capillaries in an in vivo matrigel assay, as well as the formation of capillary-like structures in an in vitro coculture system composed of endothelial cells surrounded by fibroblasts. In contrast to the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin, nutlin-3 showed no induction of apoptosis in vitro either in the cocultures or in isolated vascular endothelial cells, even when used at the highest concentration (10 &mgr;mol/L). However, treatment with pharmacological inhibitors of the nuclear factor &kgr;B and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathways sensitized endothelial cells to nutlin-3–induced apoptosis. Although nutlin-3 and doxorubicin induced a comparable p53 accumulation in endothelial cells, nutlin-3 was significantly more efficient than doxorubicin in upregulating the p53 target genes CDKN1A/p21, MDM2, and GDF-15, as well as in inhibiting cell cycle progression. However, the predominant in vitro effect of nutlin-3 was its strong antimigratory activity observed at concentrations significantly lower (0.1 &mgr;mol/L) than those required to inhibit endothelial cell cycle progression. Taken together, our data suggest that the antiangiogenic activity of nutlin-3 observed in vivo was mainly attributable to inhibition of endothelial cell migration, to some extent attributable to cell cycle arrest, and to a lesser extent attributable to induction of apoptosis.
Low-complexity channel reservation design scheme in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, a low-cost channel reservation design scheme is proposed for cognitive radio networks (CRNs) to achieve call level quality of service (QoS) provisioning. An optimization problem is formed to minimize the handoff call dropping probability with a hard constraint on the new call blocking probability, and then is rewritten to another problem where only the new call blocking probability is involved. An analytical expression of the new call blocking probability is derived through modeling the channel occupancy situation of the system (including primary user network and CRN) through a one-dimension continuous time Markov chain instead of the commonly used two-dimension one. Then, the optimal number of reserved channels is determined by solving the aforementioned rewritten problem. The computational complexity of the proposed method is very low which enables its applications in high dynamic scenarios like CRNs. Simulation results verify the accuracy of the analytical expression and the effectiveness of the optimization.
Multitest media for rapid identification of Proteus species with notes on biochemical reactions of strains isolated from urine and pus

Two `multitest'1 media for biochemical classification of the genus Proteus into species were developed. The species so determined were checked with conventional methods. Results show that these media were useful for rapid identification of species. The biochemical reactions of four Proteus species isolated from clinical specimens as tested by conventional methods are reviewed and the occurrence of some atypical strains is described.
Unique Structural Features of the Peptidoglycan of Mycobacterium leprae

ABSTRACT The peptidoglycan structure of Mycobacterium spp. has been investigated primarily with the readily cultivable Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis and has been shown to contain unusual features, including the occurrence of N-glycolylated, in addition to N-acetylated, muramic acid residues and direct cross-linkage between meso-diaminopimelic acid residues. Based on results from earlier studies, peptidoglycan from in vivo-derived noncultivable Mycobacterium leprae was assumed to possess the basic structural features of peptidoglycans from other mycobacteria, other than the reported replacement of l-alanine by glycine in the peptide side chains. In the present study, we have analyzed the structure of M. leprae peptidoglycan in detail by combined liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. In contrast to earlier reports, and to the peptidoglycans in M. tuberculosis and M. smegmatis, the muramic acid residues of M. leprae peptidoglycan are exclusively N acetylated. The un-cross-linked peptide side chains of M. leprae consist of tetra- and tripeptides, some of which contain additional glycine residues. Based on these findings and genome comparisons, it can be concluded that the massive genome decay in M. leprae does not markedly affect the peptidoglycan biosynthesis pathway, with the exception of the nonfunctional namH gene responsible for N-glycolylmuramic acid biosynthesis.
A Microfabricated Spiral-Groove Turbopump Supported on Microball Bearings

The development of a microfabricated turbopump that is capable of delivering liquid fuel with the flow rates and pressures required for portable power generation is reported. The device is composed of a spiral-groove viscous pump driven by a radial in-flow microturbine and supported using a newly developed encapsulated microball bearing. A planar-contact bearing raceway is employed using 285-¿m -diameter 440C stainless steel microballs. A modification to the raceway geometry, as compared to previous designs, has enabled repeatable operation of the microturbine at speeds up to 87 000 r/min, showing negligible variations in performance for over 6 h and 3.8 million revolutions. Pumping has been demonstrated with water as the working fluid for flow rates of 10-80 mL/h and pressures rises of up to 8.2 kPa. This is the first application to incorporate an encapsulated microball bearing support mechanism, to achieve rotational speeds in excess of 50 000 r/min using a contact bearing, and to demonstrate reliable operation of more than 1 million revolutions.
Adaptation Of The Variable Neighborhood Search Heuristic To Solve The Vehicle Routing Problem

The vehicle routing problem is investigated by using some adaptations of the variable neighborhood search (VNS). The initial solution was obtained by Dijkstra’s algorithm based on cost network constructed by the sweep algorithm and the 2-opt. Our VNS algorithm use several neighborhoods which were adapted for this problem. In addition, a number of local search methods together with a diversification procedure were used. The algorithm was then tested on the data sets from the literature and it produced competitive results if compared to the solutions published.
Roots of the derivative of the Riemann-zeta function and of characteristic polynomials

We investigate the horizontal distribution of zeros of the derivative of the Riemann-zeta function and compare this with the radial distribution of zeros of the derivative of the characteristic polynomial of a random unitary matrix. Both cases show a surprising bimodal distribution which is yet to be explained. We show by example that the bimodality is a general phenomenon. For the unitary matrix case we prove a conjecture of Mezzadri concerning the leading order behaviour, and we show that the same follows from the random matrix conjectures for the zeros of the zeta function.