Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protease concentration in amniotic fluid at term and early childhood respiratory symptoms

Abstract Objective: Asthma is a common chronic disease associated with altered proteolytic activity. The present study tested the hypothesis that altered protease concentration in amniotic fluid (AF), an index of airway fluid at birth, precedes early cough and wheeze. Methods: AF was collected and analysed for the following: matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) -2, -8 and -9, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases (TIMP) -1 and 2, plasminogen activator inhibitor (PAI)-1. Infant were followed up at ages 1, 2 and 3 years. Results: Samples of AF were obtained in 92 infants. There were inconsistent and relatively small differences in some analytes between those individuals with and without symptoms at ages one and two years. PAI-1 concentrations were reduced in association with cough at age 1 year (p = 0.035). Reduced MMP-8:TIMP-2 ratio was associated with wheeze at age 2 years (p = 0.038). There were no associations between AF analytes and symptoms at 3 years of age. Conclusion: There is heterogeneity in concentrations of proteases and their inhibitors in airways at birth but in this exploratory study, there was no consistent evidence that protease concentration at birth was important to later respiratory symptoms.
The effect of 2000 r of x-rays on the internal structure of the mouse tibia.

SummaryThe effects of 2000 r of x-rays on the structure of the epiphyseal plate of the tibiae of 3 weeks and 12 weeks old mice are described. The initial effects were the disorganization of the epiphyseal plate due to the death of actively dividing cells and the cessation of cell erosion at the metaphyseal edge of the plate and of endochondral ossification, resulting in the formation of a wide plate with a low cell : matrix ratio, and diminished glycogen content. The resorption of bone in the metaphysis continued. This irradiated plate did not always persist and in some animals, clusters of cartilage cells appeared after about 9 weeks and initiated a new plate, the old one being split off and resorbed. It is considered that the formation of a new plate was dependent on the survival of stem cells with an intact reproductive mechanism and the maintenance of an adequate metaphyseal circulation. Where the blood supply was seriously reduced degenerative changes appeared in the bone marrow, cartilage and bone m.
Compression in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are highly resource constrained in terms of power supply, memory capacity, communication bandwidth, and processor performance. Compression of sampling, sensor data, and communications can significantly improve the efficiency of utilization of three of these resources, namely, power supply, memory and bandwidth. Recently, there have been a large number of proposals describing compression algorithms for WSNs. These proposals are diverse and involve different compression approaches. It is high time that these individual efforts are put into perspective and a more holistic view taken. In this article, we take a step in that direction by presenting a survey of the literature in the area of compression and compression frameworks in WSNs. A comparative study of the various approaches is also provided. In addition, open research issues, challenges and future research directions are highlighted.
Bioengineering the Lung : Molecules , Materials , Matrix , Morphology , and Mechanics Use of reflectance interference contrast microscopy to characterize the endothelial glycocalyx stiffness

Job KM, Dull RO, Hlady V. Use of reflectance interference contrast microscopy to characterize the endothelial glycocalyx stiffness. Am J Physiol Lung Cell Mol Physiol 302: L1242–L1249, 2012. First published April 13, 2012; doi:10.1152/ajplung.00341. 2011. — Reflectance interference contrast microscopy (RICM) was used to study the mechanics of the endothelial glycocalyx. This technique tracks the vertical position of a glass microsphere probe that applies very light fluctuating loads to the outermost layer of the bovine lung microvascular endothelial cell (BLMVEC) glycocalyx. Fluctuations in probe vertical position are used to estimate the effective stiffness of the underlying layer. Stiffness was measured before and after removal of specific glycocalyx components. The mean stiffness of BLMVEC glycocalyx was found to be 7.5 kT/nm (or 31 pN/nm). Enzymatic digestion of the glycocalyx with pronase or hyaluronan with hyaluronidase increased the mean effective stiffness of the glycocalyx; however, the increase of the mean stiffness on digestion of heparan sulfate with heparinase III was not significant. The results imply that hyaluronan chains act as a cushioning layer to distribute applied forces to the glycocalyx structure. Effective stiffness was also measured for the glycocalyx exposed to 0.1%, 1.0%, and 4.0% BSA; glycocalyx compliance increased at two extreme BSA concentrations. The RICM images indicated that glycocalyx thickness increases with BSA concentrations. Results demonstrate that RICM is sensitive to detect the subtle changes of glycocalyx compliance at the fluid-fiber interface.
Recent warming in northwestern Ontario inferred from borehole temperature profiles

[1] We have used the temperature depth profiles available in the region north and northwest of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Canada, to reconstruct the changes in ground surface temperature over the past 500 years. The 49 temperature depth profiles used were obtained for heat flow measurements and are part of two different data sets, one collected around 1980, the other one after 2000. We have discarded 16 of these profiles because of known nonclimatic perturbations (lakes, topography, clear signs of groundwater circulation). We have inverted the remaining 33 profiles to infer the variations in ground surface temperature. Individual and joint inversions consistently show a recent (150–200 years) warming (1–2 K) of the ground surface. This warming trend is similar to that inferred for northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, to the northwest, and in eastern Ontario and Quebec, to the southeast. However, there is no clear indication that a cold episode preceded the warming of the past 200 years in northwestern Ontario. The mean increase in ground surface temperature for all boreholes measured between 2000 and 2003 is 1.3 ± 0.8 K compared to 0.8 ± 0.6 K (σ) for the 1980 data. This difference suggests that the warming trend is persisting and might even have accelerated recently. Although the long-term trend is climatic, part of the recent warming may be due to deforestation by the logging industry.
Nuclear Discrepancy for Active Learning

Active learning algorithms propose which unlabeled objects should be queried for their labels to improve a predictive model the most. We study active learners that minimize generalization bounds and uncover relationships between these bounds that lead to an improved approach to active learning. In particular we show the relation between the bound of the state-of-the-art Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) active learner, the bound of the Discrepancy, and a new and looser bound that we refer to as the Nuclear Discrepancy bound. We motivate this bound by a probabilistic argument: we show it considers situations which are more likely to occur. Our experiments indicate that active learning using the tightest Discrepancy bound performs the worst in terms of the squared loss. Overall, our proposed loosest Nuclear Discrepancy generalization bound performs the best. We confirm our probabilistic argument empirically: the other bounds focus on more pessimistic scenarios that are rarer in practice. We conclude that tightness of bounds is not always of main importance and that active learning methods should concentrate on realistic scenarios in order to improve performance.
Findings of impedance pH-monitoring in patients with atypical gastroesophageal reflux symptoms

Aim This study was designed to investigate about findings of Impedance pH-monitoring in patients with atypical symptoms of GERD. Background The routine treatment with proton pump inhibitors is not very effective in patients with atypical symptoms of Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). It may be due to non-acid reflux which cannot be monitored using common methods such as pH-metry. Therefore, in these patients combinational procedure of multi channel intraluminal impedance and pH monitoring has been suggested as a new approach. Patients and methods Sixty patients with atypical symptoms of GERD underwent combined impedance pH-monitoring. pH of reflux episodes, type of material refluxant, blous cleaning time, proximal extension and symptoms association probability (SAP) was recorded for each patient. Results Globus sensation was reported as the most common atypical symptom. 95% of patients experienced weakly acid reflux. Mixed and pure gas refluxates were more frequent than pure liquid reflux. Bolus clearing time was pathologic in 36.7% of cases and proximal extension was detected in 43 patients (71.7%). Of the 46 symptomatic patients, 33.3% had a positive SAP and 43.3% had a negative SAP. Conclusion The findings of current study showed that the combinational procedure of MII and pH monitoring could provide important information for resistant to treatment patients’ with atypical GERD symptoms.
Configurations of curves and geodesics on surfaces

Author(s): Hass, Joel; Scott, Peter | Abstract: We study configurations of immersed curves in surfaces and surfaces in 3-manifolds. Among other results, we show that primitive curves have only finitely many configurations which minimize the number of double points. We give examples of minimal configurations not realized by geodesics in any hyperbolic metric.
Simulating and Prediction of Flow Using by WetSpa Model in Ziyarat River Basin, Iran

The spatially distributed hydrologic model WetSpa that works on daily, hourly, and minutely timescales is used to predict the flood hydrographs and spatial distribution of the hydrologic characteristics in a river basin by combining elevation, soil and land-use data within Geographical Information System. This model was applied in Ziarat river basin (95.15 km2) located in Golestan Province of Iran. Hourly hydro-meteorological data from 2008 to 2010 consist of precipitation data of two stations, temperature data of one station and evaporation data measured at one station, which were used as input data of the model. Three base maps namely DEM, land-use and soil types were produced in GIS form using 30 × 30 m cell size. Results of the simulations revealed a good agreement between calculated and measured hydrographs at the outlet of the river basin. The model predicted the hourly hydrographs with a good accuracy between 62% - 74% according to the Nash-Sutcliff criteria. To evaluate the model performance during the calibration and validation periods an Aggregated Measure (AM) was introduced that measures different aspects of the simulated hydrograph such as shape, size, and volume. The statistics of Ziarat river basin showed that the results produced by the model were very good in the calibration and validation periods.
The local Cauchy problem for ionized magnetized reactive gas mixtures

We investigate a system of partial differential equations modelling ionized magnetized reactive gas mixtures. In this model, dissipative fluxes are anisotropic linear combinations of fluid variable gradients and also include zeroth‐order contributions modelling the direct effect of electromagnetic forces. There are also gradient dependent source terms like the conduction current in the Maxwell–Ampere equation. We introduce the notion of partial symmetrizability and that of entropy for such systems of partial differential equations and establish their equivalence. By using entropic variables, we recast the system into a partially normal form, that is, in the form of a quasilinear partially symmetric hyperbolic–parabolic system. Using a result of Vol'Pert and Hudjaev, we prove local existence and uniqueness of a bounded smooth solution. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A multicomponent DEA approach to measure the economic and energy efficiencies of OECD countries

We employ a multicomponent Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) framework to examine the interplay between economic and energy efficiency for all 29 OECD countries and then classify each country into one of four categories in terms of their relative economic and energy efficiency. In addition to using a broader set of inputs and improved measure of labour compared with prior studies, we make a methodological contribution in that we develop a new complete multi-component DEA measure for examining the efficiency performance of individual countries. Our proposed measure provides an efficiency index, not only at the country level, but also decomposes overall efficiency into economic and energy components. The G7 countries display the worst performance, in terms of CO2 and energy efficiencies. For the sample as a whole, there is a positive and marginally significant relationship between economic efficiency and energy efficiency. This finding suggests that higher economic and energy efficiencies are not necessarily incompatible goals.
Relational continuity of care in integrated maternity and child health clinics improve parents’ service experiences

Introduction In the Finnish primary health care, relational continuity of care is implemented in integrated maternity and child health clinics where the same nurse takes care of the family from the pregnancy until the child reaches school age. The aim of this study was to clarify the association between this relational continuity of care and the availability, utilisation and selected features of the maternity and child health clinic services, as evaluated by the parents. Methods A comparative, cross-sectional service evaluation survey was used. Eighteen months after their baby's delivery, mothers (N = 987) and fathers (N = 835) from Southwest Finland evaluated specific maternity and child health clinic services. Comparisons were made between the parents who had relational continuity of care in the integrated maternity and child health clinics and those who did not. Results Home visits were more frequently provided when relational continuity of care in integrated maternity and child health clinics existed. Parents who had this relational continuity of care, evaluated several features of the service, especially provided support, more positively than parents who did not. Conclusions Relational continuity of care in integrated maternity and child health clinics seems to increase parents’ satisfaction with the services and might increase the provision of home visits.
On the practice of error analysis for machine translation evaluation

Error analysis is a means to assess machine translation output in qualitative terms, which can be used as a basis for the generation of error profiles for different systems. As for other subjective approaches to evaluation it runs the risk of low inter-annotator agreement, but very often in papers applying error analysis to MT, this aspect is not even discussed. In this paper, we report results from a comparative evaluation of two systems where agreement initially was low, and discuss the different ways we used to improve it. We compared the effects of using more or less fine-grained taxonomies, and the possibility to restrict analysis to short sentences only. We report results on inter-annotator agreement before and after measures were taken, on error categories that are most likely to be confused, and on the possibility to establish error profiles also in the absence of a high inter-annotator agreement.
Regime shifts in a dynamic term structure model of U.S. Treasury bond yields

This article develops and empirically implements an arbitrage-free, dynamic term structure model with 'priced' factor and regime-shift risks. The risk factors are assumed to follow a discrete-time Gaussian process, and regime shifts are governed by a discrete-time Markov process with state-dependent transition probabilities. This model gives closed-form solutions for zero-coupon bond prices, an analytic representation of the likelihood function for bond yields, and a natural decomposition of expected excess returns to components corresponding to regime-shift and factor risks. Using monthly data on U.S. Treasury zero-coupon bond yields, we show a critical role of priced, state-dependent regime-shift risks in capturing the time variations in expected excess returns, and document notable differences in the behaviors of the factor risk component of the expected returns across high and low volatility regimes. Additionally, the state dependence of the regime-switching probabilities is shown to capture an interesting asymmetry in the cyclical behavior of interest rates. The shapes of the term structure of volatility of bond yield changes are also very different across regimes, with the well-known hump being largely a low-volatility regime phenomenon. , Oxford University Press.
Influence of Barrier Wind Forcing on Heat Delivery Toward the Greenland Ice Sheet

A high-resolution numerical hydrodynamic model of Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord and the adjacent southeast Greenland shelf region was constructed in order to investigate the dynamics of fjord-shelf exchange. Recent studies have suggested that rapid exchange flows, driven by along-shelf barrier wind events, are the dominant agent of exchange between fjord and shelf. These events are prone to occur during the winter, when freshwater forcing is minimal and observations of the fjord interior are scarce. Subglacial freshwater discharge was held at zero, so that any buoyancy-driven overturning circulation was driven by melting alone. The model described a geostrophically balanced background flow transporting water masses between the fjord mouth and the glacier terminus, indicating that rotational effects are of order-one importance. Barrier wind events were found to trigger coastally trapped internal wave activity within fjord, temporarily enhancing exchange and vertical mixing, and causing warm water to oscillate in the along-fjord direction. These internal waves were also found to enhance the background flow via Stokes’ drift. Heat delivery through the fjord mouth was smaller than that recorded in summer observations, however the system is more effective at delivering this heat to the head of the fjord. There exists the potential for wintertime melting at the ice-ocean interface to be significant to the same order as summertime melting.
STUDIES ON BREVICIN AF 01 : A BACTERIOCIN LIKE INHIBITORY SUBSTANCE ACTIVE AGAINST METHICILLIN RESISTANT STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS

Bacillus brevis AF01, isolated from wheat field, has been found to produce proteinaceous antibacterial substance Brevicin AF01. The inhibitory activity could not be related to bacteriophages. It has a narrow spectrum of activity against gram-positive bacterial strains only. Brevicin AF01 revealed bactericidal effect against Staphylococccus aureus FS10. It was also found to be active against several strains of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Its production was started in the early stationary phase and continued till late stationary phase. Maximum production of Brevicin AF01 was observed when the producer strain was grown in BHI broth without NaCl supplement, at neutral pH and at 37°C. It remained stable at 60°C and 80°C for 30 minutes. The activity decreased at 100°C and was completely lost by autoclaving (121°C, 15 lb/sq inch, for 15 minutes). It remained stable at wide pH range (3-11). Bioactivity of Brevicin AF01 was relatively less affected by treatment with organic solvents, heavy metal salts but lost completely by surfactants and proteolytic enzymes. The activity was also found sensitive to lipase and thus Brevicin AF01 appeared to be a lipoprotein.
Cilia- and Flagella-Associated Protein 69 Regulates Olfactory Transduction Kinetics in Mice

Animals detect odorous chemicals through specialized olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) that transduce odorants into neural electrical signals. We identified a novel and evolutionarily conserved protein, cilia- and flagella-associated protein 69 (CFAP69), in mice that regulates olfactory transduction kinetics. In the olfactory epithelium, CFAP69 is enriched in OSN cilia, where olfactory transduction occurs. Bioinformatic analysis suggests that a large portion of CFAP69 can form Armadillo-type α-helical repeats, which may mediate protein–protein interactions. OSNs lacking CFAP69, remarkably, displayed faster kinetics in both the on and off phases of electrophysiological responses at both the neuronal ensemble level as observed by electroolfactogram and the single-cell level as observed by single-cell suction pipette recordings. In single-cell analysis, OSNs lacking CFAP69 showed faster response integration and were able to fire APs more faithfully to repeated odor stimuli. Furthermore, both male and female mutant mice that specifically lack CFAP69 in OSNs exhibited attenuated performance in a buried food pellet test when a background of the same odor to the food pellet was present even though they should have better temporal resolution of coding olfactory stimulation at the peripheral. Therefore, the role of CFAP69 in the olfactory system seems to be to allow the olfactory transduction machinery to work at a precisely regulated range of response kinetics for robust olfactory behavior. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Sensory receptor cells are generally thought to evolve to respond to sensory cues as fast as they can. This idea is consistent with mutational analyses in various sensory systems, where mutations of sensory receptor cells often resulted in reduced response size and slowed response kinetics. Contrary to this idea, we have found that there is a kinetic “damper” present in the olfactory transduction cascade of the mouse that slows down the response kinetics and, by doing so, it reduces the peripheral temporal resolution in coding odor stimuli and allows for robust olfactory behavior. This study should trigger a rethinking of the significance of the intrinsic speed of sensory transduction and the pattern of the peripheral coding of sensory stimuli.
Free Space Radiation Pattern Reconstruction from Non-Anechoic Measurements Using an Impulse Response of the Environment

The objective of this paper is to investigate a methodology, which can extract approximate results for the free space radiation pattern from non-anechoic measurements. Using an impulse response both in the time and angular domains of the non-anechoic measurement environment, the free space pattern of the device under test is estimated. The purpose of this paper is, as opposed to what has been stated in some papers, to show that a deconvolution based technique is feasible for reflection compensation in non-anechoic measurements. The proposed method can also be applied at a single frequency as illustrated in this paper. Simulated data has been used to illustrate the applicability of this new technique and its improved performance over the conventional FFT-based methods.
On the refinement of non-interference

It is known that functional refinement does not preserve the security properties of a system. The authors propose a trace-based method for specifying the security properties of a system and a method which ensures that this security is preserved under refinement. They include an example to illustrate the use of the definitions and make use of non-interference (as defined in their notation). <<ETX>>