Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SIXTH GENERATION ADAPTIVE APEX LOCATOR

SUMMARY: A comparative analysis is made which is grounded on literary data concerning the advantages and disadvantages of apex locators of various generations that have been created following two different principles /19, 28/. The PURPOSE of this study is to create a method and a device that combine the established advantages of fourth and fifth generation instruments. While measuring the working length of the root canals of 30 extracted human teeth /dry and filled with animal blood and sodium hypochlorite/, experimental research work was carried out which has served as a basis for creating both a method and an adaptive apex locator that combine the advantages of the two previous generations of appliances. The prolonged direct and juxtaposing studies have made it possible to create a steady algorithm for adapting the method for measuring the working length of the root canal depending on the canal’s moisture characteristics. The method has been implemented in the apex locator of the so called sixth generation – the adaptive type. Measurement with the adaptive apex locator has made it possible to eliminate the necessity of drying or moistening of the canal, as well as to achieve high degree of measurement precision in the presence of blood, of additionally imported liquid /sodium hypochlorite/, or while manipulating dry canals. Clinical observations are yet to come that will help assess the device’s ability to determine the working length of root canals under various clinical conditions and situations.
Owning Versus Leasing: Do Courts Matter?

The authors develop a legal contract enforcement theory of the own versus lease decision. The allocation of ownership rights will minimize enforcement costs when the legal system is inefficient. In particular, when legal enforcement of contracts is costly, there will be a shift from arrangements that rely on such enforcement (such as a rental agreement) toward other forms that do not (such as direct ownership). The authors then test this prediction and show that costly enforcement of rental contracts hampers the development of the rental housing market in a cross-section of countries. They argue that this association is not the result of reverse causation from a developed rental market to more investor-protective enforcement and is not driven by alternative institutional channels. The results provide supportive evidence on the importance of legal contract enforcement for market development and the optimal allocation of property rights.
Nuclear S100A7 Is Associated with Poor Prognosis in Head and Neck Cancer

Background Tissue proteomic analysis of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and normal oral mucosa using iTRAQ (isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantitation) labeling and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, led to the identification of a panel of biomarkers including S100A7. In the multi-step process of head and neck tumorigenesis, the presence of dysplastic areas in the epithelium is proposed to be associated with a likely progression to cancer; however there are no established biomarkers to predict their potential of malignant transformation. This study aimed to determine the clinical significance of S100A7 overexpression in HNSCC. Methodology Immunohistochemical analysis of S100A7 expression in HNSCC (100 cases), oral lesions (166 cases) and 100 histologically normal tissues was carried out and correlated with clinicopathological parameters and disease prognosis over 7 years for HNSCC patients. Overexpression of S100A7 protein was significant in oral lesions (squamous cell hyperplasia/dysplasia) and sustained in HNSCC in comparison with oral normal mucosa (ptrend<0.001). Significant increase in nuclear S100A7 was observed in HNSCC as compared to dysplastic lesions (p = 0.005) and associated with well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma (p = 0.031). Notably, nuclear accumulation of S100A7 also emerged as an independent predictor of reduced disease free survival (p = 0.006, Hazard ratio (HR = 7.6), 95% CI = 1.3−5.1) in multivariate analysis underscoring its relevance as a poor prognosticator of HNSCC patients. Conclusions Our study demonstrated nuclear accumulation of S100A7 may serve as predictor of poor prognosis in HNSCC patients. Further, increased nuclear accumulation of S100A7 in HNSCC as compared to dysplastic lesions warrants a large-scale longitudinal study of patients with dysplasia to evaluate its potential as a determinant of increased risk of transformation of oral premalignant lesions.
A Selection Region Based Routing Protocol for Random Mobile Ad Hoc Networks with Directional Antennas

In this paper, we propose a selection region based multihop routing protocol with directional antennas for wireless mobile ad hoc networks, where the selection region is defined by two parameters: a reference distance and the beamwidth of the directional antenna. At each hop, we choose the nearest node to the transmitter within the selection region as the next hop relay. By maximizing the expected density of progress, we present an upper bound for the optimum reference distance and derive the relationship between the optimum reference distance and the optimum transmission probability. Compared with the results with routing strategy using omnidirectional antennas in [1], we find interestingly that the optimum transmission probability is a constant independent of the beamwidth, the expected density of progress with the new routing strategy is increased significantly, and the computational complexity involved in the relay selection is also greatly reduced.
From Caring to Work : The Labor Market Effects of Noncontributory Health Insurance

Health reforms in low and middle-income countries usually include the provision of free or subsidized health insurance. In this paper, I examine whether this type of insurance encourages employment by freeing up resources previously used by households to cope with health shocks. To isolate the causal effect of providing free health insurance I use a differencein-differences design that exploits municipal (county) level variation in the rollout of Mexico’s Seguro Popular (SP). My main finding is that SP increases labor supply by retaining workers in the labor force. I propose that this occurs because SP reduces the time burden that dependents in poor health impose on caregivers. Consistent with this channel, I find that the labor supply response triggered by SP is driven by women, in particular those with caregiving responsibilities. Time use estimates provide additional evidence of the mechanism, as they illustrate that the increase in female labor supply is due to the reallocation of time from caregiving tasks at home to work in the labor market. The finding that SP increases labor supply is especially important, because it shows that the provision of subsidized health insurance need not entail an efficiency loss in the labor market. Specifically, I show that the increase in the share of workers in jobs without employer-based health insurance, that is, in informal jobs, is not driven by workers moving to less productive informal jobs, but by informal workers staying in the labor force. Accordingly, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that SP has led to a gain of one quarter of one percent of GDP.
Effects of Dose and Session Duration on Cocaine Self-Administration in Rats

Previous studies showed that an extended 6-h session duration produced an increasing rate of cocaine self-administration in rats. The present study further investigated the effect of dose and session duration on cocaine self-administration. Eight groups of rats (4 doses × 2 session durations) self-administered one of four cocaine doses (0.25, 0.5, 1, and 2 mg/kg/injection) in either 1- or 6-h sessions under a fixed-ratio schedule. In another experiment, two other groups of rats self-administered 0.5 mg/kg/injection of cocaine in either 3- or 12-h sessions. Cocaine self-administration increased at all doses in 6-h sessions but not in 1-h sessions. Cocaine intake (milligram/kilogram) reached an asymptote earlier at a higher dose, but the rate of responding increased faster when the dose was lower. In ShA rats, the cocaine dose-response function was higher in rats at the two higher unit doses than at the lower doses. Cocaine self-administration increased in 6- and 12-h sessions, but not in 1- and 3-h sessions. The increase in self-administration was faster and greater in 12-h sessions than 6-h sessions. The data suggest that cocaine self-administration increases at various doses with prolonged access and that an increase in the rate of responding is positively and inversely associated with session duration and unit dose, respectively. Results also imply that cocaine intake reaches a ceiling faster at high doses even under short session duration. Therefore, high doses or prolonged access to cocaine are more likely to result in a pattern of cocaine intake that reflects compulsive use.
FractalNet: Ultra-Deep Neural Networks without Residuals

We introduce a design strategy for neural network macro-architecture based on self-similarity. Repeated application of a simple expansion rule generates deep networks whose structural layouts are precisely truncated fractals. These networks contain interacting subpaths of different lengths, but do not include any pass-through or residual connections; every internal signal is transformed by a filter and nonlinearity before being seen by subsequent layers. In experiments, fractal networks match the excellent performance of standard residual networks on both CIFAR and ImageNet classification tasks, thereby demonstrating that residual representations may not be fundamental to the success of extremely deep convolutional neural networks. Rather, the key may be the ability to transition, during training, from effectively shallow to deep. We note similarities with student-teacher behavior and develop drop-path, a natural extension of dropout, to regularize co-adaptation of subpaths in fractal architectures. Such regularization allows extraction of high-performance fixed-depth subnetworks. Additionally, fractal networks exhibit an anytime property: shallow subnetworks provide a quick answer, while deeper subnetworks, with higher latency, provide a more accurate answer.
Surface Modification of Polycarbonate by Ultraviolet Radiation and Ozone

The effect of ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the presence of ozone as a surface treatment for polycarbonate is examined in regards to changes in the wettability, adhesion, and surface mechanical properties. Standalone, 175-µm-thick films of a commercially available polycarbonate were exposed to UV radiation from sources of different power with various treatment times in the presence of supplemental ozone. Significant decreases in the water contact angle were observed after exposure to UV radiation in the presence of ozone. After several variations in the experimental setup, it was determined that the change in water contact angle is a function of the UV irradiance and the work of adhesion follows a master curve versus UV irradiance. Nanoindentation experiments revealed that the modulus of the top 500 nm of the surface is increased following UV exposure, attributable to surface cross-linking. Adhesion tests to the surface (conducted by a pneumatic adhesion tensile test instrument) showed little change as a function of UV exposure. Analysis of adhesion test failure surfaces with X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) showed the locus of bond failure lay within the bulk polycarbonate and the measured bond strength is limited by the bulk properties of the polycarbonate and/or the creation of a weak boundary layer within the polymer.
Establishment of goat embryonic stem cells from in vivo produced blastocyst‐stage embryos

Embryonic stem (ES) cells with the capacity for germ line transmission have only been verified in mouse and rat. Methods for derivation, propagation, and differentiation of ES cells from domestic animals have not been fully established. Here, we describe derivation of ES cells from goat embryos. In vivo‐derived embryos were cultured on goat fetal fibroblast feeders. Embryos either attached to the feeder layer or remained floating and expanded in culture. Embryos that attached showed a prominent inner cell mass (ICM) and those that remained floating formed structures resembling ICM disks surrounded by trophectodermal cells. ICM cells and embryonic disks were isolated mechanically, cultured on feeder cells in the presence of hLIF, and outgrown into ES‐like colonies. Two cell lines were cultured for 25 passages and stained positive for alkaline phosphatase, POU5F1, NANOG, SOX2, SSEA‐1, and SSEA‐4. Embryoid bodies formed in suspension culture without hLIF. One cell line was cultured for 2 years (over 120 passages). This cell line differentiated in vitro into epithelia and neuronal cells, and could be stably transfected and selected for expression of a fluorescent marker. When cells were injected into SCID mice, teratomas were identified 5–6 weeks after transplantation. Expression of known ES cell markers, maintenance in vitro for 2 years in an undifferentiated state, differentiation in vitro, and formation of teratomas in immunodeficient mice provide evidence that the established cell line represents goat ES cells. This also is the first report of teratoma formation from large animal ES cells. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 78:202–211, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Regulome Size in Prokaryotes: Universality and Lineage-specific Variations

Molina and van Nimwegen [1] recently reported scaling exponents for different functional groups of genes and analysed the distribution of these scaling coefficients across clades and lifestyles. On the basis of the overlap between the 99% confidence intervals of their fits, they conclude that, for almost all functional groups, the exponents are equal ('universal') for all Prokaryotes. They place particular emphasis on transcription regulation and conclude that the scaling exponent over all clades and lifestyles is $2. This differs from our earlier study of regulome evolution across clades [2], in which we found abrupt expansions and contractions of relative regulome size at the origin of major lineages and lower exponents within clades than in the whole dataset. Molina and van Nimwe-gen suggest that this discrepancy is because of their larger dataset, improved annotation (i.e. GO annotated domains rather than COG) and a better fitting procedure, and conclude that the differences we reported can be explained by 'noise'. Here, we question their conclusions on technical and conceptual grounds and discuss the possible mechanisms underlying the apparent constraints and variation of regulome size in prokaryotes. On a technical level, the main problem with Molina and van Nimwegen's cross-annotation comparison is that the 'transcription regulation' category in the COG database collects one-component systems (1CS), which combine substrate-binding and DNA-binding domains in a single protein [3], rather than two-component systems (2CS), which are present in the 'signal transduction' category. Therefore, by comparing the 'transcription regulation' COG category with their GO-PFAM annotation, which bundles 1CS and 2CS together, they compare different biological systems. In our previous Trends in Genetics paper [2], we showed that, although 1CS and 2CS have similar scaling exponents when fitting through all species, for the specific case of 1CS, the scaling became near-linear in large clades such as Bacilli, a result confirmed by Molina and van Nimwegen (see their supplementary material online). Figure 1a shows the results of combining 1CS and 2CS with COG annotation: as expected, the exponent of Bacilli is somewhat greater than for 1CS only. The fitted trends are actually consistent with the results obtained when we annotate proteins based on PFAM and not on GO-PFAM annotation (which misses $20% of all proteins that do have PFAM domains) as Molina and van Nimwegen do (see Figure 1 and supplementary material online for details). Molina and van Nimwegen see the lower spread in the GO-PFAM data as a sign …
Radio Propagation Measurements and Modeling in Railway Viaduct Area

A network with high quality of service (QoS) is required for railway wireless communication and control systems. Research on radio-wave propagation in railway environment has great significance for the design and optimization of the railway wireless network. In this paper, measurements are taken in railway viaduct area using track side base stations of the GSM-R network. Comparison between the measured path loss values and the estimated values by a few prediction models shows a large deviation. Thus a new path loss prediction model for viaduct area is derived from statistical analysis of the measurement results in this paper. The novel proposed model has proven to be accurate for the planning of the railway wireless network.
INVESTIGATION OF THERMO-PHYSICAL AND FLOW PROPERTIES OF CO2 HYDRATE SLURRY

A pilot CO2 hydrate slurry production system was built and tested. The density of CO2 hydrate slurry was experimentally investigated and the relation between the density and the solid fraction has been established. The apparent viscosity of water, CO2 solution and CO2 hydrate slurry was investigated with a XL7-100 online resonant viscometer. We find that when the solid mass fraction in slurry increases, the density and apparent viscosity of CO2 slurry also increase. CO2 hydrate solid particles contribute only slightly to the viscosity increase when the solid mass fraction increased from 1.59% to 28% from our experimental results. Higher solid mass fraction can be achieved when more CO2 gas is injected into the loop under suitable hydrate formation conditions. The pure hydrate's dissociation enthalpy was evaluated by Micro Differential Scanning Calorimetry system. The enthalpy of CO2 hydrate slurry mainly depends on solid mass fraction. Real-time coupled multielectrode array sensor probes were applied to measure the maximal localized corrosion rate of three different materials subjected to CO2 hydrate slurry and saturated CO2 solution in the temperature range of 274.15–291.15 K and pressure range of 2.5–3.0 MPa. For a long-term usage in a mixture of CO2 saturated aqueous solution and hydrate slurry environment, carbon steel materials are to be unacceptable from the corrosion resistance point of view. In contrast, stainless steel type 304L and copper 110 have presented very low corrosion rates.
Drought and aquatic ecosystems: an introduction

SUMMARY 1. This paper introduces, and summarises the key messages of, a series of papers that emanated from a symposium on the Role of Drought in the Ecology of Aquatic Systems, held in Australia in 2001. 2. Defining drought hydrologically is problematic because the return times, intensity, duration and long-term trends in low-flow periods are specific to regions and times. Droughts may instead be referred to as ‘significant low-flow periods’, many of which have been replaced by ‘anti-drought’ conditions in rivers as they are used increasingly as irrigation conduits. 3. Droughts can be divided into those that cause predictable, seasonal press disturbances and less predictable, protracted ‘ramp’ disturbances. However, while droughts may be ‘ramp’ disturbances, their effects on aquatic biota are most likely to be ‘stepped’ when geomorphological or hydrological thresholds are crossed, causing abrupt changes in biological community structure and ecosystem processes. 4. Physical, morphological, physiological or behavioural refugia confer resistance or resilience to riverine populations and communities that experience drought conditions. The physical and chemical parameters associated with refugia habitats and their formation, influence population parameters within, and interactions among, species and can have protracted reproductive consequences, even well after the cessation of the drought. 5. Fish, invertebrate and plant populations and assemblages seem to recover rapidly from drought. Most studies of the effects of drought, however, have arisen fortuitously and have involved relatively short temporal, and small spatial, scales. Innovative approaches, such as microsatellite DNA analyses, can reveal that the effects of drought may be profound and long-lasting, resulting in population bottlenecks and altering the course of the evolution of species. 6. During periods of drought, decreases in inputs of dissolved organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus may lead to carbon limitation to microbial metabolism, resulting in autotrophic production being favoured over heterotrophic production. 7. Long-term climate trends, as indicated by palaeoecological evidence, suggest that, at least for Australia, droughts are likely to occur more frequently in the future. Anthropogenic effects on climate are likely to exacerbate this. 8. It is important that drought is seen for what it is: a natural extreme of the flow continuum, with flooding at the other extreme. Thus, despite the potential for dramatic impacts on aquatic biota and the negative social connotations associated with such events, drought must be incorporated into river management plans.
A 600 MHz VLIW DSP

A 600 MHz VLIW DSP, which implements the C64x VelociTI.2/spl trade/ architecture delivers 4800 MIPS, 2400 (16 b) or 4800 (8 b) million multiply accumulates at 0.3 mW/MMAC (16 b). The chip has 64 M transistors and dissipates 718 mW at 600 MHz and 1.2 V, and 200 mW at 300 MHz and 0.9 V. It has an 8-way VLIW DSP core, a 2-level memory system, and 2.4 GB/s I/O bandwidth. The DSP chip is implemented in 0.13 μm CMOS technology with 6-layer copper metalization.
SHape REtrieval contest 2008: 3D face scans

Three-Dimensional face recognition is a challenging task with a large number of proposed solutions [1, 2]. With variations in pose and expression the identification of a face scan based on 3D geometry is difficult. To improve on this task and to evaluate existing face matching methods large sets of 3D faces were constructed, such as the FRGC [3], BU-3DFE [4], and the GavabDB [5] database. When used in the same experimental way, these publicly available sets allow for a fair comparison of different methods. Usually, researchers compare the recognition rates (or identification rates) of different methods. To identify a person, its 3D face scan is enrolled as query in the database and if the most similar scan (other than the query) in the database belongs to the same person, he or she is identified correctly. For a set of queries, the recognition rate is computed as the average of zeros (no identification) and ones (correct identification). However, the recognition rate is a limited evaluation measure, because it considers merely the closest match of each query. In case you are using a database that contains two scans per expression per subject and you use each scan as query once, you are bound to find the similar scan on top of the ranked list. Such an experiment boosts the recognition rate, but gives no insight of the expression invariance of different methods. For that, an evaluation measure is required that takes a larger part of the ranked list into account. In this contest we compare different face matching methods using a large number of performance measures. As a test set we have used a processed subset of the GavabDB [5], which contains several expressions and pose variations per subject. 2 DATABASE For the retrieval contest of 3D faces we have used a subset of the GavabDB [5]. The GavabDB consists of Minolta Vi-700 laser range scans from 61 different subjects. The subjects, of which 45 are male and 16 are female, are all Caucasian. Each subject was scanned nine times for different poses and expressions, namely six neutral expression scans and three scans with an expression. The neutral scans include two different frontal scans, one scan while looking up ( +35 ), one scan while looking down ( -35 ), one scan from the right side ( +90 ), and one from the left side ( -90 ). The expression scans include one with a smile, one with a pronounced laugh, and an “arbitrary expression” freely chosen by the subject.