Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Corrosion behaviour of zirconium alloys in high temperature aqueous environment by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

The corrosion behaviour of zirconium based alloys has been primarily investigated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). In-situ autoclave EIS experiments were performed in simulated primary coolant conditions in order to study the high temperature water corrosion of zirconium alloys in PWRs. In-situ impedance response of the corroding material was recorded throughout first kinetic transition.A physical model of the zirconium oxide was proposed in accordance with the microstructural observation made by SEM analysis. Electrical properties of the oxide was evaluated with equivalent circuit model (ECM) which was constructed accord- ing to the physical oxide model. Evolution of various oxide parameters obtained from ECM was analysed in accordance with the microstructure observation made by SEM.A two layer structure consists of a outer porous oxide and an inner barrier oxide, was found to be the most accurate description for the autoclave formed oxide. Support- ing evidence from the SEM cross-section and surface analysis of the oxide had shown cracks and pores that were linked and connected with the environment. This observation is also confirmed by the in-situ EIS measurement which has shown porous electrode behaviour throughout the course of oxidation. The porous oxide behaviour was also confirmed by the ex-situ soaking experiment on samples with incremental exposure time.Evolution of inner barrier layer oxide thickness was found to be correlated with kinetic transition which was determined from weight gain measurement. This indicated that barrier layer maybe the oxidation rate controlling layer and its thickness maybe reduced during transition. Thus, a thinner barrier layer would resulted in a rapid corrosion of zirconium alloys. Furthermore, maintaining the barrier layer thickness maybe the possible route to improve zirconium alloy corrosion resistance.
Are community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains replacing traditional nosocomial MRSA strains?

BACKGROUND Recent studies have suggested that community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection is encroaching on health care settings. We describe the epidemiology of hospital-onset community-associated MRSA bloodstream infections using phenotypic and genotypic analysis. METHODS Using an update of an established rule derived from antibiotic susceptibilities, we inferred genotypes (i.e., community [CG] or hospital [HG]) for 208 MRSA isolates from hospital-onset (>72 h after hospital admission) bloodstream infections during 2000-2006. We compared demographic characteristics, risk factors, and outcomes of patients infected with CG or HG strains. RESULTS Total hospital-onset MRSA bloodstream infection incidence density rates for the periods January 2000-June 2003 and July 2003-December 2006 (0.215 cases per 1000 patient-days and 0.207 cases per 1000 patient-days, respectively) were stable (risk ratio, 1.0; 95% confidence interval, 0.7-1.3; P = .79, period 2 vs. period 1). However, the risk that these bloodstream infections were due to CG strains doubled (risk ratio, 1.9; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-3.1; P = .01), whereas the risk due to HG strains decreased (risk ratio, 0.7; 95% confidence interval, 0.46-0.93; P = .02). After adjustment for comorbidities in multivariate analysis, no significant risk factors for or outcomes of infections due to CG versus HG strains were detected. Patients infected with HG strains showed a trend toward later day of acquisition of a positive blood culture, and those infected with CG strains showed trend toward greater risk of intensive care unit admission. CONCLUSION Although total hospital-onset MRSA bloodstream infection rates were relatively stable during 2000-2006, CG strains were responsible for an increasing proportion of cases (from 24% to 49%), suggesting replacement of traditional hospital-associated strains. For most risk factors and outcomes, patients infected with CG and HG strains were similar, suggesting that, thus far, CG strains are behaving like their traditional hospital-associated counterparts.
Cellular and genetic control of antibody responses in vitro. III. Immune response gene regulation of accessory cell function

The possibility was investigated that Ir genes regulate the function of cells other than T or B cells in the primary IgM responses to the synthetic antigens trinitrophenylated poly-L-(Tyr,Glu)-poly-D,L-Ala--poly-L-Lys [TNP-(T,G)-A--L]and trinitrophenylated poly-,-(His,Glu)-poly-D, L-Ala--poly-L-Lys [TNP-(H,G)-A--L]. The primary responses of (B10 × B10.A)F(1) spleen cells to both antigens were abrogated by Sephadex G-10 passage, and restored by the addition of spleen adherent cells. The cell type in the spleen adherent cell population active in reconstituting the responses to TNP-(T,G)-A--L and TNP-(H,G)-A--L was a non-T, non-B, radiation-resistant, glass-adherent spleen cell. The responses of Sephadex G-10-passed (responder x nonresponder)F(1) spleen cells to TNP-(T,G)-A--L or TNP-(H,G)-A--L were reconstituted by spleen adherent cells from only responder strains. Spleen adherent cells from F(1) mice reconstituted the responses to both antigens. Spleen adherent cells from each of the strains tested reconstituted the non- Ir gene-controlled response to a third antigen, TNP-keyhole limpet hemocyanin. The inability of spleen adherent cells from nonresponder strains to reconstitute the responses to either TNP-(T,G)-A--L or TNP-(H,G)-A--L was not a result of active suppression induced by the presence of nonresponder adherent cells, since a mixture of responder and nonresponder spleen adherent cells reconstituted the responses to both antigens. The use of spleen adherent cells from recombinant strains demonstrated that the autosomal dominant genes controlling the ability of spleen adherent cells to function as accessory cells in the responses to TNP-(T,G)-A--L and TNP-(H,G)-A--L are located in the K or I-A regions of the responder H-2 complex, the same region(s) of H-2 as the Ir genes controlling overall in vitro and in vivo responsiveness to these antigens.
Sweetened Beverage Consumption, Incident Coronary Heart Disease, and Biomarkers of Risk in Men

Background— Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is associated with weight gain and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Few studies have tested for a relationship with coronary heart disease (CHD) or intermediate biomarkers. The role of artificially sweetened beverages is also unclear. Methods and Results— We performed an analysis of the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, a prospective cohort study including 42 883 men. Associations of cumulatively averaged sugar-sweetened (eg, sodas) and artificially sweetened (eg, diet sodas) beverage intake with incident fatal and nonfatal CHD (myocardial infarction) were examined with proportional hazard models. There were 3683 CHD cases over 22 years of follow-up. Participants in the top quartile of sugar-sweetened beverage intake had a 20% higher relative risk of CHD than those in the bottom quartile (relative risk=1.20; 95% confidence interval, 1.09–1.33; P for trend <0.01) after adjustment for age, smoking, physical activity, alcohol, multivitamins, family history, diet quality, energy intake, body mass index, pre-enrollment weight change, and dieting. Artificially sweetened beverage consumption was not significantly associated with CHD (multivariate relative risk=1.02; 95% confidence interval, 0.93–1.12; P for trend=0.28). Adjustment for self-reported high cholesterol, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, and diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus slightly attenuated these associations. Intake of sugar-sweetened but not artificially sweetened beverages was significantly associated with increased plasma triglycerides, C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor receptors 1 and 2 and decreased high-density lipoprotein, lipoprotein(a), and leptin (P<0.02). Conclusions— Consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages was associated with increased risk of CHD and some adverse changes in lipids, inflammatory factors, and leptin. Artificially sweetened beverage intake was not associated with CHD risk or biomarkers.
Uniqueness of Ordinal Embedding

Ordinal embedding refers to the following problem: all we know about an unknown set of points x1, . , xn ∈ R are ordinal constraints of the form ‖xi−xj‖ < ‖xk−xl‖; the task is to construct a realization y1, . , yn ∈ R that preserves these ordinal constraints. It has been conjectured since the 1960ies that upon knowledge of all ordinal constraints a large but finite set of points can be approximately reconstructed up to a similarity transformation. The main result of our paper is a formal proof of this conjecture.
Rheological Investigation of the Influence of Short Chain Branching and Mw of LDPE on the Melt Miscibility of LDPE/PP Blends

The influences of short chain branching (SCB) and molecular weight (Mw) of low density polyethylene (LDPE) on its melt miscibility with polypropylene (PP) were investigated by rheological techniques. Rheological meas- urement and different data-treatment techniques as well as rheological models suggest that blends of PP with LDPE of high SCB (22 CH3/1000 C) are miscible at all compositions. However, blends of LDPE with low SCB (8.3 CH3/1000 C) are immiscible in the LDPE-rich and miscible in PP-rich regimes. It was suggested that matching the conformations of PP and LDPE and matching the Mw of LDPE and PP is a key to the melt miscibility of PP/LDPE blends. The experimental results are in agreement with theoretical predictions on the miscibility of polyolefin blends.
A brain-inspired multimodal data mining approach for human activity recognition in elderly homes

Human activity recognition is a prerequisite for many innovative applications including elderly activity monitoring and support in order to enable elderly people to live longer independently in their own homes. Over the past decade, a diversity of different activity recognition approaches has been developed from which the majority focuses on the processing of data from one sensor modality only (e.g., vision). Nonetheless, a merging of data from multiple disparate sources has the potential of offering more accurate, robust, descriptive, intuitive, and meaningful results due to the availability of complementary and partially redundant information. This article (1) gives a review of existing multimodal approaches for elderly activity recogni- tion in home settings, (2) introduces a powerful activity recognition model based on brain-inspired multimodal data mining methods, (3) employs this model for the purpose of daily activity recognition in a home setting using a publically available real world dataset, and (4) quantitatively compares the obtained results with state of the art multimodal activity recognition meth- ods including hidden Markov models, conditional random fields, decision trees, a Bayes approach, and a context lattice.
PREVENTION OF HYPERURICEMIA IN LEUKEMIA AND LYMPHOMA: USE OF ALOPURINOL, A XANTHINE OXIDASE INHIBITOR.

Allopurinol [4-hydroxypyrazolo(3,4-d)pyrimidine], a potent inhibitor of xanthine oxidase, was given orally to patients with leukemia and lymphoma in whom marked hyperuricemia was present or was to be expected as a result of cytolytic therapy. There was a decrease in serum uric acid in each patient, and a decrease in urine uric acid excretion in each of the ten patients in whom it was measured. This was accompanied by only a moderate increase in urinary oxypurines and no evidence of renal, hematologic, gastrointestinal, or hepatic toxicity.
Evaluation of Outcome Change Scores for Patients With Pneumonia or Heart Failure

This study was conducted to describe the variance in selected Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) outcome change scores of hospitalized older patients with pneumonia (n = 216) or heart failure (HF; n = 67) that could be explained by age, length of stay (LOS), number of comorbid conditions, number of nursing diagnoses, and number of nursing interventions. Investigators used a descriptive correlational design to analyze data sets from three U.S. community hospitals. Study participants had at least two ratings on one of nine outcomes selected for their frequency and use across the three hospitals. A significant portion of the variance in the outcomes Knowledge: Illness Care and Fall Prevention Behavior was explained for pneumonia patients. None of the regression models for HF patients showed significance. Individual independent variables were significant in some of the models (i.e., LOS [pneumonia], number of nursing diagnoses [pneumonia and HF]). Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.
Sedative effects of intramuscular alfaxalone administered to cats

The sedative effects of intramuscular (IM) alfaxalone in 2-hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (alfaxalone-HPCD) were evaluated in cats. The cats were treated with alfaxalone-HPCD in five occasions with a minimum 14-day interval between treatments: an IM injection of 1.0 mg/kg (IM1), 2.5 mg/kg (IM2.5), 5 mg/kg (IM5) or 10 mg/kg (IM10), or an intravenous injection of 5 mg/kg (IV5). The sedative effects were evaluated subjectively using a composite measurement scoring system (a maximum score of 16). Cardio-respiratory variables were measured non-invasively. The median sedation scores peaked at 10 min (score 9), 15 min (score 14), 10 min (score 16), 10 to 20 min (score 16) and 2 to 5 min (score 16) after the IM1, IM2.5, IM5, IM10 and IV5 treatments, respectively. The IM5 treatment produced longer lasting sedation, compared to the IV5 treatment. Durations of maintenance of lateral recumbency after the IM10 treatment (115 ± 22 min) were longer than those after the IM2.5 (40 ± 15 min), IM5 (76 ± 21 min) and IV5 treatments (50 ± 5 min). Cardio-respiratory variables remained within clinically acceptable ranges, except for each one cat that showed hypotension (<60 mmHg) after the IM10 and IV5 treatments. Tremors, ataxia and opisthotonus-like posture were observed during the early recovery period after the IM2.5, IM5, IM10 and IV5 treatments. In conclusion, IM alfaxalone-HPCD produced dose-dependent and clinically relevant sedative effect at 2.5 to 10 mg/kg in healthy cats. Hypotension may occur at higher IM doses of alfaxalone-HPCD.
The convergence of mildly context-sensitive grammar formalisms

Investigations of classes of grammars that are nontransformational and at the same time highly constrained are of interest both linguistically and mathematically. Context-free grammars (CFG) obviously form such a class. CFGs are not adequate (both weakly and strongly) to characterize some aspects of language structure. Thus how much more power beyond CFG is necessary to describe these phenomena is an important question. Based on certain properties of tree adjoining grammars (TAG) an approximate characterization of class of grammars, mildly context-sensitive grammars (MCSG), has been proposed earlier. In this paper, we have described the relationship between several different grammar formalisms, all of which belong to MCSG. In particular, we have shown that head grammars (HG), combinatory categorial grammars (CCG), and linear indexed grammars (LIG) and TAG are all weakly equivalent. These formalisms are all distinct from each other at least in the following aspects: (a) the formal objects and operations in each formalism, (b) the domain of locality over which dependencies are specified, (c) the degree to which recursion and the domain of dependencies are factored, and (d) the linguistic insights that are captured in the formal objects and operations in each formalism. A deeper understanding of this convergence is obtained by comparing these formalisms at the level of the derivation structures in each formalism. We have described a formalism, the linear context-free rewriting system (LCFR), as a first attempt to capture the closeness of the derivation structures of these formalisms. LCFRs thus make the notion of MCSGs more precise. We have shown that LCFRs are equivalent to muticomponent tree adjoining grammars (MCTAGs), and also briefly discussed some variants of TAGs, lexicalized TAGs, feature structure based TAGs, and TAGs in which local domination and linear precedence are factored TAG(LD/LP). Disciplines Computer Sciences Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-90-01. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn. edu/cis_reports/539 The Convergence Of Mildly Context-Sensitive Grammar Formalisms MS-CIS-90-01 LINC LAB 161 Aravind K. Joshi K. Vijay Shanker David Weir Department of Computer and Information Science School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389
Ebola Virus VP 24 Proteins Inhibit the Interaction of NPI-1 Subfamily Karyopherin Proteins with Activated STAT 1

The Zaire ebolavirus protein VP24 was previously demonstrated to inhibit alpha/beta interferon (IFN/ )and IFN-induced nuclear accumulation of tyrosine-phosphorylated STAT1 (PY-STAT1) and to inhibit IFN/ and IFN-induced gene expression. These properties correlated with the ability of VP24 to interact with the nuclear localization signal receptor for PY-STAT1, karyopherin 1. Here, VP24 is demonstrated to interact not only with overexpressed but also with endogenous karyopherin 1. Mutational analysis demonstrated that VP24 binds within the PY-STAT1 binding region located in the C terminus of karyopherin 1. In addition, VP24 was found to inhibit PY-STAT1 binding to both overexpressed and endogenous karyopherin 1. We assessed the binding of both PY-STAT1 and the VP24 proteins from Zaire, mouse-adapted Zaire, and Reston Ebola viruses for interaction with all six members of the human karyopherin family. We found, in contrast to previous studies, that PY-STAT1 can interact not only with karyopherin 1 but also with karyopherins 5 and 6, which together comprise the NPI-1 subfamily of karyopherin s. Similarly, all three VP24s bound and inhibited PY-STAT1 interaction with karyopherins 1, 5, and 6. Consistent with their ability to inhibit the karyopherin-PY-STAT1 interaction, Zaire, mouse-adapted Zaire, and Reston Ebola virus VP24s displayed similar capacities to inhibit IFN-induced gene expression in human and mouse cells. These findings suggest that VP24 inhibits interaction of PY-STAT1 with karyopherins 1, 5, or 6 by binding within the PY-STAT1 binding region of the karyopherins and that this function is conserved among the VP24 proteins of different Ebola virus species.
SensibleSleep: A Bayesian Model for Learning Sleep Patterns from Smartphone Events

We propose a Bayesian model for extracting sleep patterns from smartphone events. Our method is able to identify individuals’ daily sleep periods and their evolution over time, and provides an estimation of the probability of sleep and wake transitions. The model is fitted to more than 400 participants from two different datasets, and we verify the results against ground truth from dedicated armband sleep trackers. We show that the model is able to produce reliable sleep estimates with an accuracy of 0.89, both at the individual and at the collective level. Moreover the Bayesian model is able to quantify uncertainty and encode prior knowledge about sleep patterns. Compared with existing smartphone-based systems, our method requires only screen on/off events, and is therefore much less intrusive in terms of privacy and more battery-efficient.
General Techniques for Exploiting Periodicity and Symmetries in Micromechanics Analysis of Textile Composites

General formulas for obtaining boundary conditions for micromechanics analysis of textile composites are developed based on the concept of equivalent subcell, which is the smallest region that has to be modeled. The equivalent subcell is identified by exploiting the periodicity and symmetries exhibited in the material microstructures and loading. The conventional formulas for the full unit cell of periodic structures and the formulas for the subcell are unified by introducing the “subcell vector” d and a constant vector R that accounts for the mismatch in the local displacement perturbations between two equivalent subcells. The usually lengthy derivation process required to obtain boundary conditions has been significantly simplified by shifting the effort from “deriving” to substituting the parameters established for the equivalent subcells into the formulas. The applications of these formulas are illustrated by generating boundary conditions for the smallest subcells of 4-harness satin weave and plain weave.
Canonical Correlation Forests

We introduce canonical correlation forests (CCFs), a new decision tree ensemble method for classification. Individual canonical correlation trees are binary decision trees with hyperplane splits based on canonical correlation components. Unlike axis-aligned alternatives, the decision surfaces of CCFs are not restricted to the coordinate system of the input features and therefore more naturally represent data with correlation between the features. Additionally we introduce a novel alternative to bagging, the projection bootstrap, which maintains use of the full dataset in selecting split points. CCFs do not require parameter tuning and our experiments show that they out-perform axis-aligned random forests, other state-of-the-art tree ensemble methods and all of the 179 popular classifiers considered in a recent extensive survey.
CD8-Mediated Type 1 Antitumor Responses Selectively Modulate Endogenous Differentiated and Nondifferentiated T Cell Localization, Activation, and Function in Progressive Breast Cancer1

CD8 T cell-mediated immune responses fall into two distinct types based on effector cell-derived cytokine production. Type I CD8 T cells (Tc1) produce IFN-γ, whereas type 2 cells (Tc2) secrete IL-4, IL-5, IL-10, and GM-CSF. Using a murine TCR transgenic T cell/breast tumor model, we show that adoptively transferred Ag-specific Tc1 cells are more effective in delaying mammary tumor growth and progression than that of functionally distinct Tc2 cells. Donor Tc1 cells administered 7 days posttumor challenge localized and persisted at sites of primary tumor growth with antitumor responses that were dependent, in part, on effector cell-derived IFN-γ. Tc1-mediated responses markedly enhanced the appearance and local accumulation of highly differentiated (CD44high) CD4 and CD8 endogenous tumor-infiltrating T cells when compared with that of untreated tumor-bearing mice. Conversely, Tc1 cell transfer markedly delayed the appearance of corresponding nondifferentiated (CD44low) endogenous T cells. Such cells were acutely activated as defined by coexpression of surface markers associated with TCR engagement (CD69) and early T cell activation (CD25). Moreover, cellular response kinetics appeared to further correlate with the up-regulation of endogenous T cells producing the chemokine IFN-γ-inducible protein-10 in vivo. This suggested that CD8-mediated type 1 antitumor responses cannot only promote accumulation of distinct endogenous CD4 and CD8 T cell subpopulations, but also facilitate and preferentially modulate their localization kinetics, persistence, states of activation/differentiation, and function within the primary tumor environment at various stages of tumor progression. These studies offer insight into potential mechanisms for enhancing T cell-based immunotherapy in breast cancer.