Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relationship between verbal and nonverbal auditory signal processing in conduction aphasia: behavioral and anatomical evidence for common decoding mechanisms

The processing of nonverbal auditory stimuli has not yet been sufficiently investigated in patients with aphasia. On the basis of a duration discrimination task, we examined whether patients with left-sided cerebrovascular lesions were able to perceive time differences in the scale of approximately 150 ms. Further linguistic and memory-related tasks were used to characterize more exactly the relationships in the performances between auditory nonverbal task and selective linguistic or mnemonic disturbances. All examined conduction aphasics showed increased thresholds in the duration discrimination task. The low thresholds on this task were in a strong correlative relation to the reduced performances in repetition and working memory task. This was interpreted as an indication of a pronounced disturbance in integrating auditory verbal information into a long-term window (sampling disturbance) resulting in an additional load of working memory. In order to determine the lesion topography of patients with sampling disturbances, the anatomical and psychophysical data were correlated on the basis of a voxelwise statistical approach. It was found that tissue damage extending through the insula, the posterior superior temporal gyrus, and the supramarginal gyrus causes impairments in sequencing of time-sensitive information.
BACTERIAL ARTHRITIS

Acute pain in peripheral joints is not a common presenting symptom for chiropractors or osteopaths. However, chiropractors or osteopaths may be asked to assess peripheral joints when patients present with other conditions such as back pain. This paper reviews the literature on bacterial arthritis as a specific type of infectious arthritis. Information was obtained from Medline and internet search using the keyword: “bacterial arthritis”. The most common presenting symptoms are described, with specific reference for chiropractors and osteopaths in clinical presentation of patients' with this condition.
Leuco-crystal-violet micelle gel dosimeters: II. Recipe optimization and testing

In this study, recipe optimization of Leuco Crystal Violet (LCV) micelle gels made with the surfactant Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) and the chemical sensitizer 2,2,2-trichloroethanol (TCE) was aided by a two-level three-factor designed experiment. The optimized recipe contains 0.75 mM LCV, 17.0 mM CTAB, 120 mM TCE, 25.0 mM tri-chloro acetic acid (TCAA), 4 wt% gelatin and ~96 wt% water. Dose sensitivity of the optimized gel is 1.5 times higher than that of Jordan’s standard LCV micelle gel. Spatial integrity of the 3D dose distribution information in 1L phantoms filled with this recipe is maintained for >120 d. Unfortunately, phantoms made using the optimized recipe showed dose-rate dependence (14% difference in optical attenuation at the peak dose using electron beam irradiations at 100 and 400 MU min−1). Further testing suggests that the surfactant CTAB is the cause of this dose rate behaviour.
Essential Data Derived from Biological Variation for Establishment and Use of Lipid Analyses

The analytical and biological components of variation of total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, HDL3 cholesterol, HDL2 cholesterol and apolipoproteins A-I and B in serum were assessed in 12 apparently healthy individuals. All analytes showed marked individuality and therefore conventional population based reference intervals are of little use. The differences required for serial results to have changed significantly for these assays were calculated. The data presented confirm that the assays studied have limited value in screening the general population.
Complex Dielectric and Impedance Spectroscopic Studies in a Multiferroic Composite of Bi2Fe4O9-BiFeO3

Complex dielectric and impedance spectroscopic studies have been carried out in a detailed manner on the system comprising of Bi2Fe4O9-BiFeO3 composite particles dispersed in a α-Fe2O3 matrix as prepared using ball milling and controlled annealing treatments. This multiferroic composite is observed to exhibit a giant dielectric constant associated with a low tangent loss. A non-Debye type of relaxation has been deduced based on complex modulus analysis. Based on these studies, the important role played by bismuth ferrite nanoshell in the core-shell composite of Bi2Fe4O9-BiFeO3 is elucidated for the observed complex impedance spectroscopic properties of the system. Electron hopping across Fe2+/Fe3+ and oxygen vacancies are deduced to be playing an important role in conduction mechanisms based on activation energy analysis of the complex impedance spectroscopy results.
Simulatable security and polynomially bounded concurrent composability

Simulatable security is a security notion for multi-party protocols that implies strong composability features. The main definitional flavours of simulatable security are standard simulatability, universal simulatability, and black-box simulatability. All three come in "computational," "statistical" and "perfect" subflavours indicating the considered adversarial power. Universal and black-box simulatability, in all of their subflavours, are already known to guarantee that the concurrent composition even of a polynomial number of secure protocols stays secure. We show that computational standard simulatability does not allow for secure concurrent composition of polynomially many protocols, but we also show that statistical standard simulatability does. The first result assumes the existence of an interesting cryptographic tool (namely time-lock puzzles), and its proof employs a cryptographic multi-party computation in an interesting and unconventional way
Infectious Disease Transmission during Organ and Tissue Transplantation

Transplantation of organs and tissues (bone, tendon, skin, cornea) will always be associated with some risk for transmission of infectious diseases from donor to recipient. Understanding and minimizing this risk is difficult for many reasons: donor screening processes vary, screening for every infectious organism is not possible, and assessment of recipient health after transplantation to determine possibility of disease transmission is often not adequate. In May 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration held a meeting to address these challenges and establish a research agenda for minimizing these transplant transmission risks. Attendees agreed that the focus should be on standardizing donor screening, compiling disease transmissibility data, monitoring of transplant recipients’ health, and assessing effectiveness of measures to minimize disease transmission. Collaboration and sharing of perspectives, experiences, and resources of all stakeholders in the transplantation process (government, private industry, and health care providers) can improve the safety of organ and tissue transplantation.
Replication competent Semliki Forest virus prolongs survival in experimental lung cancer

We evaluated the therapeutic potential of the replication competent vector VA7‐EGFP, which is based on the avirulent Semliki Forest virus (SFV) strain A7 (74) carrying the EGFP marker gene in an orthotopic lung cancer tumor model in nude mice. We have previously shown that this oncolytic vector destroys tumor cells efficiently in vitro and in vivo (in subcutaneous tumor model). Tumor growth in animals with orthotopically implanted adenocarcinoma cells (A549) were monitored during the study with small animal CT. We show that locally administered virotherapy with VA7‐EGFP increased survival rate in experimental lung cancer significantly (p < 0.001) comparable to results obtained with the second generation conditionally replicating adenoviral vector Ad5‐Δ24TK‐GFP, used for comparison. The limited efficacy in systemically administered oncolytic viruses is the essential problem in oncolytic virotherapy and also in this study we were not able to elicit significant response with systemic administration route. Despite the fact that tumor microenvironment in orthotopic lung cancer is more optimal, viruses failed to home to the tumors and were unable to initiate efficient intratumoral replication. Clearly, the efficacy of virotherapy is influenced by many factors such as the route of virus administration, immunological and physiological barriers and cancer cell–specific features (IFN‐responsiveness). © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Beta Diversity in Spatially Implicit Neutral Models: A New Way to Assess Species Migration

The spatially implicit neutral model (SINM) of S. P. Hubbell predicts species’ abundance distributions at two levels: local communities where extinction balances immigration, characterized by the immigration number I, and the metacommunity, a source pool of migrants where speciation balances extinction. Previously, a plot’s I was estimated from its species abundance distribution. Here, we relate neutral theory to the additive partitioning of species diversity and calculate the immigration rate into different plots from the variation in species composition among them. We revisit the GST statistic of population genetics to introduce a new version, GST(k), conditional on each community sample k. We derive an analytical expectation of GST(k) as a function of the local immigration number, I(k), under a generalized version of the SINM, which allows the pool of migrants to deviate from the large‐scale speciation‐extinction balance. Simulations and field data suggest that GST(k) provides reasonable estimates of immigration numbers, which were compared with the results from alternative likelihood‐based estimations.
Obtenção de extratos secos de carotenoides a partir da biomassa da microalga Haematococcus pluvialis por secagem em torre de aspersão (spray-drying)

RESUMO Os carotenoides compreendem uma classe de mais de 600 pigmentos naturais, cujo potencial biológico está relacionado à sua atividade antioxidante, regulação do crescimento celular, modulação da resposta imune e da atividade anti-inflamatória. A Haematococcus pluvialis é uma microalga verde, conhecida por sintetizar e acumular grandes quantidades de carotenoides, entre estes a astaxantina. Este trabalho teve como objetivo preparar e caracterizar extratos secos de H. pluvialis pela técnica de secagem em torre de aspersão, avaliando o efeito do emprego de adjuvantes farmacêuticos e dos parâmetros de secagem sobre as características finais dos extratos secos. Além disso, as atividades antioxidante e citotóxica dos carotenoides obtidos a partir dos extratos secos foram avaliadas. Quando a extração dos carotenoides a partir da biomassa da microalga foi avaliada, altos valores de rendimento que variaram entre 87,8% e 94,6% foram obtidos. Após a extração e a secagem por pulverização não foram observadas diferenças na morfologia das partículas e os valores de densidade aparente e compactada não parecem ser afetados quando as diferentes condições de secagem por pulverização foram testadas. Observou-se que o aumento da temperatura e concentração do adjuvante de secagem proporcionou redução do teor de carotenoides totais. Os valores da atividade antioxidante dos extratos de carotenoides variaram entre 55,78 e 77,83%, com os menores valores verificados para os extratos secos preparados com a maior temperatura de entrada. A avaliação da atividade antiproliferativa dos extratos de carotenoides demonstrou que as maiores concentrações testadas reduziram de 66,58 e 82,91% a viabilidade de células de melanoma murino B16F10. Assim, o conjunto de resultados demonstrou que a obtenção de extratos secos a partir da biomassa de Haematococcus pluvialis visando a produção de matérias-primas farmacêuticas utilizando a secagem em torre de aspersão (spray dryer) é promissor especialmente, com altos valores de carotenoides totais e sem perda significativa da atividade antioxidante.
DC-DC converter modeling and simulation using state space approach

This paper presents the DC-DC converter model, implementation and simulation using state space modeling approach. Three DC-DC converters including Buck, Boost and Buck-Boost converter are developed using state-space modeling approach and implemented in Simulink. Each converter is modeled based on its circuit topology and its state space matrix are derived in detail. The state space model simulation results are comparable with circuitry model with only up to 0.0015V of tolerance. The simulation computation time has improved up to 7.8 times faster as compared to circuitry model. The state space model embed DC-DC converter into a single block, thus allowing buck, boost or buck-boost to be easily implemented and integrate into other larger system.
The cover time of the giant component of a random graph

We study the cover time of a random walk on the largest component of the random graph Gn,p. We determine its value up to a factor 1 + o(1) whenever np = c > 1, c = O(lnn). In particular, we show that the cover time is not monotone for c = Θ(lnn). We also determine the cover time of the k‐cores, k ≥ 2. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 2008
Modulation of Catalytic Activity in Multi-Domain Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases

Signaling mechanisms involving protein tyrosine phosphatases govern several cellular and developmental processes. These enzymes are regulated by several mechanisms which include variation in the catalytic turnover rate based on redox stimuli, subcellular localization or protein-protein interactions. In the case of Receptor Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases (RPTPs) containing two PTP domains, phosphatase activity is localized in their membrane-proximal (D1) domains, while the membrane-distal (D2) domain is believed to play a modulatory role. Here we report our analysis of the influence of the D2 domain on the catalytic activity and substrate specificity of the D1 domain using two Drosophila melanogaster RPTPs as a model system. Biochemical studies reveal contrasting roles for the D2 domain of Drosophila Leukocyte antigen Related (DLAR) and Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase on Drosophila chromosome band 99A (PTP99A). While D2 lowers the catalytic activity of the D1 domain in DLAR, the D2 domain of PTP99A leads to an increase in the catalytic activity of its D1 domain. Substrate specificity, on the other hand, is cumulative, whereby the individual specificities of the D1 and D2 domains contribute to the substrate specificity of these two-domain enzymes. Molecular dynamics simulations on structural models of DLAR and PTP99A reveal a conformational rationale for the experimental observations. These studies reveal that concerted structural changes mediate inter-domain communication resulting in either inhibitory or activating effects of the membrane distal PTP domain on the catalytic activity of the membrane proximal PTP domain.
SentiSys at SemEval-2016 Task 4: Feature-Based System for Sentiment Analysis in Twitter

This paper describes our sentiment analysis system which has been built for Sentiment Analysis in Twitter Task of SemEval-2016. We have used a Logistic Regression classiﬁer with different groups of features. This sys-tem is an improvement to our previous sys-tem Lsislif in Semeval-2015 after removing some features and adding new features extracted from a new automatic constructed sentiment lexicon.
El Niño–Southern Oscillation–related salinity variations recorded in the skeletal geochemistry of a Porites coral from Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

[1] Coral skeletal geochemistry offers the potential to reconstruct the sea surface salinity (SSS) history of the tropical oceans on seasonal to interannual and perhaps centennial timescales because of the strong link between variation in SSS and seawater δ18O in tropical regions. We explore this potential using a monthly resolved, 65-year record of skeletal δ18O and Sr/Ca variations in a Porites coral from Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. We demonstrate that El Nino–Southern Oscillation–related climate variability strongly influences coral δ18O at Santo through local salinity changes associated with the position of the South Pacific Convergence Zone and the movement of its associated salinity front. Such a demonstration provides the “ground truth” data that can be used to place paleoclimate variability estimated using existing fossil coral records from this region into a modern conceptual framework. We also evaluate different methods of combining coral δ18O and Sr/Ca to reconstruct SSS and conclude that the coral δ18O anomaly time series provides the best fit to recent in situ SSS data at Santo.
Dual effects of adenosine on the tone of porcine retinal arterioles in vitro.

PURPOSE Previous studies have shown that adenosine induces relaxation of isolated retinal arterioles mediated by the A2A receptor, but the contributions to tone regulation of adenosine receptors located both in and around the vascular wall have not been studied in detail. METHODS Porcine retinal arterioles with preserved perivascular retinal tissue were mounted in a wire myograph, and the tone was recorded after addition of antagonists to the adenosine A1, A2A, A2B, and A3 receptors, followed by removal of the perivascular retinal tissue and repetition of the experiments. Additionally, these responses were studied in concentration-response experiments using specific agonists. RESULTS Adenosine induced a significant concentration-dependent relaxation at high concentrations that was independent of the perivascular retinal tissue and could be antagonized by the nonspecific adenosine receptor antagonist 8-PSPT. The selective A2A receptor antagonist SCH 58261 and the A2B receptor antagonist MRS 1754 significantly antagonized the relaxing effect of adenosine. Conversely, the selective A1 receptor antagonist KW-3902 and the A3 receptor antagonist MRS 1523 significantly increased the relaxing effect of adenosine, and the corresponding agonists contracted retinal arterioles at intermediate concentrations. The contracting effect of the A1 receptor agonist but not the A3 receptor antagonist depended on the presence of perivascular retinal tissue. CONCLUSIONS Adenosine has complex effects on retinal vascular tone elicited both from the vascular wall and from the perivascular retina and with receptors mediating contraction at intermediate concentrations and relaxation at high concentration.
Antibodies to human fetal erythroid cells from a nonimmune phage antibody library

The ability to isolate fetal nucleated red blood cells (NRBCs) from the maternal circulation makes possible prenatal genetic analysis without the need for diagnostic procedures that are invasive for the fetus. Such isolation requires antibodies specific to fetal NRBCs. To generate a panel of antibodies to antigens present on fetal NRBCs, a new type of nonimmune phage antibody library was generated in which multiple copies of antibody fragments are displayed on each phage. Antibody fragments specific for fetal NRBCs were isolated by extensive predepletion of the phage library on adult RBCs and white blood cells (WBCs) followed by positive selection and amplification on fetal liver erythroid cells. After two rounds of selection, 44% of the antibodies analyzed bound fetal NRBCs, with two-thirds of these showing no binding of WBCs. DNA fingerprint analysis revealed the presence of at least 16 unique antibodies. Antibody specificity was confirmed by flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, and immunofluorescence of total fetal liver and adult RBCs and WBCs. Antibody profiling suggested the generation of antibodies to previously unknown fetal RBC antigens. We conclude that multivalent display of antibodies on phage leads to efficient selection of panels of specific antibodies to cell surface antigens. The antibodies generated to fetal RBC antigens may have clinical utility for isolating fetal NRBCs from maternal circulation for noninvasive prenatal genetic diagnosis. Some of the antibodies may also have possible therapeutic utility for erythroleukemia.
Modified biomass fuel instead of coke for iron ore sintering

ABSTRACT Owing to majority of sintering fuel gas pollutants comes from the coke, modified charcoal replaced coke for iron ore sintering to achieve the emissions reduction of the pollutants in this study. By modifying biomass fuel with CaO and urea, the specific surface area, pore volume and pore diameter were reduced to 12.942 m2 g−1, 1.326e-02 cc g−1 and 18.865 nm. The experimental results of sintering cup showed that the vertical sintering speed increased, the burning through point advanced, the sinter drum index decreased gradually, and the sintering yield increased initially and then decreased with the increasing of modified charcoal content. The optimum proportion of modified charcoal instead of coke powder was determined to be 40%. Meanwhile, application of the 40% modified charcoal to sintering resulted in a decrease of 45.85% for SO2 and a decrease of 54.26% for NOx emissions.
A Critical Review of Early-Onset and Late-Onset Preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a leading cause of pregnancy-related morbidity and mortality in the United States. In the past 30 years, a large amount of research has been performed to investigate the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of preeclampsia, ways to treat preeclampsia, markers that can be used to predict preeclampsia, and associations with other factors, such as smoking, stroke, and cardiovascular disease. Preeclampsia has been characterized by some investigators into 2 different disease entities: early-onset preeclampsia and late-onset preeclampsia. Early-onset preeclampsia is usually defined as preeclampsia that develops before 34 weeks of gestation, whereas late-onset preeclampsia develops at or after 34 weeks of gestation. Although the presenting features overlap, they are associated with different maternal and fetal outcomes, biochemical markers, heritability, and clinical features. To date, no review has analyzed the data focusing on early- versus late-onset preeclampsia. This review summarizes the relevant research on the similarities and differences between early- and late-onset preeclampsia as it relates to pathogenesis and biomarkers, including differences in vascular endothelial growth factor, placental growth factor, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-1, epidermal growth factor, transforming growth factor-&bgr;, vascular cell adhesion molecule, toll-like receptor, plasma pentraxin 3, soluble endoglin, and lipid peroxidation. Although many articles have been published regarding these 2 entities, more data regarding differences and similarities between the 2 are clearly needed. Such study should permit more effective diagnosis, treatment, and management of patients with preeclampsia. Target Audience: Obstetricians & Gynecologists and Family Physicians Learning Objectives: After the completing the CME activity, physicians should be better able to evaluate the role of abnormal placentation in preeclampsia. Develop a protocol for researching biomarkers relevant to early-onset and late-onset preeclampsia. To distinguish the biomarkers that are similar and different in early-onset and late-onset preeclampsia.