Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deletion of Hyaluronan Synthase 3 Inhibits Neointimal Hyperplasia in Mice

Objective— Hyaluronan (HA) is a polymeric glucosaminoglycan that forms a provisional extracellular matrix in diseased vessels. HA is synthesized by 3 different HA synthases (HAS1, HAS2, and HAS3). Aim of this study was to unravel the role of the HAS3 isoenzyme during experimental neointimal hyperplasia. Approach and Results— Neointimal hyperplasia was induced in Has3-deficient mice by ligation of the carotid artery. HA in the media of Has3-deficient mice was decreased 28 days after ligation, and neointimal hyperplasia was strongly inhibited. However, medial and luminal areas were unaffected. Cell density, proliferation, and apoptosis were not altered, suggesting a proportional decrease of both, the number of cells and extracellular matrix. In addition, endothelial function as determined by acetylcholine-induced relaxation of aortic rings, immunoblotting of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, and arterial blood pressure were not affected. Furthermore, the oxidative stress response was not affected as determined in total protein extracts from aortae. Transcriptome analysis comparing control versus ligated carotid arteries hinted toward a mitigated differential regulation of various signaling pathways in Has3-deficient mice in response to ligation that were related to vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) migration, including focal adhesions, integrins, mitogen-activated protein kinase, and phosphatidylinositol signaling system. Lentiviral overexpression of HAS3 in VSMC supported the migratory phenotype of VSMC in response to platelet-derived growth factor BB in vitro. Accordingly, knockdown of HAS3 reduced the migratory response to platelet-derived growth factor BB and in addition decreased the expression of PDGF-B mRNA. Conclusions— HAS3-mediated HA synthesis after vessel injury supports seminal signaling pathways in activation of VSMC, increases platelet-derived growth factor BB–mediated migration, and in turn enhances neointimal hyperplasia in vivo.
WNK1 Kinase Polymorphism and Blood Pressure Response to a Thiazide Diuretic

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes encoding or influencing renal sodium transport systems were investigated as potential predictors of blood pressure (BP) response to a thiazide diuretic. A sample of 585 adults with essential hypertension (30 to 59.9 years of age; 50% blacks; 47% women) were treated with hydrochlorothiazide for 4 weeks (25 mg daily, orally) to determine office BP responses. Ambulatory BP responses were measured in a subset of 228 subjects. After adjustment for ethnicity, sex, age, and waist-to-hip ratio, 3 SNPs in WNK1 (rs2107614, rs2277869, and rs1159744), encoding a lysine-deficient protein kinase that regulates thiazide-sensitive sodium–potassium cotransport, made statistically significant contributions to predicting ambulatory BP responses, accounting for 2% to 4% of variation in systolic and diastolic responses (P<0.05). SNPs in the &bgr;2-adrenoceptor (rs2400707) and the epithelial sodium channel &ggr;-subunit (rs5723 and rs5729) were associated with similar magnitude of variation in ambulatory systolic BP response (P=0.028) or office diastolic BP response (P<0.05), respectively. However, SNPs evaluated in the furosemide-sensitive sodium–potassium chloride cotransporter, potassium inwardly rectifying channel, chloride channel, thiazide-sensitive sodium chloride cotransporter, epithelial sodium channel &bgr;-subunit, and the mineralocorticoid receptor were not associated with significant variation in ambulatory or office BP responses. Polymorphisms in genes regulating renal sodium transport, in particular WNK1, predict interindividual differences in antihypertensive responses to hydrochlorothiazide.
Object classification on raw radar data using convolutional neural networks

This paper evaluates the classification of objects given their signal data via a simple convolutional neural network (CNN). Many of the signal processing neural networks involve sound frequency data or Doppler signatures that contain the characteristic features of each object. In this study, we use frequency-intensity data within range-time domain from a Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave (FMCW) radar to classify detected objects. The application of various data augmentation methods mitigated the scarcity of labeled data from our field experiments. Time stretching, frequency shifting and noise addition preserved the semantic information of each rangetime data, further improving the models ability to generalize. Modifications applied to our data, which is then converted into a low-level log-scaled mel-spectrogram representation, are learned by CNN models with a set of convolutional and max-pooling layers along with fully-connected layers and selective residual module. Based on our experiments, we conclude that raw radar data can be used for training CNNs for classification and thus can be used to classify a car, a human, and an UAV.
Classification of Non-ferrous Scrap Metal using Two Component Magnetic Induction Spectroscopy

Magnetic induction spectroscopy is the measurement of how a conductive object reflects and scatters a magnetic field over different frequencies in response to some excitation magnetic field. In recent work, we proposed using this technique to classify different non-ferrous metals for the recycling and resource recovery sector - specifically, to identify fragments of scrap aluminium, copper and brass in shredded waste streams for separation and recovery. We proposed a simple algorithm that used only two components of the spectra that gave strong purity and recovery-rates when tested on a manufactured control set cut from stock metals.In this paper, we re-examined this method using real scrap metal samples drawn from a commercial sorting line. We found moderate purity and recovery-rates of brass and copper of between around 70% and 90%. However, the classification of aluminium was poor with ≈55% and ≈80% purity and recovery rates respectively. Magnetic induction sensors are a natural fit for the specifications of the industry. They are capable of high-throughputs, are unaffected by dirt or contaminants and are mechanically and physically robust. Although our results are modest, they are not insignificant given the simplicity of the algorithm and the relatively low-cost of instrumentation. Our work suggests the MIS as a technique may have a significant role to play in the extraction and recovery of non-ferrous resources.
Formosa Speech Recognition Challenge 2018: Data, Plan and Baselines

This paper introduces the Formosa speech recognition (FSR) challenge 2018, presents the provided data profile, evaluation plan and reports the experimental results of the baseline systems. This challenge focuses on spontaneous Taiwanese Mandarin speech recognition (TMSR) and it is based on a real-life, multigene broadcast radio speech corpus, NER-Trs-Vol1, selected from the Formosa speech in the wild (FSW) project. To assist participants to establish a good starting system, a set of baseline systems were published based on various deep neural network (DNN) models. NER-Trs-Vol1 is free for participants (noncommercial license), and its corresponding Kaldi recipes for the baselines have been published online. Experimental results show that the combination of NER-Trs-Vol1 and Kaldi recipes is a good resource pack for spontaneous TMSR research and could be used to initialize an advanced semi-supervised training procedure to further improve the recognition performance.
Role of FliJ in Flagellar Protein Export inSalmonella

ABSTRACT We isolated and characterized spontaneous mutants with defects in the 147-amino-acid Salmonella protein FliJ, which is a cytoplasmic component of the type III flagellar export apparatus. These mutants, including ones with null mutations, have the ability to form swarms on motility agar plates after prolonged incubation at 30°C; i.e., they display a leaky motile phenotype. One mutant, SJW277, which formed significantly bigger swarms than the others, encoded only the N-terminal 73 amino acids of FliJ, one-half of the protein. At 30°C, overproduction of this mutant protein improved, to wild-type levels, both motility and the ability to export both rod/hook-type (FlgD; hook capping protein) and filament-type (FliC; flagellin) substrates. At 42°C, however, export was inhibited, indicating that the mutant FliJ protein was temperature sensitive. Taking advantage of this, we performed temperature upshift experiments, which demonstrated that FliJ is directly required for the export of FliC. Co-overproduction of FliJ and either of two export substrates, FliE or FlgG, hindered their aggregation in the cytoplasm. We conclude that FliJ is a general component of the flagellar export apparatus and has a chaperone-like activity for both rod/hook-type and filament-type substrates.
A Comparative Study of Retinal Function in Rabbits after Panretinal Selective Retina Therapy versus Conventional Panretinal Photocoagulation

Purpose. This study evaluates functional changes in electroretinographic findings after selective retina therapy (SRT) compared to panretinal photocoagulation (PRP) in rabbits. Methods. The right eyes of 12 Chinchilla rabbits received 200 laser treatment spots. The right eyes of six rabbits received SRT (SRT group), whereas the other six animals were treated using PRP on the right eye (PRP group). The eyes were investigated using full-field ERG 1 hour and 3 weeks after treatment. Histologic exam to assess the tissue response of lasers was performed on 3 weeks. Results. No significant changes in the mean ROD or CR b-wave amplitudes of the SRT lesions were evident, compared to baseline, 1 h after laser treatment (p = 0.372 and 0.278, resp.). In addition, the OPs and 30 Hz flickers of the SRT lesions were not significantly altered (p = 0.17 and 0.243, resp.). At 3 weeks, similar results were found. Comparing the two groups, the ROD b-wave amplitude was reduced in the PRP and SRT groups to 60.04 ± 4.2% and 92.32 ± 6.43% of baseline (p < 0.001). Histologically, there was no visible photoreceptor alterations on week 3. Conclusions. SRT in rabbit eyes induced less functional loss than PRP in both rod-mediated retinal function and cone-mediated retinal function. In addition, SRT irradiated eyes had no functional loss compared to its control.
Single Image, Context Aware Action Estimation in Sports

Sports video analysis enables professional teams to prepare and practice more efficiently than ever before. It allows the team to work on their weak points and analyze upcoming opponents' strategies. As segmentation is a well researched topic, we assume a sports video where each frame is segmented into actors. We show that the location of the actors is correlated to their action. We develop a model to predict each actor's action in a context consistent and location aware manner. The set of context actors is an unordered set, thus we propose a permutation invariant structure for our classifier. We evaluate a location and a context aware network for single image sports action recognition on two datasets. One is an existing dataset of volleyball games. We present a new dataset for actor recognition in rugby. We compare the results to using only the image of the actor.
Energy-Efficient Broadcast in Mobile Networks Subject to Channel Randomness

Wireless communication in a network of mobile devices is a challenging and resource-demanding task, due to the highly dynamic network topology and the wireless channel randomness. This paper investigates information broadcast schemes in 2-D mobile ad hoc networks where nodes are initially randomly distributed and then move following a random direction mobility model. Based on an in-depth analysis of the popular susceptible-infectious-recovered epidemic broadcast scheme, this paper proposes a novel energy and bandwidth-efficient broadcast scheme, named the energy-efficient broadcast scheme, which is able to adapt to fast-changing network topology and channel randomness. Analytical results are provided to characterize the performance of the proposed scheme, including the fraction of nodes that can receive the information and the delay of the information dissemination process. The accuracy of analytical results is verified using simulations driven by both the random direction mobility model and a real-world trace.
Identifying Factors Affecting Smart City Adoption Using The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) Method

Smart City concept first appeared in 1998 while in Indonesia, this concept has just been established since 2014. Yogyakarta has already had plans to build smart city concept. However, the local government has not conducted any factors identification whereas it is necessary to check the E-Readiness of Yogyakarta local government before making the smart city technology come true. The aim of this research is to identify factors which affect the readiness of local government in establishing smart city system. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model was used to analyze data from questionnaires given to local government staffs. The research method is built based on UTAUT model. There are 4 hypotheses created and analyzed using Partial Least Square (PLS) approach. From the hypotheses, it can be seen that 2 of 4 is accepted. It can concluded that Performance Expectancy and Effort Expectancy factors affect the readiness of local government significantly.
NIPM-sWMF: Toward Efficient FPGA Design for High-Definition Large-Disparity Stereo Matching

Large disparity stereo matching is critical to the application of a stereo vision system especially for outdoor scenes. Nevertheless, how to efficiently design high accuracy large-disparity stereo matching on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is still a grand challenge. The computational complexity of previously proposed stereo matching is inevitably proportional to disparity range; hence their hardware designs become very inefficient when the disparity range is large. Motivated by the original PatchMatch and weighted median filtering (WMF) algorithms, this paper proposes a non-iterative PatchMatch and separable WMF (NIPM-sWMF) algorithm to significantly reduce the computational complexity of stereo matching and make it independent of disparity range. Moreover, we also propose a fully pipelined architecture design on FPGA that employs several hardware techniques to efficiently implement the proposed NIPM-sWMF. The disparity quality of the proposed NIPM-sWMF algorithm is evaluated on both KITTI2015 and Middlebury V3 stereo data sets, and the proposed architecture design is implemented and synthesized on Xilinx FPGA. Evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed NIPM-sWMF design on FPGA reaches the real-time performance of $1920\times1080$ @60 Hz at the disparity range of 128, and can achieve almost the same disparity estimation accuracy, $4.5\times $ processing throughput, while reducing the hardware cost of LUT, Register, DSP, and BRAM by 40%, 47%, 100%, and 68%, respectively, compared with the reference stereo matching design. Therefore, the proposed NIPM-sWMF design is an efficient way to address the challenge of large-disparity stereo matching.
Coverage and Capacity Dynamics in 4G-LTE Deployment in India

The deployment of the fourth generation (4G) of mobile services is gaining traction across the developed and the developing world. A host of Carrier Frequencies (CFs) are used for provisioning 4G services utilizing the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) networks. The cellular propagation characteristics of these CFs differ across the radio spectrum, leading to variations in their cellular coverage capabilities. Also, the capacity of such 4G-LTE networks depends on the service usage patterns and the volume of subscribers. This study explores the temporal (years 2016–2026) dynamics arising out of such coverage and capacity requirements of 4G-LTE network infrastructure, across CFs in sub 1 GHz and 1–3 GHz cohorts, by taking the case of the 22 Telecom Circles (TCs) in India. We evaluate, with the help of Okumura-Hata and Cost 231 radio propagation models, the 4G-LTE infrastructure required for ensuring coverage across these TCs and CFs. We also forecast the 4G-LTE subscriber adoption in these TCs and predict their data volume demands over the years. Finally, we calibrate the 4G-LTE coverage requirements, with the capacity requirements, across the TCs. We find that all the TCs in India would soon become “capacity constrained” thereby leading to additional spectrum bandwidth requirements across the TCs.
Mobile Payment Services Adoption: The Role of Perceived Technology Risk

The rapid development of internet technology at affordable costs raises new opportunities for micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in various areas, especially in the use of financial technology services which directly and indirectly have helped SME performance. Various studies in the field of information technology adoption have been carried out, but not much research found specifically examines the level of adoption of the Financial Technology system for SME's business development. Through this study researchers used the well known Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) framework which also considers technological risk factors for SME Fintech users. A hundred and twenty seven respondents who were merchants offering mobile payment method in several shopping centers were chosen randomly. The findings from this study recommends that mobile payment provider may focus on Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use only, without orrying about Perceived Technology Risk.
The Microbiological Profiles of Infected Prosthetic Implants with an Emphasis on the Organisms which Form Biofilms.

BACKGROUND In spite of the decreasing incidence of orthopaedic device related infections to 1%, nowadays, device-related infections still remain a diagnostic, therapeutic and cost -related problem. AIMS AND OBJECTIVE To record the common causative organisms and the contributing risk factors for orthopaedic device-related infections in a tertiary care teaching hospital. METHODS In a prospective study, fifty patients who underwent orthopaedic device implantation from Jan 2009 - June 2010 were enrolled; among them, 42 patients were complicated with infections. The demography, microbiological data, treatment and the outcome of each patient were recorded. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS The data was analyzed in terms of frequency and percentage. RESULTS Of the 50 samples, 42(84%) were culture positive, while 8(16%) were cultures negative. The femur was the most commonly affected bone in both males (median age-37.1yrs) and females (median age-41.3 yrs). Staphylococcus aureus was the organism which was most commonly isolated and which caused biofilms, followed by non-fermenting, gram negative bacilli and Klebsiella spp. We reported the first case till date in the literature of Candida krusei PJI, to the best of our knowledge. No anaerobes were isolated. Tissue trauma, open fractures, post-operative surgical site infections and Diabetes mellitus were found to be the important risk factors. The biofilm forming organisms were commonly associated with polymicrobial infections and even an aggressive antibiotic therapy was often inadequate to eliminate the infections. A conservative surgical treatment was associated with treatment failures. Implant removal or replacement was required in most of the cases to eradicate the infection. CONCLUSION The most common bacteria which were isolated included Staphylococcus aureus, followed by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella. A majority of them are resistant to the commonly used antibiotics, leading to treatment failures which necessitated an implant removal.
Robust Front-End Processing For Emotion Recognition In Noisy Speech

Since the emotion recognition performances degrade drastically for noisy speech, we propose a robust front-end processing to reduce the effect of noise. The front-end consists of a novel energy based voice activity detector (VAD), which discards silence or noisy frames. We show that the proposed VAD results in significant performance gain and outperforms the more complex Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) based VAD as well as popular Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) technique. Moreover, the proposed VAD can be used alongside the NMF technique to further improve the performance. The emotion recognition is done by extracting a large number of statistical features from low-level audio descriptors, and we have used state-of-the-art classifiers. Extensive experimentation on noisy (5 types of noise: Babble, F-16, Factory, Volvo, and HF-channel from the Noisex-92 database) speech contaminated at 5 different SNR levels (0,5,10,15,20dB) have been carried out to measure the performance of the proposed front-end techniques.
Distributed systems: Principles and Paradigms

From the Publisher: Andrew Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen cover the principles, advanced concepts, and technologies of distributed systems in detail, including: communication, replication, fault tolerance, and security. Intended for use in a senior/graduate level distributed systems course or by professionals, this text systematically shows how distributed systems are designed and implemented in real systems. Written in the superb writing style of other Tanenbaum books, the material also features unique accessibility and a wide variety of real-world examples and case studies, such as NFS v4, CORBA, DOM, Jini, and the World Wide Web. FEATURES Detailed coverage of seven key principles. An introductory chapter followed by a chapter devoted to each key principle: communication, processes, naming, synchronization, consistency and replication, fault tolerance, and security, including unique comprehensive coverage of middleware models. Four chapters devoted to state-of-the-art real-world examples of middleware. Covers object-based systems, document-based systems, distributed file systems, and coordination-based systems including CORBA, DCOM, Globe, NFS v4, Coda, the World Wide Web, and Jini. Excellent coverage of timely, advanced, distributed systems topics: Security, payment systems, recent Internet and Web protocols, scalability, and caching and replication. NEW-The Prentice Hall Companion Website for this book contains PowerPoint slides, figures in various file formats, and other teaching aids, and a link to the author's Web site.
Viewership of pro-eating disorder websites: association with body image and eating disturbances.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between pro-eating disorder website viewership and concurrent levels of body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance. METHOD A sample of 1575 women were surveyed for viewership of a variety of websites, including those promoting disordered eating (pro-eating disorder) and those providing information about eating disorders (professional). RESULTS Individuals who frequented pro-eating disorder sites had higher levels of body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance than a control group. The group who frequented only professional information websites, but not pro-eating disorder websites, differed from controls on only one of the four measures of disturbance. The pro-eating disorder group did not differ from the professional group on any measure. CONCLUSION The findings offer moderate evidence indicating that viewers of pro-eating disorder sites have higher levels of disturbance than a control sample of nonviewers, but limited evidence that those who view pro-eating disorder sites differ from individuals who view professional sites offering information regarding eating disorders. The findings are discussed in light of the difficulty determining causality in this area of inquiry and a cautionary note regarding the potential iatrogenic effects of this type of research is offered.