Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
IMAGING THE DEBRIS DISK OF HD 32297 WITH A PHASE-MASK CORONAGRAPH AT HIGH STREHL RATIO

We present the first Ks-band image of the scattered light from HD 32297's debris disk. HD 32297 is an A5 star known to possess a nearly edge-on disk with a high fractional luminosity Ld/L⋆ ≈ 0.003 in the infrared. Our image was obtained using phase-mask coronagraphy on the 1.6 m well-corrected subaperture on the 5 m Palomar Hale telescope, and reaches an inner working angle of 400 mas. We confirm the previously reported disk asymmetry and central hole. The gray J − Ks disk color appears similar on the two sides of the disk, which would demand a minimum grain size of at least a few microns, larger than thermal arguments suggest. One possible explanation is a planetesimal clump in a resonant orbit with an outward migrating giant planet, located at larger radii than the warm dust emitting at longer wavelengths. Our observations also clearly demonstrate the benefits of operating in the extreme adaptive optics regime with a coronagraph able to reach a very small inner working angle.
Renal replacement therapy in Brunei Darussalam: Comparing standards with international renal registries

Brunei Darussalam is a small South East Asian country with a high prevalence and incidence of end stage kidney disease (ESRD). This study aims to compare key performance indicators recorded in the Brunei Dialysis and Transplant Registry and department records against international practice. Registries from the USA (USRDS), UK (UK Renal Registry), Australasia (ANZDATA), Europe (ERA‐EDTA Registry) and Malaysia (MDTR) were used for comparisons.
Study on the Novel Generalized Discontinuous SVPWM Strategies for Three-Phase Voltage Source Inverters

In this paper, a novel generalized discontinuous space-vector pulse width modulation (DSVPWM) strategy called DSVPWMx, which includes DSVPWMP, DSVPWMN, DSVPWMPN0, DSVPWMPN1, DSVPWMPN2, and DSVPWMPN3, is proposed for three-phase voltage source inverters. Six sectors are redivided into 12 ones based on space-vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) and local over modulation method. The principle of the new DSVPWMx is developed, essential relationship among different DSVPWMx strategies and linear modulation ranges of DSVPWMx are discussed. The characteristics for DSVPWMx and the traditional discontinuous pulse width modulation (DPWM) strategies such as DPWMMAX, DPWMMIN, DPWM0, DPWM1, DPWM2, and DPWM3 named as DPWMx are studied on the basis of harmonic distortion and switching loss. The simulation and experimental results verify that the DSVPWMx strategies are right and feasible.
WAGS: A Beautiful English-Italian Benchmark Supporting Word Alignment Evaluation on Rare Words

This paper presents WAGS (Word Alignment Gold Standard), a novel benchmark which allows extensive evaluation of WA tools on out-of-vocabulary (OOV) and rare words. WAGS is a subset of the Common Test section of the Europarl English-Italian parallel corpus, and is specifically tailored to OOV and rare words. WAGS is composed of 6,715 sentence pairs containing 11,958 occurrences of OOV and rare words up to frequency 15 in the Europarl Training set (5,080 English words and 6,878 Italian words), representing almost 3% of the whole text. Since WAGS is focused on OOV/rare words, manual alignments are provided for these words only, and not for the whole sentences. Two off-the-shelf word aligners have been evaluated on WAGS, and results have been compared to those obtained on an existing benchmark tailored to full text alignment. The results obtained confirm that WAGS is a valuable resource, which allows a statistically sound evaluation of WA systems’ performance on OOV and rare words, as well as extensive data analyses. WAGS is publicly released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Determinants of UDP glucuronosyltransferase membrane association and residency in the endoplasmic reticulum.

The UDP glucuronosyltransferases (UGT)2 are a family of enzymes which detoxify small hydrophobic compounds in mammalian cells. It is believed that UGTs are type I endoplasmic reticulum (ER) resident membrane proteins with a single membrane spanning domain near the carboxyl-terminus. The determinants of endoplasmic reticulum subcellular localization and membrane association for the UDP glucuronosyltransferase, UGT2B1, were examined. The construction and analysis of truncated and chimeric forms of UGT2B1 demonstrated that the protein contains regions of membrane interaction in the amino-terminal half of the lumenal domain in addition to the carboxyl-terminal transmembrane domain. UGT2B1 also remained resident in the ER in the absence of the cytosolic tail and transmembrane domain. Construction and analysis of an active, truncated form of UGT2B1 indicated that the cytosolically located dilysine motif, which is a putative ER membrane targeting signal, may be redundant for residency of UGT in the ER.
N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), Liver Function Enzymes, Renal Function Parameters and Oxidative Stress Parameters: A Review

The aim of this study is to review a procarcinogen, the N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), liver and kidney functional enzymes (in assessing action of toxicants such as NDMA) as well as oxidative stress parameters (in assessing the extent of free radical damage and scavenging). Catalase and hydro peroxidase enzymes convert hydrogen peroxide and hydro peroxides to non-radical forms and functions as natural antioxidant in human body. Enzymes like Superoxide Dismutase (SOD) and Catalase (CAT) and compounds such as tocopherol and ascorbic acid can protect organisms against free radical damage. Lipid peroxidation is a mechanism generally recognized as being the most important in the pathogenesis of liver injury by a number of toxic compounds including NDMA.
Running Head: Diversity of GABA Receptors in Cardiac Vagal Neurons

Recent work suggests neurons can have different types of GABAA receptors that mediate phasic inhibitory post-synaptic currents (IPSCs) and tonic currents. This study examines the diversity of GABAergic synaptic currents in parasympathetic cardioinhibitory neurons that receive rhythmic bursts of GABAergic neurotransmission. Focal application of gabazine (25 μM) to cardiac vagal neurons in-vitro did not change the frequency of firing in spontaneously active neurons or the resting membrane potential, however picrotoxin (100 μM) significantly depolarized cardiac vagal neurons and increased their firing. Similarly, gabazine (25 μM) selectively blocked GABAergic IPSCs but did not change holding current in cardiac vagal neurons, whereas picrotoxin (100 μM) not only blocked GABAergic IPSCs but also rapidly decreased the tonic current. Since the tonic current could be due to activation of GABA receptors by ambient GABA, or alternatively, spontaneous opening of constitutively active GABA channels, an antagonist for the GAT-1 GABA transporter, NO-711 (10 μM), was applied to distinguish between these possibilities. NO-711 did not significantly alter the holding current in these neurons. The benzodiazepine flunitrazepam (1 μM) significantly increased the tonic current and GABAergic IPSC decay time, surprisingly, however, in the presence of gabazine flunitrazepam failed to elicit any change. These results suggest cardiac vagal neurons possess gabazine-sensitive GABAA receptors that mediate phasic synaptic currents, a gabazineinsensitive but picrotoxin-sensitive extrasynaptic tonic current that when blocked depolarizes and increases the firing rate of cardiac vagal neurons, and benzodiazepines recruit a third type of GABAA receptor which is sensitive to gabazine and augments the extrasynaptic tonic current. keywords: GABA, bradycardia; parasympathetic; ambiguus Page 2 of 26
MicroRNA-125a/b-5p inhibits endothelin-1 expression in vascular endothelial cells

Background Endothelin-1 (ET-1) is considered to be one of the most potent and long-lasting vasoconstrictive peptides, but the mechanisms on the regulation of ET-1 expression are not fully understood. Method and results In this study, we found that microRNA (miR)-125a-5p and miR-125b-5p are highly expressed in vascular endothelial cells (VECs), which can be regulated by oxidized low-density lipoprotein (oxLDL). To explore the function of miR-125a/b-5p in VECs, we examined the roles of potential targets of miR-125a/b-5p that could influence endothelium function. We found that both miR-125a/b-5p can suppress oxLDL-induced ET-1 expression by directly targeting 3′ untranslated region of prepro-endothelin-1 (preproET-1) mRNA determined by luciferase reporter assay, western blot, and enzyme immunometric assay. Consistently, inhibitors of miR-125a/b-5p can directly enhance preproET-1 expression. The decreased expressions of miR-125a-5p and miR-125b-5p are negatively associated with upregulation of preproET-1 expression in aorta of stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR-SPs). Conclusion Our finding demonstrated that endothelial miR-125a/b-5p inhibits ET-1 expression in VECs, which revealed a novel miRNA-mediated mechanism in vasomotor homeostasis.
A Conserved Function for the H2A.Z C Terminus*

Background: The H2A variant H2A.Z is an important regulatory component of chromatin. Results: A novel form of human H2A.Z and mutants of yeast H2A.Z that share truncated C termini have altered properties. Conclusion: The C-terminal tail of histone H2A.Z is important for its stable association with nucleosomes. Significance: The strength of H2A.Z's association with nucleosomes is key to the biological functions of this histone variant. Histone H2A variants generate diversity in chromatin structure and functions, as nucleosomes containing variant H2A histones have altered physical, chemical, and biological properties. H2A.Z is an evolutionarily ancient and highly conserved H2A variant that regulates processes ranging from gene expression to the DNA damage response. Here we find that the unstructured portion of the C-terminal tail of H2A.Z is required for the normal functions of this histone variant in budding yeast. We have also identified a novel splice isoform of the human H2A.Z-2 gene that encodes a C-terminally truncated H2A.Z protein that is similar to the truncation mutants we identified in yeast. The short forms of H2A.Z in both yeast and human cells are more loosely associated with chromatin than the full-length proteins, indicating a conserved function for the H2A.Z C-terminal tail in regulating the association of H2A.Z with nucleosomes.
Flash Sintering of Alumina-based Ceramics

Flash sintering is an electrical field-assisted consolidation technology and represents a very novel technique for producing ceramic materials, which allows to decrease sensibly both processing temperature and time. Starting from 2010, when flash sintering was discovered, different ceramic materials with a wide range of electrical properties have been successfully densified. Up to date, the research on flash sintering has been mainly focused on ionic and electronic conductors and on semiconductor ceramics. In the present work, we studied the flash sintering behavior of a resistive technical ceramic like alumina also in the presence of magnesia silicate glass phase typically used for activating liquid phase sintering. The materials were studied by using different combinations of electric field and current density. Physical, structural and microstructural properties of sintered samples were extensively investigated by Archimedes’ method, SEM, XRD, XPS and pholuminescence spectroscopy. Light emission and electrical behavior during the flash process were studied,as well. The results point out the applicability of flash sintering to alumina and glass-containing alumina using electrical-field in excess of 500 V/cm, allowing an almost complete densification at temperatures lower than 1000°C. Different densification mechanisms were pointed out in the two systems, namely “solid state flash sintering” and “liquid phase flash sintering” for pure alumina and glass containing alumina, respectively. The glass addition allows a significant reduction of the current and power dissipation needed for densification, by promoting liquid phase sintering. The results suggest that unconventional mass transport phenomena are activated by the current flow in the ceramic body and they can be very likely attributed to partial reduction of the oxide induced by the electrical current. The hypothesis that the oxide gets partially reduced during DC-flash sintering experiments is supported by several experimental findings. Finally, strong affinities between flash sintering and other physical processes, like dielectric breakdown, were pointed out.
Critical observations in a diagnostic problem

We claim that presenting a human operator in charge of repairing a faulty system with a small subset of observations relevant to the failure improves awareness and confidence of the operator. Consequently, we introduce the problem of finding a set of relevant observations (called the critical observations) that can be used to derive the same diagnosis as the full problem. We show how this problem can be solved and illustrate its benefits on a real diagnostic problem.
Textual and Quantitative Analysis: Towards a new, e-mediated Social Science

The analysis of large volumes of quantitative data in social sciences has a long tradition: mathematical modelling and statistical analysis can now be performed on large, distributed data sets and the results of such computations can be variously visualised. Qualitative research, and the concomitant data acquired, is no longer confined to ‘issues of “subjective” meaning’ but embraces exciting areas of ‘language, representation and social organisation’ (Silverman 2004:1). Research in qualitative analysis deals with patterns of linguistic discourse, with researchers scrutinizing linguistic output obtained through interviews, focusgroup sessions, e-mail archives, and so on. The discourse patterns are often identified and ‘coded’ by hand for subsequent retrieval and analysis.
Accuracy of the QuantiFERON-TB Gold in Tube for diagnosing tuberculosis in a young pediatric population previously vaccinated with Bacille Calmette-Guérin

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of an interferongamma release assay (QuantiFERON-TB Gold in Tube) for diagnosing Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in a young pediatric population. Methods: 195 children previously vaccinated with BCG were evaluated, being 184 healthy individuals with no clinical or epidemiological evidence of mycobacterial infection, and 11 with Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, according to clinical, radiological, and laboratory parameters. A blood sample was obtained from each child and processed according to the manufacturer's instructions. The assay performance was evaluated by a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve. Results: In the group of 184 non-infected children, 130 (70.6%) were under the age of four years (mean age of 35 months). In this group, 177 children (96.2%) had negative test results, six (3.2%) had indeterminate results, and one (0.5%) had a positive result. In the group of 11 infected children, the mean age was 58.5 months, and two of them (18%) had negative results. The ROC curve had an area under the curve of 0.88 (95%CI 0.82-0.92; p<0.001), disclosing a predictive positive value of 81.8% for the test (95%CI 46.3-97.4). The assay sensitivity was 81.8% (95%CI 48.2-97.2) and the specificity was 98.8% (95%CI 96-99.8). Conclusions: In the present study, the QuantiFERON-TB Gold in Tube performance for diagnosing M. tuberculosis infection was appropriate in a young pediatric population.
Stress-Aware Module Placement on Reconfigurable Devices

A lot of research has been spent on improving the reliability and extending the lifetime of ASIC and SoC devices, but only little on improving the long-term reliability of dynamically reconfigurable systems. In order to increase the lifetime of a reconfigurable device, we propose a placement strategy to distribute the stress equally on the reconfigurable resources at runtime such that all have a similar level of degradation. Thereby, we present a new aging model which is applied to estimate the influence of aging effects on dynamically reconfigurable devices, and which can be evaluated at runtime, while providing quite accurate aging results. Furthermore, we present a new stress-aware placement algorithm that takes the degradation of the reconfigurable resources into account and can significantly extend the lifetime of reconfigurable devices.
Formalism-Independent Parser Evaluation with CCG and DepBank

A key question facing the parsing community is how to compare parsers which use different grammar formalisms and produce different output. Evaluating a parser on the same resource used to create it can lead to non-comparable accuracy scores and an over-optimistic view of parser performance. In this paper we evaluate a CCG parser on DepBank, and demonstrate the difficulties in converting the parser output into DepBank grammatical relations. In addition we present a method for measuring the effectiveness of the conversion, which provides an upper bound on parsing accuracy. The CCG parser obtains an F-score of 81.9% on labelled dependencies, against an upper bound of 84.8%. We compare the CCG parser against the RASP parser, outperforming RASP by over 5% overall and on the majority of dependency types.
MUI-free CDMA systems incorporating space-time coding and channel shortening

In this paper we consider a CDMA system equipped with multiple antenna transceivers to implement space-time block coding (STBC). The codes incorporate a cyclic prefix (CP), to facilitate channel equalization and simplify the rejection of multiuser interference (MUI) in broadband transmissions over frequency-selective channels. The only price paid for the introduction of CP is a rate reduction, depending on the relative length of the CP with respect to the code length. To limit, and possibly avoid, this loss, we propose a CDMA/STBC scheme using CP of length smaller than the channel. To prevent interblock interference which would require a sophisticated decoding procedure, we equip the receiver with a MIMO channel shortening filterbank. We derive the conditions under which we can achieve perfect shortening using an FIR filterbank. Finally, we show that the choice of a CP length represents a trade-off between the rate reduction factor and the SNR loss resulting from the insertion of the channel shortening filter.
Risk factors for acute hepatitis B and its progression to chronic hepatitis in Shanghai, China

Background and aims: The major risk factors for acute hepatitis B (AHB) in China and the viral factors determining the progression from acute to chronic hepatitis B remain largely unknown. Methods: Epidemiological studies within a population-based surveillance for AHB in adults were performed in Shanghai, China, including 294 patients, 588 matched controls and 572 family members of the patients. Results: Invasive medical procedures, household contact with hepatitis B virus (HBV) carriers, body care and beauty treatments, and lack of HBV vaccination were independently associated with AHB. Among those risks, pedicure in bath centres emerged. Sixty-eight of 128 patients with AHB were genotyped including 33 with HBV B2 and 35 with HBV C2. Twenty-five (8.50%) of the 294 patients, including 20 with HBV C2 and 5 with HBV B2 (p = 0.013), progressed to chronic infection. Multivariate analysis showed that HBV C2 was independently associated with chronicification of AHB. Patients with HBV B2 were younger and there was a higher proportion of women than those with HBV C2. The prevalence of HBV B2 was higher in the patients than in neighbourhood chronic carriers. The chronic carriers with HBV B2 showed higher viral loads, higher hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) seropositivity, and with higher proportion in men than those with HBV C2, implying that sexual contact plays a role in the transmission of HBV B2. Phylogenetic analysis showed that HBV C2 was frequently involved in transmissions within households. Conclusions: Despite lower viral load and HBeAg status in the chronic carriers, HBV C2 was more prone to causing chronic infection than was HBV B2.
A Probabilistic Framework for Deep Learning

We develop a probabilistic framework for deep learning based on the Deep Rendering Mixture Model (DRMM), a new generative probabilistic model that explicitly capture variations in data due to latent task nuisance variables. We demonstrate that max-sum inference in the DRMM yields an algorithm that exactly reproduces the operations in deep convolutional neural networks (DCNs), providing a first principles derivation. Our framework provides new insights into the successes and shortcomings of DCNs as well as a principled route to their improvement. DRMM training via the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is a powerful alternative to DCN back-propagation, and initial training results are promising. Classification based on the DRMM and other variants outperforms DCNs in supervised digit classification, training 2-3 x faster while achieving similar accuracy. Moreover, the DRMM is applicable to semi-supervised and unsupervised learning tasks, achieving results that are state-of-the-art in several categories on the MNIST benchmark and comparable to state of the art on the CIFAR10 benchmark.
The Immunoregulation Effect of Alpha 1-Antitrypsin Prolong β-Cell Survival after Transplantation

Islet transplantation has considerable potential as a cure for diabetes. However, the difficulties that arise from inflammation and the immunological rejection of transplants must be addressed for islet transplantation to be successful. Alpha 1-antitrypsin (AAT) inhibits the damage on β cells caused by inflammatory reactions and promotes β-cell survival and proliferation. This protein also induces specific immune tolerance to transplanted β cells. However, whether the expression of AAT in β cells themselves could eliminate or decrease immunological rejection of transplants is not clear. Therefore, we established a β cell line (NIT-hAAT) that stably expresses human AAT. Interestingly, in a cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)-killing assay, we found that hAAT reduced apoptosis and inflammatory cytokine production in NIT-1 cells and regulated the Th1/Th2 cytokine balance in vitro. In vivo transplantation of NIT-hAAT cells into mice with diabetes showed hAAT inhibited immunological rejection for a short period of time and increased the survival of transplanted β cells. This study demonstrated that hAAT generated remarkable immunoprotective and immunoregulation effects in a model of β cell islet transplantation for diabetes model.
Chronic lymphocytic sialoadenitis in HCV‐related chronic liver disease: comparison with Sjögren's syndrome

With the aim of morphologically characterizing chronic sialoadenitis in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) chronic liver disease, labial salivary gland biopsies from 22 chronic HCV liver disease and from 10 primary Sjögren's syndrome patients were compared. Only focus score (number of aggregates with more than 50 lymphocytes per 4 mm2 of glandular tissue) and grading of inflammation were able to discriminate significantly between the two patient groups. Duct ectasia, acinar depletion, presence of lymphoid aggregates with less than 50 lymphocytes and of lymphoid infiltration within intralobular salivary duct epithelium were evident in both disease groups and appeared to be non‐specific, mostly age‐related changes. In both patient groups plasma cell and lymphocyte typing showed similar features: T lymphocytes represented most of the lymphoid population, B lymphocytes were few unless follicles were present. Higher focus score values were associated with a plasma cell switch from an IgA to an IgM and/or IgG predominance. A greater morphological similarity was seen between biopsies of the primary Sjögren's syndrome group and those of female rather than male chronic HCV liver disease patients. Salivary gland tissue in HCV patients responds to damage in a fashion similar to primary Sjögren's syndrome, the only difference being a lesser degree of inflammation.