Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crowdsourcing taste research: genetic and phenotypic predictors of bitter taste perception as a model

Understanding the influence of taste perception on food choice has captured the interest of academics, industry, and the general public, the latter as evidenced by the extent of popular media coverage and use of the term supertaster. Supertasters are highly sensitive to the bitter tastant propylthiouracil (PROP) and its chemical relative phenylthiocarbamide. The well-researched differences in taste sensitivity to these bitter chemicals are partially controlled by variation in the TAS2R38 gene; however, this variation alone does not explain the supertaster phenomenon. It has been suggested that density of papillae, which house taste buds, may explain supertasting. To address the unresolved role of papillae, we used crowdsourcing in the museum-based Genetics of Taste Lab. This community lab is uniquely situated to attract both a large population of human subjects and host a team of citizen scientists to research population-based questions about human genetics, taste, and health. Using this model, we find that PROP bitterness is not in any way predicted by papillae density. This result holds within the whole sample, when divided into major diplotypes, and when correcting for age, sex, and genotype. Furthermore, it holds when dividing participants into oft-used taster status groups. These data argue against the use of papillae density in predicting taste sensitivity and caution against imprecise use of the term supertaster. Furthermore, it supports a growing volume of evidence that sets the stage for hypergeusia, a reconceptualization of heightened oral sensitivity that is not based solely on PROP or papillae density. Finally, our model demonstrates how community-based research can serve as a unique venue for both study participation and citizen science that makes scientific research accessible and relevant to people’s everyday lives.
An Integrated Method for Optimal Placement and Tuning of a Power System Stabilizer Based on Full Controllability Index and Generator Participation

In this paper, an integrated architecture for optimal placement and tuning of power system stabilizers (PSSs) in multimachine systems is proposed in order to improve system stability, damp oscillations, and increase damping of the power system oscillatory modes. The proposed approach provides full-rank optimal conditions for the PSS placement, which provide complete controllability of the system. In addition, this method allows optimal tuning of PSS parameters based on real and imaginary coefficients for damping. Test cases are performed to evaluate the proposed concept, and it has been found that the proposed architecture fully captures system dynamics and provides an efficient way for PSS placement and tuning. The architecture is also verified using a real-time digital simulator on a real experimental test bed and found that the method provides improvement in system stability and reduces low-frequency oscillations in local and inter-area modes of oscillations.
Electrical Impedance Tomography in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is an emerging new imaging modality not yet routinely used in a clinical setting. The generation of EIT scans is based on the non-invasive measurement of electrical properties of tissues which does not require the use of radiation. Thoracic EIT examinations have been shown to track changes in regional lung volumes at scan rates of up to 40-50 scans/s. Experimental and clinical studies indicate the potential of EIT in monitoring regional lung ventilation and aeration at the bedside. Mechanically ventilated patients with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) might benefit from possible continuous monitoring of their regional lung function by EIT which could be used to optimise the ventilator settings and minimise the ventilator-induced lung injury. This review explains the measuring principle of EIT and the analysis of regional EIT signals which allow the assessment of regional lung ventilation, aeration and potentially also lung perfusion. Protective lung ventilation using low tidal volumes and adequate positive end-expiratory pressures, recruitment manoeuvres, surfactant administration, prone posture, restricted fluid administration, assisted ventilation allowing spontaneous breathing, partial liquid ventilation, administration of pulmonary vasoactive, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant agents are used or considered in the management of ARDS patients. EIT is capable of monitoring the pulmonary effects of many of these therapeutic procedures. This is documented by examples from experimental and clinical EIT studies and by references to relevant EIT literature. The perspectives and limitations of EIT monitoring are also addressed.
Clinicians’ gut feeling about serious infections in children: observational study

Objective To investigate the basis and added value of clinicians’ “gut feeling” that infections in children are more serious than suggested by clinical assessment. Design Observational study. Setting Primary care setting, Flanders, Belgium. Participants Consecutive series of 3890 children and young people aged 0-16 years presenting in primary care. Main outcome measures Presenting features, clinical assessment, doctors’ intuitive response at first contact with children in primary care, and any subsequent diagnosis of serious infection determined from hospital records. Results Of the 3369 children and young people assessed clinically as having a non-severe illness, six (0.2%) were subsequently admitted to hospital with a serious infection. Intuition that something was wrong despite the clinical assessment of non-severe illness substantially increased the risk of serious illness (likelihood ratio 25.5, 95% confidence interval 7.9 to 82.0) and acting on this gut feeling had the potential to prevent two of the six cases being missed (33%, 95% confidence interval 4.0% to 100%) at a cost of 44 false alarms (1.3%, 95% confidence interval 0.95% to 1.75%). The clinical features most strongly associated with gut feeling were the children’s overall response (drowsiness, no laughing), abnormal breathing, weight loss, and convulsions. The strongest contextual factor was the parents’ concern that the illness was different from their previous experience (odds ratio 36.3, 95% confidence interval 12.3 to 107). Conclusions A gut feeling about the seriousness of illness in children is an instinctive response by clinicians to the concerns of the parents and the appearance of the children. It should trigger action such as seeking a second opinion or further investigations. The observed association between intuition and clinical markers of serious infection means that by reflecting on the genesis of their gut feeling, clinicians should be able to hone their clinical skills.
Prevention and Treatment of White Spot Lesions During and After Treatment with Fixed Orthodontic Appliances: a Systematic Literature Review

ABSTRACT Objectives The aim of the systematic literature review is to update the evidence for the prevention of white spot lesions, using materials containing fluoride and/or casein phosphopeptide-amorphous calcium phosphate during and after treatment with fixed orthodontic appliances. Material and Methods Information search for controlled studies on humans published between January 2008 and February 2016 was performed in PubMed, ScienceDirect, Embase, The Cochrane Library. Inclusion criteria were: the English language, study on humans, patients undergoing orthodontic treatment with fixed appliances, randomized or quasi-randomized controlled clinical studies fluoride-containing product or casein derivates used throughout the appliance therapy or straightaway after debonding. Results 326 articles were reviewed (Embase 141, PubMed 129, ScienceDirect 41, Cochrane 15). Twelve clinical studies fulfilled all inclusion criteria. Use of fluoridated toothpaste had a remineralizing effect on white spot lesions (WSLs) (P < 0.05); fluoride varnish and casein supplements were effective in prevention and early treatment of WSLs (P < 0.05). Conclusions Early detection of white spot lesions during orthodontic treatment would allow implementing preventive measures to control the demineralization process before lesions progress. The systemic review has showed that the usage of fluoride and casein supplements in ameliorating white spot lesions during and after fixed orthodontic treatment is significantly effective. However the use of casein phosphopeptide-amorphous calcium phosphate can be more beneficial than fluoride rinse in the reduction of demineralization spots.
Riemannian Similarity Learning

We consider a similarity-score based paradigm to address scenarios where either the class labels are only partially revealed during learning, or the training and testing data are drawn from heterogeneous sources. The learning problem is subsequently formulated as optimization over a bilinear form of fixed rank. Our paradigm bears similarity to metric learning, where the major difference lies in its aim of learning a rectangular similarity matrix, instead of a proper metric. We tackle this problem in a Riemannian optimization framework. In particular, we consider its applications in pairwise-based action recognition, and cross-domain image-based object recognition. In both applications, the proposed algorithm produces competitive performance on respective benchmark datasets.
Influence of Neospora caninum intra-specific variability in the outcome of infection in a pregnant BALB/c mouse model

Previous assays in pregnant animals have demonstrated the effect of different host factors and timing of infection on the outcome of neosporosis during pregnancy. However, the influence of Neospora caninum isolate itself has been poorly investigated. Here, we compared the effects on clinical outcome and vertical transmission observed in a pregnant mouse model following infection with 10 different N. caninum isolates. The isolates in our study included the Nc-Liv isolate and nine N. caninum isolates obtained from calves. Female BALB/c mice were inoculated with 2 × 106 tachyzoites at day 7 of pregnancy. Morbidity and mortality, in both dams and offspring during the course of infection, and transmission to progeny at day 30 postpartum were evaluated. The serum IgG1 and IgG2a production in dams were also examined. All dams showed elevated IgG1 and IgG2a responses, confirming N. caninum infection, although signs of disease were only exhibited in dams infected with 4 of the 10 isolates (Nc-Spain 4H, Nc-Spain 5H, Nc-Spain 7 and Nc-Liv). In neonates, clinical signs were observed in all N. caninum-infected groups, and neonatal mortality rates varied from greater than 95% with the isolates mentioned above to less than 32.5% with the other isolates. Vertical transmission rates, as assessed by parasite PCR-detection in neonate brains, also varied from 50% to 100% according to the isolate implicated. These results confirm the wide pathogenic and transmission variability of N. caninum. The intra-specific variability observed herein could help us explain the differences in the outcome of the infection in the natural host.
Monte Carlo simulation of silicon amorphization during ion implantation

When a sufficient high dose of energetic ions is implanted into a silicon crystal, irradiated zones of the crystal are transformed to an amorphous state. The thickness and spatial location of the amorphous layers determine the type of the extended defects and the number of point defects remaining in the silicon crystal after a recrystallization step. It is believed that the lateral diffusion of the defects is a possible source of the inverse short channel effect in MOS transistors. We present an accurate multi-dimensional model to predict the range of amorphous layers within ion implanted single-crystal silicon. The critical parameters ruling the amorphization process are the implantation dose D, the ion mass and energy, and the substrate temperature T which are all taken into account by our simulation method.
NVP: Non-uniform voltage and pulse width settings for power efficient hybrid STT-RAM

As technology scales down, the leakage power of SRAM based cache becomes a more critical source of power dissipation, particularly for large last level cache where leakage power is dominant. The emerging non-volatile spin transfer torque RAM (STT-RAM) is a candidate to substitute SRAM due to its low leakage power and high thermal stability. However, considerable high energy and long latency of write operations in STT-RAMs are barriers to their commercial adoption. To address this problem, we propose a hybrid non-uniform cache architecture (NUCA) by combining SRAMs and STT-RAMs with different operating voltage/pulse width settings. Operating at low voltage increases the probability of failure. To alleviate this, we propose a technique that reduces STT-RAM write access energy by lowering voltage while ensures correctness by either retrying the failed writes or increasing effective pulse width. Simulation results indicate overall 20-30% power gain for various workloads in hybrid cache architecture. This comes with less than 2% performance loss.
A novel low loss porous-core photonic crystal fiber for terahertz wave transmission

A novel low loss porous core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed in this paper for terahertz (THz) wave propagation. In order to investigate the guiding properties and numerical simulations, finite element method based COMSOL v4.2 software is used. Only circular air holes are used in this proposed structure so the design is easy to realize and fabricate. The numerical analysis confirms that, the proposed microstructure fiber exhibits low effective material loss of 0.063 cm<sup>−1</sup> at 1.0 THz operating frequency. Moreover, a low confinement loss of 6.9 × 10<sup>−3</sup> cm<sup>−1</sup> and low bending loss of 1.07 × 10<sup>−11</sup> cm<sup>−1</sup> is obtained for the optimum designing condition at an operating frequency of 1.0 THz. The other guiding properties such as power fraction, effective area and dispersion are also discussed in this paper.
Mathematical Foundations for a Compositional Distributional Model of Meaning

We propose a mathematical framework for a unification of the distributional theory of meaning in terms of vector space models, and a compositional theory for grammatical types, for which we rely on the algebra of Pregroups, introduced by Lambek. This mathematical framework enables us to compute the meaning of a well-typed sentence from the meanings of its constituents. Concretely, the type reductions of Pregroups are `lifted' to morphisms in a category, a procedure that transforms meanings of constituents into a meaning of the (well-typed) whole. Importantly, meanings of whole sentences live in a single space, independent of the grammatical structure of the sentence. Hence the inner-product can be used to compare meanings of arbitrary sentences, as it is for comparing the meanings of words in the distributional model. The mathematical structure we employ admits a purely diagrammatic calculus which exposes how the information flows between the words in a sentence in order to make up the meaning of the whole sentence. A variation of our `categorical model' which involves constraining the scalars of the vector spaces to the semiring of Booleans results in a Montague-style Boolean-valued semantics.
PREVALENCE AND CLINICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PACHYDRUSEN IN POLYPOIDAL CHOROIDAL VASCULOPATHY: Multimodal Image Study

Purpose: To investigate the prevalence of a newly defined drusen type, pachydrusen, soft drusen, and subretinal drusenoid deposits in eyes with polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy and fellow eyes and the relationship between each drusen type and the choroidal thickness, vascular morphology, and hyperpermeability. Methods: The 169 eyes of 90 patients with polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy were retrospectively reviewed. The prevalence of each drusen type was evaluated using color fundus photography and optical coherence tomography. The choroidal thickness and presence of pachyvessels on optical coherence tomography and choroidal vascular hyperpermeability on indocyanine green angiography were compared among the drusen groups. Results: Pachydrusen, soft drusen, and subretinal drusenoid deposits were found in 49.3%, 12.3%, and 6.9% in polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy eyes. The mean subfoveal choroidal thickness of the pachydrusen, soft drusen, and subretinal drusenoid deposit groups was 403.1, 184.4, and 176.4 µm. The pachydrusen group showed significantly thicker choroid than the others. The choroidal hyperpermeability was noticed at 41.7%, 0%, and 0% and the pachyvessel was observed at 80.6%, 44.4%, and 40% in pachydrusen, soft drusen, and subretinal drusenoid deposit groups, respectively. Conclusion: In patients with polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy, pachydrusen was prevalent and associated with thicker choroid. Polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy with pachydrusen was highly associated with choroidal vascular hyperpremeability and pachyvessel morphology than other types of drusen.
Combined Multivariate and Pathway Analyses Show That Allergen-Induced Gene Expression Changes in CD4+ T Cells Are Reversed by Glucocorticoids

Background Glucocorticoids (GCs) play a key role in the treatment of allergy. However, the genome-wide effects of GCs on gene expression in allergen-challenged CD4+ T cells have not been described. The aim of this study was to perform a genome-wide analysis to investigate whether allergen-induced gene expression changes in CD4+ T cells could be reversed by GCs. Methodology/Principal Findings Gene expression microarray analysis was performed to profile gene expression in diluent- (D), allergen- (A), and allergen + hydrocortisone- (T) challenged CD4+ T cells from patients with seasonal allergic rhinitis. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed good separation of the three groups. To identify the correlation between changes in gene expression in allergen-challenged CD4+ T cells before and after GC treatment, we performed orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) followed by Pearson correlation analysis. This revealed that allergen-induced genes were widely reversed by GC treatment (r = −0.77, P<0.0001). We extracted 547 genes reversed by GC treatment from OPLS-DA models based on their high contribution to the discrimination and found that those genes belonged to several different inflammatory pathways including TNFR2 Signalling, Interferon Signalling, Glucocorticoid Receptor Signalling and T Helper Cell Differentiation. The results were supported by gene expression microarray analyses of two independent materials. Conclusions/Significance Allergen-induced gene expression changes in CD4+ T cells were reversed by treatment with glucocorticoids. The top allergen-induced genes that reversed by GC treatment belonged to several inflammatory pathways and genes of known or potential relevance for allergy.
Baculoviral polyhedrin as a novel fusion partner for formation of inclusion body in escherichia coli

Baculoviral polyhedrin, which originated from Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcNPV), was employed for the first time as a novel fusion partner for expression of foreign proteins in an Escherichia coli system. We characterized the expression of recombinant polyhedrin protein fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP). The polyhedrin fusion protein (∼58 kDa) was successfully expressed as an insoluble inclusion body comprising approximately 30% of the total cellular protein. The E. coli expressing polyhedrin–GFP fusion protein showed higher cell growth (∼1.8‐fold) and higher GFP yield (∼3.5‐fold) than the strain expressing soluble single GFP. Interestingly, the polyhedrin fusion portion showed almost the same characteristics as the native baculoviral polyhedrin; it was rapidly solubilized under alkaline conditions, similar to the conditions found in the insect midgut. In addition, the polyhedrin fusion portion was rapidly digested by alkaline proteases in insect Plutella xylostella midgut as well as by α‐chymotrypsin, a protease that has similar properties to insect midgut polyhedra‐associated alkaline proteases. These unique properties suggest that baculoviral polyhedrin might be an advantageous fusion partner for production of foreign proteins, especially harmful proteins, in E. coli expression systems. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biotechnol Bioeng 84: 467–473, 2003.
Simulation and evaluation for measuring directional ocean wave spectrum from SWIM on CFOSAT

SWIM is a satellite-based Ku-band real aperture radar designed for measuring the directional ocean wave spectrum. This radar works at six incidence angles (from 0 degree to 10 degree) with the 360 degree azimuth scanning. The measurement principal has been proposed by Jackson and the simulation technology has been developed by Hauser, which depends on the comparisons between estimated modulation spectrum and reference one. Based on the method after the slightly modification, we consider the SWIM performance for measuring wave properties in cases of no noise, noise and noise with correction. Moreover, we propose the four methods to calculate the coefficient α(θ) , which include integration method, derivative method, wind speed experience method and significant wave height method. We substitute the α(θ) into the simulation, in which the forward simulation only use the integration method and the afterward simulation use the four method alternatively. From the results, it shows that the SWIM has the capacity of measuring the wave spectrum but it requires the proper processing for the elimination and correction of noise. Among the four methods, the wind speed experience method has a big deviation with reference spectrum, the integration and derivative methods have good results of measurements and the significant wave height method has moderate error and shows good in low wind speed.
Soil strength in the seed zone of several planting systems

The growth in conservation tillage has placed new demands on the performance of planting systems. Newer openers designed to provide adequate compaction of soil around seeds in hard, dry soils can produce excessive compaction in wet soils. Occasionally, concern is raised whether openers are creating compaction in the seed zone. Soil bin tests were used to measure soil strength in the seed zone created by planting systems used on hoe drills, seeding tillers, row crop planters, and no-till drills to assess possible soil compaction problems. Each system was operated throughout the range of its adjustments. A multiple-cone penetrometer measured soil strength before and after operation to create contour maps showing the ratio of after/before soil strength. Most tests used soil with an initial cone penetrometer soil strength index of 350 kPa. All openers reduced soil strength in an area extending from the surface to 15 to 30 mm below the seed, with no evidence of compaction. Closing systems provided selectable levels of soil reconsolidation. The system on the row crop planter could provide soil strength in the seed zone ranging from 30 to nearly 200% of the original soil strength by using its adjustments and standard accessories. We conclude that openers do not cause compaction. Closing system options, especially on no-till openers, can create a range of soil strengths in the seed zone, but must be set to avoid compaction in susceptible soil conditions.