Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variation in the Shape of Coronoid Process in Dry Mandible of Maharashtra Population.

Background: Knowledge about the morphological shapes of the coronoid process is useful for the maxillofacial surgeon. The Coronoid process can be easily harvested as a donor bone. It is also helpful in determining buccal vestibule during denture fabrication. Aim of the study: To find out the variation in shape of coronoid process and the intercoronoid distance in dry mandible of Maharashtra region. Material and Methods: One hundred and fifty seven (male 84 and female 73) dry mandible of Maharashtra region were studied for variations of shape in coronoid process of both sides and the intercoronoid distance . Results: Triangular shape coronoid process was found in 204 (64.97%), Hook shape in 66 (21.02%) sides. and rounded in 44 (14.01%) sides of mandible. Mean intercoronoid distance among males was found to be 9.2000 and 9.100 in females. Conclusions: It was found that most common shape of coronoid process found in our study was triangular. Mandible with hook shape coronoid process was almost equal in male and female mandible while triangular shape was slightly more in the male .
Astrocytes engage unique molecular programs to engulf pruned neuronal debris from distinct subsets of neurons

Neural circuit assembly involves an initial overproduction of neurons and synaptic connections, followed by their selective elimination. Tasdemir-Yilmaz and Freeman show that Drosophila larval astrocytes are the primary phagocytic cell type in the pupal CNS neuropil. MB γ neuron axons are engulfed by astrocytes using the Draper and Crk/Mbc/dCed-12 signaling pathways, while Crk/Mbc/dCed-12, but not Draper, mediates the elimination of vCrz+ neurites. Eliminating Draper signaling delays early vCrz+ neurite degeneration, suggesting that glial cells promote neurite destruction through engulfment signaling.
Diffusion Limitations in Root Uptake of Cadmium and Zinc, But Not Nickel, and Resulting Bias in the Michaelis Constant1[W][OA]

It has long been recognized that diffusive boundary layers affect the determination of active transport parameters, but this has been largely overlooked in plant physiological research. We studied the short-term uptake of cadmium (Cd), zinc (Zn), and nickel (Ni) by spinach (Spinacia oleracea) and tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) in solutions with or without metal complexes. At same free ion concentration, the presence of complexes, which enhance the diffusion flux, increased the uptake of Cd and Zn, whereas Ni uptake was unaffected. Competition effects of protons on Cd and Zn uptake were observed only at a very large degree of buffering, while competition of magnesium ions on Ni uptake was observed even in unbuffered solutions. These results strongly suggest that uptake of Cd and Zn is limited by diffusion of the free ion to the roots, except at very high degree of solution buffering, whereas Ni uptake is generally internalization limited. All results could be well described by a model that combined a diffusion equation with a competitive Michaelis-Menten equation. Direct uptake of the complex was estimated to be a major contribution only at millimolar concentrations of the complex or at very large ratios of complex to free ion concentration. The true Km for uptake of Cd2+ and Zn2+ was estimated at <5 nm, three orders of magnitude smaller than the Km measured in unbuffered solutions. Published Michaelis constants for plant uptake of Cd and Zn likely strongly overestimate physiological ones and should not be interpreted as an indicator of transporter affinity.
Urban Area Extent Extraction in Spaceborne HR and VHR Data Using Multi-Resolution Features

Detection of urban area extents by means of remotely sensed data is a difficult task, especially because of the multiple, diverse definitions of what an “urban area” is. The models of urban areas listed in technical literature are based on the combination of spectral information with spatial patterns, possibly at different spatial resolutions. Starting from the same data set, “urban area” extraction may thus lead to multiple outputs. If this is done in a well-structured framework, however, this may be considered as an advantage rather than an issue. This paper proposes a novel framework for urban area extent extraction from multispectral Earth Observation (EO) data. The key is to compute and combine spectral and multi-scale spatial features. By selecting the most adequate features, and combining them with proper logical rules, the approach allows matching multiple urban area models. Experimental results for different locations in Brazil and Kenya using High-Resolution (HR) data prove the usefulness and flexibility of the framework.
Forbidden Line Emission in the Eccentric Spectroscopic Binaries DQ Tauri and UZ Tauri E Monitored over an Orbital Period

We present echelle spectroscopy of the close pre–main-sequence binary star systems DQ Tau and UZ Tau E. Over a 16 day time interval we acquired 14 nights of spectra for DQ Tau and 12 nights of spectra for UZ Tau E. This represents the entire phase of DQ Tau and 63% of the phase of UZ Tau E. As expected, photospheric lines such as Li I λ6707 clearly split into two components while the primary and secondary orbit one another, as did the permitted line He I λ5876. Unlike the photospheric features, the forbidden lines of [O I] λ6300 and [O I] λ5577 retain the same shape throughout the orbit. Therefore, these lines must originate outside the immediate vicinity of the two stars and any circumstellar disks that participate in the orbital motion of the stars.
Quickly detecting relevant program invariants

Explicitly stated program invariants can help programmers by characterizing certain aspects of program execution and identifying program properties that must be preserved when modifying code. Unfortunately, these invariants are usually absent from code. Previous work showed how to dynamically detect invariants from program traces by looking for patterns in and relationships among variable values. A prototype implementation, Daikon, accurately recovered invariants from formally-specified programs, and the invariants it detected in other programs assisted programmers in a software evolution task. However, Daikon suffered from reporting too many invariants, many of which were not useful, and also failed to report some desired invariants. The paper presents, and gives experimental evidence of the efficacy of, four approaches for increasing the relevance of invariants reported by a dynamic invariant detector. One of them (exploiting unused polymorphism), adds desired invariants to the output. The other three (suppressing implied invariants, limiting which variables are compared to one another, and ignoring unchanged values), eliminate undesired invariants from the output and also improve runtime by reducing the work done by the invariant detector.
Enhanced ISAR Imaging by Exploiting the Continuity of the Target Scene

This paper presents a novel inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging method by exploiting the inherent continuity of the scatterers on the target scene to obtain enhanced target images within a Bayesian framework. A simplified radar system is utilized by transmitting the sparse probing frequency signal, where the ISAR imaging problem can be converted to deal with underdetermined linear inverse scattering. Following the Bayesian compressive sensing (BCS) theory, a hierarchical Bayesian prior is employed to model the scatterers in the range-Doppler plane. In contrast to the independent prior on each scatterer in the conventional BCS, a correlated prior is proposed to statistically encourage the continuity structure of the scatterers in the target region. To overcome the intractability of the posterior distribution, the Gibbs sampling strategy is used for Bayesian inference. The parameters of the signal model are inferred efficiently from samples obtained by the Gibbs sampler. Because the proposed method is a data-driven learning process, the tedious parameter tuning process required by the convex optimization-based approaches can be avoided. Both the synthetic and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve substantial improvements in the scenarios of limited measurements and low signal-to-noise ratio compared with other reported algorithms for ISAR imaging problems.
Non-Gaussian statistical timing analysis using second-order polynomial fitting

In the nanometer manufacturing region, process variation causes significant uncertainty for circuit performance verification. Statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) is thus developed to estimate timing distribution under process variation. However, most of the existing SSTA techniques have difficulty in handling the non-Gaussian variation distribution and non-linear dependency of delay on variation sources. To solve such a problem, in this paper, we first propose a new method to approximate the max operation of two non- Gaussian random variables through second-order polynomial fitting. We then present new non-Gaussian SSTA algorithms under two types of variational delay models: quadratic model and semi-quadratic model (i.e., quadratic model without crossing terms). All atomic operations (such as max and sum) of our algorithms are performed by closed-form formulas, hence they scale well for large designs. Experimental results show that compared to the Monte-Carlo simulation, our approach predicts the mean, standard deviation, and skewness within 1%, 1%, and 5% error, respectively. Our approach is more accurate and also 20times faster than the most recent method for non-Gaussian and nonlinear SSTA.
Use of Thiopurines and Risk of Colorectal Neoplasia in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: A Meta-Analysis

Objective Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is commonly treated with thiopurines such as azathioprine and mercaptopurine for the maintenance of remission. Studies examining chemopreventive of these medications on colorectal neoplasm in IBD patients have yielded conflicting results. We performed a meta-analysis to assess the role of thiopurines for this indication. Methods We performed a systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE and Cochrane to identify studies reporting colorectal neoplasm from IBD patients treated with thiopurines and conducted a meta-analysis of pooled relative risk (RR) using the random effects model. Results Nine case-control and ten cohort studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The use of thiopurines was associated with a statistically significant decreased incidence of colorectal neoplasm (summary RR=0.71, 95% CI=0.54–0.94, p=0.017), even after adjustment for duration and extent of the disease, but there was high heterogeneity among studies (I 2=68.0%, p<0.001). The RR of advanced neoplasm (high-grade dysplasia and cancer) was 0.72 (95%CI=0.50–1.03, p=0.070) and that of cancer was 0.70 (95% CI=0.46–1.09, p=0.111) for thiopurine-treated patients. Heterogeneity of the studies was affected by the sample size (</≥100 cases) and whether the patients had longstanding colitis (≥7 years). Conclusion The current meta-analysis revealed that thiopurines had a chemopreventive effect of colorectal neoplasms and a tendency of reducing advanced colorectal neoplasms in IBD. Due to the heterogeneity of included studies, these results should be interpreted with caution.
Identification and Molecular Characterization of the Chloroplast Targeting Domain of Turnip yellow mosaic virus Replication Proteins

Turnip yellow mosaic virus (TYMV) is a positive-strand RNA virus infecting plants. The TYMV 140K replication protein is a key organizer of viral replication complex (VRC) assembly, being responsible for recruitment of the viral polymerase and for targeting the VRCs to the chloroplast envelope where viral replication takes place. However, the structural requirements determining the subcellular localization and membrane association of this essential viral protein have not yet been defined. In this study, we investigated determinants for the in vivo chloroplast targeting of the TYMV 140K replication protein. Subcellular localization studies of deletion mutants identified a 41-residue internal sequence as the chloroplast targeting domain (CTD) of TYMV 140K; this sequence is sufficient to target GFP to the chloroplast envelope. The CTD appears to be located in the C-terminal extension of the methyltransferase domain—a region shared by 140K and its mature cleavage product 98K, which behaves as an integral membrane protein during infection. We predicted the CTD to fold into two amphipathic α-helices—a folding that was confirmed in vitro by circular dichroism spectroscopy analyses of a synthetic peptide. The importance for subcellular localization of the integrity of these amphipathic helices, and the function of 140K/98K, was demonstrated by performing amino acid substitutions that affected chloroplast targeting, membrane association and viral replication. These results establish a short internal α-helical peptide as an unusual signal for targeting proteins to the chloroplast envelope membrane, and provide new insights into membrane targeting of viral replication proteins—a universal feature of positive-strand RNA viruses.
The Reliability and Validity of the Outcome Rating Scale: A Replication Study of a Brief Clinical Measure

Abstract : There is an industry-wide trend toward making outcome evaluation a routine part of therapeutic services, yet most measures are infeasible for everyday clinical use. Consequently, the Outcome Rating Scale (ORS) was developed and recently validated by its authors (Miller, Duncan, Brown, Sparks, & Claud, 2003). This article reports the findings of an independent replication study evaluating the reliability and concurrent validity of the ORS as studied in a non-clinical sample. Concurrent validity was tested by comparing the ORS with the Outcome Questionnaire 45.2 (OQ) using correlation statistics. The findings re-confirm that the ORS has high test-retest reliability, strong internal consistency, and moderate concurrent validity. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.
Network-Coded Multiple Access II: Toward Real-Time Operation With Improved Performance

This paper presents a first real-time network-coded multiple access (NCMA) system that jointly exploits physical (PHY)-layer network coding (PNC) and multiuser decoding (MUD) to boost the throughput of a wireless local area network (WLAN). NCMA is a new design paradigm for multipacket reception wireless networks, in which the access point can receive and decode several packets simultaneously transmitted by multiple users. Conventionally, multipacket reception is realized using MUD only, whereas the key idea of NCMA is to use PNC together with MUD to realize multipacket reception. Although the feasibility of NCMA has previously been studied by the authors, our previous NCMA prototype was a version with offline signal processing. In addition, our previous investigation left open a number of theoretical and implementation issues, the resolution of which is critical to the adoption of NCMA in real practice. The current investigation makes the following state-of-the-art contributions toward NCMA: 1) we demonstrate a first NCMA system with integrated real-time PHY and MAC-layer decoding; 2) we construct a new unified framework for MAC-layer decoding that yields higher throughput with faster decoding-the faster decoding is one of the key enablers of our real-time implementation; and 3) we design new PHY-layer decoding techniques that overcome the poor performance of the first-generation NCMA prototype at low SNR. Experimental results show that, compared with the previous NCMA prototype, our new NCMA prototype improves real-time throughput by more than 100% at medium-high SNR (≥ 8 dB).
Robust order-based methods for feature description

Feature-based methods have found increasing use in many applications such as object recognition, 3D reconstruction and mosaicing. In this paper, we focus on the problem of matching such features. While a histogram-of-gradients type methods such as SIFT, GLOH and Shape Context are currently popular, several papers have suggested using orders of pixels rather than raw intensities and shown improved results for some applications. The papers suggest two different techniques for doing so: (1) A Histogram of Relative Orders in the Patch and (2) A Histogram of LBP codes. While these methods have shown good performance, they neglect the fact that the orders can be quite noisy in the presence of Gaussian noise. In this paper, we propose changes to these approaches to make them robust to Gaussian noise. We also show how the descriptors can be matched using recently developed more advanced techniques to obtain better matching performance. Finally, we show that the two methods have complimentary strengths and that by combining the two descriptors, one obtains much better results than either of them considered separately. The results are shown on the standard 2D Oxford and the 3D Caltech datasets.
Ion channels contribute to the regulation of cell sheet forces during Drosophila dorsal closure

We demonstrate that ion channels contribute to the regulation of dorsal closure in Drosophila, a model system for cell sheet morphogenesis. We find that Ca2+ is sufficient to cause cell contraction in dorsal closure tissues, as UV-mediated release of caged Ca2+ leads to cell contraction. Furthermore, endogenous Ca2+ fluxes correlate with cell contraction in the amnioserosa during closure, whereas the chelation of Ca2+ slows closure. Microinjection of high concentrations of the peptide GsMTx4, which is a specific modulator of mechanically gated ion channel function, causes increases in cytoplasmic free Ca2+ and actomyosin contractility and, in the long term, blocks closure in a dose-dependent manner. We identify two channel subunits, ripped pocket and dtrpA1 (TrpA1), that play a role in closure and other morphogenetic events. Blocking channels leads to defects in force generation via failure of actomyosin structures, and impairs the ability of tissues to regulate forces in response to laser microsurgery. Our results point to a key role for ion channels in closure, and suggest a mechanism for the coordination of force-producing cell behaviors across the embryo.
University of Huddersfield Repository a Language Modelling Approach to Linking Criminal Styles with Offender Characteristics Original Citation a Language Modelling Approach to Linking Criminal Styles with Offender Characteristics

Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. Abstract The ability to infer the characteristics of offenders from their criminal behaviour ('offender profiling') has only been partially successful since it has relied on subjective judgments based on limited data. Words and structured data used in crime descriptions recorded by the police relate to behavioural features. Thus Language Modelling was applied to an existing police archive to link behavioural features with significant characteristics of offenders. Both multinomial and multiple Bernoulli models were used. Although categories selected are gender, age group, ethnic appearance and broad occupation (employed or not), in principle this can be applied to any characteristic recorded. Results indicate that statistically significant relationships exist between all characteristics for many types of crime. Bernoulli models tend to perform better than multinomial ones. It is also possible to identify automatically specific terms which when taken together give insight into the style of offending related to a particular group.
A panel study to evaluate quality of life assessments in patients suffering from allergic rhinitis after treatment with a Chinese herbal nasal drop

Allergic rhinitis impairs quality of life (QOL). To assess the changes in QOL of patients with perennial allergic rhinitis (PAR) after treatment with Allergic Rhinitis Nose Drops (ARND), 35 patients were divided into 2 groups in a randomized, double‐blinded and placebo‐controlled study, with a cross‐over arrangement over 7 weeks, applying ARND or placebo. Group A (n = 20) started with ARND first for 2 weeks followed by a 3‐week washout before placebo for the last 2 weeks, while Group B (n = 15) started with placebo first and finished with ARND after washout. The changes in Clinical Symptoms Score (CSS) and QOL were observed. A decrease in CSS was observed in patients of both groups after treatment with ARND, but no change was observed with the placebo. Group A patients also showed significant improvements in complexion and sleep (P < 0.05 for both) after treatment with ARND, but no change with the placebo. Group B patients showed significant improvements in appetite and digestion (P < 0.01) as well as joy (P < 0.05) after cross‐over treatment with ARND, but no change with the placebo. ARND may have a therapeutic effect by relieving clinical symptoms and improving the QOL in patients with PAR. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Computational Analysis of Bundle Trading Markets Design for Distributed Resource Allocation

Online auction markets play increasingly important roles for resource allocations in distributed systems. This paper builds upon a market-based framework presented by Guo et al. (Guo, Z., G. J. Koehler, A. B. Whinston. 2007. A market-based optimization algorithm for distributed systems. Management Sci. 53(8) 1345–1458), where a distributed system optimization problem is solved by self-interested agents iteratively trading bundled resources in a double auction market run by a dealer. We extend this approach to a dynamic, asynchronous Internet market environment and investigate how various market design factors including dealer inventory policies, market communication patterns, and agent learning strategies affect the computational market efficiency, market liquidity, and implementation. We prove finite convergence to an optimal solution under these various schemes, where individual rational and budget-balanced trading leads to an efficient auction outcome. Empirical investigations further show that the alg.
Influence of nucleotide sequence on dA.dT-specific binding of Netropsin to double stranded DNA.

Using CD measurements the complex formation of Netropsin (Nt) with poly(dA-dC). poly(dT-dG) and its stability against high salt concentrations is compared with that of poly(dA). poly(dT) and poly(dA-dT). POLY(DT-dA). It is experimentally shown that the insertion of a dG.dC pair in dA.dT sequences strongly reduces the specific interaction of Nt with DNA duplexes. The specificity of the interaction is strongly increased by two or more consecutive thymine residues as present in thymine isostichs of double stranded DNA's.