Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of high-mobility group box-1 in myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury and the effect of ethyl pyruvate

High-mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) acts as a proinflammatory cytokine that triggers and amplifies the inflammation cascade following ischemia/reperfusion (I/R). Ethyl pyruvate (EP) has been reported to inhibit HMGB1 release in several I/R models. This study was designed to investigate the potential role of HMGB1 in a rat myocardial I/R model and to determine the effect of EP. Male Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to 30 min myocardial ischemia and 48 h reperfusion. In protocol 1, the rats were assigned to one of four groups (n=16 per group): Phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or recombinant human HMGB1 (rhHMGB1) at three different doses (1, 10 or 100 μg/kg). In protocol 2, the rats were also assigned to one of four groups (n=16 per group): Sham, control, EP and EP + rhHMGB1. EP (40 mg/kg) or rhHMGB1 (100 μg/kg) was injected intravenously prior to reperfusion. Hemodynamic measurements were performed, and myocardial infarct size (IS) was calculated. Western blotting was conducted to evaluate HMGB1, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) expression levels. In the protocol 1 rats, the IS was markedly increased in the rhHMGB1 (100 μg/kg) group compared with that in the PBS group, and this increase was accompanied by elevated levels of TNF-α and IL-6. In the protocol 2 rats, I/R resulted a 4.8-fold increase in HMGB1 expression with an increased IS and impaired cardiac function compared with the sham group. EP significantly inhibited the elevated HMGB1 level, suppressed the activated TNF-α and IL-6 and reduced cardiac dysfunction. This cardioprotection was abolished by rhHMGB1. In conclusion, accumulation of HMGB1 is deleterious to the heart following myocardial I/R. EP can exert a strong protective effect against myocardial I/R injury, and these benefits are associated with a reduction in HMGB1.
Layout-aware scan chain synthesis for improved path delay fault coverage

Path delay fault testing has become increasingly important due to higher clock rates and higher process variability caused by shrinking geometries. Achieving high-coverage path delay fault testing requires the application of scan justified test vector pairs, coupled with careful ordering of the scan flip-flops and/or insertion of dummy flip-flops in the scan chain. Previous works on scan synthesis for path delay fault testing using scan shifting have focused exclusively on maximizing fault coverage and/or minimizing the number of dummy flip-flops, but have disregarded the scan wirelength overhead. In this paper we propose a layout-aware coverage-driven scan chain ordering methodology and give exact and heuristic algorithms for computing the achievable tradeoffs between path delay fault coverage and both dummy flip-flop and wirelength costs. Experimental results show that our scan chain ordering methodology yields significant improvements in path delay coverage with a very small increase in wirelength overhead compared to previous layout-driven approaches, and similar coverage with up to 25 times improvement in wirelength compared to previous layout-oblivious coverage-driven approaches.
Lower Sensitivity to Happy and Angry Facial Emotions in Young Adults with Psychiatric Problems

Many psychiatric problem domains have been associated with emotion-specific biases or general deficiencies in facial emotion identification. However, both within and between psychiatric problem domains, large variability exists in the types of emotion identification problems that were reported. Moreover, since the domain-specificity of the findings was often not addressed, it remains unclear whether patterns found for specific problem domains can be better explained by co-occurrence of other psychiatric problems or by more generic characteristics of psychopathology, for example, problem severity. In this study, we aimed to investigate associations between emotion identification biases and five psychiatric problem domains, and to determine the domain-specificity of these biases. Data were collected as part of the ‘No Fun No Glory’ study and involved 2,577 young adults. The study participants completed a dynamic facial emotion identification task involving happy, sad, angry, and fearful faces, and filled in the Adult Self-Report Questionnaire, of which we used the scales depressive problems, anxiety problems, avoidance problems, Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) problems and antisocial problems. Our results suggest that participants with antisocial problems were significantly less sensitive to happy facial emotions, participants with ADHD problems were less sensitive to angry emotions, and participants with avoidance problems were less sensitive to both angry and happy emotions. These effects could not be fully explained by co-occurring psychiatric problems. Whereas this seems to indicate domain-specificity, inspection of the overall pattern of effect sizes regardless of statistical significance reveals generic patterns as well, in that for all psychiatric problem domains the effect sizes for happy and angry emotions were larger than the effect sizes for sad and fearful emotions. As happy and angry emotions are strongly associated with approach and avoidance mechanisms in social interaction, these mechanisms may hold the key to understanding the associations between facial emotion identification and a wide range of psychiatric problems.
Plastic Surgery: A New Dimension to Face Recognition

Advancement and affordability is leading to the popularity of plastic surgery procedures. Facial plastic surgery can be reconstructive to correct facial feature anomalies or cosmetic to improve the appearance. Both corrective as well as cosmetic surgeries alter the original facial information to a large extent thereby posing a great challenge for face recognition algorithms. The contribution of this research is 1) preparing a face database of 900 individuals for plastic surgery, and 2) providing an analytical and experimental underpinning of the effect of plastic surgery on face recognition algorithms. The results on the plastic surgery database suggest that it is an arduous research challenge and the current state-of-art face recognition algorithms are unable to provide acceptable levels of identification performance. Therefore, it is imperative to initiate a research effort so that future face recognition systems will be able to address this important problem.
Management of idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss.

OBJECTIVE To determine if any consensus exists regarding the efficacy of treatment in idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss syndrome (ISSNHL). DATA SOURCES A review of the literature from 1966 to the present on Medline database was performed with the following search criteria: Hearing loss, sensorineural (MeSH terms), sensorineural hearing loss (text word), deafness (MeSH), and idiopathic or sudden (all fields). Further limiting search terms were treatment outcomes or controlled studies. DATA EXTRACTION The articles were then analyzed searching for randomized, prospective, controlled studies of single treatment modalities. Both human and animal studies were included for discussion because of the paucity of human studies. CONCLUSION No consensus exists on the effective treatment of ISSNHL. Randomized, controlled studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of systemic steroids, however, follow up studies have questioned the benefit of steroid therapy.
A Comparative Study of Energy Minimization Methods for Markov Random Fields with Smoothness-Based Priors

Among the most exciting advances in early vision has been the development of efficient energy minimization algorithms for pixel-labeling tasks such as depth or texture computation. It has been known for decades that such problems can be elegantly expressed as Markov random fields, yet the resulting energy minimization problems have been widely viewed as intractable. Algorithms such as graph cuts and loopy belief propagation (LBP) have proven to be very powerful: For example, such methods form the basis for almost all the top-performing stereo methods. However, the trade-offs among different energy minimization algorithms are still not well understood. In this paper, we describe a set of energy minimization benchmarks and use them to compare the solution quality and runtime of several common energy minimization algorithms. We investigate three promising methods-graph cuts, LBP, and tree-reweighted message passing-in addition to the well-known older iterated conditional mode (ICM) algorithm. Our benchmark problems are drawn from published energy functions used for stereo, image stitching, interactive segmentation, and denoising. We also provide a general-purpose software interface that allows vision researchers to easily switch between optimization methods. The benchmarks, code, images, and results are available at http://vision.middlebury. edu/MRF/.
Syk-Mediated Translocation of PI3Kδ to the Leading Edge Controls Lamellipodium Formation and Migration of Leukocytes

The non-receptor tyrosine kinase Syk is mainly expressed in the hematopoietic system and plays an essential role in β2 integrin-mediated leukocyte activation. To elucidate the signaling pathway downstream of Syk during β2 integrin (CD11/CD18)-mediated migration and extravasation of polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN), we generated neutrophil-like differentiated HL-60 (dHL-60) cells expressing a fluorescently tagged Syk mutant lacking the tyrosine residue at the position 323 (Syk-Tyr323) that is known to be required for the binding of the regulatory subunit p85 of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) class IA. Syk-Tyr323 was found to be critical for the enrichment of the catalytic subunit p110δ of PI3K class IA as well as for the generation of PI3K products at the leading edge of the majority of polarized cells. In accordance, the translocation of PI3K p110δ to the leading edge was diminished in Syk deficient murine PMN. Moreover, the expression of EGFP-Syk Y323F interfered with proper cell polarization and it impaired efficient migration of dHL-60 cells. In agreement with a major role of β2 integrins in the recruitment of phagocytic cells to sites of lesion, mice with a Syk-deficient hematopoietic system demonstrated impaired PMN infiltration into the wounded tissue that was associated with prolonged cutaneous wound healing. These data imply a novel role of Syk via PI3K p110δ signaling for β2 integrin-mediated migration which is a prerequisite for efficient PMN recruitment in vivo.
Prodomains regulate the synthesis, extracellular localisation and activity of TGF-β superfamily ligands

All transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) ligands are synthesised as precursor molecules consisting of a signal peptide, an N-terminal prodomain and a C-terminal mature domain. During synthesis, prodomains interact non-covalently with mature domains, maintaining the molecules in a conformation competent for dimerisation. Dimeric precursors are cleaved by proprotein convertases, and TGF-β ligands are secreted from the cell non-covalently associated with their prodomains. Extracellularly, prodomains localise TGF-β ligands within the vicinity of their target cells via interactions with extracellular matrix proteins, including fibrillin and perlecan. For some family members (TGF-β1, TGF-β2, TGF-β3, myostatin, GDF-11 and BMP-10), prodomains bind with high enough affinity to suppress biological activity. The subsequent mechanism of activation of these latent TGF-β ligands varies according to cell type and context, but all activating mechanisms directly target prodomains. Thus, prodomains control many aspects of TGF-β superfamily biology, and alterations in prodomain function are often associated with disease.
Design, Modeling, Control, and Evaluation of a Hybrid Hip Joint Miniature Climbing Robot

The subject of this paper is the design, control, and evaluation of a biped-climbing robot featuring a new hybrid hip joint. The hybrid hip provides both prismatic and revolute motion, discretely, to the robot, using a single actuator. This is intended to improve its adaptability in confined environments and its capability to maneuver over and around obstacles. Optimization of the hybrid hip joint relative to robot size, weight, and actuation limits is considered while maximizing range of motion. The mechanical structure of the robot is discussed, as well as forward and inverse kinematics for motion planning. Reachable robot workspace in both revolute and prismatic phases of the hybrid hip joint is analyzed. Different robot locomotion strides are developed and dynamic controller requirements are considered. Experimental evaluation of the robot walking and climbing on and between surfaces with different inclinations is conducted to evaluate performance and repeatability of the system.
Pharmacokinetics of valganciclovir and ganciclovir in renal impairment

Valganciclovir is the oral prodrug of ganciclovir. The pharmacokinetics of valganciclovir in patients with renal impairment is not known. Furthermore, it is not known whether there are any pharmacokinetic differences between patients who are positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and cytomegalovirus (CMV) and healthy subjects.
Nitric Oxide Administration Using an Oxygen Hood: A Pilot Trial

Background We have shown earlier that inhaled nitric oxide (iNO) administered by oxygen hood reduces pulmonary hypertension in an animal model (J Perinatol 2002; 22:50-6). Our objective in this study was to determine feasibility of iNO by oxygen hood in neonates with elevated alveolar-arterial oxygen gradients (A-aDO2). Methods/Principal Findings Masked randomized controlled pilot trial. Inclusion criteria were: gestation≥34 weeks, age<7 days, with post-ductal arterial line, and A-aDO2 400–600. Infants were randomized to study gas (iNO 20 ppm or equivalent O2 flow) for 1 hr which was then weaned over the next 4 hours. Primary outcome was PaO2 one hour post-randomization. Four infants each were randomized to iNO or O2 (controls). Two of the four infants given iNO had an increase in PaO2 of >100 torr, while oxygenation was unchanged in the controls. Methemoglobinemia and other adverse effects were not noted in any infant. Environmental levels of NO and NO2 were minimal (<1 ppm) at >0.3 m from the hood. Conclusions Administration of iNO by oxygen hood is feasible. Larger randomized controlled trials are required to measure the efficacy and determine an appropriate target population for this technique. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00041548
Forces Exerted by a Conventional Dental Explorer during Clinical Examination

Purpose: To measure the range of forces exerted clinically in order to determine whether research in this area uses forces that are similar to those generally seen in a clinical setting. Methods: A transducer was manufactured consisting of a force measurement sleeve positioned over the handle of a conventional explorer. The sleeve housed 4 strain gauges oriented to detect forces in a vertical and lateral direction. Five experienced dentists performed a full-mouth caries exam on three fully dentate caries-free subjects with the force-detecting probe. Results: The overall average force was 340 ± 6 (SEM) g with a standard deviation of 218 g and a range of 14–1,006 g. The average number of contacts per tooth was 6.2 ± 0.2 (SEM) with a standard deviation of 2.7. Conclusions: The data from this study show that the forces used in previous studies were sometimes greater than the average force, but were still within the observed range of forces.
On the Use of Combining Rules in Relational Probability Trees

A relational probability tree (RPT) is a type of decision tree that can be used for probabilistic classification of instances with a relational structure. Each leaf of an RPT contains a probability model that determines for each class the probability that an instance belongs to that class. The only kind of probability models that have been used in RPTs so far are multinomial probability distributions. In this paper we show how to integrate a more complex kind of probability models based on the concept of combining rules (such as noisy-or) into RPTs. We introduce two learning algorithms for such RPTs and experimentally compare these algorithms to the learning algorithm for standard RPTs. The experiments indicate that the use of probability models based on combining rules does not significantly influence the quality of the probability estimates of the RPTs. We perform additional experiments to investigate the reason for this result. The main conclusion is that probability models based on combining rules are useful but do not have an added value when aggregates are used in the internal nodes (as in standard RPTs).
Inhibitory Activity of  ${\rm Fe}_{3} {\rm O}_{4}$/Oleic Acid/Usnic Acid—Core/Shell/Extra-Shell Nanofluid on S. aureus Biofilm Development

Undesired biofilm development is a major concern in many areas, especially in the medical field. The purpose of the present study was to comparatively investigate the antibiofilm efficacy of usnic acid, in soluble versus nanofluid formulation, in order to highlight the potential use of Fe3O4/oleic acid (FeOA) nanofluid as potential controlled release vehicle of this antibiofilm agent. The (+) -UA loaded into nanofluid exhibited an improved antibiofilm effect on S. aureus biofilm formation, revealed by the drastic decrease of the viable cell counts as well as by confocal laser scanning microscopy images. Our results demonstrate that FeOA nanoparticles could be used as successful coating agents for obtaining antibiofilm pellicles on different medical devices, opening a new perspective for obtaining new antimicrobial and antibiofilm surfaces, based on hybrid functionalized nanostructured biomaterials.
Retiming Synchronous Circuitry with Imprecise Delays

Often, and certainly in the early stages of a design, the knowledge about delays is imprecise. Stochastic programming is not an adequate means to account for this imprecision. Not only is a probability distribution seldom a correct translation of the designer's delay knowledge, it also leads to inefficient algorithms. In this paper possibilistic programming is proposed for handling the retiming problem where delays are modelled as (triangular) possibilistic numbers. Beside the capability of optimizing the most possible clock cycle time and generating its possibility distribution, it allows for trade-offs between reducing clock cycle time and chances for obtaining worse solutions. It is shown that the computational complexity is the same as for retiming with exact circuit delays.
Mean Reversion across National Stock Markets and Parametric Contrarian Investment Strategies

For U.S. stock prices, evidence of mean reversion over long horizons is mixed, possibly due to lack of a reliable long time series. Using additional cross-sectional power gained from national stock index data of 18 countries during the period 1969 to 1996, we find strong evidence of mean reversion in relative stock index prices. Our findings imply a significantly positive speed of reversion with a half-life of three to three and one-half years. This result is robust to alternative specifications and data. Parametric contrarian investment strategies that fully exploit mean reversion across national indexes outperform buy-and-hold and standard contrarian strategies. Copyright The American Finance Association 2000.
Dynamic Multiway Segment Tree for IP Lookups and the Fast Pipelined Search Engine

A dynamic multiway segment tree (DMST) is proposed for IP lookups in this paper. DMST is designed for dynamic routing tables that can dynamically insert and delete prefixes. DMST is implemented as a B-tree that has all distinct end points of ranges as its keys. The complexities of search, insertion, deletion, and memory requirement are the same as the existing multiway range tree (MRT) and prefix in B-tree (PIBT) for prefixes. In addition, a pipelined DMST search engine is proposed to further speed up the search operations. The proposed pipelined DMST search engine uses off-chip SRAMs instead of on-chip SRAMs because the capacity of the latter is too small to hold large routing tables and the cost of the latter is too expensive. By utilizing current FPGA and off-chip SRAM technologies, our proposed five-stage pipelined search engine can achieve the worst case throughputs of 33.3 and 41.7 million packets per second (Mpps) with 144-bit and 288-bit wide SRAM blocks, respectively. Furthermore, a straightforward extension of the pipelined search engine with multiple independent off-chip SRAMs can achieve the throughput of 200 Mpps which is equivalent to 102 Gbps for minimal Ethernet packets of size 64 bytes.
Quantum chemical studies of protein structure

Quantum chemical methods now permit the prediction of many spectroscopic observables in proteins and related model systems, in addition to electrostatic properties, which are found to be in excellent accord with those determined from experiment. I discuss the developments over the past decade in these areas, including predictions of nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shifts, chemical shielding tensors, scalar couplings and hyperfine (contact) shifts, the isomer shifts and quadrupole splittings in Mössbauer spectroscopy, molecular energies and conformations, as well as a range of electrostatic properties, such as charge densities, the curvatures, Laplacians and Hessians of the charge density, electrostatic potentials, electric field gradients and electrostatic field effects. The availability of structure/spectroscopic correlations from quantum chemistry provides a basis for using numerous spectroscopic observables in determining aspects of protein structure, in determining electrostatic properties which are not readily accessible from experiment, as well as giving additional confidence in the use of these techniques to investigate questions about chemical bonding and chemical reactions.
Interpretation of positron emission mammography: feature analysis and rates of malignancy.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of our study was to define and illustrate standard terminology for describing findings on positron emission mammography (PEM) and provide associated rates of malignancy. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Three hundred eighty-eight women with newly-diagnosed breast cancer anticipating breast-conserving surgery completed a multicenter trial comparing PEM to MRI in assessment of disease extent. Morphologic terminology to describe PEM findings was patterned on BI-RADS for MRI, and investigators were trained in the PEM lexicon. PEM imaging features of known malignancies and additional PEM lesions were recorded and correlated with outcome. The reference standard was biopsy or at least a 6-month follow-up. RESULTS Of 166 additional lesions on PEM, 54 (33%) proved malignant, with median invasive tumor size 8 mm (range, 2-60 mm). Among 43 round or oval masses, 16 (37%) were malignant, compared with 16 of 21 (76%) of lobulated or irregular masses (p = 0.003). Among 14 findings of focal or regional nonmass uptake, two (14%) were malignant compared with four of 12 (33%) findings of linear-ductal or segmental uptake (p = 0.350). Malignancy rates for BI-RADS-type final assessments were category 2, one of 31 (3.2%); 3, three of 32 (9.4%); 4a, four of 18 (22%); 4b, nine of 33 (27%); 4c, 15 of 24 (63%); and 5, 22 of 28 (79%). On the basis of modeling, irregular or lobulated morphology was the strongest predictor of malignancy, followed by lesion laterality (i.e., ipsilateral to known cancer) then increasing semiquantitative (18)F-FDG uptake. CONCLUSION Use of standardized terminology to report PEM findings will facilitate effective communication of results and consistent management. A probably benign category 3 assessment carried a substantial rate of malignancy for lesions seen on PEM, and biopsy may be more appropriate than follow-up.