Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Air solar collectors in building use - A review

In the current energy and environmental context it is imperative to implement systems based on renewable energy sources in order to reduce energy consumptions worldwide. Solar collectors are studied by many years and many researchers are focusing their attention in order to increase their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Water solar collectors are often implemented for domestic hot water, heating or industrial processes and already have a place on the market. A promising system which is not yet widely known is represented by air solar collectors that could represent an efficient way to use the solar energy with a lower investment cost, a system that can be used in order to preheat the fresh air required for heating, drying, or to maintain a minimum temperature during winter. This paper presents a comprehensive literature review on air solar collectors used mainly in buildings, acting as a solar wall. Air solar collectors are roughly classified into two types: glazed and opaque. The present study comprises the solar collector classification, applications and their main parameters with a special focus on opaque solar collectors.
The Effect of TNF-α Blocker HL036337 and Its Best Concentration to Inhibit Dry Eye Inflammation

Purpose Dry eye syndrome is commonly thought of as an inflammatory disease, and we have previously presented data showing the effectiveness of topical TNF-α blocker agents for the treatment of this condition. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of the TNF-α blocking agent HL036337 compared to cyclosporine A for the treatment of dry eye induced inflammation in order to establish whether HL036337 represents a more effective method for suppressing inflammation. The efficacy of HL036337 and cyclosporine A was determined using an experimental murine dry eye model. Methods The TNF-α blocker HL036337 is a modified form of TNF receptor I. Using dry eye induced C57BL/6 mice (n = 45), corneal erosion was measured at day 4 and 7 after topical treatment with cyclosporine A or HL036337. To determine the effective treatment dose, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2.5, and 5 mg/mL of HL036337 were topically administered twice per day to dry eye induced murine corneas for 1 week. Results The optimal concentration of the TNF-α blocker HL036337 for treatment of dry eye induced corneal erosion was determined to be 1 mg/mL. Dry eye induced corneal erosion was improved after 1 week with topically applied cyclosporine A and HL036337 at 1 mg/mL. Conclusions HL036337 administered topically at 1 mg/mL effectively improved corneal erosion induced by dry eye. This finding may also suggest that inhibition of TNF-α can improve dry eye syndrome.
Disappearing Arctic tundra ponds: Fine‐scale analysis of surface hydrology in drained thaw lake basins over a 65 year period (1948–2013)

Long‐term fine‐scale dynamics of surface hydrology in Arctic tundra ponds (less than 1 ha) are largely unknown; however, these small water bodies may contribute substantially to carbon fluxes, energy balance, and biodiversity in the Arctic system. Change in pond area and abundance across the upper Barrow Peninsula, Alaska, was assessed by comparing historic aerial imagery (1948) and modern submeter resolution satellite imagery (2002, 2008, and 2010). This was complemented by photogrammetric analysis of low‐altitude kite‐borne imagery in combination with field observations (2010–2013) of pond water and thaw depth transects in seven ponds of the International Biological Program historic research site. Over 2800 ponds in 22 drained thaw lake basins (DTLB) with different geological ages were analyzed. We observed a net decrease of 30.3% in area and 17.1% in number of ponds over the 62 year period. The inclusion of field observations of pond areas in 1972 from a historic research site confirms the linear downward trend in area. Pond area and number were dependent on the age of DTLB; however, changes through time were independent of DTLB age, with potential long‐term implications for the hypothesized geomorphologic landscape succession of the thaw lake cycle. These losses were coincident with increases in air temperature, active layer, and density and cover of aquatic emergent plants in ponds. Increased evaporation due to warmer and longer summers, permafrost degradation, and transpiration from encroaching aquatic emergent macrophytes are likely the factors contributing to the decline in surface area and number of ponds.
Temporary vascular shunts as initial treatment of proximal extremity vascular injuries during combat operations: the new standard of care at Echelon II facilities?

BACKGROUND Historically, penetrating injuries to the extremities account for up to 75% of wounds sustained during combat and 10% of deaths. Rapid vascular control and perfusion of injured extremities at forward deployed Echelon II surgical facilities is essential to limit loss of life and maximize limb preservation. We review our experience with the management of extremity vascular trauma and report the largest single Echelon II experience to date on temporary vascular shunting (TVS) for proximal extremity vascular injuries. METHODS Data on combat trauma patients presenting to a US Navy Echelon II forward surgical facility in Iraq were prospectively recorded during a 7-month period. Patients with suspected vascular injuries underwent exploration in the operating room. After vessel control, thrombectomy and instillation of heparinized saline, vascular injuries in the proximal extremity were temporarily shunted in a standardized fashion. Vascular injuries in the distal extremity were routinely ligated. After shunting, patients were transported to an Echelon III facility in the Iraqi Theater and underwent vascular reconstruction. They were followed through transfer to the Continental United States or discharge into the civilian Iraqi medical system. Shunt patency, limb salvage, and survival data were obtained by retrospective review of electronic medical records. RESULTS Six hundred ten combat trauma patients were treated from August 16, 2006 to February 25, 2007. Thirty-seven patients (6.1%) sustained 73 injuries to major extremity vascular structures. Twenty-three proximal vascular shunts were placed in 16 patients with mean Injury Severity Score of 25 (range, 17-43) and mean mangled extremity severity score (MESS) of 8 (range, 5-10). Twenty-two of 23 shunts (95.6%) were patent upon arrival to the Echelon III facility and underwent successful autologous vein reconstruction. All shunt patients survived their injuries with 100% early limb preservation as followed through their first 30 days of medical care or discharge into the local medical community. CONCLUSIONS Complex combat injuries to proximal extremity vessels should be routinely shunted at forward-deployed Echelon II facilities as part of the resuscitative, damage control process.
FRET-based mapping of calmodulin bound to the RyR1 Ca2+ release channel

Calmodulin (CaM) functions as a regulatory subunit of ryanodine receptor (RyR) channels, modulating channel activity in response to changing [Ca2+]i. To investigate the structural basis of CaM regulation of the RyR1 isoform, we used site-directed labeling of channel regulatory subunits and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). Donor fluorophore was targeted to the RyR1 cytoplasmic assembly by preincubating sarcoplasmic reticulum membranes with a fluorescent FK506-binding protein (FKBP), and FRET was determined following incubations in the presence of fluorescent CaMs in which acceptor fluorophore was attached within the N lobe, central linker, or C lobe. Results demonstrated strong FRET to acceptors attached within CaM's N lobe, whereas substantially weaker FRET was observed when acceptor was attached within CaM's central linker or C lobe. Surprisingly, Ca2+ evoked little change in FRET to any of the 3 CaM domains. Donor–acceptor distances derived from our FRET measurements provide insights into CaM's location and orientation within the RyR1 3D architecture and the conformational switching that underlies CaM regulation of the channel. These results establish a powerful new approach to resolving the structure and function of RyR channels.
Intraarterial Administration of Bone Marrow Mononuclear Cells in Patients With Critical Limb Ischemia: A Randomized-Start, Placebo-Controlled Pilot Trial (PROVASA)

Background—Critical limb ischemia due to peripheral arterial occlusive disease is associated with a severely increased morbidity and mortality. There is no effective pharmacological therapy available. Injection of autologous bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells (BM-MNC) is a promising therapeutic option in patients with critical limb ischemia, but double-blind, randomized trials are lacking. Methods and Results—Forty patients with critical limb ischemia were included in a multicenter, phase II, double-blind, randomized-start trial to receive either intraarterial administration of BM-MNC or placebo followed by active treatment with BM-MNC (open label) after 3 months. Intraarterial administration of BM-MNC did not significantly increase ankle-brachial index and, thus, the trial missed its primary end point. However, cell therapy was associated with significantly improved ulcer healing (ulcer area, 3.2±4.7 cm2 to 1.89±3.5 cm2 [P=0.014] versus placebo, 2.92±3.5 cm2 to 2.89±4.1 cm2 [P=0.5]) and reduced rest pain (5.2±1.8 to 2.2±1.3 [P=0.009] versus placebo, 4.5±2.4 to 3.9±2.6 [P=0.3]) within 3 months. Limb salvage and amputation-free survival rates did not differ between the groups.Repeated BM-MNC administration and higher BM-MNC numbers and functionality were the only independent predictors of improved ulcer healing. Ulcer healing induced by repeated BM-MNC administration significantly correlated with limb salvage (r=0.8; P<0.001). Conclusions—Intraarterial administration of BM-MNC is safe and feasible and accelerates wound healing in patients without extensive gangrene and impending amputation. These exploratory findings of this pilot trial need to be confirmed in a larger randomized trial in patients with critical limb ischemia and stable ulcers. Clinical Trial Registration—URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00282646.
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Using the Theory of Reasoned Action to Explain Physician Intention to Prescribe Emergency Contraception Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Physician Intention to Prescribe Emergency Contraception Table 1. Correlation between Independent Vari

Emergency contraception, or postcoital birth control, is used less often in the United States than in other countries. 1 Many factors influence this difference, including differences in U.S. prescribing rates, women' s and physicians' knowledge and attitudes, and accessibility. A complex dynamic exists among these factors, independent of prevailing attitudes about contraception in general and sexual responsibility in particular. 2 This dynamic influences access to emergency contraception and is complicated by the need to use the medication within a particular window of time and by its cost. 3 Emergency contraception is available without a prescription in more than 25 countries; 4 in the United States, however, it remains prescription-based except in a few states New Mexico and Washington) 5 that allow pharmacists to dispense it without a prescription under certain conditions. For the foreseeable future, most legally accessed emergency contraception will be available solely through prescription. The overwhelming majority of adolescent health experts and obstetrician-gynecologists have prescribed emergency contraception at some time; however, only half of general practitioners have done so, and of these, one-third have prescribed it fewer than six times. 6 Emergency contraception prescribing differs by practice setting. In 2003, 74% of all faculty, residents and clinic nurses in a university-based family medicine department in the Midwest had prescribed emergency contraception, doing so, on average, 3.2 times in the previous 12 months. 7 In the late 1990s, only 42% of women' s health care providers at a large health maintenance organization in southern California had ever prescribed it. 8 This proportion increased by almost 20% after a one-year demonstration project, which included the repackaging of oral contraceptives for use as emergency contraception, development of provider and patient education materials, and formal provider and staff training. 9 In the 1990s, 20% of the members of the Washington, DC, chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics had prescribed emergency contraception in the prior year, compared with 75% in a chapter in the New York City area. 10 The disparity may be an artifact of differences in survey response rates (61% in Washington, DC; 24% in New York) or patient profiles. Some providers who prescribe emergency contraception restrict adolescents' ability to obtain the drug—for example, by limiting the number of times an individual can obtain it or limiting its availability on the basis of menstrual timing. 11 It is unclear whether insufficient knowledge or attitude— conscious or unconscious—influences patterns of emergency …
Month of birth as a risk factor for narcolepsy.

STUDY OBJECTIVES A loss of hypocretin neurons has been observed in human narcolepsy; however, the cause of this disorder is still unknown. While family history and genetic factors are important individual risk factors for narcolepsy, environmental factors also contribute to the pathogenesis of the disease. The aim of the study was to find out whether there is a seasonality of month of birth in narcoleptic patients. DESIGN Diagnosis of narcolepsy with cataplexy was based on International Classification of Sleep Disorders criteria with clinical, standard polysomnographic, and Multiple Sleep Latency Test features. PATIENTS AND SETTING The birth dates of 886 patients with a clear-cut diagnosis of narcolepsy with cataplexy from 3 large narcolepsy databases (352 from Montpellier-France, 157 from Montreal-Canada, and 377 from Stanford-United States of America) were compared with those of 35,160,522 subjects from the general population. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS Patients with narcolepsy had a significantly different seasonality of month of birth compared to that of the general population. The monthly distribution of birth yielded a peak in March with a maximal odds ratio at 1.45 and a trough in September with a minimal odds ratio at 0.63. No gender or country of origin differences were observed. CONCLUSIONS A birth seasonality in the development of narcolepsy suggests the presence of environmental factors acting in combination with genetic factors during the fetal or perinatal period, in terms of an autoimmune process targeting the hypocretin system.
GIS time series mapping of the Ciskei homeland

This study reports on the creation and evaluation of a spatio-temporal mapping of the Ciskei, one of the so-called ‘Bantustans’ or ‘Homelands’ located in South Africa. The Ciskei was created as a result of race-based legislation during the colonial and apartheid periods. Its geographical extent changed over time, and the spatial changes coincided with the promulgation of different legislation. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology was used to create a time series animation and a static map to display the spatial change of the Ciskei boundaries. Questionnaires and interviews were used to investigate two main aspects. The questionnaire’s purpose was to investigate and compare map-readers’ cognition at detecting change between static and animated maps. Interviews allowed the researchers to qualitatively assess the value of such an exercise. Both the animated and static maps have advantages over each other but neither one of them has an overall clear advantage, confirming previous research. There is value of such mapping to decision-makers in government, as this exercise can help to produce a better understanding of legislative, cadastral, planning and historical effects.
Graph-based concept identification and disambiguation for enterprise search

Enterprise Search (ES) is different from traditional IR due to a number of reasons, among which the high level of ambiguity of terms in queries and documents and existence of graph-structured enterprise data (ontologies) that describe the concepts of interest and their relationships to each other, are the most important ones. Our method identifies concepts from the enterprise ontology in the query and corpus. We propose a ranking scheme for ontology sub-graphs on top of approximately matched token q-grams. The ranking leverages the graph-structure of the ontology to incorporate not explicitly mentioned concepts. It improves previous solutions by using a fine-grained ranking function that is specifically designed to cope with high levels of ambiguity. This method is able to capture much more of the semantics of queries and documents than previous techniques. We prove this claim by an evaluation of our method in three real-life scenarios from two different domains, and found it to consistently be superior both in terms of precision and recall.
On metrics for comparing routability estimation methods for FPGAs

Interconnect management is a critical design issue for large FPGA based designs. One of the most important issues for planning interconnection is the ability to accurately and efficiently predict the routability of a given design on a given FPGA architecture. The recently proposed routability estimation procedure, fGREP, produced estimates within 3 to 4% of an actual detailed router. Other known routability estimation methods include RISA, Lou's method and Rent's rule based methods. Comparing these methods has been difficult because of the different reporting methods used by the authors. We propose a uniform reporting metric based on comparing the estimates produced with the results of an actual detailed router on both local and global levels. We compare all the above methods using our reporting metric on a large number of benchmark circuits and show that the enhanced fGREP method produces tight estimates that outperform most other techniques.
Impaired sleep quality and sleep duration in smokers—results from the German Multicenter Study on Nicotine Dependence

Cigarette smoking is a severe health burden being related to a number of chronic diseases. Frequently, smokers report about sleep problems. Sleep disturbance, in turn, has been demonstrated to be involved in the pathophysiology of several disorders related to smoking and may be relevant for the pathophysiology of nicotine dependence. Therefore, determining the frequency of sleep disturbance in otherwise healthy smokers and its association with degree of nicotine dependence is highly relevant. In a population‐based case‐control study, 1071 smokers and 1243 non‐smokers without lifetime Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Axis I disorder were investigated. Sleep quality (SQ) of participants was determined by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. As possible confounders, age, sex and level of education and income, as well as depressiveness, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity, alcohol drinking behaviour and perceived stress, were included into multiple regression analyses. Significantly more smokers than non‐smokers (28.1% versus 19.1%; P < 0.0001) demonstrated a disturbed global SQ. After controlling for the confounders, impaired scores in the component scores of sleep latency, sleep duration and global SQ were found significantly more often in smokers than non‐smokers. Consistently, higher degrees of nicotine dependence and intensity of smoking were associated with shorter sleep duration. This study demonstrates for the first time an elevated prevalence of sleep disturbance in smokers compared with non‐smokers in a population without lifetime history of psychiatric disorders even after controlling for potentially relevant risk factors. It appears likely that smoking is a behaviourally modifiable risk factor for the occurrence of impaired SQ and short sleep duration.
Prenatally detected trisomy 20 mosaicism

Trisomy 20 is one of the more common mosaic trisomies detected on amniocentesis and presents with a normal outcome in over 90% of reported cases. Trisomic cells are almost never confirmed in newborn blood and are only rarely found in other fetal or placental samples. Nonetheless, some abnormal outcomes have been reported, including unexplained fetal demise, intrauterine growth restriction, and multiple congenital anomalies. Because of the lack of molecular studies on such cases, it is unknown whether the origin of trisomy or presence of uniparental disomy (UPD) could have some influence on outcome.
Proliferation of mouse embryonic stem cell progeny and the spontaneous contractile activity of cardiomyocytes are affected by microtopography

The niche in which stem cells reside and differentiate is a complex physicochemical microenvironment that regulates cell function. The role played by three‐dimensional physical contours was studied on cell progeny derived from mouse embryonic stem cells using microtopographies created on PDMS (poly‐dimethyl‐siloxane) membranes. While markers of differentiation were not affected, the proliferation of heterogeneous mouse embryonic stem cell‐derived progeny was attenuated by 15 μm‐, but not 5 μm‐high microprojections. This reduction was reversed by Rho kinase and myosin light chain kinase inhibition, which diminishes the tension generating ability of stress fibers. Purified cardiomyocytes derived from embryonic stem cells also showed significant blunting of proliferation and increased beating rates compared with cells grown on flat substrates. Thus, proliferation of stem cell‐derived progeny appears to be regulated by microtopography through tension‐generation of contractility in the third‐dimension. These results emphasize the importance of topographic cues in the modulation of stem cell progeny behavior. Developmental Dynamics 238:1964–1973, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Measuring Mountain River Discharge Using Seismographs Emplaced Within the Hyporheic Zone

Flow and sediment transport dynamics in fluvial systems play critical roles in shaping river morphology, in the design and use of riverine infrastructure, and in the broader management of watersheds. However, these properties are often difficult to measure comprehensively. Previous work has suggested the use of proximal seismic signals resulting from flow and bed load transport to construct more complete records of these fluvial processes. We investigate a small (184 km2; < 20 m3/s), snowmelt‐fed mountain river in the Northern Colorado Rocky Mountains during May–August 2015 to capture peak runoff with colocated measurements of discharge and seismic noise. Three‐component seismometers were placed in close proximity to the channel bank (~1 m) within the hyporheic zone (at times submerged beneath the water table). We recorded a broad spectrum of seismic signals excited by discharge, including novel, low‐frequency (0.1–2 Hz) signals observed predominantly on the horizontal components. The characteristics of these low‐frequency signals are not consistent with an elastically propagating seismic wave. We instead infer that they likely arise from the sensor tilting in response to viscoelastic deformation occurring near the channel and propose large‐scale turbulent eddies as a forcing mechanism. Calibrating horizontal seismic power with hydrograph flow rates over the course of a rainstorm for individual sensors, we demonstrate that these unique signals can be used to accurately estimate river discharge with simple regressions. This technique shows promise for augmenting seismic monitoring of rivers by enabling discharge rates to be estimated from outside the channel using easily deployed and noninvasive seismic instrumentation.