Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Meta-representation of shape families

We introduce a meta-representation that represents the essence of a family of shapes. The meta-representation learns the configurations of shape parts that are common across the family, and encapsulates this knowledge with a system of geometric distributions that encode relative arrangements of parts. Thus, instead of predefined priors, what characterizes a shape family is directly learned from the set of input shapes. The meta-representation is constructed from a set of co-segmented shapes with known correspondence. It can then be used in several applications where we seek to preserve the identity of the shapes as members of the family. We demonstrate applications of the meta-representation in exploration of shape repositories, where interesting shape configurations can be examined in the set; guided editing, where models can be edited while maintaining their familial traits; and coupled editing, where several shapes can be collectively deformed by directly manipulating the distributions in the meta-representation. We evaluate the efficacy of the proposed representation on a variety of shape collections.
Attitudes towards priority-setting and rationing in healthcare — an exploratory survey of Swedish medical students

Background: Healthcare priority-setting is inextricably linked to the challenge of providing publicly funded healthcare within a limited budget, which may result in difficult and potentially controversial rationing decisions. Despite priority-setting's increasing prominence in policy and academic discussion, it is still unclear what the level of understanding and acceptance of priority-setting is at different levels of health care. Aims: The aim of this study is threefold. First we wish to explore the level of familiarity with different aspects of priority-setting among graduating medical students. Secondly, to gauge their acceptance of both established and proposed Swedish priority-setting principles. Finally to elucidate their attitudes towards healthcare rationing and the role of different actors in decision making, with a particular interest in comparing the attitudes of medical students with data from the literature examining the attitudes among primary care patients in Sweden. Methods: A cross-sectional survey containing 14 multiple choice items about priority-setting in healthcare was distributed to the graduating medical class at Linkoöping University. The response rate was 92% (43/47). Results: Less than half of respondents have encountered the notion of open priority-setting, and the majority believed it to be somewhat or very unclear. There is a high degree of awareness and agreement with the established ethical principles for priority-setting in Swedish health care; however respondents are inconsistent in their application of the cost-effectiveness principle. A larger proportion of respondents were more favourable to physicians and other health personnel being responsible for rationing decisions as opposed to politicians. Conclusions: Future discussion about priority-setting in medical education should be contextualized within an explicit and open process. There is a need to adequately clarify the role of the cost-effectiveness principle in priority-setting. Medical students seem to acknowledge the need for rationing in healthcare to a greater extent when compared with previous results from Swedish primary care patients.
β-Elemene: Mechanistic Studies on Cancer Cell Interaction and Its Chemosensitization Effect

Over the past decade, screening and identifying novel compounds for their biomedical applications has become an upcoming area of research. Identifying the molecular mechanisms of these compounds has become an integral part of anticancer research. β-elemene, a sesquiterpene, is renowned for its anticancer activity against a variety of cell lines. Recent studies on β-elemene have elucidated that it possesses anti-proliferative effect on cancer cells by creating an apoptotic trigger. Interestingly, it also induces protective autophagy in some cancerous cell lines and is less cytotoxic compared to other widely accepted chemotherapeutic agents. This provides an edge with the perception of limited toxicity to normal cells. This mini-review precisely focuses on the studies performed to identify the mechanism of anticancer activity of β-elemene against cancer cells of multiple origin. In accordance to the evaluation made by the studies mentioned, apoptosis has been identified to be most possible reason behind anticancer activity exerted by β-elemene against a variety of cancer cell lines. Cell cycle arrest and necrosis have been credited to be possible alternate mechanisms for the anticancer effect of β-elemene.
Disaggregate Wealth and Aggregate Consumption: an Investigation of Empirical Relationships for the G7

To date, testing for wealth effects in consumption has mainly used aggregate wealth definitions, and/or is on a single-country basis. This study breaks new ground by analysing disaggregated wealth in consumption functions for G7 countries. Contrary to other empirical work, illiquid financial wealth, (securities, pensions and mortgage debt), tends to be a more significant long-run determinant of consumption than liquid financial wealth. We suggest that this pattern reflects a shift from liquidity constrained to life cycle behaviour following financial liberalisation. Results were robust in SURE analysis, tested in a nested manner, using varying definition of liquid assets and using non-property income instead of personal disposable income. Wald tests indicate similar long-run behaviour for all EU countries including the UK.
Structured Type 1 Diabetes Education Delivered Within Routine Care

OBJECTIVE To determine whether improvements in glycemic control and diabetes-specific quality of life (QoL) scores reported in research studies for the type 1 diabetes structured education program Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating (DAFNE) are also found when the intervention is delivered within routine U.K. health care. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Before and after evaluation of DAFNE to assess impact on glycemic control and QoL among 262 adults with type 1 diabetes. RESULTS There were significant improvements in HbA1c from baseline to 6 and 12 months (from 9.1 to 8.6 and 8.8%, respectively) in a subgroup with suboptimal control. QoL was significantly improved by 3 months and maintained at both follow-up points. CONCLUSIONS Longer-term improved glycemic control and QoL is achievable among adults with type 1 diabetes through delivery of structured education in routine care, albeit with smaller effect sizes than reported in trials.
Modifying spiking precision in conductance-based neuronal models

The temporal precision of a neuron's spiking can be characterized by calculating its “jitter,” defined as the standard deviation of the timing of individual spikes in response to repeated presentations of a stimulus. Sub-millisecond jitters have been measured for neurons in a variety of experimental systems and appear to be functionally important in some instances. We have investigated how modifying a neuron's maximal conductances affects jitter using the leaky integrate-and-fire (LIF) model and an eight-conductance Hodgkin-Huxley type (HH8) model. We observed that jitter can be largely understood in the LIF model in terms of the neuron's filtering properties. In the HH8 model we found the role of individual conductances in determining jitter to be complicated and dependent on the model's spiking properties. Distinct behaviors were observed for populations with slow (<11.5 Hz) and fast (>11.5 Hz) spike rates and appear to be related to differences in a particular channel's activity at times just before spiking occurs.
Role of Transcription Factors in Steatohepatitis and Hypertension after Ethanol: The Epicenter of Metabolism

Chronic alcohol consumption induces multi-organ damage, including alcoholic liver disease (ALD), pancreatitis and hypertension. Ethanol and ethanol metabolic products play a significant role in the manifestation of its toxicity. Ethanol metabolizes to acetaldehyde and produces reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) by cytosolic alcohol dehydrogenase. Ethanol metabolism mediated by cytochrome-P450 2E1 causes oxidative stress due to increased production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Acetaldehyde, increased redox cellular state and ROS activate transcription factors, which in turn activate genes for lipid biosynthesis and offer protection of hepatocytes from alcohol toxicity. Sterol regulatory element binding proteins (SREBPs) and peroxisome proliferator activated-receptors (PPARs) are two key lipogenic transcription factors implicated in the development of fatty liver in alcoholic and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. SREBP-1 is activated in the livers of chronic ethanol abusers. An increase in ROS activates nuclear factor erythroid-2-related factor-2 (Nrf2) and hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) to provide protection to hepatocytes from ethanol toxicity. Under ethanol exposure, due to increased gut permeability, there is release of gram-negative bacteria-derived lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from intestine causing activation of immune response. In addition, the metabolic product, acetaldehyde, modifies the proteins in hepatocyte, which become antigens inviting auto-immune response. LPS activates macrophages, especially the liver resident macrophages, Kupffer cells. These Kupffer cells and circulating macrophages secrete various cytokines. The level of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα), interleukin-1beta (IL-1β), IL-6, IL-8 and IL-12 have been found elevated among chronic alcoholics. In addition to elevation of these cytokines, the peripheral iron (Fe2+) is also mobilized. An increased level of hepatic iron has been observed among alcoholics. Increased ROS, IL-1β, acetaldehyde, and increased hepatic iron, all activate nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) transcription factor. Resolution of increased reactive oxygen species requires increased expression of genes responsible for dismutation of increased ROS which is partially achieved by IL-6 mediated activation of signal transducers and activators of transcription 3 (STAT3). In addition to these transcription factors, activator protein-1 may also be activated in hepatocytes due to its association with resolution of increased ROS. These transcription factors are central to alcohol-mediated hepatotoxicity.
An Empirical Study on the Relation between Dependency Neighborhoods and Failures

Changing source code in large software systems is complex and requires a good understanding of dependencies between software components. Modification to components with little regard to dependencies may have an adverse impact on the quality of the latter, i.e., increase their risk to fail. We conduct an empirical study to understand the relationship between the quality of components and the characteristics of their dependencies such as their frequency of change, their complexity, number of past failures and the like. Our study has been conducted on two large software systems: Microsoft VISTA and ECLIPSE. Our results show that components that have outgoing dependencies to components with higher object-oriented complexity tend to have fewer field failures for VISTA, but the opposite relation holds for ECLIPSE. Likewise, other notable observations have been made through our study that (a) confirm that certain characteristics of components increase the risk of their dependencies to fail and (b) some of the characteristics are project specific while some were also found to be common. We expect that such results can be leveraged for use to provide new directions for research in defect prediction, test prioritization and related research fields that utilize code dependencies in their empirical analysis. Additionally, these results provide insights to engineers on the potential reliability impacts of new component dependencies based upon the characteristics of the component.
Experimental study on heat transfer and rheological characteristics of hybrid nanofluids for cooling applications

The enhancement of heat transfer and rheological behaviour of hybrid nanofluids (HyNF) flowing through the tubular heat exchanger system were experimentally analysed. In this study, the effects of Nusselt number, Peclet number, Reynolds number, heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop were investigated for various volume concentrations of copper-titania hybrid nanocomposite (HyNC). The experiments were performed for various HyNC volume concentrations in the base fluid (cold water) ranging from 0.1% to 1.0%. The experimental results showed that the convective heat transfer coefficient of the HyNF increased by 59.3% for the particular volume concentration of 0.7% of HyNC. The friction factor and pressure drop of HyNF for 1.0% volume concentration were expected to be 0.8% and 5.4%, respectively. This implies for experiencing penalty in the pumping capacity. The experimental measurements, on the other hand, were validated using a newly developed correlation. For all the volume concentrations of HyNF, the deviation obtained for the experimental data and the prediction was observed to be +8% and −8%, respectively. The present correlation has been found to be in good agreement with the experimental data, which can be helpful in predicting the heat transfer characteristics of the HyNF.
CYP2C19 Progress Curve Analysis and Mechanism-Based Inactivation by Three Methylenedioxyphenyl Compounds

Several in vitro criteria were used to assess whether three methylenedioxyphenyl (MDP) compounds, the isoquinoline alkaloids bulbocapnine, canadine, and protopine, are mechanism-based inactivators of CYP2C19. The recently reported fluorometric CYP2C19 progress curve analysis approach was applied first to determine whether these alkaloids demonstrate time-dependent inhibition. In this experiment, bulbocapnine, canadine, and protopine displayed time dependence and saturation in their inactivation kinetics with KI and kinact values of 72.4 ± 14.7 μM and 0.38 ± 0.036 min−1, 2.1 ± 0.63 μM and 0.18 ± 0.015 min−1, and 7.1 ± 2.3 μM and 0.24 ± 0.021 min−1, respectively. Additional studies were performed to determine whether other specific criteria for mechanism-based inactivation were fulfilled: NADPH dependence, irreversibility, and involvement of a catalytic step in the enzyme inactivation. CYP2C19 activity was not significantly restored by dialysis when it had been inactivated by the alkaloids in the presence of a NADPH-regenerating system, and a metabolic-intermediate complex-associated increase in absorbance at approximately 455 nm was observed. In conclusion, the CYP2C19 progress curve analysis method revealed time-dependent inhibition by these alkaloids, and additional experiments confirmed its quasi-irreversible nature. This study revealed that the CYP2C19 progress curve analysis method is useful for identifying novel mechanism-based inactivators and yields a wealth of information in one run. The alkaloids bulbocapnine, canadine, and protopine, present in herbal medicines, are new mechanism-based inactivators and the first MDP compounds exhibiting quasi-irreversible inactivation of CYP2C19.
Facing an uncertain future: how forest and people can adapt to climate change

The most prominent international responses to climate change focus on mitigation (reducing the accumulation of greenhouse gases) rather than adaptation (reducing the vulnerability of societies and ecosystems). However, with some degree of climate change now recognised as inevitable, adaptation is gaining importance in the policy arena. Moreover, it is one of the four building blocks of the 2-year Bali Action Plan-ongoing negotiations towards an international framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. This report presents the case for adaptation for forests (reducing the impacts of climate change on forests and their ecosystem services) and forests for adaptation (using forests to help local people and society in general to adapt to inevitable changes). Linking adaptation and tropical forests are a new frontier: adaptation is a new arena for tropical foresters, and tropical forests are a new arena for adaptation specialists. Tropical forest management now needs to be adapted in a way that will smooth the transition through climate change. The goal may be to maintain important ecosystems or species-where adaptation measures will aim at resisting the effects of climate change. Alternatively, the goal may be to maintain the ecosystem services provided by the forest-where adaptation measures will aim at helping the forest to 'evolve' so that it does the same job in the new climate. The huge diversity of tropical forests and local situations means that a vast array of adaptation measures is required, from which the most appropriate ones can be selected for each situation. Moreover, because the extent of future climate change is unknown, more than one measure is advisable in each case and implementation must be flexible to the changing situation. Policies in the forest, climate change and other sectors need to address these issues and be integrated with each other-such a cross-sectoral approach is essential if the benefits derived in one area are not to be lost or counteracted in another. To date, tropical forests have been given a minor role in adaptation strategies, even in most of the National Adaptation Programmes of Action. Moreover, the institutions involved in policy development and implementation themselves need to change, to be in a position to enforce the new policies, and to become flexible and able to learn in the context of dynamic human and environmental systems. And all this needs to be done at all levels from the local community to the national government and the international community- again the emphasis is on integration, without which actions at different scales risk cancelling each other out. The report looks at the two aspects in turn-adaptation for tropical forests, and tropical forests for adaptation-and includes an appendix on climate scenarios, concepts, and international policies and funds. (Resume d'auteur)
Entry into the Thymic Microenvironment Triggers Notch Activation in the Earliest Migrant T Cell Progenitors 1

Interactions between T cell precursors and thymic stromal cells are essential during thymocyte development. However, the role of the thymus in initial commitment of lymphoid progenitors to the T lineage remains controversial, with data providing evidence for both extra- and intrathymic commitment mechanisms. In this context, it is clear that Notch1 is an important mediator during initiation of T cell development. Here we have analyzed the mechanisms regulating Notch activation in lymphoid precursors at extrathymic sites and in the thymus, including stages representing the first wave of embryonic thymus colonization on embryonic day 12 of gestation. We show that Notch activation in migrant lymphoid precursors requires entry into the thymic microenvironment where they are exposed to Notch ligands expressed by immature thymic epithelial cells. Moreover, continued Notch signaling in such precursors requires sustained interactions with Notch ligands. Collectively, these findings suggest a role for Notch in an intrathymic mechanism of T cell lineage commitment involving sustained interactions with Notch ligand bearing thymic epithelium.
Exact Analysis of Frequency Splitting Phenomena of Contactless Power Transfer Systems

Frequency splitting phenomena are investigated systematically by circuit theory in a series-tuned contactless power transfer (CPT) system. First, in a symmetrical CPT system, the splitting equation is defined and the key frequency splitting characteristics are described by the trough and the ridge equations in a complete fashion. The even and the odd splitting frequencies are exactly two roots of the ridge equation; the splitting coupling is determined theoretically when the even and odd splitting frequencies merge together. Second, in an unsymmetrical CPT system, the idea of the trough and the ridge equation is exploited to find exactly the splitting coupling. Next, the relationship between frequency bifurcation and splitting is elucidated; and a zero-phase control method is suggested to track the splitting frequency when the coupling changes in the splitting region. Finally, the theoretical results are validated by a 10-W prototype with planar spiral coils.
Prospective study of the hemodynamic behavior of ophthalmic arteries in postpartum preeclamptic women: A doppler evaluation

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate the hemodynamic behavior of the ophthalmic artery by means of the Doppler ultrasound, in postpartum preeclamptic women. It was an observational prospective study with 44 postpartum preeclamptic women (group 1) and 49 postpartum normal women with normal blood pressure and with no previous illnesses known (group 2). All the pregnant women had a Doppler ultrasound exam of the ophthalmic artery in the immediate puerperium, that is, 10 days for the delivery (time 1). Group 1 was then followed prospectively, 26 patients of which returned to the last test in the remote puerperium in 45 days (time 2) and 29 patients returned to the last test in the remote puerperium in 90 days (time 3). All these women had preeclampsia before the delivery. The resistance index (RI), pulsatility index (PI), peak systolic velocity (PSV), end diastolic flow velocity (EDV), second peak of systolic velocity (P2), and the peak ratio (PR) were calculated. The data obtained are expressed in average and standard deviation, by using the Lilliefors test for normality. The average of the Doppler indexes in groups 1 and 2 was compared by means of test t of the student. Group 1 was analyzed separately, comparing the three times, using the test of ANOVA for repetitive measures and Tukey post-hoc range test. In the “Results” section, the statically meaningful differences in RI, PI, P2, RPV, and EDV (p < 0.0001, p < 0.0001, p < 0.0009, p < 0.0001, p < 0.0028) were found in the immediate puerperium of group 1 in relation to group 2, indicating the persistence of hyperperfusion and orbital vasodilatation in the immediate postpartum period in patients who had complicated pregnancies previously due to preeclampsia. In the evolutionary analysis of group 1, comparing the Doppler indexes between the immediate and late puerperium, statistically relevant differences between the rates of RI, P2, and PR (p < 0,01) were observed, showing a raise of RI and reduction of P2 and PR, and also a tendency of normalization of these rates in the late puerperium. When the same indexes were compared (PI, P2, and PR) now in times 2 and 3, the remote, and late puerperium, respectively, there were no significant differences, indicating the stabilization of these indexes since the 45th day of the puerperium. Within 90 days, RI, PI, and PR are not stabilized yet in relation to the control, even though there is a tendency of these indexes to reach the control. In conclusion, there was persistence of signs of vasodilatation and hyperperfusion of the orbital territory, represented by Doppler of the ophthalmic artery in the immediate puerperium of preeclamptic women. A tendency of normalization of the orbital hemodynamic standard in the pregnant women from the period of the late puerperium was observed, but there was no complete normalization of the vascular pattern on the remote postpartum.