Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Translational efficiency of phi X174 lysis gene E is unaffected by upstream translation of the overlapping gene D reading frame

The lysis gene E of bacteriophage phi X174 is entirely embedded in gene D. Expression studies of genes D and E in Escherichia coli minicells and lysis times obtained in the presence or absence of D translation showed that the simultaneous expression of gene D does not affect protein E production. Thus, unlike other overlapping gene pairs, gene E expression is independent from the upstream translation of gene D. lacZ fusion studies and primer extension inhibition analysis (toeprinting) revealed an intrinsically weak E ribosome-binding site, which seems to be the major factor determining the low expression rate of the gene and thus proper scheduling of cell lysis.
EWMA Control Chart Performance with Estimated Parameters under Non‐normality

Exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) control charts can be designed to detect shifts in the underlying process parameters quickly while enjoying robustness to non‐normality. Past studies have shown that performance of various EWMA control charts can be adversely affected when parameters are estimated or observations do not follow a normal distribution. To the best of our knowledge, simultaneous effect of parameter estimation and non‐normality has not been studied so far. In this paper, a Markov chain approach is used to model and evaluate performance of EWMA control charts when parameter estimation is subject to non‐normality using skewed and heavy‐tailed symmetric distributions. Using standard deviation of the run length (SDRL), average run length (ARL), and percentiles of run lengths for various phase I sample sizes, we show that larger phase I sample sizes do not necessarily lead to a better performance for non‐normal observations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Walsh and Hoyt’s Clinical Neuro-Ophthalmology.

Walsh and Hoyt’s Clinical Neuro-Ophthalmology. 5th ed. Vols 1 and 2. By Neil R Miller, Nancy J Newman. Pp 1116 each. £130 each. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1998. ISBN 0-683-302302 (Vol 1); 0-683-302310 (Vol 2). The fifth edition of Walsh and Hoyt’s Clinical Neuro-Ophthalmology is a very extensive piece of work that consists of five volumes and involves over 70 authors. It is the largest textbook in neuro-ophthalmology and is considered to be the reference standard in this area with appeal not only to ophthalmologists but also to neurologists and neurosurgeons. The fourth edition took two authors 14 years to complete and suffered as a result by quickly becoming out of date. To avoid this, the present edition has multiple authors and was completed in the remarkably short time of two …
Use of the Internet as a resource of health information by patients: a clinic-based study in the Indian population.

BACKGROUND There is abundant literature documenting that the Internet is fast changing the way patients access health-related information, learn about their illnesses, and make healthcare-related decisions. However, there is hardly any data regarding Indian patients accessing health-related information available on the Internet. AIMS To determine patients' use of the Internet as a medical information resource and to determine their experience, their perceptions of the quality and reliability of the information available. SETTING The study was carried out in the outpatient clinic of an urban, tertiary care private sector hospital in November 2004. MATERIAL AND METHODS Our survey instrument consisted of an anonymous single-page questionnaire. Eight hundred and eighty consecutive adults aged 18-70 years, attending the general outpatient clinic of a tertiary care private hospital completed the questionnaire. RESULTS Two hundred and eighty-one (32%) patients acknowledged surfing the Internet, while 75% (212/281) of them acknowledged that they accessed health-related information. Amongst those who accessed the Internet, 130 (61%) found the information on the net to be of average quality. Almost all patients (211/212) felt that the information served the purpose and 95% (201/212) also found also found it to be reliable. Only 7% (21/281) patients were aware of the presence of any quality standards pertaining to health information sites and none could name any accreditation standard. CONCLUSIONS One in four patients attending the private set-up is using the Internet for health information. A majority of patients find the information on the net reliable and of good quality. Awareness about health information quality standards is a rarity.
Acupuncture for Nasal Congestion: A Prospective, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Pilot Study

Background Nasal congestion is one of the most common complaints dealt with in otorhinolaryngology. Side effects of decongestants are frequently seen in patients with chronic nasal congestion. This leads to an increasing demand of alternative treatments such as acupuncture. Future studies on acupuncture should aim at objectifying effects by both physical measuring and double blinding. Therefore, we were interested in whether these effects can potentially be measured as increase in nasal airflow (NAF) in ventus (“wind”) disease of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Methods Twenty-four patients with a history of nasal congestion due to hypertrophic inferior turbinates or chronic sinusitis without polyposis were additionally diagnosed according to the Heidelberg model of TCM. They were asked to score the severity of their nasal congestion on a visual analog scale (VAS). The acupuncturist was blinded according to the Heidelberg blinding assay. NAF was measured by using active anterior rhinomanometry (ARM). Specific verum acupoints according to the Chinese medical diagnosis were tested against nonspecific control acupoints. VAS and NAF were scored and measured before and 15 and 30 minutes after acupuncture. Results Control acupuncture showed a significant improvement in VAS and a deterioration of NAF. Verum acupuncture showed highly significant improvements in VAS and NAF. In addition, verum acupuncture improved NAF and VAS significantly over time. Conclusion Our control and verum acupoints fulfill the condition of a control and verum treatment, respectively. Measuring NAF by RRM and scoring VAS are possible and reflect acupuncture effects in vivo.
Physically-based simulation of twilight phenomena

We present a physically-based approach to compute the colors of the sky during the twilight period before sunrise and after sunset. The simulation is based on the theory of light scattering by small particles. A realistic atmosphere model is assumed, consisting of air molecules, aerosols, and water. Air density, aerosols, and relative humidity vary with altitude. In addition, the aerosol component varies in composition and particle-size distribution. This allows us to realistically simulate twilight phenomena for a wide range of different climate conditions. Besides considering multiple Rayleigh and Mie scattering, we take into account wavelength-dependent refraction of direct sunlight as well as the shadow of the Earth. Incorporating several optimizations into the radiative transfer simulation, a photo-realistic hemispherical twilight sky is computed in less than two hours on a conventional PC. The resulting radiometric data is useful, for instance, for high-dynamic range environment mapping, outdoor global illumination calculations, mesopic vision research and optical aerosol load probing.
Optimization Integrator for Large Time Steps

Practical time steps in today's state-of-the-art simulators typically rely on Newton's method to solve large systems of nonlinear equations. In practice, this works well for small time steps but is unreliable at large time steps at or near the frame rate, particularly for difficult or stiff simulations. We show that recasting backward Euler as a minimization problem allows Newton's method to be stabilized by standard optimization techniques with some novel improvements of our own. The resulting solver is capable of solving even the toughest simulations at the 24Hz frame rate and beyond. We show how simple collisions can be incorporated directly into the solver through constrained minimization without sacrificing efficiency. We also present novel penalty collision formulations for self collisions and collisions against scripted bodies designed for the unique demands of this solver. Finally, we show that these techniques improve the behavior of Material Point Method (MPM) simulations by recasting it as an optimization problem.
N-Acetyl Cysteine May Support Dopamine Neurons in Parkinson's Disease: Preliminary Clinical and Cell Line Data

Backgound The purpose of this study was to assess the biological and clinical effects of n-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods The overarching goal of this pilot study was to generate additional data about potentially protective properties of NAC in PD, using an in vitro and in vivo approach. In preparation for the clinical study we performed a cell tissue culture study with human embryonic stem cell (hESC)-derived midbrain dopamine (mDA) neurons that were treated with rotenone as a model for PD. The primary outcome in the cell tissue cultures was the number of cells that survived the insult with the neurotoxin rotenone. In the clinical study, patients continued their standard of care and were randomized to receive either daily NAC or were a waitlist control. Patients were evaluated before and after 3 months of receiving the NAC with DaTscan to measure dopamine transporter (DAT) binding and the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) to measure clinical symptoms. Results The cell line study showed that NAC exposure resulted in significantly more mDA neurons surviving after exposure to rotenone compared to no NAC, consistent with the protective effects of NAC previously observed. The clinical study showed significantly increased DAT binding in the caudate and putamen (mean increase ranging from 4.4% to 7.8%; p<0.05 for all values) in the PD group treated with NAC, and no measurable changes in the control group. UPDRS scores were also significantly improved in the NAC group (mean improvement of 12.9%, p = 0.01). Conclusions The results of this preliminary study demonstrate for the first time a potential direct effect of NAC on the dopamine system in PD patients, and this observation may be associated with positive clinical effects. A large-scale clinical trial to test the therapeutic efficacy of NAC in this population and to better elucidate the mechanism of action is warranted. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02445651
Conjugated Quantum Dots Inhibit the Amyloid β (1–42) Fibrillation Process

Nanoparticles have enormous potential in diagnostic and therapeutic studies. We have demonstrated that the amyloid beta mixed with and conjugated to dihydrolipoic acid- (DHLA) capped CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) of size approximately 2.5 nm can be used to reduce the fibrillation process. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used as tools for analysis of fibrillation. There is a significant change in morphology of fibrils when amyloid β (1–42) (Aβ (1–42)) is mixed or conjugated to the QDs. The length and the width of the fibrils vary under modified conditions. Thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence supports the decrease in fibril formation in presence of DHLA-capped QDs.
Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research Open Access Asymmetry and Structural System Analysis of the Proximal Femur Meta-epiphysis: Osteoarticular Anatomical Pathology

Background: The human femur is commonly considered as a subsystem of the locomotor apparatus with four conspicuous levels of organization. This phenomenon is the result of the evolution of the locomotor apparatus, which encompasses both constitutional and individual variability. The work therein reported, therefore, underlies the significance of observing anatomical system analysis of the proximal femur meta-epiphysis in normal conditions, according to the anatomic positioning with respect to the right or left side of the body, and the presence of system asymmetry in the meta-epiphysis structure, thus indicating structural and functional asymmetry.
Predictability or adaptivity? Designing robot handoffs modeled from trained dogs and people

One goal of assistive robotics is to design interactive robots that can help disabled people with tasks such as fetching objects. When people do this task, they coordinate their movements closely with receivers. We investigated how a robot should fetch and give household objects to a person. To develop a model for the robot, we first studied trained dogs and person-to-person handoffs. Our findings suggest two models of handoff that differ in their predictability and adaptivity.
Relevance of Micro-leakage to Orthodontic Bonding - a Review

As it is seen, by passing the evolutionary process of banding of orthodontic attachments to the bonding ones, orthodontics have witnessed many developments, such as application of new adhesives, optimized base designs, new bracket materials, curing methods and more efficient primers. The studies often address the morphological, micro-leakage, and shear bond tests to evaluate bond efficacy. Among studies endeavored to develop the bond strength of brackets, some observed the reduction of micro-leakage of bracket-adhesive and enamel-adhesive interfaces. Owing to the importance of micro-leakage in orthodontics, this study aimed at reviewing the micro-leakage values directly relevant to the enamel decay and debonding of the brackets. To reach the best bond strength, the researchers tried to design different studies to evaluate the effect of variables and prevent any possible side effects in clinical situations. It is noticed that most studies have mainly focused on adhesives, enamel preparation and methods of curing which are discussed in this review. The literature was reviewed by searching databases, using micro-leakage and orthodontic bonding as the keywords . Having found the relevant studies, the researchers entered them into the database. After reviewing numerous studies conducted in this field, the type of adhesive or curing method was not found to have determinative role in the value of micro-leakage although more standardized studies are needed.
Pyrazine odour makes visually conspicuous prey aversive

Unpalatable insects frequently adopt multimodal signals to ward off predators, incorporating sounds and odours into their colourful displays. Pyrazine is an odour commonly used in insect warning displays, and has previously been shown to elicit unlearned biases against common warning colours, e.g. yellow and red in naive predators. We designed two experiments to test for similar effects of pyrazine on the conspicuousness of prey, perhaps the most ubiquitous aspect of aposematic coloration. In the first experiment, we offered predators (Gallus gallus domesticus) a choice between conspicuous crumbs and cryptic crumbs in the presence or absence of pyrazine. In the second experiment, we manipulated the birds' experience of conspicuous prey during an initial training phase. Only in the presence of pyrazine did birds show a bias against conspicuously coloured food, and this occurred whether or not they had previously experienced food that contrasted with the background. This emergent behaviour relied upon the visual and odorous signal components being presented together. These unlearned, yet hidden, responses against conspicuousness demonstrate that there are initial benefits to prey being conspicuous when the multimodal nature of warning signals is accounted for.
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Event-Driven Multi-Agent Decision Processes

The incorporation of macro-actions (temporally extended actions) into multi-agent decision problems has the potential to address the curse of dimensionality associated with such decision problems. Since macro-actions last for stochastic durations, multiple agents executing decentralized policies in cooperative environments must act asynchronously. We present an algorithm that modifies generalized advantage estimation for temporally extended actions, allowing a state-of-the-art policy optimization algorithm to optimize policies in Dec-POMDPs in which agents act asynchronously. We show that our algorithm is capable of learning optimal policies in two cooperative domains, one involving real-time bus holding control and one involving wildfire fighting with unmanned aircraft. Our algorithm works by framing problems as “event-driven decision processes,” which are scenarios in which the sequence and timing of actions and events are random and governed by an underlying stochastic process. In addition to optimizing policies with continuous state and action spaces, our algorithm also facilitates the use of event-driven simulators, which do not require time to be discretized into time-steps. We demonstrate the benefit of using event-driven simulation in the context of multiple agents taking asynchronous actions. We show that fixed time-step simulation risks obfuscating the sequence in which closely separated events occur, adversely affecting the policies learned. In addition, we show that arbitrarily shrinking the time-step scales poorly with the number of agents.
Finest power efficient steering Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks for surveillance

In the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), limited energy resource is one of the limitations of the wireless sensor nodes. For the energy efficient packet transmission in the WSNs, we introduce a new algorithm called Finest Energy Efficient Routing (FEER) Algorithm. In this algorithm, the energy efficiency is achieved through the comparison of the energy of the neighbor nodes of the source. Initially, the neighbor nodes are taken as the forwarder list. Nodes in the forwarder list must have at least the finest energy for the energy efficient transmission. To minimize the energy consumption by all nodes, nodes in the forwarder list are selected and compared. The routing protocol used in the proposed algorithm is AODV. The main objectives of the proposed algorithm are to minimize the energy consumption, to improve the network throughput and to minimize the network depth. The performance of FEER is simulated in the NS2 and it has been compared with the other protocols for WSNs. Simulation results show that FEER performs better than the other protocols in terms of energy consumption and network throughput.
Investigating the association between valence and elevation with an implicit association task that requires upward and downward responding

In three experiments (total N = 96), we investigated the origins of effects of associations between affective valence and spatial elevation (or verti-cality). To that end, we used a congruence measure. We used spatial and affective stimuli, like the words "up" and "happy". Spatial stimuli had to be categorized as elevated or less elevated and affective stimuli as positive or negative. Critically, in congruent conditions, associated spatial and affective stimuli required the same response and less associated stimuli required different responses, whereas in incongruent conditions, associated spatial and affective stimuli required different responses, but less associated stimuli required the same response. The results supported the assumption that valence-elevation associations exist in semantic memory: faster responses in congruent than incongruent conditions were observed with (I) words (Experiments 1 and 2), (II) pictures and words (Experiment 3), and (III) increased as a function of the centrality of the spatial meaning for the spatial words (Experiments 1 vs. 2). We discuss the implications of our results for the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
Structure Structural Characteristics of Rabbit Hair

Key morphological features of rabbit hair were investigated and compared with these of cashmere fiber. When the rabbit fiber diameter was about 10um, the angle of scale edge to the fiber axis was small. When the fiber diameter was around 40um, scale edges inclined larger angles to the axis. In addition, no overlapping and checks along the scale edges were observed in such coarse hair. The rabbit fiber diameters were normally between 10um and 20um and the scales of these fibers were long strip shaped with sharp tip at the middle. There was obvious boundary in the cashmere fiber after dyeing. One side is far darker than the other. On the contrast, this bilateral structure was not observed in the rabbit hair samples. The cortical cells presented in an uneven distribution in the rabbit hair. The mean ratio of medulla (filled with plenty of air) to fiber diameter was about 40%, which provide excellent thermal insulation to the rabbit hair assemblies.
Optimization Approaches for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Drone

The fast and cost-efficient home delivery of goods ordered online is logistically challenging. Many companies are looking for new ways to cross the last mile to their customers. One technology-enabled opportunity that recently has received much attention is the use of drones to support deliveries. An innovative last-mile delivery concept in which a truck collaborates with a drone to make deliveries gives rise to a new variant of the traveling salesman problem TSP that we call the TSP with drone. In this paper, we model this problem as an integer program and develop several fast route-first, cluster-second heuristics based on local search and dynamic programming. We prove worst-case approximation ratios for the heuristics and test their performance by comparing the solutions to the optimal solutions for small instances. In addition, we apply our heuristics to several artificial instances with different characteristics and sizes. Our experiments show that substantial savings are possible with this concept compared to truck-only delivery. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2017. 0791 .
Thin Filament–Based Modulation of Contractile Performance in Human Heart Failure

Background—The contribution of the sarcomere’s thin filament to the contractile dysfunction of human cardiomyopathy is not well understood. Methods and Results—We have developed techniques to isolate and functionally characterize intact (native) thin filaments obtained from failing and nonfailing human ventricular tissue. By use of in vitro motility and force assays, native thin filaments from failing ventricular tissue exhibited a 19% increase in maximal velocity but a 27% decrease in maximal contractile force compared with nonfailing myocardium. Native thin filaments isolated from human myocardium after left ventricular assist device support demonstrated a 37% increase in contractile force. Dephosphorylation of failing native thin filaments resulted in a near-normalization of thin-filament function, implying a phosphorylation-mediated mechanism. Tissue expression of the protein kinase C isoforms &agr;, &bgr;1, and &bgr;2 was increased in failing human myocardium and reduced after left ventricular assist device support. Conclusions—These novel findings demonstrate that (1) the thin filament is a key modulator of contractile performance in the failing human heart, (2) thin-filament function is restored to near normal levels after LVAD support, and (3) the alteration of thin-filament function in failing human myocardium is mediated through phosphorylation, most likely through activation of protein kinase C.