Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bond wrench testing

Very limited experience exists with bond wrench testing in the Netherlands. The research described in this paper had two main goals: to gain experience with bond wrench testing and validating this method; to explore the possibilities for quality control of bond at an early stage. The bond wrench is useful to establish bond strength in the laboratory. When loaded manually the influence of unintended horizontal forces is negligible, so that it can also be used on building sites. The result of the bond wrench tests were equal to those of the four point bending tests. Therefore, they can be regarded as the flexural bond strength. A strength versus time relationship in the shape of a photosynthesis curve was established. When specimens of an age of 24h or more are used the bond strength prediction curve gives good indication of the final bond strength. However, the prediction curve does not apply to the results found in the literature. Research has to be done to find a more general description for the strength development to make quality control possible at an early stage.
Effects of magnetite on high-frequency ground-penetrating radar

Large concentrations of magnetite in sedimentary deposits and soils with igneous parent material have been reported to affect geophysical sensor performance. We have undertaken the first systematic experimental effort to understand the effects of magnetite for ground-penetrating radar (GPR) characterization of the shallow subsurface. Laboratory experiments were conducted to study how homogeneous magnetite-sand mixtures and magnetite concentrated in layers affect the propagation behavior (velocity, attenuation) of high-frequency GPR waves and the reflection characteristics of a buried target. Important observations were that magnetite had a strong effect on signal velocity and reflection, at magnitudes comparable to what has been observed in small-scale laboratory experiments that measured electromagnetic properties of magnetite-silica mixtures. Magnetite also altered signal attenuation and affected the reflection characteristics of buried targets. Our results indicated important implications for several fields, including land mine detection, Martian exploration, engineering, and moisture mapping using satellite remote sensing and radiometers.
A Structural Approach to Selection Bias

The term “selection bias” encompasses various biases in epidemiology. We describe examples of selection bias in case-control studies (eg, inappropriate selection of controls) and cohort studies (eg, informative censoring). We argue that the causal structure underlying the bias in each example is essentially the same: conditioning on a common effect of 2 variables, one of which is either exposure or a cause of exposure and the other is either the outcome or a cause of the outcome. This structure is shared by other biases (eg, adjustment for variables affected by prior exposure). A structural classification of bias distinguishes between biases resulting from conditioning on common effects (“selection bias”) and those resulting from the existence of common causes of exposure and outcome (“confounding”). This classification also leads to a unified approach to adjust for selection bias.
Parametrized Actor-Critic Algorithms for Finite-Horizon MDPs

Due to their non-stationarity, finite-horizon Markov decision processes (FH-MDPs) have one probability transition matrix per stage. Thus the curse of dimensionality affects FH-MDPs more severely than infinite-horizon MDPs. We propose two parametrized 'actor-critic' algorithms to compute optimal policies for FH-MDPs. Both algorithms use the two-timescale stochastic approximation technique, thus simultaneously performing gradient search in the parametrized policy space (the 'actor') on a slower timescale and learning the policy gradient (the 'critic') via a faster recursion. This is in contrast to methods where critic recursions learn the cost-to-go proper. We show w.p 1 convergence to a set with the necessary condition for constrained optima. The proposed parameterization is for FH-MDPs with compact action sets, although certain exceptions can be handled. Further, a third algorithm for stochastic control of stopping time processes is presented. We explain why current policy evaluation methods do not work as critic to the proposed actor recursion. Simulation results from flow-control in communication networks attest to the performance advantages of all three algorithms.
Contemporary outcomes of conventional aortic valve replacement in 638 octogenarians: insights from an Italian Regional Cardiac Surgery Registry (RERIC).

OBJECTIVES Few data exist on contemporary outcomes after conventional aortic valve replacement (AVR) in the elderly. Accordingly, we evaluated contemporary outcomes and identified predictors of reduced survival in a large series of octogenarians undergoing AVR. METHODS The Regione Emilia Romagna Cardiac Surgery registry (RERIC) database (n = 2 6938) was queried for clinical features, hospital and mid-term outcomes of octogenarians undergoing AVR between 2003 and 2009. Predictors of hospital and mid-term mortality were identified. RESULTS The study population consisted of 638 patients. NYHA class III-IV, congestive heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, extra-cardiac arteriopathy, mostly exacerbated patients' clinical profile. Mean log-EuroSCORE was 13.0%. Overall hospital mortality and stroke rates were 4.5% and 1.3%, respectively. Other post-operative complications included renal failure (4.9%), intubation time >48 h (3.4%), complete atrio-ventricular block (4.4%). NYHA III-IV (OR = 2.7; CI 95%:1.2-6.7) and CCS III-IV (OR = 3.1; CI 95%:1.1-9.4) emerged as independent predictors of hospital mortality on multivariate analysis. At 6 years, octogenarians' survival rate was similar to the expected survival of the age- and sex-matched regional population. CCS III-IV (HR = 2.1; CI 95%:1.2-4), preoperative creatinine > 2.1 (HR = 2.8; CI 95%:1.4-5.9), extra-cardiac arteriopathy (HR = 1.5; CI 95%:1.1-2.1) and peripheral neurological dysfunction (HR = 3.8; CI 95%:1.4-10.4) emerged as independent risk factors for decreased 6 years' survival. CONCLUSIONS This study, showing that contemporary outcomes after AVR are excellent, may help to improve treatment decision-making in elderly patients with aortic valve disease.
Drug therapy of migraine.

Migraine is an episodic headache that is unilateral or bilateral, pulsating in quality, moderate to severe in intensity, and exacerbated by physical activity. Associated symptoms include nausea or vomiting, photophobia, and phonophobia. The disorder is classified as migraine with aura (previously called classic migraine) and migraine without aura (previously called common migraine), according to the presence or absence, respectively, of premonitory neurologic symptoms1. The pathophysiology of migraine is clearly related to disordered brain physiology, although neither the details nor the cause is known. The positive (stimulative) followed by negative (suppressive) neurologic symptoms of the aura and the slow spread .
On Nonnegative Moore-Penrose Inverses of Perturbed Matrices

Nonnegativity of the Moore-Penrose inverse of a perturbation of the form is considered when . Using a generalized version of the Sherman-Morrison-Woodbury formula, conditions for to be nonnegative are derived. Applications of the results are presented briefly. Iterative versions of the results are also studied.
VLSI implementation of a high performance and low power 32-bit multiply-accumulate unit

A high performance and low power 32-bit multiply-accumulate unit (MAC) is described in this paper. The fast mixed length-encoding scheme used in the MAC leverages the advantage of a 16-bit encoding scheme without adding extra delay to the faster four-stage Wallace Tree of a 12-bit encoding scheme. A mixture of static CMOS logic and complementary pass-gate logic (CPL) was used to achieve the high speed and still meet the low power goal. Several power saving techniques were also implemented in this MAC.
Evolutionary etiology of high-grade astrocytomas

Significance High-grade astrocytomas (HGAs), including glioblastomas (GBMs), are the most common human brain tumors, and they remain fatal with no effective treatment. The most prevalent form, primary GBM, presents clinically as advanced disease, thus providing no access to or understanding of early stages. We report a comprehensive study in the mouse that establishes causal relationships and an evolutionary etiology in HGA development. Events yielding disease, both engineered and spontaneous, indicate grade-specific roles culminating in the development of GBMs with characteristics of primary GBMs, including molecular alignment with the mesenchymal subclass, asymptomatic early disease, and rapid emergence of high-grade aggressive cancer. These genetically engineered models provide a path to basic understanding of disease etiology and a window into diagnostic and therapeutic discovery. Glioblastoma (GBM), the most common brain malignancy, remains fatal with no effective treatment. Analyses of common aberrations in GBM suggest major regulatory pathways associated with disease etiology. However, 90% of GBMs are diagnosed at an advanced stage (primary GBMs), providing no access to early disease stages for assessing disease progression events. As such, both understanding of disease mechanisms and the development of biomarkers and therapeutics for effective disease management are limited. Here, we describe an adult-inducible astrocyte-specific system in genetically engineered mice that queries causation in disease evolution of regulatory networks perturbed in human GBM. Events yielding disease, both engineered and spontaneous, indicate ordered grade-specific perturbations that yield high-grade astrocytomas (anaplastic astrocytomas and GBMs). Impaired retinoblastoma protein RB tumor suppression yields grade II histopathology. Additional activation of v-Ki-ras2 Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog (KRAS) network drives progression to grade III disease, and further inactivation of phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) yields GBM. Spontaneous missense mutation of tumor suppressor Trp53 arises subsequent to KRAS activation, but before grade III progression. The stochastic appearance of mutations identical to those observed in humans, particularly the same spectrum of p53 amino acid changes, supports the validity of engineered lesions and the ensuing interpretations of etiology. Absence of isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) mutation, asymptomatic low grade disease, and rapid emergence of GBM combined with a mesenchymal transcriptome signature reflect characteristics of primary GBM and provide insight into causal relationships.
Inhibition of Autophagy Suppresses Sertraline-Mediated Primary Ciliogenesis in Retinal Pigment Epithelium Cells

Primary cilia are conserved cellular organelles that regulate diverse signaling pathways. Autophagy is a complex process of cellular degradation and recycling of cytoplasmic proteins and organelles, and plays an important role in cellular homeostasis. Despite its potential importance, the role of autophagy in ciliogenesis is largely unknown. In this study, we identified sertraline as a regulator of autophagy and ciliogenesis. Sertraline, a known antidepressant, induced the growth of cilia and blocked the disassembly of cilia in htRPE cells. Following treatment of sertraline, there was an increase in the number of cells with autophagic puncta and LC3 protein conversion. In addition, both a decrease of ATG5 expression and the treatment of an autophagy inhibitor resulted in the suppression of the sertraline-induced activation of autophagy in htRPE cells. Interestingly, we found that genetic and chemical inhibition of autophagy attenuated the growth of primary cilia in htRPE cells. Taken together, our results suggest that the inhibition of autophagy suppresses sertraline-induced ciliogenesis.
ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITIES OF PLANT EXTRACTS COMBINED WITH ANTIBIOTIC DRUGS ON CLINICAL ESCHERICHIA COLI ISOLATED FROM URINARY TRACT INFECTION

Urinary tract infections are the most common pathogenic infections especially increasing resistance to antibiotic drugs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the antibacterial activities of natural extracts against pathogenic E.coli causing urinary tract infections. A Total 130 urine samples were collected from patients examinated for urinary tract infection in Zagazig University hospitals , Urology Department, Egypt. A positive bacterial growth on CLED, MacConkey's agar and nutrient agar was detected. E. coli was the most predominant pathogen causing urinary tract infection with ratio 43.9 % . Ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin and norfloxacin were the best antibiotics used against E.coli isolates. Clove, ginger (dry , fresh) , peppermint , spearmint and thyme alcoholic extracts were the most effective plant extracts against selected isolates of E.coli. Combination between clove alcoholic extract and antibiotics as gentamicin , levofloxacin , amikacin and norfloxacin increase the synergistic effect of antibiotics against selected E.coli isolates. By 1 HNMR , IR analysis the purified effective compound in clove alcoholic extract was identified as eugenol. INTRODUCTION Infection of the urinary tract (UTI) is the second most common type of infection in the body. There are an estimated 150 million urinary tract infections per year worldwide (Stamm & Norrby , 2001). Urinary tract infections is a bacterial infection that affects any part of urinary tract . In most cases bacteria travel to the urethra and multiply causing kidney infection if not treated (Bethesda 2005 & David et al. , 2008). Urinary tract bacterial infection are common in women because they have a shorter urethra than men (Todar , 2007). The most common cause of UTI is Gram negative bacteria that belong to the family Enterobacteriaceae. Members of these families include E.coli , Klebsiella , Enterobacter and Proteus . Also Gram positive Stapylococcus sp. plays a role in the infection (Kunin , 1997). E. coli is one of the most common bacteria capable of causing infection in humans, particularly urinary tract infections (Iroha et al., 2009). This work aimed to investigate the most effective antibiotic against pathogenic E.coli, also detect the antibacterial activities of some natural plant extracts and also investigate the effect of combination between antibiotics and plant extract on E.coli isolates. Purified & identified the effective compound in the most effective plant extract and showing its antibacterial activities on E.coli isolates, was also investigated.
Dual-hop multi-input multi-output relay systems over spatially correlated Nakagami-m fading channels

The authors study the performance of a dual-hop plus a direct link multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication system using orthogonal space–time block codes. The system under consideration is based on the decode-and-forward relaying protocol and operates over spatially correlated Nakagami-m fading channels. The proposed analysis is generic enough to account for any MIMO correlation model either from measurements or having theoretical and analytical justification. Analytical expressions for the system end-to-end outage and average symbol error probability are obtained, while critical parameters of the MIMO channel are taken into consideration such as the angle of arrival, the antenna array configuration, the wavelength and non-isotropic scattering conditions. Various numerical and computer simulation results demonstrate the proposed mathematical analysis and the impact of the above parameters to the system performance.
Hydrogen Peroxide Induces Murine Macrophage Chemokine Gene Transcription Via Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase- and Cyclic Adenosine 5′-Monophosphate (cAMP)-Dependent Pathways: Involvement of NF-κB, Activator Protein 1, and cAMP Response Element Binding Protein1

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) has been shown to act as a second messenger that activates chemokine expression. In the present study, we investigated the mechanisms underlying this cellular regulation in the murine macrophage cell line B10R. We report that H2O2 increases mRNA expression of various chemokines, macrophage-inflammatory protein (MIP)-1α/CC chemokine ligand (CCL)3, MIP-1β/CCL4, MIP-2/CXC chemokine ligand 2, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1/CCL2, by activating the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway and the nuclear translocation of the transcription factors NF-κB, AP-1, and CREB. Blockage of the ERK pathway with specific inhibitors against mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 1/2 and ERK1/ERK2 completely abolished both the H2O2-mediated chemokine up-regulation and the activation of all NF studied. Similarly, selective inhibition of cAMP and NF-κB strongly down-regulated the induction of all chemokine transcripts as well as CREB and NF-κB activation, respectively. Of interest, we detected a significant decrease of NF-κB, AP-1, and CREB DNA binding activities by reciprocal competition for these binding sites when either specific cold oligonucleotides (NF-κB, AP-1, and CREB) or Abs against various transcription factor subunits (p50, p65, c-Fos, Jun B, c-Jun, and CREB-1) were added. These findings indicate that cooperation between ERK- and cAMP-dependent pathways seems to be required to achieve the formation of an essential transcriptional factor complex for maximal H2O2-dependent chemokine modulation. Finally, experiments performed with actinomycin D suggest that H2O2-mediated MIP-1β mRNA up-regulation results from transcriptional control, whereas that of MIP-1α, MIP-2, and monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 is due to both gene transcription activation and mRNA posttranscriptional stabilization.
VEGF Production by Ly6C+high Monocytes Contributes to Ventilator-Induced Lung Injury

Background Mechanical ventilation is a life-saving procedure for patients with acute respiratory failure, although it may cause pulmonary vascular inflammation and leakage, leading to ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI). Ly6C+high monocytes are involved in the pathogenesis of VILI. In this study, we investigated whether pulmonary infiltrated Ly6C+high monocytes produce vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and contribute to VILI. Methods A clinically relevant two-hit mouse model of VILI, with intravenous lipopolysaccharide (LPS, 20 ng/mouse) immediately before high tidal volume (HTV, 20 mL/kg) ventilation (LPS+HTV), was established. Blood gas and respiratory mechanics were measured to ensure the development of VILI. Flow cytometry and histopathological analyses revealed pulmonary infiltration of leukocytes subsets. Clodronate liposomes were intravenously injected to deplete pulmonary monocytes. In vitro endothelial cell permeability assay with sorted Ly6C+high monocytes condition media assessed the role of Ly6C+high monocytes in vascular permeability. Results LPS+HTV significantly increased total proteins, TNF-α, IL-6, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and mononuclear cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). Pulmonary Ly6C+high monocytes (SSClowCD11b+F4/80+Ly6C+high), but not Ly6C+low monocytes (SSClowCD11b+F4/80+Ly6C+low), were significantly elevated starting at 4 hr. Clodronate liposomes were able to significantly reduce pulmonary Ly6C+high monocytes, and VEGF and total protein in BALF, and restore PaO2/FiO2. There was a strong correlation between pulmonary Ly6C+high monocytes and BALF VEGF (R2 = 0.8791, p<0.001). Moreover, sorted Ly6C+high monocytes were able to produce VEGF, resulting in an increased permeability of endothelial cell monolayer in an in vitro endothelial cell permeability assay. Conclusion VEGF produced by pulmonary infiltrated Ly6C+high monocytes regulates vasculature permeability in a two-hit model of HTV-induced lung injury. Ly6C+high monocytes play an important role in the pathogenesis of VILI.
Experimental Demonstration of Quantum-Flux-Latch-Based Circuits

We propose and discuss quantum-flux-latch (QFL) based circuits for adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP) logic. The QFL-based XOR (QXOR) gate is a novel XOR gate. The circuit schematic of the QXOR is the same as that of a QFL, but QXORs operate on a different operation principle due to ac biasing. We designed and fabricated the QXOR and the half adder including a QXOR. We successfully demonstrated correct logic operations of these circuits at 4.2 K in the low-speed function test. Also, we estimated the energy dissipation of the QFL using a circuit simulator. The estimated energy dissipation was $\sim$0.2 aJ/cycle.
Focused Screening and Treatment (FSAT): A PCR-Based Strategy to Detect Malaria Parasite Carriers and Contain Drug Resistant P. falciparum, Pailin, Cambodia

Recent studies have shown that Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites in Pailin province, along the border between Thailand and Cambodia, have become resistant to artemisinin derivatives. To better define the epidemiology of P. falciparum populations and to assess the risk of the possible spread of these parasites outside Pailin, a new epidemiological tool named “Focused Screening and Treatment” (FSAT), based on active molecular detection of asymptomatic parasite carriers was introduced in 2010. Cross-sectional malariometric surveys using PCR were carried out in 20 out of 109 villages in Pailin province. Individuals detected as P. falciparum carriers were treated with atovaquone-proguanil combination plus a single dose of primaquine if the patient was non-G6PD deficient. Interviews were conducted to elicit history of cross-border travel that might contribute to the spread of artemisinin-resistant parasites. After directly observed treatment, patients were followed up and re-examined on day 7 and day 28. Among 6931 individuals screened, prevalence of P. falciparum carriers was less than 1%, of whom 96% were asymptomatic. Only 1.6% of the individuals had a travel history or plans to go outside Cambodia, with none of those tested being positive for P. falciparum. Retrospective analysis, using 2010 routine surveillance data, showed significant differences in the prevalence of asymptomatic carriers discovered by FSAT between villages classified as “high risk” and “low risk” based on malaria incidence data. All positive individuals treated and followed-up until day 28 were cured. No mutant-type allele related to atovaquone resistance was found. FSAT is a potentially useful tool to detect, treat and track clusters of asymptomatic carriers of P. falciparum along with providing valuable epidemiological information regarding cross-border movements of potential malaria parasite carriers and parasite gene flow.
Bundle branch block.

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