Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epithelial β1 integrin is required for lung branching morphogenesis and alveolarization

Integrin-dependent interactions between cells and extracellular matrix regulate lung development; however, specific roles for β1-containing integrins in individual cell types, including epithelial cells, remain incompletely understood. In this study, the functional importance of β1 integrin in lung epithelium during mouse lung development was investigated by deleting the integrin from E10.5 onwards using surfactant protein C promoter-driven Cre. These mutant mice appeared normal at birth but failed to gain weight appropriately and died by 4 months of age with severe hypoxemia. Defects in airway branching morphogenesis in association with impaired epithelial cell adhesion and migration, as well as alveolarization defects and persistent macrophage-mediated inflammation were identified. Using an inducible system to delete β1 integrin after completion of airway branching, we showed that alveolarization defects, characterized by disrupted secondary septation, abnormal alveolar epithelial cell differentiation, excessive collagen I and elastin deposition, and hypercellularity of the mesenchyme occurred independently of airway branching defects. By depleting macrophages using liposomal clodronate, we found that alveolarization defects were secondary to persistent alveolar inflammation. β1 integrin-deficient alveolar epithelial cells produced excessive monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 and reactive oxygen species, suggesting a direct role for β1 integrin in regulating alveolar homeostasis. Taken together, these studies define distinct functions of epithelial β1 integrin during both early and late lung development that affect airway branching morphogenesis, epithelial cell differentiation, alveolar septation and regulation of alveolar homeostasis.
Toxic effects of the administration of Mikania glomerata Sprengel during the gestational period of hypertensive rats

Herbal medicine is an ancient practice that has been gaining acceptance of the medical class through scientific studies that prove its effectiveness. However, its use should still be cautious. Medicinal plants have potential toxic effects not yet discovered, and may have unproven interactions with other medications. The use of drugs during pregnancy is still very dangerous and vigorously studied; however, there are few studies of herbal medicines in pregnant women. Existing studies prioritize on teratogenic or abortifacient effects. The aim of this study was to analyze the toxic effects of Mikania glomerata Sprengel administration, popularly known as “guaco” during the gestational period of hypertensive rats. For this experimental groups consisting of pregnant Wistar rats received treatments with guaco extract (1 to 2 mL). In order to analyze the possible toxic effects of guaco during pregnancy, weight gain of rats was assessed during pregnancy; reproductive performance of rats, morphological parameters, and fetal placental histology were compared. Although some parameters presented significant differences, we can conclude that changes prioritized by literature, such as toxicity, vasodilation and hypotension, have not been caused by guaco. The only fetal changes observed were due to the maternal hypertension. Some studies have reported vasodilator and hypotensive effects of guaco. However, only a few studies exist, and its actual effects remain unknown. Specific studies should be developed with higher doses of guaco for a definitive conclusion of its toxic and non-toxic effects.
Computerized tomography of children with seizure disorders.

BACKGROUND Neuro-imaging is generally considered as part of the evaluation of seizures and epilepsy. There is limited information about its usefulness in our environment. We describe the pattern of CT findings in children with seizures in our environment. METHOD We carried out a retrospective review of the computerized tomography findings in children with recurrent seizures over a one year period, November 2005 to October 2006. RESULTS During the study period, 49 infants and children had computerized tomography performed on them out of which 19 had CT done for recurrent seizures. They ranged in age from 4 months to 16 years with 13 of them being boys. Generalized tonic--clonic seizures was the most predominant seizure type, being present in 10 of the 19 (52.6%) children while simple partial seizure, myoclonic jerk and mixed seizure types were present in 2 cases each. Abnormal scan was demonstrated in 10 of the 19 children (52.6%) with 3 of them having double cerebral lesions, giving a total of 13 cerebral lesion demonstrated by the CT scan. Cerebral infarct was the most common lesion demonstrated, being present in 5 of the 13 lesions (38.5%). Others were cerebral atrophy in 4 cases (30.8%), moderate ventricular dilatation 2 (15.4%) and 1 each ofporencephalic cyst, hydrocephalus and linear skull fracture. Of the 10 children with abnormal scan, 90% of them had significant past medical history, with birth asphyxia (44.4%) and meningitis (33.3%) being the commonest significant past medical history in them. CCONCLUSION There is a high incidence of abnormal scan findings in children with seizure disorder in our environment compared to what is obtained from the developed countries. Cerebral infarct appears to be the most common abnormal CT findings in our children with seizures.
Dynamic Cluster based Privacy-Preserving Multi-Keyword Search over encrypted cloud data

Cloud computing enables the data stored on the cloud to be accessed anytime and anywhere. The data stored online must be encrypted using either symmetric key encryption or public key encryption to prevent it from unauthorized access. The end user may desire to perform dynamic updates i.e. insertion, deletion and modification of data along with the search operation on the encrypted cloud data to improve the search efficiency. The search operation is performed to access its current up-to-date version from anywhere and at anytime. In earlier search schemes the generated index was static in nature which used to support only searching. To handle the dynamic updates along with searching, the generated index is made dynamic instead of static. The proposed search scheme posses all the security requirements as proposed in the existing approaches in literature but provides searching and dynamic updates results efficiently. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed dynamic search scheme as it efficiently retrieves the documents with the updated version. Also the cost of index generation is reduced as compared to existing available searching schemes which support tree-based index.
Hipparcos Parallaxes and the Cepheid Distance Scale

Hipparcos parallaxes have recently become available for a sample of Galactic Cepheids, and we have used these new distances to calibrate the Cepheid period-luminosity (PL) relation at six wavelengths (BVIJHK). Comparing these calibrations with previously published multiwavelength PL relations we find agreement to within 0.07 ± 0.14 mag, or 4% ± 7% in distance. Unfortunately, the current parallax errors for the fundamental pulsators (ranging in signal-to-noise ratio = π/σπ from 0.3 to 5.3, at best) preclude an unambiguous interpretation of the observed differences, which may arise from a combination of true distance modulus, reddening, and/or metallicity effects. We explore these effects and discuss their implications for the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Cepheid-based extragalactic distance scale. These results suggest a range of LMC moduli between 18.44 ± 0.35 and 18.57 ± 0.11 mag; however, other effects on the Cepheid PL relation (e.g., extinction, metallicity, and statistical errors) are still as significant as any such reassessment of its zero point.
Codo: Fundraising with Conditional Donations

Crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo offer project organizers the ability to market, fund, and build a community around their campaign. While offering support and flexibility for organizers, crowdfunding sites provide very little control to donors. In this paper, we investigate the idea of empowering donors by allowing them to specify conditions for their crowdfunding contributions. We introduce a crowdfunding system, Codo, that allows donors to specify conditional donations. Codo allow donors to contribute to a campaign but hold off on their contribution until certain specific conditions are met (e.g. specific members or groups contribute a certain amount). We begin with a micro study to assess several specific conditional donations based on their comprehensibility and usage likelihood. Based on this study, we formalize conditional donations into a general grammar that captures a broad set of useful conditions. We demonstrate the feasibility of resolving conditions in our grammar by elegantly transforming conditional donations into a system of linear inequalities that are efficiently resolved using off-the-shelf linear program solvers. Finally, we designed a user-friendly crowdfunding interface that supports conditional donations for an actual fund raising campaign and assess the potential of conditional donations through this campaign. We find preliminary evidence that roughly 1 in 3 donors make conditional donations and that conditional donors donate more compared to direct donors.
Khmer Spell Checker

Khmer is the official language of Cambodia. It is a complex language. Similar to Chinese, Japanese and Thai, Khmer words are written without spaces or other word delimiters. This is a major challenge in spell checking Khmer since there is no simple way to determine word boundaries. However, it is feasible to spell check Khmer. The process of spell checking Khmer is different from the spell checking process in other languages that have word delimiters like English. In Khmer, words are constructed from root words that are made up of consonantal clusters, which can be misspelled. In order to do the spell checking, first we need to find the approximate clusters of each input clusters. We then give the possible sequences of the consonantal clusters to a hidden Markov model. The model will give the score of every sequence of consonantal clusters. Based the possible sequences and their scores, we know the word boundaries, whether or not a word is correctly spelled and some alternative words if it is misspelled.
Generic Subclass Ensemble: A Novel Approach to Ensemble Classification

Multiple classifier systems, also known as classifier ensembles, have received great attention in recent years because of their improved classification accuracy in different applications. In this paper, we propose a new general approach to ensemble classification, named generic subclass ensemble, in which each base classifier is trained with data belonging to a subset of classes, and thus discriminates among a subset of target categories. The ensemble classifiers are then fused using a combination rule. The proposed approach differs from existing methods that manipulate the target attribute, since in our approach individual classification problems are not restricted to two-class problems. We perform a series of experiments to evaluate the efficiency of the generic subclass approach on a set of benchmark datasets. Experimental results with multilayer perceptrons show that the proposed approach presents a viable alternative to the most commonly used ensemble classification approaches.
New area efficient residue-to-weighted number system converters

The residue number system is popular in high performance arithmetic applications like digital signal processing because of its carry free nature, modularity and error correcting properties. But these opportunities are eclipsed by the high area and time requirements for reverse conversion. In this regard, we present two new techniques for residue-to-weighted number system conversion. The first one is based on the popular Chinese remainder theorem. Here by evaluating the quotient the number is decoded. The second one deals with residue-to-mixed radix conversions. The arithmetic based technique replaces the conventional hardware intensive look up tables by simple adders. An OHR based high speed MRC is also presented. The mixed radix converters described are memoryless and are hardware efficient compared to conventional techniques.
Audit of oxygen prescribing before and after the introduction of a prescription chart

Oxygen, used to treat hypoxaemia, may be lethal and should therefore be considered a drug and be prescribed.1 It is, however, recognised that oxygen is poorly prescribed by doctors.2 To ensure the safe and effective delivery of oxygen the prescription should include the flow rate, the concentration, the delivery device, the duration, and the method for monitoring treatment.2 We audited the prescription of oxygen to inpatients by doctors before and after the introduction of a specific prescription chart. Junior doctors at the North West Lung Centre are given two lectures on practical aspects of oxygen delivery and prescribing at the beginning of their one year's rotation in respiratory medicine. In 1997 and 1998 the doctors were informed that an audit of their prescribing practice would take place some time during the next year. The outcome measures of …
An investigation of two chapter i teachers’ beliefs about reading and instructional practices

Abstract The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between two Chapter I teachers’ reader‐based beliefs about reading and their instructional decision‐making that took place as they planned instruction and during actual teaching episodes, as well as to identify possible constraints and opportunities that may have influenced the decision‐making process. For each participant, the researcher selected a pull‐out class (6–10 students) to observe during 10 separate Chapter I instructional sessions. During the observations, the researcher wrote field notes, audiotaped the lessons, collected relevant learning materials, and interviewed the teachers. All data were qualitatively analyzed by a research team that searched for meaningful patterns between and within the participants. Results indicated that, although the participants shared similar beliefs about reading, there was considerable variation in their instructional practices. The participants’ beliefs affected their decision‐making, how.
International Atomic Energy Agency and United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization International Centre for Theoretical Physics on the Form Factors of the D

We apply the infinite mass effective theory, when a heavy quark mass tends to infinity, and Chiral perturbation theory at the quark level, based on the extended Nambu – Jona – Lasinio model with linear realization of chiral U(3) × U(3) symmetry, to calculate the form factors of the D + s → φ µ + ν µ decay up to the first order in current s – quark mass. The theoretical results are compared with experimental data and found to be in good agreement.
Trans rectal ultra sound guided prostate biopsies: a single centre experience in Sri Lanka.

BACKGROUND Trans rectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsy (TRUS) was introduced to Sri Lanka in 2002. OBJECTIVES 1. To study clinicopathological features of males subjected to TRUS biopsy 2. To compare estimation of tumour burden by two methods in carcinoma prostate (CaP). METHODS 749 symptomatic males subjected to TRUS biopsy over 64 months at a single centre. Information was retrieved from case records. Tumour burden in CaP was calculated as: 1. Calculated tumour burden (CTB)--total percentage tumour in each core/total number of cores 2. Percentage positive biopsy cores (PPBC)--number of positive cores/total number of cores X 100. SPSS 15.0, student's t test and Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were used for statistical analysis. RESULTS 35.2% had CaP, microacinar in type. 34.88% were poorly differentiated. CaP was frequent among older patients (P<0.00001). The prostate volume in CaP was significantly lower than in the benign group (P<0.05). Prostate specific antigen (PSA) level was significantly higher in CaP (P<0.00001). A 99.6% sensitivity and 4.7% specificity was observed at PSA of 4 ng/ml for detecting CaP. Specificity was 98% at 25.5 ng/ml, with a sensitivity of 44.4%. CTB and PPBC had similar correlations with biochemical/histological parameters of CaP and were strongly correlated (0.786). INTERPRETATION Males with CaP were older, had higher PSA levels and smaller prostates. A cut off level of PSA >4 ng/ml could be used for directing symptomatic patients for TRUS biopsy to detect CaP, keeping in mind that specificity is 98% only at 25.5 ng/ml. Both CTB and PPBC could be used to calculate tumour burden in TRUS with CaP.
Computational Fluid Dynamics Analysis of the Aortic Coarctation

In this work, we first investigated the hemodynamic parameters in the case of a normal aortic arch anatomy and in the case of aortic coarctation anatomy, both generated by using CFX-ICEM-ANSYS simulations. Then, we compared these results with those obtained for a proposed model without and with aortic coarctation, while introducing a real tridimensional magnetic resonance imaging geometry in the simulation process. The conclusion is that our proposed model reproduces, with a high agreement, the real case obtained from imaging data.
Utility of Haptic Data in Recognition of User State

The current paper examines optimal strategies for recognizing aversive user states such as frustration from users’ patterns of pressure on a TouchPad. An experiment (N = 20) was conducted to compare the patterns of participants’ pressure data between frustrating and baseline conditions when participants used computer-based instructions to complete a given task. Results showed that participants pressed TouchPad significantly harder when they were frustrated (M = 74.64, S = 16.04) than when they were not frustrated (M= 67.61, S = 15.70). Content analysis of facial expressions was compared with the haptic data for each participant. In general, the results showed a matching pattern in multimodal sensing methods. Implications of this study as well as the use of psychophysiological methods in the study of human-computer interaction are discussed.
Musicians and the Metric Structure of Words

The present study aimed to examine the influence of musical expertise on the metric and semantic aspects of speech processing. In two attentional conditions (metric and semantic tasks), musicians listened to short sentences ending in trisyllabic words that were semantically and/or metrically congruous or incongruous. Both ERPs and behavioral data were analyzed and the results were compared to previous nonmusicians' data. Regarding the processing of meter, results showed that musical expertise influenced the automatic detection of the syllable temporal structure (P200 effect), the integration of metric structure and its influence on word comprehension (N400 effect), as well as the reanalysis of metric violations (P600 and late positivities effects). By contrast, results showed that musical expertise did not influence the semantic level of processing. These results are discussed in terms of transfer of training effects from music to speech processing.
Bayesian Aggregation for Hierarchical Classiﬁcation

Large numbers of overlapping classes are found to be organized in hierarchies in many domains. In multi-label classiﬁcation over such a hierarchy, members of a class must also belong to all of its parents. Training an independent classiﬁer for each class is a common approach, but this may yield labels for a given example that collectively violate this constraint. We propose a principled method of resolving such inconsistencies to increase accuracy over all classes. Our approach is to view the hierarchy as a graphical model, and then to employ Bayesian inference to infer the most likely set of hierarchically consistent class labels from independent base classiﬁer predictions. This method of Hierarchical Bayesian Ag-gregation (HBA) can work with any type of base classiﬁcation algorithm. Experiments on synthetic data, as well as real data sets from bioinformatics, graphics, and music domains, illustrate the behavior of HBA under a range of conditions, and reliably demonstrates improvements in accuracy over all levels of a hierarchy.
Power Management of Datacenter Workloads Using Per-Core Power Gating

While modern processors offer a wide spectrum of software-controlled power modes, most datacenters only rely on dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS, a.k.a. P-states) to achieve energy efficiency. This paper argues that, in the case of datacenter workloads, DVFS is not the only option for processor power management. We make the case for per-core power gating (PCPG) as an additional power management knob for multi-core processors. PCPG is the ability to cut the voltage supply to selected cores, thus reducing to almost zero the leakage power for the gated cores. Using a testbed based on a commercial 4-core chip and a set of real-world application traces from enterprise environments, we have evaluated the potential of PCPG. We show that PCPG can significantly reduce a processor's energy consumption (up to 40%) without significant performance overheads. When compared to DVFS, PCPG is highly effective saving up to 30% more energy than DVFS. When DVFS and PCPG operate together they can save up to almost 60%.
Evoked Potentials and Neuropsychological Tests Validate Positron Emission Topography (PET) Brain Metabolism in Cognitively Impaired Patients

Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) Positron Emission Topography (PET) brain hypometabolism (HM) correlates with diminished cognitive capacity and risk of developing dementia. However, because clinical utility of PET is limited by cost, we sought to determine whether a less costly electrophysiological measure, the P300 evoked potential, in combination with neuropsychological test performance, would validate PET HM in neuropsychiatric patients. We found that patients with amnestic and non-amnestic cognitive impairment and HM (n = 43) evidenced significantly reduced P300 amplitudes, delayed latencies, and neuropsychological deficits, compared to patients with normal brain metabolism (NM; n = 187). Data from patients with missing cognitive test scores (n = 57) were removed from the final sample, and logistic regression modeling was performed on the modified sample (n = 173, p = .000004). The logistic regression modeling, based on P300 and neuropsychological measures, was used to validate membership in the HM vs. NM groups. It showed classification validation in 13/25 HM subjects (52.0%) and in 125/148 NM subjects (84.5%), correlating with total classification accuracy of 79.8%. In this paper, abnormal P300 evoked potentials coupled with cognitive test impairment validates brain metabolism and mild/moderate cognitive impairment (MCI). To this end, we cautiously propose incorporating electrophysiological and neuropsychological assessments as cost-effective brain metabolism and MCI indicators in primary care. Final interpretation of these results must await required additional studies confirming these interesting results.