Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of erythropoietin combined with tissue plasminogen activator on the rats following cerebral ischemia and reperfusion

OBJECTIVES: Exogenously administered recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO) has been reported to exhibit neuroprotective effects in animal models. However, there are still have some controversies that combination of EPO and tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) in acute ischemic stroke. In the present study, we investigated the effects of local intra-arterial infusion of low-dose EPO in combination with tPA on focal cerebral ischemic stroke. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Sixty adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into five groups, including sham, vehicle, EPO, tPA, and EPO+tPA groups. Rats were subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) and administrated with EPO (800 U/kg, middle cerebral artery injection), tPA (10 mg/kg, tail vein injection), EPO+tPA, or saline (vehicle) onset of reperfusion. Neurobehavioral deficits, infarct volume, brain edema, the expression of tight junction proteins (Claudin-5, Occludin), and AQP4 were assessed following 2 h ischemia and 24 h reperfusion. The number of apoptotic cells in the periinfarct region was detected by the terminal deoxyribonucleotide transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining. RESULTS: The neurobehavioral deficits, brain infarct volume, edema volume, TUNEL-positive cells and downregulation of Claudin-5 and Occludin were alleviated by EPO or EPO plus tPA, following the ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) in rats. The EPO and EPO plus tPA both reduced the upregulation of AQP4 in the ischemic brain tissue. CONCLUSION: Our data demonstrate local intra-arterial infusion of low-dose EPO in combination with tPA protected against focal cerebral ischemia in rats manifested by a decrease in brain edema and blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption after 2 h ischemia and 24 h reperfusion.
Immunogenicity and Protective Activity of a Chimeric Protein Based on the Domain III of the Tick-Borne Encephalitis Virus E Protein and the OmpF Porin of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis Incorporated into the TI-Complex

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) is a widespread, dangerous infection. Unfortunately, all attempts to create safe anti-TBE subunit vaccines are still unsuccessful due to their low immunogenicity. The goal of the present work was to investigate the immunogenicity of a recombinant chimeric protein created by the fusion of the EIII protein, comprising domain III and a stem region of the tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) E protein, and the OmpF porin of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (OmpF-EIII). Adjuvanted antigen delivery systems, the tubular immunostimulating complexes (TI-complexes) based on the monogalactosyldiacylglycerol from different marine macrophytes, were used to enhance the immunogenicity of OmpF-EIII. Also, the chimeric protein incorporated into the most effective TI-complex was used to study its protective activity. The content of anti-OmpF-EIII antibodies was estimated in mice blood serum by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). To study protective activity, previously immunized mice were infected with TBEV strain Dal’negorsk (GenBank ID: FJ402886). The animal survival was monitored daily for 21 days. OmpF-EIII incorporated into the TI-complexes induced about a 30–60- and 5–10-fold increase in the production of anti-OmpF-EIII and anti-EIII antibodies, respectively, in comparison with the effect of an individual OmpF-EIII. The most effective vaccine construction provided 60% protection. Despite the dramatic effect on the specific antibody titer, the studied TI-complex did not provide a statistically significant increase in the protection of OmpF-EIII protein. However, our results provide the basis of the future search for approaches to design and optimize the anti-TBEV vaccine based on the OmpF-EIII protein.
Osteopontin promotes cancer cell drug resistance, invasion, and lactate production and is associated with poor outcome of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer

Background Osteopontin (OPN), a member of the small integrin binding ligand N-linked glycoprotein family, has been analyzed in numerous types of human malignancy. Purpose The present study detected the expression levels of OPN and evaluated its role in tumor progression in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Patients and methods OPN expression levels were detected using immunohistochemistry in 101 NSCLC tumors. The mRNA and protein levels have significant difference between advanced NSCLC and stage I/II NSCLC. The drug resistance, invasive ability and lactate production of NSCLC cancer cell lines (A549 and SK-MES-1) were detected in cancer cells with the disturbance of OPN. Results Immunostaining indicated that OPN was primarily expressed in the cytoplasm of NSCLC cells. Moreover, OPN correlates with NSCLC clinical traits. The results demonstrated that OPN expression levels significantly correlated with cancer differentiation, distant metastasis and the efficacy of platinum-based treatment. Notably, the results identified OPN expression levels as a potential factor for predicting the response of cells to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy using multivariate analysis, as well as predicting cancer differentiation and distant metastasis. Additionally, the abrogation of OPN levels reduced lactate production in NSCLC cells and occurred along side with the downregulation of lactate dehydrogenase A (LDHA). Conclusion The results of the current study suggest that OPN may be able to predict poor prognosis and cisplatin resistance in patients.
Long-term, moderate coffee consumption is associated with lower prevalence of diabetes mellitus among elderly non-tea drinkers from the Mediterranean Islands (MEDIS Study).

BACKGROUND We evaluated the association between coffee drinking and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus in elderly people from the Mediterranean islands. METHODS During 2005-2007, 500 men and 437 women (aged 65 to 100 years) from the islands of Cyprus (n = 300), Mitilini (n = 142), Samothraki (n = 100), Cephalonia (n = 104), Corfu (n = 160) and Crete (n = 131) participated in the survey. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors (i.e. hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and obesity), as well as behavioral, lifestyle and dietary characteristics were assessed using face-to-face interviews and standard procedures. Among various factors, fasting blood glucose was measured and prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus was estimated, according to the established American Diabetes Association (ADA) criteria, while all participants were asked about the frequency of any type of coffee consumption over the last year. RESULTS Coffee drinking was reported by 84% of the participants, the majority of whom drank boiled coffee. The participants reported that they had consumed coffee for at least 30 years of their life. Data analysis adjusted for various potential confounders, revealed that, compared to non-consumption, the multi-adjusted odds ratio for having diabetes was 0.47 (95%, CI 0.32 to 0.69) for 1-2 cups/day, while it was 1.05 (95%, CI 0.70 to 1.55) for >3 cups/day, after adjusting for various potential confounders. The association of coffee drinking with diabetes was significant only among non-tea drinkers. Increased coffee intake was not associated with diabetes prevalence. CONCLUSION The data presented suggest that moderate coffee drinking is associated with a lower likelihood of having diabetes, after adjusting for various potential confounders.
GLRT-Based Spectrum Sensing for SIMO Cognitive Radio with Transmitter IQI

In this work, the received signal of a single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) cognitive radio (CR) is modeled under transmission in-phase and quadrature imbalance (TX-IQI). Then, the detection problem is presented as a composite hypothesis testing problem. Based on the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) principle, two eigenvalue-based detectors are derived in the case of known and unknown noise variance. This results in different detectors. The first is a non-constant false alarm rate (CFAR) test with respect to the noise variance, referred to as semi-blind GLR (SBG) test. The latter is a CFAR detector called blind GLR (BG). For the proposed non-CFAR detector, we introduce a new threshold setting to restrict its obtained false alarm to an upper bound $p_{fa}$, improving the chance of opportunistic use of spectrum holes. Detection performance of proposed detectors is compared in different scenarios through extensive Monte-Carlo simulations. It is shown that the BG test outperforms the SBG detector in the presence of noise variance uncertainty as well as TX-IOI.
An Ensemble Model Using Face and Body Tracking for Engagement Detection

Precise detection and localization of learners' engagement levels are useful for monitoring their learning quality. In the emotiW Challenge's engagement detection task, we proposed a series of novel improvements, including (a) a cluster-based framework for fast engagement level predictions, (b) a neural network using the attention pooling mechanism, (c) heuristic rules using body posture information, and (d) model ensemble for more accurate and robust predictions. Our experimental results suggest that our proposed methods effectively improved engagement detection performance. On the validation set, our system can reduce the baseline Mean Squared Error (MSE) by about 56%. On the final test set, our system yielded a competitively low MSE of 0.081.
Testing of Automated Photochemical Reflectance Index Sensors as Proxy Measurements of Light Use Efficiency in an Aspen Forest

Commercially available autonomous photochemical reflectance index (PRI) sensors are a new development in the remote sensing field that offer novel opportunities for a deeper exploration of vegetation physiology dynamics. In this study, we evaluated the reliability of autonomous PRI sensors (SRS-PRI) developed by METER Group Inc. as proxies of light use efficiency (LUE) in an aspen (Populus tremuloides) forest stand. Before comparisons between PRI and LUE measurements were made, the optical SRS-PRI sensor pairs required calibrations to resolve diurnal and seasonal patterns properly. An offline diurnal calibration procedure was shown to account for variable sky conditions and diurnal illumination changes affecting sensor response. Eddy covariance measurements provided seasonal gross primary productivity (GPP) measures as well as apparent canopy quantum yield dynamics (α). LUE was derived from the ratio of GPP to absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (APAR). Corrected PRI values were derived after diurnal and midday cross-calibration of the sensor’s 532 nm and 570 nm fore-optics, and closely related to both LUE (R2 = 0.62, p < 0.05) and α (R2 = 0.72, p < 0.05). A LUE model derived from corrected PRI values showed good correlation to measured GPP (R2 = 0.77, p < 0.05), with an accuracy comparable to results obtained from an α driven LUE model (R2 = 0.79, p < 0.05). The automated PRI sensors proved to be suitable proxies of light use efficiency. The onset of continuous PRI sensors signifies new opportunities for explicitly examining the cause of changing PRI, LUE, and productivity over time and space. As such, this technology represents great value for the flux, remote sensing and modeling community.
Optimal Decentralized Control of DC-Segmented Power Systems

DC-segmented power systems consist of ac subsystems connected to each other only by dc lines. DC-segmentation improves the transient stability and transmission capacity of power systems. Centralized control of large power systems entails burdensome communication requirements which are expensive and introduce delays. Decentralized control circumvents these problems, but finding decentralized controllers is intractable for general systems. Poset-causal systems are a special class for which the optimal neighbor-to-neighbor decentralized controller is easy to obtain. In this paper, we show that dc-segmented systems are poset-causal. We observe in numerical examples that the optimal decentralized controller attains almost the same performance as the optimal centralized controller.
A Multi-Gb/s Frame-Interleaved LDPC Decoder With Path-Unrolled Message Passing in 28-nm CMOS

This paper presents a frame-interleaved low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoder architecture with a new interconnect partitioning scheme and time-distributed Min-Sum decoding schedule. The architecture exploits the cyclic structure of the parity-check matrix by unrolling each check node update in time over all connected variable nodes in order to minimize wiring complexity and power. Multiple frames are interleaved to maximize hardware utilization, while coarse-grained clock gating is used to systematically turn off inactive logic and memories to save power. To demonstrate the scalability of the proposed architecture, a multirate LDPC decoder test chip was fabricated for the IEEE 802.11ad standard in the 28-nm CMOS technology node. The design occupies an area of 1.99 mm2, contains 160 Kb of embedded static random-access memory, and achieves a throughput of 6.78 Gb/s at 10 decoding iterations for all four code rates specified in the standard. With early decoding termination, the fabricated chip consumes between 104 and 279 mW of power at a target bit error rate of 10−6 under nominal operation at 0.9-V supply and 202-MHz clock rate, resulting in an energy efficiency between 1.53 and 4.12 pJ/bit/iteration. With clock-frequency and voltage scaling, the fabricated chip achieves an energy efficiency between 1.1 and 3.1 pJ/bit/iteration. This paper achieves the highest normalized energy efficiency among recently published CMOS-based decoders for the IEEE 802.11ad standard at nominal clock frequency and supply voltage.
Tenofovir Exposure during Pregnancy and Postpartum in Women Receiving Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate for the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of Hepatitis B Virus

We assessed tenofovir exposure during pregnancy and postpartum in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-infected HIV-uninfected women receiving tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV. Data from 154 women who received TDF within a randomized controlled trial were included. ABSTRACT We assessed tenofovir exposure during pregnancy and postpartum in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-infected HIV-uninfected women receiving tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV. Data from 154 women who received TDF within a randomized controlled trial were included. Individual plasma tenofovir exposures (area under the concentration-time curve from 0 to 24 h [AUC0–24]) were estimated using a population pharmacokinetic approach. The estimated geometric mean tenofovir AUC0–24 was 20% (95% confidence interval [95% CI], 19 to 21%) lower during pregnancy than during postpartum; this modest reduction in the absence of HBV transmission suggests that no dose adjustment is needed.
Increased oxidative stress and renal injury in patients with sepsis

Sepsis remains one of the leading causes of death in intensive care units. The early phase of sepsis is characterized by a massive formation of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species such as superoxide and nitric oxide. However, few comprehensive studies on plasma antioxidants have been reported. Increased oxidative stress was confirmed in sepsis patients (n = 18) at the time of hospitalization by a significant decrease in plasma ascorbic acid and a significant increase in the percentage of oxidized form of coenzyme Q10 in total coenzyme Q10 compared to age-matched healthy controls (n = 62). Tissue oxidative damage in patients was suggested by a significant decrease in polyunsaturated fatty acid contents and a significant increase in oleic acid contents in total free fatty acids. Thus, it is reasonable that plasma uric acid (end product of purines) would be significantly elevated. However, uric acid levels were continuously decreased during hospitalization for 7 days, indicating a continuous formation of peroxynitrite. A greater decrease in free cholesterol (FC) compared to cholesterol esters (CE) was observed. Thus, the FC/CE ratio significantly increased, suggesting deficiency of lecithin-cholesterol acyltransferase secreted from the liver. Plasma levels of prosaposin, a coenzyme Q10 binding protein, significantly decreased as compared to healthy controls. This may be correlated with renal injury in sepsis patients, since the kidney is thought to be a major secretor of prosaposin.
Changes in the Fungal Microbiome of Maize During Hermetic Storage in the United States and Kenya

Prior to harvest, maize kernels are invaded by a diverse population of fungal organisms that comprise the microbiome of the grain mass. Poor post-harvest practices and improper drying can lead to the growth of mycotoxigenic storage fungi and deterioration of grain quality. Hermetic storage bags are a low-cost technology for the preservation of grain during storage, which has seen significant adoption in many regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. This study explored the use of high-throughput DNA sequencing of the fungal Internal Transcribed Spacer 2 (ITS2) region for characterization of the fungal microbiome before and after 3 months of storage in hermetic and non-hermetic (woven) bags in the United States and Kenya. Analysis of 1,377,221 and 3,633,944 ITS2 sequences from the United States and Kenya, respectively, resulted in 251 and 164 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Taxonomic assignment of these OTUs revealed 63 and 34 fungal genera in the US and Kenya samples, respectively, many of which were not detected by traditional plating methods. The most abundant genus was Fusarium, which was identified in all samples. Storage fungi were detected in the grain mass prior to the storage experiments and increased in relative abundance within the woven bags. The results also indicate that storage location had no effect on the fungal microbiome of grain stored in the United States, while storage bag type led to significant changes in fungal composition. The fungal microbiome of the Kenya grain also underwent significant changes in composition during storage and fungal diversity increased during storage regardless of bag type. Our results indicated that extraction of DNA from ground kernels is sufficient for identifying the fungi associated with the maize. The results also indicated that bag type was the most important factor influencing changes in fungal microbiome during storage. The results also support the recommended use of hermetic storage for reducing food safety risks, especially from mycotoxigenic fungi.
RecGAN: recurrent generative adversarial networks for recommendation systems

Recent studies in recommendation systems emphasize the significance of modeling latent features behind temporal evolution of user preference and item state to make relevant suggestions. However, static and dynamic behaviors and trends of users and items, which highly influence the feasibility of recommendations, were not adequately addressed in previous works. In this work, we leverage the temporal and latent feature modelling capabilities of Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), respectively, to propose a Recurrent Generative Adversarial Network (RecGAN). We use customized Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) cells to capture latent features of users and items observable from short-term and long-term temporal profiles. The modification also includes collaborative filtering mechanisms to improve the relevance of recommended items. We evaluate RecGAN using two datasets on food and movie recommendation. Results indicate that our model outperforms other baseline models irrespective of user behavior and density of training data.
Riemannian Adaptive Optimization Methods

Several first order stochastic optimization methods commonly used in the Euclidean domain such as stochastic gradient descent (SGD), accelerated gradient descent or variance reduced methods have already been adapted to certain Riemannian settings. However, some of the most popular of these optimization tools - namely Adam , Adagrad and the more recent Amsgrad - remain to be generalized to Riemannian manifolds. We discuss the difficulty of generalizing such adaptive schemes to the most agnostic Riemannian setting, and then provide algorithms and convergence proofs for geodesically convex objectives in the particular case of a product of Riemannian manifolds, in which adaptivity is implemented across manifolds in the cartesian product. Our generalization is tight in the sense that choosing the Euclidean space as Riemannian manifold yields the same algorithms and regret bounds as those that were already known for the standard algorithms. Experimentally, we show faster convergence and to a lower train loss value for Riemannian adaptive methods over their corresponding baselines on the realistic task of embedding the WordNet taxonomy in the Poincare ball.
SurfelMeshing: Online Surfel-Based Mesh Reconstruction

We address the problem of mesh reconstruction from live RGB-D video, assuming a calibrated camera and poses provided externally (e.g., by a SLAM system). In contrast to most existing approaches, we do not fuse depth measurements in a volume but in a dense surfel cloud. We asynchronously (re)triangulate the smoothed surfels to reconstruct a surface mesh. This novel approach enables to maintain a dense surface representation of the scene during SLAM which can quickly adapt to loop closures. This is possible by deforming the surfel cloud and asynchronously remeshing the surface where necessary. The surfel-based representation also naturally supports strongly varying scan resolution. In particular, it reconstructs colors at the input camera's resolution. Moreover, in contrast to many volumetric approaches, ours can reconstruct thin objects since objects do not need to enclose a volume. We demonstrate our approach in a number of experiments, showing that it produces reconstructions that are competitive with the state-of-the-art, and we discuss its advantages and limitations. The algorithm (excluding loop closure functionality) is available as open source at https://github.com/puzzlepaint/surfelmeshing.
A comparative study of cone-beam computed tomography and digital panoramic radiography for detecting pulp stones

Purpose The aim of this study was to compare cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and digital panoramic radiography (DPR) for the detection of pulp stones. Materials and Methods DPR and CBCT images of 202 patients were randomly selected from the database of our department. All teeth were evaluated in sagittal, axial, and coronal sections in CBCT images. The systemic condition of patients, the presence of pulp stones, the location of the tooth, the group of teeth, and the presence and depth of caries and restorations were recorded. The presence of pulp stones in molar teeth was compared between DPR and CBCT images. Results Pulp stones were identified in 105 (52.0%) of the 202 subjects and in 434 (7.7%) of the 5,656 teeth examined. The prevalence of pulp stones was similar between the sexes and across various tooth locations and groups of teeth (P>.05). A positive correlation was observed between age and the number of pulp stones (ρ=0.277, P<.01). Pulp stones were found significantly more often in restored or carious teeth (P<.001). CBCT and DPR showed a significant difference in the detection of pulp stones (P<.001), which were seen more often on DPR than on CBCT. Conclusion DPR, as a 2D imaging system, has inherent limitations leading to the misinterpretation of pulp stones. Restored and carious teeth should be carefully examined for the presence of pulp stones. CBCT imaging is recommended for a definitive assessment in cases where there is a suspicion of a pulp stone on DPR.