Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ACTIVITY OF UPPER BODY MUSCLES IN DOUBLE POLING AND SKIERG WORKOUT

Background. The aim of the study was to compare the involvement of upper body muscles during double poling and SkiErg Concept 2 workout and verify its specificity for cross-country skiing. Methods. Ten elite Czech cross-country skiers performed double poling and SkiErg workout. Electromyography of selected upper body muscles and cycle characteristics were analysed. To monitor the electrical activity of muscles, we used the device ME6000. Data were analysed using Mega Win and MATLAB software version R2012b. Results. Relative poling phase during double poling was 30.30 ± 2.02% and during SkiErg workout 54 ± 3.36%. Pre-activation of trunk flexors was significantly higher during double poling due to high and forward body position before pole plant. Pre-activation of trunk flexors was not significantly different as pre-activation of shoulder and elbow extensors during SkiErg workout. Deactivation of these muscles came significantly later during SkiErg workout. Conclusion. SkiErg cannot be considered a specific training method for cross-country skiing. It can be recommended to obtain specific power, but long-term application may cause disruption of double poling technique, especially timing of trunk flexors, shoulder and elbow extensors.
Evaluating the Type of Light Transmittance in Mono Crystalline, Poly Crystalline and Sapphire Brackets- An Invitro Spectrofluorometer Study.

INTRODUCTION Most of the patients seek orthodontic treatment to improve the smile, which improves the facial profile by means of fixed appliances i.e., brackets and wires. The brackets are of different types like stainless steel and ceramic. Ceramic brackets were considered as aesthetic appliance which was divided into mono-crystalline, polycrystalline and sapphire brackets. The light transmittance might influence the degree of curing adhesive material in mono crystalline, polycrystalline and sapphire brackets. AIM The aim of the present study was to evaluate the translucency and intensity of three different aesthetic brackets (mono crystalline, poly crystalline and sapphire ceramic brackets) and to determine their influence on shear bond strength of the brackets. The adhesive remnant index was also measured after debonding of the brackets from the tooth surface. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twenty six samples each of monocrystalline, polycrystalline and sapphire brackets (total 78 ceramic brackets) were used for the study. The bracket samples were subjected to optical fluorescence test using spectrofluorometer to measure the intensity of the brackets. Seventy eight extracted premolar teeth were procured and divided into 3 groups. The brackets were then bonded to the tooth using Transbond XT (3M Unitek) light cure composite material and cured with new light cure unit (Light Emitting Diode) of wood pecker company (400-450nm) for 30 seconds, and these samples were subjected to shear bond strength test with Instron Universal Testing Machine (UNITEK-94100) with a load range between 0 to 100 KN with a maximum cross head speed of 0.5mm/min. ARI (Adhesive Remnant Index) scores were evaluated according to Artun and Bergland scoring system using stereomicroscope at 20x magnification. RESULTS The light absorption values obtained from spectrofluorometeric study were 3300000-3500000 cps for group 1 (monocrystalline ceramic brackets), 6000000-6500000 cps for Group 2 (polycrystalline ceramic brackets) and 2700000 -3000000 cps for Group 3 (sapphire ceramic brackets) i.e., Group 2 showed the highest light absorption and the least translucency followed by groups 1 and 3. Shear bond strength results were 2.4 mpa, 1.9 mpa and 3.6 mpa for groups 1,2 and 3 respectively. Superior shear bond strength was recorded in group 3 (sapphire ceramic brackets). ARI results showed that group 3 had increased bond between bracket adhesive interfaces when compared to the other 2 groups. CONCLUSION From this study, it has been concluded that sapphire ceramic brackets (Group 3) was superior in translucency and shear bond strength followed by monocrystalline and polycrystalline ceramic brackets.
Use of Complementary Therapies During Chemotherapy: Influence of Patients’ Satisfaction With Treatment Decision Making and the Treating Oncologist

The relationship between the use of complementary therapy (CT) and satisfaction with medical treatment decision making and with the treating oncologist was evaluated in a sample of 166 women who were undergoing an initial course of chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer. At the beginning of chemotherapy, 39% indicated already trying CT and an additional 13% reported planning to try CT. These women mentioned a variety of vitamin, nutritional, herbal, physical, mental, and spiritual approaches. Four months later, when most patients had completed chemotherapy, more than half (53%) reported using CT, with another 8% planning to try it. Regression analysis controlling for psychosocial and medical variables revealed that women who were younger and less satisfied with their treatment decision-making experience were significantly more likely to use CT. When predicting use of CT at the conclusion of treatment, baseline utilization was the greatest predictor, but dissatisfaction with the oncologist was also a significant predictor. These findings suggest that patients who are dissatisfied with their medical care may be more likely to use CT during treatment. Further research is needed to elucidate the relationship between satisfaction with medical decision making and the patient-physician relationship to CT use among cancer patients. The findings also highlight the importance of good patient-physician communication about CT use throughout the cancer treatment experience.
Identification of an ADAM2-ADAM3 Complex on the Surface of Mouse Testicular Germ Cells and Cauda Epididymal Sperm*

Male mice lacking ADAM2 (fertilin β) or ADAM3 (cyritestin) are infertile; cauda epididymal sperm (mature sperm) from these mutant mice cannot bind to the egg zona pellucida. ADAM3 is barely present in Adam2-null sperm, despite normal levels of this protein in Adam2-null testicular germ cells (TGCs; sperm precursor cells). Here, we have explored the molecular basis for the loss of ADAM3 in Adam2-null TGCs to clarify the biosynthetic and functional linkage of ADAM2 and ADAM3. A small portion of total ADAM3 was found present on the surface of wild-type and Adam2-/- TGCs at similar levels. In the Adam2-null TGCs, however, surface-localized ADAM3 exhibited an increased amount of an endoglycosidase H-resistant form that may be related to instability of ADAM3. Moreover, we found a complex between ADAM2 and ADAM3 on the surface of TGCs and sperm. The intracellular chaperone calnexin was a component of the testicular ADAM2-ADAM3 complex. Our findings suggest that the association with ADAM2 is a key element for stability of ADAM3 in epididymal sperm. The presence of the ADAM2-ADAM3 complex in sperm also suggests a potential role of ADAM2 with ADAM3 in sperm binding to the egg zona pellucida.
Parallelizing Over Artificial Neural Network Training Runs with Multigrid

Artificial neural networks are a popular and effective machine learning technique. Great progress has been made parallelizing the expensive training phase of an individual network, leading to highly specialized pieces of hardware, many based on GPU-type architectures, and more concurrent algorithms such as synthetic gradients. However, the training phase continues to be a bottleneck, where the training data must be processed serially over thousands of individual training runs. This work considers a multigrid reduction in time (MGRIT) algorithm that is able to parallelize over the thousands of training runs and converge to the exact same solution as traditional training would provide. MGRIT was originally developed to provide parallelism for time evolution problems that serially step through a finite number of time-steps. This work recasts the training of a neural network similarly, treating neural network training as an evolution equation that evolves the network weights from one step to the next. Thus, this work concerns distributed computing approaches for neural networks, but is distinct from other approaches which seek to parallelize only over individual training runs. The work concludes with supporting numerical results for two model problems.
Research on security requirements engineering process

Nowadays, mostly security solutions are mainly focused on how to defend against various threats, including insider threats and outsider threats, instead of trying to solve security issues from their sources. In this paper, a security requirements engineering process is presented for security requirements elicitation and analysis. And the proposed process will deal with the security requirements at the earlier stages of system design in a systematic way. In addition, it can be generalized to any large-scale design project.
Interference detection between non-convex polyhedra revisited with a practical aim

Exact interference checking between two arbitrary polyhedra is known to have O(mn) complexity, where m and n are the number of edges in the two polyhedra. This is just a worst-case bound that still leaves plenty of room for algorithm improvement in practice. The algorithm presented herein has been developed so as to: 1. Minimize the number of operations that each pairing of edges entails. We prove that this factor is 4.5 for multiplications and 8.5 for additions. 2. Avoid the construction of auxiliary geometric entities. The standard approach is to decompose the nonconvex polyhedra (or their faces) into convex entities and then check for interference in this convex setting. This entails the construction of many fictitious edges and faces, which indirectly contribute to the growth of the complexity. 3. Permit the straightforward application of prunning strategies to most practical situations, so that the worst-case bound above is reached only when truly needed. 4 Allow the derivation of both directional and undirectional distance bounds between the polyhedra, which prove extremely useful for collision avoidance and local path planning. The simplicity and homogeneity of the algorithm has led to a quick implementation, which has been proven to be robust and fast. Some performance measurements are reported. <<ETX>>
Using Precise Time Offset to Improve Freeway Vehicle Delay Estimates

Traffic congestion is getting worse and has resulted in increased travel delays and costs. In order to develop effective intelligent transportation systems (ITS) strategies to mitigate traffic congestion on freeways, a good understanding of its causes and impacts is vital but has not been achieved at a satisfactory level. Over the past several decades, deterministic queuing theory (DQT) has been widely used to evaluate freeway travel delays resulted from traffic congestion. However, several studies evaluated the accuracy of its delay estimates and claimed that the DQT method consistently underestimates vehicle delays. The reason for the underestimation, however, had not been clearly identified. This study aims at exploring the main cause of such underestimation problems and proposing a solution to fix it. Based on theoretical analysis and empirical justification, it was found the underestimation resulted primarily from the inappropriate estimates of the time offsets, that is, the travel times between the queue starting point and the immediate upstream and downstream traffic sensor locations. To address this issue, a microscopic approach was developed and implemented in a computer application to enhance the time offset estimation. This proposed approach was tested using the real vehicle delay data manually extracted from traffic surveillance video cameras. The test results indicated that the improved DQT-based vehicle delay estimates with appropriate time offset settings were very close to the ground-truth data. The underestimation problem associated with the traditional DQT method can be effectively addressed and fairly accurate estimates of vehicle delay can be achieved by the proposed method.
Recombinant Marek’s Disease Virus (MDV)-Derived Lymphoblastoid Cell Lines: Regulation of a Marker Gene within the Context of the MDV Genome

ABSTRACT Marek’s disease is a herpesvirus (Marek’s disease virus [MDV])-induced pathology of chickens characterized by paralysis and the rapid appearance of T-cell lymphomas. Lymphoblastoid cell lines (LBCLs) derived from MDV-induced tumors have served as models of MDV latency and transformation. We have recently reported the construction of mutant MDVs having a deletion (M. S. Parcells et al., J. Virol. 69:7888–7898, 1995) and an insertion (A. S. Anderson et al., J. Virol. 72:2548–2553, 1998) within the unique short region of the virus genome. These mutant MDVs retained oncogenicity, and LBCLs have been established from the mutant-induced tumors. We report the characterization of these cell lines with respect to (i) virus structure within and reactivated from the cell lines, (ii) surface antigen expression, (iii) kinetics of MDV and marker gene induction, (iv) localization and colocalization of induced MDV antigens and β-galactosidase (β-Gal), and (v) methylation status of the region of lacZ insertion in recombinant- and non-recombinant-derived cell lines. Our results indicate that (i) recombinant-derived cell lines contain no parental virus, (ii) the established cell lines are predominantly CD4+ CD8−, (iii) the percentage of Lac-expressing cells is low (1 to 3%) but increases dramatically upon 5′-iododeoxyuridine (IUdR) treatment, (iv) lacZ expression is induced with the same kinetics as several MDV lytic-phase genes (pp38, US1, gB, gI, and US10), and (v) the regulation oflacZ expression is not mediated by methylation. Furthermore, the MDV-encoded oncoprotein, Meq, could be detected in cells expressing β-Gal and various lytic antigens but did not appear to be induced by IUdR treatment. Our results indicate that regulation of the lacZ marker gene can serve as sensitive measure of virus lytic-phase induction and the reactivation from latency.
Evidence for a Role of ClpP in the Degradation of the Chloroplast Cytochrome b6f Complex

In the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, the ClpP protease is encoded by an essential chloroplast gene. Mutating its AUG translation initiation codon to AUU reduced ClpP accumulation to 25 to 45% of that of the wild type. Both the mature protein and the putative precursor containing its insertion sequence were present in reduced amounts. Attenuation of ClpP did not affect growth rates under normal conditions but restricted the ability of the cells to adapt to elevated CO2 levels. It also affected the rate of degradation of the cytochrome b6f complex of the thylakoid membrane in two experimental situations: (1) during nitrogen starvation, and (2) in mutants deficient in the Rieske iron–sulfur protein. The ClpP level also controls the steady state accumulation of a mutated version of the Rieske protein. In contrast, attenuation of ClpP did not rescue the fully unassembled subunits in other cytochrome b6f mutants. We conclude that proteolytic disposal of fully or partially assembled cytochrome b6f is controlled by the Clp protease.
Sequential Therapy Versus Tailored Triple Therapies for Helicobacter pylori Infection in Children

Aims: The aim of the study was to compare sequential versus tailored triple therapy regimens on Helicobacter pylori (H pylori) eradication rates in children and to assess the effect of antimicrobial susceptibility. Patients and Methods: Prospective, open-label, multicenter study. Children received randomly either a 10-day sequential treatment comprising omeprazole (OME) with amoxicillin for 5 days and OME, clarithromycin (CLA), and metronidazole (MET) for the remaining 5 days, or a 7-day triple therapy comprising OME with amoxicillin and CLA in cases of a CLA-susceptible strain or MET in cases of CLA-resistant strain. H pylori eradication was assessed by 13C-urea breath test. Results: One hundred sixty-five children, 95 girls and 70 boys, of median age 10.4 years, were included. The intention-to-treat (ITT) eradication rate was 76.9% (sequential 68/83 = 81.9%, triple therapy 59/82 = 71.9%, ns), and the per-protocol (PP) eradication rate was 84.6% (sequential 68/77 = 88.3%, triple therapy 59/73 = 81.8%, ns). Eradication rates tended to be higher using the sequential treatment, but the difference was only statistically significant for ITT analysis in children harboring both CLA- and MET-susceptible strains (87.8% vs 68.5%, odds ratio [OR] 3.3, P = 0.03). Both ITT and PP eradication rates were significantly lower with sequential treatment in CLA-resistant compared with CLA-susceptible strains (ITT: 56.2% vs 72.7%, OR 5.5, P = 0.008; PP 64.3% vs 80.0%, OR 7.9, P = 0.009). Both treatments were well tolerated. Conclusions: Sequential treatment is greatly effective for eradicating H pylori in children except in CLA-resistant strains. Sequential treatment can be used as a first-line therapy, but only in areas with a low CLA resistance rate.
Physical, biochemical, and immunological characterization of a thermostable amidase from Klebsiella pneumoniae NCTR 1

An amidase capable of degrading acrylamide and aliphatic amides was purified to apparent homogeneity from Klebsiella pneumoniae NCTR 1. The enzyme is a monomer with an apparent molecular weight of 62,000. The pH and temperature optima of the enzyme were 7.0 and 65 degrees C, respectively. The purified amidase contained 11 5,5-dithiobis(2-nitrobenzoate) (DTNB)-titratable sulfhydryl (SH) groups. In the native enzyme 1.0 SH group readily reacted with DTNB with no detectable loss of activity. Titration of the next 3.0 SH groups with DTNB resulted in a loss of activity of more than 70%. The remaining seven inaccessible SH groups could be titrated only in the presence of 8 M guanidine hydrochloride. Titration of SH groups was strongly inhibited by carboxymethylation and KMnO4, suggesting the presence of SH groups at the active site(s). Inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry analysis indicated that the native amidase contains 0.33 mol of cobalt and 0.33 mol of iron per mol of the native enzyme. Polyclonal antiserum against K. pneumoniae amidase was raised in rabbits, and immunochemical comparisons were made with amidases from Rhodococcus sp. , Mycobacterium smegmatis, Pseudomonas chlororaphis B23, and Methylophilus methylotrophus. The antiserum immunoprecipitated and immunoreacted with the amidases of K. pneumoniae and P. chlororaphis B23. The antiserum failed to immunoreact or immunoprecipitate with other amidases.
Existence of renal dysfunction in diabetics undergoing coronary artery bypass

Introduction The effect of diabetes mellitus on morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting has remained uncertain, and conflicting conclusions have been reported in clinical trials. Evidence suggests that coronary artery bypass in patients with diabetes mellitus carries a higher risk of stroke, renal failure, perioperative complications, and sternal wound infection. This study evaluated the frequency of acute renal dysfunction after coronary artery bypass in diabetic patients, and the associated risk factors. Method This cross-sectional observational study included 135 patients with diabetes (111 males and 24 females with a mean age 51 years and a body mass index of 27.44 kg m−2), who underwent elective coronary artery bypass from March 2015 to October 2015. Data were collected prospectively in 2 tertiary care centers. Renal dysfunction was assessed by serum creatinine levels preoperatively and at 24 and 48 h postoperatively. Results Fifteen percent of patients were found to have postoperative renal dysfunction. Univariate analysis revealed that patients with increased serum creatinine preoperatively were at greater risk of developing renal dysfunction after coronary artery bypass (p = 0.00). On multivariable binary logistic regression analysis, preoperative serum creatinine level was the only independent predictor of postoperative renal dysfunction; age, body mass index, dyslipidemia, hypertension, cardiopulmonary bypass time, and aortic crossclamp time showed no significant association. Conclusion Diabetic patients with increased serum creatinine preoperatively are at greater risk of kidney damage postoperatively; therefore, these patients should be monitored and treated critically in the perioperative period.
Improved Proxy Re-Encryption With Delegatable Verifiability

Proxy re-encryption cryptosystem enables proxy to re-encrypt the ciphertext and protects the privacy of the corresponding plaintext. Hence, this type of cryptosystem has found tremendous applications in data sharing in cloud computing, email forwarding, securing file systems, and so on. In practice, proxy re-encryption has to support verification of ciphertext to reduce the users’ computational burden. The ciphertext verification can be achieved through a public, private, or delegatable manner. Delegatable verification is more generic in that it can be easily converted into the other two verification methods. However, almost all existing schemes with delegatable verifiability only achieve replayable chosen ciphertext security. Hence, in this paper we propose a more secure proxy re-encryption scheme with delegatable verifiability. Specifically, we utilize a short signature scheme to prevent an attacker from forging a valid ciphertext, and prevent an attacker from forging a signature. As a result, our scheme is secure against chosen ciphertext attacks under the standard model.
Pedestrian classification in automotive radar systems

Urban traffic is dangerous for all car drivers and especially for pedestrians. There are about 5000 fatalities on German streets every year, which is absolutely too much. Human beings have strong limitations in the ability to measure precisely the distance and the speed difference between cars, which is the reason for several accidents. Therefore, the European Union has called all car manufactureres to intensify their research activities in protecting vulnerable road users. An automotive radar sensor measures the target range and radial velocity very accurately and with high resolution even in multiple target situations and there is tremendous progress in 24 GHz radar sensor development. The objective of this paper is to protect vulnerable road users by a target recognition scheme in any urban scenario. One main objective is the difference between lateral moving vehicles and pedestrians in terms of feature extraction and classification. Therefore, a pedestrian detection procedure is additionally integrated into the 24 GHz automotive radar sensor.