Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subcutaneous gold nanoroad detection with diffusion reflection measurement

Abstract. The ability to quantitatively and noninvasively detect nanoparticles nearby the skin surface has important implications on their development as an in vivo cancer diagnostic tool. The diffusion reflection (DR) method is a simple, noninvasive imaging technique which has been proven useful for the investigation of the optical parameters of the tissue. A new method is presented for the measurements of gold nanorod (GNR) concentration in tissue-like phantoms, based on DR measurement and intense light absorption of GNR. Monte Carlo simulations and tissue-like phantom measurements of the reflected light intensity are presented. The ability to extract optical properties of phantoms and their GNR concentrations from DR measurements is demonstrated, followed by a discussion about the best mathematical model for light propagation in tissues, based on the diffusion theory.
The Use of Density-Gradient Centrifugation for the Purification of Eggs of Meloidogyne spp.

Investigators studying lipids, enzymes, and soluble proteins of nematodes have used plant tissue (2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12), fungi (1, 10), yeasts (! , 9), or bacteria (9) for propagating large numbers of nematodes for subsequent b iochemica l analyses . A l t h o u g h most investigators have eliminated viable bacteria from nematodes with surface sterilants, the possibility of macromolecular contamination from nonviable bacteria would remain. McClure et al. (8) recently suggested the use of a screening-centrifugation technique to obtain relatively noncontaminated eggs. In an attempt to obtain eggs of Meloidogyne incognita (Kofoid and White) Chitwood for analyses of structural protein, we found the above method unsatisfactory for eliminating sufficient bacterial and plant contamination. The size and density of nematode eggs are quite different from bacteria and most plant mater ia l . T h e r e f o r e , dens i t y -g r ad i en t centrifugation (DGC) in combination with filtration might be a useful technique for obtaining "clean" eggs for biochemical analysis; this report describes such a technique. Eggs of M. incognita were obtained from roots of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. 'Bonny Best'), grown in 30-era clay pots of Lloyd sandy clay-loam:vermiculite mixture (3: i) or builders sand in a greenhouse. Roots were collected 4-8 weeks after planting. Three methods of extracting eggs were compared: (i) the method of McClure et al. (8), (ii) McClure et al. without sodium hypochlorite (SH), and (iii) McClure et al. modified as follows: egg masses and small roots were placed in 500 ml of sterile distilled water instead of I% SH. Eluted eggs and plant debris from a 16 ~m (400-mesh) screen were centrifuged in water instead of sucrose. After centrifuging for 2 min at 1,000 X g in 15-ml conical glass tubes,
Disrupted posttranscriptional regulation of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) by a 5′UTR mutation is associated with a cftr‐related disease

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is characterized as a single‐gene disorder with a simple, autosomal recessive mode of inheritance. However, translation of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) genotype into CF phenotype is influenced by nucleotide sequence variations at multiple genetic loci, and individuals heterozygous for CFTR mutations are predisposed to a range of CFTR‐related conditions, such as disseminated bronchiectasis. CF disease severity and CFTR‐related conditions are more akin to complex, multifactorial traits, which are increasingly being associated with mutations that perturb gene expression. We have identified a patient with disseminated bronchiectasis, who is heterozygous for a single‐nucleotide substitution in the CFTR 5′ untranslated region (UTR) (c.‐34C>T). The c. ‐34C>T mutation creates an upstream AUG codon and upstream open reading frame that overlaps, and is out of frame with, the CFTR protein coding sequence. Using luciferase reporter constructs, we have shown that the c. ‐34C>T mutation decreases gene expression by 85–99%, by reducing translation efficiency and mRNA stability. This is the first CFTR regulatory mutation shown to act at a posttranscriptional level that reduces the synthesis of normal CFTR (Class V), and reaffirms the importance of regulatory mutations as a genetic basis of multifactorial phenotypes. ©2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Towards a Benchmark for ETL Workflows

Extraction–Transform–Load (ETL) processes comprise complex data workflows, which are responsible for the maintenance of a Data Warehouse. Their practical importance is denoted by the fact that a plethora of ETL tools currently constitutes a multi-million dollars market. However, each one of them follows a different design and modeling technique and internal language. So far, the research community has not agreed upon the basic characteristics of ETL tools. Hence, there is a necessity for a unified way to assess ETL workflows. In this paper, we investigate the main characteristics and peculiarities of ETL processes and we propose a principled organization of test suites for the problem of experimenting with ETL scenarios.
Delineating developmental and metabolic pathways in vivo by expression profiling using the RIKEN set of 18,816 full-length enriched mouse cDNA arrays

We have systematically characterized gene expression patterns in 49 adult and embryonic mouse tissues by using cDNA microarrays with 18,816 mouse cDNAs. Cluster analysis defined sets of genes that were expressed ubiquitously or in similar groups of tissues such as digestive organs and muscle. Clustering of expression profiles was observed in embryonic brain, postnatal cerebellum, and adult olfactory bulb, reflecting similarities in neurogenesis and remodeling. Finally, clustering genes coding for known enzymes into 78 metabolic pathways revealed a surprising coordination of expression within each pathway among different tissues. On the other hand, a more detailed examination of glycolysis revealed tissue-specific differences in profiles of key regulatory enzymes. Thus, by surveying global gene expression by using microarrays with a large number of elements, we provide insights into the commonality and diversity of pathways responsible for the development and maintenance of the mammalian body plan.
Indirect calorimetry reveals that better monitoring of nutrition therapy in pediatric intensive care is needed.

BACKGROUND Monitoring nutrition therapy is essential in the care of critically ill children, but the risk of nutrition failure seems to remain. The aims of the present study were to examine the prevalence of underfeeding, adequate feeding, and overfeeding in mechanically ventilated children and to identify barriers to the delivery of nutrition support. MATERIALS AND METHODS Children aged 0-14 years who fulfilled the criteria for indirect calorimetry were enrolled in this prospective, observational study and were studied for up to 5 consecutive days. Actual energy intake was recorded and compared with the required energy intake (measured energy expenditure plus 10%); energy intake was classified as underfeeding (<90% of required energy intake), adequate feeding (90%-110%), or overfeeding (>110%). The reasons for interruptions to enteral and parenteral nutrition were recorded. RESULTS In total, 104 calorimetric measurements for 140 total days were recorded for 30 mechanically ventilated children. Underfeeding, adequate feeding, and overfeeding occurred on 21.2%, 18.3%, and 60.5% of the 104 measurement days, respectively. There was considerable variability in the measured energy expenditure between children (median, 37.2 kcal/kg/d; range, 16.81-66.38 kcal/kg/d), but the variation within each child was small. Respiratory quotient had low sensitivity of 21% and 27% for detecting underfeeding and overfeeding, respectively. Fasting for procedures was the most frequent barrier that led to interrupted nutrition support. CONCLUSION The high percentage of children (~61%) who were overfed emphasizes the need to measure energy needs by using indirect calorimetry.
Byzantine set-union consensus using efficient set reconciliation

AbstractApplications of secure multiparty computation such as certain electronic voting or auction protocols require Byzantine agreement on large sets of elements. Implementations proposed in the literature so far have relied on state machine replication and reach agreement on each individual set element in sequence.We introduce set-union consensus, a specialization of Byzantine consensus that reaches agreement over whole sets. This primitive admits an efficient and simple implementation by the composition of Eppstein’s set reconciliation protocol with Ben-Or’s ByzConsensus protocol.A free software implementation of this construction is available in GNUnet. Experimental results indicate that our approach results in an efficient protocol for very large sets, especially in the absence of Byzantine faults. We show the versatility of set-union consensus by using it to implement distributed key generation, ballot collection, and cooperative decryption for an electronic voting protocol implemented in GNUnet. This is a revised and extended version of a paper published under the same title at ARES 2016.
An efficient test vector compression technique based on geometric shapes [system-on-a-chip]

One of the prime challenges of testing a system-on-a-chip (SOC) is to reduce the required test data size. In this paper, we introduce a novel geometric shapes based compression/decompression scheme that substantially reduces the amount of test data and hence reduces test time. The proposed scheme is based on reordering the test vectors in such a way that it enables the generation of geometric shapes that can be highly compressed via perfect lossless compression. Experimental results on ISCAS benchmark circuits demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique in achieving very high compression ratio. Compared to published results, our technique achieves significantly higher compression ratio.
A Collaborative Filtering Approach to Real-Time Hand Pose Estimation

Collaborative filtering aims to predict unknown user ratings in a recommender system by collectively assessing known user preferences. In this paper, we first draw analogies between collaborative filtering and the pose estimation problem. Specifically, we recast the hand pose estimation problem as the cold-start problem for a new user with unknown item ratings in a recommender system. Inspired by fast and accurate matrix factorization techniques for collaborative filtering, we develop a real-time algorithm for estimating the hand pose from RGB-D data of a commercial depth camera. First, we efficiently identify nearest neighbors using local shape descriptors in the RGB-D domain from a library of hand poses with known pose parameter values. We then use this information to evaluate the unknown pose parameters using a joint matrix factorization and completion (JMFC) approach. Our quantitative and qualitative results suggest that our approach is robust to variation in hand configurations while achieving real time performance (≈ 29 FPS) on a standard computer.
Intra-Species Bacterial Quorum Sensing Studied at Single Cell Level in a Double Droplet Trapping System

In this paper, we investigated the intra-species bacterial quorum sensing at the single cell level using a double droplet trapping system. Escherichia coli transformed to express the quorum sensing receptor protein, LasR, were encapsulated in microdroplets that were positioned adjacent to microdroplets containing the autoinducer, N-(3-oxododecanoyl)-L-homoserine lactone (OdDHL). Functional activation of the LasR protein by diffusion of the OdDHL across the droplet interface was measured by monitoring the expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP) from a LasR-dependent promoter. A threshold concentration of OdDHL was found to induce production of quorum-sensing associated GFP by E. coli. Additionally, we demonstrated that LasR-dependent activation of GFP expression was also initiated when the adjacent droplets contained single E. coli transformed with the OdDHL synthase gene, LasI, representing a simple quorum sensing circuit between two droplets.
Hybrid Mesh-Ring wireless NoC for multi-core system

Hybrid network on chip architecture is proposed for high system performance, so with the increase in the number of IP blocks it improves the three main parameters which are throughput, latency and power dissipation better than traditional wired network on chip. Hybrid Mesh-Ring architecture has shown the advantages of using both wired and wireless links in the same network which shows a great performance in Network on Chip (NoC). Two models of Mesh-Ring Architecture are proposed one is based on wired and wireless links which is hybrid model and the other model is based on wired links only which is wired model. The hybrid model has improved the performance in Latency by 20 % as compared to wired model. Throughput has increased by 31 % compared to throughput of wired model and Power-dissipation has decreased by 11 % compared to wired model.
Automatic annotation placement for interactive maps

Situation maps play an important role in planning and decision making in emergency response centers. Important information such as operating units or hazards is usually shown on these maps. Arranging the huge amount of in-formation can be challenging for operators, as this information should always be visible while not occluding im-portant regions of the underlying geographic map. As large interactive whiteboards are increasingly replacing tradition-al analog maps, new ways to assist with arranging information can be provided. In this paper, we present a new approach for placing annotations automatically on top of a map. For finding the optimal placement, our metrics are based on geographic features, on the users' sketched input, and on the annotations geometry itself. Moreover, we also added additional features to minimize occlusions for multiple annotations. First results were highly promising and showed that our approach improves input performance while keeping an optimal view of the map.
Using WordNet to disambiguate word senses for text retrieval

This paper describes an automatic indexing procedure that uses the “IS-A” relations contained within WordNet and the set of nouns contained in a text to select a sense for each plysemous noun in the text. The result of the indexing procedure is a vector in which some of the terms represent word senses instead of word stems. Retrieval experiments comparing the effectivenss of these sense-based vectors vs. stem-based vectors show the stem-based vectors to be superior overall, although the sense-based vectors do improve the performance of some queries. The overall degradation is due in large part to the difficulty of disambiguating senses in short query statements. An analysis of these results suggests two conclusions: the IS-A links define a generalization/specialization hierarchy that is not sufficient to reliably select the correct sense of a noun from the set of fine sense distinctions in WordNet; and missing correct matches because of incorrect sense resolution has a much more deleterious effect on retrieval performance than does making spurious matches.
A parallel kinematic mechanism for the torso of a humanoid robot: Design, construction and validation

The torso of a humanoid robot is a fundamental part of its kinematic structure because it defines the reachable workspace, supports the entire upper-body and can be used to control the position of the center of mass. The majority of the torso joints are designed exploiting serial or differential mechanisms, while parallel kinematic structures are less used mainly because of their greater design complexity. This paper describes the design and construction of a 4 degrees of freedom (DoF) torso for our new humanoid robot. Three degrees of freedom, namely roll, pitch and heave, have been implemented using a 3 DoF parallel kinematic structure, while the fourth DoF, namely yaw, has been implemented with a rotational joint on top of the parallel structure. The design has been optimized to reduce the cost and the volume of the system. A first prototype of the torso has been constructed and validated with respect to our design requirements. Eventually, experimental tests have been conducted to assess the functionality of the proposed system.
The Toxicological Properties of Petroleum Gases

To characterize the toxicological hazards of petroleum gases, 90-day inhalation toxicity (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] 413) and developmental toxicity (OECD 414) tests were conducted with liquefied propane gas (LPG) at concentrations of 1000, 5000, or 10 000 ppm. A micronucleus test (OECD 474) of LPG was also conducted. No systemic or developmental effects were observed; the overall no observed adverse effect concentration (NOAEC) was 10 000 ppm. Further, there was no effect of LPG exposure at levels up to 10 000 ppm on micronucleus induction and no evidence of bone marrow toxicity. Other alkane gases (ethane, propane, n-butane, and isobutane) were then evaluated in combined repeated exposure studies with reproduction/development toxicity screening tests (OECD 422). There were no toxicologically important changes in parameters relating to systemic toxicity or neurotoxicity for any of these gases at concentrations ranging from 9000 to 16 000 ppm. There was no evidence of effects on developmental or reproductive toxicity in the studies of ethane, propane, or n-butane at the highest concentrations tested. However, there was a reduction in mating in the high-exposure group (9000 ppm) of the isobutane study, which although not significantly different was outside the range previously observed in the testing laboratory. Assuming the reduction in mating to have been toxicologically significant, the NOAEC for the isobutane reproductive toxicity screening test was 3000 ppm (7125 mg/m3). A method is proposed by which the toxicity of any of the 106 complex petroleum gas streams can be estimated from its composition.
Geospatial technology perspectives for mining vis-a-vis sustainable forest ecosystems

Abstract Forests, the backbone of biogeochemical cycles and life supporting systems, are under severe pressure due to varied anthropogenic activities. Mining activities are one among the major reasons for forest destruction questioning the survivability and sustainability of flora and fauna existing in that area. Thus, monitoring and managing the impact of mining activities on natural resources at regular intervals is necessary to check the status of their depleted conditions, and to take up restoration and conservative measurements. Geospatial technology provides means to identify the impact of different mining operations on forest ecosystems and helps in proposing initiatives for safeguarding the forest environment. In this context, the present study highlights the problems related to mining in forest ecosystems and elucidates how geospatial technology can be employed at various stages of mining activities to achieve a sustainable forest ecosystem. The study collates information from various sources and highlights the role of geospatial technology in mining industries and reclamation process.
Agonist‐dependent modulation of arterial endothelinA receptor function

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Endothelin‐1 (ET‐1) causes long‐lasting vasoconstrictions. These can be prevented by ETA receptor antagonists but are only poorly reversed by these drugs. We tested the hypothesis that endothelin ETA receptors are susceptible to allosteric modulation by endogenous agonists and exogenous ligands.
Visual Saliency Based on Scale-Space Analysis in the Frequency Domain

We address the issue of visual saliency from three perspectives. First, we consider saliency detection as a frequency domain analysis problem. Second, we achieve this by employing the concept of nonsaliency. Third, we simultaneously consider the detection of salient regions of different size. The paper proposes a new bottom-up paradigm for detecting visual saliency, characterized by a scale-space analysis of the amplitude spectrum of natural images. We show that the convolution of the image amplitude spectrum with a low-pass Gaussian kernel of an appropriate scale is equivalent to an image saliency detector. The saliency map is obtained by reconstructing the 2D signal using the original phase and the amplitude spectrum, filtered at a scale selected by minimizing saliency map entropy. A Hypercomplex Fourier Transform performs the analysis in the frequency domain. Using available databases, we demonstrate experimentally that the proposed model can predict human fixation data. We also introduce a new image database and use it to show that the saliency detector can highlight both small and large salient regions, as well as inhibit repeated distractors in cluttered images. In addition, we show that it is able to predict salient regions on which people focus their attention.
Murine interstitial nephritis. I. Analysis of disease susceptibility and its relationship of pleiomorphic gene products defining both immune- response genes and a restrictive requirement for cytotoxic T cells at H- 2K

Anti-tubular basement membrance (alpha TBM) disease-producing interstitial nephritis in mice is not dependent on the generation of alpha TBM antibodies. Susceptibility seems to be defined by very private specificities in H-2K. These specificities are pleiomorphic, providing both immune-response genes and identity restrictions for cytotoxic effector functions expressed by a Thy-1.2+, Lyt-2,3+ T cell. These studies establish a role for T cells in the pathogenesis in interstitial nephritis as well as providing further evidence for the role of H-2K in the expression of an autoimmune disease.
SystemC-AMS requirements, design objectives and rationale

This paper presents and discusses the foundations on which the analog and mixed-signal extensions of SystemC, named SystemC-AMS, will be developed. First, requirements from targeted application domains are identified. These are then used to derive design objectives and related rationales. Finally, some preliminary seed work is presented and the outline of the analog and mixed-signal extensions development work is given.