Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of net-costs for prevention of occupational low back pain: three case studies from the US.

BACKGROUND Occupational low back pain (OLBP) is widespread in industrialized societies. We present a model to estimate the net economic costs of investments in ergonomic interventions at the company level to reduce work-related low back pain. METHODS Costs of interventions are defined by incorporating not only the costs of investment of equipment and labor, but also by taking into account the avoided costs of lost work time, medical care costs, and productivity improvements. In the net-cost model, all costs are annualized and are calculated at the level of an individual organization. Three case studies have been performed based on data from three companies in the manufacturing sector of the United States using the above approach. RESULTS The net-cost estimates for the three case studies consistently show that ergonomic interventions applied appropriately can result in substantial cost savings for the companies. CONCLUSIONS Although generalizing on the basis of three case studies is not ideal, our analyses show that it might be in the economic interest of management to play a more active role to prevent back pain. Gathering useful retrospective cost data, even on interventions deemed effective by corporate innovators, proved to be extremely difficult. We conclude that it is essential to incorporate a protocol for collecting cost and effectiveness data in the standard operating procedures of ergonomists and companies introducing such innovation. We intend to validate the net-cost model for the monitoring and reporting of such data through prospective studies in a variety of industrial settings and in countries at various stages of economic development.
The experimental and educational rain gardens of the Agripolis Campus (north-east Italy): preliminary results on hydrological and plant behavior

In most urbanized areas stormwater runoff, flowing on impervious surfaces, can increase the risk of floods and overload of drainage systems. Landscape designers may contribute to the mitigation of the problem by incorporating appropriate solutions in the design of green spaces. Rain gardens are green infrastructures that can contribute to more sustainable urban development. Since 2011, an experiment has been carried out at the University of Padova with the aim to assess the use of rain gardens for a sustainable management of the stormwater runoff. Two circular rain gardens with herbaceous perennials, differently sized and equipped with TDR soil moisture sensors, were designed and built to intercept equal amounts of runoff draining from a building roof with an area of 215 m2. The experiment consisted of testing the capacity of intercepting runoff caused by storm of different magnitude, in measuring the dynamics of water in the topsoil after the rainfall events and in evaluating the growth and aesthetic quality of the different plant species used. Input and output water volumes were measured and actual ET was estimated using WUCOLS Landscape Coefficient Methods. Results of the preliminary phase showed that both the rain gardens were able to satisfactorily manage the roof runoff, which was taken off the urban drainage system, with a good aesthetic result.
Rapid Online Analysis of Local Feature Detectors and Their Complementarity

A vision system that can assess its own performance and take appropriate actions online to maximize its effectiveness would be a step towards achieving the long-cherished goal of imitating humans. This paper proposes a method for performing an online performance analysis of local feature detectors, the primary stage of many practical vision systems. It advocates the spatial distribution of local image features as a good performance indicator and presents a metric that can be calculated rapidly, concurs with human visual assessments and is complementary to existing offline measures such as repeatability. The metric is shown to provide a measure of complementarity for combinations of detectors, correctly reflecting the underlying principles of individual detectors. Qualitative results on well-established datasets for several state-of-the-art detectors are presented based on the proposed measure. Using a hypothesis testing approach and a newly-acquired, larger image database, statistically-significant performance differences are identified. Different detector pairs and triplets are examined quantitatively and the results provide a useful guideline for combining detectors in applications that require a reasonable spatial distribution of image features. A principled framework for combining feature detectors in these applications is also presented. Timing results reveal the potential of the metric for online applications.
ARTcode: preserve art and code in any image

The ubiquitous QR codes and some similar barcodes are becoming a convenient and popular approach to impromptu communication between mobile devices and their surrounding cyber-physical world. However, such codes suffer from two common drawbacks: poor viewing experience and inability to be identified through itself. In this work, we propose ART-code-- Adaptive Robust doT matrix barcode, which aims to preserve ART and CODE features in one visual pattern. It works on any surface (paper or electronic displays) and is able to convert any image or any form of human-readable contents (e.g., a picture, a logo, a slogan) into an ARTcode. It looks like an image which retains human-readable and aesthetically pleasant contents, and in the meanwhile, it acts as a QR code which conveys data bits over the visual channel. The core enablers in ARTcode are (1) the design of the colored dot matrix for data embedding with little distortion from the original image and (2) a comprehensive error correction scheme which enhances decoding robustness against noises and interferences from the original image in ARTcode. We implement ARTcode with the receiver on Android phones and the sender from a PC or a phone (it can be printed in paper). We conduct extensive user survey and experiments for evaluation. It validates the effectiveness and wide applicability of ARTcode: It works well with all of 197 images randomly downloaded, covering representative categories of the gray-scale images, logos, colored ones with low/medium/strong contrasts. The image quality is quite acceptable in a subjective user-perception survey with 50 participants and data communication accuracy achieves as high as 99% in almost all the cases (> 96% raw accuracy in ARTcode without error detection and other schemes).
L-Theanine Content and Related Gene Expression: Novel Insights into Theanine Biosynthesis and Hydrolysis among Different Tea Plant (Camellia sinensis L.) Tissues and Cultivars

L-Theanine content has tissues and cultivars specificity in tea plant (Camellia sinensis L.), the correlations of theanine metabolic related genes expression profiles with theanine contents were explored in this study. L-theanine contents in the bud and 1st leaf, 2nd leaf, 3rd leaf, old leaf, stem, and lateral root were determined by HPLC from three C. sinensis cultivars, namely ‘Huangjinya’, ‘Anjibaicha’, and ‘Yingshuang’, respectively. The theanine contents in leaves and root of ‘Huangjinya’ were the highest, followed by ‘Anjibaicha’, and ‘Yingshuang’. The theanine contents in the leaves reduced as the leaf mature gradually, and in stem were the least. Seventeen genes encoding enzymes involved in theanine metabolism were identified from GenBank and our tea transcriptome database, including CsTS1, CsTS2, CsGS1, CsGS2, CsGOGAT-Fe, CsGOGAT-NAD(P)H, CsGDH1, CsGDH2, CsALT, CsSAMDC, CsADC, CsCuAO, CsPAO, CsNiR, CsNR, CsGGT1, and CsGGT3. The transcript profiles of those seventeen genes in the different tissues of three tea plant cultivars were analyzed comparatively. Among the different cultivars, the transcript levels of most selected genes in ‘Huangjinya’ were significantly higher than that in the ‘Anjibaicha’ and ‘Yingshuang’. Among the different tissues, the transcript levels of CsTS2, CsGS1, and CsGDH2 almost showed positive correlation with the theanine contents, while the other genes showed negative correlation with the theanine contents in most cases. The theanine contents showed correlations with related genes expression levels among cultivars and tissues of tea plant, and were determined by the integrated effect of the metabolic related genes.
Soluble Factor from Murine Bladder Tumor-2 Cell Elevates Nitric Oxide Production in Macrophages and Enhances the Taxol-Mediated Macrophage Cytotoxicity on Tumor Cells

The therapeutic mechanism of taxol is believed to reside primarily in its ability to stabilize microtubules and prevent cell progression through mitosis. Taxol also can activate macrophage-mediated antitumor mechanism through a nitric oxide (NO)-dependent pathway. To address whether any mechanisms account for superficial urinary bladder tumor cell killing, we evaluated the effects of taxol on the growth and viability of murine bladder tumor-2 (MBT-2) cells in vitro, both in the absence and presence of murine macrophages. In addition, we evaluated whether a soluble factor generated from MBT-2 cells could modulate the antitumor activity of the taxol-activated macrophages. Although taxol inhibited the growth of MBT-2 cells, it did not kill the tumor cells. However, preincubation of macrophages with taxol significantly decreased the viability of MBT-2 cells. Secretion of NO correlated with MBT-2 cell killing, and the activated macrophages failed to kill tumor cell targets in the presence of NG-monomethyl-L-arginine, a competitive inhibitor of NO synthase. By the co-culture of macrophages and MBT-2 cells, untreated macrophages also released modest amount of NO and this was synergistically augmented by the treatment with taxol, indicating that MBT-2 tumor cells released some unknown factor that activated the macrophages and enhanced NO production. We named this factor the tumor-derived macrophage activating factor (TMAF). The TMAF-mediated activation of macrophages to enhance the NO production was not blocked by treatment of macrophages with oxidized low-density lipoprotein (Ox-LDL), implying that the scavenger receptor of macrophages is not involved. Sodium nitroprusside (SNP), an NO donor given to the MBT-2 cells, increased the activities of c-Jun N-terminal kinase and caspase-3 in MBT-2 cells and associated with nucleosomal fragmentation or apoptosis, whereas taxol had no direct effect on these parameters. Collectively, our results strongly suggest that taxol kills the murine bladder tumor cells through indirect activation of macrophages via NO-dependent apoptosis, instead of its better-known role as the direct antimitotic action. Our results further demonstrate that TMAF acts in synergy with taxol to activate the macrophages to elicit enhanced tumor cell killing ability.
Disassembly of Son-of-sevenless Proteins from Grb2 during p21 Desensitization by Insulin (*)

Insulin receptor signaling acutely stimulates GTP loading of p21, apparently by mobilizing complexes of Grb2 and the guanine nucleotide exchangers Son-of-sevenless (Sos) 1 and 2 to associate with tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins in the plasma membrane. Here we show that in P-labeled 3T3-L1 adipocytes the elevated cellular concentrations of [P]GTP-bound p21 in response to insulin return to near basal levels after 20-30 min of hormone stimulation, while insulin receptors remain activated. Lysates of such desensitized cells were quantitatively immunoprecipitated with an antiserum recognizing both Sos1 and Sos2 proteins or a specific anti-Sos2 antiserum. Immunoblot analysis of these precipitates revealed that insulin causes a marked hyperphosphorylation of Sos1 and a 50% decrease in Grb2 associated with Sos proteins under these conditions. Similarly, anti-Grb2 immunoprecipitates of such lysates revealed the presence of decreased Sos1 protein due to insulin action. The disassembly of Grb2 from Sos proteins slightly precedes the time course of p21 deactivation in response to insulin. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that the dissociation of Grb2 from Sos proteins caused by insulin in 3T3-L1 cells mediates p21deactivation and desensitization.
An efficient strategy for evaluating similarity between time series based on Wavelet / Karhunen-Loève transforms

The present work aims to present an innovative measure able to efficiently evaluate the similarity between two physiological time series. The proposed methodology combines the Haar wavelet decomposition, in which signals are represented as linear combinations of a set of orthogonal basis, with the Karhunen-Loève transform, that allows for the optimal reduction of that set of basis. The similarity measure is based on the Euclidean distance, but indirectly calculated through the linear combination coefficients of both time series. Moreover, an iterative scheme for computing the referred coefficients significantly decreases the computational complexity of the method that, due to its simplicity and fast execution, can be easily applicable in clinical applications, namely in computational demanding contexts such as telemonitoring environments. This strategy has been successfully implemented and validated inside HeartCycle project, applied to blood pressure signals collected by a telemonitoring platform (TEN-HMS) in the recognition of hypertension episodes.
Lebecetin, a C‐type lectin, inhibits choroidal and retinal neovascularization

Angiogenesis is a cause of visual impairment and blindness in the wet form of age‐related macular degeneration and in ischemic retinopathies. Current therapies include use of anti‐VEGF agents to reduce choroidal neovascularization (CNV) and edema. These treatments are effective in most cases, but spontaneous or acquired resistance to anti‐VEGF and possible adverse effects of long‐term VEGF inhibition in the retina and choroid highlight a need for additional alternative therapies. Integrins αvβ3 and αvβ5, which regulate endothelial cell proliferation and stabilization, have been implicated in ocular angiogenesis. Lebecetin (LCT) is a 30‐kDa heterodimeric C‐type lectin that is isolated from Macrovipera lebetina venom and interacts with α5β1‐ and αv‐containing integrins. We previously showed that LCT inhibits human brain microvascular endothelial cell adhesion, migration, proliferation, and tubulogenesis. To evaluate the inhibitory effect of LCT on ocular angiogenesis, we cultured aortic and choroidal explants in the presence of LCT and analyzed the effect of LCT on CNV in the mouse CNV model and on retinal neovascularization in the oxygen‐induced retinopathy model. Our data demonstrate that a single injection of LCT efficiently reduced CNV and retinal neovascularization in these models. —Montassar, F. , Darche, M. , Blaizot, A. , Augustin, S. , Conart, J.‐B. , Millet, A. , Elayeb, M. , Sahel, J.‐A. , Réaux‐Le Goazigo, A. , Sennlaub, F. , Marrakchi, N. , Messadi, E. , Guillonneau, X. Lebecetin, a C‐type lectin, inhibits choroidal and retinal neovascularization. FASEB J. 31, 1107–1119 (2017). www.fasebj. org
Investigation of Aflatoxins in Imported Animal Feeds in Iran

Background: Aflatoxins (AF’s) are secondary metabolites produced by certain species of fungi on grains and animal feeds. Because of serious impact of AF’s on health, they should be monitored closely in potentially hazardous foods and feeds. Method: In this study, AF’s in imported animal feeds including cereals, corn gluten and meals (pastes derived from the cotton, colza and sunflower seeds) from several Iranian ports were investigated. To determine AF’s contamination in feeds, the HPLC method coupled with immunoaffinity column clean up and post column derivatization were used. Results: The results showed that 44.2% of samples were positive for AF’s at levels of 0.5 to 103. 8μg/Kg. Nine of the positive samples (3.7%) showed total AF’s concentrations (B1, B2, G1 and G2) higher than the limit established by the regulated Iranian standards. Conclusions: The results of the present investigation showed that the level of aflatoxin contamination in these feeds samples was variable. Among the samples, corn was more susceptible to various AF species than other tested substrates.
Machine-Learning-Guided Typestate Analysis for Static Use-After-Free Detection

Typestate analysis relies on pointer analysis for detecting temporal memory safety errors, such as use-after-free (UAF). For large programs, scalable pointer analysis is usually imprecise in analyzing their hard "corner cases", such as infeasible paths, recursion cycles, loops, arrays, and linked lists. Due to a sound over-approximation of the points-to information, a large number of spurious aliases will be reported conservatively, causing the corresponding typestate analysis to report a large number of false alarms. Thus, the usefulness of typestate analysis for heap-intensive clients, like UAF detection, becomes rather limited, in practice. We introduce Tac, a static UAF detector that bridges the gap between typestate and pointer analyses by machine learning. Tac learns the correlations between program features and UAF-related aliases by using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) and applies this knowledge to further disambiguate the UAF-related aliases reported imprecisely by the pointer analysis so that only the ones validated by its SVM classifier are further investigated by the typestate analysis. Despite its unsoundness, Tac represents a practical typestate analysis approach for UAF detection. We have implemented Tac in LLVM-3.8. 0 and evaluated it using a set of eight open-source C/C++ programs. The results show that Tac is effective (in terms of finding 5 known CVE vulnerabilities, 1 known bug, and 8 new bugs with a low false alarm rate) and scalable (in terms of analyzing a large codebase with 2,098 KLOC in just over 4 hours).
NGC 1912 and NGC 1907: A close encounter between open clusters?

The possible physical relation between the closely projected open clusters NGC 1912 (M 38) and NGC 1907 is investigated. Previous studies suggested a physical pair based on similar distances, and the present study explores in more detail the possible interaction. Spatial velocities are derived from available radial velocities and proper motions, and the past orbital motions of the clusters are retrieved in a Galactic potential model. Detailed N-body simulations of their approach suggest that the clusters were born in dierent regions of the Galaxy and presently experience a fly-by.
Doppler synthetic aperture hitchhiker imaging Can

In this paper we consider passive airborne receivers that use backscattered signals from sources of opportunity transmitting single-frequency or ultranarrowband waveforms. Because of its combined passive synthetic aperture and the single-frequency nature of the transmitted waveforms, we refer to the system under consideration as Doppler synthetic aperture hitchhiker (DSAH). We present a novel image formation method for DSAH. Our method first correlates the windowed signal obtained from one receiver with the windowed, filtered, scaled and translated version of the received signal from another receiver. This processing removes the transmitter-related variables from the phase of the Fourier integral operator that maps the radiance of the scene to the correlated signal. Next, we use microlocal analysis to reconstruct the scene radiance by the weighted backprojection of the correlated signal. The image reconstruction method is applicable to both cooperative and noncooperative sources of opportunity using one or more airborne receivers. It has the desirable property of preserving the visible edges of the scene radiance. Additionally, it is an analytic reconstruction technique that can be made computationally efficient. We present numerical simulations to demonstrate the performance of the image reconstruction method and to verify the theoretical results. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)
Cooperative multiple trellis coded modulation

In this paper, we consider the general design criteria, properties and explicit code design procedures for cooperative multiple trellis coded modulation (CMTCM) schemes over Rayleigh fading channels. The cooperative system of interest utilizes the decode and forward protocol based on orthogonal transmissions from the cooperating terminals to the destination. We design full diversity cooperative multiple trellis codes using asymmetric constellations that at a frame error probability of 10-3 provide around 10-12 dB gains over non-cooperative coded modulation without sacrificing the data rate and/or bandwidth efficiency. This is achieved by expanding the baseline constellation used in the non-cooperative transmission, designing the signal constellation to be asymmetric, and adopting multiple mappings among users. The consistent performance gains due to coding, asymmetry, and mappings of symbols onto the constellation are evaluated in terms of the frame error probability. We present simulation results that support the theoretical designs and illustrate the viability of the proposed cooperative MTCM technique.
Obstetric Anesthesia

Every aspect of obstetric anesthesia practice is covered, including patient evaluation, anesthesia for labor and delivery, anesthesia for cesarean delivery, management of patients with concurrent medical problems, management of obstetric emergencies, fetal assessment, and neonatal resuscitation. Distilled, synthesized text is complemented by a generous number of tables, charts, figures and flow diagrams, all presented in accessible handbook format. Obstetric Anesthesia is an ideal introduction to the specialty as well as an essential daily guide for obstetric patient care and management.
Integrating User-Generated Content in the ACL Anthology

The ACL Anthology was revamped in 2012 to its second major version, encompassing faceted navigation, social media use, as well as author- and reader-generated content and comments on published work as part of the revised frontend user interface. At the backend, the Anthology was updated to incorporate its publication records into a database. We describe the ACL Anthology's previous legacy, redesign and revamp process and technologies, and its resulting functionality.
Changes in hydrogen isotope ratios in sequential plumage stages: An implication for the creation of isotope-base maps for tracking migratory birds

Accurate reference maps are important in the use of stable-isotopes to track the movements of migratory birds. Reference maps created by the analysis of samples collected from young at the nest site are more accurate than simply referring to naturally occurring patterns of hydrogen isotope ratios created by precipitation cycles. Ratios of hydrogen isotopes in the nutrients incorporated early in the development of young birds can be derived from endogenous, maternal sources. Base-maps should be created with the analysis of tissue samples from hatchlings after local the isotopic signature of exogenous nutrients is dominant. Migratory species such as Peregrine Falcons are known to use endogenous sources in the creation of their eggs, therefore knowledge of what plumage stage best represents the local hydrogen ratios would assist in the planning of nest visits. We conducted diet manipulation experiments involving Japanese Quail and Peregrine Falcons to determine the plumage stage when hydrogen isotope ratios were indicative of a switch in their food source. The natal down of both the quail and falcons reflected the diet of breeding adult females. The hydrogen isotope ratios of a new food source were dominant in the juvenile down of the young falcons, although a further shift was detected in the final juvenile plumage. The juvenile plumage is grown during weeks 3-4 after hatch on Peregrine Falcons. Nest visits for the purpose of collecting feathers for isotope-base-map creation should be made around 4 weeks after the presumed hatch of the young falcons.