Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Molecular mechanism for the umami taste synergism

Umami is one of the 5 basic taste qualities. The umami taste of L-glutamate can be drastically enhanced by 5′ ribonucleotides and the synergy is a hallmark of this taste quality. The umami taste receptor is a heteromeric complex of 2 class C G-protein-coupled receptors, T1R1 and T1R3. Here we elucidate the molecular mechanism of the synergy using chimeric T1R receptors, site-directed mutagenesis, and molecular modeling. We propose a cooperative ligand-binding model involving the Venus flytrap domain of T1R1, where L-glutamate binds close to the hinge region, and 5′ ribonucleotides bind to an adjacent site close to the opening of the flytrap to further stabilize the closed conformation. This unique mechanism may apply to other class C G-protein-coupled receptors.
Critical Factors of ERP Adoption for Small- and Medium- Sized Enterprises: An Empirical Study

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises SMEs play a vital and pervasive role in the current development of Taiwan's economy. Recently, the application of Enterprise Resource Planning ERP systems have enabled large enterprises to have direct contact with their clients via e-commerce technology, which has led to even fiercer competition among the SMEs. This study develops and tests a theoretical model including critical factors which influence ERP adoption in Taiwan's SMEs. Specifically, four dimensions, including CEO characteristics, innovative technology characteristics, organizational characteristics, and environmental characteristics, are empirically examined. The results of a mail survey indicate that the CEO's attitude towards information technology IT adoption, the CEO's IT knowledge, the employees' IT skills, business size, competitive pressure, cost, complexity, and compatibility are all important determinants in ERP adoption for SMEs. The authors' results are compared with research on IT adoption in SMEs based in Singapore and the United States, while implications of the results are also discussed.
The Influence of Discourse on Syntax: A Psycholinguistic Model of Sentence Processing

Probabilistic models of sentence comprehension are increasingly relevant to questions concerning human language processing. However, such models are often limited to syntactic factors. This paper introduces a novel sentence processing model that consists of a parser augmented with a probabilistic logic-based model of coreference resolution, which allows us to simulate how context interacts with syntax in a reading task. Our simulations show that a Weakly Interactive cognitive architecture can explain data which had been provided as evidence for the Strongly Interactive hypothesis.
Characterization and Antimicrobial Activity of Volatile Constituents from Fresh Fruits of Alchornea cordifolia and Canthium subcordatum

Bacterial resistance has been increasingly reported worldwide and is one of the major causes of failure in the treatment of infectious diseases. Natural-based products, including plant secondary metabolites (phytochemicals), can be exploited to ameliorate the problem of microbial resistance. The fruit essential oils of Alchornea cordifolia and Canthium subcordatum were obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The essential oils were subjected to in vitro antibacterial, antifungal and cytotoxic activity screening. Thirty-eight compounds comprising 97.7% of A. cordifolia oil and forty-six constituents representing 98.2% of C. subcordatum oil were identified. The major components in A. cordifolia oil were methyl salicylate (25.3%), citronellol (21.4%), α-phellandrene (7.4%), terpinolene (5.7%) and 1,8-cineole (5.5%). Benzaldehyde (28.0%), β-caryophyllene (15.5%), (E,E)-α-farnesene (5.3%) and methyl salicylate (4.5%) were the quantitatively significant constituents in C. subcordatum fruit essential oil. A. cordifolia essential oil demonstrated potent in vitro antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus (MIC = 78 μg/mL) and marginal antifungal activity against Aspergillus niger (MIC = 156 μg/mL). C. subcordatum showed antibacterial activity against Bacillus cereus and S. aureus (MIC = 156 μg/mL) and notable antifungal activity against A. niger (MIC = 39 μg/mL). However, no appreciable cytotoxic effects on human breast carcinoma cells (Hs 578T) and human prostate carcinoma cells (PC-3) were observed for either essential oil. The antimicrobial activities of A. cordifolia and C. subcordatum fruit essential oils are a function of their distinct chemical profiles; their volatiles and biological activities are reported for the first time.
The SPOrt project: an experimental overview

The Sky Polarization Observatory (SPOrt) is presented as a project aimed to measure the diffuse sky polarized emission, from the International Space Station, in the frequency range 20–90 GHz with 7° of HPBW. The SPOrt experimental configuration is described with emphasis on the aspects that make SPOrt the first European scientific payload operating at microwave wavelengths.
Evaluating Large-Scale Biomedical Ontology Matching Over Parallel Platforms

ABSTRACT Biomedical systems have been using ontology matching as a primary technique for heterogeneity resolution. However, the natural intricacy and vastness of biomedical data have compelled biomedical ontologies to become large-scale and complex; consequently, biomedical ontology matching has become a computationally intensive task. Our parallel heterogeneity resolution system, i.e., SPHeRe, is built to cater the performance needs of ontology matching by exploiting the parallelism-enabled multicore nature of today's desktop PC and cloud infrastructure. In this paper, we present the execution and evaluation results of SPHeRe over large-scale biomedical ontologies. We evaluate our system by integrating it with the interoperability engine of a clinical decision support system (CDSS), which generates matching requests for large-scale NCI, FMA, and SNOMED-CT biomedical ontologies. Results demonstrate that our methodology provides an impressive performance speedup of 4.8 and 9.5 times over a quad-core desktop PC and a four virtual machine (VM) cloud platform, respectively.
RESOLUTION IN ELECTRON MICROSCOPE RADIOAUTOGRAPHY

Experimental resolution values, half distances (HD), were determined for electron microscope radioautography with 14C as the source of radioactivity. These were about a factor of 1.5–2 times higher than for tritium. Grain distributions normalized in units of HD were found to fit the "universal" curves previously obtained for tritium.
A Rule-Based Traffic Exchange Matrix Estimation Algorithm for BitTorrent Tomography

Traffic exchange matrix records the traffic exchanged between pairs of BitTorrent (BT) clients. Comparing with measuring each BT client's total file transferring rates, which can be easily done at the BT tracker, to directly measure the traffic exchange matrix is far from operable. A problem of BT tomography to estimate the traffic exchange matrix from the clients' total file transferring rates is raised in this paper. We propose a heuristic algorithm based on the BT file transferring rules and the law of gravity widely presented in the Internet traffic to estimate the traffic exchange matrix. Our work takes the first step to infer the traffic exchange matrix in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, which helps to further investigate how P2P traffic actually flow in the networks
Overview and status of the 0.5NA EUV microfield exposure tool at Berkeley Lab

A 0.5-NA extreme ultraviolet micro-field exposure tool has been installed and commissioned at beamline 12.0.1.4 of the Advanced Light Source synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Commissioning has demonstrated a patterning resolution of 13 nm half-pitch with annular 0.35 – 0.55 illumination; a patterning resolution of 8 nm half-pitch with annular 0.1 – 0.2 illumination; critical dimension (CD) uniformity of 0.7 nm 1σ on 16 nm nominal CD across 80% of the 200 um x 30 um aberration corrected field of view; aerial image vibration relative to the wafer of 0.75 nn RMS and focus control and focus stepping better than 15 nm.
Physical Activity in Adolescents following Treatment for Cancer: Influencing Factors

The purpose of this study was to examine physical activity levels and influencing individual and environmental factors in a group of adolescent survivors of cancer and a comparison group. Methods. The study was conducted using a “mixed methods” design. Quantitative data was collected from 48 adolescent survivors of cancer and 48 comparison adolescents using the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire, the Fatigue Scale—Adolescents, and the Amherst Health and Activity Study—Student Survey. Qualitative data was collected in individual semistructured interviews. Results. Reported leisure-time physical activity total scores were not significantly different between groups. Physical activity levels were positively correlated with adult social support factors in the group of adolescent survivors of cancer, but not in the comparison group. Time was the primary barrier to physical activity in both groups. Fatigue scores were higher for the comparison but were not associated with physical activity levels in either group. The qualitative data further supported these findings. Conclusions. Barriers to physical activity were common between adolescent survivors of cancer and a comparative group. Increased knowledge of the motivators and barriers to physical activity may help health care providers and families provide more effective health promotion strategies to adolescent survivors of pediatric cancer.
The Effect of a Diet Moderately High in Protein and Fiber on Insulin Sensitivity Measured Using the Dynamic Insulin Sensitivity and Secretion Test (DISST)

Evidence shows that weight loss improves insulin sensitivity but few studies have examined the effect of macronutrient composition independently of weight loss on direct measures of insulin sensitivity. We randomised 89 overweight or obese women to either a standard diet (StdD), that was intended to be low in fat and relatively high in carbohydrate (n = 42) or to a relatively high protein (up to 30% of energy), relatively high fibre (>30 g/day) diet (HPHFib) (n = 47) for 10 weeks. Advice regarding strict adherence to energy intake goals was not given. Insulin sensitivity and secretion was assessed by a novel method—the Dynamic Insulin Sensitivity and Secretion Test (DISST). Although there were significant improvements in body composition and most cardiometabolic risk factors on HPHFib, insulin sensitivity was reduced by 19.3% (95% CI: 31.8%, 4.5%; p = 0.013) in comparison with StdD. We conclude that the reduction in insulin sensitivity after a diet relatively high in both protein and fibre, despite cardiometabolic improvements, suggests insulin sensitivity may reflect metabolic adaptations to dietary composition for maintenance of glucose homeostasis, rather than impaired metabolism.
A convenient microbiological assay employing cell-free extracts for the rapid characterization of Gram-negative carbapenemase producers.

OBJECTIVES The dissemination of metallo and serine carbapenem-hydrolysing beta-lactamases among Gram-negative nosocomial bacteria represents an acute problem worldwide. Here, we present a rapid and sensitive assay for the characterization of carbapenemase producers to aid in infection control and prevention. METHODS The assay involves a rapid disruption of bacterial isolates with silicon dioxide microbeads, followed by the testing in cell-free extracts of hydrolytic activity towards various beta-lactams including two carbapenems (imipenem and meropenem) and a cephalosporin (ceftazidime). A parallel testing of the effects of selective beta-lactamase inhibitors such as EDTA and clavulanic acid allows differentiation of metallo carbapenemases from serine carbapenemases, and also clavulanic-acid-sensitive from -resistant enzymes among the latter. RESULTS The efficiency of bacterial disruption using silicon dioxide microbeads was identical to that of ultrasonic treatment. The subsequent microbiological assay aimed to evaluate both substrate specificity and inhibitor profile of carbapenem-hydrolysing enzymes present in the extracts and allowed an accurate differentiation of A, B and D types, as judged by the analysis of 24 well-characterized clinical strains that included metallo-beta-lactamase producers (i.e. VIM-, IMP- and SPM-type Pseudomonas producers; an L1 Stenotrophomonas maltophilia producer; and a GOB-18 Elizabethkingia meningoseptica producer) as well as serine carbapenemase producers (i.e. an SME-type Serratia marcescens producer, a GES-2 Pseudomonas aeruginosa producer, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Citrobacter freundii KPC-2 producers and OXA-type Acinetobacter baumannii producers). CONCLUSIONS We have developed a convenient microbiological assay aimed to more accurately and in a short time characterize carbapenem-hydrolysing enzymes produced by Gram-negative bacteria. The assay possesses broad applicability in the clinical setting.
The Activity Recognition Repository : Towards Competitive Benchmarking in Ambient Intelligence

Rapid development in the area of ambient intelligence introduced numerous applications. One of the fundamental underpinnings in such applications is an effective and reliable context-aware system able to recognize and understand activities performed by a human, and context in which it happened. However, there are two pending issues: (i) transferability, i.e., a specific implementation is tightly interrelated with a selected algorithm, available sensors, and a scenario/environment where they are employed; and (ii) comparability, i.e., there is no established benchmark problem that would enable a direct comparison of the developed context-aware systems. This paper first reviews some recent initiatives that address the abovementioned problems and then proposes a centralized collection of resources related to design and evaluation of context-aware systems. The main idea is to establish an online repository of datasets accompanied with the task, result and applied approach. Ideally, the contributors will provide the dataset with short description of the data, task and results, relevant paper, and link to resources such as implementation of the approach, preprocessing tools, and filtering. This would allow the community to quickly start building upon the latest state-of-the-art approaches, to benchmark newly developed techniques, and ultimately, to advance the frontiers in ambient intelligence.
AUTOMATED CORPUS CALLOSUM SEGMENTATION IN MIDSAGITTAL BRAIN MR IMAGES

Corpus Callosum (CC) is an important white-matter structure in the human brain. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive medical imaging technique that provides high resolution images for the structures. Segmentation is an important step in medical image analysis. This paper proposes a fully automated technique for segmentation of CC on the midsagittal slice of T1-weighted brain MR images. The proposed technique consists of three modules. First it clusters all homogenous regions in the image with an adaptive mean shift (AMS) technique. The automatic CC contour initialization (ACI) is achieved using the region analysis, template matching and location analysis, thus identify the CC region. Finally, the boundary of recognized CC region is used as the initial contour in the Geometric Active Contour (GAC) model, and is evolved to obtain the final segmentation result of CC. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed AMS-ACI technique is able to provide accurate initial CC contour, and the proposed AMS-ACI-GAC technique overcomes the problem of user-guided initialization in existing GAC techniques, and provides a reliable and accurate performance in CC segmentation.
Improving the Process of Enteral Nutrition Preparation With Milk Technicians: Perceptions of Cost, Time, and Quality

Background:Neonatal intensive care nurses have historically been responsible for preparing enteral feedings—a costly and time-consuming process that may require leaving the bedside. To address these concerns, the Milk Technician Program was implemented at a major military treatment facility. Milk technicians were specially trained and responsible for handling, storing, and preparing enteral feeds. Purpose:To determine effectiveness of the Milk Technician Program, changes in length of time required to first attain full feeds, cost of feeding preparation, adherence to feeding preparation procedures, and nurse and milk technician role variables were evaluated. Methods:A pre-/postdesign was used to compare length of time to full enteral feedings and cost. A plan-do-study-act design was used to evaluate protocol adherence and to identify and evaluate nurse and milk technician role variables. Data were collected via surveys, direct observations, and retrospective chart reviews to determine the overall effectiveness of this intervention. Results:The average time for extremely and very preterm infants (<28 to 31 weeks) to first reach full feeds decreased from 32 to 19 days, t (33.1) = 2.33, P = . 026, d = 0.704. Estimated feeding preparation cost savings for all infants admitted to the unit was $767 per day. Observed milk technician adherence to preparation procedures was 95.5%. Most nurses reported that the program saved time (97%) and all milk technicians reported improved job satisfaction. Nurses expressed concerns about accuracy and safety of preparation. Milk technicians reported concerns with communication, supplies, and lack of perceived support. Implications for Practice:Milk technicians offer significant benefit to infants and nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit, including reducing time for infants to reach full feeds, saving nurses' time, and reducing costs. Implications for Research:Further research is needed to identify ideal educational backgrounds for milk technicians and to directly measure the effect of milk technicians on hospital length of stay and infant growth parameters.
Valley-Adaptive Clearing Scheme for Multimodal Optimization Evolutionary Search

Recent studies [13, 18] have shown that clearing schemes are efficient multi-modal optimization methods. They efficiently reduce genetic drift which is the direct reason for premature convergence in genetic algorithms. However, clearing schemes assumed a landscape containing equal-spaced basins when using a fixed niche radius. Further, most clearing methods employ policies that favor elitists, thus affecting the explorative capabilities of the search. In this paper, we present a valley adaptive clearing scheme, aiming at adapting to non-uniform width of the valleys in the problem landscape. The framework of the algorithm involves hill-valley initialization, valley-adaptive clearing and archiving. Experimental results on benchmark functions are presented to demonstrate that the proposed scheme uncovers more local optima solutions and displays excellent robustness to varying niche radius than other clearing compeers.
miR-34 and SNAIL form a double-negative feedback loop to regulate epithelial-mesenchymal transitions

Recently, the inhibition of epithelial-mesenchymal-transition (EMT) by p53 has been described as a new mode of tumor suppression which presumably prevents metastasis. Here we report that activation of p53 down-regulates the EMT-inducing transcription factor SNAIL via induction of the miR-34a/b/c genes. Suppression of miR-34a/b/c caused up-regulation of SNAIL and cells displayed EMT markers and related features, as enhanced migration and invasion. Ectopic miR-34a induced mesenchymal-epithelial-transition (MET) and down-regulation of SNAIL, which was mediated by a conserved miR-34a/b/c seed-matching sequence in the SNAIL 3’-UTR. miR-34a also down-regulated SLUG and ZEB1, as well as the stemness factors BMI1, CD44, CD133, OLFM4 and c-MYC. Conversely, the transcription factors SNAIL and ZEB1 bound to E-boxes in the miR-34a/b/c promoters, thereby repressing miR-34a and miR-34b/c expression. Since ectopic miR-34a prevented TGF-β-induced EMT, the repression of miR-34 genes by SNAIL and related factors is part of the EMT program. In conclusion, the frequent inactivation of p53 and/or miR-34a/b/c found in cancer may shift the equilibrium of these reciprocal regulations towards the mesenchymal state and thereby lock cells in a metastatic state.
Optimal Scan Time of 18F-FDG PET in Identifying Therapeutic Efficacy Secondary to Radiofrequency Ablation of Lung Cancer

AbstractPositron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT)–guided radiofrequency ablation (RFA) has become a major treatment approach for small tumors. Identifying this quantitative dynamic 18F-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (18F-FDG) activity at the primary lesion can minimize misdiagnosis and allow an opportunity to reintervene.Here, we report 3 patients with nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who underwent the ablative therapy with split-dose 18F-FDG fused PET/CT scans for early identification of residual tumors and follow-up evaluation of treatment.Our results indicate that reliable post-RFA imaging follow-up is critical in fast and efficient assessment of complete tumor resection in patients experienced the ablation procedure.
Identification of people with acquired hemophilia in a large electronic health record database

Background Electronic health records (EHRs) can provide insights into diagnoses, treatment patterns, and clinical outcomes. Acquired hemophilia (AH) is an ultrarare bleeding disorder characterized by factor VIII inhibiting autoantibodies. Aim To identify patients with AH using an EHR database. Methods Records were accessed from a large EHR database (Humedica) between January 1, 2007 and July 31, 2013. Broad selection criteria were applied using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, clinical modification (ICD-9-CM) code for intrinsic circulating anticoagulants (286.5 and all subcodes) and confirmation of records 6 months before and 12 months after the first diagnosis. Additional selection criteria included mention of “bleeding” within physician notes identified via natural language processing output and a normal prothrombin time and prolonged activated partial thromboplastin time. Results Of 6,348 patients with a diagnosis code of 286.5 or any subcodes, 16 males and 15 females met the selection criteria. The most common bleeding locations reported was gastrointestinal (23%), vaginal (16%), and endocrine (13%). A wide range of comorbidities was reported. Natural language processing identified chart note mention of “hemophilia” in 3 patients (10%), “bruise” in 15 patients (48%), and “pain” in all 31 patients. No patients received a prescription for approved/recommended AH treatments. Four patient cases were reviewed to validate whether the identified cohort had AH; each patient had bleeding symptoms and a normal prothrombin time and prolonged activated partial thromboplastin time, although none received hemostatic treatments. Conclusion In ultrarare disorders, ICD-9-CM coding alone may be insufficient to identify patient cohorts; multimodal analysis combined with in-depth reviews of physician notes may be more effective.