Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Invivo efficacy and durability of anti‐infective foley catheters functionalized with silver nano particle and antibiotics

Urinary catheters are an inevitable medical device in health care unit. Complications of urinary catheterization are dreadful. To circumvent the drawbacks associated with existing catheters, the present investigation is aimed to impregnate urinary catheter with a synergistic combination of silver nanoparticle and antibiotics. The functionalized catheter was evaluated by invitro and invivo methods for its anti‐infectious property. Silver nanoparticle was synthesized using Spirulina platensis and it was characterized by SEM and FTIR. Susceptibility of uropathogenic E.coli to antibiotics and silver nano particle was evaluated by agar well diffusion method. MIC and MBC of silver nano particles and antibiotics against the uropathogen was determined by serial twofold dilution method. Invitro antimicrobial property of functionalized catheter was assessed by serial plate transfer. Invitro antiadhesive property of the functionalized catheter was evaluated by challenging catheter with multidrug resistant uropathogenic E.coli (105cfu/ml). Invivio efficacy of the functionalized catheter was assessed in mice according to the clearance of Institutional Animal Ethical Committee. After catheterization in mice, urine sample was collected regularly for a period of 15 days and it was assessed for the presence of pathogens. Liver function test and kidney function tests of mice were analyzed to understand the host toxicity. The stability of the catheter was evaluated for a period of 18 months post primary studies to validate the stability. The uropathogenic E.coli was identified to be multidrug resistant.It was susceptible to amikacin and nitrofurantoin. Size of the nanoparticle was 42–75nm. UV‐Vis spectrum exhibited an absorbance maximum at 408nm. The MIC value of nitrofurantoin and amikacin were 2 mg/ml and 150×10−3 mg/ml respectively. Amikacin (40μg/ml) and nitrofurantoin (10μg/ml) showed synergistic effect with 1. 176μM of SNP. Invitro anti‐infectious property was evaluated in unfunctionalized catheter, catheter impregnated with amikacin, nitrofurantoin, silver nanoparticles and synergistic combination of antibiotics and silver nanoparticle. All catheters were colonized by the uropathogen except in the synergistic combination. It retained its property till 14 days. In invivo study, the catheter colonization was nil in mice catheterized with the synergistic combination till 15 days. Liver function test and kidney function tests in mice were normal. After 18 months of aseptic preservation, the efficacy was evaluated by invitro methods. It showed an effective zero colonization. Hence, the present study has revealed that impregnation of urinary catheter with a synergistic combination of silver nano particle and antibiotics is an efficient and promising method for preventing Catheter Associated Urinary Tract infection.
Optimal Vehicle Trajectory Planning With Control Constraints and Recursive Implementation for Automated On-Ramp Merging

This paper proposes a vehicle trajectory planning method for automated on-ramp merging. Trajectory planning tasks of an on-ramp merging vehicle and a mainline facilitating vehicle are formulated as two related optimal control problems. Rather than specifying the merge point via external computational procedures, the location and time that the on-ramp vehicle merges into the mainline are determined endogenously by the optimal control problem of the facilitating vehicle. Bounds on vehicle acceleration are explicitly considered. The Pontryagin Maximum Principle is applied to find the solutions of the optimal control problems. In order to accommodate the constantly changing external environment, the proposed optimal control method is subsequently implemented in a recursive planning framework. Because of the nature of the problem, the length of the planning horizon is time-varying, unlike the conventional model predictive control applications where the planning horizon is a fixed length. Numerical experiments are conducted to study the performances of the proposed methodology under the influence of different leading vehicle trajectories and with different lengths of the planning updating interval. In particular, an experiment involving a real-world leading vehicle trajectory and considering different traffic demand levels are presented. The proposed methodology performs well in these experiments and has demonstrated good potential in real-time applications.
Carotid Vascular Blood Flow in Individuals with Down Syndrome Following Low Body Negative Pressure Challenge

Individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) exhibit autonomic dysfunction with reduced sympathetic activity, which may cause reduced aerobic capacity and alterations in peripheral blood flow. Carotid vascular function has been considered as a marker of future cardiovascular events. However, changes in carotid blood flow and vascular conductance in response to sympathoexcitation are not well characterized in persons with DS, carotid stiffness responses to exercise differ between individuals with DS and controls.
Entanglement and control operations in Ising interactions of bipartite qubits

Entanglement generated by Ising model has been studied for several authors in order to understand the relation between it and magnetic properties of materials, principally using one or two dimensional models for two or more particles. In this work, Ising model evolution is solved in three dimensions for two parts including an inhomogeneous magnetic field, giving an detailed study of the entanglement properties derived from interaction. Some relations between entanglement and energy or spin are developed specifically to stablish candidates for entanglement witness. Finally, some basic quantum control operations are prescripted for this model as to preserve the properties of the system as for transfer information between the two parts. These last schemes of control are useful when initial state is completely known, to gain domain on the system. It prevents to introduce more sophisticated control schemes which normally are necessary when initial state is at least partially unknown.
Effects of Resting Muscle Carnosine Content on the Intramuscular Antioxidant Response to a Bout of Resistance Exercise

Acute bouts of resistance exercise can result in elevations in oxidative stress. Carnosine (CARN) is a histidine dipeptide that has been suggested to have antioxidant properties, and as a result may enhance the recovery processes following exercise. However, there appears to be only limited data that has examined the effect of resting muscle CARN content on its role as an antioxidant or reducing oxidative stress following an acute bout of resistance exercise. The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of high (HI) and low (LO) resting muscle CARN on antioxidant status. A secondary purpose was to compare the intramuscular oxidative stress response following an acute bout of resistance exercise between individuals with HI and LO CARN values.
Zero adjusted Dirichlet regression for compositional data with zero values present

Compositional data are met in many different fields, such as economics, archaeometry, ecology, geology and political sciences. The feature that makes them special is that each vector contains positive number which sum to the same constant, usually taken to be $1$ for convenience purposes. Regression where the dependent variable is a composition is usually carried out via log-ratio transformation of the composition or via the Dirichlet distribution. However, when there are zero values in the data these two ways are not readily applicable. In this paper we adjust the Dirichlet distribution in order to allow for zero values to be present in the data. To do so, we take into advantage the conditionality (or the marginality) property of the Dirichlet distribution. In addition we check the effect of the zero values on the resulting model. Finally, we propose a new information criterion to be used for model selection and for assessing the goodness of fit.
A dimensional analysis of stakeholder assessment of project outcomes

Driven by an interest in developing a deeper understanding of stakeholder interests, this study undertakes a dimensional analysis of how different stakeholders assess project outcomes. Most importantly, in our analysis, we take into consideration the largely unaccounted-for conceptual difference between project success and project failure. Data were collected over a two-year period (between 2013 and 2015) from 1631 project stakeholders in nine countries. We analysed the survey data using three-way Multidimensional Scaling. We found that most project stakeholders tend to be more specific in their assessment of project success than when assessing project failure. We also found that most stakeholders attached maximal and different levels of importance to different dimensions of project outcomes. In particular, we found that when assessing project “success”, project stakeholders appear more focused on project effectiveness. On the other hand, when assessing project “failure”, project stakeholders appear more focused on efficiency. Understanding how stakeholders assess and prioritise project outcomes is of particular interest to project managers as it enables them develop a clearer understanding of individual interests of various stakeholders. For stakeholders themselves, such an understanding helps limit possible disruptions to the project emanating from contesting decisions made by the project manager.
Uracil/H+ symport by the FurE transporter challenges the rocking-bundle mechanism of transport in APC transporters

Transporters mediate the uptake of solutes, metabolites and drugs across the cell membrane. The eukaryotic FurE nucleobase/H+ symporter of Aspergillus nidulans has been used as a model protein to address structure-function relationships in the APC transporter superfamily, members of which are characterized by the LeuT-fold and seem to operate by the so-called ‘rocking-bundle’ mechanism. In this study, we reveal the binding mode, translocation and release pathway of uracil/H+ by FurE, using path collective variable, funnel metadynamics and rationally designed mutational analysis. Our study reveals a step-wise, induced-fit, mechanism of ordered sequential transport of proton and uracil, which in turn suggests that the FurE symporter, and probably structurally similar transporters, functions as a multi-step gated pore, rather than employing ‘rocking’ of compact domains, as generally proposed for APC transporters. In addition, our work further supports the emerging concept that specific elements of cytosolic terminal regions of transporters might be functionally important.
Radiation Effects on High-Speed InGaAs Photodiodes

Photodiodes are important components in optical data links, and their performance degradation under irradiation has to be understood in order to guarantee the long-term functionality of the data links in radiation environments of high-energy physics experiments. Indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) on indium phosphide (InP) photodiodes are attractive candidates for these applications, thanks to their relatively modest radiation-induced responsivity loss when operated at 850 nm. In this paper, we present the results that confirm earlier observed additional sensitivity penalties in InGaAs-based receivers. This behavior is further investigated by carrying out several proton tests where InGaAs photodiodes are irradiated together with alternative photodiode types. The critical parameters—responsivity, dark current, and capacitance—are measured up to fluences exceeding ${1\times 10^{16}}$ p/cm2. Radiation-induced dark current is shown to be orders of magnitude higher in InGaAs photodiodes than in GaAs and InGaAs on GaAs photodiodes. However, instead of the dark current increase, the additional losses with InGaAs photodiodes are shown to arise from strongly increased capacitance, which is a dominant feature only in InGaAs photodiodes. This is confirmed with simulations where the measured capacitance characteristics are used in the device model. Our results show that without precautions in the receiver design, radiation-induced capacitance can limit the use of InGaAs photodiodes in harsh radiation environments.
The $H^{\infty}$-Functional Calculus and Square Function Estimates

Using notions from the geometry of Banach spaces we introduce square functions $\gamma(\Omega,X)$ for functions with values in an arbitrary Banach space $X$. We show that they have very convenient function space properties comparable to the Bochner norm of $L_2(\Omega,H)$ for a Hilbert space $H$. In particular all bounded operators $T$ on $H$ can be extended to $\gamma(\Omega,X)$ for all Banach spaces $X$. Our main applications are characterizations of the $H^{\infty}$--calculus that extend known results for $L_p$--spaces from \cite{CowlingDoustMcIntoshYagi}. With these square function estimates we show, e. g. , that a $c_0$--group of operators $T_s$ on a Banach space with finite cotype has an $H^{\infty}$--calculus on a strip if and only if $e^{-a|s|}T_s$ is $R$--bounded for some $a > 0$. Similarly, a sectorial operator $A$ has an $H^{\infty}$--calculus on a sector if and only if $A$ has $R$--bounded imaginary powers. We also consider vector valued Paley--Littlewood $g$--functions on $UMD$--spaces.
Lithium Abundances in α Persei Stars

We revisit the scatter in lithium abundances among stars in the α Persei cluster. Among the factors that we examine, inhomogeneous reddening, stellar spots, and stellar surface activity are the main contributors to this scatter. Thus there is no solid evidence requiring the observed dispersion in lithium abundances to be intrinsic to the cluster member stars. Instead, the scatter is probably induced by observational effects.
Solar Magnetic Loops Observed with TRACE and EIT

We select some highlights and new results that have been obtained from detailed “microscopic” observations of coronal loop structures with the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) and Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EIT) instruments, including: (1) the inhomogeneous substructure of EUV loops, (2) the dynamic and non-hydrostatic nature, (3) the non-uniform heating, (4) the magnetic topology at the loop footpoints, (5) the magnetic energy budget for heating, and (6) oscillations and waves in coronal loops.
Interface quantique atomes-champ en régime de variables continues

Ce travail est consacre a l'etude quantique du couplage du spin collectif d'un ensemble d'atomes avec le champ electromagnetique. Nous avons genere des etats comprimes du champ par interaction non-lineaire en cavite avec un nuage d'atomes froids de cesium se comportant comme un milieu Kerr. Nous montrons ensuite experimentalement que l'etat quantique d'un faisceau lumineux peut etre transfere a une coherence Zeeman de grande duree de vie par transparence induite electromagnetiquement dans une vapeur de cesium. Deux quadratures du champ qui ne commutent pas sont stockees simultanement puis relues sans leur ajouter de bruit. Enfin, deux protocoles sont proposes pour reduire directement les fluctuations quantiques du moment angulaire collectif d'un ensemble d'atomes, soit en exploitant les non-linearites apparaissant lors d'un piegeage coherent de population, soit par l'intermediaire de mesures quantiques non-destructives d'alignement utilisant un couplage lineaire par effet Raman.
Large Sample Covariance Matrices and High-Dimensional Data Analysis

1. Introduction 2. Limiting spectral distributions 3. CLT for linear spectral statistics 4. The generalised variance and multiple correlation coefficient 5. The T2-statistic 6. Classification of data 7. Testing the general linear hypothesis 8. Testing independence of sets of variates 9. Testing hypotheses of equality of covariance matrices 10. Estimation of the population spectral distribution 11. Large-dimensional spiked population models 12. Efficient optimisation of a large financial portfolio.
Role of Hepatic PLIN2 and PLIN4 in The Development of Western Type Diet Induced Hepatosteatosis

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is characterized by the excessive accumulation of triglyceride (TAG) in the liver. In hepatocytes TAG is stored intracellularly within cytoplasmic lipid droplets (LD). Intracellular LD are coated with various LD associated proteins in the perilipin (PLIN) and FSP27 family. These LD associated proteins are thought to promote LD formation by regulating the hydrolysis of stored TAG. Hepatocyte‐specific knockout of the LD‐associated protein perilipin 2 (PLIN2) protects mice from developing NAFLD and associated inflammation when fed a methionine‐choline deficient diet for 15 days, indicating an essential role for PLIN2 in the development of fatty liver disease. However, the protective effects of hepatocyte‐specific knockout of PLIN2 on hepatic steatosis in mice fed a high fat, western diet (WTD) are unknown. To determine the function of hepatic PLIN2 in the development of WTD‐induced liver steatosis, 16 week old hepatocyte‐specific PLIN2 knockout mice (PLIN2Alb‐Cre) and floxed controls (PLIN2fl/fl) were fed either a WTD previously shown to induce significant hepatosteatosis, or a low fat control diet (LFD). 20 weeks of WTD (44% fat, 39% carbohydrate, 34% sucrose by weight) feeding significantly increased weight gain (14.9g WTD vs. 1.6g LFD, p<0.001), reduced insulin sensitivity as measured by intraperitoneal (IP) insulin tolerance test (AUC increased 56% vs LFD, p<0.05), impaired glucose tolerance as measured by IP glucose tolerance test (AUC increased 59% vs LFD p<0.05) and increased accumulation of hepatic TAG (10.6ug/mg WTD vs 67.3ug/mg LFD, p<0.01). Surprisingly, the absence of hepatocyte PLIN2 expression did not prevent liver steatosis in mice fed a WTD. Interestingly, hepatocyte‐specific knockout of PLIN2 reduced the accumulation of liver triglycerides following LFD feeding (3.3ug/mg PLIN2Alb‐Cre vs. 8.1ug/mg PLIN2fl/fl). To determine whether other LD‐associated proteins may compensate for the absence of PLIN2 we measured the expression of PLIN1, PLIN3, PLIN4, and FSP27. PLIN4 was the only LD‐associated protein affected by either diet or genotype, significantly upregulated by WTD feeding in both lines of mice (increased 4.1 fold vs. LFD). At the present time there are no studies on the role of PLIN4 in the development of hepatic steatosis. We hypothesize that during LFD feeding PLIN2 is necessary for hepatic TAG storage. However, during WTD feeding we hypothesize that PLIN4 is a critical determinant of liver TAG accumulation. Future experiments using newly developed anti‐sense oligonucleotides directed against PLIN4 are underway to determine the relative contribution of PLIN4 to hepatic TAG storage during WTD feeding.
Conjugated Linoleic Acid Reduces Adiposity and Increases Markers of Browning and Inflammation in White Adipose Tissue of Mice

The objective of this study was to examine the mechanism by which conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) reduces body fat. Mice were fed three combinations of fatty acids at three doses (0.06%, 0.2%, and 0.6%, w/w) for 7 wk. The types of fatty acids were linoleic acid (control), an equal mixture of 10,12 CLA plus linoleic acid, or an equal mixture of 10,12 plus 9,11 CLA. Mice receiving the 0.2% and 0.6% dose of 10,12 CLA or the CLA mixture had decreased white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT) mass and increased incorporation of CLA isomers in epididymal WAT, liver, and muscle compared to controls. Food intake, glucose tolerance, and liver triglycerides were not affected by 0.2% CLA. Notably, in mice receiving 0.2% of both CLA treatments, the mRNA levels of genes associated with browning including uncoupling protein1 (UCP1), UCP1 protein levels, cytochrome c oxidase (CCO) activity, and the appearance of multilocular lipid droplets were most robustly increased in epididymal WAT compared to controls. CLA‐induced browning was accompanied by increases in mRNA levels of markers of low‐grade inflammation. Muscle CCO activity and BAT UCP1 protein levels were not affected by either CLA treatment. Collectively, these data suggest a linkage between decreased adiposity, browning in WAT, and low‐grade inflammation due to consumption of 10,12 CLA. Supported by NIH NIDDK/ODS 5R01‐DK063070‐09.
MESSENGER Investigations of the Plasma Environment at Mercury.

The region around Mercury is filled with ions that originate from interactions of the solar wind with Mercury’s space environment and through ionization of its exosphere. The MESSENGER spacecraft’s observations of Mercury’s ionized exosphere during its first flyby yielded Na, O, and K abundances consistent with expectations from observations of neutral species. There are increases in ions at mass per charge (m/q) = 32 to 35, which we interpret to be S and H2S with (S+H2S)/(Na + Mg) = 0.67 ± 0.06, and from water-group ions around m/q = 18, at an abundance of 0.20
Ecological validity of soundscape reproduction

Summary We introduce a methodology based on linguistic exploration of verbal data to investigate the influence of reproduction method on cognitive processing of environmental sounds in laboratory conditions. Three experiments were carried out to explore the ecological validity of reproduction systems. The reference study consisted of interviews conducted in actual environments, which were also recorded simultaneously. The recordings were used for two listening tests, the first one using stereophonic reproduction and the second one using multichannel reproduction. The comparison of the verbal data collected in the different contexts sketches some theoretical and methodological issues concerning the reproduction of everyday life scenes in laboratory conditions. The linguistic analyses indicate that the “same” acoustic phenomenon gives rise to different cognitive representations, depending on the spatial presentatio no ft he stimuli. It follows that the quality of the reproduction system must be adapted to specific properties of mental representations (here, spatial immersion vs. source identification). On methodological grounds, the analysis of spontaneous language representations gives access to cognitive representations elaborated in real life situations and in experimental conditions. The comparison of the linguistic exploration can then be used as a psycholinguistic measure of the ecological validity of experimental settings.