Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Modeling for Prediction of the Effects of Carbon-Monoxide on Humans Operating under Continuous and Periodic Exposures

The advancements in technological innovations and the utilizations of some technological products or research outcomes have adversely affected the environment and in consequence, continuously pose serious threats to future survival of humans. To counter these assaults of the resultant environmental pollution and the threats of further degradation of the environment, the basic recommended approach for predicting the impact of the pollution and for the determination of the risk assessment strategies is through the use of mathematical models. In the list of various pollutants, carbon monoxide has been established as a major pollutant that seriously affects human health by converting the Oxyhemoglobin (O2Hb) in the blood to carboxyhemoglobin (COHb). Therefore, this paper presents mathematical models for the computations of carbon-monoxide and carboxyhemoglobin in the blood for the cases of humans under environmental and occupational exposures i.e. operating under continuous and periodic exposures to the pollutant. The developed models are solved analytically using Laplace transforms. The computed results show good agreement with the established experimental results. Using the percentage of COHb in the blood as a good index of health effects of carbon monoxide (CO) on humans, the computed COHb from the developed models is used to predict the effects of CO on human health. On the validation of the developed models, the computed results show good agreement with experimental results. Also, effects of the models parameters on the amount of COHb in the blood. This work will assist in evaluating the technological injuries, effectively controlling our pollutants emissions and also as a tool for designing and developing better equipment and engines with lower or zero emissions.
The NHLBI-sponsored Consortium for preclinicAl assESsment of cARdioprotective therapies (CAESAR): a new paradigm for rigorous, accurate, and reproducible evaluation of putative infarct-sparing interventions in mice, rabbits, and pigs.

RATIONALE Despite 4 decades of intense effort and substantial financial investment, the cardioprotection field has failed to deliver a single drug that effectively reduces myocardial infarct size in patients. A major reason is insufficient rigor and reproducibility in preclinical studies. OBJECTIVE To develop a multicenter, randomized, controlled, clinical trial-like infrastructure to conduct rigorous and reproducible preclinical evaluation of cardioprotective therapies. METHODS AND RESULTS With support from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, we established the Consortium for preclinicAl assESsment of cARdioprotective therapies (CAESAR), based on the principles of randomization, investigator blinding, a priori sample size determination and exclusion criteria, appropriate statistical analyses, and assessment of reproducibility. To validate CAESAR, we tested the ability of ischemic preconditioning to reduce infarct size in 3 species (at 2 sites/species): mice (n=22-25 per group), rabbits (n=11-12 per group), and pigs (n=13 per group). During this validation phase, (1) we established protocols that gave similar results between centers and confirmed that ischemic preconditioning significantly reduced infarct size in all species and (2) we successfully established a multicenter structure to support CAESAR's operations, including 2 surgical centers for each species, a Pathology Core (to assess infarct size), a Biomarker Core (to measure plasma cardiac troponin levels), and a Data Coordinating Center-all with the oversight of an external Protocol Review and Monitoring Committee. CONCLUSIONS CAESAR is operational, generates reproducible results, can detect cardioprotection, and provides a mechanism for assessing potential infarct-sparing therapies with a level of rigor analogous to multicenter, randomized, controlled clinical trials. This is a revolutionary new approach to cardioprotection. Importantly, we provide state-of-the-art, detailed protocols ("CAESAR protocols") for measuring infarct size in mice, rabbits, and pigs in a manner that is rigorous, accurate, and reproducible.
1 WHAT DETERMINES THE SCOPE OF THE FIRM OVER TIME AND AROUND THE WORLD ? AN ASIA PACIFIC PERSPECTIVE

[Acknowledgment] Both authors made equal contributions. This article draws on a keynote speech delivered at the APJM Special Issue Conference on “Asian Business Groups and Conglomerates” in Singapore, December 12-14, 2005. It is based on a series of meetings in Atlanta, Beijing, Dallas, Honolulu, Shanghai, and Singapore during 2004-06. We thank all the authors, reviewers, Marleen Dieleman, and especially the Special Issue conference participants for their insights. Yung Hua, Kwok Siew Geok, Wendy Ng, and Kenny Oh provided able assistance. The conference was funded in part by the National University of Singapore and the Asia Academy of Management. Peng’s research was supported in part by a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant (SES 0552089). The views expressed here are ours and not necessarily those of the funding organizations.
On the ergodic capacity and precoder design of flat fading MIMO systems equipped with MMSE receivers

This paper is devoted to the study of the ergodic capacity of doubly correlated flat fading MIMO systems equipped with a MMSE receiver with full knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) at receiver side and when only the second order statistics of the channel at transmitter side are available. As the corresponding expression is complicated and difficult to exploit, the behavior of the capacity is studied when the number of transmit and receive antennas t and r converge to +∞ at the same rate. In this asymptotic regime, a new approximation of the ergodic capacity is obtained, and it is established that the relative error between the actual capacity and its approximation is a O(1/t3/2) term. The new approximation appears to be more accurate that the proposal of [1] which provides a O(1/t) relative error. The approximation is used in order to design an optimal precoder. It is shown that the left singular eigenvectors of the optimum precoder coincide with the eigenvectors of the transmit covariance matrix, and its singular values are solution of a certain maximization problem. Numerical experiments show that the capacity provided by this precoder is very close from the capacity obtained by maximizing the true ergodic capacity, but that the algorithm maximizing the approximation is much less computationally intensive.
Pastoral Neolithic Settlement at Luxmanda, Tanzania

ABSTRACT The later Holocene spread of pastoralism throughout eastern Africa profoundly changed socio-economic and natural landscapes. During the Pastoral Neolithic (ca. 5000–1200 B.P.), herders spread through southern Kenya and northern Tanzania—areas previously occupied only by hunter-gatherers—eventually developing the specialized forms of pastoralism that remain vital in this region today. Research on ancient pastoralism has been primarily restricted to rockshelters and special purpose sites. This paper presents results of surveys and excavations at Luxmanda, an open-air habitation site located farther south in Tanzania, and occupied many centuries earlier, than previously expected based upon prior models for the spread of herding. Technological and subsistence patterns demonstrate ties to northerly sites, suggesting that Luxmanda formed part of a network of early herders. The site is thus unlikely to stand alone, and further surveys are recommended to better understand the spread of herding into the region, and ultimately to southern Africa.
Significant Anatomy Detection Through Sparse Classification: A Comparative Study

We present a comparative study for discriminative anatomy detection in high dimensional neuroimaging data. While most studies solve this problem using mass univariate approaches, recent works show better accuracy and variable selection using a sparse classification model. Two types of image-based regularization methods have been proposed in the literature based on either a Graph Net (GN) model or a total variation (TV) model. These studies showed increased classification accuracy and interpretability of results when using image-based regularization, but did not look at the accuracy and quality of the recovered significant regions. In this paper, we theoretically prove bounds on the recovered sparse coefficients and the corresponding selected image regions in four models (two based on GN penalty and two based on TV penalty). Practically, we confirm the theoretical findings by measuring the accuracy of selected regions compared with ground truth on simulated data. We also evaluate the stability of recovered regions over cross-validation folds using real MRI data. Our findings show that the TV penalty is superior to the GN model. In addition, we showed that adding an l2 penalty improves the accuracy of estimated coefficients and selected significant regions for the both types of models.
The mitochondrial genome of Ancylostoma tubaeforme from cats in China

Abstract Ancylostoma tubaeforme may infect canids, felids and humans, and pose a potential risk to public health. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques were used to amplify the complete mitochondrial (mt) genome sequence of A. tubaeforme from cats and to analyse its sequence characteristics after molecular identification based on the internal transcribed spacer ITS1+ sequence. The results show that the complete mt genome sequence (GenBank accession number KY070315) of A. tubaeforme from cats was 13,730 bp in length, including 12 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes, two ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, two non-coding regions and an AT-rich region. The nucleotide content of A and T was 77.93%, biased toward A and T. Twelve protein-coding genes used ATT, TTG and GTG as initiation codons, and TAA, TAG, TA and T as termination codons. The length of the 22 tRNA genes ranged from 52 to 62 bp, their predicted secondary structures were D loops and V loops. The lengths of the two rRNAs were 958 and 697 bp. Phylogenetic analyses showed that A. tubaeforme from cats was in the lineage of Ancylostoma, having a close phylogenetic relationship with A. caninum. This study reports for the first time the mt genome of A. tubaeforme from cats in China, which could enhance the mt genome database of Ancylostomatidae nematodes, and it offers the scientific basis for further studies in the genetic diversity of hookworms among different hosts.
Meaningful Error Estimations for Data Analysis

Much work has been done in recent years on designing techniques used as support tools in the knowledge discovery process, particularly in classification tasks. In most cases it is assumed that the data where these techniques are applied is free of errors or the data was cleaned in a previous phase. However the data cleaning process represents a great amount of time and effort to the general knowledge discovery process.In this paper, we present preliminary results to devise a method to determine if the amount of errors in a dataset that will be processed by means of Naive Bayes classifier will influence the results. Our results may be used as a criterion to determine if it is necessary to carry out the data cleaning tasks over the data that will be processed by the classifier. Since the cleaning process takes a lot of time and effort our results are a helpful tool in the overall knowledge discovery process.
Saline-enhanced radio-frequency tissue ablation in the treatment of liver metastases.

PURPOSE To assess the effect of intraparenchymal saline injection on the results of radio-frequency (RF) tissue ablation. MATERIALS AND METHODS Ex vivo and in vivo animal RF ablation was performed with and without intraparenchymal saline injection. Initially, saline was injected as a bolus (1-20 mL) before RF application. For subsequent in vivo studies, saline was injected as a bolus before RF application or continuously (1 mL/min) during RF application. Finally, 14 patients with liver metastases and one patient with primary cholangiocarcinoma were treated with the continuous infusion technique. A single RF electrode (tip exposure, 1-3 cm) was used with various ablation parameters. RESULTS With pretreatment bolus injection of saline, lesions measured 1.4 cm +/- 0.1, 1.6 cm +/- 0.2, and 1.2 cm +/- 0.1 in ex vivo liver, in vivo animal muscle, and in vivo animal liver, respectively. Without saline enhancement, lesion sizes were 1.0 +/- 0.2, 1.2 +/- 0.2, and 0.8 +/- 0.1 cm, respectively. With continuous saline injection in in vivo pig liver, lesion size was 1.8 - 4.1 cm in diameter. In human tumors, necrosis volume was variable, but complete necrosis was seen in 13 of 25 lesions (diameter, 1.2-3.9 cm). Partial necrosis greater than 50% was seen in 12 lesions (diameter, 1.5-4.5 cm). CONCLUSION Saline-enhanced RF ablation might permit percutaneous destruction of large liver lesions.
Acute‐phase protein serum amyloid A3 is a novel paracrine coupling factor that controls bone homeostasis

Serum amyloid A (A‐SAA/Saa3) was shown before to affect osteoblastic metabolism. Here, using RT‐quantitative PCR and/or immunoblotting, we show that expression of mouse Saa3 and human SAA1 and SAA2 positively correlates with increased cellular maturation toward the osteocyte phenotype. Expression is not detected in C3H10T1/2 embryonic fibroblasts but is successively higher in preosteoblastic MC3T3‐E1 cells, late osteoblastic MLO‐A5 cells, and MLO‐Y4 osteocytes, consistent with findings using primary bone cells from newborn mouse calvaria. Recombinant Saa3 protein functionally inhibits osteoblast differentiation as reflected by reductions in the expression of osteoblast markers and decreased mineralization in newborn mouse calvaria. Yet, Saa3 protein enhances osteoclastogenesis in mouse macrophages/monocytes based on the number of multinucleated and tartrate‐resistant alkaline phosphatase‐positive cells and Calcr mRNA expression. Depletion of Saa3 in MLO osteocytes results in the loss of the mature osteocyte phenotype. Recombinant osteocalcin, which is reciprocally regulated with Saa3 at the osteoblast/osteocyte transition, attenuates Saa3 expression in MLO‐Y4 osteocytes. Mechanistically, Saa3 produced by MLO‐Y4 osteocytes is integrated into the extracellular matrix of MC3T3‐E1 osteoblasts, where it associates with the P2 purinergic receptor P2rx7 to stimulate Mmp13 expression via the P2rx7/MAPK/ERK/activator protein 1 axis. Our data suggest that Saa3 may function as an important coupling factor in bone development and homeostasis. —Thaler, R. , Sturmlechner, I. , Spitzer, S. , Riester, S. M. , Rumpler, M. , Zwerina, J., Klaushofer, K. , vanWijnen, A. J., Varga, F. Acute‐phase protein serum amyloid A3 is a novel paracrine coupling factor that controls bone homeostasis. FASEB J. 29, 1344‐1359 (2015). www.fasebj. org
Automated Filtering of Intrinsic Movement Artifacts during Two-Photon Intravital Microscopy

In vivo imaging using two-photon microscopy is an essential tool to explore the dynamic of physiological events deep within biological tissues for short or extended periods of time. The new capabilities offered by this technology (e.g. high tissue penetrance, low toxicity) have opened a whole new era of investigations in modern biomedical research. However, the potential of using this promising technique in tissues of living animals is greatly limited by the intrinsic irregular movements that are caused by cardiac and respiratory cycles and muscular and vascular tone. Here, we show real-time imaging of the brain, spinal cord, sciatic nerve and myenteric plexus of living mice using a new automated program, named Intravital_Microscopy_Toolbox, that removes frames corrupted with motion artifacts from time-lapse videos. Our approach involves generating a dissimilarity score against precalculated reference frames in a specific reference channel, thus allowing the gating of distorted, out-of-focus or translated frames. Since the algorithm detects the uneven peaks of image distortion caused by irregular animal movements, the macro allows a fast and efficient filtering of the image sequence. In addition, extra features have been implemented in the macro, such as XY registration, channel subtraction, extended field of view with maximum intensity projection, noise reduction with average intensity projections, and automated timestamp and scale bar overlay. Thus, the Intravital_Microscopy_Toolbox macro for ImageJ provides convenient tools for biologists who are performing in vivo two-photon imaging in tissues prone to motion artifacts.
Effects of unkei-to, an herbal medicine, on endocrine function and ovulation in women with high basal levels of luteinizing hormone secretion.

OBJECTIVE To treat anovulatory women with high plasma LH levels with unkei-to. STUDY DESIGN A total of 100 patients with polycystic ovary syndrome (n = 38) or non-polycystic ovary syndrome (n = 62) were allocated randomly into two groups. Endocrine levels (FSH, LH and estradiol), follicle growth and response to unkei-to were compared for 52 subjects in the unkei-to group and 48 subjects in the control group. RESULTS Unkei-to induced significant decreases in plasma LH in polycystic ovary syndrome and non-polycystic ovary syndrome with high LH levels. Plasma estradiol levels increased significantly (43.5%) in eight weeks of treatment with unkei-to. Significant development of the dominant follicle was also observed in patients treated with unkei-to. When women suffering from ovulatory failure or irregular menstruation and having high plasma LH concentration were treated with unkei-to for eight weeks, a reduction in the serum LH level of at least 1 SD from baseline was noted in 45.5% of polycystic ovary syndrome patients and in 80.0% of non-polycystic ovary syndrome patients. The mean rate of reduction of serum LH was 22.2 +/- 35.7% in polycystic ovary syndrome patients and 49.7 +/- 15.3% in non-polycystic ovary syndrome patients. This reduction was significant in the non-polycystic ovary syndrome patients (P = .030). The rate of menstrual cycle improvement, including successful ovulation, was 50.0% in the polycystic ovary syndrome group and 60.0% in the non-polycystic ovary syndrome group, with no significant difference between the two groups.
Facial animation by optimized blendshapes from motion capture data

This paper presents a labor‐saving method to construct optimal facial animation blendshapes from given blendshape sketches and facial motion capture data. At first, a mapping function is established between target “Marker Face” and performer's face by RBF interpolating selected feature points. Sketched blendshapes are transferred to performer's “Marker Face” by using motion vector adjustment technique. Then, the blendshapes of performer's “Marker Face” are optimized according to the facial motion capture data. At last, the optimized blendshapes are inversely transferred to target facial model. Apart from that, this paper also proposes a method of computing blendshape weights from facial motion capture data more accurately. Experiments show that expressive facial animation can be acquired. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Throughput Analysis of Proportional Fair Scheduling for Sparse and Ultra-Dense Interference-Limited OFDMA/LTE Networks

Various system tasks, such as interference coordination, handover decisions, admission control, and so on in current cellular networks require precise mid-term (spanning over a few seconds) performance models. Due to channel-dependent scheduling at the base station, these performance models are not simple to obtain. Furthermore, LTE cellular systems are interference limited; hence, the way interference is modeled is crucial for the accuracy. In this paper, we present a closed-form analytical model for the throughput expectation of proportional fair scheduling in orthogonal frequency division multiple access/LTE networks. The model takes into account a precise signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) distribution as well as considering limitations with respect to modulation and coding, as encountered in LTE networks. Furthermore, the analysis is extended to ultra-dense deployments likely to happen in the 5th generation of cellular networks. The resulting analytical performance model is validated by means of simulations, considering realistic network deployments. Compared with related work, the model introduced in this paper demonstrates a significantly higher accuracy for mid-term throughput estimation.
Experiences with the Twitter Health Surveillance (THS) System

Social media has become an important platform to gauge public opinion on topics related to our daily lives. In practice, processing these posts requires big data analytics tools since the volume of data and the speed of production overwhelm single-server solutions. Building an application to capture and analyze posts from social media can be a challenge simply because it requires combining a set of complex software tools that often times are tricky to configure, tune, and maintain. In many instances, the application ends up being an assorted collection of Java/Scala programs or Python scripts that developers cobble together to generate the data products they need. In this paper, we present the Twitter Health Surveillance (THS) application framework. THS is designed as a platform to allow end-users to monitor a stream of tweets, and process the stream with a combination of built-in functionality and their own user-defined functions. We discuss the architecture of THS, and describe its implementation atop the Apache Hadoop Ecosystem. We also present several lessons learned while developing our current prototype.
Robust linear regression through PAC-Bayesian truncation

We consider the problem of predicting as well as the best linear combination of d given functions in least squares regression under $L^\infty$ constraints on the linear combination. When the input distribution is known, there already exists an algorithm having an expected excess risk of order d/n, where n is the size of the training data. Without this strong assumption, standard results often contain a multiplicative log(n) factor, complex constants involving the conditioning of the Gram matrix of the covariates, kurtosis coefficients or some geometric quantity characterizing the relation between $L^2$ and $L^\infty$-balls and require some additional assumptions like exponential moments of the output. This work provides a PAC-Bayesian shrinkage procedure with a simple excess risk bound of order d/n holding in expectation and in deviations, under various assumptions. The common surprising factor of these results is their simplicity and the absence of exponential moment condition on the output distribution while achieving exponential deviations. The risk bounds are obtained through a PAC-Bayesian analysis on truncated differences of losses. We also show that these results can be generalized to other strongly convex loss functions.
Guanosine impairs inhibitory avoidance performance in rats

The nucleoside guanosine, previously found to exert trophic and neuroprotective effects, was found to impair retention of inhibitory avoidance responses, with a complete effect at 7.5 mg/kg i.p. pretraining. Treated animals, when retrained 1 week later, showed normal learning ability. Guanosine injected immediately after training or pretest did not alter retention latency. Combined pretraining and pretest treatments with guanosine failed to reverse its amnestic effect, excluding the contribution of state dependency. Open field parameters and shock sensitivity were mostly unaltered by guanosine. These results suggest an amnestic effect of guanosine on inhibitory avoidance in rats, in a pattern compatible with inhibition of glutamatergic activity. However, the mechanism for the amnestic effect of guanosine is yet to be elucidated.