Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design and characterization of W-band components in planar technology

This paper describes the design and characterization of the components which compose a W-band broadband and differential RF front-end configuration in planar technology which could be used for radiometer receivers. The main advantages of this configuration are the high sensitivity due to the minimization of the gain and noise temperature fluctuations of any amplifier, and the capability of the system to be easily calibrated given that the outputs are the amplified RF and reference signal with the same contribution of noise. Moreover, each component has been characterized by means of an inline microstrip to WR10 transition covering the full W-band.
Highly Concentrated Alginate-Gellan Gum Composites for 3D Plotting of Complex Tissue Engineering Scaffolds

In tissue engineering, additive manufacturing (AM) technologies have brought considerable progress as they allow the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) structures with defined architecture. 3D plotting is a versatile, extrusion-based AM technology suitable for processing a wide range of biomaterials including hydrogels. In this study, composites of highly concentrated alginate and gellan gum were prepared in order to combine the excellent printing properties of alginate with the favorable gelling characteristics of gellan gum. Mixtures of 16.7 wt % alginate and 2 or 3 wt % gellan gum were found applicable for 3D plotting. Characterization of the resulting composite scaffolds revealed an increased stiffness in the wet state (15%–20% higher Young’s modulus) and significantly lower volume swelling in cell culture medium compared to pure alginate scaffolds (~10% vs. ~23%). Cytocompatibility experiments with human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) revealed that cell attachment was improved—the seeding efficiency was ~2.5–3.5 times higher on the composites than on pure alginate. Additionally, the composites were shown to support hMSC proliferation and early osteogenic differentiation. In conclusion, print fidelity of highly concentrated alginate-gellan gum composites was comparable to those of pure alginate; after plotting and crosslinking, the scaffolds possessed improved qualities regarding shape fidelity, mechanical strength, and initial cell attachment making them attractive for tissue engineering applications.
The Transcript and Metabolite Networks Affected by the Two Clades of Arabidopsis Glucosinolate Biosynthesis Regulators1[W]

In this study, transcriptomics and metabolomics data were integrated in order to examine the regulation of glucosinolate (GS) biosynthesis in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and its interface with pathways of primary metabolism. Our genetic material for analyses were transgenic plants overexpressing members of two clades of genes (ALTERED TRYPTOPHAN REGULATION1 [ATR1]-like and MYB28-like) that regulate the aliphatic and indole GS biosynthetic pathways (AGs and IGs, respectively). We show that activity of these regulators is not restricted to the metabolic space surrounding GS biosynthesis but is tightly linked to more distal metabolic networks of primary metabolism. This suggests that with similarity to the regulators we have investigated here, other factors controlling pathways of secondary metabolism might also control core pathways of central metabolism. The relatively broad view of transcripts and metabolites altered in transgenic plants overexpressing the different factors underlined novel links of GS metabolism to additional metabolic pathways, including those of jasmonic acid, folate, benzoic acid, and various phenylpropanoids. It also revealed transcriptional and metabolic hubs in the “distal” network of metabolic pathways supplying precursors to GS biosynthesis and that overexpression of the ATR1-like clade genes has a much broader effect on the metabolism of indolic compounds than described previously. While the reciprocal, negative cross talk between the methionine and tryptophan pathways that generate GSs in Arabidopsis has been suggested previously, we now show that it is not restricted to AGs and IGs but includes additional metabolites, such as the phytoalexin camalexin. Combining the profiling data of transgenic lines with gene expression correlation analysis allowed us to propose a model of how the balance in the metabolic network is maintained by the GS biosynthesis regulators. It appears that ATR1/MYB34 is an important mediator between the gene activities of the two clades. While it is very similar to the ATR1-like clade members in terms of downstream gene targets, its expression is highly correlated with that of the MYB28-like clade members. Finally, we used the unique transgenic plants obtained here to show that AGs are likely more potent deterrents of the whitefly Bemisia tabaci compared with IGs. The influence on insect behavior raises an important question for future investigation of the functional aspect of our initial finding, which pointed to enriched expression of the MYB28-like clade genes in the abaxial domain of the Arabidopsis leaf.
GO-Bayes Method for System Modeling and Safety Analysis

Safety analysis ensuring the normal operation of an engineering system is important. The existing safety analysis methods are limited to relatively simple fact description and statistical induction level. Besides, many of them enjoy poor generality, and fail to achieve comprehensive safety evaluation given a system structure and collected information. This work describes a new safety analysis method, called a GO-Bayes algorithm. It combines structural modeling of the GO method and probabilistic reasoning of the Bayes method. It can be widely used in system analysis. The work takes a metro vehicle braking system as an example to verify its usefulness and accuracy. Visual implementation by Extendsim software shows its feasibility and advantages in comparison with the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) method.
Using multiple worlds for multiple agent roles in games

In a game it is often the case that there are multiple roles or types of actors with different goals. One possible target for automatic content generation is to create multiple different software agents for these distinct roles. This paper outlines a technique, based on the multiple worlds model, for creating such actors via evolution. The objective function is based on the performance of the actors within their role and retains the ability of evolution to operate on populations of agents, permitting the creation of many possible agents for each role. The fitness of distinct agent types is never compared by this algorithm, so the evolution of agents affects fitness only at the level of the user specified simulation used to evaluate performance. The technique is demonstrated by simultaneously evolving four populations of prisoner's dilemma agents with very different roles.
Performance analysis of flow-based routing in software-defined networking

In this paper, we analyze flow-based routing schemes in SDN. Specifically, we study the flow-based routing performance; combining the knowledge of the link condition and updating the period for calculating the path. The framework uses centralized control of SDN where the SDN controller calculates available paths to determine the routing policy based on a global knowledge network. This flow-based routing design aims to reduce the impact of network congestion by finding a decent way, and to choose one path that has the greatest residual bandwidth. We evaluate the effectiveness of flow-based routing in SDN and investigate its performance due to changes in the update period by using simulations. Simulation results shows that the scheme has a flow-based routing overhead that is smaller than a link state routing such as OSPF. Also, this scheme still produces a good performance for different update periods.
TGF-β Signaling in Gingival Fibroblast-Epithelial Interaction

The underlying mechanism and the therapeutic regimen for the transition of reversible gingivitis to irreversible periodontitis are unclear. Since transforming growth factor (TGF)-β has been implicated in differentially regulated gene expression in gingival fibroblasts, we hypothesized that TGF-β signaling is activated in periodontitis-affected gingiva, along with enhanced collagen degradation, that is reversed by TGF-β inhibition. A novel three-dimensional (3D) gel-culture system consisting of primary human gingival fibroblasts (GF) and gingival epithelial (GE) cells in collagen gels was applied. GF populations from patients with severe periodontitis degraded collagen gels, which was reduced by TGF-β-receptor kinase inhibition. Up-regulation of TGF-β-responsive genes was evident in GF/GE co-cultures. Furthermore, the TGF-β downstream transducer Smad3C was highly phosphorylated in periodontitis-affected gingiva and 3D cultures. These results imply that TGF-β signaling is involved in fibroblast-epithelial cell interaction in periodontitis, and suggest that the 3D culture system is a useful in vitro model for therapeutic drug screening for periodontitis.
Optimal trajectories for time-critical street scenarios using discretized terminal manifolds

This paper deals with the trajectory generation problem faced by an autonomous vehicle in moving traffic. Being given the predicted motion of the traffic flow, the proposed semi-reactive planning strategy realizes all required long-term maneuver tasks (lane-changing, merging, distance-keeping, velocity-keeping, precise stopping, etc.) while providing short-term collision avoidance. The key to comfortable, human-like as well as physically feasible trajectories is the combined optimization of the lateral and longitudinal movements in street-relative coordinates with carefully chosen cost functionals and terminal state sets (manifolds). The performance of the approach is demonstrated in simulated traffic scenarios.
Cross-Cultural Differences in Somatic Presentation in Patients With Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Little is known about cultural differences in the expression of distress in anxiety disorders. Previous cross-cultural studies of depression have found a greater somatic focus in Asian populations. We examined anxiety symptoms in patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in urban mental health settings in Nepal (N = 30) and in the United States (N = 23). Participants completed the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). The overall BAI score and somatic and psychological subscales were compared. While there was no difference in total BAI scores, the Nepali group scored higher on the somatic subscale (i.e. “dizziness” and “indigestion,” t[df] = –2.63[50], p < 0.05), while the American group scored higher on the psychological subscale (i.e. “scared” and “nervous,” t[df] = 3.27[50], p < 0.01). Nepali patients with GAD had higher levels of somatic symptoms and lower levels of psychological symptoms than American patients with GAD. Possible explanations include differences in cultural traditions of describing distress and the mind-body dichotomy.
IMAGE COMPRESSION SCHEMES BASED ON BLOCK CLASSIFICATION AND SORTING : A REVIEW

Different Fractal image compression (FIC) techniques with optimization and without optimization are compared in this paper. FIC is an image coding technology based on the local similarity of image structure. It is widely used in many fields such as image retrieval, image denoising, image authentication, and encryption. FIC, however, suffers from the high computational complexity in encoding. Although many schemes are published to speed up encoding, they do not easily satisfy the encoding time or the reconstructed image quality requirements. Experimental results show that the APCC and FDI method shows the greatest quality in the reconstructed image as compared to other techniques.
The Evolution of Volunteerism and Professional Staff Within Hospice Care in North Carolina

ABSTRACT Although the pursuit of Medicare certification has been one of the most controversial events in hospice history no study has examined its impact using data from a defined population of hospices before, during, and after federal legislation was enacted. This paper revisits the debate over the changing role of volunteers using such a longitudinal data source. Over time, as the patient population grew, aggregate levels of volunteers and professional staff increased. However, the ratios of professional staff and volunteers to patients reveal that regardless of certification status, hospices retained more professional staff per patient and fewer volunteers per patient over time. These data suggest hospices, particularly certified organizations, have transitioned from voluntary organizations to professionally staffed organizations with a strong volunteer component. The most important issue for future research is whether the observed changes have affected the quality of hospice care. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: getinfo@haworthpressinc.com ]
Therapeutic Dendritic Cell Vaccination of Patients With Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma: A Clinical Phase 1/2 trial

Therapeutic dendritic cell (DC) vaccination against cancer is a strategy aimed at activating the immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells. In this nonrandomized phase 1/2 trial, we investigated the safety, feasibility, induction of T-cell response, and clinical response after treatment with a DC-based vaccine in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Twenty-seven patients with progressive cytokine-refractory metastatic renal cell carcinoma were vaccinated with DCs loaded with either a cocktail of survivin and telomerase peptides or tumor lysate depending on their HLA-A2 haplotype, and low-dose IL-2 was administered concomitantly. Tumor response, immune response, and serum IL-6 and YKL-40 were measured during treatment. Vaccine generation was successful in all patients and no serious adverse events were observed. None of the patients had an objective response but 13/27 patients obtained disease stabilization (SD) for more than 8 weeks. An antigen-specific immune response was demonstrated in 6/6 patients tested. Furthermore, significant alterations in serum YKL-40 and IL-6 were found during treatment. In conclusion, DC vaccination in our setting is feasible and without severe toxicity. Almost half of the patients obtained SD, and in more than 1/3 of the patients, SD persisted for more than 6 months. However, the evaluation of SD is difficult to interpret in the absence of a randomized trial and, therefore, these results should be interpreted with caution. Antigen-specific immune responses were observed in a subset of the treated patients.
Unravelling the relationships between Anopheles darlingi (Diptera: Culicidae) densities, environmental factors and malaria incidence: understanding the variable patterns of malarial transmission in French Guiana (South America)

Abstract Anopheles darlingi, one of the main malaria vectors in the Neotropics, is widely distributed in French Guiana, where malaria remains a major public‐health problem. Elucidation of the relationships between the population dynamics of An. darlingi and local environmental factors would appear to be an essential factor in the epidemiology of human malaria in French Guiana and the design of effective vector‐control strategies. In a recent investigation, longitudinal entomological surveys were carried out for 2–4 years in one village in each of three distinct endemic areas of French Guiana. Anopheles darlingi was always the anopheline mosquito that was most frequently caught on human bait, although its relative abundance (as a proportion of all the anophelines collected) and human biting rate (in bites/person‐year) differed with the study site. Seasonality in the abundance of human‐landing An. darlingi (with peaks at the end of the rainy season) was observed in only two of the three study sites. Just three An. darlingi were found positive for Plasmodium (either P. falciparum or P. vivax) circumsporozoite protein, giving entomological inoculation rates of 0·0–8·7 infectious bites/person‐year. Curiously, no infected An. darlingi were collected in the village with the highest incidence of human malaria. Relationships between malaria incidence, An. darlingi densities, rainfall and water levels in the nearest rivers were found to be variable and apparently dependent on land‐cover specificities that reflected the diversity and availability of habitats suitable for the development and reproduction of An. darlingi.
What You Need to Know to Become a MEG Technologist

ABSTRACT. Magnetoencephcilography (MEG) is a way to non-invasively localize sources of electrical activity within the human brain, by measuring the very weak magnetic fields just outside ofthe head. This paper is an introduction to MEG for technologists who are interested in performing MEG studies. We have organized the paper into a brief overview of what MEG measures and how it does it, as well as a short history of the MEG manufacturers. There is a discussion of the dijferences in coils/sensors used to detect the magnetic fields, followed by a detailed description of what an average MEG technologist does to perform a MEG study. Some MEG centers may require more dutiesfrom the MEG technologist than are listed here and others may require fewer duties. We fnish the paper with the contraindications for a MEG study, a job description for the MEG technologist, and a MEG procedure checklist to help keep the tasks organized.
Point Scatterer Model for RCS prediction using ISAR measurements

A New Point Scatterer Prediction Model is presented in this paper to predict RCS of an aircraft model using Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) images of the aircraft. The ISAR images are provided by Defense Agency of Sweden and Saab inc. for each 15 degrees in horizontal plane. RCS is predicted for each aspect angle by taking superposition of the dominant point scatterers whose locations and strength are calculated from these ISAR images and simulation results are given with measurement results of the same aircraft model.
Computing probabilities of homozygosity by descent

A person is autozygous at a locus if the person inherits the same allele twice identical by descent along two distinct paths from the same ancestor. Autozygosity is a common cause of recessive diseases in inbred populations. Homozygosity mapping uses this fact to locate the genes that cause recessive diseases. The probability of autozygosity can be used to estimate the probability of a true positive and of a false positive in homozygosity mapping. Thompson [1994] and Guo [1997] therefore studied the problem of computing the prior, unconditional (multilocus) probability of autozygosity (MPA).
Sleep in children

The impact of poor sleep in the developing child is still tremendously underrated and virtually unexplored. The normative, age-appropriate sleep needs during development remain undefined to a large extent. Furthermore, it remains crucial to realize that relations between sleep duration and cognition, effect, and health are all multi-directional. The most consistent result of insufficient or disrupted sleep is increased daytime somnolence. Thorough sleep history-taking by the healthcare provider and the use of objective sleep assessments are potential first steps and should include the five sleep variables (bedtime, rise time, total sleep duration, variability of sleep over time, and alignment of sleep with other circadian factors). We need to explore the beneficial effects of healthy sleep and how disrupted, shortened, or insufficient sleep may adversely impact on our children’s cognitive and affective functioning, may compromise their health, and may therefore impose a heavy price on our socio-economic structure.
Excitons in self-organized semiconductor/insulator superlattices: PbI-based perovskite compounds.

We calculate the binding energies, wave functions, and diamagnetic coefficients of excitons in perovskite lead iodine based compounds in the form of self-organized semiconductor/insulator superlattices with allowance for the image potential and the superlattice structure of these materials. We demonstrate a good agreement between our theory and the experiment; the fitting of our theory to the experiments makes it possible to evaluate the reduced mass of excitons in these compounds of the order of 0.2${\mathit{m}}_{0}$.
Effects of cyclodextrins on the flavor of goat milk and its yogurt.

UNLABELLED Goat milk fat includes several branched chain fatty acids (BCFAs), like 4-methyloctanoic acid, which when free, are responsible for goaty flavor. This flavor limits the market opportunities for goat milk. Prior research showed that cyclodextrins (CDs) can reduce goaty flavor, presumably by binding free fatty acids. This research extends that observation. In odor ranking trials in citrate buffer at pH 4.8, β-CD concentrations between 0% and 0.35% were increasingly effective in reducing odor intensity due to 4-methyloctanoic acid, but only when present in high molar excess. α-CD was also effective, but γ-CD was not. In lipase-treated goat milk only β-CD was effective but at much lower molar excess, a difference potentially explained by several factors. One was that BCFAs bind to CDs in marked preference to their straight chain isomers. Displacement experiments with phenolphthalein disproved that hypothesis. The ability of β-CD to reduce goaty flavor intensity extended to yogurt. An analytical panel showed that flavor of goat yogurt was reduced by addition of β-CD, but only if added before heating and fermentation. A hedonic trial showed that consumers preferred unsweetened and sweet/vanilla-flavored goat yogurt more when β-CD was included, P = 0.004 and 0.016, respectively. Males liked all yogurts more than females (P < 0.01), but there was a treatment × gender interaction (P = 0.016) for sweet/vanilla yogurt: sweet/vanilla masked the goaty flavor for males but not females. This results parallels previously demonstrated gender effects for sheepmeat flavor caused by BCFAs. PRACTICAL APPLICATION β-Cyclodextrin masks goaty flavor in yogurt, and with its GRAS status means it could be used in commercial goat yogurts and similar products so the real or perceived nutritional advantages of goat milk are not lost to goaty flavor.
A novel elliptical curve ID cryptography protocol for multi-hop ZigBee sensor networks

ZigBee uses the network security and application profile layers of the IEEE 802.15. 4 and ZigBee Alliance standards for reliable, low-powered, wireless data communications. However, the ZigBee protocol has some security weaknesses for newly joining devices. In this paper, these weaknesses are analyzed and a novel elliptical curve identity-based cryptography (ECIC) protocol is presented to improve the security level of ZigBee networks. The proposed method provides perfect forward secrecy and enables network key transmission between nodes. Therefore, the traffic concentrated on the trustcenter is diminished, and the network efficiency is improved by reducing the key establishment time and processing burden on each sensor node, thereby reducing the overall energy consumption of the sensor network. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (The proposed elliptical curve identity-based cryptography (ECIC) ZigBee provides perfect forward secrecy and enables network key transmission between nodes. As a result the protocol can reduce the traffic concentrated on the trustcenter and increase the network efficiency compared to when using the ZigBee protocol based on the network security and application profile layers of the IEEE 802.15. 4 and ZigBee Alliance. Key complexity comparison of the ZigBee protocol (a) and the ECIC ZigBee protocol (b) is illustrated. )