Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
“Old” Technology in New Hands: Instruments as Mediators of Interdisciplinary Learning in Microfluidics

In his article on radical innovation, Shinn (2005) examined the role of scientific instruments in innovation. This paper continues to investigate this theme, but the main focus is on how scientists or engineers from one discipline may learn from another and produce new knowledge and new technology. The paper looks at the role that tools and instruments developed by one discipline, in one environment, can play in the development of knowledge in a new environment. The theoretical basis for this study is Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of tool-mediated activity. The proposed conceptualisation views instruments as dynamic and suggests types of tool-mediated activities which may contribute to knowledge creation. The collaborative process of experimentation is examined and opportunities for knowledge creation are discussed in relation to the instruments used. Methods used are interviews and observations. The case study is a small multidisciplinary laboratory developing a new process for producing nanoreactors, with potential applications in pharmaceuticals and energy.
Socioeconomic Position and Graft Failure in Pediatric Heart Transplant Recipients

Background—Socioeconomic (SE) position may affect availability of resources, health-related behavior, and outcomes. We assessed whether patient SE position, determined for the block group of patient residence (average population 1000, smallest census unit with SE data), is associated with graft failure in pediatric heart transplant recipients. Methods and Results—We used the US Census 2000 database to derive a composite SE score for the block group of residence for all patients who underwent their first heart transplant at Children’s Hospital Boston between 1991 and 2005 (n=135). Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine the risk of graft failure (death or retransplant) in the lowest tertile SE group (low SE group) compared with the remaining 2 of 3 patients (controls). The 2 groups were similar with respect to age, gender, diagnosis, and year of transplant. White race was less frequent in low SE group (64% versus 90%, P=0.001). Graft failure occurred in 46 transplant recipients (40 deaths, 6 retransplant). Low SE group (hazard ratio 2.4, 95% CI 1.3 to 4.3) and nonwhite race (hazard ratio 2.7, 95% CI 1.4 to 5.2) were both associated with higher risk of graft failure. In a multivariable model controlling for diagnosis and pretransplant support, race, and low SE position (hazard ratio 2.0, 95% CI 1.0 to 3.7, P=0.04) remained associated with graft failure. Low SE position group had a higher incidence rate of graft rejection and was at a higher risk of late rejection. Conclusion—Low SE position may be an independent risk factor for graft failure in pediatric heart transplant recipients.
Reliability of a Qualitative Video Analysis for Running.

Study Design Reliability study. Background Video analysis of running gait is frequently performed in orthopaedic and sports medicine practices to assess biomechanical factors that may contribute to injury. However, the reliability of a whole-body assessment has not been determined. Objective To determine the intrarater and interrater reliability of the qualitative assessment of specific running kinematics from a 2-dimensional video. Methods Running-gait analysis was performed on videos recorded from 15 individuals (8 male, 7 female) running at a self-selected pace (3.17 ± 0.40 m/s, 8:28 ± 1:04 min/mi) using a high-speed camera (120 frames per second). These videos were independently rated on 2 occasions by 3 experienced physical therapists using a standardized qualitative assessment. Fifteen sagittal and frontal plane kinematic variables were rated on a 3- or 5-point categorical scale at specific events of the gait cycle, including initial contact (n = 3) and midstance (n = 9), or across the full gait cycle (n = 3). The video frame number corresponding to each gait event was also recorded. Intrarater and interrater reliability values were calculated for gait-event detection (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] and standard error of measurement [SEM]) and the individual kinematic variables (weighted kappa [κw]). Results Gait-event detection was highly reproducible within raters (ICC = 0.94-1.00; SEM, 0.3-1.0 frames) and between raters (ICC = 0.77-1.00; SEM, 0.4-1.9 frames). Eleven of the 15 kinematic variables demonstrated substantial (κw = 0.60-0.799) or excellent (κw>0.80) intrarater agreement, with the exception of foot-to-center-of-mass position (κw = 0.59), forefoot position (κw = 0.58), ankle dorsiflexion at midstance (κw = 0.49), and center-of-mass vertical excursion (κw = 0.36). Interrater agreement for the kinematic measures varied more widely (κw = 0.00-0.85), with 5 variables showing substantial or excellent reliability. Conclusion The qualitative assessment of specific kinematic measures during running can be reliably performed with the use of a high-speed video camera. Detection of specific gait events was highly reproducible, as were common kinematic variables such as rearfoot position, foot-strike pattern, tibial inclination angle, knee flexion angle, and forward trunk lean. Other variables should be used with caution. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2016;46(7):556-561. Epub 6 Jun 2016. doi:10.2519/jospt.2016. 6280.
Day-ahead price forecasting of electricity markets by a new fuzzy neural network

In this paper, an efficient method based on a new fuzzy neural network is proposed for short-term price forecasting of electricity markets. This fuzzy neural network has inter-layer and feed-forward architecture with a new hypercubic training mechanism. The proposed method predicts hourly market-clearing prices for the day-ahead electricity markets. By combination of fuzzy logic and an efficient learning algorithm, an appropriate model for the nonstationary behavior and outliers of the price series is presented. The proposed method is examined on the Spanish electricity market. It is shown that the method can provide more accurate results than the other price forecasting techniques, such as ARIMA time series, wavelet-ARIMA, MLP, and RBF neural networks.
Single-Amino-Acid Substitutions in Open Reading Frame (ORF) 1b-nsp14 and ORF 2a Proteins of the Coronavirus Mouse Hepatitis Virus Are Attenuating in Mice

ABSTRACT A reverse genetic system was recently established for the coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus strain A59 (MHV-A59), in which cDNA fragments of the RNA genome are assembled in vitro into a full-length genome cDNA, followed by electroporation of in vitro-transcribed genome RNA into cells with recovery of viable virus. The “in vitro-assembled” wild-type MHV-A59 virus (icMHV-A59) demonstrated replication identical to laboratory strains of MHV-A59 in tissue culture; however, icMHV-A59 was avirulent following intracranial inoculation of C57BL/6 mice. Sequencing of the cloned genome cDNA fragments identified two single-nucleotide mutations in cloned genome fragment F, encoding a Tyr6398His substitution in open reading frame (ORF) 1b p59-nsp14 and a Leu94Pro substitution in the ORF 2a 30-kDa protein. The mutations were repaired individually and together in recombinant viruses, all of which demonstrated wild-type replication in tissue culture. Following intracranial inoculation of mice, the viruses encoding Tyr6398His/Leu94Pro substitutions and the Tyr6398His substitution alone demonstrated log10 50% lethal dose (LD50) values too great to be measured. The Leu94Pro mutant virus had reduced but measurable log10 LD50, and the “corrected” Tyr6398/Leu94 virus had a log10 LD50 identical to wild-type MHV-A59. The experiments have defined residues in ORF 1b and ORF 2a that attenuate virus replication and virulence in mice but do not affect in vitro replication. The results suggest that these proteins serve roles in pathogenesis or virus survival in vivo distinct from functions in virus replication. The study also demonstrates the usefulness of the reverse genetic system to confirm the role of residues or proteins in coronavirus replication and pathogenesis.
Energy-efficient distributed state estimation via event-triggered consensus on exponential families

The paper addresses distributed state estimation over a peer-to-peer sensor network with an eye to communication/energy efficiency. In particular, consensus on exponential families of probability distributions is first introduced and shown to be equivalent to iteratively performing convex linear combinations on the natural parameters of such distributions. Then, an event-triggered consensus strategy is presented and exploited to derive a novel energy-efficient consensus Kalman filter algorithm for distributed state estimation. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
Adenosine A2A receptors enable the synaptic effects of cannabinoid CB1 receptors in the rodent striatum

Adenosine A2A, cannabinoid CB1 and metabotropic glutamate 5 (mGlu5) receptors are all highly expressed in the striatum. The aim of the present work was to investigate whether, and by which mechanisms, the above receptors interact in the regulation of striatal synaptic transmission. By extracellular field potentials (FPs) recordings in corticostriatal slices, we demonstrated that the ability of the selective type 1 cannabinoid receptor (CB1R) agonist WIN55,212‐2 to depress synaptic transmission was prevented by the pharmacological blockade or the genetic inactivation of A2ARs. Such a permissive effect of A2ARs towards CB1Rs does not seem to occur pre‐synaptically as the ability of WIN55,212‐2 to increase the R2/R1 ratio under a protocol of paired‐pulse stimulation was not modified by ZM241385. Furthermore, the effects of WIN55,212‐2 were reduced in slices from mice lacking post‐synaptic striatal A2ARs. The selective mGlu5R agonist (RS)‐2‐chloro‐5‐hydroxyphenylglycine (CHPG) potentiated the synaptic effects of WIN55,212‐2, and such a potentiation was abolished by A2AR blockade. Unlike the synaptic effects, the ability of WIN55,212‐2 to prevent NMDA‐induced toxicity was not influenced by ZM241385. Altogether, these results show that the state of activation of A2ARs regulates the synaptic effects of CB1Rs and that A2ARs may control CB1 effects also indirectly, namely through mGlu5Rs.
ROMANO: A Novel Overlay Lightweight Communication Protocol for Unified Control and Sensing of a Network of Robots

We present the Robotic Overlay coMmunicAtioN prOtocol (ROMANO), a lightweight, application layer overlay communication protocol for a unified sensing and control abstraction of a network of heterogeneous robots mainly consisting of low power, low-compute-capable robots. ROMANO is built to work in conjunction with the well-known MQ Telemetry Transport for Sensor Nodes (MQTT-SN) protocol, a lightweight publish-subscribe communication protocol for the Internet of Things and makes use its concept of "topics" to designate the addition and deletion of communication endpoints by changing the subscriptions of topics at each device. We also develop a portable implementation of ROMANO for low power IEEE 802.15. 4 (Zigbee) radios and deployed it on a small testbed of commercially available, low-power, and low-compute-capable robots called Pololu 3pi robots. Based on a thorough analysis of the protocol on the real testbed, as a measure of throughput, we demonstrate that ROMANO can guarantee more than a $99.5\%$ message delivery ratio for a message generation rate up to 200 messages per second. The single hop delays in ROMANO are as low as 20ms with linear dependency on the number of robots connected. These delay numbers concur with typical delays in 802.15. 4 networks and suggest that ROMANO does not introduce additional delays. Lastly, we implement four different multi-robot applications to demonstrate the scalability, adaptability, ease of integration, and reliability of ROMANO.
Glutamine and Aspartate Loading of Synaptosomes: A Reevaluation of Effects on Calcium‐Dependent Excitatory Amino Acid Release

Guinea‐pig cerebral cortical synaptosomes were preincubated for 60 min with 100 μMd‐aspartate, l‐aspartate, or l‐glutamate. The total d‐ plus l‐aspartate content of the synaptosomal fraction increased to 235%, 195%, or 164%, respectively, of the control. Despite this no increase was seen in the very low KCl evoked, Ca2+‐dependent release of aspartate. Preincubation with the three amino acids changed the synaptosomal glutamate content to 78% (d‐aspartate), 149% (l‐aspartate), or 168% (l‐glutamate) of control. However there was no statistically significant effect of these preincubations on the extent of Ca2+‐dependent glutamate release. Thus the Ca2+‐dependent release of aspartate and glutamate is not determined by the total synaptosomal content of these amino acids. The addition of 0.1–0.5 mM glutamine to the incubation caused a massive appearance of glutamate in the extrasynaptosomal medium. Analysis of specific activities showed that glutamine was hydrolysed directly by an extra‐synaptosomal glutaminase, and that intrasynaptosomal glutamate was predominantly labelled by uptake of this glutaminase‐derived glutamate. No increase was seen in the extent of Ca2+‐dependent release of glutamate (by fluorimetry) either after preincubation with glutamine or in the continued presence of glutamine. Thus we are unable to confirm reports that glutamine expands the transmitter pool of glutamate. The extrasynaptosomal glutaminase activity in the synaptosomal preparation was inhibited by Ca2+ and activated by phosphate. Identical kinetics were obtained with “free'’brain mitochondria, confirming the origin of the glutamine‐derived glutamate.
Trichiasis and disability in a trachoma-endemic area of Tanzania.

OBJECTIVE To measure limitations in the daily activities of village life associated with having trichiasis for individuals with and without visual acuity loss. METHODS Men and women 40 years and older in 6 randomly chosen rural villages in the Kongwa district of Tanzania had visual acuity measured and were examined by an ophthalmologist. Subjects indicated the degree of difficulty with daily activities of village life and whether the difficulty was related, in any way, to vision. Limitations were scored using an indicator of "any difficulty" and using a 4-point scale ranging from "no difficulty" to "unable to do. " Scores of individuals with and without trichiasis were compared separately for men and women. RESULTS Among men, trichiasis was associated with excess functional limitation only for those with visual acuity loss (adjusted difference in proportion of tasks [AD] compared with men with neither trichiasis nor visual impairment, 0.35; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.23-0.47). For women, trichiasis alone was limiting (AD, 0.15; 95% CI, 0.08-0.22) similarly to visual acuity loss alone (AD, 0.09; 95% CI 0.06-0.13), and the combination led to greater limitations (AD, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.26-0.39). CONCLUSION The burden of trichiasis is likely greater than previously estimated, especially in women for whom trichiasis alone was disabling.
Incremental Learning with Support Vector Data Description

Due to the simplicity and firm mathematical foundation, Support Vector Machines (SVMs) have been intensively used to solve classification problems. However, training SVMs on real world large-scale databases is computationally costly and sometimes infeasible when the dataset size is massive and non-stationary. In this paper, we propose an incremental learning approach that greatly reduces the time consumption and memory usage for training SVMs. The proposed method is fully dynamic, which stores only a small fraction of previous training examples whereas the rest can be discarded. It can further handle unseen labels in new training batches. The classification experiments show that the proposed method achieves the same level of classification accuracy as batch learning while the computational cost is significantly reduced, and it can outperform other incremental SVM approaches for the new class problem.
Transcription of Spanish Historical Handwritten Documents with Deep Neural Networks

The digitization of historical handwritten document images is important for the preservation of cultural heritage. Moreover, the transcription of text images obtained from digitization is necessary to provide efficient information access to the content of these documents. Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) has become an important research topic in the areas of image and computational language processing that allows us to obtain transcriptions from text images. State-of-the-art HTR systems are, however, far from perfect. One difficulty is that they have to cope with image noise and handwriting variability. Another difficulty is the presence of a large amount of Out-Of-Vocabulary (OOV) words in ancient historical texts. A solution to this problem is to use external lexical resources, but such resources might be scarce or unavailable given the nature and the age of such documents. This work proposes a solution to avoid this limitation. It consists of associating a powerful optical recognition system that will cope with image noise and variability, with a language model based on sub-lexical units that will model OOV words. Such a language modeling approach reduces the size of the lexicon while increasing the lexicon coverage. Experiments are first conducted on the publicly available Rodrigo dataset, which contains the digitization of an ancient Spanish manuscript, with a recognizer based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). They show that sub-lexical units outperform word units in terms of Word Error Rate (WER), Character Error Rate (CER) and OOV word accuracy rate. This approach is then applied to deep net classifiers, namely Bi-directional Long-Short Term Memory (BLSTMs) and Convolutional Recurrent Neural Nets (CRNNs). Results show that CRNNs outperform HMMs and BLSTMs, reaching the lowest WER and CER for this image dataset and significantly improving OOV recognition.
A compact saliency model for video-rate implementation

Salient regions are useful for priority processing of fixated areas in case of limited computational or bandwidth resources. This paper presents an efficient and compact saliency model, compatible with image sensors implementation. In contrast with Itti's reference model, our model relies on a low-complexity processing consisting of inter-frame difference, spatial contrast, and the central fixation bias. Simple weighted combinations of these factors show better results than Itti's model. Moreover, a combination using time-varying weights further improves the performance; and results show that spatial saliency should be integrated after motion saliency. Besides, a new criterion compatible with image sensors is used to evaluate the models.
Adequacy study of wind farms considering reliability and wake effect of WTGs

The wake effect of a wind turbine generator (WTG) may affect output of a wind farm. Wake effect depends on wind speed, and the size and location of WTGs in a wind farm. When one or more WTGs fail in a wind farm, the wind speed distribution in the farm will change, which may lead to different wind power output from the farm. This paper proposes a Monte Carlo simulation technique is used to evaluate adequacy of a wind farm with considering the reliability and location of WTGs, wind speed and the wake effect of WTGs. A quadratic interpolation method is used to study the optimal distribution of WTG in a wind farm. Reliability of a wind farm with and without the optimal WTG distribution is investigated by using the proposed technique. The results show that, the optimal layout of a wind farm with considering wake effect should be considered in wind farm adequacy studies.
Non-Standard tapering of leaky-wave antennas in hybrid technology

This paper illustrates for the first time the ability of leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) [1] in hybrid waveguide printed-circuit technology [2] to provide non-standard simultaneous tapering of the phase and the leakage rate of the constituent leaky-mode. This unusual tapering allows synthesis of broadbeam radiation patterns with high rejection out of the prescribed beamwidth [3], high efficiency focusing near field patterns [3,4], or highly directive conformal antennas [5]. The proposed hybrid technology offers a much simpler and more flexible mechanism to design this unusual type of tapered LWAs, if compared to LWAs in pure waveguide [3] or pure printed-circuit [4–5] technologies.
Persistent Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia: an analysis of risk factors and outcomes.

BACKGROUND Persistent Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (pSAB) is an emerging problem among hospitalized patients. We studied key clinical characteristics and outcomes associated with pSAB to better define the epidemiological features of this increasingly recognized clinical entity. METHODS A retrospective case-control study of patients hospitalized with SAB between January 1, 2001, and September 30, 2004, was conducted to compare the clinical characteristics, management, and outcomes of patients with pSAB (> 7 days of bacteremia) with those of a cohort of patients with nonpersistent SAB (< 3 days of bacteremia). Patients with 4 to 6 days of bacteremia were excluded from the analysis. To detect a potential association between reduced susceptibility to vancomycin and persistent methicillin-resistant SAB, vancomycin susceptibilities were confirmed using standard dilution methods. RESULTS Eighty-four patients with pSAB and 152 patients with nonpersistent SAB were included in the analysis. Methicillin resistance (odds ratio [OR], 5.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.63-10.38), intravascular catheter or other foreign body use (OR, 2.37; 95% CI, 1.11-3.96), chronic renal failure (OR, 2.08; 95% CI, 1.09-3.96), more than 2 sites of infection (OR, 3.31; 95% CI, 1.17-9.38), and infective endocarditis (OR, 10.30; 95% CI, 2.98-35.64) were independently associated with pSAB. The mean time to device removal was significantly longer in patients with pSAB than in patients with nonpersistent SAB (4.94 vs 1.64 days; P < .01). There was no evidence of reduced vancomycin susceptibility among persistent methicillin-resistant S aureus isolates. Clinical outcomes were significantly worse among patients with pSAB. CONCLUSIONS Many hospitalized patients may be at risk for pSAB. Aggressive attempts to minimize the risk of complications and poor outcomes associated with pSAB, such as early device removal, should be encouraged.
Benchmarking Ensemble Classifiers with Novel Co-Trained Kernal Ridge Regression and Random Vector Functional Link Ensembles [Research Frontier]

Studies in machine learning have shown promising classification performance of ensemble methods employing "perturb and combine" strategies. In particular, the classical random forest algorithm performs the best among 179 classifiers on 121 UCI datasets from different domains. Motivated by this observation, we extend our previous work on oblique decision tree ensemble. We also propose an efficient co-trained kernel ridge regression method. In addition, a random vector functional link network ensemble is also introduced. Our experiments show that our two oblique decision tree ensemble variants and the co-trained kernel ridge regression ensemble are the top three ranked methods among the 183 classifiers. The proposed random vector functional link network ensemble also outperforms all neural network based methods used in the experiments.
Anti-vaccinationists past and present

The British Vaccination Act of 1840 was the first incursion of the state, in the name of public health, into traditional civil liberties. The activities of today's propagandists against immunisations are directly descended from, indeed little changed from, those of the anti-vaccinationists of the late nineteenth century, say Robert Wolfe and Lisa Sharp