Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do patients with Alzheimer's disease draw like young children? An exploratory study.

BACKGROUND Previous studies have shown that AD patients present a stepwise regression to their cognitive functioning from a mature adult to that of an infant. OBJECTIVES The present study aimed to compare Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients' and 4-10 year old children's drawing performance, taking into account that drawing is currently considered as a cognitive process and that AD manifests a severe cognitive impairment. METHODS The sample consisted of 10 AD patients and 10 adult controls, as well as of 40 children, divided into 4 age groups (4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-years old). Participants were asked to draw from memory (a) six simple objects, (b) a man, and (c) a tree behind a house. RESULTS Analysis showed an improvement with age in children's drawing performance, while controls' drawing scores were similar to those obtained by older children. On the contrary, drawing performance of AD patients significantly decreased into levels under that of the 4-year old children in drawing errors, or under that of the 8-year old children in drawing a man task and partial occlusion task. CONCLUSIONS The observed regression in AD patients' drawing performance is discussed in relation to the cognitive deficits accompanying the disease.
Assessment of MS-2 phage and salt tracers to characterize axial dispersion in water distribution systems

The present study investigates the axial dispersion and retardation patterns of viruses in a pressurized water distribution pipe using MS-2 as a surrogate. The results were obtained by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), along with a hydraulic and water quality model. These models included the plug flow assumption and were first used to estimate transport mechanisms along a pipe. These prediction–model results were compared to experimental data using sodium chloride as a chemical tracer. Significant axial dispersion and retardation (or tailing) was found to exist under laminar flow conditions with high dispersion coefficients (E) estimated by CFD runs and salt tracer experiments. A similar dispersion pattern was also observed for MS-2, along with a long tailing pattern, which is particularly unique. The commonly used water quality model showed no axial dispersion (E = 0) under any flow regimes; thus, the plug flow assumption could produce significant errors in predicting the transport phenomena of chemical and biological constituents in water distribution systems. On the other hand, the dispersion curves predicted by the plug flow model and CFD are in good agreement with the experimental data in the turbulent flow regime, although using computational methods to predict microbial retardation is intrinsically difficult. Because the MS-2 demonstrated considerable temporal retardation and because its detection limit is much lower than that of the salt tracer, MS-2 should make an excellent tracer for characterizing viral transport in water distribution systems.
A PV inverter with charge-pump circuit topology

This paper proposes a photovoltaic (PV) inverter capable of stepping up voltage and the control algorithm for the inverter. The proposed inverter employs a charge-pump (CP) circuit instead of the commonly used step-up converter of a chopper type. Because the CP circuit does not include any inductor, the proposed inverter can be formed compactly. The CP circuit steps up the dc link voltage of the inverter by superimposing the voltage of the capacitor in the CP circuit on the PV voltage. So that the inverter performs the effective operation of the voltage step-up, the capacitor needs to maintain an appropriate voltage level. The equations modeling the energy variation of the capacitor are derived. Based on the equations, the maximum voltage step-up ratio of the inverter is obtained. The observation of the simulated output voltage waveforms of the inverter introduces two improved topologies of the CP circuit. The experiments using the inverter operated by the described control techniques confirms that the inverter can perform effective step-up operation while executing maximum power point tracking (MPPT) operation successfully.
Neutralizing antibody responses to varicella-zoster virus

Neutralization of varicella-zoster (V-Z) virus by human sera and immune rhesus monkey sera was enhanced by fresh guinea pig complement. There was no marked difference in the degree to which complement enhanced neutralization by sera from current V-Z virus infections and sera from long-past varicella infections. Immunoglobulin G neutralizing antibody in sera from varicella cases was enhanced by complement to a slightly higher degree than was immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody, and immunoglobulin G neutralizing antibody in immune monkey sera was enhanced to a much greater degree than was IgM antibody. There was a rapid decline in the complement requirement of IgM neutralizing antibodies over the course of immunization of the rhesus monkeys. V-Z neutralizing antibody titers in the presence of complement were higher than complement-fixing titers of the same sera in all groups of individuals studied. IgM neutralizing antibody for V-Z virus was demonstrable in all cases of varicella but in only 1 of 22 zoster cases, and V-Z IgM neutralizing antibody was not detectable in primary herpes simplex virus infections in which heterotypic antibody titer rises occurred to V-Z virus. Complement-fixing antibody for V-Z virus was absent in 19S serum fractions which contained IgM neutralizing antibody for the virus.
Monocytic origin of the human hematopoietic cell line U‐937 and its convertibility to macrophages evidenced by isoenzyme mapping

U‐937 represents a well established permanent human hematopoietic cell line. Electron microscopical and enzyme cytochemical studies as well as the analysis of surface glycoproteins have provided ample evidence for the monocytic origin of U‐937. Upon stimulation with the tumour promotor 12‐O‐tetradecanoylphorbol‐13‐acetate (TPA), U‐937 cells evolve into macrophage‐like cells with phagocytic capacities. Since human blood monocytes (BM) are characterized by five acid esterase (AcE; EC 3.1.1.6) isoenzymes which are cell‐specific in terms of isoelectric points (pi) and antigenicity, attempts were made in the present study to identify identical isoenzyme patterns in non‐ and TPA‐stimulated U‐937 cells. BM, cultured BM, non‐ and TPA‐stimulated U‐937 cells, as well as samples of resident human peritoneal macrophages (PM) as clearly‐defined functional derivatives of BM, were subjected to isoenzyme analysis using isoelectric focusing (IEF). The five monocyte specific isoenzymes of AcE were identified in both populations of U‐937. TPA‐stimulated samples showed two additional bands, identical to those appearing in cultured BM after 4 days of glass‐adherence and characteristic of resident human PM. Antisera raised against AcE of BM immunoprecipitated the two additional isoenzymes of TPA‐stimulated U‐937. It is concluded (1) the isoenzyme mapping of AcE documents the monocytic origin of U‐937. (2) TPA‐stimulation caricatures transformation of BM into resident tissue macrophages as far as pure morphology and AcE isoenzyme patterns are concerned. Thus, AcE isoenzyme mapping is apt for establishing reproducible and standardized criteria of different activation/differentiation states within the monocyte‐macrophage lineage.
Seeing the Fermi Surface in Real Space by Nanoscale Electron Focusing

The Fermi surface that characterizes the electronic band structure of crystalline solids can be difficult to image experimentally in a way that reveals local variations. We show that Fermi surfaces can be imaged in real space with a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope when subsurface point scatterers are present: in this case, cobalt impurities under a copper surface. Even the very simple Fermi surface of copper causes strongly anisotropic propagation characteristics of bulk electrons that are confined in beamlike paths on the nanoscale. The induced charge density oscillations on the nearby surface can be used for mapping buried defects and interfaces and some of their properties.
A Detection Method for Transmission Line Insulators Based on an Improved FCM Algorithm

An improved segmentation Fuzzy C-Means algorithm (FCM) is proposed for the image recognition of transmission line insulators. In this paper, the improved Wiener filter algorithm is firstly used to filtrate and recover image in pre-processing. Then, the insulator image is segmented based on the improved algorithm FCM. Finally, the contour of insulator is labelled by using connected component labelling algorithm. Experimental results have shown that the improved Wiener filtering algorithm may effectively filter and recover the images; furthermore, the improved FCM image segmentation algorithm may accurately segment insulators from the image.
Priming Protective CD8 T Cell Immunity by DNA Vaccines Encoding Chimeric, Stress Protein-Capturing Tumor-Associated Antigen1

DNA vaccines encoding heat shock protein (hsp)-capturing, chimeric peptides containing antigenic determinants of the tumor-associated Ag (TAA) gp70 (an envelope protein of endogenous retrovirus) primed stable, specific, and tumor-protective CD8 T cell immunity. Expression of gp70 transcripts was detectable in most normal tissues but was particularly striking in some (but not all) tumor cell lines tested (including the adenocarcinoma cell line CT26). An ∼200 residue gp70 fragment or its Ld-binding antigenic AH1 peptide cloned in-frame behind an hsp-capturing (cT272) or noncapturing (T60) N-terminal large SV40 tumor Ag sequence was expressed as either hsp-binding or -nonbinding chimeric Ags. Only hsp-capturing, chimeric fusion proteins were expressed efficiently in transfected cell lines and primed TAA-specific CD8 T cell immunity. This immunity mediated protection in the CT26 and mKSA models. A vaccination strategy based on delivering antigenic, hsp-associated TAA fragments can thus prime protective CD8 T cell immunity even if these TAA are of low intrinsic immunogenicity.
Deducibility security with dynamic level assignments

The authors give a generalization of the definition of security for state machines given by D. Sutherland (Proc. 9th Nat. Comput. Security Conf., Sept. 1986). The generalization allows the security levels of inputs and outputs to be assigned dynamically. Its aim is merely to say what it means to infer high-level information from low-level information when the definitions of what is high and low can change. Although the generalization supports the modeling of thins like login and reclassification, it does not give any guidance about how to do login or reclassification correctly. It merely allows such procedures to be represented; this cannot be done in a straightforward way with previous models. <<ETX>>
Analysis of Mortality among Canadian Nuclear Power Industry Workers after Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation

Abstract Zablotska, L. B. , Ashmore, J. P. and Howe, G. R. Analysis of Mortality among Canadian Nuclear Power Industry Workers after Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation. Radiat. Res. 161, 633–641 (2004). Studies of radiation-associated risks among workers chronically exposed to low doses of radiation are important, both to estimate risks directly and to assess the adequacy of extrapolations of risk estimates from high-dose studies. This paper presents results based on a cohort of 45,468 nuclear power industry workers from the Canadian National Dose Registry monitored for more than 1 year for chronic low-dose whole-body ionizing radiation exposures sometime between 1957 and 1994 (mean duration of monitoring = 7.4 years, mean cumulative equivalent dose = 13.5 mSv). The excess relative risks for leukemia [excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)] and for all solid cancers were 52.5 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.205, 291] and 2.80 (95% CI: −0.038, 7.13) per sievert, respectively, both associations having P values close to 0.05. Relative risks by dose categories increased monotonically for leukemia excluding CLL but were less consistent for all solid cancers combined. Although the point estimates are higher than those found in other studies of whole-body irradiation, the difference could well be due to chance. Further follow-up of this cohort or the combination of results from multiple worker studies will produce more stable estimates and thus complement the risk estimates from higher-dose studies.
Investigating the linearity of MOSFET-only switched-capacitor ΔΣ modulators under low-voltage condition

Effect of asymmetric operating condition of depletion-mode MOS capacitors on the linearity of MOSFET-only switched-capacitor ΔΣ modulators is investigated. In very low-voltage switched-capacitor circuits the opamp input and output common-mode levels are separated to provide maximum overdrive voltage for MOS switches. This causes an asymmetric voltage drop on capacitors during operation. On the other hand, the depletion-mode MOS capacitors are most linear when operated under a symmetric condition. The effect of this increased nonlinearity on a ΔΣ modulator which is operated under an asymmetric condition is simulated and the results are compared with a ΔΣ modulator which is operated under a symmetric condition.
Development of a dedicated laboratory system for measurement of iron losses in high speed PMSM

Iron loss measurement has always been a concern for the engineers designing electrical machines. A novel test method developed for fast and accurate measurement of iron losses of permanent magnet synchronous machines and a dedicated laboratory system for performing automatic measurements are presented. The principle of the measurement technique, the main building blocks of the laboratory system and the procedures of tests are described. Test results are presented to illustrate the accuracy and repeatability of the measurements that confirm the realization of expectations and the viability of the iron loss measurement system.
DCT-Precoding Technique in Optical Fast OFDM for Mitigating Fiber Nonlinearity

We construct a discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-precoded optical fast orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (FOFDM) system. However, the DFT-precoded FOFDM system requires a higher modulation order (M2) compared with the conventional FOFDM system (M) owing to the complex conjugate data. The higher modulation order results in an increase in the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), which degrades the nonlinear tolerance. To overcome this problem, we propose a discrete cosine transform (DCT)-precoded optical FOFDM system. The proposed system does not require a higher modulation order. Therefore, the proposed DCT-precoded optical FOFDM system has a lower PAPR characteristic than the DFT-precoded FOFDM system. The lowest PAPR characteristic of the proposed system enables superior nonlinear tolerance compared with other FOFDM systems. The numerical results show that the proposed system outperforms the conventional FOFDM system by an optical signal-to-noise ratio of 2 dB at 3.8×10-3 BER for an 800-km transmission.
Isolation and characterization of chromosome‐specific DNA sequences from a chromosome arm genomic library of common wheat

Summary Isolation, physical mapping and polymorphism of chromosome-specific DNA sequences in wheat are reported. Following the microdissection of the long arm of chromosome 5B (5BL) of common wheat, its DNA was amplified by degenerate oligonucleotide-primed PCR and directly cloned into plasmid vectors. Characterization of the chromosome arm library showed that ~55% of the inserts are of low-copy nature. Southern analysis using aneuploid lines of common wheat revealed that five of 11 low-copy inserts analyzed map to chromosome arm 5BL; four of these are 5BL-specific. By deletion mapping, the 5BLspecific sequences were located to sub- chromosome arm regions. Based on the hybridization patterns of three 5BLspecific sequences to DNA from a diverse collection of goat-grass (Aegilops) and wheat (Triticum) species, it was concluded that these sequences emerged at different times in the course of evolution of this group of plant species.
Semi-parametric trajectory modelling using temporally varying feature mapping for speech recognition

Recently, trajectory HMM has been shown to improve the performance of both speech recognition and speech synthesis. For efﬁciency, state sequence is required to compute likelihood for trajectory HMM which limits its use to N -best rescoring for speech recognition. Motivated by the success of models with temporally varying parameters, this paper proposes a Tempo-rally Varying Feature Mapping (TVFM) model to transform the feature vector sequence such that the trajectory information as modelled by trajectory HMM is suppressed. Therefore, TVFM can be perceived as an implicit trajectory modelling technique. Two approaches for estimating the TVFM parameters are presented. Experimental results for phone recognition on TIMIT and word recognition on Wall Street Journal show that promising results can be obtained using TVFM.
Discrete Frequency-Tuning Active Filter to Suppress Harmonic Resonances of Closed-Loop Distribution Power Systems

Increasing demand of electric-power reliability in industrial parks or in urban areas has led to the development of closed-loop distribution power systems. The harmonic resonance between power-factor-correction capacitors and system inductors may cause significant voltage distortion along the feeder. This paper proposes a discrete frequency-tuning active filter installed at the middle point of a closed-loop line for harmonic-resonance suppression. The active filter operates as a variable conductance for individual harmonic frequency according to the corresponding harmonic-voltage distortion. This algorithm allows the damping conductance of each harmonic frequency to be separately and autonomously adjusted in response to variation of both harmonic sources and resonant capacitors. Therefore, the unintentional “whack-a-mole” phenomenon, due to mismatching between the active filter and the line, can be avoided even if the active-filter location deviates from the middle point. Voltage distortion throughout the closed-loop line can be definitely maintained below an allowable level with lower peak current and lower rms current compared to the conventional voltage-detection active filter. Computer simulations based on a 11.4 kV/15 MVA system and a scaled-down platform in the laboratory are developed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Osteoporosis prevention among young women: psychosocial models of calcium consumption and weight-bearing exercise.

OBJECTIVE To examine the putative determinants of two osteoporosis-preventive behaviors, calcium consumption and weight-bearing exercise, in 2 samples of young women (Sample 1, n = 202; Sample 2, n = 209). A common psychosocial model of both behaviors, comprising the health belief model and augmented with constructs drawn from social cognitive theory and the theory of planned behavior, was developed, tested, and replicated. DESIGN A prospective 2-panel design was used. Baseline data were obtained in fall 1997 for Sample 1 and in spring 2002 for Sample 2. Behavioral follow-up data were obtained 6 months after initial data collection for both samples. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Baseline measures of behavioral intentions served as proximal outcomes. Behavioral measures obtained 6 months later served as distal outcomes. RESULTS Perceived barriers and self-efficacy directly predicted intentions to consume calcium and to exercise. Descriptive norms predicted intentions, in part indirectly through barriers and self-efficacy. Constructs specific to osteoporosis (e.g., susceptibility, severity) did not contribute to prediction. With initial behavior controlled, intentions to consume calcium and to exercise predicted the corresponding behaviors measured 6 months later; intentions fully mediated the relationship of model constructs to behavior. CONCLUSION Health beliefs associated with a negative health outcome, here osteoporosis, distal to young women's lives did not contribute to prediction. In contrast, constructs related to the current behaviors of calcium consumption and weight-bearing exercise (barriers, self-efficacy, norms) were highly predictive. Implications for behavioral interventions are discussed.
Crystal instabilities at finite strain.

It is demonstrated that stability criteria derived using elastic stiffness coefficients which govern stress-strain relations at finite deformation give quantitative predictions of crystal instability, as observed in direct molecular dynamics simulations. With the aid of such analysis we show that instabilities can be triggered in succession; as a consequence, the limit of metastability in the superheating of a defect-free crystal can be predicted.
Interrelationship between hypersensitivity to soybean proteins and growth performance in early-weaned pigs.

The objective of this growth trial was to determine the interrelationship between immunological criteria, gut morphology, and performance of starter pigs fed soybean proteins processed by different methods. One hundred twenty-five pigs were orally infused with 6 g/d of either dried skim milk, soybean meal (48% CP), soy protein concentrate, extruded soy protein concentrate, or experimental soy protein concentrate from 7 to 11 d of age and then fed a diet containing the same protein sources from weaning (d 21) to 35 d of age. All pigs were fed a corn-soybean meal diet containing 10% dried whey, 1.25% lysine, and 3% soybean oil for the remaining 21 d of the experiment. Xylose absorption and anti-soy immunoglobulin G (IgG) titers were measured on d 6 postweaning, and skin-fold thickness after intradermal injection of protein extracts was measured on d 7 postweaning. A total of 25 pigs (five pigs/treatment) was euthanatized on d 7 postweaning. Villus height and crypt depth from duodenum samples were measured. These measurements were obtained to elucidate a relationship between the hypersensitivity responses to soybean products and growth performance of baby pigs. Pigs fed diets containing soybean meal had a lower (P less than .05) rate of gain (d 0 to 14) and villus height, higher (P less than .01) serum anti-soy IgG titers, and increased skin-fold thickness (d 6 and 7 postweaning) after intradermal injection compared with those fed dried skim milk. Pigs fed other soy proteins also had lower ADG from d 0 to 14 postweaning; however, pigs fed moist extruded soy protein concentrate tended (P less than .09) to have higher ADG and improved feed utilization when compared with pigs fed soybean meal (d 0 to 14). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Spin diffusion in trapped clouds of cold atoms with resonant interactions.

We show that puzzling recent experimental results on spin diffusion in a strongly interacting atomic gas may be understood in terms of the predicted spin diffusion coefficient for a generic strongly interacting system. Three important features play a central role: (a) Fick's law for diffusion must be modified to allow for the trapping potential; (b) the diffusion coefficient is inhomogeneous, due to the density variations in the cloud; and (c) the diffusion approximation fails in the outer parts of the cloud, where the mean free path is long.