Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Two-dimensional myocardial strain imaging detects changes in left ventricular systolic function immediately after anthracycline chemotherapy.

AIMS The efficacy of anthracyclines is undermined by potential life-threatening cardiotoxicity. Cardiotoxicity is dependent upon several factors and the timing to its development is variable. Moreover, as adjuvant therapy with trastuzumab often follows, a close monitoring of cardiac function in those treated with anthracyclines is mandatory. Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) by echocardiography is currently used for monitoring cardiotoxicity; however, LVEF has numerous limitations. Two-dimensional strain imaging may provide a more sensitive measure of altered LV systolic function, so the aim of the present study was to compare LVEF and LV systolic strain before and after anthracyclines. METHODS AND RESULTS Fifty-two women with histologically confirmed breast cancer were prospectively studied. Echocardiographic LVEF (by Simpson's method), global and regional peak longitudinal, radial, and circumferential 2D systolic strain were measured 1 week before and 1 week after chemotherapy. Global and regional longitudinal LV systolic strain was significantly reduced after treatment; global longitudinal strain decreased from -17.7 to -16.3% (P < 0.01) with 48% of global measurements reduced by >10%. Global and regional radial LV systolic strain after treatment was also significantly reduced; global radial strain dropped from 40.5 to 34.5% (P < 0.01) with 59% of global measurements reduced by >10%. In contrast, no reduction in LVEF >10% after chemotherapy was observed. CONCLUSION Reduced LV systolic strain immediately after anthracycline treatment may indicate early impairment of myocardial function before detectable change in LVEF.
User-adaptive music emotion recognition

Music can arouse profound and deep emotional reactions and the automatic emotion recognition of music is useful for music information retrieval, human-computer interaction and affective computing Picard R.W. (1997). However, the nature of music is very complex and users' emotion responses vary from individual to individual. In this paper, we present an adaptive scheme to recognize the emotional meaning of music, which is able to follow users' preference. The recognition process is consisted of four steps: first, a two-dimensional model, 'emotion plane' is used to model the emotion classes; second, novel musical perceptual features are extracted from MIDI files; then, different support vector machines (SVM) were trained according to different users' preferences and finally these trained support vector machines are used to classify the emotion of music. Satisfying experimental results are obtained on western tonal music, with different users. That indicates the effectiveness of our approach.
Design and implementation of photovoltaic lighting system with high luminous efficacy LEDs

With the background park lighting application, and based on the characteristics of advanced devices in the system, this paper studies the photovoltaic (PV) light emitted diode (LED) lighting system in three main aspects, which are the design of the whole system, hybrid control strategy combining the maximum power point tracing (MPPT, for PV panels) with the energy management(for battery), and LED driving and dimming. Taking the example of an actual 50W high luminous efficacy LED system, the design, implantation and experiments are described in detail. In addition, the long-term measurement results in real environment are illustrated in this paper.
Ursachen für eine mangelnde Reproduzierbarkeit beim Laser-Sintern von Kunststoffbauteilen

RTejournal - Forum fur Rapid Technologie, Vol. 2013, Iss. 1 - Das Laser-Sintern hat sich in den letzten Jahren zunehmend als Kleinserienfertigungsverfahren fur Kunststoffbauteile etabliert. Dennoch entspricht die Bauteilqualitat aufgrund von Verzug oder mangelnder Reproduzierbarkeit der Eigenschaften oftmals nicht den Anforderungen. Ein Grund hierfur ist die inhomogene Temperaturfuhrung wahrend des Prozesses. So ergeben sich aufgrund einer inhomogenen Temperaturverteilung auf der Pulverbettoberflache sowie durch unterschiedliche Abkuhlgeschwindigkeiten im Pulverbett zum Teil deutliche lokale Unterschiede im Temperatur-Zeit-Verhalten. Grundlegende Untersuchungen zu diesen Effekten fehlen jedoch bislang. Im Rahmen der dargestellten Untersuchungen gilt es daher zum einen die Reproduzierbarkeit verschiedener Laser-Sinter-Anlagen in Bezug auf die mechanischen Eigenschaften, die Mashaltigkeit und die Bauteildichte zu analysieren und zum anderen diese Ergebnisse mit den lokalen Temperatur- und Abkuhlbedingungen im Pulverbett zu korrelieren. Dabei werden durch thermografische Untersuchungen die Temperaturverteilung an der Pulverbett-oberflache charakterisiert sowie durch Einsatz entsprechender Funk-Temperatur-messsensorik die lokalen Abkuhlbedingungen von Bauteilen innerhalb des Pulverbettes analysiert. Diese lokalen Temperatur- und Abkuhlbedingungen sollen anschliesend mit positionsabhangigen Analysen zum Bauteilschrumpf korreliert werden. Abschliesend werden Optimierungspotentiale fur ein neuentwickeltes Temperaturfuhrungssystem mit homogeneren Temperatur- und Abkuhlbedingungen abgeleitet.
Knockout of the Erythromycin Biosynthetic Cluster Gene, eryBI, Blocks Isoflavone Glucoside Bioconversion during Erythromycin Fermentations in Aeromicrobium erythreum but Not in Saccharopolyspora erythraea

ABSTRACT Isoflavone glucosides are valuable nutraceutical compounds and are present in commercial fermentations, such as the erythromycin fermentation, as constituents of the soy flour in the growth medium. The purpose of this study was to develop a method for recovery of the isoflavone glucosides as value-added coproducts at the end of either Saccharopolyspora erythraea or Aeromicrobium erythreum fermentation. Because the first step in isoflavone metabolism was known to be the conversion of isoflavone glucosides to aglycones by a β-glucosidase, we chose to knock out the only β-glucosidase gene known at the start of the study, eryBI, to see what effect this had on metabolism of isoflavone glucosides in each organism. In the unicellular erythromycin producer A. erythreum, knockout of eryBI was sufficient to block the conversion of isoflavone glucosides to aglycones. In S. erythraea, knockout of eryBI had no effect on this reaction, suggesting that other β-glucosidases are present. Erythromycin production was not significantly affected in either strain as a result of the eryBI knockout. This study showed that isoflavone metabolism could be blocked in A. erythreum by eryBI knockout but that eryBI knockout was not sufficient to block isoflavone metabolism in S. erythraea.
The WNT receptor FZD7 contributes to self-renewal signaling of human embryonic stem cells

Abstract A number of recent studies identified nuclear factors that together have the unique ability to induce pluripotency in differentiated cell types. However, little is known about the factors that are needed to maintain human embryonic stem (ES) cells in an undifferentiated state. In a search for such requirements, we performed a comprehensive meta-analysis of publicly available SAGE and microarray data. The rationale for this analysis was to identify genes that are exclusively expressed in human ES cell lines compared to 30 differentiated tissue types. The WNT receptor FZD7 was found among the genes with an ES cell-specific expression profile in both SAGE and microarray analyses. Subsequent validation by quantitative RT-PCR and flow cytometry confirmed that FZD7 mRNA levels in human ES cells are up to 200-fold higher compared to differentiated cell types. ShRNA-mediated knockdown of FZD7 in human ES cells induced dramatic changes in the morphology of ES cell colonies, perturbation of expression levels of germ layer-specific marker genes, and a rapid loss of expression of the ES cell-specific transcription factor OCT4. These findings identify the WNT receptor FZD7 as a novel ES cell-specific surface antigen with a likely important role in the maintenance of ES cell self-renewal capacity.
Autotrophic Growth of Thiobacillus acidophilus in the Presence of a Surface-Active Agent, Tween 80

Cellular protein, pH, dissolved oxygen concentration, and static surface tension were measured during growth of Thiobacillus acidophilus on elemental sulfur in the absence and presence of up to 5,000 mg of Tween 80 per liter. The decrease in pH and the increase in sulfate production were observed to be less accurate measurements of growth when compared with the increase in cellular protein. The doubling time of the bacterium decreased approximately 50% with the addition of 500 mg of Tween 80 per liter. The bacteria did not appear to synthesize any wetting agents as demonstrated by the constant surface tension of the medium during growth. Morphological alterations in the presence of Tween 80 were also observed.
Draft Genome Sequence of an Anaerobic, Thermophilic Bacterium, Thermoanaerobacterium aotearoense SCUT27, Isolated from a Hot Spring in China

ABSTRACT Thermoanaerobacterium aotearoense SCUT27, isolated from a hot spring in China, is a strictly anaerobic, thermophilic bacterium capable of degrading xylan and converting both pentose and hexose to ethanol with high yields. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of SCUT27, which reveals insights into the mechanisms of carbon source coutilization and xylan degradation in this thermophilic microorganism.
Systematic design of network coding-aware buffering strategies

The bandwidth sparing capability of network coding for the two-way relay channel has been illustrated by a recent demonstration of this technique for satellite communications. One of the issues that limits the efficiency of network coding in this setting is the difference between the instantaneous bit rates and packet lengths of the streams that converge from the ground terminals to the satellite, which can lead to significant performance degradation due to zero-padding. This problem can be reduced by introducing a buffer at the intermediate node that will aggregate packets from each flow before combining them. However, the design of such buffering strategies has been performed by means of heuristics or has been limited to very specific settings. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach for the analysis and design of buffering strategies for the two-way relay channel considering streams with Poisson arrivals of packets and randomly distributed packet lengths. A system optimization is performed in terms of jitter and spared bandwidth.
A Spatially Focused Method for High Density Electrode-Based Functional Brain Mapping Applications

Mapping the electric field of the brain with electrodes benefits from its superior temporal resolution but is prone to low spatial resolution property comparing with other modalities such as fMRI, which can directly impact the precision of clinical diagnosis. Simulations show that dense arrays with straightforwardly miniaturized electrodes in terms of size and pitch may not improve the spatial resolution but only strengthen the cross coupling between adjacent channels due to volume conduction. We present a new spatially focused method to improve the electrode spatial selectivity and consequently suppress the neural signal coupling from the sources in the vicinity. Compared with existing spatial filtering methods with fixed coefficients, the proposed method is adaptively optimized for the geometric parameters of the recording electrode arrays, including electrode size, pitch and source depth. The effective spatial bandwidth, characterized as Radius of Half Power, can be reduced by about 70% for ECoG and the case of distant sources scenarios. The proposed method has been applied to the analysis of high-frequency oscillations (HFOs) in seizures to study the ictal pathway in the epileptogenic region. The results reveal lucid HFO wavefront propagation in both preictal and ictal stages due to a 75% reduction in the coupling effect. The results also show that a specific power threshold of preictal HFOs is needed in order to initiate an epileptic seizure. This demonstrates that our method indeed facilitates the investigation of complex neurobiological signals preprocessing applications.
rapid communication Caloxin: a novel plasma membrane Ca 21 pump inhibitor

Caloxin: a novel plasma membrane Ca 2 1 pump inhibitor. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 280: C1027–C1030, 2001. —Plasma membrane (PM) Ca 2 1 pump is a Ca 2 1 -Mg 2 1 -ATPase that expels Ca 2 1 from cells to help them maintain low concentrations of cytosolic Ca 2 1 . There are no known extracellularly acting PM Ca 2 1 pump inhibitors, as digoxin and ouabain are for Na 1 pump. In analogy with digoxin, we deﬁne caloxins as extracellular PM Ca 2 1 pump inhibitors and describe caloxin 2A1. Caloxin 2A1 is a peptide obtained by screening a random peptide phage display library for binding to the second extracellular domain (residues 401–413) sequence of PM Ca 2 1 pump isoform 1b. Caloxin 2A1 inhibits Ca 2 1 -Mg 2 1 ATPase in human erythrocyte leaky ghosts, but it does not affect basal Mg 2 1 -ATPase or Na 1 -K 1 -ATPase in the ghosts or Ca 2 1 -Mg 2 1 -ATPase in the skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum. Caloxin 2A1 also inhibits Ca 2 1 -dependent formation of the 140-kDa acid-stable acylphosphate, which is a partial reaction of this enzyme. Consistent with inhibition of the PM Ca 2 1 pump in vascular endothelium, caloxin 2A1 produces an endothelium-dependent relaxation that is reversed by N G -nitro- L -arginine methyl ester. Thus caloxin 2A1 is a novel PM Ca 2 1 pump inhibitor selected for binding to an extracellular domain.
Disability Evolution in Multiple Sclerosis: How to Deal with Missing Transition Times in the Markov Model?

Markov modeling of disability progression in multiple sclerosis requires knowledge of all times of transitions from a given level of disability to the next level, but such data are often missing. We address methodological challenges due to partly missing transition times. To estimate the effects of prognostic factors on the risk of transitions between three consecutive disability levels, two methods were used to deal with missing data. Listwise deletion limited the analysis to subjects with complete data. Multiple imputation of missing data revealed that data were missing at random (MAR mechanism) and imputed the missing transition times from the Weibull model. The results were then compared with the full data set with the actual times established through chart review. Multiple imputation estimates were systematically closer to those from the full data set than the listwise deletion estimates.
Effets phénotypiques de deux mécanismes d’activation de la voie Wnt/beta caténine dans le carcinome hépatocellulaire

Le carcinome hepatocellulaire (CHC) est une des principales causes de mortalite par cancer dans le monde. Dans environ 50% des tumeurs, on observe les signes d’une activation de la voie Wnt/β-catenine, causee par une mutation de l’exon 3 du gene CTNNB1 ou par stimulation du recepteur FRZD. Des etudes transcriptomiques du CHCs ont montre que ces deux modes d’activation etaient associes a des sous-types de tumeurs differents. Nous avons cherche a mieux comprendre les caracteristiques cliniques et le phenotype moleculaire de ces deux sous-types de CHCs. Dans un premier temps, nous avons fait le lien entre l'activation Wnt extracellulaire, un phenotype de cellules cancereuses souches ou progenitrices et la presence de foyers de fibrose discrete intra-tumorale, observable par examen histopathologique, que nous avons appeles "nids fibreux". Nous avons egalement mis en evidence HAPLN1, une proteine de la matrice extracellulaire dont l’expression est stimulee par Wnt3a dans un modele de cellules hepatiques progenitrices HepaRG, comme un nouveau marqueur d’agressivite du CHC. Ces resultats montrent une association entre l’activation Wnt extracellulaire et une agressivite tumorale passant par un remodelage matriciel. Dans un second temps, une Meta-analyse de donnees publiques de transcriptomique a permis de mettre evidence 4 sous-types de CHCs. La mutation CTNNB1, predite par l’expression de 5 marqueurs par une methode developpee durant la these, etait associee a un de ces sous-types et a un bon pronostic clinique. Nous avons egalement isole un nouveau sous-type de CHC de bon pronostic exprimant un phenotype de tumeur differenciee et des signatures de metabolisme hepatique periportales. Ce sous-type a probablement ete un facteur confondant dans les etudes precedentes mesurant l’association de la mutation CTNNB1 avec un bon pronostic. Enfin, nous avons mis en evidence une forte association negative entre la mutation CTNNB1 et l’inflammation ainsi que la fibrose tumorale dans trois cohortes independantes. Cet effet pourrait etre provoque par une inhibition de NF-κB par la β-catenine mutee, comme suggeree par des resultats preliminaires issue d’un modele in vitro d’HepaRG mutes T41 stimules par LPS. Nos resultats suggerent donc que les deux modes d’activation de la voie Wnt/β-catenine sont associes a des mecanismes moleculaires, des profils d’expression, des phenotypes et des pronostics cliniques tres differents.
Ideas, Individuals and Institutions: Notion and Practices of a European Electricity System

Based upon extensive multi-archival research, this article traces the long lineage of the notion of European electricity network. Since the 1930s engineers and policy makers conceived of a geographical conception for rationalising and optimising electricity supply: a European one. This article purports that three vectors undergirded threads of continuity: institutional, intellectual and physical (technological networks). These vectors, and the actors involved in them, created strong path dependencies that kept the idea of a European system firmly on the agenda. Today's international electricity market of the European Union should be seen as an extension of this legacy.
VLSI sensor for multiple targets detection and tracking

An architecture for implementation of a novel tracking VLSI sensor for multiple target detection and tracking is presented. The sensor, based on the proposed implementation concept, allows acquisition and real time tracking of up to three bright targets in the field of view. While based on the spotlight model of visual attention in biological systems, the proposed sensor features several advantages. This includes distractors elimination, attentional shifts possibility with no dependence on the distance between the targets of interest, high quality image in the snapshot mode of operation simultaneously with tracking and low-power dissipation. A comparison of the proposed concept to the existing spotlight and object-based visual attention models is discussed and a brief description of the proposed sensor is given.
The impact of poverty on self-efficacy: an Australian longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND People with strong feelings of 'self-efficacy', i.e. how much a person feels they have control over their life, perform better in the workplace. However, little is known about negative influences on feelings of self-efficacy. In view of the increasing number of people whose income places them below the poverty line despite being in employment, poverty may negatively influence feelings of self-efficacy and hence workplace productivity. AIMS To assess whether falling into poverty lowers self-efficacy. METHODS Longitudinal analysis of waves 7 to 11 of the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, using linear regression models. RESULTS Those who fell into multidimensional poverty (income poverty plus poor health or insufficient level of education attainment) had significantly lower self-efficacy scores (up to 18% lower (95% CI -31% to -1%, P < 0.05)) than those never in poverty, after accounting for initial self-efficacy score and other confounding factors. Income uniquely accounted for 3% of the variance in self-efficacy scores, physical health for 10%, mental health for 78% and education for 1%. CONCLUSIONS Given the known links between self-efficacy and workplace productivity, workers who are below the poverty line may be at risk of poor productivity due to the experience of poverty. In addition to the poor outcomes from the employer's perceptive, this may also lead to a negative spiral for the employee.
Minimizing Dialog Length in Interactive Case-Based Reasoning

Decision trees induced from stored cases are increasingly used to guide case retrieval in case-based reasoning (CBR) systems for fault diagnosis and product recommendation. In this paper, we refer to such a decision tree as an identification tree when, as often in practice, each of the faults to be identified, or available products, is represented by a single case in the case library. We evaluate common splitting criteria for decision trees in the special case of identification trees. We present simplified versions of those that are most effective in reducing the average path length of an identification tree, or equivalently, the average number of questions asked when the tree is used for problem solving. We also identify conditions in which no such reduction is possible with any splitting criterion.
Stabilisation of Sohar’s Sabkha soil using waste gypsum plasterboard

Sabkha soil are salt-encrusted desert flats typically found in arid regions. Construction developments on naturally occurring Sabkha soils are usually problematic. This study examines the properties of Sabkha soil obtained from Sohar city of Oman. The Sabkha soil samples were further treated with Gypsum obtained from waste plasterboards at varying percentages of 3, 6, 9 and 12 with a view to stabilising the soil. From the results, Sohar Sabkha soil is a poorly graded sand (SP) with AASHTO classification of A-2-7(0), therefore, it is unsuitable for supporting infrastructures in its natural form. The pH test confirms the reaction between Sabkha and Gypsum, while both the compaction and unconfined compression strength (UCS) tests revealed the optimum percentage of gypsum required to enhance the properties of Sabkha soil to be 6%. The California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test yielded a 33.3% increase in CBR value for Sabkha treated with 6% of Gypsum over untreated Sabkha. Overall, a better understanding of sabkha soil and the confirmation of the potential use of Gypsum for its stabilisation was achieved in this study.
Evaluation of stimulated raman scattering microscopy for identifying squamous cell carcinoma in human skin

There is a need to develop non‐invasive diagnostic tools to achieve early and accurate detection of skin cancer in a non‐surgical manner. In this study, we evaluate the capability of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy, a potentially non‐invasive optical imaging technique, for identifying the pathological features of s squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) tissue.
Genetically-designed Neural Networks for Error Reduction in an Optimized Biomechanical Model of the Human Elbow Joint Complex

A real time dynamic biomechanical model of the human elbow joint has been used as the first step in the process of calculating time varying joint position from the electromyograms (EMGs) of eight muscles crossing the joint. Since calculation of position has a high sensitivity to errors in the model torque calculation, a genetic algorithm (GA) neural network (NN) has been developed for automatic error reduction in the dynamic model. Genetic algorithms are used to design many neural network structures during a preliminary trial effort, and then each network's performance is ranked to choose a trained network that represents the most accurate result. Experimental results from three subjects have shown model error reduction in 84.2% of the data sets from a subject on which the model had been trained, and 52.6% of the data sets from the subjects on which the model had not been trained. Furthermore, the GA networks reduced the error standard deviation across all subjects, showing that progress in error reduction was made evenly across all data sets.