Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Graphene-based Magnetite Polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) sensor for human brain microwave imaging

Human brain tumor is successfully detected and visualized by Graphene-based Magnetite Polydimethylsiloxane sensor through microwave imaging technique. The UWB antenna functioned as a sensor is made of graphene radiating element and magneto-dielectric (PDMS-Fe3O4) as the substrate to realize ultra-wide band radiation (2.5 GHz-12.2 GHz) with high gain (2.5dB-6.7dB) in microwave frequency ranges. Magneto-dielectric (PDMS-Fe3O4) substrate is realized by integrating ferum oxide (Fe3O4) magnetic nanoparticles solution with polymer matrix of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The sensor functioned to transmit the equivalent signal and receive back the scattering signal from a stratified of the human head model in an attempt to detect tumor. Differences of the scattering parameters recorded from the head model belong to presence and absence of tumor was processed to generate an image. Head model with tumor produce more scatter signal due to the incoming signal collision with the tumor itself. The study manages to clearly illustrate the tumor located at the edge of the right side of the human head.
Maturation of blood vessels by haematopoietic stem cells and progenitor cells: Involvement of apelin/APJ and angiopoietin/Tie2 interactions in vessel caliber size regulation

Summary Apelin is a recently-isolated bioactive peptide from bovine gastric extract. The gene encodes a protein of 77 amino acids, which can generate two active polypeptides, long (42–77) and short (65–77). Both peptides ligate and activate APJ, a G protein-coupled receptor expressed in the cardiovascular and central nervous systems. Although an essential role for the apelin/APJ system in blood vessel formation has been reported in Xenopus, its precise function in mammals is unclear. Blood vessel tube formation is accomplished by two main mechanisms: 1) single cell hollowing, in which a lumen forms within the cytoplasm of a single endothelial cell (EC), and 2) cord hollowing in which a luminal cavity is created de novo between ECs in a thin cylindrical cord. Molecular control of either single cell or cord hollowing has not been precisely determined. Angiopoietin-1 (Ang1) has been reported to induce enlargement of blood vessels. Apelin is produced from ECs upon activation of Tie2, a cognate receptor of Ang1, expressed on ECs. It has been suggested that apelin induces cord hollowing by promoting proliferation and aggregation/assembly of ECs. During angiogenesis, haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and progenitor cells (HPCs) are frequently observed in the perivascular region. They produce Ang1 and induce migration of ECs, resulting in a fine vascular network. Moreover, HSCs/HPCs can induce apelin production from ECs. Therefore, this review article posits that HSCs/HPCs regulate caliber size of blood vessels via apelin/APJ and Angiopoietin/Tie2 interactions.
Eating difficulties among patients 3 months after stroke in relation to the acute phase.

AIM This paper is a report of a study comparing eating difficulties among patients 3 months after stroke in relation to the acute phase. BACKGROUND There is limited knowledge of patients with eating problems early after stroke, hence the progress of eating abilities needs to be further explored. METHOD From March 2007 to June 2008 36 stroke patients with 2-7 eating difficulties or problems with reduced alertness or swallowing in the acute phase were included. Eating difficulties were detected using a structured protocol of observation of meals. In addition, stroke severity (National Institute of Health Stroke Scale), functional status (Barthel Index), unilateral neglect (Line Bisection test and Letter Cancellation test), psychological well-being (The Well-being Questionnaire-12), nutritional status (Mini Nutritional Assessment) and oral status (Revised Oral Assessment Guide) were assessed. RESULTS There were 36 participants (58% female) with a median age of 74·5 years. The proportion of eating difficulties decreased significantly from the acute phase to the 3-month follow-up in 'sitting position', 'managing food on the plate' and 'manipulating food in the mouth' and increased regarding inadequate food consumption. Improvements were shown at 3 months in stroke severity, functional status, nutritional status and neglect. Oral status and psychological well-being remained unchanged. CONCLUSION The majority of eating problems persisted 3 months after stroke despite a marked improvement in most of the physical functions. The unchanged psychological well-being and sustained problems with food consumption indicate that factors other than physical function should be taken into account regarding eating difficulties poststroke.
Quality Factor in Polycrystalline Diamond Micromechanical Flexural Resonators

This paper reports an investigation into the various dissipation mechanisms that can affect polycrystalline diamond micromechanical resonators. Double-ended tuning fork and cantilever resonators were fabricated from 1-5-μm thick microcrystalline diamond films. It is shown that the quality factor of the low frequency (<;500 kHz) resonators is limited by surface loss, whereas the thermoelastic damping limits the quality factor of the higher frequency resonators. In resonators where surface loss is the dominant effect, the dependence of quality factor on resonator thickness is demonstrated. The addition of a lossy surface layer of Al2O3 deposited via atomic layer deposition is shown to degrade quality factor, and an experiment that further demonstrates the effect of surface dissipation and results in a reduction in quality factor that scales with the thickness of the Al2O3 layer. Heat treatment of cantilever resonators in N2 for various times up to 660 min is used to modify the resonator surface and is shown to result in a threefold increase in quality factor up to 365 000 at 26.6 kHz.
Solvent/detergent treatment of platelet concentrates enhances the release of growth factors

BACKGROUND: Platelet (PLT) growth factors released by thrombin activation of autologous PLT concentrates (PCs) are used in clinics as PLT gels or releasates for tissue repair and wound healing applications. If allogeneic products are to be used for clinical or cell culture applications, a method of viral inactivation of the PC source of growth factors is desirable.
Omafilcon A (Proclear) soft contact lenses in a dry eye population.

PURPOSE We conducted a 3-month, randomized, comparative cross-over study to evaluate the clinical performance of lenses manufactured from omafilcon A on subjects with signs and symptoms of dry eye. The subjects' own daily wear soft lenses were used as controls. METHODS Seventy-six subjects with objective evidence of dry eye, as defined in the NEI/Industry Workshop Report 1995, were fit with either the omafilcon A lenses (Proclear) or new control lenses. Subjects wore the lenses for 6 weeks and then crossed over to bilateral wear of the other lenses for an additional 6 weeks. During each part of the study, we examined subjects at 1 week, 1 month, and 6 weeks. Signs and symptoms of dry eye were evaluated, and on-eye dehydration of the lens was assessed. RESULTS When the subjects were wearing the omafilcon A lenses, there was a statistically significant improvement in a number of subjective parameters including comfort, dryness, frequency of eye irritation, and frequency of burning. We found significantly less on-eye dehydration of the lens and fluorescein corneal staining with the omafilcon A lenses. CONCLUSIONS This study indicated that the daily wear of omafilcon A lenses provided better comfort, fewer symptoms, less on-eye dehydration, and less fluorescein corneal staining than other soft daily wear contact lenses in subjects with mild to moderate dry eye.
A Variant Form of the Nuclear Triiodothyronine Receptor c-ErbAα1 Plays a Direct Role in Regulation of Mitochondrial RNA Synthesis

ABSTRACT In earlier research, we identified a 43-kDa c-ErbAα1 protein (p43) in the mitochondrial matrix of rat liver. In the present work, binding experiments indicate that p43 displays an affinity for triiodothyronine (T3) similar to that of the T3 nuclear receptor. Using in organello import experiments, we found that p43 is targeted to the organelle by an unusual process similar to that previously reported for MTF1, a yeast mitochondrial transcription factor. DNA-binding experiments demonstrated that p43 specifically binds to four mitochondrial DNA sequences with a high similarity to nuclear T3 response elements (mt-T3REs). Using in organello transcription experiments, we observed that p43 increases the levels of both precursor and mature mitochondrial transcripts and the ratio of mRNA to rRNA in a T3-dependent manner. These events lead to stimulation of mitochondrial protein synthesis. In transient-transfection assays with reporter genes driven by the mitochondrial D loop or two mt-T3REs located in the D loop, p43 stimulated reporter gene activity only in the presence of T3. All these effects were abolished by deletion of the DNA-binding domain of p43. Finally, p43 overexpression in QM7 cells increased the levels of mitochondrial mRNAs, thus indicating that the in organello influence of p43 was physiologically relevant. These data reveal a novel hormonal pathway functioning within the mitochondrion, involving a truncated form of a nuclear receptor acting as a potent mitochondrial T3-dependent transcription factor.
Reliability and sources of variation of the ABILHAND-Kids questionnaire in children with cerebral palsy

Abstract Purpose: To determine reliability of the ABILHAND-Kids, explore sources of variation associated with these measurement results, and generate repeatability coefficients. Method: A reliability study with a repeated measures design was performed in an ambulatory rehabilitation care department from a rehabilitation center, and a center for special education. A physician, an occupational therapist, and parents of 27 children with spastic cerebral palsy independently rated the children’s manual capacity when performing 21 standardized tasks of the ABILHAND-Kids from video recordings twice with a three week time interval (27 first-, and 25 second video recordings available). Parents additionally rated their children’s performance based on their own perception of their child's ability to perform manual activities in everyday life, resulting in eight ratings per child. Results: ABILHAND-Kids ratings were systematically different between observers, sessions, and rating method. Participant × observer interaction (66%) and residual variance (20%) contributed the most to error variance (9%). Test–retest reliability was 0.92. Repeatability coefficients (between 0.81 and 1.82 logit points) were largest for the parents’ performance-based ratings. Conclusion: ABILHAND-Kids scores can be reliably used as a performance- and capacity-based rating method across different raters. Parents’ performance-based ratings are less reliable than their capacity-based ratings. Resulting repeatability coefficients can be used to interpret ABILHAND-Kids ratings with more confidence. Implications for Rehabilitation The ABILHAND-Kids is a valuable tool to assess a child's unimanual and bimanual upper limb activities. The reliability of the ABILHANDS-Kids is good across different observers as a performance- and capacity-based rating method. Parents' performance-based ratings are less reliable than their capacity-based ones. This study has generated repeatability coefficients for clinical decision making.
Towards automatic identification of network applications

Traditional application identification based on port numbers has become increasingly inaccurate. A more accurate alternative is to inspect the application payloads of traffic flows. The main drawback of such method is that target applications must be manually analyzed beforehand. Another alternative is to exploit the distinctive statistical properties of traffic flows and apply machine learning techniques to classify or cluster flows. In this paper, we propose a fully automatic mechanism for application identification. The mechanism combine flow clustering based on statistical features in order to generate clusters dominated by a single application on the one hand, and automatic construction of application signature based on payload contents solely on the other hand. Preliminary results of evaluation using real-world traffic traces indicate that the proposed approach is feasible and promising.
On Pre-Commitment Aspects of a Time-Consistent Strategy for a Mean-Variance Investor

In this paper, a link between a time-consistent and a pre-commitment investment strategy is established. We define an implied investment target, which is implicitly contained in a time-consistent strategy at a given time step and wealth level. By imposing the implied investment target at the initial time step on a time-consistent strategy, we form a hybrid strategy which may generate better mean-variance efficient frontiers than the time-consistent strategy. We extend the numerical algorithm proposed in Cong and Oosterlee (2016b) to solve constrained time-consistent mean-variance optimization problems. Since the time-consistent and the pre-commitment strategies generate different terminal wealth distributions, time-consistency is not always inferior to pre-commitment.
An study on the effect of learning parameters for inducing compact SVM

Support vector machine (SVM) is one of the best machine learning models that offers high accuracy both for recognition and for regression. One drawback of using SVM is that the system implementation cost is usually proportional to the number of training data and the dimension of the feature space. Therefore, it is difficult to use SVM in mobile devices such as IC cards and smart phones. In our study, we have tried to solve the problem using dimensionality reduction (DR). Since implementation cost of DR should also be considered in a restricted computing environment, we adopted a simple centroid based DR method. In this paper, we investigate the effect of learning parameters on the performance of the system, and provide some insights on obtaining compact SVMs.
[Cancer in addition....].

BACKGROUND There is still controversy over the possible prognostic role of subjective and objective stress in patients with cancer. The present report is based on a six year follow-up study of a breast cancer patient cohort. We focus on the possible prognostic effects of behavioural variables recorded in an early phase of the disease, adjusting for known clinical prognostic factors. MATERIAL AND METHODS 106 consecutive breast cancer patients stage I and II less than 71 years of age were investigated with interviews and questionnaires one day before and six weeks after surgery. Negative life events, impaired functioning and previous health parameters were recorded with standard questions. Coping style and emotional control were assessed with the Mental Adjustment to Cancer scale (MAC) and the Courtauld Emotional Control scale (CEC). RESULTS At six years, 79 patients were still alive, including seven patients with relapse. Among 27 deceased patients, two patients died from other causes. There was a significantly increased risk (Hazard Ratio 2.6; 95% CI 1.18-5.77) of cancer specific deaths in women who "had suffered from one or more serious illnesses of more than six months' duration over the past 10 years" compared to those without previous illnesses. There were no significant results found for scores on the MAC or CEC scales. INTERPRETATION Comorbid chronic diseases in cancer patients represent a negative prognostic factor with important clinical and health service implications.
Genomic Association Analysis Identifies Multiple Loci Influencing Antihypertensive Response to an Angiotensin II Receptor Blocker

To identify genes influencing blood pressure response to an angiotensin II receptor blocker, single nucleotide polymorphisms identified by genome-wide association analysis of the response to candesartan were validated by opposite direction associations with the response to a thiazide diuretic, hydrochlorothiazide. We sampled 198 white and 193 blacks with primary hypertension from opposite tertiles of the race-sex–specific distributions of age-adjusted diastolic blood pressure response to candesartan. There were 285 polymorphisms associated with the response to candesartan at P<10−4 in whites. A total of 273 of the 285 polymorphisms, which were available for analysis in a separate sample of 196 whites, validated for opposite direction associations with the response to hydrochlorothiazide (Fisher &khgr;2 1-sided P=0.02). Among the 273 polymorphisms, those in the chromosome 11q21 region were the most significantly associated with response to candesartan in whites (eg, rs11020821 near FUT4, P=8.98×10−7), had the strongest opposite direction associations with response to hydrochlorothiazide (eg, rs3758785 in GPR83, P=7.10×10−3), and had the same direction associations with response to candesartan in the 193 blacks (eg, rs16924603 near FUT4, P=1.52×10−2). Also notable among the 273 polymorphisms was rs11649420 on chromosome 16 in the amiloride-sensitive sodium channel subunit SCNN1G involved in mediating renal sodium reabsorption and maintaining blood pressure when the renin-angiotensin system is inhibited by candesartan. These results support the use of genomewide association analyses to identify novel genes predictive of opposite direction associations with blood pressure responses to inhibitors of the renin-angiotensin and renal sodium transport systems.
Investigation of a Broad-Spectrum PCR Assay for Human Papillomaviruses in Screening Benign Lesions of the Upper Aerodigestive Tract

Background: A variety of different human papillomavirus (HPV) types can be found in benign and malignant lesions of the upper aerodigestive tract. Therefore a broad-spectrum assay is needed for screening reasons. Methods: A PCR system with degenerate consensus primers originating from a very conserved region (e.g. L1) of the HPV genome was applied. The sensitivity level was improved by combining PCR and nested PCR. Results: A total of 27 biopsies from laryngeal papillomas (9), exophytic (3) and inverted (6) papillomas of the nasal cavity or paranasal sinuses, papillomas of the uvula or soft palate (5), leukoplakias of the larynx (2), seborrheic keratosis (1) and granulation tumor of the tongue (1) were analyzed by the broad-spectrum PCR system. Sixteen cases showed a positive result in either PCR or nested PCR or both. Conclusions: It was shown that the applied broad-spectrum PCR system is a reliable tool in the detection of HPV DNA in benign lesions of the upper aerodigestive tract.
Testing the limits of the price elasticity of potential students at colleges and universities: has the increased direct cost to the student begun to drive down higher education enrolment?

ABSTRACT Higher education enrolment has long been known to rise and fall counter to the current economic situation. This counter-cyclical enrolment response represents an economic principle where a price-elastic consumer is more likely make a consumption choice when another valuable use of resources is not available. Higher unemployment has historically led to increased enrolment as fewer prospective students have had attractive employment opportunities as an alternative use of the resource of time. This consumer decision was possible students generally had the ability to pay the cost. This trend has now ended as enrolment is no longer rising with increased unemployment. This indicates that ability of many students to pay has now been exceeded by the cost of tuition and other fees.
Physical degradation of proteins in well‐defined fluid flows studied within a four‐roll apparatus

In most applications of biotechnology and downstream processing proteins are exposed to fluid stresses in various flow configurations which often lead to the formation of unwanted protein aggregates. In this paper we present physical degradation experiments for proteins under well‐defined flow conditions in a four‐roll apparatus. The flow field was characterized numerically by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimentally by particle image velocimetry (PIV). The local shear strain rate as well as the local shear and elongation rate was used to characterize the hydrodynamic stress environment acting on the proteins. Lysozyme was used as a model protein and subjected to well‐defined fluid stresses in high and low stress environment. By using in situ turbidity measurements during stressing the aggregate formation was monitored directly in the fluid flow. An increase in absorbance at 350 nm was attributed to a higher content of visible particles (>1 µm). In addition to lysozyme, the formation of aggregates was confirmed for two larger proteins (bovine serum albumin and alcohol dehydrogenase). Thus, the presented experimental setup is a helpful tool to monitor flow‐induced protein aggregation with high reproducibility. For instance, screening experiments for formulation development of biopharmaceuticals for fill and finish operations can be performed in the lab‐scale in a short time‐period if the stress distributions in the application are transferred and applied in the four‐roll mill. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2011;108: 2914–2922. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Why do they fail? A qualitative follow up study of 1000 recruits to the British Army Infantry to understand high levels of attrition.

BACKGROUND The British Army has over 100 career employment groups to which recruits may apply. The Infantry is one of these career employment groups; it accounts for 25% of the overall strength. It is of concern that Infantry recruit attrition within the first 12 weeks of training remains consistently above 30% . Poor selection methods that lead to the enlistment of unsuitable recruits have negative financial and personal consequences, but little is known about the personal experiences of those who fail. OBJECTIVE The aim of this research was to understand why infantry recruits choose to leave and explore the personal experiences of those that fail. METHODS This study draws on qualitative data from the second phase of a larger mixed method study. The foci of this paper are the findings directly related to the responses of recruits in exit interviews and their Commanding Officers' training reports. An exploratory qualitative, inductive method was used to generate insights, explanations and potential solutions to training attrition. RESULTS What the data describes is a journey of extreme situational demands that the recruits experience throughout their transition from civilian life to service in the British Infantry. It is the cumulative effect of the stressors, combined with the recruit being dislocated from their established support network, which appears to be the catalyst for failure among recruits. CONCLUSION There are clearly defined areas where either further research or changes to current practice may provide a better understanding of, and ultimately reduce, the current attrition rates experienced by the Infantry Training Centre.