Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adipose-Derived Stem Cells from Both Visceral and Subcutaneous Fat Deposits Significantly Improve Contractile Function of Infarcted Rat Hearts

Adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) from subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissues have been studied individually. No studies have compared their abilities in treatment of heart failure. This study was designed to evaluate whether ASCs from the two sources could provide a long-term improvement of cardiac function in infarcted hearts. Rat subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissues were excised for isolation of ASCs. Morphology, yield, proliferation, surface markers, differentiation, and cytokine secretion of the subcutaneous ASCs (S-ASCs) and visceral ASCs (V-ASCs) were analyzed. Then a rat model of myocardial infarction (MI) was established by a coronary occlusion. Seven days after occlusion, S-ASCs (n = 22), V-ASCs (n = 22), and Dulbecco's modified Eagle medium (DMEM, n = 20) were injected into the infarct rim, respectively. Cardiac function was then monitored with MRI for up to 6 months. The hearts were then removed for histological assessments. The yield of V-ASCs per gram of the visceral adipose depot was significantly greater than that of S-ASCs in 1 g of the subcutaneous adipose depot. On the other hand, the S-ASCs showed a greater proliferation rate and colony-forming unit relative to the V-ASCs. In addition, the infarcted hearts treated with either S-ASCs or V-ASCs showed a significantly greater left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) than those treated with DMEM at 4 weeks and 6 months following the cell/DMEM transplantation. Moreover, the infarct sizes of both S-ASC- and V-ASC-treated hearts were significantly smaller than that in the DMEM-treated hearts. MRI showed the implanted ASCs at the end of 6 months of recovery. Despite the differences in cell yield, proliferation, and colony formation capacity, both S-ASCs and V-ASCs provide a long-lasting improvement of cardiac contractile function in infarcted hearts. We conclude that the subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissues are equally effective cell sources for cell therapy of heart failure.
Cotranslational Intersection between the SRP and GET Targeting Pathways to the Endoplasmic Reticulum of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

ABSTRACT Targeting of transmembrane proteins to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) proceeds via either the signal recognition particle (SRP) or the guided entry of tail-anchored proteins (GET) pathway, consisting of Get1 to -5 and Sgt2. While SRP cotranslationally targets membrane proteins containing one or multiple transmembrane domains, the GET pathway posttranslationally targets proteins containing a single C-terminal transmembrane domain termed the tail anchor. Here, we dissect the roles of the SRP and GET pathways in the sorting of homologous, two-membrane-spanning K+ channel proteins termed Kcv, Kesv, and Kesv-VV. We show that Kcv is targeted to the ER cotranslationally via its N-terminal transmembrane domain, while Kesv-VV is targeted posttranslationally via its C-terminal transmembrane domain, which recruits Get4-5/Sgt2 and Get3. Unexpectedly, nascent Kcv recruited not only SRP but also the Get4-5 module of the GET pathway to ribosomes. Ribosome binding of Get4-5 was independent of Sgt2 and was strongly outcompeted by SRP. The combined data indicate a previously unrecognized cotranslational interplay between the SRP and GET pathways.
Complete mitochondrial genome sequence of red-tailed knobby newt (Tylototriton kweichowensis)

Abstract The entire mitogenome of Tylototriton kweichowensis is 16 727 bp in length. It consists of 13 protein-coding genes (PCGS), 2 ribosomal RNA genes (rRNA), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNA), and 1 control region (CR). Except for ND6 subunit and 8 tRNA genes are distributed on the L-strand, all the other PCGs and tRNA genes are located on the H-strand. “ATG” and “GTG” are the start codons of the PCGs, “TAA”, “AGA”, “TA–” and “T––” are the stop codons. Most of the tRNA genes can be folded into typical clover-leaf secondary structure. The genome of T. kweichowensis has two repeat sequences in the cob-noncoding region. Mitogenomic phylogenetic analysis (NJ tree) robustly resolved the genus-level relationship among the three genera Tylototriton, Echinotriton, and Pleurodeles, and which is congruent with the previous molecular phylogeny results.
Time to Task Failure and Motor Cortical Activity Depend on the Type of Feedback in Visuomotor Tasks

The present study aimed to elucidate whether the type of feedback influences the performance and the motor cortical activity when executing identical visuomotor tasks. For this purpose, time to task failure was measured during position- and force-controlled muscular contractions. Subjects received either visual feedback about the force produced by pressing a force transducer or about the actual position between thumb and index finger. Participants were instructed to either match the force level of 30% MVC or the finger position corresponding to the thumb and index finger angle at this contraction intensity. Subjects demonstrated a shorter time to task failure when they were provided with feedback about their joint position (11.5±6.2 min) instead of force feedback (19.2±12.8 min; P = 0.01). To test differences in motor cortical activity between position- and force-controlled contractions, subthreshold transcranial magnetic stimulation (subTMS) was applied while executing submaximal (20% MVC) contractions. SubTMS resulted in a suppression of the first dorsal interosseus muscle (FDI) EMG in both tasks. However, the mean suppression for the position-controlled task was significantly greater (18.6±9.4% vs. 13.3±7.5%; P = 0.025) and lasted longer (13.9±7.5 ms vs. 9.3±4.3 ms; P = 0.024) compared to the force-controlled task. The FDI background EMG obtained without stimulation was comparable in all conditions. The present results demonstrate that the presentation of different feedback modalities influences the time to task failure as well as the cortical activity. As only the feedback was altered but not the mechanics of the task, the present results add to the body of evidence that suggests that the central nervous system processes force and position information in different ways.
Altruism, labor supply and redistributive neutrality

This paper presents a model of familial altruism in which labor supply is chosen endogenously. The model is used to address the predictions of Ricardian Equivalence, both theoretical and empirical. It is argued that, to the extent that income variation in the data comes mostly from wage and effort changes, the empirical tests of neutrality are misspecified. Numerical estimates suggest that quantitatively important deviations from neutrality may be at work.
Peer Influence, Perceived Self-Efficacy, Family Style and Parental Monitoring as Correlates Affecting Bullying Behaviour Among In-School Adolescents in South-West Nigeria

Bullying as an anti-social behaviour among in-school adolescents have lately become a significant concern for teachers, parents, psychologists and society in general due to the negative consequences these behaviour has on the teachinglearning process. In view of this, the study adopts a descriptive survey research design of ex-post factor type. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 12 local government areas out of 137 local government areas in South West Nigeria, making two each from the six states. Also, simple random sampling technique was used to select 2300 participants for the study from 60 public secondary schools across the 12 local government areas in South Western States used for the study. Five instruments used were Bullying Prevalence Questionnaire (BPQ), Peer Pressure Inventory (PPI), General Self-Efficacy (GSE), Parental Monitoring and Family Parenting Style. Data were analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression. The independent variables made a joint contributive effect of variation in the prediction of perceived bullying among in-school adolescents. Also, there was significant relationship between peer influence and perceived bullying behaviour among in-school adolescents. Likewise, there was significant relationship between self-efficacy and perceived bullying behaviour among in-school adolescents. Similarly, there was significant relationship between parental monitoring and perceived bullying behaviour among in-school adolescents. Furthermore, there was significant relationship between family style and bullying behaviour among in-school adolescents. Therefore, it was recommended that Adolescents should be given appropriate orientation on the danger of negative peer influence on their well-being and the need to avoid the expression of violence in their relationship with their peers. Also, schools should endeavour to organize social reawakening activities that will enable in-school adolescents appreciate the need to develop friendly attitude instead of being a bully.
A 64Gb/s PAM-4 transceiver utilizing an adaptive threshold ADC in 16nm FinFET

ADC-based transceivers having up to 8 bits of resolution have been reported for PAM-4 links above 50Gb/s [1,2], although fewer bits are sufficient and offer lower power for short reach (SR) channels. To further reduce the power consumption of ADC-based wireline transceivers, non-uniform quantization has been explored [3,4] using performance metrics for the complete link, such as bit-error rate (BER), to optimize the quantizer thresholds. Both [3,4] are PAM-2 (NRZ) receivers, demonstrating non-uniform quantization specifically for a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) at 10Gb/s and a feedforward equalizer (FFE) at 4Gb/s respectively. An LMS algorithm in [4] adjusts the threshold levels requiring fine-tuning (8b resolution). This paper presents a 64Gb/s PAM-4 transceiver utilizing an ADC-based receiver (RX), with an analog front-end (AFE) based on a 6b, 1b folding, flash ADC with adaptive threshold levels. A fast greedy-search algorithm is used to choose the optimal quantizer thresholds for minimum BER over a given channel. This provides a near-optimal way of power-scaling the ADC when the channel loss doesn't require the ADC's full resolution. The optimization can work in the background for any equalizer structure, does not place additional requirements on the ADC design, and never diverges, unlike LMS-based approaches [4].
A flocking algorithm for multi-agent systems with connectivity preservation under hybrid metric-topological interactions

In this paper, we propose a connectivity-preserving flocking algorithm for multi-agent systems in which the neighbor set of each agent is determined by the hybrid metric-topological distance so that the interaction topology can be represented as the range-limited Delaunay graph, which combines the properties of the commonly used disk graph and Delaunay graph. As a result, the proposed flocking algorithm has the following advantages over the existing ones. First, range-limited Delaunay graph is sparser than the disk graph so that the information exchange among agents is reduced significantly. Second, some links irrelevant to the connectivity can be dynamically deleted during the evolution of the system. Thus, the proposed flocking algorithm is more flexible than existing algorithms, where links are not allowed to be disconnected once they are created. Finally, the multi-agent system spontaneously generates a regular quasi-lattice formation without imposing the constraint on the ratio of the sensing range of the agent to the desired distance between two adjacent agents. With the interaction topology induced by the hybrid distance, the proposed flocking algorithm can still be implemented in a distributed manner. We prove that the proposed flocking algorithm can steer the multi-agent system to a stable flocking motion, provided the initial interaction topology of multi-agent systems is connected and the hysteresis in link addition is smaller than a derived upper bound. The correctness and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm are verified by extensive numerical simulations, where the flocking algorithms based on the disk and Delaunay graph are compared.
Genetic diversity of an endangered bush frog Pseudophilautus wynaadensis (Jerdon, 1854 “1853”) from the south of Palghat gap, Western Ghats, India

Abstract Background and aims: Samples of endemic endangered frog species, Pseudophilautus wynaadensis, were assessed with the aid of mitochondrial DNA markers in order to study the pattern of intra specific genetic variation of samples lying south of Palghat gap of the Western Ghats, India. Materials and methods: Partial mitochondrial CO1 and 16S gene sequences were obtained for 21 specimens. Results: Phylogenetic analysis revealed that samples from either side of Palghat gap belonged to a single species. The population of frogs south of Palghat gap showed high haplotype diversity and low nucleotide diversity. The relative gene heterogeneity statistics were low and the gene flow estimates were very high. The AMOVA results showed that 96.05% of the total variations were within the populations. Conclusion: It was concluded that high genetic diversity with relatively little geographic differentiation was found in the populations of P. wynaadensis lying south of Palghat gap.
Local Gaussian difference extrema pattern: A new feature extractor for face recognition

In this paper, a contemporary method for face recognition i.e. local gaussian difference extrema pattern (LGDEP) is proposed. The proposed method collects the most prominent directional edges present in the image, which in turn extracts the most prominent edge information. The basic local binary pattern (LBP) encodes the central pixel with reference to its surrounding pixels in an image while the directional local extrema pattern (DLEP) encodes the directional edge information featured by local extrema in 0°,45°,90° and 135° in an image. Whereas the proposed method encodes the most prominent directional edge information by integrating the local extrema concept with the multi-resolution (three resolutions) Gaussian filter banks. The Gaussian filter banks make the method more robust as it extracts only the most prominent edges and ignores (smoothens) the minor variations due to noise. Finally, k-nearest neighbors (KNN) classifier is used for the classification. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated on three different sets of FERET Database and compared with the standard block based LBP (BLBP). After thorough analysis, it has been found that the proposed method significantly improves the results from 95% (BLBP) to 100% in terms of recognition rate.
Improvement of mechanical strength and osteogenic potential of calcium sulfate-based hydroxyapatite 3-dimensional printed scaffolds by ε-polycarbonate coating

Abstract Powder-based three-dimensional (3D) printing is an excellent method to fabricate complex-shaped scaffolds for tissue engineering. However, their lower mechanical strength restricts their application in bone tissue engineering. Here, we created a 3D-printed scaffold coated with a ε-polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer solution (5 and 10 w/v %) to improve the mechanical strength of the scaffold. The 3D scaffold was fabricated from calcium sulfate hemihydrate powder (CaSO4-1/2 H2O), transformed into hydroxyapatite (HAp) by treatment with a hydrothermal reaction in an NH4H2PO4 solution. The surface properties and composition of the scaffold were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis. We demonstrated that the 3D scaffold coated with PCL had an improved mechanical modulus. Coating with 5 and 10% PCL increased the compressive strength significantly, by about 2-fold and 4-fold, respectively, compared with that of uncoated scaffolds. However, the porosity was reduced significantly by coating with 10% PCL. In vitro biological evaluation demonstrated that MG-63 cells adhered well and proliferated on the 3D scaffold coated with PCL, and the scaffold was not cytotoxic. In addition, alkaline phosphatase activity and real time polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that osteoblast differentiation also improved in the PCL-coated 3D scaffolds. These results indicated that PCL polymer coating could improve the compressive strength and biocompatibility of 3D HAp scaffolds for bone tissue engineering applications.
Discriminative Parse Reranking for Chinese with Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Annotations

Discriminative parse reranking has been shown to be an effective technique to improve the generative parsing models. In this paper, we present a series of experiments on parsing the Tsinghua Chinese Treebank with hierarchically split-merge grammars and reranked with a perceptron-based discriminative model. In addition to the homogeneous annotation on TCT, we also incorporate the PCTB-based parsing result as heterogeneous annotation into the reranking feature model. The reranking model achieved 1.12% absolute improvement on F1 over the Berkeley parser on a development set. The head labels in Task 2.1 are annotated with a sequence labeling model. The system achieved 80.32 (B+C+H F1) in CIPS-SIGHAN-2010 Task 2.1 (Open Track) and 76.11 (Overall F1) in Task 2.2 (Open Track) 1 .
Repair of video frames received by eavesdropping from VGA cable transmission

Unintentional signals are leaked whenever electrical, electro-optical or electromechanical device processes some information. The previous study shows that these signals could be recaptured by a directional antenna placed at some particular distance which can be decrypted into binary form hence making these leaked emissions as one of the security and defense concern. An algorithm is developed in MATLAB to reconstruct the video data from attained decrypted data of VGA emissions. The acquired serial data has pixel information and dislocated horizontal and vertical synchronization. The algorithm takes the received binary data and converts it into video display to extract information by applying signal processing techniques without having prior knowledge of the sequence of data. The developed algorithm investigates the extent of the utility of the emissions from the VGA cable to the eavesdropper and alternatively detrimental to the intended receiver. The proposed technique also validates the magnitude of similarity of processed data with original data hence enabling the system to correct the data closest to the original one. For reconstructing the missing frames to acquire intelligent information, filtering and averaging is done on the noisy and corrupted frame.
Pregnancy after renal transplantation: a retrospective study at the military hospital of Tunis from 1992 to 2011

Introduction Our study objective was to analyze the optimum conditions for pregnancy in kidney transplanted women. For that, we conducted a retrospective study was from 1992 to April 2011 about 17 pregnancies in 12 kidney transplanted patients followed in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Organ Transplant Unit of the Military Hospital of Tunis. Methods We studied nephrological parameters and obstetric pathologies encountered during pregnancy and the potential impact of pregnancy on graft. Our main outcome measures were: time between renal transplantation and conception, birth of a living child, renal graft defect. Results The mean age at the time of renal transplantation was 30.11 years. The average age at the time of conception is 34.23 years. The average time between renal transplantation and the occurrence of pregnancy was 46.94 months. More than 40% of pregnancies were not planned. Of the 17 pregnancies, 12 have advanced beyond the first trimester with 91.6% resulting in the birth of a living child. Toxemia was found in 60% of cases, low birth weight in 50%, preterm in 30% and intrauterine growth retardation in 20% of cases. Cesarean section was indicated in all cases. Graft survival was 90% with a mean of 6 years after delivery. Conclusion Pregnancy in kidney transplanted patients is a high-risk pregnancy, but pregnancy does not appear to affect graft function through certain conditions.
Fast coding algorithm based on adaptive coding depth range selection for HEVC

The JCT-VC is developing the next-generation video coding standard, called high efficiency video coding (HEVC). In HEVC, there are three units in a block structure. These units are a coding unit (CU), a prediction unit (PU), and a transform unit (TU). The CU is the basic unit for region splitting (like a macroblock). The CU performs recursive splitting into four blocks of equal size, starting from the treeblock. We use mode information of the current CU to avoid unnecessary CU splitting. To reduce the computational complexity, we propose a depth range selection mechanism (DRSM) using a selecting adaptive depth range. This depth range selection mechanism allows for effective splitting by only processing CUs that need this process. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves an approximate 48% reduction in encoding time for Random Access HE, compared to the HEVC test model (HM) 6.0 encoder with a BD-bitrate loss of 1.2%.
The morphological structure of polyacrylonitrile fiber during thermal-oxidation stabilization process

The morphological structure of PAN copolymer fiber during its thermal oxidative stabi- lization was characterized and investigated by X-ray diffraction(XRD)and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)in this paper.Results show that the all-round scanning information offered by X-ray diffraction pole characterized persuasively the changing process of orientation structure during the thermal oxidative stabilization is that the PAN molecular chains verified from the initial improvement to the consequent disorientation.The chemical reaction is occurred in amorphous region at lower thermal oxidative temper- ature,and then expanded to crystalline region and resulted in the descend of crystallinity when the energy provided by heat treatment temperature exceeded the energy which to change the molecular conformation in cyclization reaction.
Alpine Crossroads or Origin of Genetic Diversity? Comparative Phylogeography of Two Sympatric Microgastropod Species

The Alpine Region, constituting the Alps and the Dinaric Alps, has played a major role in the formation of current patterns of biodiversity either as a contact zone of postglacial expanding lineages or as the origin of genetic diversity. In our study, we tested these hypotheses for two widespread, sympatric microgastropod taxa – Carychium minimum O.F. Müller, 1774 and Carychium tridentatum (Risso, 1826) (Gastropoda, Eupulmonata, Carychiidae) – by using COI sequence data and species potential distribution models analyzed in a statistical phylogeographical framework. Additionally, we examined disjunct transatlantic populations of those taxa from the Azores and North America. In general, both Carychium taxa demonstrate a genetic structure composed of several differentiated haplotype lineages most likely resulting from allopatric diversification in isolated refugial areas during the Pleistocene glacial periods. However, the genetic structure of Carychium minimum is more pronounced, which can be attributed to ecological constraints relating to habitat proximity to permanent bodies of water. For most of the Carychium lineages, the broader Alpine Region was identified as the likely origin of genetic diversity. Several lineages are endemic to the broader Alpine Region whereas a single lineage per species underwent a postglacial expansion to (re)colonize previously unsuitable habitats, e.g. in Northern Europe. The source populations of those expanding lineages can be traced back to the Eastern and Western Alps. Consequently, we identify the Alpine Region as a significant ‘hot-spot’ for the formation of genetic diversity within European Carychium lineages. Passive dispersal via anthropogenic means best explains the presence of transatlantic European Carychium populations on the Azores and in North America. We conclude that passive (anthropogenic) transport could mislead the interpretation of observed phylogeographical patterns in general.