Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Explorer Molecular changes in fibrillar collagen in myxomatous mitral valve disease

Introduction: Myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) is the single most common acquired cardiac disease of dogs and is a disease of significant veterinary importance. It also bears close similarities to mitral valve prolapse in humans and therefore is a disease of emerging comparative interest. We have previously mapped the structure of collagen fibrils in valve leaflets using synchrotron X-rays and have demonstrated changes in collagen structure associated with the regions of disease. Methods: Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), biochemical assay of collagen content, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and neutron diffraction were combined with further analysis of our previous X-ray data to elucidate molecular changes in fibrillar collagen in mild to moderately affected MMVD dogs. Results: Comparing diseases and adjacent grossly uninvolved areas in the same leaflets, there was a 20% reduction in collagen fibrils, but only a 10% depletion of collagen content. The enthalpy of collagen denaturation was reduced in affected areas. Chromatography showed a 25% decrease in mature nonreducible covalent cross-links in the affected samples, and neutron diffraction data showed fewer reducible immature covalent cross-links in grossly uninvolved tissue samples. Conclusions: Mild to moderate MMVD in the dog is associated with a marginal decline in collagen content in overtly diseased areas of valves, but more importantly is associated with an increase in immature collagen content. These changes will contribute to the mechanical dysfunction of the leaflet, and this study provides important information on the structure–mechanical alterations associated with this disease. The data suggests MMVD involves a dyscollagenesis process in the development of valve pathology. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Impedance spectroscopy: An efficient tool to determine the non‐steady‐state chloride diffusion coefficient in building materials

One of the most important problems of reinforced steel concrete in marine environments is the corrosion of the reinforcing bars. Most of the times, this corrosion is a consequence of the local destruction of the passive layer formed on the surface of the embedded steel, due to the arrival of chlorides present in the environment. Many efforts have been made to determine the chloride diffusion coefficient in concrete structures, both using natural diffusion methods, and accelerated migration methods. This coefficient determines the velocity of ingress of chlorides, and as a consequence the life time of the structures. In this work it is presented the possibility of using the technique of impedance spectroscopy, that is, very simple to use and requires no chemical or conductivity measurement, to determine the value of the non‐steady‐state diffusion coefficient. This technique, together with the equivalent circuits proposed for the interpretation of the measurements, allows the determination of the chloride saturation of a concrete or mortar sample. Pores of the material that are initially filled with water have high resistivity, and as the chlorides penetrate into the sample the value of the resistivity decreases. This diminution can be determined in situ, and permits the calculation of the diffusion coefficient saving experimental time and efforts. The results have been obtained both with concrete and mortar samples, and using different cement types.
Detecting Compositionality in Multi-Word Expressions.

Identifying whether a multi-word expression (MWE) is compositional or not is important for numerous NLP applications. Sense induction can partition the context of MWEs into semantic uses and therefore aid in deciding compositionality. We propose an unsupervised system to explore this hypothesis on compound nominals, proper names and adjective-noun constructions, and evaluate the contribution of sense induction. The evaluation set is derived from WordNet in a semisupervised way. Graph connectivity measures are employed for unsupervised parameter tuning.
A Novel Eye Localization Method With Rotation Invariance

This paper presents a novel learning method for precise eye localization, a challenge to be solved in order to improve the performance of face processing algorithms. Few existing approaches can directly detect and localize eyes with arbitrary angels in predicted eye regions, face images, and original portraits at the same time. To preserve rotation invariant property throughout the entire eye localization framework, a codebook of invariant local features is proposed for the representation of eye patterns. A heat map is then generated by integrating a 2-class sparse representation classifier with a pyramid-like detecting and locating strategy to fulfill the task of discriminative classification and precise localization. Furthermore, a series of prior information is adopted to improve the localization precision and accuracy. Experimental results on three different databases show that our method is capable of effectively locating eyes in arbitrary rotation situations (360° in plane).
An age‐dependent fitness cost of migration? Old trans‐Saharan migrating spoonbills breed later than those staying in Europe, and late breeders have lower recruitment

Migration is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. On the basis of the considerable variation that exists between and within species, and even within populations, we may be able to infer the (age- and sex-specific) ecological trade-offs and constraints moulding migration systems from assessments of fitness associated with migration and wintering in different areas. During three consecutive breeding seasons, we compared the reproductive performance (timing of breeding, breeding success, chick body condition and post-fledging survival) of Eurasian spoonbills Platalea leucorodia that breed at a single breeding site in The Netherlands, but migrate different distances (c. 4,500 vs. 2,000 km, either or not crossing the Sahara) to and from wintering areas in southern Europe and West Africa. Using mark-recapture analysis, we further investigated whether survival until adulthood (recruitment probability) of chicks hatched between 2006 and 2010 was related to their hatch date and body condition. Long-distance migrants bred later, particularly the males, and raised chicks of poorer body condition than short-distance migrants. Hatch dates strongly advanced with increasing age in short-distance migrants, but hardly advanced in long-distance migrants, causing the difference in timing of breeding between long- and short-distance migrants to be more pronounced among older birds. Breeding success and chick body condition decreased over the season, and chicks that fledged late in the season or in poor condition were less likely to survive until adulthood. As a result, long-distance migrants-particularly the males and older birds-likely recruit fewer offspring into the breeding population than short-distance migrants. This inference is important for predicting the population-level consequences of changes in winter habitat suitability throughout the wintering range. Assuming that the long-distance migrants-being the birds that occupy the traditional wintering areas-are not the poorer quality birds, and that the observed age-dependent patterns in timing of breeding are driven by within-individual effects and not by selective disappearance, our results suggest that the strategy of long-distance migration, involving the crossing of the Sahara to winter in West Africa, incurred a cost by reducing reproductive output, albeit a cost paid only later in life.
Visual salience and stack extension based ghost removal for high-dynamic-range imaging

High-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI) techniques are proposed to extend the dynamic range of captured images against sensor limitation. The key issue of multi-exposure fusion in HDRI is removing ghost artifacts caused by motion of moving objects and handheld cameras. This paper proposes a ghost-free HDRI algorithm based on visual salience and stack extension. To improve the accuracy of ghost areas detection, visual salience based bilateral motion detection is introduced to measure image differences. For exposure fusion, the proposed algorithm reduces brightness discontinuity and enhances details by stack extension, and rejects the information of ghost areas to avoid artifacts via fusion masks. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm can remove ghost artifacts accurately for both static and handheld cameras, remain robust to scenes with complex motion and keep low complexity over recent advances including patch based method and rank minimization based method by 20.4% and 63.6% time savings on average.
Effect of packing pressure on refractive index variation in injection molding of precision plastic optical lens

In this study, refractive index variation in injection-molded polymethylmethacrylate optical lenses under different levels of packing pressure was evaluated using a Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor-based metrology system. The experimental results showed that optical polymer's refractive index exhibits a considerable amount of variation for the lenses molded under different packing pressures. Specifically, within the range investigated in this study, refractive index variation is more uniform when higher packing pressure was used but less so for lower packing pressure. Refractive index variation is believed to be the result of density variation, which itself is caused by shrinkage variation at different packing conditions. In addition, using density information in the plastic lenses predicted by finite element simulation, refractive index variation was numerically determined using the differential Lorentz–Lorenz equation and the results were in good agreement with the experiments conducted in this research. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Adv Polym Techn 30:51–61, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/adv.20211
Person re-identification with coarse-to-fine visual attention

The basic goal of person re-identification (re-id) tasks is to identify a person across disjoint camera views. It has been deeply explored in video surveillance but still remains a very challenging problem. In this paper, we introduce a novel model for re-id tasks with two components: an expressive feature fusion strategy that consists of high-level convolution features and the low-level optical information, and an improved recurrent attention model that performs a coarse-to-fine feature selection. To the best of our knowledge, experiments show that our model achieves the best performance on several benchmark datasets compared with all the other state-of-the-art approaches.
Blind quality assessment of multiply-distorted images based on structural degradation

It is known that images available usually undergo some stages of processing (e.g., acquisition, compression, transmission and display), and each stage may introduce certain type of distortion. Hence, images distorted by multiple types of distortions are common in real applications. Research in human visual perception has evidenced that the human visual system (HVS) is sensitive to image structural information. This fact inspires us to design a new blind/no-reference (NR) image quality assessment (IQA) method to evaluate the visual quality of multiply-distorted images based on structural degradation. Specifically, quality-aware features are extracted from both the first- and high-order image structures by local binary pattern (LBP) operators. Experimental results on two well-known multiply-distorted image databases demonstrate the outstanding performance of the proposed method.
Learning discriminant grassmann kernels for image-set classification

Image-set classification has recently generated great popularity due to widespread application to challenging tasks in computer vision. The great challenges arise from measuring the similarity between image sets which usually exhibit huge inter-class ambiguity and intra-class variation. In this paper, based on the assumption that each image set as a linear subspace can be treated as a point on a Grassmann manifold, we propose discriminant Grassmann kernels (DGK) of principal angles between subspaces. To tackle the ambiguity and variation, we propose learning the DGK via kernel target alignment, which achieves kernels of great discrimination by maximizing correlations with class labels. The proposed DGK has been evaluated on two challenging datasets including the ETH-80 and UCSD datasets for object recognition and video-based traffic congestion recognition, respectively. Extensive experiments have shown that the proposed DGKs achieves state-of-the-art performance and surpasses most of previous methods, which demonstrates the great effectiveness of the DGKs for image-set classification.
Skeletal muscle mass is associated with higher dietary protein intake and lower body fat in postmenopausal women: a cross-sectional study

Objective: We investigated the association between skeletal muscle mass and dietary protein intake, habitual physical activity, body composition, and metabolic variables. Methods: One hundred three healthy postmenopausal women from southern Brazil (age 55.2 ± 4.9 y, body mass index 27.2 ± 4.6 kg/m2) were enrolled. Bone mineral density, %body fat, %trunk fat mass, and appendicular lean mass were assessed by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, resting metabolic rate by indirect calorimetry, and habitual physical activity by pedometer. Skeletal muscle mass index (SMI) was expressed as appendicular lean mass standardized to body mass index. The cutoff for low lean mass was <0.512. Protein intake was measured by a validated food frequency questionnaire and categorized into tertiles: ⩽0.93 g/kg body weight (BW), 0.94 to 1.29 g/kg BW, and ≥1.3 g protein/kg BW. Results: The prevalence of low lean mass (SMI <0.512) was 7%. Waist circumference, %body fat, trunk fat mass, and diastolic blood pressure were higher, whereas SMI and mean daily steps were lower in women with protein intake ⩽0.93 g/kg BW. SMI was positively correlated with physical activity (r = 0.205, P = 0.038) and protein intake (r = 0.334, P = 0.001), and negatively correlated with waist circumference (r = −0.505, P < 0.001) and %body fat (r = 0.808, P < 0.001). Linear regression analysis adjusted for age, time since menopause, previous smoking behavior, and energy intake showed an independent, positive contribution of protein intake (mean difference 0.007, 95% CI, 0.001-0.014, P = 0.044) and an independent, negative contribution of %body fat (mean difference −0.010, 95%CI, −0.011 to −0.008, P < 0.001) to SMI. Conclusions: In our healthy postmenopausal women, SMI was positively associated with protein intake and negatively associated with %body fat.
Cross-Reactive Plasmonic Aptasensors for Controlled Substance Identification

In this work, we developed an assay to determine if an arbitrary white powder is a controlled substance, given the plasmonic response of aptamer-gold nanoparticle conjugates (Apt-AuNPs). Toward this end, we designed Apt-AuNPs with specific a response to common controlled substances without cross reactivity to chemicals typically used as fillers in street formulations. Plasmonic sensor variation was shown to produce unique data fingerprints for each chemical analyzed, supporting the application of multivariate statistical techniques to annotate unknown samples by chemical similarity. Importantly, the assay takes less than fifteen minutes to run, and requires only a few micrograms of the material, making the proposed assay easily deployable in field operations.
Durable graft‐versus‐leukaemia effects without donor lymphocyte infusions – results of a phase II study of sequential T‐replete allogeneic transplantation for high‐risk acute myeloid leukaemia and myelodysplasia

Allogeneic haematopoietic stem‐cell transplantation remains the only curative treatment for relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and high‐risk myelodysplasia but has previously been limited to patients who achieve remission before transplant. New sequential approaches employing T‐cell depleted transplantation directly after chemotherapy show promise but are burdened by viral infection and require donor lymphocyte infusions (DLI) to augment donor chimerism and graft‐versus‐leukaemia effects. T‐replete transplantation in sequential approaches could reduce both viral infection and DLI usage. We therefore performed a single‐arm prospective Phase II clinical trial of sequential chemotherapy and T‐replete transplantation using reduced‐intensity conditioning without planned DLI. The primary endpoint was overall survival. Forty‐seven patients with relapsed/refractory AML or high‐risk myelodysplasia were enrolled; 43 proceeded to transplantation. High levels of donor chimerism were achieved spontaneously with no DLI. Overall survival of transplanted patients was 45% and 33% at 1 and 3 years. Only one patient developed cytomegalovirus disease. Cumulative incidences of treatment‐related mortality and relapse were 35% and 20% at 1 year. Patients with relapsed AML and myelodysplasia had the most favourable outcomes. Late‐onset graft‐versus‐host disease protected against relapse. In conclusion, a T‐replete sequential transplantation using reduced‐intensity conditioning is feasible for relapsed/refractory AML and myelodysplasia and can deliver graft‐versus‐leukaemia effects without DLI.
Dietary patterns obtained through principal components analysis: the effect of input variable quantification

Principal components analysis (PCA) is a popular method for deriving dietary patterns. A number of decisions must be made throughout the analytic process, including how to quantify the input variables of the PCA. The present study aims to compare the effect of using different input variables on the patterns extracted using PCA on 3-d diet diary data collected from 7473 children, aged 10 years, in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Four options were examined: weight consumed of each food group (g/d), energy-adjusted weight, percentage contribution to energy of each food group and binary intake (consumed/not consumed). Four separate PCA were performed, one for each intake measurement. Three or four dietary patterns were obtained from each analysis, with at least one component that described ‘more healthy’ and ‘less healthy’ diets and one component that described a diet with high consumption of meat, potatoes and vegetables. There were no obvious differences between the patterns derived using percentage energy as a measurement and adjusting weight for total energy intake, compared to those derived using gram weights. Using binary input variables yielded a component that loaded positively on reduced fat and reduced sugar foods. The present results suggest that food intakes quantified by gram weights or as binary variables both resulted in meaningful dietary patterns and each method has distinct advantages: weight takes into account the amount of each food consumed and binary intake appears to describe general food preferences, which are potentially easier to modify and useful in public health settings.
Residents as Mentors: The Development of Resident Mentorship Milestones.

BACKGROUND Mentorship of residents by more senior colleagues has been identified as important for stress management and creating an ideal learning environment. OBJECTIVE We set out to define the attributes of an ideal resident mentor and explore ways to develop these attributes during residency training. METHODS A 28-member, multi-specialty counsel of residents and fellows used 2 phases of a small group exercise. In the first phase, the group developed desirable attributes of resident mentors and explored means of developing these attributes. In the second phase, the group identified trends in the results, and in a second small group exercise with participants at a major national conference, refined these trends into Resident Mentorship Milestones. RESULTS The exercises identified 3 common themes: availability, competence, and support of the mentee. We defined milestones for mentorship in each of these areas. CONCLUSIONS The Resident Mentorship Milestones, developed by a national panel of residents, describe 3 key dimensions of mentorship: availability, defined as making time for mentorship; competence for and success in mentoring; and support of the mentee. These milestones may serve as a novel tool to develop and assess successful resident mentorship models.
D allele of insertion/deletion polymorphism at angiotensin-converting enzyme gene is associated with reduced prevalence and severity of depression among Chinese adolescents at early stage after Wenchuan earthquake

Abstract Objective: The purpose of the present study was to longitudinally investigate the association of insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism at angiotensin-converting enzyme gene (ACE) with depression in Chinese adolescents experiencing the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Methods: Variants of ACE I/D were identified by polymerase chain reaction and verified by DNA sequencing. Depression symptoms were assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) among high school students at 6, 12 and 18 months after the earthquake. Results: The D-allele carriers had lower depression prevalence than II homozygotes at 6, 12 and 18 months after the earthquake only in females, but not in males. Meanwhile, BDI scores were reduced in the female D-allele carriers when compared with those in the female II homozygotes at 6 and12 months after the earthquake. In addition, ACE I/D was found to be the predictors of BDI scores and depression prevalence at 6 and 12 months after the earthquake. Conclusions: These results suggest that the association of ACE I/D with depression are longitudinally different in Chinese Han adolescents after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. The D allele may be associated with reduced depression prevalence and severity in female adolescents in the early stage of depression rehabilitation during the follow-up.
Repeated Sprints in Fasted State Impair Reaction Time Performance

ABSTRACT Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the effects of 3-day Islamic intermittent fasting (3d-IF) on cognitive performance and serum levels of neurotrophic factors (brain-derived neurotrophic factor [BDNF] and vascular endothelial growth factor [VEGF]) before and after repeated sprints. Methods: Twenty-one physically active male Muslims (29.8 ± 5.9 years, exercising 4 ± 1.5 times/week) were randomly assigned to one of 2 experimental sessions: the control or nonfasting session (CS) or the fasting session (FS). These 2 sessions occurred 7 days apart in a counterbalanced crossover design. In both conditions, the test was performed at the same time of day, approximately 1 hour before sunset. In the FS, the test occurred on the third day of the 3d-IF and involved the participants' performance of the following: (a) two series of 5 maximal 5-second sprints and (b) 2 cognitive tasks: One Touch Stockings (OTS) and reaction time (simple and complex RTI). Results: In both conditions, the participants' reaction times during the RTI test were similar at the pre- and mid-exercise points, but postexercise, simple and complex reaction times were higher in FS compared to CS (p = 0.045, effect size [ES] = 0.21 and p = 0.006, ES = 0.41, respectively). However, OTS performance and serum levels of neurotrophic factors were not influenced by the 3d-IF. Conclusion: Simple and complex reaction times during the RTI test were negatively affected by the 3d-IF after 2 bouts of intensive repeated sprints.