Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vitro evaluation of endothelial exosomes as carriers for small interfering ribonucleic acid delivery

Exosomes, one subpopulation of nanosize extracellular vesicles derived from multivesicular bodies, ranging from 30 to 150 nm in size, emerged as promising carriers for small interfering ribonucleic acid (siRNA) delivery, as they are capable of transmitting molecular messages between cells through carried small noncoding RNAs, messenger RNAs, deoxyribonucleic acids, and proteins. Endothelial cells are involved in a number of important biological processes, and are a major source of circulating exosomes. In this study, we prepared exosomes from endothelial cells and evaluated their capacity to deliver siRNA into primary endothelial cells. Exosomes were isolated and purified by sequential centrifugation and ultracentrifugation from cultured mouse aortic endothelial cells. Similar to exosome particles from other cell sources, endothelial exosomes are nanometer-size vesicles, examined by both the NanoSight instrument and transmission electron microscopy. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay analysis confirmed the expression of two exosome markers: CD9 and CD63. Flow cytometry and fluorescence microscopy studies demonstrated that endothelial exosomes were heterogeneously distributed within cells. In a gene-silencing study with luciferase-expressing endothelial cells, exosomes loaded with siRNA inhibited luciferase expression by more than 40%. In contrast, siRNA alone and control siRNA only suppressed luciferase expression by less than 15%. In conclusion, we demonstrated that endothelial exosomes have the capability to accommodate and deliver short foreign nucleic acids into endothelial cells.
Practical clinical applications of 3-D printing in cardiovascular surgery.

The authors are an engineer and two surgeons who developed a shared interest in three-dimensional (3-D) printing of the ascending aorta in 2000, leading to the development of a customised external support for the Marfan aortic root (1). The invitation from the Journal of Thoracic Disease to write on the subject of 3-D printing provides an opportunity to briefly illustrate some existing, practical but very different applications. The fundamental attraction of 3-D printing over the usual range of surgical illustrations is that it provides a ‘graspable’ object (2). The word ‘graspable’ which we have borrowed from Regnier, is particularly appropriate in this context in that it indicates a physical object which the surgeon can literally grasp, manipulate in the hands (3,4), and cut in operative rehearsals (5). Being able to manipulate the object while simultaneously viewing it may have a significant impact on the understanding of 3-D anatomy by the surgeon.
Defining Antonymy : A Corpus-based Study of Opposites Found by Lexico-syntactic Patterns

Using small sets of adjectival seed antonym pairs, we automatically find patterns where these pairs co-occur in a large corpus of Dutch, and then use these patterns to extract new antonym pairs. Evaluation of extracted pairs by five human judges showed that automatic scores correlate with human evaluation and that pattern based methods can be used to extract new antonym pairs. The majority of extracted pairs were noun-noun pairs, contrary to expectations based on previous research. Additionally, the method identifies a subgroup of co-hyponyms that frequently function antonymously, and together with more traditional antonyms makes up a wider class of incompatibles, suggesting that antonymy is a diverse relation that includes pairs of different types and categories that are not captured by any single linguistic theory. Comparison with Dutch WordNet and an online Dutch dictionary shows that only a handful of extracted pairs are currently listed in these existing resources, emphasizing the usefulness of the project.
Polynomial Reconstruction Based Cryptography (A Short Survey)

Cryptography and Coding Theory are closely knitted in many respects. Recently, the problem of Decoding Reed Solomon Codes (aka Polynomial Reconstruction) was suggested as an intractability as- sumption upon which the security of cryptographic protocols can be based. This has initiated a line of research that exploited the rich al- gebraic structure of the problem and related subproblems of which in the cryptographic setting. Here we give a short overview of recent works on the subject and the novel applications that were enabled due to this development.
Influence of material contrast on fault branching behavior

Material contrasts across faults are a common occurrence, and it is important to understand if these material contrasts can influence the path of rupture propagation. Here we examine models, solved numerically, of rupture propagation through one type of geometric complexity, that of a fault branch stemming from a planar main fault on which rupture initiates. This geometry, with a material contrast across the main fault, could be representative of either a mature strike‐slip fault or a subduction zone interface. We consider branches in both the compressional and extensional quadrants of the fault, and material configurations in which the branch fault is in either the stiffer or the more compliant material as well as configurations with no material contrast. We find that there are regimes in which this elastic contrast can influence the rupture behavior at a branching junction, but there are also stress states for which the branch activation will not depend on the orientation of the mismatch. For the scenarios presented here, both compressional and extensional side branches are more likely to rupture if the branch is on the side of the fault with the more compliant material versus the stiffer material. The stresses induced on the branch fault, by rupture traveling on the main fault, are different for the two orientations of material contrast. We show how the interactions between rupture on the two faults determine which faults are activated.
Antibacterial and Antioxidant Activity of Essential Oil Terpenes against Pathogenic and Spoilage-Forming Bacteria and Cell Structure-Activity Relationships Evaluated by SEM Microscopy

The antibacterial activity and antioxidant effect of the compounds α-terpineol, linalool, eucalyptol and α-pinene obtained from essential oils (EOs), against pathogenic and spoilage forming bacteria were determined. The antibacterial activities of these compounds were observed in vitro on four Gram-negative and three Gram-positive strains. S. putrefaciens was the most resistant bacteria to all tested components, with MIC values of 2% or higher, whereas E. coli O157:H7 was the most sensitive strain among the tested bacteria. Eucalyptol extended the lag phase of S. Typhimurium, E. coli O157:H7 and S. aureus at the concentrations of 0.7%, 0.6% and 1%, respectively. In vitro cell growth experiments showed the tested compounds had toxic effects on all bacterial species with different level of potency. Synergistic and additive effects were observed at least one dose pair of combination against S. Typhimurium, E. coli O157:H7 and S. aureus, howeverantagonistic effects were not found in these combinations. The results of this first study are encouraging for further investigations on mechanisms of antimicrobial activity of these EO components.
Expression of depolarization‐induced immediate early gene proteins in PC12 cells

Immediate early genes induced by depolarization are thought to be important in mediating neuronal functional plasticity. We previously identified a group of immediate early genes that are preferentially induced by depolarization and forskolin but not by nerve growth factor or epidermal growth factor in PC12 pheochromocytoma cells. These depolarization‐induced genes include synaptotagmin 4; the protein kinases KID‐1, PIM‐1, and SIK; an orphan transcription factor, Nurr‐1; and a transcription corepressor, rTLE‐3. All these genes are also induced in the hippocampus in response to kainic‐acid induced depolarization. To characterize further the unique functions of these genes in plasticity, we used recombinant proteins to generate and purify antibodies against KID‐1 and SIK proteins. Immunoblotting experiments were performed to examine the induced expression of the KID‐1 and SIK proteins in PC12 cells. PIM‐1 and Nurr‐1 protein expression was also examined following stimulation, using commercially available antibodies. There is an increase in synthesis, in PC12 cells, of these four IEG proteins after KCl plus forskolin treatment. Nurr‐1 protein peaks between 2 and 4 hr and decreases by 6 hr after the treatment. PIM‐1 and KID‐1 proteins rise by 1 hr, peak between 2 and 4 hr, and return to their basal levels at 6 hr. SIK protein increases significantly at 2 hr after treatment, peaks between 4 and 6 hr, and returns to the basal level at 8 hr. Immunofluorescence studies demonstrate distinct distribution patterns of each of these depolarization‐induced IEG proteins in PC12 cells. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
2D KINEMATICS AND KINETICS ANALYSES OF HUMAN GAIT

Analisis gerak manusia telah menjadi topik berbagai penelitian, seperti diagnosa medis, rehabilitasi fisik atau olahraga. Gait analysis merupakan bagian dari analisis gerak manusia yang spesifik mempelajari gerak berjalan manusia yang dapat digunakan untuk memonitor respons pasien selama rehabilitasi medis. Variabel gerakan (seperti waktu siklus, frekuensi langkah, panjang langkah, dan kecepatan) dari seorang pasien dapat dipantau dan dianalisisis untuk mengetahui apakah perkembangan telah terjadi. Variabel ini diperoleh dengan melakukan observasi. Penelitian ini merupakan bagian dari penelitian untuk mengembangkan sistem yang terjangkau, namun dapat diandalkan, terientegrasi untuk analisis orang berjalan 2D yang terdiri dari analisis gerak berdasarkan observasi optik, analisis kinematik dan kinetik gerak berjalan manusia untuk keperluan rehabilitasi medis. Studi ini menyangkut analisis kinematik dan kinetik berdasarkan analisis gerak pada eksperimen untuk mendapatkan parameter gerak berjalan manusia. Dalam analisis, tubuh manusia dimodelkan sebagai lima segmen yang dihubungkan oleh sendi. Sebuah program disusun untuk menghitung parameter umum, kinematik dan kinetik gerak berjalan manusia berdasarkan posisi segmen tubuh setiap saat dan data antropometrik tubuh manusia. Untuk meminimalkan error akibat proses differensiasi, data eksperimental harus dihaluskan terlebih dahulu sebelum digunakan dalam analisis kinematik dan kinetik. Proses smoothing yang dilakukan terhadap data eksperimen menunjukkan tingkat akurasi dan presisi yang cukup tinggi. Perangkat lunak yang telah dikembangkan mampu menghitung parameter berjalan manusia seperti frekuensi langkah, waktu siklus, panjang langkah, kecepatan berjalan, sudut, kecepatan, percepatan sendi, gaya dan momen berdasarkan data posisi anggota tubuh. Hasil yang diperoleh dengan menggunakan sistem ini cukup mendekati hasil yang diperoleh melalui berbagai eksperimen oleh peneliti terdahulu. Oleh karena itu, model dianggap dapat diandalkan dan sistem yang dikembangkan memiliki potensi penggunaan cukup tinggi dalam rehabilitasi medis.
Superiorly Based Pharyngeal Flap for Treatment of Velopharyngeal Insufficiency in Patients With 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome

BackgroundThere are no previous blinded studies for comparison of preoperative versus postoperative perceptual speech assessments when using a pharyngeal flap for treating velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) in patients diagnosed with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of superiorly based pharyngeal flap surgery on speech in these patients using blinded judgments of experienced speech therapists. MethodsA retrospective study of 12 consecutive patients who had undergone pharyngeal flap surgery for treatment of VPI between 2002 and 2009 was conducted. Seven girls and 5 boys between 4 and 15 (median, 6) years old at the time of surgery were included in the study. Six patients were born with a submucous cleft palate (including 2 occult), and 1 patient, with an overt cleft palate. The remaining 5 patients had no signs of a palatal pathology. All palatal clefts had been repaired before pharyngeal flap surgery except in 2 patients with occult submucous cleft palate. Preoperative and postoperative audio recordings were blinded for scoring independently by 3 senior speech therapists. ResultsThere was a significant improvement in hypernasality (P = 0.002), audible nasal emission (P = 0.033), weak pressure consonants (P = 0.008), and speech intelligibility (P = 0.021) after pharyngeal flap surgery. Hyponasality did not develop significantly with surgery. One patient was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea. ConclusionsSuperiorly based pharyngeal flap resulted in a significant speech improvement in 12 consecutive patients with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome having VPI.
Holy Grail of Outlier Detection Technique : A Macro Level Take on the State of the Art

A phenomenal interest in big data among research community has emerged. Outlier detection analysis in big data leads to new discoveries in databases. Outlier can be a noise or anomaly. Outlier detection indicates identifying deviations from normal behavior in the data set. Cause of Outliers maybe error prone human inputs. It is desirable to identify outliers at the initial stages to avoid ballooning effect. Present focus of the state of the art is on time series, temporal outliers and categorical outliers. Outlier detection and removal is a form of filtering data from impurities. This paper is a survey of state of the art outlier detection and analysis mechanisms. This survey will give a comparative overview of contemporary outlier detection techniques.
A New Proof of the Fixed-Point Theorem of Probability Logic

We give a simple semantic proof of the fixed-point theorem of the modal system G (also known as GL, PRL, L, and K4W). It is modeled after a syntactic proof of Sambin, yet is simpler than his, due to our taking advantage of the Kripke semantics for G. The advantages of this particular version are that it is les complicated and the fixed-point so obtained has the same general «appearance» as the original formula
Nicotine levels in electronic cigarettes.

INTRODUCTION The electronic cigarette (EC) is a plastic device that imitates conventional cigarettes and was developed to deliver nicotine in a toxin-free vapor. Nicotine in a solution is heated and vaporized when a person puffs through the device and is inhaled as a vapor into the mouth. The EC is a new product on the market and little is known about its safety and nicotine delivery efficacy. The aim of the study was to analyze nicotine levels in vapor generated from various EC brands and models. The study was designed to assess efficacy and consistency of various ECs in converting nicotine to vapor and to analyze dynamics of nicotine vaporization. METHODS Sixteen ECs were selected based on their popularity in the Polish, U.K. and U.S. markets. Vapors were generated using an automatic smoking machine modified to simulate puffing conditions of real EC users. Nicotine was absorbed in a set of washing bottles with methanol and analyzed with gas chromatography. RESULTS The total level of nicotine in vapor generated by 20 series of 15 puffs varied from 0.5 to 15.4 mg. Most of the analyzed ECs effectively delivered nicotine during the first 150-180 puffs. On an average, 50%-60% of nicotine from a cartridge was vaporized. CONCLUSIONS ECs generate vapor that contains nicotine, but EC brands and models differ in their efficacy and consistency of nicotine vaporization. In ECs, which vaporize nicotine effectively, the amount inhaled from 15 puffs is lower compared with smoking a conventional cigarette.
Influence of non-REM sleep on inspiratory muscle activity and lung volume in asthmatic patients.

To determine the effect of non-REM (NREM) sleep on inspiratory muscle electromyographic (EMG) activity in asthmatic patients and the subsequent effect of such changes on FRC, 12 asthmatic patients with nocturnal worsening were monitored overnight in a horizontal volume-displacement body plethysmograph. During studies FRC was monitored using the single inspiratory occlusion technique, whereas EMG activities of the diaphragm (DI), intercostal (IC), and sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscles were monitored using surface electrodes. FRC decreased progressively, from 3.63 +/- 0.27 L while awake prior to "lights out" to 3.15 +/- 0.27 L after 60 min of NREM sleep (p < 0.005). With awakening at the end of the study FRC increased to 4.69 +/- 0.48 L (p < 0.01). Onset of NREM sleep was also associated with significant (p < 0.05) reductions in EMG tonic activities of all three inspiratory muscles. These levels of tonic activity returned and were further augmented (p < 0.001) with awakening at the conclusion of the study. Linear relationships were demonstrated between sleep-state dependent changes in FRC and EMG tonic activity for each of the three inspiratory muscles (r = 0.98, 0.93, and 0.97 for DI, IC, and SCM, respectively, p < 0.01). NREM sleep did not significantly alter mean inspiratory phasic activities of these muscles, although there was considerable heterogeneity between individual subjects in the effects of NREM sleep. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Minority SVM for linearly separable imbalanced datasets

Class imbalance (CI) is common in most non synthetic datasets, which presents a major challenge for many classification algorithms geared towards optimized overall accuracy whenever the minority class risk loss is often higher than the majority class one. Support vector machine (SVM), a machine learning (ML) technique deeply rooted in statistics, maximizes linear margins between classes and generalizes well on yet to be seen data as long as the dataset is not severely imbalanced. Motivated to improve classification of imbalanced datasets using SVM standard formulation, we propose in this study a novel minority SVM (MinSVM) that achieves, with the addition of one constraint to the SVM objective function, separating boundaries that are closer to the majority class. Consequently, the minority data points are favored, and the probability of being misclassified becomes smaller. Experimental results support MinSVM claims and motivate to follow on research.
Value of Different Assays for Detection of Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in Predicting the Development of HCMV Disease in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Patients

ABSTRACT In the present prospective study, five blood tests for detection of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) for detection of early (immediate-early antigen) and late (pp67) mRNA, PCR for detection of HCMV DNA (DNA PCR), culture, and pp65 antigenemia assay, and culture and DNA PCR of urine and throat swab specimens were compared for their abilities to predict the development of disease caused by HCMV (HCMV disease). Of 101 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients with ≤100 CD4+ lymphocytes per mm3, 25 patients developed HCMV disease. The pp65 antigenemia assay (sensitivity, 50%; specificity, 89%) and DNA PCR of blood (sensitivity, 69%; specificity, 75%) were most accurate in predicting the development of HCMV disease within the next 12 months. Both blood culture and late pp67 mRNA NASBA had high specificities (91 and 90%, respectively) but low sensitivities (25 and 13%, respectively). The sensitivities of urine culture, DNA PCR, throat swab specimen culture, DNA PCR, and NASBA of blood for detection of the immediate-early antigen were 73, 87, 53, 67, and 63%, respectively, and the specificities were 58, 46, 76, 60, and 72%, respectively. The positive predictive values of all tests however, were low and did not exceed 50%. In conclusion, virological screening by these qualitative assays for detection of HCMV is of limited value for prediction of the development of HCMV disease in HIV-infected patients.
Writer-independent feature learning for Offline Signature Verification using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Automatic Offline Handwritten Signature Verification has been researched over the last few decades from several perspectives, using insights from graphology, computer vision, signal processing, among others. In spite of the advancements on the field, building classifiers that can separate between genuine signatures and skilled forgeries (forgeries made targeting a particular signature) is still hard. We propose approaching the problem from a feature learning perspective. Our hypothesis is that, in the absence of a good model of the data generation process, it is better to learn the features from data, instead of using hand-crafted features that have no resemblance to the signature generation process. To this end, we use Deep Convolutional Neural Networks to learn features in a writer-independent format, and use this model to obtain a feature representation on another set of users, where we train writer-dependent classifiers. We tested our method in two datasets: GPDS-960 and Brazilian PUC-PR. Our experimental results show that the features learned in a subset of the users are discriminative for the other users, including across different datasets, reaching close to the state-of-the-art in the GPDS dataset, and improving the state-of-the-art in the Brazilian PUC-PR dataset.
The Effect of LIFT on Life Effectiveness and Locus of Control.

The Effect of LIFT on Life Effectiveness and Locus of Control. (December 2009) Brian Merrell, B.A.; M.Ed., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. John Hoyle The purpose of this study is to measure the effects of the Leadership Inspiration Facilitation Team (LIFT) program on the life effectiveness and locus of control of a group of sixth grade students at Schultz Middle School. The participants consisted of 36 sixth grade students, ages 10 to 12 years, from a single public middle school. The participants attended a two-day summer adventure-based ROPES camp. The Review of Personal Effectiveness and Locus of Control (ROPELOC) instrument was administered at the beginning (pre-test), the end (post-test), and six months later (follow-up). The twelve domains of life effectiveness have been identified, including active involvement, cooperative teamwork, leadership ability, open thinking, quality seeking, self confidence, self efficacy, social effectiveness, stress management, time efficiency, coping with change, and overall effectiveness. Two domains of locus of control were identified: external and internal. Composite ROPELOC, subscale, and gender data were all analyzed using t-tests of independent samples. The analysis showed no significant improvement in participants’ composite ROPELOC score between the pre, post, and follow-up. However, there was an increase between the pre and post, although the increase was not at a significant level. Significant