Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Complications associated with implant migration into the maxillary sinus cavity.

BACKGROUND Migration of dental implants into the maxillary sinus is an uncommon, but increasingly reported complication. Implant migration may result from initial lack of primary stability, intrasinusal and nasal pressure changes, autoimmune reaction to the implant or incorrect distribution of occlusal forces. This retrospective study aims at analyzing the factors that may influence implant migration into the maxillary sinus cavity. MATERIAL AND METHODS Fourteen patients presenting a total 15 implants that migrated into the maxillary sinus were recruited. Diagnosis of this complication was based on imaging techniques, such as cone beam computerized tomography scan and panoramic radiography. Clinical data were recorded in all cases and processed for statistical analysis. RESULTS ABH was below 6 mm in the majority of cases. However, almost 50% of the patients did not receive any site preparation treatment prior to implant insertion. Five patients (33.3%) were treated by osteotome techniques, but only one of them had bone grafting. Therefore, 73.3% of sites did not receive any biomaterial to increase available bone height. The most common complication-associated factors found on this study were related to implant design (cylindrical), implant dimension (diameter), implant restoration/rehabilitation method (partial removable denture), site-specific anatomy (initial residual bone height between 5 and 6.9 mm), demographics (age), and biomaterials. CONCLUSION Patient selection and proper treatment planning, as well as the application of the appropriate sinus augmentation technique, are critical aspects that should be controlled to minimize the risk of implant migration into the maxillary sinus cavity.
Experiences with a FPGA-based Reed/Solomon Encoding Coprocessor

In this paper we present an implementation of a Reed/Solomon (R/S) coprocessor to be used on a hybrid computing system, which combines general purpose CPUs with FPGAs. The coprocessor accelerates the encoding of user data to be stored block-wise on a distributed, failure tolerant storage system. We document design constraints and their impact on the resulting architecture. Measurements are presented to characterize the performance of the coprocessor in terms of computation bandwidth, latency, and the hardware-software interaction. For comparison, software based R/S encoding implementations are presented and evaluated as well. Finally, the performance of the hardware accelerated encoding is compared to a software based system.
Handling Conflicts in Autonomous Coordination of Distributed Collaborative Activities

Coordination between different organizations in dynamic situations, such as a disaster response, is challenging. Organizations are autonomous and coordinate the situation from their point of view. There is no central authority to coordinate all operations. To coordinate their actions, organizations need to exchange information on what they are doing. However, they cannot share everything with everybody due to privacy, regulatory or strategic reasons. Currently, only e-mail, telephone or fax are used to exchange information. This makes detecting and handling of conflicting views on the situation very difficult. We propose an approach for inter-organizational process management for these kinds of dynamic scenarios. It allows different organizations to share selected activities by replicating them in the different workspaces of the organizations. State changes of shared activities are propagated optimistically. We explain detecting and handling of two different types of conflicts that can occur in this setting. We provide an implementationand interviews to validate the concepts.
Characterization of a mazEF Toxin-Antitoxin Homologue from Staphylococcus equorum

ABSTRACT Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems encoded in prokaryotic genomes fall into five types, typically composed of two distinct small molecules, an endotoxic protein and a cis-encoded antitoxin of ribonucleic or proteinaceous nature. In silico analysis revealed seven putative type I and three putative type II TA systems in the genome of the nonpathogenic species strain Staphylococcus equorum SE3. Among these, a MazEF system orthologue termed MazEFseq was further characterized. 5′ rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) revealed the expression and the transcriptional start site of mazEseq, indicating an immediately upstream promoter. Heterologous expression of the putative toxin-encoding mazFseq gene imposed growth cessation but not cell death on Escherichia coli. In vivo and in vitro, MazFseq was shown to cleave at UACAU motifs, which are remarkably abundant in a number of putative metabolic and regulatory S. equorum gene transcripts. Specific interaction between MazFseq and the putative cognate antitoxin MazEseq was demonstrated by bacterial two-hybrid analyses. These data strongly suggest that MazEFseq represents the first characterized TA system in a nonpathogenic Staphylococcus species and indicate that MazEF modules in staphylococci may also control processes beyond pathogenicity.
Current status of the plant phosphorylation site database PhosPhAt and its use as a resource for molecular plant physiology

As the most studied post-translational modification, protein phosphorylation is analyzed in a growing number of proteomic experiments. These high-throughput approaches generate large datasets, from which specific spectrum-based information can be hard to find. In 2007, the PhosPhAt database was launched to collect and present Arabidopsis phosphorylation sites identified by mass spectrometry from and for the scientific community. At present, PhosPhAt 3.0 consolidates phosphoproteomics data from 19 published proteomic studies. Out of 5460 listed unique phosphoproteins, about 25% have been identified in at least two independent experimental setups. This is especially important when considering issues of false positive and false negative identification rates and data quality (Durek etal., 2010). This valuable data set encompasses over 13205 unique phosphopeptides, with unambiguous mapping to serine (77%), threonine (17%), and tyrosine (6%). Sorting the functional annotations of experimentally found phosphorylated proteins in PhosPhAt using Gene Ontology terms shows an over-representation of proteins in regulatory pathways and signaling processes. A similar distribution is found when the PhosPhAt predictor, trained on experimentally obtained plant phosphorylation sites, is used to predict phosphorylation sites for the Arabidopsis genome. Finally, the possibility to insert a protein sequence into the PhosPhAt predictor allows species independent use of the prediction resource. In practice, PhosPhAt also allows easy exploitation of proteomic data for design of further targeted experiments.
[French translation of Schalling-Sifneos Personality Scale Revised and Beth Israel Questionnaire, 2 evaluation tools of alexithymia].

The concept of alexithymia was first proposed in the 1960's by Sifneos and Nemiah to describe personality traits originally found in psychosomatic patients but which have since been found in other types of patients (alcoholics, drug addicts, traumatic stress disorder patients, sociopaths) as well as in the general population. Etymologically, alexithymia signifies: incapacity to speak one's emotions (from the Greek: a, lack; lexis, word; thymos, sentiments). Alexithymia is not the impossibility of feeling one's emotions, but rather the impossibility of associating them with corresponding mental representations and thus verbalizing them. Such patients tend to act out, to speak circumstantially, and to have difficulty in relationships. A neurophysiological substratum, the absence of connexions between the limbic system and the neo-cortical regions, has been suggested by Sifneos, who has distinguished primary and secondary alexithymia. A "biological" deficit seems to be responsible for primary alexithymia, such as in found in split-brain patients or aprosodias in patients with right hemispheric strokes. Secondary alexithymia, on the other hand, seems to be due to psychodynamic factors such as massive utilisation of defense mechanisms like denial, repression and regression. Appropriate psychotherapy for such patients is debatable, but it seems that in most cases the analytical approach should be replaced by more directive therapies, including relaxation and bio-feedback, to help patients learn to stimulate, master, and verbalize their emotions. The Beth Israel Questionnaire (BIQ) is a rating scale evaluating such traits that is filled out by the rater based on a clinical interview. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Global protein function prediction in protein-protein interaction networks

The determination of protein functions is one of the most challenging problems of the post-genomic era. The sequencing of entire genomes and the possibility to access gene's co-expression patterns has moved the attention from the study of single proteins or small complexes to that of the entire proteome. In this context, the search for reliable methods for proteins' function assignment is of uttermost importance. Previous approaches to deduce the unknown function of a class of proteins have exploited sequence similarities or clustering of co-regulated genes, phylogenetic profiles, protein-protein interactions, and protein complexes. We propose to assign functional classes to proteins from their network of physical interactions, by minimizing the number of interacting proteins with different categories. The function assignment is made on a global scale and depends on the entire connectivity pattern of the protein network. Multiple functional assignments are made possible as a consequence of the existence of multiple equivalent solutions. The method is applied to the yeast Saccharomices Cerevisiae protein-protein interaction network. Robustness is tested in presence of a high percentage of unclassified proteins and under deletion/insertion of interactions.
DIFFERENCES IN STUDENTS' USE OF COMPUTER SIMULATION TOOLS AND REASONING ABOUT EMPIRICAL DATA AND THEORETICAL DISTRIBUTIONS

This paper reports a comparison of two separate studies using the same task and simulation software but with different age groups and abilities of students who have had different curricula experiences. One study examined how middle school students used computer simulation tools to reason between empirical data and theoretical probability. The second study replicated the first with secondary school students who had just completed an Advanced Placement statistics course. This comparison includes the similarities and the differences in the way each group approached the task and used the simulation software, given their background and prior knowledge.
Game-Based BCI Training: Interactive Design for Individuals with Cerebral Palsy

Mutual brain-machine co-adaptation is the most common approach used to gain control over spontaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Co-adaptation means the concurrent or alternating use of machine learning and the brain's reinforcement learning mechanisms. Results from the literature, however, suggest that current implementations of this approach does not lead to desired results ("BCI inefficiency"). In this paper, we propose an alternative strategy that implements some recommendations from educational psychology and instructional design. We present a jigsaw puzzle game for Android devices developed to train the BCI skill in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP). Preliminary results of a supporting study in four CP users suggest high user acceptance. Three out of the four users achieved better than chance accuracy in arranging pieces to form the puzzle.
Modelling of the video DCT coefficients

In this paper, the normal inverse Gaussian probability density function (PDF) is presented as a highly suitable prior for modelling the DCT coefficients of videos. The parameters of the proposed prior are estimated by minimizing the Kullback-Leibler divergence between the prior and the empirical PDF obtained from the DCT coefficients of digital videos. The effectiveness of the parameter estimation technique is demonstrated through Monte Carlo tests. Experiments are carried out to study the effectiveness of the proposed prior in modelling both the full-frame and block-DCT coefficients of video data, and compare it with that of the generalized Gaussian, Laplacian and Bessel K form PDFs. It is shown that in general the normal inverse Gaussian PDF is a better model than the other PDFs.
New Fe–Co–Ni–Zr–B Amorphous Alloys with Wide Supercooled Liquid Regions and Good Soft Magnetic Properties

New Fe-based amorphous alloys in Fe-Co-Ni-Zr-B system exhibiting a wide supercooled liquid region before crystallization and good soft magnetic properties were found to be formed by melt spinning. The composition range of the amorphous (Fe 1-x-y Co x Ni y ) 70 Zr 10 B 20 alloys with the wide supercooled liquid region above 50 K extends from 0 to 36 at%Co and 0 to 30%Ni and the largest value of the supercooled liquid region defined by the difference between the glass transition temperature (T g ) and crystallization temperature (T x ), ΔT x ( = T x - T g ) is 68 K for Fe 56 Co 7 Ni 7 Zr 10 B 20 . The crystallization from the supercooled liquid of the Fe 56 Co 7 Ni 7 Zr 10 B 20 alloy upon continuous heating occurs through a single stage and the resulting crystallized structure consists of α-Fe, Fe2Zr and Fe 3 B phases containing Co and Ni elements. These Fe-based amorphous alloys exhibit good soft magnetic properties and the saturation magnetization, coercive force, permeability at I kHz and Curie temperature are respectively 0.96 T, 2.41 A/m, 17700 and 567 K for the amorphous Fe 56 Co 7 Ni 7 Zr 10 B 20 alloy annealed for 600 s at 750 K. The finding of the Fe-based amorphous alloys with good soft magnetic properties and high thermal stability of the supercooled liquid is important for future development of ferromagnetic bulk amorphous alloys.
The SWISS-MODEL Repository and associated resources

SWISS-MODEL Repository (http://swissmodel.expasy.org/repository/) is a database of 3D protein structure models generated by the SWISS-MODEL homology-modelling pipeline. The aim of the SWISS-MODEL Repository is to provide access to an up-to-date collection of annotated 3D protein models generated by automated homology modelling for all sequences in Swiss-Prot and for relevant models organisms. Regular updates ensure that target coverage is complete, that models are built using the most recent sequence and template structure databases, and that improvements in the underlying modelling pipeline are fully utilised. As of September 2008, the database contains 3.4 million entries for 2.7 million different protein sequences from the UniProt database. SWISS-MODEL Repository allows the users to assess the quality of the models in the database, search for alternative template structures, and to build models interactively via SWISS-MODEL Workspace (http://swissmodel.expasy.org/workspace/). Annotation of models with functional information and cross-linking with other databases such as the Protein Model Portal (http://www.proteinmodelportal.org) of the PSI Structural Genomics Knowledge Base facilitates the navigation between protein sequence and structure resources.
CacheDedup: In-line Deduplication for Flash Caching

Flash caching has emerged as a promising solution to the scalability problems of storage systems by using fast flash memory devices as the cache for slower primary storage. But its adoption faces serious obstacles due to the limited capacity and endurance of flash devices. This paper presents CacheDedup, a solution that addresses these limitations using in-line deduplication. First, it proposes a novel architecture that integrates the caching of data and deduplication metadata (source addresses and fingerprints of the data) and efficiently manages these two components. Second, it proposes duplication-aware cache replacement algorithms (D-LRU, DARC) to optimize both cache performance and endurance. The paper presents a rigorous analysis of the algorithms to prove that they do not waste valuable cache space and that they are efficient in time and space usage. The paper also includes an experimental evaluation using real-world traces, which confirms that CacheDedup substantially improves I/O performance (up to 20% reduction in miss ratio and 51% in latency) and flash endurance (up to 89% reduction in writes sent to the cache device) compared to traditional cache management. It also shows that the proposed architecture and algorithms can be extended to support the combination of compression and deduplication for flash caching and improve its performance and endurance.
MEMS Micro-Wire Magnetic Field Detection Method at CERN

This paper reports a novel construction of a micromachined MEMS magnetometer characterized by static magnetic fields of CERN's reference dipole with a custom made capacitive read-out. The magnetic flux density is characterized via the vibration modes of the MEMS structure, which are sensed capacitively. The device consists of a single-crystal silicon clamped-free plate (cantilever) carrying a thin conductor. The cantilever and the thin film metal electrodes are separated by a small gap, forming a vibrating plate capacitor. Movements of the cantilever are read out conveniently by electronic circuits. A static magnetic field generates a force density acting on the conductor that alternates according to the frequency of the current. When the electrical current is known, the deflection amplitude of the cantilever is a measure of the component of the magnetic flux density that points perpendicular to the current. The highest vibration amplitudes are expected, in the vicinity of resonance frequencies of the micromachined structure. At ambient pressure, the prototype sensor has a measured resonance frequency of 3.8 kHz for the fundamental mode and 20 kHz for the first antisymmetric mode. In experiments, the magnetic flux of the dipole has been characterized between 0.1 and 1 T, with a relative uncertainty of 3 × 10-4.
Multi-stream speech recognition: ready for prime time?

Multi-stream and multi-band methods can improve the accuracy of speech recognition systems without overly increasing the complexity. However, they cannot be applied blindly. In this paper, we review our experience applying multi-stream and multiband methods to the Broadcast News corpus. We found that multi-stream systems using different acoustic front-ends provide a significant improvement over single stream systems. However, despite the fact that they have been successful on smaller tasks, we have not yet been able to show any improvement using multiband methods. We report various insights gained from the experience in applying these methods in a large-vocabulary task.
Adhesion of Escherichia coli to HeLa Cells Mediated byTrypanosoma cruzi Surface Glycoprotein-Derived Peptides Inserted in the Outer Membrane Protein LamB

ABSTRACT Peptides derived from the surface glycoprotein gp82 ofTrypanosoma cruzi, previously implicated in the parasite’s invasion of host cells, were expressed as fusions to the protein LamB of Escherichia coli in a region known to be exposed on the cell surface. Bacteria expressing these proteins adhered to HeLa cells in a manner that mimics the pattern of parasite invasion of mammalian cells. Purified LamB fusion proteins were shown to bind to HeLa cells and to inhibit infection by T. cruzi, supporting the notion that these gp82-derived peptides can mediate interaction of the parasite with its host.
Loss of αT-catenin alters the hybrid adhering junctions in the heart and leads to dilated cardiomyopathy and ventricular arrhythmia following acute ischemia

It is generally accepted that the intercalated disc (ICD) required for mechano-electrical coupling in the heart consists of three distinct junctional complexes: adherens junctions, desmosomes and gap junctions. However, recent morphological and molecular data indicate a mixing of adherens junctional and desmosomal components, resulting in a ‘hybrid adhering junction’ or ‘area composita’. The α-catenin family member αT-catenin, part of the N-cadherin–catenin adhesion complex in the heart, is the only α-catenin that interacts with the desmosomal protein plakophilin-2 (PKP2). Thus, it has been postulated that αT-catenin might serve as a molecular integrator of the two adhesion complexes in the area composita. To investigate the role of αT-catenin in the heart, gene targeting technology was used to delete the Ctnna3 gene, encoding αT-catenin, in the mouse. The αT-catenin-null mice are viable and fertile; however, the animals exhibit progressive cardiomyopathy. Adherens junctional and desmosomal proteins were unaffected by loss of αT-catenin, with the exception of the desmosomal protein PKP2. Immunogold labeling at the ICD demonstrated in the αT-catenin-null heart a preferential reduction of PKP2 at the area composita compared with the desmosome. Furthermore, gap junction protein Cx43 was reduced at the ICD, including its colocalization with N-cadherin. Gap junction remodeling in αT-catenin-knockout hearts was associated with an increased incidence of ventricular arrhythmias after acute ischemia. This novel animal model demonstrates for the first time how perturbation in αT-catenin can affect both PKP2 and Cx43 and thereby highlights the importance of understanding the crosstalk between the junctional proteins of the ICD and its implications for arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy.
Light Scattering from Filaments

Photorealistic visualization of a huge number of individual filaments like in the case of hair, fur, or knitwear is a challenging task: Explicit rendering approaches for simulating radiance transfer at a filament get totally impracticable with respect to rendering performance and it is also not obvious how to derive efficient scattering functions for different levels of (geometric) abstraction or how to deal with very complex scattering mechanisms. We present a novel uniform formalism for light scattering from filaments in terms of radiance, which we call the bidirectional fiber scattering distribution function (BFSDF). We show that previous specialized approaches, which have been developed in the context of hair rendering, can be seen as instances of the BFSDF. Similar to the role of the BSSRDF for surface scattering functions, the BFSDF can be seen as a general approach for light scattering from filaments, which is suitable for deriving approximations in a canonic and systematic way. For the frequent cases of distant light sources and observers, we deduce an efficient far field approximation (bidirectional curve scattering distribution function, BCSDF). We show that on the basis of the BFSDF, parameters for common rendering techniques can be estimated in a non-ad-hoc, but physically-based way
Characterisation of rapid prototyping techniques for studies in cell behaviour

Purpose – The area of microfluidic systems has greatly enhanced the in vitro field of tissue engineering. Microfluidic systems such as microchannelled assays are now widely used for mimicking in vivo cell behaviour and studies into basic biological research. In certain cases engineered tissue cell design use 3D ordered geometrical configurations in vitro (such as microchannel assays) to reproduce native in vivo functions. The most common approach for manufacturing micro‐assays is now rapid prototyping (RP) technology. The choice of assay material is dependent on the proposed cell type and ultimately the tissue application. However, many RP technologies can be unsuitable for cell growth applications because of the construction methods and materials they employ. The purpose of this paper is to describe a comparison between two different RP 3D printing methods of fabrication and investigates the merits of each technology for direct cell culture applications using micro‐assays, while also examining the dispen.