Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deposition and characterization of nichrome thin film over PDMS elastomer

Nichrome (Ni - Cr 80/20 wt. %) is one of the most widely used thin film material for the development of micro heaters in various applications. Present paper discusses the optimized sputtering conditions required for successful deposition of nichrome thin film and fabrication of microheaters over a biocompatible polymer PDMS, for biomedical application. Various sputtering conditions like the base vacuum, working pressure, sputtering power and time were standardized to obtain crack free nichrome thin film deposition over PDMS and glass surface. Microheaters were fabricated using the conventional photolithography technique and the resulting structures were used to measure temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) of nichrome. Measured sheet resistance and TCR of the crack free deposited nichrome thin film over PDMS surface were 3.62 Ω/ and 713 ppm/°C respectively.
Self-certified public key generation on the intel mote 2 sensor network platform

It is widely acknowledged that security will play a key role in the successful design and deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSN). A prerequisite for achieving security is the ability to dynamically establish a secret key joint to two nodes. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) has emerged as a suitable public key cryptographic foundation for WSN. This poster will present an efficient ECC-based method for self-certified key generation in resource-constrained sensor nodes. In particular, we provide implementation results on the Intel Mote 2 sensor network platform which demonstrate that such key generation can be established in the order of 60 msec while consuming less than 30 mJ.
Differential Regulation of TLR Signaling on the Induction of Antiviral Interferons in Human Intestinal Epithelial Cells Infected with Enterovirus 71

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) causes hand-foot-and-mouth disease, which can lead to fatal neurological complications in young children and infants. Few gastrointestinal symptoms are observed clinically, suggesting the presence of a unique immunity to EV71 in the gut. We reported a robust induction of interferons (IFNs) in human intestinal epithelial cells (HT-29), which was suppressed in other types such as RD and HeLa cells. The underlying mechanism for the apparent difference remains obscure. In this study we report that in EV71-infected HT-29 cells, TLR/TRIF signaling was essential to IFN induction; viral replication increased and the induction of IFN-α, -β, -ω, -κ, and -ε decreased markedly in TRIF-silenced HT-29 cells. Importantly, TRIF was degraded by viral 3Cpro in RD cells, but resisted cleavage, and IRF3 was activated and translocated into the nucleus in HT-29 cells. Taken together, our data suggest that IFNs were induced differentially in human HT-29 cells through an intact TLR/TRIF signaling, which differs from other cell types and may be implicated in viral pathogenesis in EV71 infection.
Preparation and characterization of paclitaxel-loaded PLDLA microspheres

Paclitaxel (Taxol®), is a drug used to treat ovarian, breast, lung and bladder cancer. However, the low solubility of this drug in water is a major limitation in its clinical use. One strategy to overcome this limitation would be to encapsulate paclitaxel in polymeric microspheres that are biocompatible and can be used as drug carriers. The aim of this study was to use the bioresorbable, biocompatible copolymer poly-L-co-D,L-lactic acid (PLDLA) in the 70:30 rate to produce and characterize microspheres containing paclitaxel. The simple emulsion technique was used to obtain spherical microspheres that were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The average size of PLDLA microspheres without and with paclitaxel was 10.3µm ± 1.7 and 12.7 ± 1.3 µm, respectively, as determined by laser light scattering (LLS). Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) showed that pure paclitaxel had an endothermic peak corresponding to a melting point of 220 °C, which indicated its crystalline nature. The same peak was observed in a physical mixture of PLDLA + paclitaxel in which both components were present in the same proportions used to prepare the microspheres . In contrast, this peak was not observed for the drug, indicating that paclitaxel did not crystallize in PLDLA microspheres. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) indicated that paclitaxel was homogeneously dispersed in the PLDLA microspheres, the incorporation of paclitaxel into the microspheres did not alter the thermal properties of PLDLA. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis seems to indicate the absence of chemical interaction between polymer and drugs in microspheres and the presence of drugs as a molecular dispersion in the polymer matrix. The efficiency of paclitaxel encapsulation in PLDLA microspheres was 98.0± 0.3%, as assessed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A kinetic study of drug release
Structure of apo‐phosphatidylinositol transfer protein α provides insight into membrane association

Phosphatidylinositol transfer protein α (PITPα) is a ubiquitous and highly conserved protein in multicellular eukaryotes that catalyzes the exchange of phospholipids between membranes in vitro and participates in cellular phospholipid metabolism, signal transduction and vesicular trafficking in vivo. Here we report the three‐dimensional crystal structure of a phospholipid‐free mouse PITPα at 2.0 Å resolution. The structure reveals an open conformation characterized by a channel running through the protein. The channel is created by opening the phospholipid‐binding cavity on one side by displacement of the C‐terminal region and a hydrophobic lipid exchange loop, and on the other side by flattening of the central β‐sheet. The relaxed conformation is stabilized at the proposed membrane association site by hydrophobic interactions with a crystallographically related molecule, creating an intimate dimer. The observed open conformer is consistent with a membrane‐bound state of PITP and suggests a mechanism for membrane anchoring and the presentation of phosphatidylinositol to kinases and phospholipases after its extraction from the membrane. Coordinates have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank (accession No. 1KCM).
Antecedents and Consequences of Board IT Governance: Institutional and Strategic Choice Perspectives

Research Article Jennifer Jewer University of Waterloo jljewer@uwaterloo.ca Kenneth N. McKay University of Waterloo kmckay@uwaterloo.ca In spite of the potential benefits of board IT governance and the costs of ineffective oversight, there has been little field-based research in this area and an inadequate application of theory. Drawing upon strategic choice and institutional theories, we propose a theoretical model that seeks to explain the antecedents of board IT governance and its consequences. Survey responses from 188 corporate directors across Canada indicate that both board attributes and organizational factors influence board involvement in IT governance. The results suggest that proportion of insiders, board size, IT competency, organizational age, and role of IT influence the board’s level of involvement in IT governance. The responses also indicate that board IT governance has a positive impact on the contribution of IT to organizational performance. Overall, the results support the integration of strategic choice and institutional theories to explain the antecedents to board IT governance and its consequences, as together they provide a more holistic framework with which to view board IT governance.
Heating and melting deformable models

We develop physically-based graphics models of non-rigid objects capable of heat conduction, thermoelasticity, melting and fluid-like behaviour in the molten state. These deformable models feature non-rigid dynamics governed by Lagrangian equations of motion and conductive heat transfer governed by the heat equation for non-homogeneous, non-isotropic media. In its solid state, the discretized model is an assembly of hexahedral finite elements in which thermoelastic units interconnect particles situated in a lattice. The stiffness of a thermoelastic unit decreases as its temperature increases, and the unit fuses when its temperature exceeds the melting point. The molten state of the model involves a molecular dynamics simulation in which ‘fluid’ particles that have broken free from the lattice interact through long-range attraction forces and short-range repulsion forces. We present a physically-based animation of a thermoelastic model in a simulated physical world populated by hot constraint surfaces.
Evaluating the Dimensionality of the 2001 PIRLS Reading Assessment : An application of DIMTEST with DESM and CFA

The purpose of this study was to investigate the dimensionality of the reading assessment of 2001 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) by DIMTEST with DIMTEST-based Effect Size Measure (DESM) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). The 2001 PIRLS reading assessment was comprised of eight booklets, with accompanying items based on different reading passages. With respect to the potential problem of reading passage dependency on measurement precision and content-related validity in reading comprehension tests, the study examined the dimensionality of the reading assessments by booklet of reading passage; a total of ten pairs of booklets were tested. As implied in previous studies reporting unexpected high Type I error rate of DIMTEST (Froliech & Habing, 2003; Seo & Roussos, 2006; Stout, Froelich, & Gao, 2001), DIMTEST rejected the null for all the ten cases; A pair of booklets is not dimensionally similar. DESM used in tandem with DIMTEST resulted in six sets that were unidimensional, but the other four sets were not. Despite different underlying assumptions, several pairs were found to be unidimensional, which is common in DESM and CFA.
Networked state estimation over a shared communication medium

This paper considers state estimation for multiple plants across a shared communication network. Each linear time-invariant plant transmits information through the common network according to either a time-triggered or an event-triggered rule. Performance in terms of the communication frequency and the estimation error covariance is analytically characterized. The main result is that for the same average communication rate, event-triggered schemes may perform worse than time-triggered schemes in terms of the resulting estimation error covariance when the effect of communication network is explicitly considered.
Depression among Asian Americans: Review and Recommendations

This article presents a review of the prevalence and manifestation of depression among Asian Americans and discusses some of the existing issues in the assessment and diagnosis of depression among Asian Americans. The authors point out the diversity and increasing numbers of Asian Americans and the need to provide better mental health services for this population. While the prevalence of depression among Asian Americans is lower than that among other ethnic/racial groups, Asian Americans receive treatment for depression less often and its quality is less adequate. In addition, the previous belief that Asians somatize depression may become obsolete as more evidence appears to support that Westerners may “psychologize” depression. The cultural validity of the current DSM-IV conceptualization of depression is questioned. In the course of the review, the theme of complexity emerges: the heterogeneity of ethnic Asian American groups, the multidimensionality of depression, and the intersectionality of multiple factors among depressed Asian Americans.
Near-Field Source Localization via Symmetric Subarrays

We propose a near-field source localization algorithm with one-dimensional (1-D) search via symmetric subarrays. By dividing the uniform linear array (ULA) into two symmetric subarrays, the steering vectors of the subarrays yield the 1-D (only bearing-related) property of rotational invariance in signal subspace, which allows for the bearing estimation using the generalized far-field ESPRIT. With the estimated bearing, the range estimation of each source is consequently obtained by defining the 1-D MUSIC spectrum. This algorithm transforms the two-dimensional search involved in the parameter estimation to a 1-D search, and it does not require high-order statistics computation in contrast with the traditional near-field high-order ESPRIT algorithm
Forecasting the Long-Term Electricity Demand in Taiwan with a Hybrid FLR and BPN Approach

Precisely and accurately predict the electricity demand is an important task for the government in each country. In addition, establishing the lowest upper bound for the electricity demand also avoids unnecessary power plant investment. To this end, a hybrid fuzzy linear regression (FLR) and back propagation network (BPN) approach is proposed in this study. In the proposed methodology, multiple experts construct their own FLR equations to predict the future electricity demand from various viewpoints. Each FLR equation can be fitted by solving two equivalent nonlinear programming problems, based on the opinions of experts. In order to aggregate these fuzzy electricity demand forecasts, a two-step aggregation mechanism is used. First, fuzzy intersection is applied to aggregate the fuzzy electricity demand forecasts into a polygon-shaped fuzzy number, in order to improve the precision. Subsequently, a BPN is constructed to defuzzify the polygon-shaped fuzzy number and generate a representative/crisp value, in order to enhance the accuracy. The actual case of Taiwan is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. According to the experimental results, the proposed methodology improved the precision and accuracy of the electricity demand forecasting by 33% and 99%, respectively.
Deriving Empirical Definitions of Spatial Labor Markets: The Roles of Competing Versus Complementary Growth

If economic growth elsewhere raises the individual's earning prospects relative to those in the present location, then the individual will move. However, if the individual can exploit the economic growth elsewhere by commuting, he will not need to move to profit from the expansion. County-level data from eight states in the Midwest over the period 1969-1994 are used to show that local county population responds positively to own-county economic growth, economic growth in the adjacent county, and even economic growth two counties away. The magnitude of the effect decreases as distance from the county increases, and turns negative beyond a three county radius. Note: This paper has now been published in the Journal or Regional Science
Boneh-Shaw fingerprinting and soft decision decoding

Collusion-secure codes are used for digital fingerprinting and for traitor tracing. In both cases, the goal is to prevent unauthorised copying of copyrighted material, by tracing at least one guilty user when illegal copies appear. The most well-known collusion-secure code is due to Boneh and Shaw (1995/98). In this paper we improve the decoding algorithm by using soft output from the inner decoder, and we show that this permits using significantly shorter codewords.
Image Segmentation Based on Visual Attention Mechanism

A new approach for image segmentation based on visual attention mechanism is proposed. Motivated biologically, this approach simulates the bottom-up human visual selective attention mechanism, extracts early vision features of the image and constructs the saliency map. Multi ple image features such as intensity, color and orientation in multiple scales are extracted to get some feature maps. The phase spectra of the feature maps are analyzed in frequency spectrum domain. Then the corresponding feature saliency maps are constructed in spatial domain and theses feature saliency maps are combined to an integrated saliency map. According to the saliency map, the salient regions in an image are detected. The image is segmented by seperating the salient regions and the backgroud. This approach has been tested on natrual images. Experiment results and quantitative and qualitative analysis have been presented in this paper. The proposed results are consistent with human manual segmentation results. T his proposed approach is effective in computational speed, segmentation result and it is robust to noise .
Identification of biomarkers for radiation-induced acute intestinal symptoms (RIAISs) in cervical cancer patients by serum protein profiling

Radiation-induced acute intestinal symptoms (RIAISs) are the most frequent complication of radiotherapy that causes great pain and limits the treatment efficacy. The aim of this study was to identify serum biomarkers of RIAISs in cervical cancer patients by surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF MS). Serum samples were collected from 66 cervical cancer patients prior to pelvic radiotherapy. In our study, RIAISs occurred in 11 patients. An additional 11 patients without RIAISs were selected as controls, whose age, stage, histological type and treatment methods were matched to RIAISs patients. The 22 sera were subsequently analyzed by SELDI-TOF MS, and the resulting protein profiles were evaluated to identify biomarkers using appropriate bioinformatics tools. Comparing the protein profiles of serum samples from the RIAIS group and the control group, it was found that 22 protein peaks were significantly different (P < 0.05), and six of these peaks with mass-to-charge (m/z) ratios of 7514.9, 4603.94, 6887.41, 2769.21, 3839.72 and 4215.7 were successfully identified. A decision tree model of biomarkers was constructed based on three biomarkers (m/z 1270.88, 1503.23 and 7514.90), which separated RIAIS-affected patients from the control group with an accuracy of 81%. This study suggests that serum proteomic analysis by SELDI-TOF MS can identify cervical cancer patients that are susceptible to RIAISs prior to pelvic radiotherapy.
HERITAGE AND SURVIVAL OF SPIN-OFFS: QUALITY OF PARENTS AND PARENT- TENURE OF FOUNDERS

This paper has benefited greatly from discussions with Steven Klepper and Olav Sorenson on various occasions. We thank Scott Shane, Ammon Salter, Thomas Brenner, Guido Bunstorf, Thomas Astebro, and Rognvaldur Saemundsson for valuable comments. We are grateful for the input received from the seminar participants at Copenhagen Business School, DRUID Summer Conference 2005, the 4
FISHER'S GEOMETRIC MODEL WITH A MOVING OPTIMUM

Fisher's geometric model has been widely used to study the effects of pleiotropy and organismic complexity on phenotypic adaptation. Here, we study a version of Fisher's model in which a population adapts to a gradually moving optimum. Key parameters are the rate of environmental change, the dimensionality of phenotype space, and the patterns of mutational and selectional correlations. We focus on the distribution of adaptive substitutions, that is, the multivariate distribution of the phenotypic effects of fixed beneficial mutations. Our main results are based on an “adaptive‐walk approximation,” which is checked against individual‐based simulations. We find that (1) the distribution of adaptive substitutions is strongly affected by the ecological dynamics and largely depends on a single composite parameter γ, which scales the rate of environmental change by the “adaptive potential” of the population; (2) the distribution of adaptive substitution reflects the shape of the fitness landscape if the environment changes slowly, whereas it mirrors the distribution of new mutations if the environment changes fast; (3) in contrast to classical models of adaptation assuming a constant optimum, with a moving optimum, more complex organisms evolve via larger adaptive steps.
Sampling Strategies for MRI with Simultaneous Excitation and Acquisition

Introduction Imaging of samples with very short T2 requires data acquisition to start immediately after excitation. In the SWIFT technique [1] this is accomplished by playing out a gapped frequency-swept pulse while concurrently acquiring data during the gaps. At the same time gradients are applied permanently and stepped in a 3D radial mode. Thus SWIFT combines the short-T2 capability of the silent radial FID method [2] with the ability of swept RF pulses to cover large bandwidths under B1 restrictions [3, 4]. Within the general concept of simultaneous excitation and acquisition (SEA) introduced with the SWIFT technique, we suggest a number of improved sampling strategies, addressing reconstruction stability, SNR, and artefacts related to pulse errors [3, 5].
Bioavailability of gatifloxacin by gastric tube administration with and without concomitant enteral feeding in critically ill patients

ObjectiveSequential intravenous-to-oral antimicrobial therapy with highly bioavailable antiinfective agents such as the fluoroquinolones may improve patient safety and decrease cost of infection management. However, physiologic changes associated with critical illness may alter drug absorption, distribution, and clearance, and concomitant enteral feeding may decrease fluoroquinolone bioavailability. We evaluated the effect of critical illness and concomitant gastric tube feeding on gatifloxacin bioavailability. DesignProspective, randomized, single-dose, two-way crossover, pharmacokinetic study. SettingA tertiary, level-one, trauma center. PatientsSixteen critically ill patients (baseline Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score ≥16) tolerating enteral nutrition administered by gastric tube (NG) for ≥12 hrs were randomized to receive gatifloxacin concurrently with continuous tube feeding or with interrupted tube feeds. Patients with renal insufficiency or those receiving concomitant fluoroquinolone therapy or postpyloric feeding were excluded. Patients received gatifloxacin 400 mg either by the intravenous or NG route followed by the alternative dosage form after a 72-hr washout period. Measurements and Main ResultsSerial serum gatifloxacin concentrations (from 5 mins to 24 hrs) were analyzed using a validated high-performance liquid chromatography method. Bioavailability was determined as the ratio of NG/intravenous area under the concentration-time curve (AUC∞) measured by the trapezoidal method. Although there was no difference in the bioavailability between NG (AUC∞: 38.0 [range 20.1 to 48.5] &mgr;g·h/mL) and intravenous (AUC∞: 39.5 [range 24.1 to 63.1] &mgr;g·h/mL, p = .60) gatifloxacin (bioavailability: 98.5% [range 61.1% to 119.7%]), a wide variability was observed in three of eight patients (>30% reduction in bioavailability). Concomitant gastric tube feeding did not affect gatifloxacin bioavailability (interrupted tube feeds: 98.5% [range 61.1% to 119.7%]; continuous tube feeding: 109.0% [range 86.2% to 142.1%];p = .42). Neither a period nor differential carryover effect was observed. ConclusionsAlthough concomitant tube feeding did not affect gatifloxacin bioavailability, critical illness resulted in significant variability that may complicate the role of gatifloxacin in sequential intravenous-to-oral therapy. More research is needed to identify those patients in whom gatifloxacin bioavailability is reduced and for whom an empirical increase in gatifloxacin dose should be considered.
Learning Physiotherapy through Virtual Action

We describe a research framework for virtualizing documented physiotherapy instructions. Our approach bridges the gap between human understanding and the written manuals of instructions for physiotherapy. Techniques of Natural Language Processing involving semantic and spatial information processing are important in this approach. We have also explained the physiotherapy considerations that we employed in this research.