Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mechanism of microglia neuroprotection: Involvement of P2X7, TNFα, and valproic acid

Recently, we have demonstrated that ramified microglia are neuroprotective in N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (NMDA)‐induced excitotoxicity in organotypic hippocampal slice cultures (OHSCs). The present study aimed to elucidate the underlying neuron‐glia communication mechanism. It is shown here that pretreatment of OHSC with high concentrations of adenosine 5′‐triphosphate (ATP) reduced NMDA‐induced neuronal death only in presence of microglia. Specific agonists and antagonists identified the P2X7 receptor as neuroprotective receptor which was confirmed by absence of ATP‐dependent neuroprotection in P2X7‐deficient OHSC. Microglia replenished chimeric OHSC consisting of wild‐type tissue replenished with P2X7‐deficient microglia confirmed the involvement of microglial P2X7 receptor in neuroprotection. Stimulation of P2X7 in primary microglia induced tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα) release and blocking TNFα by a neutralizing antibody in OHSC abolished neuroprotection by ATP. OHSC from TNFα‐deficient mice show increased exicitoxicity and activation of P2X7 did not rescue neuronal survival in the absence of TNFα. The neuroprotective effect of valproic acid (VPA) was strictly dependent on the presence of microglia and was mediated by upregulation of P2X7 in the cells. The present study demonstrates that microglia‐mediated neuroprotection depends on ATP‐activated purine receptor P2X7 and induction of TNFα release. This neuroprotective pathway was strengthened by VPA elucidating a novel mechanism for the neuroprotective function of VPA. GLIA 2016;64:76–89
Adjacent Price Anchoring and Consumer’s Willingness to Pay: A Bayesian Approach

Considerable research on consumers' use of psychological reference points exists in pricing literature. Researchers examining brand choice have reasoned that reference point is based on past prices of the brand. We argue that consumers’ reference prices is motivated by the adjacent price of the product at point of display rather than any other reference prices in the context. This research studies the effect of adjacent price on consumers’ willingness to pay and purchase intention. This research considers consumer level heterogeneity since price sensitivity and consumers’ willingness to pay vary among individual. Hierarchical Bayes methodology is used to incorporate heterogeneity. This study shows significant difference in consumers’ willingness to pay when a medium priced brand is placed adjacent to a high priced brand as against adjacent to a moderately priced brand.
Visual Tracker Using Sequential Bayesian Learning: Discriminative, Generative, and Hybrid

This paper presents a novel solution to track a visual object under changes in illumination, viewpoint, pose, scale, and occlusion. Under the framework of sequential Bayesian learning, we first develop a discriminative model-based tracker with a fast relevance vector machine algorithm, and then, a generative model-based tracker with a novel sequential Gaussian mixture model algorithm. Finally, we present a three-level hierarchy to investigate different schemes to combine the discriminative and generative models for tracking. The presented hierarchical model combination contains the learner combination (at level one), classifier combination (at level two), and decision combination (at level three). The experimental results with quantitative comparisons performed on many realistic video sequences show that the proposed adaptive combination of discriminative and generative models achieves the best overall performance. Qualitative comparison with some state-of-the-art methods demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of our method in handling various challenges during tracking.
High step-up high efficiency dc-dc converter for module-integrated photovoltaic applications

A novel high step-up high efficiency DC-DC converter for photovoltaic energy conversion is presented in this paper. The proposed converter employs a coupled inductor and two voltage multiplier cells to achieve high step-up voltage gain. The operating principle and the steady-state analyses of voltage gain are described in detail. A 200 W prototype with 20-30 V input and 400 V output voltages is built to verify the analysis. The maximum efficiency of the prototype is nearly 97.7% and the efficiency is higher than 97% over a wide load range.
Comparison of blood volume pulse and skin conductance responses to mental and affective stimuli at different anatomical sites

Measurements of blood volume pulse (BVP) and skin conductance are commonly used as indications of psychological arousal in affective computing and human–machine interfaces. To date, palmar surfaces remain the primary site for these measurements. Placement of sensors on palmar surfaces, however, is undesirable when recordings are fraught with motion and pressure artifacts. These artifacts are frequent when the human participant has involuntary movements as in hyperkinetic cerebral palsy. This motivates the use of alternative measurement sites. The present study examined the correlation between measurements of blood volume pulse and skin conductance obtained from three different sites on the body (fingers, toes and ear for BVP; fingers, toes and arch of the foot for skin conductance) in response to cognitive and affective stimuli. The results of this pilot study indicated significant inter-site correlation among signal features derived from different sites, with the exception of BVP amplitude, the number of electrodermal reactions and the slope of the electrodermal activity response. We attribute these differences in part to inter-site discrepancies in local skin conditions, such as skin temperature. Despite these differences, significant changes from baseline were present in the responses to the cognitive and affective stimuli at non-palmar sites, suggesting that these sites may provide viable signal measurements for use in affective computing and human–machine interface applications.
Towards Ontology-Based Question Answering in Vague Domains

The rapid growth of the Semantic Web in the last years has led to the emergence of Ontology-Based Question Answering systems, namely systems that exploit the ontological structure of data in order to interpret and answer natural language questions. In this paper, we are interested in question answering scenarios where both semantic data and user questions can be characterized by vagueness and we propose a novel framework that is able to handle this vagueness by means of fuzzy ontologies.
Fast Quadtree Structure Decision for HEVC Intra Coding Using Histogram Statistics

The final draft of the latest video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), was approved in January 2013. The coding efficiency of HEVC surpasses its predecessor, H.264/MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), by using only half of the bitrate to encode the same sequence with similar quality. However, the complexity of HEVC is sharply increased compared to H.264/AVC. In this paper, a method is proposed to decrease the complexity of intra coding in HEVC. Early pruning and an early splitting strategy are applied to the quadtree structure of coding tree units (CTU) and residual quadtree (RQT). According to our experiment, when our method is applied to sequences from Class A to Class E, the coding time is decreased by 44% at the cost of a 1.08% Bjontegaard delta rate (BD-rate) increase on average.
Successful selective nonoperative management of abdominal gunshot wounds despite low penetrating trauma volumes.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether selective nonoperative management of abdominal gunshot wounds (AGSW) is safe in trauma centers with a low volume of penetrating trauma. DESIGN Retrospective study. SETTING Academic level 1 trauma center with approximately 10% penetrating trauma. PATIENTS All patients with anterior and posterior AGSW (January 1, 1999, through December 31, 2009), excluding tangential injuries, transfers, and deaths in the emergency department. Patients with hemodynamic instability or peritonitis received an urgent laparotomy. The remaining patients had selective nonoperative management. A delayed laparotomy was offered for worsening symptoms or worrisome computed tomography findings. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Hospital stay, complications, and mortality. RESULTS Of 125 AGSW patients, 38 (30%) were initially managed by selective nonoperative management (25 of 99 anterior and 13 of 26 posterior AGSW patients). Seven selective nonoperative management patients received delayed laparotomy as late as 11 hours after admission. At the end, 30 of the 125 patients (24%) were successfully managed without an operation (20 of 99 anterior and 10 of 26 posterior AGSW patients). There were no predictors of delayed laparotomy and no complications or mortality attributed to it. Ten patients (8%) had a nontherapeutic laparotomy, and 3 of them developed complications. CONCLUSIONS Selective nonoperative management of AGSW is feasible and safe in trauma centers with low penetrating trauma volumes. Nearly 1 in 4 AGSW patients does not need a laparotomy, and nontherapeutic laparotomies are associated with complications. The volume of AGSW per se should not be an excuse for routine laparotomies. These data become particularly important because penetrating trauma volumes are decreasing around the country.
Relative roles of surface temperature and climate forcing patterns in the inconstancy of radiative feedbacks

Radiative feedbacks robustly vary over time in transient warming simulations. Published studies offer two explanations: (i) evolving patterns of ocean heat uptake (OHU) or radiative forcing give rise to OHU or forcing “efficacies” and (ii) evolving patterns of surface temperature change. This study seeks to determine whether these explanations are indeed distinct. Using an idealized framework of an aquaplanet atmosphere‐only model, we show that radiative feedbacks depend on the pattern of climate forcing. Yet the same feedbacks arise when the temperature pattern induced by that climate forcing is prescribed in the absence of any forcing. These findings suggest the perspective that feedbacks are influenced by efficacies of forcing and OHU is equivalent to the perspective that feedbacks are dependent on the temperature patterns induced by those forcings. Prescribed surface temperature simulations are thus valuable for studying the temporal evolution of radiative feedbacks.
Markov-Modulated Markov Chains and the Covarion Process of Molecular Evolution

The covarion (or site specific rate variation, SSRV) process of biological sequence evolution is a process by which the evolutionary rate of a nucleotide/amino acid/codon position can change in time. In this paper, we introduce time-continuous, space-discrete, Markov-modulated Markov chains as a model for representing SSRV processes, generalizing existing theory to any model of rate change. We propose a fast algorithm for diagonalizing the generator matrix of relevant Markov-modulated Markov processes. This algorithm makes phylogeny likelihood calculation tractable even for a large number of rate classes and a large number of states, so that SSRV models become applicable to amino acid or codon sequence datasets. Using this algorithm, we investigate the accuracy of the discrete approximation to the Gamma distribution of evolutionary rates, widely used in molecular phylogeny. We show that a relatively large number of classes is required to achieve accurate approximation of the exact likelihood when the number of analyzed sequences exceeds 20, both under the SSRV and among site rate variation (ASRV) models.
Digitalization in supply chain management and logistics

This volume contains research contributions by an international group of authors addressing innovative and technology-based approaches for logistics and supply chains. They present business models and investment options for enhanced strategic decision making as well as recent approaches for supply chain risk management. This volume, edited by Wolfgang Kersten, Thorsten Blecker and Christian Ringle, provides valuable insights into the digitalization of Supply Chain Management and Logistics with regard to: Innovation and Technology Management, Advanced Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, Risk and Security Management.
Preparatory data analysis for the reconstruction of real-time MRI data.

Real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) poses unique challenges related to the speed of data acquisition and to the degree of undersampling necessary to achieve this speed. This Master's thesis introduces and evaluates two pre-processing approaches for these problems: Coil compression to reduce the data volume and a channel selection algorithm to reduce streak artifacts which arise as a consequence of undersampling. Both approaches are tested on real data covering anatomical imaging of the head and of the heart.
The effect of solvent on the etching of ITO electrode

In this study, the effect of solvents, HCl and aqua regia at room temperature, on the etching behavior of ITO film was investigated. A higher etching rate was obtained in aqua regia than in HCl. However, via XPS analysis, it was found that there was more surface residual byproduct in aqua regia etchant than in HCl. The surface concentration (ratio of chlorine to indium) was 7.2 and 0.38 in aqua regia and HCl, respectively. It was also observed that the surface residual byproduct reduced the carrier mobility due to the ionized impurity scattering. As seen in the ITO pattern after the etching process, a serious undercut occurred with the aqua regia due to the fast etching rate. Thus, the 9 M HCl solution is more suitable as an etchant for ITO/OLED application. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The Effective Mass, Band Gap, Device Characteristics, and Performance Considerations for AGNR and AGNRFETs

In this paper, we introduce our work on material characteristics, device characteristics, and performance considerations for armchair graphene nanoribbons (AGNRs) and AGNR field-effect transistors (AGNRFETs). First, we show that the effective-mass-versus-band-gap relationship can be described by a group of lines. By simply tight-binding a model considering only the first-nearest neighbor interaction, the effective-mass-versus-band-gap relationship for AGNRs can be described by two lines crossing zero, which is further separated into three lines if considering third-nearest neighbor interaction and edge bond relaxation. Second, we show the quantum transport calculations for AGNRFETs. We found that a smaller/larger off-state leakage current in the <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$I_{D}$</tex></formula>– <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$V_{G}$</tex></formula> curve may be always accompanied with a smaller/larger on-current in the <formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$I_{D}$</tex> </formula>–<formula formulatype="inline"><tex Notation="TeX">$V_{D}$</tex></formula> curve, which is then explained by full complex band structure characteristics. Finally, we show that, to achieve a certain on-current–off-current ratio for 10-nm AGNRFETs, smooth edges are needed for AGNRs with a width of about 3 nm at most.
Spectroscopic Studies and Applications of the Reactions of Some Anti-Diabetic and Anti-Hypertensive Drugs with Rose Bengal

Simple, rapid and sensitive spectrophotometric methods were developed and validated for the microdetermination of terazosin HCl, doxazosin mesylate and pioglitazone HCl drugs in pure and pharmaceutical dosage forms. These methods are based on ion-pair formation reaction between these drugs and a chromogenic reagent Rose Bengal (RBeng). These reactions were studied under various conditions and the optimum parameters were selected. The spectrophotometric microdeterminations have been done at λmax=570 nm for terazosin HCl and pioglitazone HCl and at λmax=575 nm for doxazosin mesylate. Under proper conditions the suggested procedures were successfully applied for microdetermination of these drugs in pure and in pharmaceutical dosage forms. The values of SD, RSD, recovery %, LOD, LOQ and Sandell sensitivity refer to the high accuracy and precession of the applied procedures. The results obtained were compared with the data obtained by the official methods, referring to confidence and agreement with rose bengal procedure results. The solid drugs-reagent ion-pairs were prepared, separated and their structures were investigated using elemental analysis, FT-IR, 1H-NMR and thermal analyses and the results confirm the structures proposed by the stoichoimetric ratio in the solution work. The biological activities of the drugs and their solid ion-pairs against some types of (G-) and (G+) bacteria and fungai were studied and compared with each other. It is found that terazosin-RBeng and pioglitazone-RBeng reaction products have antibacterial effect higher than the parent drugs, but doxazosin-RBeng reaction product has almost the same antibacterial effect of the parent drug.
Interests and Limitations of Technology Scaling for Subthreshold Logic

Subthreshold logic is an efficient technique to achieve ultralow energy per operation for low-to-medium throughput applications. In this paper, the interests and limitations of technology scaling for subthreshold logic are investigated from 0.25 mum to 32 nm nodes. Scaling to 90/65 nm nodes is shown to be highly desirable for medium-throughput applications (1-10 MHz) due to great dynamic energy reduction. However, this interest is limited at 45/32 nm nodes by high static energy due to degraded subthreshold swing and delay variability. Moreover, for low-throughput applications (10-100 kHz), this limitation is worsened by the increase of minimum supply voltage to achieve sufficient functional yield, which results in bad energy efficiency starting at 0.13 mum node. Upsizing the channel length is proposed as a straightforward circuit-level technique to efficiently mitigate these effects. At 32 nm node, this technique reduces energy per operation by 60% at medium throughput and by two orders of magnitude at low throughput.
Development of Black Soldier Fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) Larvae Fed Dairy Manure

Abstract Black soldier flies, Hermetia illucens L. , are a common colonizer of animal wastes. However, all published development data for this species are from studies using artificial diets. This study represents the first examining black soldier fly development on animal wastes. Additionally, this study examined the ability of black soldier fly larvae to reduce dry matter and associated nutrients in manure. Black soldier fly larvae were fed four rates of dairy manure to determine their effects on larval and adult life history traits. Feed rate affected larval and adult development. Those fed less ration daily weighed less than those fed a greater ration. Additionally, larvae provided the least amount of dairy manure took longer to develop to the prepupal stage; however, they needed less time to reach the adult stage. Adults resulting from larvae provided 27 g dairy manure/d lived 3–4 d less than those fed 70 g dairy manure. Percentage survivorship to the prepupal or adult stages did not differ across treatments. Larvae fed 27 g dairy manure daily reduced manure dry matter mass by 58%, whereas those fed 70 g daily reduced dry matter 33%. Black soldier fly larvae were able to reduce available P by 61–70% and N by 30–50% across treatments. Based on results from this study, the black soldier fly could be used to reduce wastes and associated nutrients in confined bovine facilities.
Very low-density lipoprotein stimulates the expression of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 in mesangial cells.

BACKGROUND Elevated plasma levels of very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) are associated with an increased risk for focal glomerulosclerosis, which is analogous to atherosclerosis. One feature of focal glomerulosclerosis is the presence of foam cells derived from the infiltration of circulating monocytes. Mesangial cells are able to express monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). In this study, the ability of VLDL to stimulate MCP-1 expression in mesangial cells and consequent monocyte adhesion was investigated. METHODS For adhesion studies, mesangial cells isolated from Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with VLDL for six hours, followed by a one-hour incubation with Tamm-Horsfall protein-1 (THP-1) cells. Mesangial MCP-1 mRNA levels were determined by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. MCP-1 protein was determined by solid-phase immunoassay. RESULTS VLDL (100 to 300 microg/mL) significantly enhanced the expression and secretion of MCP-1 (54 to 285 ng/well) in mesangial cells. Such an effect was accompanied by the increased adhesion of monocytes to mesangial cells and later the formation of foam cells from monocytes after ingesting excessive amounts of VLDL lipids. VLDL-induced MCP-1 expression and monocyte adhesion were blocked by a protein kinase C inhibitor (staurosporine), as well as a calcium channel blocker (diltiazem). CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrate that elevated levels of VLDL, through the action of MCP-1, may contribute to the infiltration of monocytes into the mesangium and subsequent foam cell formation. Hence, VLDLs may play a role in the pathogenesis of focal glomerulosclerosis. One of the mechanisms of such effect may be mediated through the calcium-dependent protein kinase C pathway.
Diagnostic Problems of Trophoblastic Disease in Women Aged 50 or More

Three cases of trophoblastic disease in women over the age of 50 are reported. The lesions were all benign. The incidence of benign and malignant trophoblastic disease in women over 50 is considered and reported cases in the world literature are reviewed. The diagnostic difficulties are discussed. Despite the rarity of this condition in the United Kingdom, a request is made for the more frequent consideration of this disease in the older woman. The increased incidence of malignancy in this age group makes early diagnosis an important factor in the success of treatment.
The Branding Effect of Sponsored Search Advertising: Value-per-Click vs. Value-per-Impression

Advertising efforts mainly aim to build broader brand image and increase sales. In the online context, widely-successful sponsored search advertising (SSA), which predominantly employs performance-based schemes (e.g., pay-per-click), has been largely treated as a direct-selling mechanism. Recent empirical studies, however, have revealed the significant branding effect in SSA. Research investigating the branding effect and its interplay with the well-studied direct response effect is urgently called for. This paper is among the first attempts to formalize both types of advertising effects and the related budget decisions. One key element of our optimal control-based formulation is extending classical advertising response functions to capture the direct response and branding effects. Based on this formulation, we have derived the closed-form optimal budget policy. Both theoretical analyses and computational experiments have been performed. Our analytical results indicate that the advertiser's optimal budget decisions can be substantially different when the branding effect is explicitly considered. We also reveal experimentally that the optimal budgets for the advertisers with varying degrees of emphasis on branding can be substantially different. The reported work has important managerial implications. For online advertisers intending to promote (either exclusively or in combination with direct response) brand awareness and image, our work provides an analytical framework to facilitate their budgeting decisions and provide a closed-form solution. For search service providers such as Google, the reported work points to interesting opportunities in developing new business models and refining sponsored search market designs.