Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polymeric Nanoparticle-Based Photodynamic Therapy for Chronic Periodontitis in Vivo

Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) is increasingly being explored for treatment of periodontitis. Here, we investigated the effect of aPDT on human dental plaque bacteria in suspensions and biofilms in vitro using methylene blue (MB)-loaded poly(lactic-co-glycolic) (PLGA) nanoparticles (MB-NP) and red light at 660 nm. The effect of MB-NP-based aPDT was also evaluated in a clinical pilot study with 10 adult human subjects with chronic periodontitis. Dental plaque samples from human subjects were exposed to aPDT—in planktonic and biofilm phases—with MB or MB-NP (25 µg/mL) at 20 J/cm2 in vitro. Patients were treated either with ultrasonic scaling and scaling and root planing (US + SRP) or ultrasonic scaling + SRP + aPDT with MB-NP (25 µg/mL and 20 J/cm2) in a split-mouth design. In biofilms, MB-NP eliminated approximately 25% more bacteria than free MB. The clinical study demonstrated the safety of aPDT. Both groups showed similar improvements of clinical parameters one month following treatments. However, at three months ultrasonic SRP + aPDT showed a greater effect (28.82%) on gingival bleeding index (GBI) compared to ultrasonic SRP. The utilization of PLGA nanoparticles encapsulated with MB may be a promising adjunct in antimicrobial periodontal treatment.
Poor Cell Surface Expression of Human Melanocortin-4 Receptor Mutations Associated with Obesity*

The melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) plays an important role in the regulation of body weight in rodents. Mutations in the coding region of the MC4R are found more frequently in obese individuals, supporting the hypothesis that also in humans deficient melanocortin signaling may lead to obesity. Family studies that were carried out to demonstrate the relevance of single mutations for obesity were mostly inconclusive, most likely due to small sample size and complexity of the trait. In addition, the existing pharmacological data of the mutant receptors are limited in that for most mutations the effect on receptor expression level and Agouti-related protein (AgRP) pharmacology have not been studied. The aim of the present study was to gain further insight into the impact of the MC4R mutations on receptor function. Eleven missense mutations were tested for cell surface expression, affinity for α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH) and AgRP-(83–132), and the biological response to α-MSH. All mutants were poorly expressed at the cell surface, as measured by 125I-[Nle4-D-Phe7]α-MSH binding, and only a few mutants showed altered pharmacology for α-MSH and AgRP. Hemagglutinin-tagged mutant receptors were retained in the intracellular environment. These pharmacological data provide a basis to estimate the quantitative effect of MC4R mutations for the development of obesity.
The StrongARM Latch [A Circuit for All Seasons]

The StrongARM latch topology finds wide usage as a sense amplifier, a comparator, or simply a robust latch with high sensitivity. The term â€œStrongARMâ€ commemorates the use of this circuit in Digital Equipment Corporationâ€™s StrongARM microprocessor [1], but the basic structure was originally introduced by Toshibaâ€™s Kobayashi et al. [2]. The StrongARM latch has become popular for three reasons: 1) it consumes zero static power, 2) it directly produces rail-to-rail outputs, and 3) its input-referred offset arises from primarily one differential pair. In this column, we study the circuit and its properties.
FAB-MAP 3D: Topological mapping with spatial and visual appearance

This paper describes a probabilistic framework for appearance based navigation and mapping using spatial and visual appearance data. Like much recent work on appearance based navigation we adopt a bag-of-words approach in which positive or negative observations of visual words in a scene are used to discriminate between already visited and new places. In this paper we add an important extra dimension to the approach. We explicitly model the spatial distribution of visual words as a random graph in which nodes are visual words and edges are distributions over distances. Care is taken to ensure that the spatial model is able to capture the multi-modal distributions of inter-word spacing and account for sensor errors both in word detection and distances. Crucially, these inter-word distances are viewpoint invariant and collectively constitute strong place signatures and hence the impact of using both spatial and visual appearance is marked. We provide results illustrating a tremendous increase in precision-recall area compared to a state-of-the-art visual appearance only systems.
General Relativity as Geometro-Hydrodynamics ∗

In the spirit of Sakharov's 'metric elasticity' proposal [1], we draw a loose analogy between general relativity and the hydrodynamic state of a quantum gas, and examine the various conditions which underlie the transition from some candidate theory of quantum gravity to general relativity, specifically, the long wavelength, low energy (infrared) limits, the quantum to classical transition, the discrete to continuum limit, and the emergence of a macroscopic collective state from the microscopic consitituents and interactions of spacetime and fields. In the 'top-down' approach, we mention how general relativity arises as various limits are taken in some popular candidate theories of quantum gravity, such as string theory, quantum geometry via the Ashtekar variables , and simplicial quantum gravity. Our emphasis here is more on the 'bottom-up' approach, where one starts with the semiclassical theory of gravity and examines how it is modified by graviton and quantum field excitations near and above the Planck scale. We mention three aspects based on our recent findings: 1) Emergence of stochastic behavior of spacetime and matter fields depicted by an Einstein-Langevin equation. The backreaction of quantum fields on the classical background spacetime manifests as a fluctuation-dissipation relation. 2) Manifestation of stochastic behavior in effective theories below the threshold arising from excitations above. The implication for general relativity is that such Planckian effects, though exponentially suppressed, is in principle detectable at sub-Planckian energies. 3) Decoherence of correlation histories and quantum to classical transition. From Gell-Mann and Hartle's observation that the hydrodynamic variables which obey conservation laws are most readily decohered, one can, in the spirit of Wheeler, view the conserved Bianchi identity obeyed by the Einstein tensor as an indication that general relativity is a hydrodynamic theory of geometry. Many outstanding issues surrounding the transition to general relativity are of a nature similar to hydrodynamics and mesoscopic physics.
Experimental and Numerical Study on Effects of Airflow and Aqueous Ammonium Solution Temperature on Ammonia Mass Transfer Coefficient

Abstract This paper reports the results of an investigation, based on fundamental fluid dynamics and mass transfer theory, carried out to obtain a general understanding of ammonia mass transfer from an emission surface. The effects of airflow and aqueous ammonium solution temperature on ammonia mass transfer are investigated by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling and by a mechanism modeling using dissociation constant and Henry’s constant models based on the parameters measured in the experiments performed in a wind tunnel. The validated CFD model by experimental data is used to investigate the surface concentration distribution and mass transfer coefficient at different temperatures and velocities for which the Reynolds number is from 1.36 × 104 to 5.43 × 104 (based on wind tunnel length). The surface concentration increases as velocity decreases and varies greatly along the airflow direction on the emission surface. The average mass transfer coefficient increases with higher velocity and turbulence intensity. However, the mass transfer coefficient estimated by CFD simulation is consistently larger than the calculated one by the method using dissociation constant and Henry’s constant models. In addition, the results show that the liquid-air temperature difference has little impact on the simulated mass transfer coefficient by CFD modeling, whereas the mass transfer coefficient increases with higher liquid temperature using the other method under the conditions that the liquid temperature is lower than the air temperature. Although there are differences of mass transfer coefficients between these two methods, the mass transfer coefficients determined by these two methods are significantly related.
Outsourcing of Verifiable Composite Modular Exponentiations

Modular exponentiation as a basic operation is widely used in discrete-log based cryptographic protocols. Most research has been made for outsourcing exponentiation modular a prime, works for outsourcing composite modular exponentiation are rare. In this paper, we propose two new secure outsourcing protocols for verifiable composite modular exponentiation and batch composite modular exponentiations respectively. We analyze the security and complexity of the protocols. Ours are more efficient.
A Lot of Students and Their Teachers Need Support: Using a Common Framework to Observe Teacher Practices Might Help

The authors take the opportunity to respond to the commentaries (this issue of Educational Researcher) that were written regarding their article (in the March 2009 issue of Educational Researcher) summarizing the conceptual and empirical basis for using standardized approaches to observing teachers’ practices in classrooms and the potential that such approaches have for addressing some concerns about youngsters’ early literacy development. In this response, their intent is to clarify what appear to be points of misunderstanding and to add some details that could be helpful in interpreting their earlier article. They do not use citations for their assertions; the points made in this response requiring such documentation are made in the original article and are cited there, Interested readers can pursue those references.
The Performance Comparison between Selective Receiver Structure and MRRC

In this paper, an efficient selective receiver for space-time block coding (STBC) scheme is proposed. The performance comparison between the proposed structure and MRRC is analyzed. This proposed scheme separates the received STBC signals into divided groups to eliminate the interference. The interference from the neighboring signals in the same symbol can be reduced almost by half. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme leads to improved performance under Rayleigh fading channels. Especially under imperfect channel estimation, it can achieve more than 10 dB gains over the conventional MRRC scheme.
A support vector machine with a hybrid kernel and minimal Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension

We present a mechanism to train support vector machines (SVMs) with a hybrid kernel and minimal Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension. After describing the VC dimension of sets of separating hyperplanes in a high-dimensional feature space produced by a mapping related to kernels from the input space, we proposed an optimization criterion to design SVMs by minimizing the upper bound of the VC dimension. This method realizes a structural risk minimization and utilizes a flexible kernel function such that a superior generalization over test data can be obtained. In order to obtain a flexible kernel function, we develop a hybrid kernel function and a sufficient condition to be an admissible Mercer kernel based on common Mercer kernels (polynomial, radial basis function, two-layer neural network, etc.). The nonnegative combination coefficients and parameters of the hybrid kernel are determined subject to the minimal upper bound of the VC dimension of the learning machine. The use of the hybrid kernel results in a better performance than those with a single common kernel. Experimental results are discussed to illustrate the proposed method and show that the SVM with the hybrid kernel outperforms that with a single common kernel in terms of generalization power.
Illusions of Affection: Bureaucratic Ritualization's Relation to Emotional Abuse and Neglect in Nursing Homes

This research uses 40 ethnographies, biographies, and autobiographies to explore various symbolic themes expressed through everyday interaction in nursing homes. The themes involve bureaucratic concepts such as staff separation, rules, documentation, and efficiency. They also involve ideas of emotional abuse and neglect, like objectification, compassion transgressions, and spiritual negligence. Relying on structural ritualization theory, we argue ritualized symbolic practices of bureaucracy unintentionally facilitate attitudes and acts of emotional neglect in both for-profit and nonprofit nursing homes. This assists in the development of rituals facilitating the poor treatment of residents. Overall, we propose that if society is going to have humane care for nursing home residents, it must first understand the ritual dynamics that lead to employees viewing and treating those they care for with a lack of dignity.
Evaluation of acoustic word embeddings

Recently, researchers in speech recognition have started to reconsider using whole words as the basic modeling unit, instead of phonetic units. These systems rely on a function that embeds an arbitrary or fixed dimensional speech segments to a vector in a fixed-dimensional space, named acoustic word embedding. Thus, speech segments of words that sound similarly will be projected in a close area in a continuous space. This paper focuses on the evaluation of acoustic word embeddings. We propose two approaches to evaluate the intrinsic performances of acoustic word embeddings in comparison to orthographic representations in order to evaluate whether they capture discriminative phonetic information. Since French language is targeted in experiments, a particular focus is made on homophone words.
Terrestrial Radar Interferometric Measurement of Hillslope Deformation and Atmospheric Disturbances in the Illgraben Debris-Flow Catchment, Switzerland

We describe a method for rapid identification and precise quantification of slope deformation using a portable radar interferometer. A rockslide with creep-like behavior was identified in the rugged and inaccessible headwaters of the Illgraben debris-flow catchment, located in the Central Swiss Alps. The estimated volume of the moving rock mass was approximately 0.5 ×106 m3 with a maximum daily (3-D) displacement rate of 3 mm. Fast scene acquisition in the order of 6 s/scene led to uniquely precise mapping of spatial and temporal variability of atmospheric phase delay. Observations led to a simple qualitative model for prediction of atmospheric disturbances using a simple model for solar radiation, which can be used for advanced campaign planning for short observation periods (hours to days).
Compressive sensing based multiuser detection for asynchronous machine-to-machine systems

This paper investigates multiuser detection for an uplink asynchronous machine-to-machine system with massive number of machine type communication devices (MTCDs). The goal is to detect the device activity, time delay, channel gain and transmission data for a grant-free three-phase access scheme where each MTCD first transmits its pilot sequence, then remains silent for a period of time, and finally transmits the data. By exploiting the sparsity of transmitted signals, a compressive sensing and successive interference cancellation based algorithm is proposed to solve the joint activity, delay and channel detection problem. With the estimated results, two linear receivers for data detection are provided. Simulation results verify the superiority of the proposed algorithm.
On the behaviour of a rigid Casimir cavity in a gravitational field

A detailed investigation is presented of the energy-momentum tensor approach to the evaluation of the force acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational field. Such a force turns out to have opposite direction with respect to the gravitational acceleration. The order of magnitude for a multi-layer cavity configuration is derived and experimental feasibility is discussed, taking into account current technological resources.
Neurokinin-1 receptor antagonists for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND The addition of neurokinin-1 receptor (NK1R) antagonists to antiemetic regimens has substantially reduced chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting (CINV). We sought to systematically review the overall impact of NK1R antagonists on CINV prevention. METHODS We systematically searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CENTRAL databases, and meeting proceedings for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated NK1R antagonists plus standard antiemetic therapy for CINV prevention. Complete response (CR) to therapy was defined as the absence of emesis and the absence of rescue therapy. The endpoints were defined as CR in the overall phase (during the first 120 hours of chemotherapy), CR in the acute phase (first 24 hours), and the delayed phase (24-120 hours) after chemotherapy, nausea, and toxicity. Subgroup analyses evaluated the type of NK1R antagonist used, the emetogenic potential of the chemotherapy regimen, and prolonged use of 5-HT3 (serotonin) receptor antagonists, a class of standard antiemetic agents. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using a random-effects model. Statistical tests for heterogeneity were one-sided; statistical tests for effect estimates and publication bias were two-sided. RESULTS Seventeen trials (8740 patients) were included in this analysis. NK1R antagonists increased the CR rate in the overall phase from 54% to 72% (OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.46 to 0.57, P < .001). CR and nausea were improved in all phases and subgroups. The expected side effects from NK1R antagonists did not statistically significantly differ from previous reports; however, this analysis suggests that the incidence of severe infection increased from 2% to 6% in the NK1R antagonist group (three RCTs with a total of 1480 patients; OR = 3.10; 95% CI = 1.69 to 5.67, P < .001). CONCLUSIONS NK1R antagonists increased CINV control in the acute, delayed, and overall phases. They are effective for both moderately and highly emetogenic chemotherapy regimens. Their use might be associated with increased infection rates; however, additional appraisal of specific data from RCTs is needed.
MINI: A Heuristic Approach for Logic Minimization

MINI is a heuristic logic minimization technique for many-variable problems. It accepts as input a Boolean logic specification expressed as an input-output table, thus avoiding a long list of minterms. It seeks a minimal implicant solution, without generating all prime implicants, which can be converted to prime implicants if desired. New and effective subprocesses, such as expanding, reshaping, and removing redundancy from cubes, are iterated until there is no further reduction in the solution. The process is general in that it can minimize both conventional logic and logic functions of multi-valued variables.
Bridging in social networks: Who are the people in structural holes and why are they there?

The current paper examines the psychological characteristics of people who link tightly connected cliques to each other with friendship ties. Based on the work of sociologist Georg Simmel, I argue that these people are characterized by two separate motivations, which I call entrepreneurial and relationship-building motivations. Using a complete network from a heterogeneous class of Jewish-, Arab-, and Druze-Israelis, I provide the first empirical evidence of their existence. Gould and Fernandez's brokerage roles were calculated for each participant, and triad proportions from each brokerage type were correlated with well-established psychological questionnaires. Results indicate the existence of two psychologically distinct network orientations, easily interpretable in terms of Simmel's analysis of processes in triads.
A Method of LVQ Network to Detect Vehicle Based on Morphology

In this paper, the main research is to recognize and classify vehicle on the traffic road in the hi-resolution satellite image. Because the satellite image contains the vehicle characters pixel set and the alike vehicle characters pixel set. So, there are a series of pattern recognition methods from image preprocessing to the LVQ Artificial Neural Network works. The application of Morphology is the main preprocessing technology in this paper. After image is morphologically preprocessed, it makes the pixel matrix more clear and differentiable, and is good for the next step, which is to calculate the preprocessed image texture. According to the gray level and the texture, a vector is built as input of LVQ Artificial Neural Network system; the trained LVQ Artificial Neural Network will give a satisfying outcome. Finally, with these processing, the result images are given. The white vehicle and the black vehicle are obvious. Although there are some errors in the results, by contrast with the origin images; the results still give a good effort of this method.
Efficient Algorithms for Topology Control Problem with Routing Cost Constraints in Wireless Networks

Topology control is one vital factor to a wireless network's efficiency. A Connected Dominating Set (CDS) can be a useful basis of a backbone topology construction. In this paper, a special CDS, named α Minimum routing Cost CDS (α-MOC-CDS), will be studied to improve the performance of CDS based broadcasting and routing. In this paper, we prove that construction of a minimum α-MOC-CDS is NP-hard in a general graph and we propose a heuristic algorithm for construction of α-MOC-CDS.
Emerging Qualities of Effective Teaching: Embracing New Literacies

Abstract In response to calls for changes in teaching and teacher education, the authors propose a framework for change called the Emerging Qualities of Effective Teaching Continuum. The continuum integrates critical components that identify the movement of education from a teacher-centered focus toward a focus in which teacher and student work together to shape the learning process in a technologically enhanced world. This new focus requires both students and teachers to embrace new literacies that have been reframed for the demands of a global context.
Antimicrobial Activity of Pantothenol against Staphylococci Possessing a Prokaryotic Type II Pantothenate Kinase

Pantothenol is a provitamin of pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) that is widely used in healthcare and cosmetic products. This analog of pantothenate has been shown to markedly inhibit the phosphorylation activity of the prokaryotic type II pantothenate kinase of Staphylococcus aureus, which catalyzes the first step of the coenzyme A biosynthetic pathway. Since type II enzymes are found exclusively in staphylococci, pantothenol suppresses the growth of S. aureus, S. epidermidis, and S. saprophyticus, which inhabit the skin of humans. Therefore, the addition of this provitamin to ointment and skincare products may be highly effective in preventing infections by opportunistic pathogens.
Software regression as change of input partitioning

It has been known for more than 20 years. If the subdomains are not homogeneous, partition testing strategies, such as branch or statement testing, do neither perform significantly better than random input generation nor do they inspire confidence when a test suite succeeds. Yet, measuring the adequacy of test suites in terms of code coverage is still considered a common practice. The main target of our research is to develop strategies for the automatic evolution of a test suite that does inspire confidence. When the program is changed, test cases shall be augmented that witness changed output for the same input (test suite augmentation). If two test cases witness the same partition, one is to be discarded (test suite reduction).