Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Occlusive Dressings on the Energy Metabolism of Severely Burned Children

Metabolic studies were performed on 23 burned children. They were studied sequentially until their burn wounds were healed. A metabolic study lasted 20 minutes, during which continuous measurements were made of O2 consumption and CO2 production rates, rectal temperature, average surface temperatures (dressings, skin and wound), body heat content, and rate of body weight loss using a bed scale. These measurements allowed solution of the heat balance equation for each study period. After 24 hours in a constant temperature room kept at 28 C and 40% relative humidity, metabolic studies were initiated when blood was drawn for catecholamine assay, followed by a metabolic analyses, after which dressings were removed and fresh silvadene applied to the wounds. No dressings were applied. Metabolic analyses were repeated after two and four hours of exposure, after which blood for catecholamine analysis was drawn and the study terminated. Without dressings in a thermally neutral environment, burn patients demonstrated an increased rate of heat loss of 27 watts/square meter body surface area (W/M2), compared with the predicted normal. The major portion of this increment is by evaporation, which increased 300%. The rate of heat production equals heat loss, and is increased 50% above the predicted normal. Occlusive dressings result in a 15 W/M2 decrease in the rate of heat loss, about evenly divided between evaporative and dry routes, with a corresponding 15 W/M2 decrease in the rate of heat production. Plasma catecholamine levels of bandaged burn patients are not significantly different from values for healed burn patients, and do not correlate with the rate of heat production. The increased heat production of burn patients is a response to an increased rate of heat loss, not vice versa. The use of occlusive dressings substantially reduces the energy requirements to manageable levels, even in patients with very large burns.
Effectiveness of Long-term Acute Care Hospitalization in Elderly Patients With Chronic Critical Illness

Background:For patients recovering from severe acute illness, admission to a long-term acute care hospital (LTAC) is an increasingly common alternative to continued management in an intensive care unit (ICU). Objective:To examine the effectiveness of LTAC transfer in patients with chronic critical illness. Research Design:Retrospective cohort study in United States hospitals from 2002 to 2006. Subjects:Medicare beneficiaries with chronic critical illness, defined as mechanical ventilation and at least 14 days of intensive care. Measures:Survival, costs, and hospital readmissions. We used multivariate analyses and instrumental variables to account for differences in patient characteristics, the timing of LTAC transfer, and selection bias. Results:A total of 234,799 patients met our definition of chronic critical illness. Of these, 48,416 (20.6%) were transferred to an LTAC. In the instrumental variable analysis, patients transferred to an LTAC experienced similar survival compared with patients who remained in an ICU [adjusted hazard ratio=0.99; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.96 to 1.01; P=0.27). Total hospital-related costs in the 180 days after admission were lower among patients transferred to LTACs (adjusted cost difference=−$13,422; 95% CI, −26,662 to −223, P=0.046). This difference was attributable to a reduction in skilled nursing facility admissions (adjusted admission rate difference=−0.591; 95% CI, −0.728 to −0.454; P<0.001). Total Medicare payments were higher (adjusted cost difference=$15,592; 95% CI, 6343 to 24,842; P=0.001). Conclusions:Patients with chronic critical illness transferred to LTACs experience similar survival compared with patients who remain in ICUs, incur fewer health care costs driven by a reduction in postacute care utilization, however, invoke higher overall Medicare payments.
Use of viscodissection and silicone oil in vitrectomy for severe diabetic retinopathy

Improvement in surgical techniques has led to improved anatomic and functional success rates following surgery for severe complications of proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). We compared the anatomic and functional outcomes of surgery in a non-randomized, consecutive case series of patients with severe PDR. We found that viscodissection using Healon® provides outcomes comparable to conventional pick and scissors dissection. We also found that adjunctive use of silicone oil can salvage selected cases with particularly severe manifestations of PDR (e.g., the fibrinoid syndrome). With proper selection of patients and techniques, the anatomic success rate can exceed 80% even in the most severe cases. The goal of this paper is to show the applicability of using viscodissection and silicone oil infusion during vitrectomy in eyes with severe PDR.
Portable Weak Magnetic Signal Detection System Based on Lock-in Amplifier

The accurate detection of the weak magnetic signal has important applications in many fields, and lock-in amplifiers are often used in them. However, commercial lockin amplifiers are expensive and bulky, and are not suitable for use in field environments such as the magnetic exploration. In this paper, a weak magnetic signal detection system is designed based on a portable lock-in amplifier, which is used to solve the problem. The system takes the portable lock-in amplifier circuit as its core, and contains a fluxgate sensor. Combined with A/D acquisition and LabVIEW, the system achieves the real-time display of measurement data on the laptop. Experimental results show that the correlation coefficient of input and output of the system is up to 0.998 under the noise environment. The system achieves the effective measurement of the amplitude of the weak alternating magnetic field signal when the interference magnetic fields are complex. The detection system has the characteristics of high resolution, good linearity and portability, and has good potential for field applications.
Playing RoboSoccer with Machine Learning: A learning and teaching experience based on STEM

The emergence of the Internet and the popularity of mobile devices is transforming education. The new student generations pose challenges to the academic models of how to acquire and share knowledge, interact with colleagues and especially how to be evaluated. An crucial challenge for programming courses is to propose projects that create opportunities for students to develop both technical and soft skills necessary in their future professional careers. The objective of this work is to share the experience of teaching and learning through a project based on STEM education in an Artificial Intelligence course in a technical university program. An approach based on active learning was used to develop the programming project. In giving teams of students a problem to solve, the project promoted the principles of active learning. Once aware of the challenge ahead and what skills they would need, students were offered workshops to prepare them with the skills necessary to accomplish the final task. Students were given the main materials required to complete the project, namely a small programmable robot powered by a smartphone. The evaluation was based on rubrics and oriented towards a functional product. Each team developed a robot prototype that could to participate in match of RoboSoccer and made a technical report about the project. The first results showed that the students were working in an integral way, professional competences related to teamwork, research, creativity, communication and leadership, mainly. Also, the teams were able to develop a robot prototype that could play a RoboSoccer match.
Corticofugal Modulation of Time-Domain Processing of Biosonar Information in Bats

The Jamaican mustached bat has delay-tuned neurons in the inferior colliculus, medial geniculate body, and auditory cortex. The responses of these neurons to an echo are facilitated by a biosonar pulse emitted by the bat when the echo returns with a particular delay from a target located at a particular distance. Electrical stimulation of cortical delay-tuned neurons increases the delay-tuned responses of collicular neurons tuned to the same echo delay as the cortical neurons and decreases those of collicular neurons tuned to different echo delays. Cortical neurons improve information processing in the inferior colliculus by way of the corticocollicular projection.
Predicting the Temperature and Flow Distribution in a Direct Oil-Cooled Electrical Machine With Segmented Stator

This paper presents a computationally efficient thermo-fluid model to predict the temperature and flow distribution in an oil-cooled electrical machine with a segmented stator. The Yokeless and Segmented Armature axial flux machine was used as a case study in which a numerical model was set up and validated to within 6% of experimental results. The model was adapted to predict the temperature distribution of the segmented stator of a machine, identifying the hotspot temperatures and their location. Changes to the flow geometry on the stator temperature distribution were investigated. It was shown how by carefully controlling the flow distribution in the stator, the temperature distribution is improved and the hot spot temperature is reduced by 13 K. This benefits the machine by doubling the insulation lifetime or by increasing the current density by approximately 7%.
Simulation of stormwater quality in an urban catchment using the Stormwater Management Model (SWMM)

of master's thesis Author Saara Lehtinen Title of thesis Simulation of stormwater quality in an urban catchment using the Stormwater Management Model (SWMM) Department Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Professorship Water Resources Engineering Code of professorship Yhd-12 Thesis supervisor Professor Harri Koivusalo Thesis advisor M.Sc. (Tech.) Gerald Krebs Date 10.11. 2014 Number of pages 87 + 5 Language English
Development of novel ultrasound techniques for imaging and elastography : from simulation to real-time implementation

Les techniques ultrasonores offrent de nombreux avantages, a la fois par leur utilisation facile et la securite du patient. De plus, la recherche, visant a etendre les possibles champs d’applications, est particulierement active. Cependant, l’acces a des equipements adaptes et supportant des logiciels est conditio sine qua non pour l’experimentation de nouvelles techniques. Ce projet de these traite des problematiques de traitement du signal et d'image dans un contexte d'imagerie medicale et vise a repondre a deux objectifs scientifiques: le premier consiste a contribuer au developpement d'une puissante plateforme de recherche (ULA-OP) alors que le second a pour objectif d'introduire et de valider, grâce a cette plateforme, des methodes de traitement non-standard qui ne pourraient pas etre evaluees avec des equipements medicaux commerciaux. ULA-OP, un equipement recherche qui donne acces aux developpeurs a une grande liberte de controle et de configuration l’ensemble des parties actives du systeme, de la transmission aux traitements des signaux echographiques. Il offre aussi la possibilite d’acceder aux signaux bruts a n’importe quel niveau de la chaine de reception. Durant cette these, les capacites du systeme ont ete ameliorees en implementant des outils logiciels comme des simulateurs de champ acoustique (propagation lineaire et non-lineaire), et en developpant des programmes de generation de signaux post-echographique. L’ULA-OP a ete crucial pour developper et tester differentes techniques non-standard telles qu’un schema adaptatif de formation de voie et une methode d’imagerie Doppler couleur/vecteur, qui seront detailles dans le manuscrit. En particulier, une nouvelle methode a ete developpee pour des applications d’elastographie quasi-statique. Cette methode, basee sur un algorithme d’estimation du mouvement dans le domaine frequentiel et combinee a une methode d’imagerie haute frequence, a permis d’ameliorer la qualite des elastogrammes obtenus. Cette nouvelle methode a d’abord ete testee in-vitro par des traitements hors ligne des signaux recus et pour ensuite etre implementee en temps reel sur le ULA-OP. Les resultats obtenus montrent que cette technique est performante et que les elastogrammes presentent une qualite superieure comparee a ceux obtenues avec les methodes connues de la litterature
Exploiting lexical resources aud linguistic tools in cross-language information retrieval: the EuroSearch approach

Cross-language Information Retrieval (CLIR) is a very new research area in which methodologies and tools developed for Natural Language Processing (NLP) are being integrated with techniques and results coming from the Information Retrieval (IR) field. The EuroSearch project provides an excellent testbed for the application and testing of different kinds of cross-language retrieval methodologies. In EuroSearch, a federation of industrial search engines (Arianna for Italy, Ole for Spain and EuroSpider for Switzerland), using different kinds of search mechanisms, will provide their users with functionalities for cross-language querying. The paper describes and motivates the technology that will be adopted in the implementation of the multilingual interface of the federation, focusing on an approach that enhances the potential of a lexicon-based search through the integration of a corpus-based methodology.
Cell Division: A Review and New Evidence’

The term “contact inhibition of cell division” was borrowed from “contact inhibition of cell movement. ” We prefer the term “postconfluence inhibition of cell division” as being more operational and less mechanistically biased; it is operationally defined as a pronounced depression of the mitotic rate in a postconfluent culture which displays a stationary density despite periodic nutrient renewal, the inhibition being locally reversible by removal of
Whole‐embryo culture of E5.5 mouse embryos: Development to the gastrulation stage

Summary: This study reports establishment of an in vitro culture system for E5.5 mouse embryos that supports development to the gastrulation stage and allows the use of experimental approaches to study gastrulation during mouse embryogenesis. Recent experiments suggest that the extraembryonic tissues may play a critical role for gastrulation from as early as E5.5. To apply whole embryo culture to E5.5 embryos and analyze gastrulation, it is essential to optimize the conditions so that most of the embryos develop to the gastrulation stage in culture. For this purpose, we established a protocol in which embryos were isolated using micromanipulator and cultured with 50–75% rat serum. Although cultured embryos tended to grow a larger extraembryonic portion, more than 80% of them developed the primitive streak and induce mesoderm, which corresponds to the mid‐streak stage. genesis 37:38–43, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Control of industrial robots with flexible joints

Flexibilities in the manipulator structure limits its ability to perform high precision manipulation. In this paper, the effects of joint flexibility on the positioning performance of the end effector are considered. A "realistic" lumped-parameter dynamic model of the servo-mechanism is presented in order to develop a control structure to regulate the apparent torsional stiffness of the joint. The joint compliance can be compensated by using adequate feed-forward control. Computer simulation results are provided to illustrate this formulation.
Enhancing Order-picking Efficiency through Data Mining and Assignment Approaches

: Using data mining techniques, this study attempts to explore how a proper layout zoning following class-based storage enhances order picking efficiency over randomized storage. Association web statistics and association rule mining examines the relative intensity levels among various product categories. These findings serve as the layout for zoning of the storage area of α company, a pharmaceutical industry master distributor. A class-based assignment policy is then proposed. Finally, by transforming accumulated orders into Pallet-Case-Broken case (PCB) data and adopting batch picking, this study compares random assignment policy with zoning and class-based assignment policy. The results conclude that zoning and class-based assignment policy decreases travel distances by 24% and improves picking times by 21%.
Systemes d'effet et interpretation abstraite pour l'analyse de flot de controle

L'analyse du flot de controle est une technique d'importance majeure pour la compilation efficace des langages de programmation fonctionnelle. Cette technique consiste, au moment de compiler un programme, a calculer une approximation de son graphe d'appel. Dans cette these, nous considerons deux approches theoriques pour formaliser l'analyse de flot de controle: l'inference d'effet et l'interpretation abstraite. La premiere methode que nous presentons, l'inference d'effet, peut etre definie comme une extension des techniques qui sont utilisees pour la verification du typage des programmes en ml. Ici, plutot que de nous limiter a adapter les techniques de typage a la ml pour faire de l'analyse de flot de controle, nous introduisons une notion avancee de sous-typage qui permet d'augmenter notablement la flexibilite et la precision de cette technique. La seconde methode que nous considerons est l'interpretation abstraite qui, utilisant des techniques d'approximation de point-fixe, permet notamment d'obtenir des informations plus precises. Nous proposons de combiner ces deux techniques, introduisant la notion d'analyse semantique separee. Nous proposons d'associer une analyse de programme basee sur l'interpretation abstraite, profitant ainsi d'une technique performante pour les expressions closes, avec l'utilisation d'un systeme d'effet, afin de pouvoir specifier des informations statiques en presence de compilation separee, et donc d'information partielle sur l'ensemble d'un programme. Enfin, nous etudions l'application de l'analyse de flot de controle pour choisir une strategie optimale pour l'allocation des fonctions
IL-10 Diminishes CTLA-4 Expression on Islet-Resident T Cells and Sustains Their Activation Rather Than Tolerance1

IL-10, a powerful anti-Th1 cytokine, has shown paradoxical effects against diabetes. The mechanism underlying such variable function remains largely undefined. An approach for controlled mobilization of endogenous IL-10 was applied to the NOD mouse and indicated that IL-10 encounter with diabetogenic T cells within the islets sustains activation, while encounter occurring peripheral to the islets induces tolerance. Insulin β-chain (INSβ) 9-23 peptide was expressed on an Ig, and the aggregated (agg) form of the resulting Ig-INSβ triggered IL-10 production by APCs, and expanded IL-10-producing T regulatory cells. Consequently, agg Ig-INSβ delayed diabetes effectively in young NOD mice whose pathogenic T cells remain peripheral to the islets. However, agg Ig-INSβ was unable to suppress the disease in 10-wk-old insulitis-positive animals whose diabetogenic T cells have populated the islets. This is not due to irreversibility of the disease because soluble Ig-INSβ did delay diabetes in these older mice. Evidence is provided indicating that upon migration to the islet, T cells were activated and up-regulated CTLA-4 expression. IL-10, however, reverses such up-regulation, abolishing CTLA-4-inhibitory functions and sustaining activation of the islet T lymphocytes. Therefore, IL-10 supports T cell tolerance in the periphery, but its interplay with CTLA-4 sustains activation within the islets. As a result, IL-10 displays opposite functions against diabetes in young vs older insulitis-positive mice.
Light trapping in photonic crystals

We consider light trapping in photonic crystals. Using temporal coupled-mode theory and assuming that the active material is weakly absorbing, we show that the upper bound of the angle-integrated light trapping absorption enhancement is proportional to the photonic density of states. The tight bound can be reached if all the modes supported by the structure are coupled to external radiation. We discuss the roles of van Hove singularity, effective medium theory, and periodicity. By appropriate design, the angle-integrated absorption enhancement could surpass the conventional limit substantially in two dimension and marginally in three dimension.
Applying a Newton Method to Strictly Convex Separable Network Quadratic Programs

By introducing quadratic penalty terms, a strictly convex separable network quadratic program can be reduced to an unconstrained optimization problem whose objective is a continuously differentiable piecewise quadratic function. A recently developed nonsmooth version of Newton's method is applied to the reduced problem. The generalized Newton direction is computed by an iterative procedure which exploits the special network data structures that originated from the network simplex method. New features of the algorithm include the use of min-max bases and a dynamic strategy in computation of the Newton directions. Some preliminary computational results are presented. The results suggest the use of "warm start" instead of "cold start. "
Formulation and Optimization of Nanosuspensions for Enhancing Simvastatin Dissolution Using Central Composite Design

Simvastatin is a poorly water-soluble drug, and bioavailability from its crystalline form is very low. The purpose of this investigation was to increase the solubility and dissolution rate of simvastatin by the preparation of nanosuspensions with Pluronic F127 and zirconium oxide (ZrO2) beads using a wet-milling technique at the laboratory scale. Prepared nanosuspensions were evaluated for particle size and in vitro dissolution. A 3 2 central composite design was employed to study the effect of the independent variables (i.e., amount of Pluronic F127, X1, and amount of ZrO2, X2) on the dependent variables (i.e., particle size [nm] and percentage of drug released after 10 min, Q10). The relationship between the dependent and independent variables was further elucidated using multiple liner regression analysis (MLRA) and contour plots. The results show that nanosuspensions prepared with the higher concentrations of Pluronic F127 and the higher quantities of ZrO2 (up to 8 g) reduced the particle size and enhanced the dissolution rate of the formulation. The dissolution rate of the optimized nanosuspension was enhanced (64% in 10 min) relative to that of a micronized suspension of simvastatin (3.5% in 10 min), mainly because of the formation of nanosized particles. These results show that the preparation of simvastatin-loaded nanosuspensions significantly improved the in vitro dissolution rate, thus possibly enhancing the fast onset of therapeutic drug effect.
Using virtual impedance to analyze the stability of LCL-filtered grid-connected inverters

This paper compares three current control methods for LCL-filtered grid-connected inverters, they are single-loop control based on inverter current feedback, that based on grid current feedback, and dual-loop control with capacitor current feedback active damping. The virtual impedance introduced by each method is identified, which comprises frequency-dependent resistance and reactance. The reactance shifts the LCL resonance frequency while a positive resistance provides damping for the resonance and hence stabilizes the system. Using the virtual impedance, the system stability is analyzed. The stable range of sampling frequency for different methods is deduced, as well as the gain boundaries of the controllers. The study therefore facilitates the analysis and design of control loops for grid-connected inverters with LCL filters, and it has been verified by experiments.