Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detection of Capripoxvirus DNA Using a Field‐Ready Nucleic Acid Extraction and Real‐Time PCR Platform

Summary Capripoxviruses, comprising sheep pox virus, goat pox virus and lumpy skin disease virus cause serious diseases of domesticated ruminants, notifiable to The World Organization for Animal Health. This report describes the evaluation of a mobile diagnostic system (Enigma Field Laboratory) that performs automated sequential steps for nucleic acid extraction and real‐time PCR to detect capripoxvirus DNA within laboratory and endemic field settings. To prepare stable reagents that could be deployed into field settings, lyophilized reagents were used that employed an established diagnostic PCR assay. These stabilized reagents demonstrated an analytical sensitivity that was equivalent, or greater than the established laboratory‐based PCR test which utilizes wet reagents, and the limit of detection for the complete assay pipeline was approximately one log10 more sensitive than the laboratory‐based PCR assay. Concordant results were generated when the mobile PCR system was compared to the laboratory‐based PCR using samples collected from Africa, Asia and Europe (n = 10) and experimental studies (n = 9) representing clinical cases of sheep pox, goat pox and lumpy skin disease. Furthermore, this mobile assay reported positive results in situ using specimens that were collected from a dairy cow in Morogoro, Tanzania, which was exhibiting clinical signs of lumpy skin disease. These data support the use of mobile PCR systems for the rapid and sensitive detection of capripoxvirus DNA in endemic field settings.
Richardson–Lucy algorithm with total variation regularization for 3D confocal microscope deconvolution

Confocal laser scanning microscopy is a powerful and popular technique for 3D imaging of biological specimens. Although confocal microscopy images are much sharper than standard epifluorescence ones, they are still degraded by residual out‐of‐focus light and by Poisson noise due to photon‐limited detection. Several deconvolution methods have been proposed to reduce these degradations, including the Richardson–Lucy iterative algorithm, which computes maximum likelihood estimation adapted to Poisson statistics. As this algorithm tends to amplify noise, regularization constraints based on some prior knowledge on the data have to be applied to stabilize the solution. Here, we propose to combine the Richardson–Lucy algorithm with a regularization constraint based on Total Variation, which suppresses unstable oscillations while preserving object edges. We show on simulated and real images that this constraint improves the deconvolution results as compared with the unregularized Richardson–Lucy algorithm, both visually and quantitatively. Microsc. Res. Tech. 69:260–266, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Applications of vanadium dioxide (VO2)-loaded electrically small resonators in the design of tunable filters

This paper presents some examples of the large possibilities offered by the combination of vanadium dioxide (VO2)-based switches and split ring resonators (SRRs) for the design of compact filters with frequency agility. First, the synthesis of an all-integrated reconfigurable four pole band-stop filter is presented. It follows the design of a digitally tuned band-reject filter. Preliminary results of the fabricated devices operating in the X-band under thermal actuation are presented. The tuning principles of both structures are validated. Good agreement between experimental data and electromagnetic simulations is obtained. This paper opens the way to the design of compact tunable microwave filters based on new principles that rely on the combination of VO2 and SRRs, but the ideas presented in this work can also be extended to many other electrically small resonators.
Meal frequency; does it determine postprandial lipaemia?

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of altering meal frequency on postprandial lipaemia and associated parameters. DESIGN A randomized open cross over study to examine the programming effects of altering meal frequency. A standard test meal was given on three occasions following: (i) the normal diet; (ii) a period of two weeks on a nibbling and (iii) a period of two weeks on a gorging diet. SETTING Free living subjects associated with the University of Surrey. SUBJECTS Eleven female volunteers (age 22 +/- 0.89 y) were recruited. INTERVENTIONS The subjects were requested to consume the same foods on either a nibbling diet (12 meals per day) or a gorging diet (three meals per day) for a period of two weeks. The standard test meal containing 80 g fat, 63 g carbohydrate and 20 g protein was administered on the day prior to the dietary intervention and on the day following each period of intervention. MAJOR OUTCOME MEASURES Fasting and postprandial blood samples were taken for the analysis of plasma triacylglycerol, non-esterified fatty acids, glucose, immunoreactive insulin, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide levels (GIP) and glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1), fasting total, low density lipoprotein (LDL)- and high density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol concentrations and postheparin lipoprotein lipase (LPL) activity measurements. Plasma paracetamol was measured following administration of a 1.5 g paracetamol load with the meal as an index of gastric emptying. RESULTS The compliance to the two dietary regimes was high and there were no significant differences between the nutrient intakes on the two intervention diets. There were no significant differences in fasting or postprandial plasma concentrations of triacylglycerol, non-esterified fatty acids, glucose, immunoreactive insulin, GIP and GLP-1 levels, in response to the standard test meal following the nibbling or gorging dietary regimes. There were no significant differences in fasting total or LDL-cholesterol concentrations, or in the 15 min postheparin lipoprotein lipase activity measurements. There was a significant increase in HDL-cholesterol in the subjects following the gorging diet compared to the nibbling diet. DISCUSSION The results suggest that previous meal frequency for a period of two weeks in young healthy women does not alter the fasting or postprandial lipid or hormonal response to a standard high fat meal. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study did not confirm the previous studies which suggested that nibbling is beneficial in reducing the concentrations of lipid and hormones. The rigorous control of diet content and composition in the present study compared with others, suggest reported effects of meal frequency may be due to unintentional alteration in nutrient and energy intake in previous studies.
Engraftment of Syngeneic and Allogeneic Endothelial Cells, Hepatocytes and Cholangiocytes Into Partially Hepatectomized Rats Previously Treated With Mitomycin C

Background. Pretreatment with retrorsine crosslinks host hepatocyte DNA and prevents proliferation after partial hepatectomy (PH), allowing selective expansion of transplanted progenitors. Shortcomings are length of protocol and carcinogenicity of retrorsine. Methods. This report describes a rapid liver repopulation protocol using mitomycin C (MMC) to block proliferation of rat hepatocytes in response to PH. One week post-MMC treatment, dipeptidyl peptidase IV negative host rats were given a PH followed by injection of late gestation, newborn, or adult total liver isolates from dipeptidyl peptidase IV positive rats. For allogeneic transplantation, host rats received injections of anti-CD3 antibody before and after PH. Results. Host liver staining 2 to 9 weeks posttransplantation revealed well-defined donor hepatocyte colonies with strong canalicular dipeptidyl peptidase IV activity. At the same cell dose, fetal and newborn isolates produced more colonies than adult liver isolates. Hepatocyte colonies also coexpressed marker proteins characteristic of adult hepatocytes and showed polarized localization of plasma membrane proteins. Host livers contained large clusters of sinusoids lined by dipeptidyl peptidase IV positive endothelial cells coexpressing the endothelial cell marker, RECA-1, but lacked the canalicular marker leucine aminopeptidase. Colonies containing donor hepatocytes, endothelial cells, and bile ducts were also observed. Similar levels of engraftment and expansion were achieved with allogeneic liver cell isolates by using anti-CD3 antibody treatment. Conclusions. The MMC transplantation model provides a rapid method for engraftment and expansion of hepatocytes, endothelial cells, and cholangiocytes and should be applicable to investigations centering on the role of endothelial cells in liver regeneration and the identification and characterization of putative endothelial, hepatocyte, and cholangiocyte progenitors.
Evaluation of dual-energy CT for differentiating intracerebral hemorrhage from iodinated contrast material staining.

PURPOSE To evaluate the efficacy of dual-energy computed tomography (CT) in the differentiation of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) from iodinated contrast material in patients who received contrast material via intraarterial or intravenous delivery. MATERIALS AND METHODS This retrospective study was approved by the local institutional review board, which waived the informed consent requirement for the analysis. Sixteen patients with acute stroke and two with head trauma who had undergone intraarterial or intravenous administration of iodinated contrast material were evaluated by using dual-energy CT to differentiate areas of hyperattenuation secondary to contrast material staining from those representing ICH. A dual-energy CT scanner was used for imaging at 80 and 140 kV, and a three-material decomposition algorithm was used to obtain virtual unenhanced images and iodine overlay images. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of dual-energy CT in the prospective differentiation of intraparenchymal contrast material from hemorrhage were obtained. Follow-up images were used as the standard of reference. RESULTS There were 28 intraparenchymal areas of hyperattenuation classified at dual-energy CT as iodinated contrast material staining (n = 20, 71%), hemorrhage (n = 5, 18%), or both (n = 3, 11%). Two of the three areas of hyperattenuation seen on both virtual unenhanced and iodine overlay images were related to mineralization. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of dual-energy CT in the identification of hemorrhage were 100% (six of six areas), 91% (20 of 22 areas), and 93% (26 of 28 areas), respectively. CONCLUSION Dual-energy CT can help differentiate ICH from iodinated contrast material staining with high sensitivity and specificity in patients who have recently received intraarterial or intravenous iodinated contrast material.
Imaging of castration-resistant prostrate cancer: development of imaging response biomarkers

Purpose of review The current standard for imaging castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) focuses solely on detection. However, in order to assess treatment response, imaging must provide quantitative results that can be validated. Recent findings Bone scintigraphy remains the most commonly used imaging tool for CRPC in bone, but with limited quantification capabilities. Both PET and MRI provide quantitative measures that could be used to assess treatment response. Several PET tracers have been shown to be able to detect bone metastases, but more research regarding their use for treatment response assessment is necessary. Similarly, research has shown that diffusion-weighted and dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI can detect metastases, with some studies suggesting that they may be suitable for assessing treatment response. Summary Recent research has shown that many imaging techniques are able to successfully detect metastases in CRPC patients as well as or better than standard imaging. These imaging methods can also be applied to treatment response assessment; however, more research must be done to validate the quantitative measures before these techniques can be used clinically for assessing patients.
Exploring the in vivo digestion of plant proteins in broiler chickens

&NA; The use of various protein sources (industry by‐products, proteaginous) in poultry diets requires a greater understanding of protein digestion mechanisms. The aim of this study was to characterize the molecular actors required for protein digestion in broilers fed 4 different diets containing soybean meal, rapeseed meal, pea, or corn distiller's dried grain with solubles as the only protein source. The digesta of the digestive tract segments were collected and soluble proteins were analyzed by SDS‐PAGE. SDS‐PAGE analyses revealed 5 ubiquitous bands in digesta of all digestive tract segments regardless of the diet, whereas 3 bands were diet‐specific. The digesta of the jejunum were further submitted to proteomic analysis. Forty‐two proteins of chicken origin and 17 plant proteins were identified in digesta samples by mass spectrometry. Fifteen proteins of chicken origin were specific to one diet and 18 were common to all diets. By homology with mammals, these proteins are thought to be involved in protein, lipid, carbohydrate, and nucleic acid metabolism and also in intestinal homeostasis. Some of the 17 plant proteins were found to be not fully digested (soybean meal, rapeseed meal, and pea diets) and others were identified as protease inhibitors (soybean meal and pea diets). This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the physiological proteins involved in the digestion of 4 protein sources used in broiler diets. Such an approach, combined with the analysis of insoluble components of these different protein sources, would contribute to define whether these protein sources could be more largely used in poultry nutrition. It also would allow identifying ways to improve their digestibility in broiler chickens (feed additives such as exogenous proteases or processing to inactivate anti‐nutritional factors, for instance).
Shared relay assignment (SRA) for many-to-one traffic in cooperative wireless transmissions

Relay assignment significantly affects the performance of cooperative communications. Previous studies in this area have mostly focused on assigning a dedicated relay to each source-destination pair for one-to-one (121) traffic. On the other hand, many-to-one (M21) traffic, which is also common in many situations (for example, several users associate with one access point in a wireless access network such as a WLAN), hasn't been well studied. This paper addresses the shared relay assignment (SRA) problem for M21 traffic. We formulate two new optimization problems: one is to maximize the minimum throughput among all the sources (hereafter called M21-SRA-MMT), and the other is to maximize the total throughput over all the sources while maintaining some degree of fairness (hereafter called M21-SRA-MTT). As both of these problems are NP-hard, we propose two approximation algorithms whose performance factors are 5.828 and 3, respectively, based on the rounding mechanism. Extensive simulation results show that our algorithm for M21-SRA-MMT can significantly improve the minimum throughput compared with existing algorithms, while our algorithm for M21-SRA-MTT can achieve the close-to-optimal performance.
Analysis of ADMM-LP algorithm for LDPC decoding, a first step to hardware implementation

The recent interest in linear programming techniques for LDPC decoding showed that these methods are too complex for real applicability. Alternating direction method of multipliers is a classic technique in convex optimization theory. When applied to the linear programming decoding of LDPC codes, the ADMM algorithm acts as a message passing decoding method. In this work, we present a complexity analysis of the ADMM LDPC decoder compared with the sum product approach and we explain the parallelism levels that are explored in the ADMM algorithm. A software implementation by taking advantage of the architectural features of the multi-core processors parallelism is presented. The overall analysis provides a better understanding of the ADMM approach complexity which makes a start to possible hardware implementations.
A neural-network based gender detection algorithm on full-face photograph

Gender detection is gaining much more interest for applications such as smart advertisement and authentication. High processing-power available today, makes possible the high process-consuming tasks. In this paper, gender detection of over 18 years old persons is investigated based on their frontal facial images. First the feature-extraction is studied and the best features in a facial image are introduced. A Neural Network (NN) based method is developed for gender detection and a database of 200 females and 200 males is gathered for training and testing the neural network. To eliminate restrictions on race and ethnicity, the database is produced based on some standard Iranian pictures and standard databases exist on this subject. The result of implementation of the proposed method shows completely a noticeable improvement in accuracy, compared to previously performed researches.
Efferent systems of the rabbit visual cortex: Laminar distribution of the cells of origin, axonal conduction velocities, and identification of axonal branches

Several efferent systems of visual area I in Dutch rabbits were studied with anatomical (horseradish peroxidase) and physiological (antidromic) methods. Anatomical studies provided information regarding the laminar origin of the projections to the contralateral hemisphere, visual area II, the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus, and the superior colliculus. Physiological studies provided information regarding conduction velocities and multiple destinations of efferent axons. Both the callosal projection and the projection to V‐II were shown to originate primarily in layer II‐III. However, approximately 10‐20% of the callosal projection and 20–40% of the projection to V‐II originated in layers IV and V. In contrast, the projection to the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus originated nearly exclusively in layer VI, while corticotectal neurons occurred primarily in layer V. A significant number of corticotectal neurons were, however, found in layer IV. Thus, the above efferent systems were found to differ in their principal laminar origin and in the diffuseness of that origin. The origins of corticocortical projections were considerably more diffuse than those of corticofugal projections.
Can Survey Participation Alter Household Financial behavior

Much empirical research in economics is based on data from household surveys. Panel surveys are particularly valuable for understanding dynamics and heterogeneity. A possible concern with panel surveys is that survey participation itself may alter subsequent behavior. We provide novel evidence of survey effects on household financial behavior in a developed country. We exploit randomized assignment to survey modules within the LISS-panel, an internet panel survey which is representative of the Dutch population. We show that households that respond to detailed questions on expenditures and needs in retirement subsequently reduced their non-housing savings by 1,700 euros (about 3.5 percent of income). Our saving measure is based on linked administrative wealth data, allowing us to distinguish changes in saving behavior from changes in reporting behavior. We document heterogeneity in the effect.
PLASMA PROTEINS FOR THE EVALUATION OF KIDNEY FUNCTION ASSESSMENT OF RENAL FUNCTION IN RENAL TRANSPLANT PATIENTS USING CYSTATIN C. A COMPARISON TO OTHER RENAL FUNCTION MARKERS AND ESTIMATES

To date, little evidence is available to define the role of cystatin C in patients with renal transplants. Thus, to assess, whether cystatin C (CysC) provides better information on renal function than other markers, CysC, creatinine clearance (CrCl), serum creatinine (SCr), b2-microglobulin (b2M), and I-Iothalamate clearance were determined in 30 patients. Correlation and ROC curves were obtained and characteristics like sensitivity and specificity were calculated. Further, to evaluate the usefulness of these markers for monitoring, intraindividual coefficients of variation for CysC and SCr measurements were compared in 85 renal transplant patients. CysC correlated best with GFR, whereas SCr, CrCl and b2-M all had lower correlation coefficients. CysC was superior to SCr, even when renal function equations of were used. The diagnostic accuracy of CysC was significantly better than SCr, but did not differ significantly from CrCl and b2-M. Together, our data show that in patients with renal transplants, CysC has a similar diagnostic value as CrCl. However, it is superior to determinations of SCr. The intraindividual variation of CysC
Diagnostic Value of Intraoperative Fiberscopy for Small-intestinal Polyps in Familial Adenomatosis Coli

X-ray examination and intraoperative fiberscopy of the small intestine were performed in 20 patients with familial adenomatosis coli. Roentgenographic study detected polypoid lesions in the upper jejunum in 2 patients (10%), and in the terminal ileum in 9 (45%). In contrast, endoscopic study revealed polyps in the jejunum in 10 patients (50%), and in the ileum in 14 (70%). Polyps in most cases were multiple and small in size (less than 3 mm in diameter). Histology revealed the lesions of the jejunum to be adenomas, and those of the ileum to be lymphoid hyperplasia with or without adenoma. The present study suggests that intraoperative endoscopy is much more valuable than roentgenography in detecting these minute polyps of the small intestine in this disease.
Modifying the velocity in adaptive PSO to improve optimisation performance

This article investigates the evolution of the velocity vector as the AdPSO (Adaptive PSO) algorithm optimizes a set of parameters through a number of epochs. Experimental results have shown that when using a swarm to find the optimal solution to a specific natural language processing (NLP) application gradually the velocity vector is decreased towards a very small value that causes the particles to switch from exploration (i.e., the attempt to determine radically new solutions) towards exploitation (search of solutions that are close to those already identified). Based on this observation, a study is carried out to determine whether the velocity vector may be handled in a more efficient manner. An algorithm for reinitializing the velocity of swarm particles is proposed, which improves the exploration of the swarm, by reenergizing particles that have very low velocities. Also, the effect of bounding the initial velocity of particles is studied, to determine whether improved optimization performance can be achieved. The effectiveness of the velocity reinitialisation mechanism is further examined by application to a selection of benchmark test functions. These experimental results are supplemented by relevant statistical tests that indicate a significant improvement in many cases.
Contractive autoencoder and SVM for recognition of handwritten Devanagari numerals

Representation of data is very important in case of machine learning. Better the representation, the classifiers will give better results. Contractive autoencoders are used to learn the representation of data which are robust to small changes in the input. This paper uses contractive autoencoder and SVM classifier for handwritten Devanagari numerals recognition. The accuracy obtained using CAE+SVM is 96 %.
Paranoid vs. Socially Anxious Individuals after Hearing

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