Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Cytokine Release Inhibitory Drug CRID3 Targets ASC Oligomerisation in the NLRP3 and AIM2 Inflammasomes

Background The Inflammasomes are multi-protein complexes that regulate caspase-1 activation and the production of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1β. Previous studies identified a class of diarylsulfonylurea containing compounds called Cytokine Release Inhibitory Drugs (CRIDs) that inhibited the post-translational processing of IL-1β. Further work identified Glutathione S-Transferase Omega 1 (GSTO1) as a possible target of these CRIDs. This study aimed to investigate the mechanism of the inhibitory activity of the CRID CP-456,773 (termed CRID3) in light of recent advances in the area of inflammasome activation, and to clarify the potential role of GSTO1 in the regulation of IL-1β production. Methodology and Results In murine bone marrow derived macrophages, CRID3 inhibited IL-1β secretion and caspase 1 processing in response to stimulation of NLRP3 and AIM2 but not NLRC4. CRID3 also prevented AIM2 dependent pyroptosis in contrast to the NLRP3 inhibitors glyburide and parthenolide, which do not inhibit AIM2 activation. Confocal microscopy and Western blotting assays indicated that CRID3 inhibited the formation of ASC complexes or ‘specks’ in response to NLRP3 and AIM2 stimulation. Co-immunoprecipitation assays show that GSTO1 interacted with ASC. Significance These results identify CRID3 as a novel inhibitor of the NLRP3 and AIM2 inflammasomes and provide an insight into the mechanism of action of this small molecule. In addition GSTO1 may be a component of the inflammasome that is required for ASC complex formation.
Energy Efficient MAC Protocols

This paper presents a survey of energy efficiency of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASNs). We highlight the features of MAC protocols along with their advantages and limitations in context of WBASNs. Comparison of Low Power Listening (LPL), Scheduled Contention and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) is also elaborated. MAC protocols with respect to different approaches and techniques which are used for energy minimization, traffic control mechanisms for collision avoidance are discussed. We also present a survey of path loss models for In-body, On-body and Off-body communications in WBASNs and analytically discuss that path loss is maximum in In-body communication because of low energy levels to take care of tissues and organs located inside the body. Survey of Power model for WBANs of CSMA/CA and beacon mode is also presented.
Adverse Events following 12 and 18 Month Vaccinations: a Population-Based, Self-Controlled Case Series Analysis

Background Live vaccines have distinct safety profiles, potentially causing systemic reactions one to 2 weeks after administration. In the province of Ontario, Canada, live MMR vaccine is currently recommended at age 12 months and 18 months. Methods Using the self-controlled case series design we examined 271,495 12 month vaccinations and 184,312 18 month vaccinations to examine the relative incidence of the composite endpoint of emergency room visits or hospital admissions in consecutive one day intervals following vaccination. These were compared to a control period 20 to 28 days later. In a post-hoc analysis we examined the reasons for emergency room visits and the average acuity score at presentation for children during the at-risk period following the 12 month vaccine. Results Four to 12 days post 12 month vaccination, children had a 1.33 (1.29–1.38) increased relative incidence of the combined endpoint compared to the control period, or at least one event during the risk interval for every 168 children vaccinated. Ten to 12 days post 18 month vaccination, the relative incidence was 1.25 (95%, 1.17–1.33) which represented at least one excess event for every 730 children vaccinated. The primary reason for increased events was statistically significant elevations in emergency room visits following all vaccinations. There were non-significant increases in hospital admissions. There were an additional 20 febrile seizures for every 100,000 vaccinated at 12 months. Conclusions There are significantly elevated risks of primarily emergency room visits approximately one to two weeks following 12 and 18 month vaccination. Future studies should examine whether these events could be predicted or prevented.
Higher-Order Concurrency: Expressiveness and Decidability Results

Higher-order process calculi are formalisms for concurrency in which processes can be passed around in communications. Higher-order (or process-passing) concurrency is often presented as an alternative paradigm to the first order (or name-passing) concurrency of the pi-calculus for the description of mobile systems. These calculi are inspired by, and formally close to, the lambda-calculus, whose basic computational step ---beta-reduction--- involves term instantiation. The theory of higher-order process calculi is more complex than that of first-order process calculi. This shows up in, for instance, the definition of behavioral equivalences. A long-standing approach to overcome this burden is to define encodings of higher-order processes into a first-order setting, so as to transfer the theory of the first-order paradigm to the higher-order one. While satisfactory in the case of calculi with basic (higher-order) primitives, this indirect approach falls short in the case of higher-order process calculi featuring constructs for phenomena such as, e.g., localities and dynamic system reconﬁguration, which are frequent in modern distributed systems. Indeed, for higher-order process calculi involving little more than traditional process communication, encodings into some first-order language are difficult to handle or do not exist. We then observe that foundational studies for higher-order process calculi must be carried out directly on them and exploit their peculiarities. This dissertation contributes to such foundational studies for higher-order process calculi. We concentrate on two closely interwoven issues in process calculi: expressiveness and decidability. Surprisingly, these issues have been little explored in the higher-order setting. Our research is centered around a core calculus for higher-order concurrency in which only the operators strictly necessary to obtain higher-order communication are retained. We develop the basic theory of this core calculus and rely on it to study the expressive power of issues universally accepted as basic in process calculi, namely synchrony, forwarding, and polyadic communication.
Thermal Barrier Coatings for the 21st Century

Yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) fabricated via electron beam physical vapor deposition (EBPVD) provide some unique properties for aerofoil applications. Such coatings are usually deposited on diffusion aluminide or MCrAIY bond coats on superalloy substrates. During deposition of the YSZ-TBC on the bond coat, a thermally grown oxide (TGO) consisting primarily of α-Al 2 O 3 is formed between the TBC and bond coat. The lives of these TBCs in oxidizing environments is determined by the interplay of the stored elastic energy driving spallation versus the interfacial toughness of the TGO/bond coat interface since failure of the TBC system often occurs at this interface. The microstructures of EBPVD-TBCs in the as-processed and exposed conditions have been documented using a variety of techniques to determine and describe the failure mechanisms. It is shown that the failure mechanisms for TBC's are dependent on the bond coat fabrication procedure and the exposure environment. Finally, possible schemes for improving TBC systems are outlined.
Social Influence on Risk Perception During Adolescence

Adolescence is a period of life in which peer relationships become increasingly important. Adolescents have a greater likelihood of taking risks when they are with peers rather than alone. In this study, we investigated the development of social influence on risk perception from late childhood through adulthood. Five hundred and sixty-three participants rated the riskiness of everyday situations and were then informed about the ratings of a social-influence group (teenagers or adults) before rating each situation again. All age groups showed a significant social-influence effect, changing their risk ratings in the direction of the provided ratings; this social-influence effect decreased with age. Most age groups adjusted their ratings more to conform to the ratings of the adult social-influence group than to the ratings of the teenager social-influence group. Only young adolescents were more strongly influenced by the teenager social-influence group than they were by the adult social-influence group, which suggests that to early adolescents, the opinions of other teenagers about risk matter more than the opinions of adults.
Development of Information Searches in Risky Investment Decision: Testing a Moderating Role of Income

Purchasing risky financial investments has been a means to create individual wealth. Facing uncertainty, investors may assess economic loss, and then seek to achieve expected returns through information search. Most studies focus on digital information and advice-seeking information. This study extends the investigation of information search to discuss heuristics reliance, a simplified information search method. We also examine the moderating effect of income on our extended information search model. 378 investors with investment experiment from financial holding companies were surveyed and the multiple-group structural equation modeling was employed. The findings show that individuals with more risk aversion tend to seek more information. More advice-seeking information search and heuristics reliance through a mass of digital information can increase investor interest in mutual fund investments. We find significant support for income differences in individual information searches in investment decision-making. Thus, the practical implications for professional advisors or governments could be addressed.
MQ: an integrated mechanism for multimedia multicasting

This paper explores the problems associated with the integration of IP multicast, QoS routing and resource reservation to support multimedia group communications in the presence of user heterogeneity. A protocol called MQ, Multicast with QoS, is proposed to support multimedia multicasting with QoS guarantees. With MQ, while resource reservation is de-coupled from multicast QoS routing, they are integrated in such a way to avoid "sender-oriented" path determination, a problem which occurs when RSVP is used with QoS routing for heterogeneous reservations. Being a truly receiver-oriented and integrated scheme for multimedia multicasting, MQ enjoys lower blocking probability for users to join the groups of interest with the requested QoS, much reduced protocol overheads, and better resource usability to enhance system performance, compared to conventional approaches that employ loosely coupled integration of IP multicasting, resource reservation and QoS routing.
A Learning Approach to Shallow Parsing

A SNoW based learning approach to shallow parsing tasks is presented and studied experimentally. The approach learns to identify syntactic patterns by combining simple predictors to produce a coherent inference. Two instantiations of this approach are studied and experimental results for Noun-Phrases (NP) and Subject-Verb (SV) phrases that compare favorably with the best published results are presented. In doing that, we compare two ways of modeling the problem of learning to recognize patterns and suggest that shallow parsing patterns are better learned using open/close predictors than using inside/outside predictors. } thus contribute to the understanding of how to model shallow parsing tasks as learning problems.
Electronic structure of germanium nanocrystals core and (001)-(1 x 1) oxidised surface

The electronic structure of (001)-(1 × 1) oxidised surface and inner core of germanium nanocrystals (1.5 - 2.3 nm in diameter) is studied separately using the self-consistent Hartree-Fock method coupled with the large unit cell (LUC) method. The separate evaluation of surface and core electronic structure leads to the exact discrimination between nanocrystal surface and core properties. The results show that the lattice constant and the energy gap of the core part decrease as nanocrystals increase in size in agreement with previous studies. The small differences between the core and the surface lattice constant reflects good adherence of the oxide layer. The nanocrystal oxidised surface is characterised by a smaller gap and a wider valence band than the core. This result is owing to the splitting of the highly degenerate core states as they approach the surface in addition to the newly added levels of oxygen surface atoms. The present two gap results resolved the ambiguity in different gap and photoluminescence results of Ge nanocrystals. The surface layers have oscillatory negative and positive charges that diminish as they reach the inner fourth germanium layer. LUC method predicts nearly direct transitions in small germanium nanocrystals that explain their suitability for light-emitting applications.
Switching from Clopidogrel to Prasugrel in patients undergoing PCI: A meta-analytic overview

Abstract Despite the demonstrated benefits of Prasugrel, a new generation thienopyridine, in the prevention of thrombotic complications after percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) for Acute Coronary Syndromes (ACS), its use is still precluded to those many patients arriving to the cath lab pre-treated with Clopidogrel. Conclusive data on the strategy of switching from Clopidogrel to Prasugrel are still missing, therefore we aimed to perform a meta-analysis of current studies evaluating the safety and efficacy of switching from Clopidogrel to Prasugrel (PS) as compared to a standard thienopyridine therapy with Clopidogrel or Prasugrel in patients undergoing PCI. Literature archives and main scientific sessions’ abstracts were scanned for studies comparing a switching strategy from Clopidogrel to Prasugrel vs. Prasugrel or Clopidogrel. Primary efficacy endpoint was overall mortality. Secondary endpoints were: non-fatal myocardial infarction and definite/probable stent thrombosis. Safety endpoint was the rate of major bleedings according to a per-protocol definition. A total of 12 studies, involving 3956 patients, were included. Among them, 1396 patients (35.3%), received Prasugrel after a Clopidogrel treatment (PS), while 2560 (64.7%) received either Prasugrel or Clopidogrel. The switch from Clopidogrel to Prasugrel was in the majority of the studies periprocedural. The mortality was numerically lower, but not statistically significant, in the PS group as compared with patients who did not switch (1.7% vs. 3.8%, OR [95% CI] = 0.68 [0.40,1.15], p = 0.15, phet = 0.61), without any relationship with patients’ risk profile (r = −0.68 [−2.09, 0.73], p = 0.35). Similar results were obtained for secondary efficacy endpoints and at sensitivity analysis in the majority of subgroups evaluated. Moreover, the PS strategy did not increase major bleedings as compared with standard therapy (1.4% vs. 2.5%, OR [95% CI = 0.70 [0.39, 1.25], p = 0.23, phet = 0.6). The present meta-analysis confirms that, among patients undergoing PCI, switching from Clopidogrel to Prasugrel may be safely performed and therefore should be encouraged among patients eligible to Prasugrel.
Protective Effect of Adonitol on Lactic Acid Bacteria Subjected to Freeze-Drying

The protective effects of glycerol, adonitol, and four other related polyhydric alcohols on lactic acid bacteria subjected to freeze-drying were examined. The presence of adonitol in the suspending medium markedly protected the viabilities of the 12 stains tested. Dulcitol, mannitol, m-inositol, and sorbitol were found to provide little or no protection.
Nomograms for visualizing support vector machines

We propose a simple yet potentially very effective way of visualizing trained support vector machines. Nomograms are an established model visualization technique that can graphically encode the complete model on a single page. The dimensionality of the visualization does not depend on the number of attributes, but merely on the properties of the kernel. To represent the effect of each predictive feature on the log odds ratio scale as required for the nomograms, we employ logistic regression to convert the distance from the separating hyperplane into a probability. Case studies on selected data sets show that for a technique thought to be a black-box, nomograms can clearly expose its internal structure. By providing an easy-to-interpret visualization the analysts can gain insight and study the effects of predictive factors.
REM: active queue management

We describe a new active queue management scheme, random exponential marking (REM), that aims to achieve both high utilization and negligible loss and delay in a simple and scalable manner. The key idea is to decouple the congestion measure from the performance measure such as loss, queue length, or delay. While the congestion measure indicates excess demand for bandwidth and must track the number of users, the performance measure should be stabilized around their targets independent of the number of users. We explain the design rationale behind REM and present simulation results of its performance in wireline and wireless networks.
Fluctuations in Ammonia Oxidizing Communities Across Agricultural Soils are Driven by Soil Structure and pH

The milieu in soil in which microorganisms dwell is never constant. Conditions such as temperature, water availability, pH and nutrients frequently change, impacting the overall functioning of the soil system. To understand the effects of such factors on soil functioning, proxies (indicators) of soil function are needed that, in a sensitive manner, reveal normal amplitude of variation. Thus, the so-called normal operating range (NOR) of soil can be defined. In this study we determined different components of nitrification by analyzing, in eight agricultural soils, how the community structures and sizes of ammonia oxidizing bacteria and archaea (AOB and AOA, respectively), and their activity, fluctuate over spatial and temporal scales. The results indicated that soil pH and soil type are the main factors that influence the size and structure of the AOA and AOB, as well as their function. The nitrification rates varied between 0.11 ± 0.03 μgN h−1 gdw−1 and 1.68 ± 0.11 μgN h−1 gdw−1, being higher in soils with higher clay content (1.09 ± 0.12 μgN h−1 gdw−1) and lower in soils with lower clay percentages (0.27 ± 0.04 μgN h−1 gdw−1). Nitrifying activity was driven by soil pH, mostly related to its effect on AOA but not on AOB abundance. Regarding the influence of soil parameters, clay content was the main soil factor shaping the structure of both the AOA and AOB communities. Overall, the potential nitrifying activities were higher and more variable over time in the clayey than in the sandy soils. Whereas the structure of AOB fluctuated more (62.7 ± 2.10%) the structure of AOA communities showed lower amplitude of variation (53.65 ± 3.37%). Similar trends were observed for the sizes of these communities. The present work represents a first step toward defining a NOR for soil nitrification. The sensitivity of the process and organisms to impacts from the milieu support their use as proxies in the NOR of agricultural soils. Moreover, the clear effect of soil texture established here suggests that the NOR should be defined in a soil type-specific manner.
Overcoming Parkinson’s disease: direct nose-to-brain delivery of amantadine

Treatments for Parkinson’s disease face significant challenges in delivery to the due to the presence of blood brain barrier (BBB). The aim of this study was to develop and characterise an in-situ thermoresponsive polymer based gel system for possible exploitation of the intranasal olfactory route where the BBB is absent. Reaching the olfactory region in the nasal cavity and mucociliary clearance are the main hurdles from formulation point of view. Thermo-sensitive and pH sensitive polymers seem to be the answer to these problems. Formulation made with these polymers along with mucoadhesives will be liquid at room temperature and will turn into a viscous gel when comes in contact with the body either due to change in pH or temperature. We have successfully prepared the gels using cold method using amantadine, with Pluronic F127 as a thermoreversible polymer and carboxymethylcelluose (CMS) as a mucoadhesive polymer. Rheological characterisation confirmed the sol-to-gel phenomenon at desired temperatures. CMC increased the gelation temperature with increase in concentration, whereas amantadine lowered the gelation temperature with increase in concentration. After preliminary studies, 16 % of Pluronic F127 found to be a suitable concentration for the formulation to change from sol-to-gel at ambient nasal temperatures. Molecular, gene expression and drug transport studies using the nasal epithelial cell lines RPMI 2650 are also under investigation along with the development of an in-vitro olfactory-epithelial cell culture model to study axonal transport. Unlike the animal studies this model will be faster to use, efficient and also better representation of human olfactory system.
Gain-robust multi-pitch tracking using sparse nonnegative matrix factorization

While nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) has successfully been applied for gain-robust multi-pitch detection, a method to track pitch values over time was not provided. We embed NMF-based pitch detection into a recently proposed pitch-tracking system, based on a factorial hidden Markov model (FHMM). The original system models speech spectra with Gaussian mixture models, which is sensitive to a gain mismatch between training and test data. We therefore combine the advantages of these two approaches and derive a gain-adaptive observation model for the FHMM. As training algorithm we use a modification of ℓ0-sparse NMF, which represents the short-time spectrum with scalable basis vectors. In experiments we show that the new approach significantly increases the gain-robustness of the original tracking system.
A curvature controlled flexible silicon micro electrode array to wrap neurons for signal analysis

A brand-new flexible microelectrodes array device is made with silicon and polymer MEMS technology. The device can “wrap” a single axon of a neuron with uniform curvature radius predefined by the integrated “curvature limiter”. The device can measure 3-dimensional potential distribution around the axon surface. By this we are intending to verify if the assumption that an axon works as a 1-dimensional wire is correct or not. This would be the world's first attempt to measure an axon 3-dimensionally.
Experimental Investigation and Optimization of Machining Characteristics in Ultrasonic Machining of WC–Co Composite Using GRA Method

WC–Co composite material is highly demanded in manufacturing industries, because of its unique properties such as excellent hardness with toughness, higher mechanical strength, and good dimensional stability. The present investigation is aimed at studying the impact of different experimental conditions (by varying cobalt content, thickness of work piece, tool profile, tool material, abrasive grit size, and power rating) on responses of interest (material removal rate and tool wear rate) in ultrasonic drilling of WC–Co composite material. The experiments have been planned by using Taguchi's L-36 orthogonal array and grey relation analysis has been applied for optimization of multiple responses. Analysis of variance is also employed to find the significant factors. Significant effects are observed for process variables such as cobalt content, abrasive grain size, and power level. Tools with higher hardness delivered better machining performance.