Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A wireless batteryless implantable radiofrequency lesioning device powered by intermediate-range segmented coil transmitter

A batteryless implantable radiofrequency lesioning (RFL) device powered by magnetic coupling is presented. The implant is composed of bipolar RFL electrodes, an energy-receiving coil, and a resonant capacitor circuit for maximizing the received power and providing an appropriate voltage for the electrodes. A 40-cm transmitting coil designed to wrap around the patient's body is used to generate a uniform magnetic field in a large volume so precise coil alignment is not necessary. The transmitting coil is divided to 24 segments by resonant capacitors to significantly reduce the excitation voltage to a safe level. The system was tested using ex-vivo chicken muscle tissue. Experimental results show that with a transmitting coil excitation of 1.2 Arms, the implant can lesion the muscle tissue by achieving a temperature of 55 °C. When the excitation increased to 1.6 Arms, the tissue temperature was increased to 83 °C. FEA simulation results demonstrate that the human body SAR is lower than the safety limit of 2 W kg−1 suggested by international guidelines when the excitation is 1.6 Arms.
Identifying superspreaders for epidemics using R0-adjusted network centrality

Identifying “superspreaders” in a network is a key problem to designing an effective mitigation strategy against a spread of an epidemic disease. Superspreaders are a set of nodes that play a hub role in a disease spread network, and classical network centrality measures are often used to identify such hubs. In this research, we test a hypothesis that a node's intrinsic property plays a role in the dynamics of disease spreading in a network. Specifically, we test whether spreading of an epidemic disease is affected by a node's property of being an amplifier or attenuator. Using GEM (Global Epidemic Model), we conducted experiments for epidemic spreading on a hypothetical, global network of 155 cities. We find that node's intrinsic property plays a significant role in disease spreading dynamics. Based on these findings we propose a new metric, R0-adjusted centrality.
Convergent differentiation in cultured rat cells from nonkeratinized epithelia: keratinocyte character and intrinsic differences

Epithelial cells derived from a variety of glandular and other nonkeratinized rat tissues (pituitary, thyroid, bladder, endometrium, trachea, seminal vesicle, prostate, and mammary epithelium) were serially cultivated using a feeder layer of lethally irradiated 3T3 cells. The epithelial cells grew as progressively expanding colonies, in some cases stratified, and were shown to form cornified envelopes upon ionophore-induced activation of cross-linking. Cultures derived from each tissue were distinguishable from the others by characteristic cellular appearance and colony morphology. Those examined in greater detail could be distinguished biochemically in three ways. (a) A majority of cells in sparse cultures of bladder, tracheal, endometrial, and vaginal epithelial cells were capable of envelope formation, whereas those from pituitary, thyroid, seminal vesicle, and mammary epithelia did not attain maximal envelope forming ability until after confluence. (b) Bladder, thyroid, and pituitary cells exhibited different electrophoretic profiles of keratins, which accounted for 20- 50% of the cellular protein. (c) Bladder cells were distinguished from thyroid and pituitary cells by a greater suppression of envelope- forming ability by vitamin A. These observations showed that cells from many epithelia have the potential to express properties of keratinocytes in culture while maintaining morphological and physiological differences. Serial passage of these cells generated continuous lines.
Using orthographic neighbours to treat a case of graphemic buffer disorder

Background: The characteristics of graphemic buffer disorder have been described by Miceli, Silveri, and Caramazza (1985) and Caramazza and Miceli (1990) and include a length effect in spelling words and nonwords, in both written and oral format. Error patterns typically consist of omissions, substitutions, additions, and movement errors. Recently, lexical effects on spelling accuracy in many buffer cases have been shown (Sage & Ellis, 2004) and, in patient BH in particular, these included an influence of orthographic neighbourhood size (the number of words that can be generated by changing one letter in the target word; Coltheart, Davelaar, Jonassen, & Besner, 1977). Aims: This paper aims to show that orthographic neighbours used in a therapy programme can bring about improvements in the spelling of targets that have not directly received therapy. Methods & procedures: This was a single case treatment study of BH, who showed classic features of graphemic buffer disorder in her spelling. Two priming studies contrasting no prime, control primes, and orthographic neighbour primes (both word and nonword) established that positive effects on spelling accuracy and error pattern could be achieved. The use of orthographic neighbours was then extended into a therapy programme. Three word sets contrasted direct therapy to the words themselves (Set1), no therapy at all (Set 2), and therapy to neighbours of the words in a set (Set 3). An errorless learning paradigm was used throughout the therapy programme. Outcome & results: Improvement was made both to the treated words in Set 1 and to the words in Set 3, even though these words had received no direct therapy. There was no change in accuracy in Set 2, the control set that had received no therapy. The paper also explores changes in error patterns due to therapy, showing that error patterns changed following therapy. Conclusions: The priming studies showed that changes in accuracy could be achieved when orthographic neighbours were used. Following on from this, a therapy programme based on neighbours was effective in assisting the graphemic buffer. Specifically, the interaction between lexicon and buffer was used therapeutically to improve not only the spelling of words that had received direct treatment but also to a word set that did not directly receive treatment. These changes were brought about using an errorless learning paradigm.
Graduate Social Work Students' Attitudes Toward Research: Problems and Prospects

This study examines the attitudes of graduate social work students toward research in the contexts of academic study, professional social work practice, and students' personal lives. The authors collected quantitative and qualitative data from MSW students (n = 102) at a major Canadian school of social work. Findings suggest that MSW students appreciate the value of research for their professional and personal lives. However, they are apprehensive about the process of learning research, and when faced with the prospect of conducting research, feel intimidated and powerless. This report discusses factors associated with positive attitudes toward learning research. Teaching strategies to engage students in discovering their research capacities are also explored.
Phase Fresnel Lens Development for X-ray & Gamma-ray Astronomy

Observations in the hard X-ray and gammaray energy regimes are constrained by limited sensitivity and angular resolution. Significant gains could be made if these high-energy photons could be concentrated from a large area onto a small detector element and if diffraction-limited measurements could be obtained. Furthermore, the angular resolution in the gamma-ray band would be superior to that possible at all other wavelengths since the diffraction-limited angular resolution improves with increasing energy. Phase Fresnel Lenses (PFL’s) have high throughput at hard x-ray and gamma-ray energies, can achieve, in principle, diffraction-limited angular resolution, and have the capability of being scaled to large dimensions. We have successfully fabricated PFL’s and measured near diffraction-limited performance with high efficiency in focusing 8 keV x-rays at the GSFC 600-meter Interferometry Testbed. The results demonstrate the superior imaging potential in the x-ray/gamma-ray energy band for PFLbased optics in a format that is scalable for astronomical applications.
Safety, Efficacy, and Pharmacokinetics of TBR-652, a CCR5/CCR2 Antagonist, in HIV-1–Infected, Treatment-Experienced, CCR5 Antagonist–Naive Subjects

Objectives:To determine the antiviral activity, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, safety, and tolerability of several dose levels of oral TBR-652 monotherapy in HIV-1-infected, antiretroviral experienced, CCR5 antagonist-naive subjects. Design:Double-blind placebo-controlled study in the United States and Argentina. Methods:Subjects were randomized in a ratio of 4:1 per dose level to TBR-652 (25, 50, 75, 100, or 150 mg) or placebo, taken once daily for 10 days. Changes from baseline in HIV-1 RNA and CD4+ cell counts were measured through day 40 and for monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and IL-6 at day 10. Pharmacokinetic data were analyzed using noncompartmental statistics. Laboratory and clinical adverse events (AEs) and electrocardiogram changes were recorded. Results:Maximum median reductions in HIV-1 RNA values for the 25, 50, 75, and 150 mg doses were −0.7, −1.6, −1.8, and −1.7 log10 copies per milliliter, respectively. All changes were significant. Median time to nadir was 10-11 days. Suppression persisted well into the posttreatment period. Mean MCP-1 increased significantly by day 10 in the 50-mg and 150-mg dose groups. Effects on CD4+ cell counts, hs-CRP, and IL-6 levels were negligible. TBR-652 was generally safe and well tolerated, with no withdrawals due to AEs. Conclusions:TBR-652 caused significant reductions in HIV-1 RNA at all doses. Significant increases in MCP-1 levels suggested a strong CCR2 blockade. TBR-652 was generally well tolerated with no dose-limiting AEs. Pharmacodynamics indicate that TBR-652 warrants further investigation as an unboosted once-daily oral CCR5 antagonist with potentially important CCR2-mediated anti-inflammatory effects.
Interest-Driven Web Service Recommendation Based on MFI-7

Composing and reusing services is the main advantage of Service Oriented Software Engineering (SOSE). Faced with the large amount of Web services which are available on World Wide Web, how to select and recommend suitable Web services becomes a key issue in service computing. The most popular service recommendation technique is QoS-based Collaborate Filtering (CF) with user-service QoS matrix. However, it cannot well capture the new interests of users and handle the cold start problem. In this paper we propose an interest-driven recommendation approach which leverage User Interest Profile (UIP) to represent users' interests. UIP is generated in accordance with an ISO standard named as MFI-7. The similarity between UIPs is used to produce users' nearest neighbors. The Top-K recommendations will be generated from these neighbors' mostly-used services. To show the effectiveness of our approach, a developed Web service registry and repository platform is used as a testbed to produce preliminary evaluation results.
A wavelet based partial update fast LMS/Newton algorithm

This paper studies a wavelet based partial update fast LMS/Newton algorithm. Different from the conventional fast LMS/Newton algorithm, the proposed algorithm first uses a shorter-order, partial Haar transform-based NLMS adaptive filter to estimate the peak position of the long, sparse channel impulse response, and then employs the fast LMS/Newton algorithm integrated with partial update technique to fulfil the rest convergence task. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed algorithm outperforms its conventional counterpart in convergence performance and possesses a significantly lower computational complexity.
Arrival and delay curve estimation for SLA Calculus

An algorithm and selection method to estimate Network Calculus arrival bounds for systems with concurrent arrivals is presented. Concurrent job arrivals are common for Service-Oriented Architectures. Their performance is described in Service Level Agreements including quantitative requirements for load and response times. SLA Calculus, a variant of Network Calculus, can be used for service performance modeling and validation with SLAs. Functions called curves are used to bound job arrivals as well as their delay. Due to the concurrent nature of job arrivals curve estimation methods used for successive packet arrivals in Network Calculus cannot be applied in SLA Calculus. We present a method to estimate unknown SLA Calculus arrival and delay bounds from input and output traces. This paper introduces an algorithm for the estimation of the curves. Optimal selection of a curve model based on several fitting criteria is performed using candidates from trace sets.
Antibodies against 70-kD heat shock cognate protein inhibit mediated nuclear import of karyophilic proteins

Previously, we found that anti-DDDED antibodies strongly inhibited in vivo nuclear transport of nuclear proteins and that these antibodies recognized a protein of 69 kD (p69) from rat liver nuclear envelopes that showed specific binding activities to the nuclear location sequences (NLSs) of nucleoplasmin and SV-40 large T-antigen. Here we identified this protein as the 70-kD heat shock cognate protein (hsc70) based on its mass, isoelectric point, cellular localization, and partial amino acid sequences. Competition studies indicated that the recombinant hsc70 expressed in Escherichia coli binds to transport competent SV-40 T-antigen NLS more strongly than to the point mutated transport incompetent mutant NLS. To investigate the possible involvement of hsc70 in nuclear transport, we examined the effect of anti-hsc70 rabbit antibodies on the nuclear accumulation of karyophilic proteins. When injected into the cytoplasm of tissue culture cells, anti-hsc70 strongly inhibited the nuclear import of nucleoplasmin, SV- 40 T-antigen NLS bearing BSA and histone H1. In contrast, anti-hsc70 IgG did not prevent the diffusion of lysozyme or 17.4-kD FITC-dextran into the nuclei. After injection of these antibodies, cells continued RNA synthesis and were viable. These results indicate that hsc70 interacts with NLS-containing proteins in the cytoplasm before their nuclear import.
Growing 'homeplace' In Critical Service-Learning: An Urban Womanist Pedagogy

GROWING ‘HOMEPLACE’ IN CRITICAL SERVICE-LEARNING: AN URBAN WOMANIST PEDAGOGY by VANESSA L. MARR May 2014 Advisor: Dr. Sandra L. Pensoneau-Conway Co-Advisor: Dr. Pradeep Sopory Major: Communication Degree: Doctor of Philosophy This dissertation explores the role of critical service-learning from the perspective of urban community members. Specifically, it examines the counternarratives produced by Black women community gardeners who engage in academic service-learning with postsecondary faculty. The study focuses on this particular group because of the women’s deep involvement with grassroots organizing that reflects their sense of self and other community members, as well as their personal and political relationships to Detroit, Michigan. Given the city’s economic disparities rooted in racial segregation, structural violence and gender oppression, Detroit is a site of critical learning within a postindustrial/postcolonial context. This intersectionalist approach to service-learning is likened to bell hooks’s concept of homeplace, a site of resistance created by Black women for the purposes of conducting anti-oppression work. Integrating community member interviews and the author’s autoethnographic account to dialogically co- construct meaning, the study employs the womanist epistemological tenet of multivocality through connections to place, community, and activist praxis. Presenting
Time ordering in the evolution of information processing and modulation systems

The ideas of optimization of learning algorithms in artificial neural networks are reviewed emphasizing generic properties, and the on-line implementations are interpreted from a biological perspective. A simple model of the relevant subsidiary variables needed to improve learning in artificial feedforward networks and the 'time ordering' of the appearance of the respective information processing systems is proposed. We discuss the possibility that these results might be relevant in other contexts, not being restricted to the simple models from which they stem. The analysis of a few examples. which range from the lowest cellular scale to the macroscopic level, suggests that similar ideas could be applied to biological systems.
Controlling orientation of V2O5 nanowires within micropatterns via microcontact printing combined with the gluing Langmuir–Blodgett technique

Previously, we suggested a facile method to transfer dioctadecyldimethylammonium bromide (DODAB)/V2O5 nanowire hybrid patterns onto both hydrophobic and hydrophilic substrates via microcontact printing combined with the Langmuir–Blodgett (LB) technique (Park et al 2007 Nanotechnology 18 405301). Herein, we report on the delicate control of the orientation of V2O5 nanowires within the micropatterns transferred via the gluing LB technique using a patterned polydimethylsilicate (PDMS) stamp. According to the orientation of the PDMS line patterns relative to the air–water interface, the aligned orientation of the nanowires, either parallel or perpendicular to the patterns, could be obtained and attributed to the moving direction of the water menisci formed between the PDMS stamp and water. In particular, addition of a small amount of ethanol in the subphase enhanced the dispersion of the DODAB at the air–water interface as well as the aggregation of V2O5 nanowires, resulting in alignment of the V2O5 nanowires via compression of the hybrid LB film by a barrier. Directional alignment of nanowires has potentially broad applications in the fabrication of aligned nanowire devices.
Isolation and Characterization of Exosomes from Cell Culture Supernatants and Biological Fluids

Exosomes are small membrane vesicles found in cell culture supernatants and in different biological fluids. Exosomes form in a particular population of endosomes, called multivesicular bodies (MVBs), by inward budding into the lumen of the compartment. Upon fusion of MVBs with the plasma membrane, these internal vesicles are secreted. Exosomes possess a defined set of membrane and cytosolic proteins. The physiological function of exosomes is still a matter of debate, but increasing results in various experimental systems suggest their involvement in multiple biological processes. Because both cell‐culture supernatants and biological fluids contain different types of lipid membranes, it is critical to perform high‐quality exosome purification. This unit describes different approaches for exosome purification from various sources, and discusses methods to evaluate the purity and homogeneity of the purified exosome preparations.
On the Relative Importance of Personal Values Validating Schwartz's Theory of Value Structures by Computerized Paired Comparisons

The relative importance of values is a central feature in Schwartz’s value theory. However, instruments used for validating his theory did not assess relative importance directly. Rather, values were independently rated and scores then statistically centered, person-by-person. Whether these scores match those that result from explicitly comparing values has not been tested. We study this here using the Computerized Paired Comparison of Values (CPCV). This instrument was applied to samples from Germany, Brazil, Spain, and Israel, together with Schwartz’s Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). CPCV- and PVQ-data were analyzed by separate and joint multidimensional scaling, generalized procrustes, and response time analyses. Results support the validity of Schwartz’s structural theory, independently of the assessment instrument used.
Psychopharmacological challenge studies in psychiatric research

Psychopharmacological challenge studies have made significant contributions to understanding the neurobiological basis of psychiatric disorders. With the emergence of novel, sometimes alternative, techniques to study the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, and the risks associated with some psychopharmacological challenge studies, the role of this technique has come under increasing scrutiny. Using the psychostimulant paradigm in schizophrenia research as the prototypical study, the important scientific contributions and risks of psychopharmacological challenge studies will be reviewed. The historical contributions of psychopharmacological challenge studies to psychiatric research will be reviewed. The risks and benefits of this approach will then be reviewed, in particular within the current ethical standards. Finally, the future role of psychopharmacological challenge studies is discussed. In the foreseeable future, psychopharmacological challenge studies either alone or in conjunction with novel techniques such as brain imaging, may continue to provide an important method to test candidate pathophysiologic mechanisms and to study potential pharmacotherapies.
Voicing Resistance: Adolescent boys and the cultural practice of leisure reading

This article describes a theoretically informed methodology for eliciting the voices of adolescent boys identified by their teachers and parents as reluctant leisure time readers. Similar methods have also been used to draw out the voices of the boys’ parents to understand their efforts to guide and maintain their sons’ literacy practices, within the context of one middle class Australian school community. The concept of “voice” in our research of boys as capable but differently committed leisure time readers is informed by a socio-cultural theory that foregrounds the processes of enculturation, appropriation, and agency as fundamental to identity formation. In this regard the varied ways in which the boys in the study have taken up the reading practices valued in their families is illustrative of the mutuality of individual agency and cultural processes. In describing both the theoretical and conceptual framing of a methodology designed to investigate in particular those boys who have resisted their families’ reading dispositions we hope to highlight how individuals struggle to construct new values within patterns of cultural practice.
Global warming—global responsibility? Media frames of collective action and scientific certainty

The increasing interconnectedness of the world that characterizes the process of globalization compels us to interlink local, national, and transnational phenomena, such as environmental risks, in both journalistic and academic discourse. Among environmental risks of global scope climate change is probably the one receiving the most attention at present, not least in the media. Globalization notwithstanding, national media are still dominated by a national logic in the presentation of news, and tensions arise between this media logic and the transnational character of environmental risks that call for a collective responsibility transcending the borders of the nation-states. This article presents results from studies of the construction of global climate change in three Swedish newspapers. It discusses the media's attribution of responsibility for collective action along an axis ranging from local to national to transnational, and highlights the media's reluctance to display any kind of scientific uncertainty that would undermine the demand for collective action. The results underline the media's responsiveness to the political setting in which they operate and the growing relevance of the transnational political realm of Europe for the construction of news frames on global climate change in European national media.