Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On randomized harmonic spectrum control for a flyback switch-mode rectifier

This paper presents the spread harmonic spectrum control for a flyback switch-mode rectifier (SMR). First, the power circuit is designed and implemented. A chargeregulated switching scheme and a robust voltage controller are designed to yield robust DC output voltage regulation response with good AC line drawn power quality. Next, the current harmonic spectral properties of the developed SMR are observed analytically. Then accordingly, the random switching schemes are developed and comparatively evaluated their harmonic spread distribution characteristics. The proposed random switching schemes belong to constant turn-on period with turn-off periods being modulated via binary sequence and pseudo random binary sequence (PRBS). The validity and performance of the developed flyback PFC rectifier are demonstrated experimentally.
Structure of a Major Antigenic Site on the Respiratory Syncytial Virus Fusion Glycoprotein in Complex with Neutralizing Antibody 101F

ABSTRACT Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of pneumonia and bronchiolitis in infants and elderly people. Currently there is no effective vaccine against RSV, but passive prophylaxis with neutralizing antibodies reduces hospitalizations. To investigate the mechanism of antibody-mediated RSV neutralization, we undertook structure-function studies of monoclonal antibody 101F, which binds a linear epitope in the RSV fusion glycoprotein. Crystal structures of the 101F antigen-binding fragment in complex with peptides from the fusion glycoprotein defined both the extent of the linear epitope and the interactions of residues that are mutated in antibody escape variants. The structure allowed for modeling of 101F in complex with trimers of the fusion glycoprotein, and the resulting models suggested that 101F may contact additional surfaces located outside the linear epitope. This hypothesis was supported by surface plasmon resonance experiments that demonstrated 101F bound the peptide epitope ∼16,000-fold more weakly than the fusion glycoprotein. The modeling also showed no substantial clashes between 101F and the fusion glycoprotein in either the pre- or postfusion state, and cell-based assays indicated that 101F neutralization was not associated with blocking virus attachment. Collectively, these results provide a structural basis for RSV neutralization by antibodies that target a major antigenic site on the fusion glycoprotein.
Convolutional neural networks for lung cancer screening in computed tomography (CT) scans

Diagnosis and cure of cancer has been one of the biggest challenges faced by mankind in the last few decades. Early detection of cancer would facilitate in saving millions of lives across the globe every year. This paper presents an approach which uses a Convolutional Neural Network (CNNs) to classify tumours seen in lung cancer screening computed tomography scans as malignant or benign. CNNs have special properties such as spatial invariance, and allow for multiple feature extraction. When such layers are cascaded, leading to Deep CNNs, it has been shown widely that the accuracy of prediction increases dramatically. In this work, we have designed a CNN suitable for the analysis of CT scans with tumours, using domain knowledge from both medicine and neural networks. The results show that the accuracy of classification for our network performs better than both the traidtional neural networks, and also existing CNNs built for image classification purposes.
A clinical trial of progesterone for severe traumatic brain injury.

BACKGROUND Progesterone has been associated with robust positive effects in animal models of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and with clinical benefits in two phase 2 randomized, controlled trials. We investigated the efficacy and safety of progesterone in a large, prospective, phase 3 randomized clinical trial. METHODS We conducted a multinational placebo-controlled trial, in which 1195 patients, 16 to 70 years of age, with severe TBI (Glasgow Coma Scale score, ≤8 [on a scale of 3 to 15, with lower scores indicating a reduced level of consciousness] and at least one reactive pupil) were randomly assigned to receive progesterone or placebo. Dosing began within 8 hours after injury and continued for 120 hours. The primary efficacy end point was the Glasgow Outcome Scale score at 6 months after the injury. RESULTS Proportional-odds analysis with covariate adjustment showed no treatment effect of progesterone as compared with placebo (odds ratio, 0.96; confidence interval, 0.77 to 1.18). The proportion of patients with a favorable outcome on the Glasgow Outcome Scale (good recovery or moderate disability) was 50.4% with progesterone, as compared with 50.5% with placebo. Mortality was similar in the two groups. No relevant safety differences were noted between progesterone and placebo. CONCLUSIONS Primary and secondary efficacy analyses showed no clinical benefit of progesterone in patients with severe TBI. These data stand in contrast to the robust preclinical data and results of early single-center trials that provided the impetus to initiate phase 3 trials. (Funded by BHR Pharma; SYNAPSE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01143064.).
Impact of Nutritional Labeling on Consumer Buying Behavior

Nutritional label plays an important role in providing the relevant nutrition information to consumers. Inclusion of a nutritional label on food items may be an important packaging decision for the Sri Lankan food processors. Hence, a study was conducted with a view of identifying the market for nutritional labeling and the factors that influence the consumer willingness-to-pay for nutritional labeling. Data were collected from a random sample of 90 consumers selected from three supermarkets - Dhanasiri, Cargill’s Food City and Royal Garden Mall - located in Kandy. Market for nutritional labeling were identified by exploring data and a logit method of analysis was performed to identify the factors that influence the willingness-to-pay for nutritional information on food items. A significantly greater proportion of individuals in the age category 36 to 50 years, individuals with tertiary education, individuals with special dietary status and households with less than four members were willing to pay more for the nutritional labels. Logit analysis showed that gender, level of education and special dietary status have a significant positive effect and the household size has a significant negative effect on the willingness to pay for nutrition information. Accordingly, it could be stated that incorporation of a nutritional panel in the package would enhance the demand for food products and it would be an appropriate strategic task for the local food processors. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.4038/sjae.v5i0. 3475 SJAE 2003; 5(1): 35-46
Evaluation of in silico tools to predict the skin sensitization potential of chemicals

Abstract Public domain and commercial in silico tools were compared for their performance in predicting the skin sensitization potential of chemicals. The packages were either statistical based (Vega, CASE Ultra) or rule based (OECD Toolbox, Toxtree, Derek Nexus). In practice, several of these in silico tools are used in gap filling and read-across, but here their use was limited to make predictions based on presence/absence of structural features associated to sensitization. The top 400 ranking substances of the ATSDR 2011 Priority List of Hazardous Substances were selected as a starting point. Experimental information was identified for 160 chemically diverse substances (82 positive and 78 negative). The prediction for skin sensitization potential was compared with the experimental data. Rule-based tools perform slightly better, with accuracies ranging from 0.6 (OECD Toolbox) to 0.78 (Derek Nexus), compared with statistical tools that had accuracies ranging from 0.48 (Vega) to 0.73 (CASE Ultra – LLNA weak model). Combining models increased the performance, with positive and negative predictive values up to 80% and 84%, respectively. However, the number of substances that were predicted positive or negative for skin sensitization in both models was low. Adding more substances to the dataset will increase the confidence in the conclusions reached. The insights obtained in this evaluation are incorporated in a web database www.asopus. weebly.com that provides a potential end user context for the scope and performance of different in silico tools with respect to a common dataset of curated skin sensitization data.
Abnormal lower limb symmetry determined by function hop tests after anterior cruciate ligament rupture

This study assessed the sensitivity of four different types of one-legged hop tests. The goal was to deter mine alterations in lower limb function in ACL deficient knees. Regression analyses were conducted between limb symmetry as measured by the hop tests and muscle strength, symptoms, and self-assessed func tion. In 67 patients, 50% had abnormal limb symmetry scores on a single hop test. When the results of two hop tests were calculated, the percent of abnormal scores increased to 62%. The percentage of normal scores indicated that these hop tests had a low sensi tivity rate. However, the high specificity and low false- positive rates allow the tests to be used to confirm suspected defects in lower limb function. Statistical trends were noted between abnormal limb symmetry on the hop tests and low velocity quadriceps isokinetic test results.
THE W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY INFRARED VORTEX CORONAGRAPH AND A FIRST IMAGE OF HIP 79124 B

An optical vortex coronagraph has been implemented within the NIRC2 camera on the Keck II telescope and used to carry out on-sky tests and observations. The development of this new L′-band observational mode is described, and an initial demonstration of the new capability is presented: a resolved image of the low-mass companion to HIP 79124, which had previously been detected by means of interferometry. With HIP 79124 B at a projected separation of 186.5 mas, both the small inner working angle of the vortex coronagraph and the related imaging improvements were crucial in imaging this close companion directly. Due to higher Strehl ratios and more relaxed contrasts in L′ band versus H band, this new coronagraphic capability will enable high-contrast, small-angle observations of nearby young exoplanets and disks on a par with those of shorter-wavelength extreme adaptive optics coronagraphs.
Learning Doubly Stochastic Affinity Matrix via Davis-Kahan Theorem

Building an ideal graph which reveals the exact intrinsic structure of the data is critical in graph-based clustering. There have been a lot of efforts to construct an affinity matrix satisfying such a need in terms of a similarity measure. A recent approach attracting attention is on using doubly stochastic normalization of the affinity matrix to improve the clustering performance. In this paper, we propose a novel method to build a high-quality affinity matrix via incorporating Davis-Kahan theorem of matrix perturbation theory in the doubly stochastic normalization problem. We interpret the goal of the doubly stochastic normalization problem as minimizing the relative distance between the eigenspaces of the corresponding matrices. Also, for the doubly stochastic normalization problem we include an additional constraint that each eigenvalue be on the unit interval to fully conform to the spectral graph theory. Experiments on our framework present superior performance over various datasets.
FimH‐mediated Escherichia coli K1 invasion of human brain microvascular endothelial cells

Adhesion to brain microvascular endothelial cells, which constitute the blood–brain barrier is considered important in Escherichia coli K1 bacterial penetration into the central nervous system. Type 1 fimbriae are known to mediate bacterial interactions with human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEC). Here, we demonstrate that type 1 fimbriae, specifically FimH adhesin is not only an adhesive organelle that provides bacteria with a foothold on brain endothelial cells but also triggers signalling events that promote E. coli K1 invasion in HBMEC. This is shown by our demonstrations that exogenous FimH increases cytosolic‐free‐calcium levels as well as activates RhoA. Using purified recombinant mannose‐recognition domain of FimH, we identified a glycosylphosphatidylinositol‐anchored receptor, CD48, as a putative HBMEC receptor for FimH. Furthermore, E. coli K1 binding to and invasion of HBMEC were blocked by CD48 antibody. Taken together, these findings indicate that FimH induces host cell signalling cascades that are involved in E. coli K1 invasion of HBMEC and CD48 is a putative HBMEC receptor for FimH.
Beta-amino alcohol derived beta-hydroxy- and beta-(o-diphenylphosphino)benzoyloxy(o-diphenylphosphino)benzamides: an ester-amide ligand structural model for the palladium-catalyzed allylic alkylation reaction.

A commercially available collection of beta-amino alcohols have been converted to their corresponding beta-hydroxy- and beta-(o-diphenylphosphino)benzoyloxy(o-diphenylphosphino)benzamides 11a-f and 12a-f and have been employed in the Tsuji-Trost asymmetric alkylation reaction with 1,3-diphenylpropenyl acetate. With the exception of ligands 11b and 11f, the beta-hydroxybenzoyloxy(o-diphenylphosphino)benzamide ligands 11a-f primarily afforded the (R)-enantiomer of the product. In contrast, the bis(phosphine) ligands 12a-f consistently afforded the (S)-enantiomer. The best ligand (12c) was derived from cis-(1R,2S)-2-amino-1,2-diphenyl-1-ethanol, and when applied in the asymmetric allylic alkylation reaction, it yielded the product in an enantiomeric ratio of 97.8. 22 favoring the (S)-enantiomer. A computational study was conducted on the conformation that this ligand might adopt in the palladium-catalyzed alkylation reaction as compared to that of the Trost ligand 1a.
Genes induced by high concentration of salicylic acid in Mitragyna speciosa

Mitragyna speciosa is rich in secondary metabolites which are similar in effects as opium. Treatment with plant growth regulator such as salicylic acid (SA) is able to increase plant defense mechanism which later induces the expression of genes that encode secondary metabolite production. To identify genes that respond to elicitation of high concentration of SA, suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) library was constructed using mRNA from SA-treated leaves and mRNA from non-SA-treated leaves. A total of 292 EST clones were randomly sequenced and all cleaned clone sequences (111) were analyzed using BLASTX against nonredundant NCBI databases. Results showed that most genes responding to acute SA treatment are related to stress and signaling pathways which eventually led to cell death. This include genes encoding chaperone, heatshock proteins (HSPs), antioxidants and genes involved in secondary metabolite biosynthesis, such as sinapyl alcohol dehydrogenase (SAD), cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD) and Cytochrome P450 (CYP 450). Further analysis was carried out using 8 out of 60 differentially expressed unique sequences through semi-quantitative RT-PCR on samples before and after treatment with 5 mM SA in 4 consecutive days. The result revealed that their expression changed over time when the plant was treated with 5 mM SA.
't Hooft loop in SU(2) Yang-Mills theory.

We study the behavior of the spatial and temporal 't Hooft loop at zero and finite temperature in the 4D SU(2) Yang-Mills theory, using a new numerical method. In the deconfined phase T > T(c), the spatial 't Hooft loop exhibits a dual string tension, which vanishes at T(c) with a 3D Ising-like critical exponent.
Trichomonas vaginalis in Selected US Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinics: Testing, Screening, and Prevalence

Background Trichomonas vaginalis is the most prevalent nonviral sexually transmitted infection in the United States, affecting 3.1% of women of reproductive age. Infection is associated with HIV acquisition and pelvic inflammatory disease. In the United States, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines recommend testing all women with vaginal discharge for T. vaginalis, but except for HIV-infected women, there are no national guidelines for screening asymptomatic persons. The objective of this analysis is to assess testing and screening practices for T. vaginalis among symptomatic and asymptomatic women in the sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic setting. Methods We analyzed data on demographics, clinical presentation, and laboratory testing for all women visiting a clinician in 2010 to 2011 at any of 15 STD clinics participating in the STD Surveillance Network. Prevalence of laboratory-confirmed T. vaginalis infection was calculated among symptomatic women tested and among asymptomatic women screened. Results A total of 59,176 women visited STD clinicians: 39,979 were considered symptomatic and 19,197 were considered asymptomatic for T. vaginalis infection, whereas 211 were HIV-infected. Diagnostic practices varied by jurisdiction: 4.0% to 96.1% of women were tested or screened for T. vaginalis using any laboratory test. Among 17,952 symptomatic women tested, prevalence was 26.2%. Among 3909 asymptomatic women screened, prevalence was 6.5%. Among 92 HIV-infected women tested/screened, prevalence was 29.3%. Conclusions Trichomoniasis is common among STD clinic patients. In this analysis, most STD clinics tested symptomatic women seeking care, in accordance with national guidelines. All HIV-infected women should be screened annually. Additional evidence and national guidance are needed regarding potential benefits of T. vaginalis screening in other asymptomatic women.
Molecular Analysis of Microbial Communities in Nitrification and Denitrification Reactors Treating High Ammonia Leachate

Abstract Molecular analysis of microbial populations in two bench-scale nitrification and denitrification reactors fed with high ammonia landfill leachate was conducted in this study by using DGGE, cloning, and FISH techniques in addition to classical efficiency control parameters. Nitrification tank was operated with a computer-controlled alkalinity dosing system to supply the alkalinity intermittently as consumed on the basis of on-line pH monitoring. By keeping the pH at 7.0 with this system, 99% nitrification efficiency and rates of about 0.14–0.18 mg -N/mgVSS day were obtained. Meanwhile, as ammonia oxidizing bacteria Nitrosomonas and Nitrosococcus mobilis-like cells and as nitrite oxidizing bacteria Nitrobacter-related cells were intensively indicated. Moreover, some aerobic denitrifiers as Thauera species were also identified. After the termination of pH adjustment in the preceding anaerobic reactors, nitrification tank was loaded with more biodegradable COD as a result of reduced COD removal in anaerobic reactors. Microbial diversity was immediately affected from this alteration and heterotrophic carbonaceous bacteria and aerobic denitrifiers have dominated. To provide the former high efficiencies, retention time has increased from 24 to 48 h and a second pump dosing HCl was included to the automatic control system. Subsequent to these precautions, numbers of ammonia (Nso190) and nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NIT3) were comparatively increased. In denitrification system, about 98% denitrification efficiencies were obtained at 2000 mg/L NO x -N concentrations if sodium acetate was supplied as carbon source. Meanwhile, with 20 gVSS/l biomass concentration, denitrification rates of about 1.34 mgNO x -N/mgVSS day were obtained. All sludge samples have represented similar DGGE patterns and Paraccoccus-related species were identified as dominant denitrifying bacteria.
Capital Account Liberalization and Stability of Capital Markets in India - An Empirical Analysis

This paper examines the implications of capital account liberalization on the stability of capital markets in India using monthly data for the period 1993-94 to 2007-08. Based on the IMF World Bank framework (2005) to monitor financial sector stability, the stability of capital markets is captured in terms of two indicators, the market liquidity indicator and market volatility. The empirical analysis, after controlling for other variables affecting the stability of capital markets, shows that capital account liberalization; particularly foreign portfolio investment liberalization has not contributed significantly to market liquidity whereas it has contributed significantly to increased market volatility. Thus this study suggests that the opening up of capital account might have made the capital markets more vulnerable to the fluctuations of cross border movements of capital without achieving the benefits. These results are particularly relevant since India opened its financial markets to Foreign Portfolio flows at an earlier stage of its reform process much before the development of domestic financial markets unlike the sequencing pattern flowed by most countries that were undergoing similar process of liberalization. Further, these results have important policy implications since the choice of an attitude towards full capital account convertibility in India has become a debateful issue.