Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficient global network learning from local reconstructions

Discovering complex interactions is an important issue in numerous fields ranging from social sciences to systems biology. Over the past few decades, many network learning methods have exhibited competitive results on various types of data. A commonly reached conclusion is that some learning approaches are more advisable than others depending on the dataset type or the complexity of the underlying network. Another frequently encountered issue relates to the ever increasing number of variables that need to be simultaneously dealt with, especially when only a small number of observations is available. The ScaleNet, a novel reconstruction method which can embed different types of network discovery approaches within a spectral framework for large graphical model was introduced recently. The approach identifies sets of connected variables based on the magnitude and sign of the eigenvector elements of a normalized graph Laplacian matrix, and it learns in parallel multiple relevant sub-graphs of a large network. However, the number of eigenvectors to be used and the size of the sub-graphs are to be fixed by an expensive procedure of cross-validation. In this contribution, we propose heuristics to find both optimal number of eigenvectors and the number of nodes in the sub-networks. We illustrate by the results on standard large-scale data sets and on a real human gut graph reconstruction that the proposed approaches save computational time, i.e. are efficient, and reach the state-of-the-art performance.
Stator flux barriers to improving interior permanent magnet motor characteristics

There are many methods to improve the characteristics of permanent magnet motors. One of them is by making flux barriers on the stator or rotor, or both. This paper discusses the adding stator flux barriers on the rectangular-shaped stator of the interior permanent magnet motor. The purpose is to increase the maximum rotation of the machine. The shape of the flux barrier is circular considering the ease of the manufacturing process, with the proposed diameter is one slot pitch. Several diameters of larger and smaller sizes will also be simulated for comparison. Other parameters, which are cogging torque and stator core loss, are also investigated. Design and simulation are carried out analytically and numerically using 2D finite element analysis. The simulation results indicate that the proposed flux barrier diameter can provide the maximum rotation with only a tiny decrease in output torque. In this regard, it can be concluded that the stator flux barriers affect the speed than output torque. Additional advantages are also obtained from the decrease in cogging torque and core loss at the base speed compared to a stator without flux barriers.
Implementation of Highly Stable Microcrystalline Silicon by VHF PECVD at High Deposition Rate in Micromorph Tandem Cells

We have shown here the development of device quality microcrystalline materials with a wide range of growth rates varying in one order from a moderate deposition rate of 0.45 nm/s to a considerable high deposition rate of 4.5 nm/s. On the one hand, we have achieved a record high stabilized efficiency of 10% for microcrystalline silicon solar cells in a superstate configuration at a deposition rate of 0.45 nm/s, on the other hand, at a high deposition rate of 4.5 nm/s we have shown a very promising stabilized efficiency of 6.7%. The monitoring tools to achieve such materials, such as in situ optical emission spectroscopy and a new parameter called "gas utilisation parameter" have been described. In this article we have reported results of the tandem "micromorph" cell with 11.4% stabilized efficiency using standard amorphous silicon (at a deposition rate of ~0.2 nm/s) for the top cell. We also propose high deposition rate HWCVD proto-Si:H as a possible candidate for the top cell in combination with our high growth rate microcrystalline silicon bottom cell
Fast pixel-size-based large-scale enlargement and reduction of image: adaptive combination of bilinear interpolation and discrete cosine transform

A fast pixel-size-based very large-scale enlargement and reduction of image via an adaptive combination of bilinear interpolation and discrete cosine transform (DCT) is proposed to improve the quality and speed of the image zooming process. The proposed algorithm combined with DCT and bilinear interpolation is proposed to adaptively process different blocks of an image with different characteristics for a very large-scale image enlargement and reduction. Moreover, if quality is the main concern factor, the evolutionary programming is applied to further improve the quality of reduction algorithm of an image by tuning the frequency coefficient matrix of the reduced image. Finally, for dealing with arbitrary pixel-size-based zooming of an image, a new algorithm is also proposed.
Preliminary studies on Phomopsis castanea and other organisms associated with healthy and rotted chestnut fruit in storage

The microflora of chestnuts during storage, and the effect of post-harvest treatments on storage rots, were investigated over two years. Isolations from apparently healthy chestnuts stored for up to 152 days at 0°C showed that nuts were colonised by a range of microorganisms. The organisms isolated most often from shell or kernel tissue were Phomopsis, Botrytis, yeasts, Penicillium, Ceuthospora, bacteria, Cladosporium, Altemaria, Truncatella, Epicoccum and Phoma. Phomopsis castanea was the fungus which was most frequently isolated from apparently healthy nuts. Results suggest that this fungus can grow from the shell into the kernel during storage. Large variations were observed in the type and frequency of microorganisms isolated from nuts between the two years. A storage trial over 172 days during the second year showed that controlled atmosphere storage combined with an initial 6% carbon monoxide atmosphere significantly reduced the incidence of rot from 15.3% in air-stored nuts to 6.1%. A dry heat treatment before storage damaged nuts, resulting in high rot levels (55.3%). The fungi most commonly isolated from the rotted nuts comprised Penicillium spp. , Botrytis cinerea, Phomopsis castanea, Fusarium spp. , Truncatella sp. , Mucor sp. and Cytospora sp. This is the first record of these fungi associated with rotting of chestnuts in Australia.
Morphological and functional characterization of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease induced by a methionine-choline-deficient diet in C57BL/6 mice.

BACKGROUND Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), appears to be increasingly common worldwide. Its histopathology and the effects of nutrition on liver function have not been fully determined. AIM To elucidate the cellular mechanisms of NAFLD induced by a methionine-choline-deficient (MCD) diet in mice. Particular focus was placed on the role of phagocytic cells. METHODS Male C57BL/6 mice were fed an MCD diet for 30 weeks. A recovery model was also established wherein a normal control diet was provided for 2 weeks after a period of 8, 16, or 30 weeks. RESULTS Mice fed the MCD diet for ≥ 2 weeks exhibited severe steatohepatitis with elevated serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels. Steatohepatitis was accompanied by the infiltration of CD68-positive macrophages (Kupffer cells). The severity of steatohepatitis increased in the first 16 weeks but was seen to lessen by week 30. Fibrosis began to develop at 10 weeks and continued thereafter. Steatohepatitis and elevated serum hepatic enzyme concentrations returned to normal levels after switching the diet back to the control within the first 16 weeks, but fibrosis and CD68-positive macrophages remained. CONCLUSIONS The histopathological changes and irreversible fibrosis seen in this model were caused by prolonged feeding of an MCD diet. These results were accompanied by changes in the activity of CD68-positive cells with temporary elevation of CCL-2, MMP-13, and MMP-9 levels, all of which may trigger early steatohepatitis and late fibrosis through phagocytosis-associated MMP induction.
Noninvasive Near-infrared Imaging of Fluorochromes within the Brains of Live Mice: An In Vivo Phantom Study

Near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging has great potential for studying physiological and pathophysiological processes noninvasively in several locations of the body. In this study, we evaluated the feasibility of NIRF imaging to visualize fluorescent compounds within the brains of live mice commonly used in brain research. To simulate the presence of a molecular NIRF reporter agent at the site of a lesion, we developed a new in vivo phantom model wherein capsules containing different amounts of an NIRF dye (Cy5.5) were stereotactically implanted deep into the left hemispheres of living mice. To precisely locate the implanted capsules, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed. Fluorescence reflectance imaging (FRI) and transillumination fluorescence imaging (TFI) were conducted to analyze and compare sensitivity and target-to-background ratios of the two methods. The sensitivities of FRI and TFI to background fluorescence from circulating dye was tested by imaging fluorescent capsules in mice intravenously injected with increasing amounts of long-circulating Cy5.5-dextran. The results show that capsules containing dye amounts as low as 10−12 mol can be detected. TFI yielded significantly higher target-to-background ratios than FRI at 10−11 mol (p < .05). Comparatively low amounts of fluorescence in the blood vessels can extinguish the signal. We conclude that keeping the signal from circulating NIRF dye low, NIRF imaging offers high sensitivity in detecting fluorochromes noninvasively within brains of mice, especially by using TFI. This encourages the application of NIRF for molecular imaging in the mouse brain using NIRF reporters.
Genes That Enhance the Ecological Fitness of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 in Sediments Reveal the Value of Antibiotic Resistance

ABSTRACT Environmental bacteria persist in various habitats, yet little is known about the genes that contribute to growth and survival in their respective ecological niches. Signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 coupled with a screen involving incubations of mutant strains in anoxic aquifer sediments allowed us to identify 47 genes that enhance fitness in sediments. Gene functions inferred from annotations provide us with insight into physiological and ecological processes that environmental bacteria use while growing in sediment ecosystems. Identification of the mexF gene and other potential membrane efflux components by STM demonstrated that homologues of multidrug resistance genes present in pathogens are required for sediment fitness of nonpathogenic bacteria. Further studies with a mexF deletion mutant demonstrated that the multidrug resistance pump encoded by mexF is required for resistance to antibiotics, including chloramphenicol and tetracycline. Chloramphenicol-adapted cultures exhibited mutations in the gene encoding a TetR family regulatory protein, indicating a role for this protein in regulating expression of the mexEF operon. The relative importance of mexF for sediment fitness suggests that antibiotic efflux may be a required process for bacteria living in sediment systems.
Teaching Spiritual Care to Nursing Students: An Integrated Model

ABSTRACT: Graduating nurses are required to know how to support patient spiritual well-being, yet there is scant literature about how spiritual care is taught in undergraduate programs. Typically spiritual content only is sporadically included; the authors recommend integrating spiritual care throughout the nursing curriculum. This article describes how one Christian nursing school integrates spiritual care content, supports student spiritual well-being throughout the program, and evaluates spiritual care instruction at graduation.
Thrombophilic Polymorphisms and Intrauterine Growth Restriction

Background: The relationship between thrombophilic polymorphisms and intrauterine growth restriction remains unclear. Whereas a subset of these polymorphims have received some attention, others have not. Methods: We conducted a case–control study of 493 cases of intrauterine growth restriction (birthweight less than the 10th percentile for gestational age and sex) and 472 controls (greater than the 10th percentile). We also conducted a family study including approximately 250 case trios (affected newborn, mother, and father) for each studied gene. Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1(PAI-1) 4G/5G and Factor XIII Val134Leu variants were compared between maternal and newborn cases and controls. Relative risks for newborn and maternal PAI-1 and Factor XIII genotypes in case trios were estimated using a log-linear model. Transmission of MTHFR C677T and 1298C haplotypes was analyzed in case trios, and the estimated haplotype distribution compared between cases and controls. Finally, we explored pairwise gene-gene interactions between all measured polymorphisms, including Factor V Leiden G1691A and Prothrombin G20210A. Results: PAI-1 and Factor XIII polymorphisms were not associated with an increased risk of intrauterine growth restriction in the case–control analysis, and the case–parent analysis showed no newborn or maternal excess genotype relative risk. No excess transmission of the MTHFR haplotypes was observed in case newborns, and the distribution of MTHFR haplotypes was similar between cases and controls. Some results were suggestive of interactions between genes. Conclusions: Overall, there seems to be little or no indication that thrombophilic genes, at least individually, have an effect on intrauterine growth restriction.
Etiology, seasonality, and clinical characteristics of respiratory viruses in children with respiratory tract infections in Eastern India (Bhubaneswar, Odisha)

Acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in young children in low and middle income countries. To analyse the overall burden of respiratory viruses responsible for ARTIs in paediatrics population in eastern India, this study was performed. Clinical information, demographic information and nasal/oral swabs were collected from 332 paediatric patients (aged from 1 month to 12 years old) with the symptoms of ARTI, enrolled from the outpatient department from Nov 2012 to Oct 2014. Multiplex PCR was performed to detect eight respiratory viral pathogens. Seasonal, as well as age‐wise prevalence of respiratory viruses was analysed. Of these 332 cases, 32.53% (108/332) were positive for at least one pathogen. Human rhinovirus (HRV) was the most frequently detected pathogen (24.7%, 82/332) followed by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) (4.22%, 14/332), PIV (2.11%, 7/332), and hMPV (2.11%, 7/332). Single infection was detected in 92.6% (100/108) of positive cases. Respiratory virus infections showed seasonal variation, with peaks during the rainy season followed by winter season, and were most common in patients under 1 year of age. Phylogenetic analysis of HMPV positive samples confirmed the circulation of A2 subgroup in the study area. The present study is first of its kind and adds to our knowledge of the epidemiological characteristics of these common respiratory viruses among patients with ARTIs in the study area. J. Med. Virol. 89:553–558, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Causal inference on electronic health records to assess blood pressure treatment targets: An application of the parametric g formula

Hypertension is a major risk factor for ischemic cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease, which are respectively the primary and secondary most common causes of morbidity and mortality across the globe. To alleviate the risks of hypertension, there are a number of effective antihypertensive drugs available. However, the optimal treatment blood pressure goal for antihypertensive therapy remains an area of controversy. The results of the recent Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) trial, which found benefits for intensive lowering of systolic blood pressure, have been debated for several reasons. We aimed to assess the benefits of treating to four different blood pressure targets and to compare our results to those of SPRINT using a method for causal inference called the parametric g formula. We applied this method to blood pressure measurements obtained from the electronic health records of approximately 200,000 patients who visited the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, NY. We simulated the effect of four clinically relevant dynamic treatment regimes, assessing the effectiveness of treating to four different blood pressure targets: 150 mmHg, 140 mmHg, 130 mmHg, and 120 mmHg. In contrast to current American Heart Association guidelines and in concordance with SPRINT, we find that targeting 120 mmHg systolic blood pressure is significantly associated with decreased incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events. Causal inference methods applied to electronic methods are a powerful and flexible technique and medicine may benefit from their increased usage.
Supervised Saliency Map Driven Segmentation of Lesions in Dermoscopic Images

Lesion segmentation is the first step in most automatic melanoma recognition systems. Deficiencies and difficulties in dermoscopic images such as color inconstancy, hair occlusion, dark corners, and color charts make lesion segmentation an intricate task. In order to detect the lesion in the presence of these problems, we propose a supervised saliency detection method tailored for dermoscopic images based on the discriminative regional feature integration (DRFI). A DRFI method incorporates multilevel segmentation, regional contrast, property, background descriptors, and a random forest regressor to create saliency scores for each region in the image. In our improved saliency detection method, mDRFI, we have added some new features to regional property descriptors. Also, in order to achieve more robust regional background descriptors, a thresholding algorithm is proposed to obtain a new pseudo-background region. Findings reveal that mDRFI is superior to DRFI in detecting the lesion as the salient object in dermoscopic images. The proposed overall lesion segmentation framework uses detected saliency map to construct an initial mask of the lesion through thresholding and postprocessing operations. The initial mask is then evolving in a level set framework to fit better on the lesion's boundaries. The results of evaluation tests on three public datasets show that our proposed segmentation method outperforms the other conventional state-of-the-art segmentation algorithms and its performance is comparable with most recent approaches that are based on deep convolutional neural networks.
A Fast Numerical Method for Electromagnetic Scattering From Dielectric Rough Surfaces

In this paper we propose an efficient and accurate iterative numerical approach to analyze EM scattering from 1-D dielectric rough surfaces. It is based on a new splitting of the impedance matrix Z to improve the asymptotic convergence rate of the resultant iterative system. The structure of split matrix is then fully explored, in combination with the application of an identity for inverse of block matrix, to further reduce the computational and storage complexity. The embedded matrix-vector product is computed using the spectral acceleration technique. Extensive numerical simulations demonstrate a couple of appealing features of this proposed method for Gaussian surface with Gaussian spectrum: (1) It converges faster than both forward-backward method (FBM) and FBM with spectral acceleration (FBM-SA); (2) For HH polarization, the proposed method is about twice as fast as FBM-SA. For VV polarization, the proposed method is better when the rms slope is not larger than 16° or interestingly when rms height is beyond 2.0 wavelengths. Moreover, it converges for cases where FBM-SA fails for both polarizations. These features indicate that the proposed method can be effectively used to analyze EM scattering from 1-D dielectric Gaussian surface with Gaussian spectrum.
Intradural extramedullary xanthoma of the spine: a rare lesion arising from the dura mater of the spine: case report.

OBJECTIVE AND IMPORTANCE Xanthomatous tumors of the central nervous system are occasionally found in several unrelated diseases such as Hand-Schüller-Christian disease, Weber-Christian disease, histiocytosis X, malignant fibrous histiocytoma, and a complication of metabolic or storage diseases. However, a solitary xanthoma without systemic disease is rare. We present an unusual case of a solitary and benign xanthoma arising in the spinal leptomeninges without systemic diseases or metabolic abnormality, including a lipid profile. CLINICAL PRESENTATION A 16-month-old male patient was admitted with a complaint of spastic paraparesis. His magnetic resonance images revealed an intradural extramedullary tumor that showed isosignal intensity on T1-weighted images and high signal intensity on T2-weighted images with homogenous gadolinium enhancement. INTERVENTION The tumor arising from the spinal meninges was totally removed. Histological findings and immunochemical studies positive for CD68 and lysozyme stain showed abundant histiocytic cells with foamy cytoplasm. Negative S-100 protein in the immunohistochemical study and the absence of Birbeck granules on an electromicroscopic study excluded the possibility of Langerhan's histiocytosis. These findings corresponded to xanthoma. The patient had no abnormality of lipid metabolism or familial history of xanthoma. CONCLUSION The patient improved enough to walk by himself 3 months after the operation.
[A study of revised self-monitoring scale].

The present study attempted to construct the Japanese version of Revised Self-Monitoring Scale (Lennox & Wolfe, 1984). Factor analysis of this scale yielded two factors: 1) Sensitivity to expressive behavior of others, 2) Ability to modify self-presentation. This scale and its two factors had acceptable internal consistency: these results were almost similar with the original study. In correlational analyses with other personality measures, this scale correlated positively with both Private and Public Self-Consciousness Scale and Maudsley Personality Inventory-E Scale, but positively or negatively with some scales of Yatabe-Guilford Personality Inventory (e.g., G, S: positively. I, T: negatively.). Moreover the correlations between the two factors and the above mentioned measures provided interesting results. The availability of this scale was discussed.