Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preserving RFID data privacy

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID), a technology for automatic object identification, has wide applications in many areas including manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation. Yet, the uniquely identifiable objects pose a privacy threat to individuals carrying the objects. Most previous work on privacy-preserving RFID technology, such as EPC re-encryption and killing tags, focused on the threats caused by the physical RFID tags in the data collection phase, but these techniques cannot address the privacy threats in the data publishing phase, when a large volume of RFID data is released to a third party. In this paper, we study the privacy threats caused by publishing RFID data. Even if the explicit identifying information, such as name and social security number, has been removed from the published RFID data, an adversary may identify a target victim's record or infer her sensitive value by matching a priori known visited locations and timestamps. RFID data by default is high-dimensional, so applying traditional anonymity model to RFID data suffers from the curse of high dimensionality, and would result in poor data usefulness. We define a new privacy model, develop an anonymization algorithm to address the special challenges on RFID data, and evaluate its performance in terms of data quality and efficiency.
Biological and immunological characteristics of hepatitis E virus-like particles based on the crystal structure

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a causative agent of acute hepatitis. The crystal structure of HEV-like particles (HEV-LP) consisting of capsid protein was determined at 3.5-Å resolution. The capsid protein exhibited a quite different folding at the protruding and middle domains from the members of the families of Caliciviridae and Tombusviridae, while the shell domain shared the common folding. Tyr-288 at the 5-fold axis plays key roles in the assembly of HEV-LP, and aromatic amino acid residues are well conserved among the structurally related viruses. Mutational analyses indicated that the protruding domain is involved in the binding to the cells susceptive to HEV infection and has some neutralization epitopes. These structural and biological findings are important for understanding the molecular mechanisms of assembly and entry of HEV and also provide clues in the development of preventive and prophylactic measures for hepatitis E.
SPATIAL SUBSPACE CLUSTERING FOR HYPERSPECTRAL DATA SEGMENTATION

We propose a novel method called spatial subspace clustering (SpatSC) for 1D hyperspectral data segmentation problem, e.g. hyperspectral data taken from a drill hole. Addressing this problem has several practical uses such as improving interpretability of the data, and especially a better understanding of the mineralogy. Spatial subspace clustering is a combination of subspace learning and the fused lasso. As a result, it is able to produce spatially smooth clusters. From this point of view, it can be simply interpreted as a spatial information guided subspace learning algorithm. SpatSC has flexible structures that embrace the cases with and without library of pure spectra. It can be further extended, for example, using different error structures, such as including rank operator. We test this method on a real drill hole thermal infrared hyperspectral data set called DDH9. SpatSC produces stable and continuous segments, which are more interpretable. This property is not shared by other state-of-the-art subspace learning algorithms.
Proinflammatory Stimulation and Pioglitazone Treatment Regulate Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor γ Levels in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells from Healthy Controls and Multiple Sclerosis Patients

The peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPAR-γ) belongs to a receptor superfamily of ligand-activated transcription factors involved in the regulation of metabolism and inflammation. Oral administration of PPAR-γ agonists ameliorates the clinical course and histopathological features in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, an animal model for multiple sclerosis (MS), and PPAR-γ agonist treatment of PBMCs from MS patients suppresses PHA-induced cell proliferation and cytokine secretion. These effects are pronounced when cells are preincubated with the PPAR-γ agonists and reexposed at the time of stimulation, indicating a sensitizing effect. To characterize the mechanisms underlying this sensitizing effect, we analyzed PPAR-γ expression in PMBCs of MS patients and healthy controls. Surprisingly, MS patients exhibited decreased PPAR-γ levels compared with controls. PHA stimulation of PBMCs from healthy controls resulted in a significant loss of PPAR-γ, which was prevented by in vitro preincubation of the cells or in vivo by long-term oral medication with the PPAR-γ agonist pioglitazone. Differences in PPAR-γ expression were accompanied by changes in PPAR-γ DNA-binding activity, as preincubation with pioglitazone increased DNA binding of PPAR-γ. Additionally, preincubation decreased NF-κB DNA-binding activity to control levels, whereas the inhibitory protein IκBα was increased. In MS patients, pioglitazone-induced increase in PPAR-γ DNA-binding activity and decrease in NF-κB DNA-binding activity was only observed in the absence of an acute MS relapse. These results suggest that the sensitizing effect observed in the preincubation experiments is mediated by prevention of inflammation-induced suppression of PPAR-γ expression with consecutive increase in PPAR-γ DNA-binding activity.
Antigen presentation on artificial acellular substrates: modular systems for flexible, adaptable immunotherapy.

BACKGROUND Recent findings on T cells and dendritic cells have elucidated principles that can be used for a bottom-up approach to engineering artificial antigen presentation on synthetic substrates. OBJECTIVE/METHODS To compare the latest artificial antigen-presenting cell (aAPC) technology, focussing on acellular systems because they offer advantages such as easy tunability and rapid point-of-care application compared with cellular systems. We review acellular aAPC performance and discuss their promise for clinical applications. RESULTS/CONCLUSION Acellular aAPCs are a powerful alternative to natural-cell-based therapies, offering flexibility and modularity for incorporation oSf a variety of stimuli, hence increasing precision. Current technologies should adapt physiologically important signals within safe materials to more closely approximate their cellular counterparts. These constructs could be administered parenterally as APC replacements for active vaccines or used ex vivo for adoptive immunotherapy.
A novel approach to enhance multi level security system using encryption with fingerprint in cloud

Cloud computing paradigm is still evolving and it is a long dreamed vision as a utility, where users can remotely store their data and enjoy the high quality of on-demand services and applications from a pool of shared configurable resources. It has recently gained tremendous momentum. However, privacy issues and security pose as the key roadblock to its fast adoption. Security is one of the major issues which declines the growth of the cloud computing and complications with the protection of data and privacy continue to plague the market. Cloud service users must be vigilant in data breaches of risk in this new environment. In this paper, a approach of existing different security issues that has emanated due to the service and the idea of implementing the fingerprints in the upcoming models that shows the proposed schemes are provably secure and highly efficient.
Researchers Use of Electronic Resources : A Review of the Recent Literature in the field of Biological Sciences

The World Wide Web (hereafter the web) is used by a huge range of people for a wide variety of purposes, every day. They each use it differently, have different perceptions of its nature, and achieve different outcomes to their searches. Technology has penetrated all areas of life and the use of information and communication technology (ICT) is commonplace in the 21st century. Libraries use ICT for better service and satisfying diverse user needs. Libraries have transformed into digital and virtual libraries where books, journals, and magazines have changed into e-books, e-journals, and e-magazines. This has increased the global dissemination of information. Electronic resources are easily accessible in remote areas. Electronic resources solve storage problems and control the flood of information. Print sources are being digitized
Electromagnetic target classification of small-scale aircraft modeled by conducting wire structures using a natural resonance based feature extraction technique

The problem studied in this paper is the design of an electromagnetic target classifier for small-scale aircraft targets by using a natural resonance based feature extraction technique supported by feature fusion. The aircraft targets are modeled by perfectly conducting straight thin wire structures and the electromagnetic fields back-scattered from targets are numerically generated. This technique uses the Wigner-Ville distribution (WD) and the principal component analysis (PCA). The technique is applied to perfectly conducting targets of moderately complicated geometries for the first time. The resulting classifier is successfully demonstrated to recognize five wire-modeled aircraft targets based on a reference database that is constructed at only three different aspect angles.
Non-Orthogonal Random Access for 5G Networks

The massive amounts of machine-type user equipments (UEs) will be supported in the future fifth generation (5G) networks. However, the potential large random access (RA) delay calls for a new RA scheme and for a detailed assessment of its performance. Motivated by the key idea of non-orthogonal multiple access, the non-orthogonal RA (NORA) scheme based on successive interference cancellation (SIC) is proposed in this paper to alleviate the access congestion problem. Specifically, NORA utilizes the difference of time of arrival to identify multiple UEs with the identical preamble, and enables power domain multiplexing of collided UEs in the following access process, while the base station performs SIC based on the channel conditions obtained through preamble detection. Our analysis shows that the performance of the NORA is superior to the conventional orthogonal RA (ORA) scheme in terms of the preamble collision probability, access success probability, and the throughput of RA. Simulation results verify our analysis and further show that our NORA scheme can improve the number of the supported UEs by more than 30%. Moreover, the number of preamble transmissions and the access delay for successfully accessed UEs are also reduced significantly by using the proposed RA scheme.
Glucose‐dependent insulinotropic polypeptide: from pathophysiology to therapeutic opportunities in obesity‐associated disorders

Glucose‐dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) is a hormone secreted from the intestinal K‐cells with established insulin‐releasing actions. However, the GIP receptor is widely distributed in peripheral organs, including the adipose tissue, gut, bone and brain, where GIP modulates energy intake, cell metabolism and proliferation, and lipid and glucose metabolism, eventually promoting lipid and glucose storage. In diabetes and obesity, the incretin effect of GIP is blunted, while the extrapancreatic tissues keep a normal sensitivity to this hormone. As GIP levels are normal or elevated in obesity and diabetes, mounting evidence from chemical or genetic GIP deletion in animal models of obesity‐related diabetes suggests that GIP may have a pro‐obesogenic action and that a strategy antagonizing GIP action may be beneficial in these conditions, clearing triglyceride deposits from adipose tissue, liver and muscle, and restoring normal insulin sensitivity. Emerging evidence also suggests that the metabolic benefits of bypass surgery are mediated, at least in part, by surgical removal of GIP‐secreting K‐cells in the upper small intestine.
Programmanalyse des XRTL-Zwischencodes

We present the xGCC analysis tool for the verification of safety properties of the XRTL intermediate code. These properties include the absence of buffer overflow, division by zero and the use of uninitialized variables and memory. XRTL is our extension of the Register Transfer Language (RTL). This language independent intermediate code is generated by frontends of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for the programming languages C, C++, Java and Fortran 77. These programming languages are supported by xGCC since we have modified only the language independent part of the compiler. We apply abstract interpretation for the analysis of XRTL. Lists of valid intervals are used for the abstraction of sets of registers and memory blocks. Valid intervals are intervals with additional contraints that simplify the implementation of the XRTL operations. The precision of the abstraction is parameterized by the list length. We describe the interpretation of sequential and parallel XRTL instructions. We take branching conditions into account for restricting the search space, and apply the Widening/Narrowing techniques to speed up the fixpoint computation for XRTL loops. We present the implementation of xGCC and explain the tool design. We demonstrate xGCC analysis tool on a collection of examples. We analyse the tool performance on examples from the Numerical Recipes in C, and introduce several optimizations.
More Than 7 Years of Hindsight: Revisiting the FDA’s 2008 Guidance on Cardiovascular Outcomes Trials for Type 2 Diabetes Medications

IN BRIEF Concerns raised about the cardiovascular safety of type 2 diabetes medications such as rosiglitazone prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue draft guidance in 2008 that, in practice, has required large cardiovascular outcomes trials (CVOTs) for all new type 2 diabetes therapies. After more than 7 years and six completed and published trials to date, this is an opportune time to consider whether these studies, as currently designed and conducted, accurately assess the long-term benefit/risk profile of new therapies and whether they represent an optimal use of limited health care resources. This article presents and contextualizes opinions on CVOTs from 10 thought leaders in diabetes. It is intended to inform an exploration of the costs, medical ethics, and effectiveness of using large-scale CVOTs to assess the safety of new diabetes therapies.
Auto-avaliação na fundação Universidade Federal do Rio Grande: metodologia de avaliação

O presente artigo propoe a utilizacao da Analise de Componentes Principais como metodologia quantitativa para auxiliar o processo de auto-avaliacao das instituicoes de ensino superior. Esta metodologia foi aplicada na auto-avaliacao da Fundacao Universidade Federal do Rio Grande (FURG), em 2005, utilizando como instrumento de coleta de dados dois questionarios de 39 questoes, aplicados a estudantes e professores de graduacao, contendo uma escala continua de zero a dez. Os resultados para os estudantes mostraram a existencia de sete componentes principais, onde a principal componente e o aspecto humano dos professores. Os resultados dos professores mostraram a existencia de quatro componentes, sendo a principal aquela relacionada aos estudantes. A metodologia utilizada mostrou-se eficiente para alcancar os objetivos tracados pelos gestores da Instituicao.
Preliminary Validation of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory in Turkey

This study aims to provide preliminary findings on the validity of Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP Inventory) on Turkish sample of 23 abuser and 47 nonabuser parents. To investigate validity in two groups, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Psychopathic Deviate (MMPI-PD) scale is also used along with CAP. The results show that, with the 200.5 cutoff point, which is the average score of the whole Turkish sample, Abuse Scale correctly classified 83% of the participants in the abuse group and 78.8% of the participants in the control group, which gives 21.2% false-positive result. MMPI-PD to all group and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis is found to be significant for both groups. These results show us high reliability and validity of the abuse scale for Turkey.
Defining Comorbidity: Implications for Understanding Health and Health Services

Comorbidity is associated with worse health outcomes, more complex clinical management, and increased health care costs. There is no agreement, however, on the meaning of the term, and related constructs, such as multimorbidity, morbidity burden, and patient complexity, are not well conceptualized. In this article, we review definitions of comorbidity and their relationship to related constructs. We show that the value of a given construct lies in its ability to explain a particular phenomenon of interest within the domains of (1) clinical care, (2) epidemiology, or (3) health services planning and financing. Mechanisms that may underlie the coexistence of 2 or more conditions in a patient (direct causation, associated risk factors, heterogeneity, independence) are examined, and the implications for clinical care considered. We conclude that the more precise use of constructs, as proposed in this article, would lead to improved research into the phenomenon of ill health in clinical care, epidemiology, and health services.
The Spatial and Temporal Distortion of Magnetic Fields Applied Inside a Magnetically Shielded Room

In the context of biomagnetism, a magnetically shielded room (MSR) is designed for shielding against external magnetic fields. Recently, several applications, such as combined structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional magnetoencephalography (MEG), have emerged that require applying relatively strong magnetic fields inside the MSR. These magnetic fields induce eddy currents and magnetize the MSR walls that are made of materials with high permeability and conductivity. These eddy currents and magnetization generate secondary magnetic fields inside the room that disturb, e.g., combined MEG-MRI by affecting sample spins and by exceeding the available dynamic range of the magnetic field sensors. In this work, static and dynamic magnetic fields applied inside an MSR are studied both theoretically and experimentally. Using a spherical model, analytical expressions are derived for the amplitudes and time constants of the various secondary magnetic field modes. These predictions are validated by comparison with experimental measurements in a rectangular MSR. The results of this study facilitate, e.g., the design of coils compatible with an MSR; a self-shielded coil is presented that decreases the secondary magnetic fields to a small fraction.
Follicular fluid hormone concentrations after ovarian stimulation using gonadotropin preparations with different FSH/LH ratios. II. Comparison of hMG and recombinant FSH.

OBJECTIVE A small amount of LH is necessary for 17 beta-estradiol production in the ovarian follicle. Human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG) contains equal amounts of FSH and LH activity, whereas recombinant FSH is a gonadotropin preparation without LH. The aim of the present randomized study was to investigate whether ovarian stimulation treatment with recombinant FSH or hMG resulted in different steroidal composition of follicular fluid. METHODS Antral fluid from mature follicles was collected in in vitro fertilization cycles and concentrations of testosterone, androstenedione, estrone, estradiol, progesterone, FSH, and LH were determined. Seven patients (27 samples) were treated with hMG, 6 patients (22 samples) with recombinant FSH. RESULTS Androgen, estrogen, progesterone, and FSH concentrations in follicular fluid tended to be lower in the group treated with recombinant FSH, but the variation was large and differences were statistically not significant. CONCLUSION Treatment with a gonadotropin preparation containing no LH resulted in adequate androgen and estrogen levels in antral fluid of the ovarian follicle in women with normal endocrine profiles, even during pituitary suppression by a GnRH agonist. Apparently, the amount of endogenous LH was sufficient for steroid production within the follicle.
Set-covering-based algorithm for delay constrained relay node placement in Wireless Sensor Networks

As Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely used in time-critical applications, e.g., factory automation and smart grid, the importance of Delay Constrained Relay Node Placement (DCRNP) problem is becoming increasingly noticeable. This paper proposes a Set-Covering-based Approximation (SCA) algorithm to solve the DCRNP problem. The SCA deploys relay nodes by levels from the sink to sensor nodes. To avoid the limitation suffering by existing algorithms and ensure a polynomial time complexity, SCA employs a novel approach to formulate the deployment of relay nodes at each level as the set covering problem subject to delay constraints, and based on the classic greedy-set-covering algorithm, a set of relay nodes are placed to connect the nodes (sensor nodes and relay nodes) that are already connected to the sink. Since delay constraints are met at each level, all the sensor nodes will be connected to the sink via feasible paths fulfilling delay constraints. In addition, the elaborated analysis of the time complexity and the approximation ratio of the SCA algorithm is given out. Extensive simulations show that SCA can significantly save deployed relay nodes in comparison to existing algorithms.
Catching liars: training mental health and legal professionals to detect high-stakes lies

Although the ability to detect deception is critical in many professional contexts, most observers (including professional lie-catchers) are able to identify deceivers at the level of chance only. Further, almost all studies of deception detection have used low-stakes deception scenarios in determining deceptive behavior and training effectiveness. We evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive, empirically based full-day training workshop in improving the ability of 42 legal and mental health professionals to detect extremely high-stakes emotional lies. Their ability to discriminate sincere and insincere pleaders was measured at baseline and post-training. Overall, accuracy increased significantly from M = 46.4 to 80.9%. We cautiously suggest that training professionals to apply empirically validated methods to deception detection can increase their ability to correctly discriminate between liars and truth-tellers. Strategies to facilitate the detection of deception via the development of training programs are discussed.
Evaluating ADL Measures from an Occupational Therapy Perspective

Background. Measures reflecting occupational therapy's conceptualization of occupational performance support the profession's contribution to evidence-based practice and fiscal accountability. Purpose. This study compared measures of performance-based activities of daily living (ADL) with principles of occupational therapy practice and intended outcomes. Methods. Using an action research study design, occupational therapists and researchers (N=13) systematically clarified the clinical problem, identified occupational therapy principles inherent to the assessment of daily living activity via nominal group technique; defined the key principles as constructs; and reframed these constructs as a questionnaire against which 18 published standardized ADL measures were evaluated. Findings. Participants identified six measures as most congruent with principles of occupational therapy practice: ADL Profile, Assessment of Motor and Process Skills, Functional Performance Measure, Rivermead ADL Assessment, Edmans ADL Index, and Melville-Nelson Self-Care Assessment. Implications. Findings guide occupational therapists' search and use of performance-based ADL measures that demonstrate the profession's distinct health care contribution.