Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating the Influences of Language Delay and/or Familial Risk for Dyslexia on Brain Structure in 5‐Year‐Olds

Abstract Early language delay has often been associated with atypical language/literacy development. Neuroimaging studies further indicate functional disruptions during language and print processing in school‐age children with a retrospective report of early language delay. Behavioral data of 114 5‐year‐olds with a retrospective report of early language delay in infancy (N = 34) and those without (N = 80) and with a familial risk for dyslexia and those without are presented. Behaviorally, children with a retrospective report of early language delay exhibited reduced performance in language/reading‐related measures. A voxel‐based morphometry analysis in a subset (N = 46) demonstrated an association between reduced gray matter volume and early language delay in left‐hemispheric middle temporal, occipital, and frontal regions. Alterations in middle temporal cortex in children with a retrospective report of early language delay were observed regardless of familial risk for dyslexia. Additionally, while children with isolated familial risk for dyslexia showed gray matter reductions in temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions, these effects were most profound in children with both risk factors. An interaction effect of early language delay and familial risk was revealed in temporoparietal, occipital, and frontal cortex. Our findings support a cumulative effect of early behavioral and genetic risk factors on brain development and may ultimately inform diagnosis/treatment.
Effects of Fiber Processing Conditions on the Yield, Carbon Content, and Diameter of Lignosulfonate-based Carbon Fibers

The use of a hardwood lignosulfonate (HLS) precursor along with electrospinning technology was studied to produce HLS-based carbon fibers. The production of the fibers helped to determine the appropriate processing parameters in the HLS carbon fiber production process. The processing parameters examined were the heating rate (POR) and the treatment temperature (POT) in the preoxidation process; the heating rate (C1R) and the treatment temperature (C1T) were in the low-temperature carbonization phase; and the carbonization temperature (C2T) and temperature holding period (C2t) were in the high-temperature carbonization phase. The results revealed that preoxidation with a POR of 1 °C/min and a POT of 250 °C generated favorable properties, particularly enhancing the fiber mat integrity and the fiber carbon content. The designed two-phase carbonization process was found to be satisfactory in increasing carbon fiber yields and enhancing fiber mat integrity. A C1R value of 1 °C/min and C1T of 400 °C facilitated favorable properties in the produced carbon fibers. Furthermore, a prolonged C2t increased the fiber carbon content but reduced the carbon fiber yield. The highest fiber carbon content occurred with a C2t of 3 h and a C2T of 1200 °C.
Biosensors for the Detection of Antibiotics in Poultry Industry—A Review

Antibiotic resistance is emerging as a potential threat in the next decades. This is a global phenomenon whereby globalization is acting as a catalyst. Presently, the most common techniques used for the detection of antibiotics are biosensors, ELISA and liquid chromatography—mass spectrometry. Each of these techniques has its benefits as well as drawbacks. This review aims to evaluate different biosensing techniques and their working principles in order to accurately, quickly and practically detect antibiotics in chicken muscle and blood serum. The review is divided into three main sections, namely: a biosensors overview, a section on biosensor recognition and a section on biosensor transducing elements. The first segment provides a detailed overview on the different techniques available and their respective advantages and disadvantages. The second section consists of an evaluation of several analyte systems and their mechanisms. The last section of this review studies the working principles of biosensing transducing elements, focusing mainly on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology and its applications in industries.
Mass spectrometry data processing using zero-crossing lines in multi-scale of Gaussian derivative wavelet

Motivation: Peaks are the key information in mass spectrometry (MS) which has been increasingly used to discover diseases-related proteomic patterns. Peak detection is an essential step for MS-based proteomic data analysis. Recently, several peak detection algorithms have been proposed. However, in these algorithms, there are three major deficiencies: (i) because the noise is often removed, the true signal could also be removed; (ii) baseline removal step may get rid of true peaks and create new false peaks; (iii) in peak quantification step, a threshold of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is usually used to remove false peaks; however, noise estimations in SNR calculation are often inaccurate in either time or wavelet domain. In this article, we propose new algorithms to solve these problems. First, we use bivariate shrinkage estimator in stationary wavelet domain to avoid removing true peaks in denoising step. Second, without baseline removal, zero-crossing lines in multi-scale of derivative Gaussian wavelets are investigated with mixture of Gaussian to estimate discriminative parameters of peaks. Third, in quantification step, the frequency, SD, height and rank of peaks are used to detect both high and small energy peaks with robustness to noise. Results: We propose a novel Gaussian Derivative Wavelet (GDWavelet) method to more accurately detect true peaks with a lower false discovery rate than existing methods. The proposed GDWavelet method has been performed on the real Surface-Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-Of-Flight (SELDI-TOF) spectrum with known polypeptide positions and on two synthetic data with Gaussian and real noise. All experimental results demonstrate that our method outperforms other commonly used methods. The standard receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are used to evaluate the experimental results. Availability: http://ranger.uta.edu/∼heng/MS/GDWavelet.html or http://www.naaan. org/nhanguyen/archive.htm Contact: heng@uta.edu
Aero engine health management system architecture design using multi-criteria optimization

A design process for system architecture design using multi-criteria optimization is described using a case study of an aero engine health management (EHM) system. The EHM system functional operations need to be deployed in order to satisfy their operational attribute requirements within the constraints of resource limitations. Considering the large discrete search space of decision variables and many-objective functions and constraints, an evolutionary multi-objective genetic algorithm along with a progressive preference articulation (PPA) technique, is used for solving the optimization problem. Using the PPA technique, the industrial decision maker is able to identify the most significant design constraints ("hot spots") and experiment with changing goals for objectives, in order to arrive at a satisfactory non-dominated solutions that takes account of domain knowledge.
Sparse Power-Law Network Model for Reliable Statistical Predictions Based on Sampled Data

A projective network model is a model that enables predictions to be made based on a subsample of the network data, with the predictions remaining unchanged if a larger sample is taken into consideration. An exchangeable model is a model that does not depend on the order in which nodes are sampled. Despite a large variety of non-equilibrium (growing) and equilibrium (static) sparse complex network models that are widely used in network science, how to reconcile sparseness (constant average degree) with the desired statistical properties of projectivity and exchangeability is currently an outstanding scientific problem. Here we propose a network process with hidden variables which is projective and can generate sparse power-law networks. Despite the model not being exchangeable, it can be closely related to exchangeable uncorrelated networks as indicated by its information theory characterization and its network entropy. The use of the proposed network process as a null model is here tested on real data, indicating that the model offers a promising avenue for statistical network modelling.
Vegetarianism, depression, and the five factor model of personality

ABSTRACT This study investigated whether vegetarians and omnivores differ in their personality characteristics. We measured the five factor model of personality and depressive symptoms in vegetarians, who avoided meat and fish (n = 276); semi-vegetarians, who ate some meat and/or fish (n = 1191); and omnivores (n = 4955). Although vegetarians and semi-vegetarians were more open to new experiences, they were more neurotic and depressed than omnivores. Neither conscientiousness nor agreeableness varied as a function of dietary habits. These findings contribute to our understanding about differences between vegetarians’ and omnivores’ personalities, which might help us better understand individual differences in food preferences.
Highly Conserved Protective Epitopes on Influenza B Viruses

Influenza Antibodies, Part B With its ability to reassort in animal hosts like pigs and birds, and to cause pandemics, influenza A viruses are often in the spotlight. However, a substantial portion of the annual flu burden is also the result of influenza B virus, which is a single influenza type that is characterized by two antigenically and genetically distinct lineages. Dreyfus et al. (p. 1343, published online 9 August) identify three monoclonal human antibodies that are able to protect against lethal infection with both lineages of influenza B virus in mice. Two antibodies, which bind to distinct regions of the viral hemagluttinin (HA) molecule, neutralize multiple strains from both lineages of influenza B virus, whereas the third antibody binds to the stem region of HA and is able to neutralize both influenza A and B strains. The structural data from these antibodies bound to HA, together with already known antibodies targeting influenza A, may provide clues for designing a universal vaccine to protect against both influenza virus types. Three broadly neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies protect mice against influenza B. Identification of broadly neutralizing antibodies against influenza A viruses has raised hopes for the development of monoclonal antibody–based immunotherapy and “universal” vaccines for influenza. However, a substantial part of the annual flu burden is caused by two cocirculating, antigenically distinct lineages of influenza B viruses. Here, we report human monoclonal antibodies, CR8033, CR8071, and CR9114, that protect mice against lethal challenge from both lineages. Antibodies CR8033 and CR8071 recognize distinct conserved epitopes in the head region of the influenza B hemagglutinin (HA), whereas CR9114 binds a conserved epitope in the HA stem and protects against lethal challenge with influenza A and B viruses. These antibodies may inform on development of monoclonal antibody–based treatments and a universal flu vaccine for all influenza A and B viruses.
A 35-mW 30-dB Gain Control Range Current Mode Linear-in-Decibel Programmable Gain Amplifier With Bandwidth Enhancement

This paper presents the design of a programmable gain amplifier (PGA) that serves as an interface between the receiver front-end and the baseband processor. The proposed PGA design is fabricated in a commercial 0.18- μm SiGe BiCMOS process with a topology consisting of two digitally variable gain amplifiers cascaded by a post amplifier and interconnected by differential wideband matching networks that presents an overall enhanced gain bandwidth product. By using the current mode exponential gain control technique, the proposed design achieves a broad 30-dB linear-in-decibel gain range, a gain-independent output 1-dB compression point better than -10 dBm, input/output return loss better than 13 dB, a ±0.75-dB gain flatness over a multi-decade frequency range from 2.5 MHz to 1.17 GHz, a measured in-band group-delay variation of 30 ps, a 35-mW power consumption, and a 0.25- mm2 core die area.
Multiple domains in Siz SUMO ligases contribute to substrate selectivity

Saccharomyces cerevisiae contains two Siz/PIAS SUMO E3 ligases, Siz1 and Siz2/Nfi1, and one other known ligase, Mms21. Although ubiquitin ligases are highly substrate-specific, the degree to which SUMO ligases target distinct sets of substrates is unknown. Here we show that although Siz1 and Siz2 each have unique substrates in vivo, sumoylation of many substrates can be stimulated by either protein. Furthermore, in the absence of both Siz proteins, many of the same substrates are still sumoylated at low levels. Some of this residual sumoylation depends on MMS21. Siz1 targets its unique substrates through at least two distinct domains. Sumoylation of PCNA (proliferating cell nuclear antigen) and the splicing factor Prp45 requires part of the N-terminal region of Siz1, the `PINIT' domain, whereas sumoylation of the bud neck-associated septin proteins Cdc3, Cdc11 and Shs1/Sep7 requires the C-terminal domain of Siz1, which is also sufficient for cell cycle-dependent localization of Siz1 to the bud neck. Remarkably, the non-sumoylated septins Cdc10 and Cdc12 also undergo Siz1-dependent sumoylation if they are fused to the short ΨKXE SUMO attachment-site sequence. Collectively, these results suggest that local concentration of the E3, rather than a single direct interaction with the substrate polypeptide, is the major factor in substrate selectivity by Siz proteins.
Dietary acculturation among black immigrant families living in Ottawa—a qualitative study

ABSTRACT The study explores the dietary acculturation process among first-generation immigrant families from sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean living in Ottawa (Canada). In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 12 mothers. The interaction between accelerating factors and other mediating factors resulted in a spiral of dietary changes triggered by immigration. The spiral evolved at different paces from traditional to acculturated and toward healthy or unhealthy diets and was hard to stop or to change in its direction once it started. Findings call for enhancing immigrant mothers’ food access, food literacy and nutrition-related parenting skills, and their children’s school food environment.
Validating UMLS Semantic Type Assignments Using SNOMED CT Semantic Tags

Summary Background: The UMLS assigns semantic types to all its integrated concepts. The semantic types are widely used in various natural language processing tasks in the biomedical domain, such as named entity recognition, semantic disambiguation, and semantic annotation. Due to the size of the UMLS, erroneous semantic type assignments are hard to detect. It is imperative to devise automated techniques to identify errors and inconsistencies in semantic type assignments. Objectives: Designing a methodology to perform programmatic checks to detect semantic type assignment errors for UMLS concepts with one or more SNOMED CT terms and evaluating concepts in a selected set of SNOMED CT hierarchies to verify our hypothesis that UMLS semantic type assignment errors may exist in concepts residing in semantically inconsistent groups. Methods: Our methodology is a four-stage process. 1) partitioning concepts in a SNOMED CT hierarchy into semantically uniform groups based on their assigned semantic tags; 2) partitioning concepts in each group from 1) into the disjoint sub-groups based on their semantic type assignments; 3) mapping all SNOMED CT semantic tags into one or more semantic types in the UMLS; 4) identifying semantically inconsistent groups that have inconsistent assignments between semantic tags and semantic types according to the mapping from 3) and providing concepts in such groups to the domain experts for reviewing. Results: We applied our method on the UMLS 2013AA release. Concepts of the semantically inconsistent groups in the PHYSICAL FORCE and RECORD ARTIFACT hierarchies have error rates 33% and 62.5% respectively, which are greatly larger than error rates 0.6% and 1% in semantically consistent groups of the two hierarchies. Conclusion: Concepts in semantically in - consistent groups are more likely to contain semantic type assignment errors. Our methodology can make auditing more efficient by limiting auditing resources on concepts of semantically inconsistent groups.
Factors Governing the Pretreatment Process of Lignocellulosic Biomass in an Acidic Pyrrolidonium Ionic Liquid

Ionic liquid (IL)-assisted pretreatment is an important step in biochemical conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into biofuels. Design for low-cost ILs that efficiently work at a relatively low pretreatment temperature with a short processing time is of great interest. In this work, a functional acidic ionic liquid, 1-H-N-methyl-2-pyrrolidonium chloride ([Hnmp]Cl), was prepared by a simple synthetic procedure in a cost-effective manner and was then investigated for use in the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass. Factors including temperature, time, ratio of biomass to ionic liquid, and water content were studied to determine their impact on the pretreatment of lignocellulose; 91.39% of lignin content was recovered when the corn stalk was pretreated by pure [Hnmp]Cl at 100 °C for 45 min with a biomass loading of 5%. The highest glucose yield attained was 93.20% and the highest cellobiose yield was 18.76%, when the ratio of biomass to water was kept at 1:4. The pretreatment efficacy was dependent on the pretreatment temperature and processing time, which was more efficient for pure ionic liquid with respect to lignin recovery from lignocelluloses. However, more efficient enzymatic saccharification of cellulose-rich materials was achieved with aqueous ionic liquid.
Delete-Free Reachability Analysis for Temporal and Hierarchical Planning

Reachability analysis is a crucial part of the heuristic computation for many state of the art classical and temporal planners. In this paper, we study the difficulty that arises in assessing the reachability of actions in planning problems containing sets of interdependent actions, notably including problems with required concur-rency as well as hierarchical planning problems. We show the limitation of state-of-the-art techniques and propose a new method suitable for both temporal and hierarchical planning problems. Our proposal is evaluated on FAPE, a constraint-based temporal planner.
Identification of pivotal genes and pathways for spinal cord injury via bioinformatics analysis

The present study aimed to identify key genes and pathways associated with spinal cord injury (SCI) and subsequently investigate possible therapeutic targets for the condition. The array data of GSE20907 was downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus database and 24 gene chips, including 3-day, 4-day, 1-week, 2-week and 1-month post-SCI together with control propriospinal neurons, were used for the analysis. The raw data was normalized and then the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the (A) 2-week post-SCI group vs. control group, (B) 1-month post-SCI group vs. control group, (C) 1-month and 2-week post-SCI group vs. control group, and (D) all post-SCI groups vs. all control groups, were analyzed with a limma package. Gene Ontology annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analyses for DEGs were performed. Cluster analysis was performed using ClusterOne plugins. All the DEGs identified were associated with immune and inflammatory responses. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), erb-B2 receptor tyrosine kinase 4 (ERBB4) and cytochrome B-245, α polypeptide (CYBA) were in the network diagrams of (A), (C) and (D), respectively. The enrichment analysis of DEGs identified in all samples demonstrated that the DEGs were also enriched in the chemokine signaling pathway (enriched in STAT3) and the high-affinity immunoglobulin E receptor (FcεRI) signaling pathway [enriched in proto-oncogene, src family tyrosine kinase (LYN)]. Immune and inflammatory responses serve significant roles in SCI. STAT3, ERBB4 and CYBA may be key genes associated with SCI at certain stages. Furthermore, STAT3 and LYN may be involved in the development of SCI via the chemokine and FcεRI signaling pathways, respectively.
Controlled Mutual Diffusion between Fullerene and Conjugated Polymer Nanopillars in Ordered Heterojunction Solar Cells

A new approach is presented to control the nanomorphology of organic solar cells in a predictable, controllable, and easily‐scalable way. The nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is combined with a subsequent molecular diffusion step controlled by thermal annealing. The new approach is realized by using nanointerdigitated donor–acceptor structure, consisting of poly(3‐hexylthiophene‐2,5‐diyl) nanopillar arrays surrounded by phenyl‐C61‐butyric acid methyl ester. Subsequent thermal annealing leads to vertically aligned ordered quasi‐bulk heterojunctions with hierarchical nanostructure. The changes are studied in nanostructural and electrical properties of the pillar samples using scanning probe microscopy. In addition, grazing‐incidence small and wide angle X‐ray scattering yield detailed quantitative information on the molecular‐ to domain‐scale nanostructures. The changes in crystal size, chain orientation, and domain composition as a function of thermal anneal temperature and time are obtained. In addition, the conductive scanning force microscopy in quantitative imaging mode, applied to the pillar‐based samples for the first time, allows us to establish a clear relationship between nanomorphology, nanoelectrical property, and macroscale device performance. It is believed that the NIL combined with controlled molecular diffusion is a powerful method, which could be easily extended to other materials and processes to realize a whole variety of other hierarchical nanomorphologies.
Tailored antiplatelet therapy in a patient with ITP and clopidogrel resistance

Grazia Loredana Mendolicchio1; Dennis Zavalloni2; Monica Bacci1; Matteo Roveda1; Vittorio Quagliuolo3; Chiara Viviani Anselmi4; Lidia L. Rota1; Zaverio M. Ruggeri5 1Laboratori di Ricerca Emostasi e Trombosi, International Center for Global Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, Milan, Italy; 2Department of Invasive Cardiology, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, Milan, Italy; 3Department of Oncological Surgery, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, Milan, Italy; 4Institute of Genetics and Biomedical Research, Milan Unit, and Laboratorio di Infiammazione e Immunologia, Patologie Cardiovascolari, Humanitas Clinical and Research Center, Milan, Italy; 5Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA