Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction technique for radiation dose reduction in chest CT: a pilot study.

PURPOSE To compare lesion detection and image quality of chest computed tomographic (CT) images acquired at various tube current-time products (40-150 mAs) and reconstructed with adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction (ASIR) or filtered back projection (FBP). MATERIALS AND METHODS In this Institutional Review Board-approved HIPAA-compliant study, CT data from 23 patients (mean age, 63 years ± 7.3 [standard deviation]; 10 men, 13 women) were acquired at varying tube current-time products (40, 75, 110, and 150 mAs) on a 64-row multidetector CT scanner with 10-cm scan length. All patients gave informed consent. Data sets were reconstructed at 30%, 50%, and 70% ASIR-FBP blending. Two thoracic radiologists assessed image noise, visibility of small structures, lesion conspicuity, and diagnostic confidence. Objective noise and CT number were measured in the thoracic aorta. CT dose index volume, dose-length product, weight, and transverse diameter were recorded. Data were analyzed by using analysis of variance and the Wilcoxon signed rank test. RESULTS FBP had unacceptable noise at 40 and 75 mAs in 17 and five patients, respectively, whereas ASIR had acceptable noise at 40-150 mAs. Objective noise with 30%, 50%, and 70% ASIR blending (11.8 ± 3.8, 9.6 ± 3.1, and 7.5 ± 2.6, respectively) was lower than that with FBP (15.8 ± 4.8) (P < .0001). No lesions were missed on FBP or ASIR images. Lesion conspicuity was graded as well seen on both FBP and ASIR images (P < .05). Mild pixilated blotchy texture was noticed with 70% blended ASIR images. CONCLUSION Acceptable image quality can be obtained for chest CT images acquired at 40 mAs by using ASIR without any substantial artifacts affecting diagnostic confidence. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL http://radiology.rsna. org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1148/radiol.11101450/-/DC1.
Comparison of moulting methods for layers: high-zinc diet versus fasting

Abstract The serum biochemical profiles, thyroid hormones, body weights and the production and quality of eggs subsequent to moulting, were compared in laying hens subjected to conventional forced moulting or forced moulting with a diet high in zinc. A total of 200 Dekalb White laying hens in their second production cycle were studied. Blood sampling was conducted in a factorial experimental design (2 × 3) with two methods of moulting (fasting or zinc) and three sampling periods (pre-moult, moult and subsequent peak). Total egg protein content, including globulins, was greater with the zinc diet, whereas egg weight and albumen percentage were greater after fasting. The zinc method resulted in an increased shell thickness and calcium percentage but lower percentage of phosphorus. During the moulting period, the hens in the zinc group had heavier mean body weights. It was concluded that moulting with a high-zinc diet could replace fasting, without negative effects on body weight, biochemical variables or subsequent egg quality and production. The zinc method was also better for the birds’ welfare.
Parataxis:A Dubious Feature of Chinese

A vast literature has been devoted to the debate whether Chinese is characterized by parataxis.But as little attempt has been made to analyze the term per se,the prominence of the so-called "feature of parataxis" of Chinese may have been exaggerated.The present paper endeavors to explain what "parataxis" means from semiotic and communicative perspectives,and,after trying to demonstrate that there exists no clear distinction between English and Chinese in term of paratactic prominence,concludes that the claim that Chinese is characterized by parataxis might not be well-grounded and therefore should be taken critically.
Identification of Neutrophil Granule Protein Cathepsin G as a Novel Chemotactic Agonist for the G Protein-Coupled Formyl Peptide Receptor 12

The antimicrobial and proinflammatory neutrophil granule protein cathepsin G (CaG) has been reported as a chemoattractant for human phagocytic leukocytes by using a putative G protein coupled receptor. In an effort to identify potential CaG receptor(s), we found that CaG-induced phagocyte migration was specifically attenuated by the bacterial chemotactic peptide fMLP, suggesting these two chemoattractants might share a receptor. In fact, CaG chemoattracts rat basophilic leukemia cells (RBL cells) expressing the high affinity human fMLP receptor FPR, but not parental RBL cells or cells transfected with other chemoattractant receptors. In addition, a specific FPR Ab and a defined FPR antagonist, cyclosporin H, abolished the chemotactic response of phagocytes and FPR-transfected cells to CaG. Furthermore, CaG down-regulated the cell surface expression of FPR in association with receptor internalization. Unlike fMLP, CaG did not induce potent Ca2+ flux and was a relatively weaker activator of MAPKs through FPR. Yet CaG activated an atypical protein kinase C isozyme, protein kinase Cζ, which was essential for FPR to mediate the chemotactic activity of CaG. Thus, our studies identify CaG as a novel, host-derived chemotactic agonist for FPR and expand the functional scope of this receptor in inflammatory and immune responses.
Wideband Inductorless Low-Power LNAs with Gm Enhancement and Noise-Cancellation

Two inductorless low-power differential low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) are designed for multiband wireless communication applications. Both LNAs are based on the combination of common-gate (CG) and shunt feedback topologies. In the first LNA, the cross-coupled push-pull structure with separated bias for nMOS and pMOS CG transistors is utilized to realize $g_{m}$ enhancement, partial noise cancellation, and bandwidth extension. In the second LNA, cascode transistors are utilized on the basis of the first topology to alleviate the Miller effect and to construct current steering structures, so as to extend the bandwidth. For both LNAs, in-depth analysis is given, and methods for sizing and biasing optimization under power constraint are proposed to obtain good overall performance tradeoffs while maintaining low-power consumption. The prototypes are implemented in 65-nm low-power CMOS technology. The first LNA achieves a gain of 21.2 dB, a noise figure (NF) of 3–3.5 dB over the 3-dB bandwidth of 200 MHz to 2.7 GHz and an IIP3 of −2 dBm at 1.1 GHz. It consumes 0.96 mW from 1.2-V supply. The second LNA exhibits a gain of 21.2 dB, an NF of 2.8–4 dB over the 3-dB bandwidth of 100 MHz to 4.3 GHz. It consumes 2 mW from 1.2-V supply. Each LNA occupies an area of 0.05 mm2.
The gIII glycoprotein of pseudorabies virus is involved in two distinct steps of virus attachment

The entry of herpesviruses into cells involves two distinct stages: attachment or adsorption to the cell surface followed by internalization. The virus envelope glycoproteins have been implicated in both stages. Pseudorabies virus attaches to cells by an early interaction that involves the viral glycoprotein gIII and a cellular heparinlike substance. We examined the role of gIII in the attachment process by analysis of a set of viruses carrying defined gIII mutations. The initial attachment of gIII mutants with an internal deletion of 134 amino acids (PrV2) to MDBK cells was indistinguishable from that of wild-type virus. The adsorption of these mutants was, however, much more sensitive than that of wild-type virus to competing heparin. Furthermore, while attachment of wild-type virus to MDBK cells led to a rapid loss of sensitivity to heparin, this was not the case with PrV2, which could be displaced from the cell surface by heparin after it had attached to the cells. We conclude that glycoprotein gIII is involved in two distinct steps of virus attachment and that the second of these steps but not the first is defective in PrV2.
Fundamental Characteristics of Electro-Textiles in Wearable UHF RFID Patch Antennas for Body-Centric Sensing Systems

Electro-textiles feature excellent radio frequency (RF) performance. They have an enormous potential to be widely accepted in body-centric sensing systems as wearable antenna materials. However, the RF community lacks comprehensive knowledge of electro-textile fundamental characteristics. This paper provides critical electro-textile design parameters for wearable radio frequency identification (RFID) ultra-high-frequency (UHF) patch antennas. For the first time, modeling parameters for embroidered antenna ground plane and patch structures are established and verified. The results highlight a new unprecedented fundamental characteristic of embroidered antennas: all embroidered structures, modeled as uniform and infinitely thin textile layer, have an existing imaginary part in their sheet impedance modeling parameter. It accounts for the antenna input inductance contributed from the electro-textile. Ideally, such as for highly conductive fabrics and pure conductors, the imaginary part is negligible. Utilizing the proposed design guidelines, a fully wearable and flexible embroidered RFID patch antenna is for the first time realized. Its performance may be considered as a benchmark for future designs. The design parameters and findings form an important milestone in the development towards wearable intelligence and foster industrial developments of garment-integrated RFID antennas.
Determinants of Customer-based Brand Equity: A Study of Public and Private Banks

The financial services sector has come a long way from arguing that banks are beyond branding to a phase where banks and other financial institutions are using branding strategically—like any other business. Banks have adopted various customer-centric strategies in order to develop a positive perception in the minds of customers. To develop and implement customer-centric strategies, banks need to provide a consistent brand experience to prevent customers from switching to rival banks. In order to understand the customer perception towards bank brand, there is a need to understand the concept of customer-based brand equity and its main determinants. The customer-based brand equity is a set of brand-related associations held by the consumers in their memory (Keller, 1993). The current article aims to identify the various determinants of customer-based brand equity in the banking industry and to verify whether these determinants vary across bank types. For this purpose, a structured questionnaire was developed and a sample of 120 respondents was taken from selected public sector banks and private sector banks of Jalandhar. Factor analysis produced six factors, that is, brand investments, brand performance, brand salience, brand verdict, brand feelings and brand unfamiliarity, which accounted for 73 per cent variance. The findings revealed that out of the six factors extracted from the study, brand verdict emerged as the most significant factor that led to the determination of customer-based brand equity. The results of independent sample t-test showed no significant differences in the perceptions of customers of public and private banks with respect to customer-based brand equity. Correlation analysis was also conducted on the study variables and the results indicated that there are strong, positive and significant relationships between brand performance and brand feelings, and between brand performance and brand verdict. The multiple regression results showed that only brand performance, brand salience and brand feelings have a significant influence on brand verdict, whereas brand investment had a significant negative impact on brand verdict.
Prepotent response inhibition predicts treatment outcome in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Objective: Inhibition deficits, including deficits in prepotent response inhibition and interference control, are core deficits in ADHD. The predictive value of prepotent response inhibition and interference control was assessed for outcome in a 10-week treatment trial with methylphenidate. Methods: Thirty-four children with ADHD (ages 8–12) received 10 weeks of methylphenidate treatment. At pretest prepotent response inhibition was assessed using the Stop-Signal Task; interference control was assessed using the Stroop Color-Word task. Methylphenidate was individually titrated to an optimal dose. Treatment outcome was assessed by parent- and teacher-rated ADHD behavior. Results: Only stop-signal reaction time of the Stop-Signal Task was a significant predictor of parent-rated levels of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity at outcome. Children with lower levels of inhibition showed worse outcome after 10 weeks of treatment, independent of medication dose. Conclusions: Low levels of prepotent response inhibition are associated with worse response to treatment with methylphenidate. Prepotent response inhibition may be an intermediate phenotypical predictor of treatment outcome.
Girl Power and Competent Caregivers: Feminism, gender roles, and gender equality through personal stories in Norwegian politics

On gender equality rankings, Norway typically places as one of the most gender equal countries in the world. Likewise, some argue that there are still some barriers in place that prevent full gender equality between men and women. In order to explore this topic, I chose two books to compare using content analysis, feminist content analysis, and rhetoric: Bare en kvinne? blå feminisme, hersketeknikker og likeverdige liv (2012), written by Conservative Party State Secretary and Women’s Forum leader Julie Brodtkorb, and Socialist-Left Party leader Audun Lysbakken's Frihet, likhet, farskap (2011). These books discuss gender equality through providing the authors’ personal stories and political platforms. My thesis statement asks: In what ways are Brodtkorb and Lysbakken similar and different to each other on the topics of feminism and gender equality, both as people and as representatives for their political parties? My research is divided into three parts. In the first part, I look at how both authors understand, identify with, and discuss feminism. Surprisingly, Brodtkorb was more focused on developing and expressing a feminist perspective than Lysbakken, who is currently the leader of the self-professed feminist Socialist-Left Party. The possible reasons behind this imbalance are explored based on Lysbakken’s message and relationship to feminists presented in his book. In the second part, I explore how the authors understand and attempt to solve the problem of gender inequality in Norway. This problem is explained through their perception that traditional gender roles remain as a barrier to gender equality on both social and personal levels. To remedy this, both authors advocate women giving up some power at home and allowing men to be more active in order for the women to be able to balance family and careers. In the third part, I uncover blind spots in the authors’ writing. This showed itself through the way in which Brodtkorb and Lysbakken discuss the family. While both stressed the importance of individuality and diversity, they family structure they describe falls into an ethnic Norwegian, heterosexual, fertile mold. This could easily alienate readers who do not fit into their A4 representation. Although their parties rest on opposite sides of the political spectrum, Brodtkorb and Lysakken’s similarities and differences indicate that there is enough in common to point towards a greater Norwegian cultural goal of gender equality, the maintenance of the social democratic welfare state, and an ideal of a gender neutral worker-caregiver model.
From Design to Experiments of a 2-DOF Vehicle Driving Simulator

Driving simulators are increasingly being used for driver evaluation and/or education. In this paper, we describe the design and the modeling aspects of a 2-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) low-cost motion platform allowing the rendering of the longitudinal and yaw movements. This prototype will be used to study various configurations of motion rendering and the impact of these variants on controllability and simulator sickness. The whole motion platform is considered as two coupled systems that are linked mechanically. The first system consists of a motorized rail for the longitudinal movement, which is mounted on top of the second system, which is a motorized turret allowing rotation of the platform. We present the platform mechanics and a number of experimental studies that have been carried out to obtain a characterization of the platform capabilities and frequency responses, as well as to assess platform performance in a classical drive operation. First conclusions and directions of future work are presented.
Pilots Strategically Compensate for Display Enlargements in Surveillance and Flight Control Tasks

Objective: Experiments were conducted to assess the impact of display size on flight control, airspace surveillance, and goal-directed target search. Background: Research of 3-D displays has shown that display scale compression influences the perception of flight path deviation, though less is known about the causes that drive this effect. In addition, research on attention-based tasks has shown that information displaced to significant eccentricities can amplify effort, but it is unclear whether the effect generates a performance difference in complex displays. Method: In Experiment 1, 16 pilots completed a low-fidelity flight control task under single- and dual-axis control. In Experiment 2, the control task from Experiment 1 was scaled up to a more realistic flight environment, and pilots performed hazard surveillance and target search tasks. Results: For flight control, pilots exhibited less path error and greater stick activity with a large display, which was attributed both to greater enhanced resolution and to the fact that larger depictions of error lead to greater urgency in correcting deviations. Size did not affect hazard surveillance or search, as pilots were adaptive in altering scanning patterns in response to the enlargement of the displays. Conclusion: Although pilots were adaptive to display changes in search and surveillance, display size reduction diminished estimates of flight path deviation and control performance because of lowered resolution and control urgency. Application: Care should be taken when manipulating display size, as size reduction can diminish control performance.
Emigration, Redistribution and Political Institutions in Origin Countries

Does migration lead to institutional gains in origin countries? So far this question has found little space in the economic literature, whose main focus has been on the economic implications of migration for source countries. I intend to broaden the focus of such literature, so as to include another crucial aspect of domestic societies, namely institutional quality. The contribution of the study is both theoretical and empirical. I provide a framework to explain the link between emigration and political institutions in origin countries. The main prediction is that an improvement in the quality of political institutions takes place whenever there is a positive net migration outow. Empirically, using a dynamic panel estimation for a sample of 105 countries in the period 1975 2005, I detect support for such hypothesis.
Profiles of Aggression among Psychiatric Patients: I. Nature and Prevalence

Based on the Yudofsky scale, a Modified Overt Aggression Scale (MOAS) with upgraded psychometric properties was developed to assess the nature and prevalence of aggression in a psychiatric population. The present report describes the standardization of this scale and the pattern of findings on two cohorts of 114 and 150 inpatients. The results support the discriminative validity of the MOAS and its internal, interrater, and retest reliabilities. Within 1 week some form of aggression was noted in about one fourth of the patient samples, with verbal aggression the most prevalent and autoaggression the least. Chronic patients showed the lowest incidence of physical assault and general aggression, whereas gender differences and daily variations were not significant. Greater stability of aggression was demonstrated for patient groups and for forms of aggression with higher base rates and for the short term (within 1 week) rather than the long course (3 months). The high prevalence of aggression and the consistency of profiles across patient samples suggested that sensitive, multivariable scaling can improve the accuracy of measurement and the depiction of the construct.
A Bandpass Sampling Receiver for Wide-Bandwidth, Spectrally-Sparse Waveforms for High-Accuracy Range Measurements

Measuring range to millimeter accuracy using microwave wireless systems is challenging due to the need for wide-bandwidth waveforms. This work presents a Sparse Ranging Receiver (SpaRR) that utilizes spectrally-sparse waveforms and bandpass sampling to achieve high range accuracy measurements without the need for expensive wideband digitizers. The accuracy of a ranging system varies inversely with the RMS bandwidth of the waveform, and the optimal ranging waveform is one that concentrates its frequency content at the edges of its bandwidth. The SpaRR utilizes widely separate two-tone waveforms from L to X band to achieve high range accuracy with a low-speed digitizer. The theory, architecture, and signal processing associated with the SpaRR are presented, and measurements are shown demonstrating accuracies on the order of 100 μm for tone separations on the order of 2 GHz.
Temperature‐Gradient gel electrophoresis of nucleic acids: Analysis of conformational transitions, sequence variations, and protein‐nucleic acid interactions

Temperature‐gradient gel electrophoresis (TGGE) is applied to analyze conformational transitions and sequence variations of nucleic acids and protein‐nucleic acid interactions. A linear and highly reproducible temperature‐gradient is established perpendicular or parallel to the direction of the electrophoresis. The instrument consists of an electrically insulated metal plate, which is heated at one edge and cooled at the other edge by two thermostating baths and is used as an ancillary device for commercial horizontal gel electrophoresis instruments. Biopolymers are separated in TGGE according to size, shape and thermal stability of their conformational transitions. If the temperature‐gradient is established perpendicular to the electrophoresis, monomolecular conformational transitions of nucleic acids show up as continuous transition curves; strand‐separation leads to discontinuous transitions. In the studies on viroid RNA it was shown that natural circular viroid RNA undergoes one highly cooperative transition detected by TGGE as a drastic retardation in mobility. Oligomeric replication intermediates of viroids exhibit coexisting structures which could not be detected by any other technique. Double‐stranded satellite RNA from cucumber mosaic virus is a mixture of sequence variants, all of which have the identical length of 335 nucleotides. In TGGE six different strains were resolved. Sequence variants of viroids were analyzed by hybridizing viroid RNA to (–)strand viroid RNA transcripts from viroid cDNA clones. Sequence variations lead to mismatches in the double strands and thereby to a shift of the transition curve to lower temperature. Mutations in plasmids, particularly in cloned inserts, were detected by mixing plasmids of two different clones, linearizing, denaturing, renaturing, and searching for shifts in the transition curves, which are generated by mismatch‐formation during the renaturation of (+)‐ and (−)strands from different clones. Examples are given for different viroid clones and HIV‐clones from one and the same patient. In another example, clones with point mutations from site‐directed mutagenesis are analyzed and selected by TGGE. TGGE is also applied to study the effect of amino acid exchanges in the Tet repressor from E. coli on the thermal stability of the represser and on the mode of binding of the repressor to the operator DNA. The results are discussed under the aspect that TGGE may be applied as routine analytical laboratory procedure.