Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of the photoluminescence properties of semiconductor quantum dots and non-blinking diamond nanoparticles. Observation of the diffusion of diamond nanoparticles in living cells

Long-term observations of photoluminescence at the single-molecule level were until recently very diffcult, due to the photobleaching of organic ? uorophore molecules. Although inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals can overcome this diffculty showing very low photobleaching yield, they suffer from photoblinking. A new marker has been recently introduced, relying on diamond nanoparticles containing photoluminescent color centers. In this work we compare the photoluminescence of single quantum dots (QDs) to the one of nanodiamonds containing a single-color center. Contrary to other markers, photoluminescent nanodiamonds present a perfect photostability and no photoblinking. At saturation of their excitation, nanodiamonds photoluminescence intensity is only three times smaller than the one of QDs. Moreover, the bright and stable photoluminescence of nanodiamonds allows wide field observations of single nanoparticles motion. We demonstrate the possibility of recording the tra jectory of such single particle in culture cells.
Prevalence of Campylobacter Species in Adult Crohn's Disease and the Preferential Colonization Sites of Campylobacter Species in the Human Intestine

Introduction Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are the two major forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). A high prevalence of Campylobacter concisus was previously detected in paediatric CD and adult UC. Currently, the prevalence of C. concisus in adult CD and the preferential colonization sites of Campylobacter species in the human intestine are unknown. In this study, we examined the prevalence of Campylobacter species in biopsies collected from multiple anatomic sites of adult patients with IBD and controls. Methods Three hundred and one biopsies collected from ileum, caecum, descending colon and rectum of 28 patients IBD (15 CD and 13 UC) and 33 controls were studied. Biopsies were used for DNA extraction and detection of Campylobacter species by PCR-sequencing and Campylobacter cultivation. Results A significantly higher prevalence of C. concisus in colonic biopsies of patients with CD (53%) was detected as compared with the controls (18%). Campylobacter genus-PCR positivity and C. concisus positivity in patients with UC were 85% and 77% respectively, being significantly higher than that in the controls (48% and 36%). C. concisus was more often detected in descending colonic and rectal biopsies from patients with IBD in comparison to the controls. C. concisus was isolated from patients with IBD. Conclusion The high intestinal prevalence of C. concisus in patients with IBD, particularly in the proximal large intestine, suggests that future studies are needed to investigate the possible involvement of C. concisus in a subgroup of human IBD. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the association between adult CD and C. concisus as well as the first study of the preferential colonization sites of C. concisus in the human intestine.
Feature-based 3D morphing based on geometrically constrained sphere mapping optimization

Current trends in free form editing suggest the development of a new novel editing paradigm for CAD models beyond traditional CAD editing of mechanical parts. To this end we wish to develop accurate, robust and efficient 3D mesh deformation techniques such as 3D structural morphing. In this paper, we present a feature-based approach to 3D morphing of arbitrary genus-0 polyhedral objects that is appropriate for CAD editing. The technique is based on a sphere mapping process built on an optimization technique that uses a target function to maintain the correspondence among the initial polygons and the mapped ones while preserving topology and connectivity through a system of geometric constraints. Finally, we introduce a fully automated feature-based technique that matches surface areas (feature regions) with similar morphological characteristics between the two morphed objects and performs morphing according to this feature correspondence list. Alignment is obtained without user intervention and is based on pattern matching between the feature graphs of the two morphed objects.
Creating 3 D boundary element models of the heart from 2 D projections

Individual 3D boundary element models can be used in solving inverse problems in electroand magnetogardiographic measurements. Many other applications exist for individual 3D models in the medical field. In some cases, MR or CT images are not available or the cost of obtaining them is too high. Modalities producing 2D data, such as X-ray projections and ultrasound images, are more readily available. Therefore, it would be useful to be able to use these images for creating 3D models. One or two X-ray projections of an object are usually not enough to reconstruct a 3D object. Several X-ray projections of the same object from different angles are needed to create a good 3D approximation of the object. In CT, hundreds of projections are used. If only a few X-ray projections are used, some a priori knowledge can be incorporated to improve the reconstruction accuracy. For human anatomy, the prior knowledge, i.e. a representation of typical human anatomy, can be extracted, for example, from MR volumes. This work is based on a method where a 3D model was reconstructed from two 2D silhouettes using a prior 3D model [1]. The aim of this work was to develop an easy to use software package for creating a 3D heart model from two orthogonal X-ray projections. In addition, 3D model coordinates can be displayed on the original X-ray projections in 2D for persons who are used to locating objects from X-ray projections. The developed application is not limited to creating only heart models but it can be applied more generally. Once a prior model of an object and two images of a new slightly different instance of the object are available, this application can be used to reconstruct the 3D geometry of the object.
Iron reduction by the deep-sea bacterium Shewanella profunda LT13a under subsurface pressure and temperature conditions

Microorganisms influence biogeochemical cycles from the surface down to the depths of the continental rocks and oceanic basaltic crust. Due to the poor recovery of microbial isolates from the deep subsurface, the influence of physical environmental parameters, such as pressure and temperature, on the physiology and metabolic potential of subsurface inhabitants is not well constrained. We evaluated Fe(III) reduction rates (FeRRs) and viability, measured as colony-forming ability, of the deep-sea piezophilic bacterium Shewanella profunda LT13a over a range of pressures (0–125 MPa) and temperatures (4–37∘C) that included the in situ habitat of the bacterium isolated from deep-sea sediments at 4500 m depth below sea level. S. profunda LT13a was active at all temperatures investigated and at pressures up to 120 MPa at 30∘C, suggesting that it is well adapted to deep-sea and deep sedimentary environments. Average initial cellular FeRRs only slightly decreased with increasing pressure until activity stopped, suggesting that the respiratory chain was not immediately affected upon the application of pressure. We hypothesize that, as pressure increases, the increased energy demand for cell maintenance is not fulfilled, thus leading to a decrease in viability. This study opens up perspectives about energy requirements of cells in the deep subsurface.
Identification of a Novel C-Terminal Truncated WT1 Isoform with Antagonistic Effects against Major WT1 Isoforms

The Wilms’ tumor gene WT1 consists of 10 exons and encodes a zinc finger transcription factor. There are four major WT1 isoforms resulting from alternative splicing at two sites, exon 5 (17AA) and exon 9 (KTS). All major WT1 isoforms are overexpressed in leukemia and solid tumors and play oncogenic roles such as inhibition of apoptosis, and promotion of cell proliferation, migration and invasion. In the present study, a novel alternatively spliced WT1 isoform that had an extended exon 4 (designated as exon 4a) with an additional 153 bp (designated as 4a sequence) at the 3’ end was identified and designated as an Ex4a(+)WT1 isoform. The insertion of exon 4a resulted in the introduction of premature translational stop codons in the reading frame in exon 4a and production of C-terminal truncated WT1 proteins lacking zinc finger DNA-binding domain. Overexpression of the truncated Ex4a(+)WT1 isoform inhibited the major WT1-mediated transcriptional activation of anti-apoptotic Bcl-xL gene promoter and induced mitochondrial damage and apoptosis. Conversely, suppression of the Ex4a(+)WT1 isoform by Ex4a-specific siRNA attenuated apoptosis. These results indicated that the Ex4a(+)WT1 isoform exerted dominant negative effects on anti-apoptotic function of major WT1 isoforms. Ex4a(+)WT1 isoform was endogenously expressed as a minor isoform in myeloid leukemia and solid tumor cells and increased regardless of decrease in major WT1 isoforms during apoptosis, suggesting the dominant negative effects on anti-apoptotic function of major WT1 isoforms. These results indicated that Ex4a(+)WT1 isoform had an important physiological function that regulated oncogenic function of major WT1 isoforms.
THREE DIMENSIONAL MODEL BASED RIGID TRACKING OF A HUMAN HEAD

Keywords: 3D model based coding, rigid head tracking, 3D motion estimation, feature tracking The presented work proposes substantial improvements to established methods for the two-dimensional tracking of an image and the rigid adaptation of a three-dimensional face model to a 2D projection. These are combined to produce a robust system for the rigid 3D tracking of a human head which is promising even for extreme rotation conditions where most methods fail. Our technique, while using a 2D feature-based image tracking algorithm introduced by Kanade, Lucas and Tomasi, is based on the assessment of the tracked features considering their suitability for tracking, the success in tracking them in the current frame and their reliability judged from their 3D position in a model adapted to the previous frame. Having determined the optimum set of tracked features on the current image frame these are used to readapt the 3D human face model which has been initialised to fit to the face manually detected in the first frame of the sequence.
Research on Spillover Effects in Financial Risk

The research on spillover effect in financial markets is frontier theory and technology. The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 affects the stock markets deeply. But, the economic consequences are different among some cross-markets. As an emerging high-speed growth securities market established in 1990, the Chinese securities market has developed significantly. Again in the current international financial crisis, it is being closely watched that how deeply China’s market affected by the financial crisis and the role making a major contribution to stabilizing the global financial situation. Both GARCH and Granger causality test are used to measure the volatility spillover in the existent literatures. However, in case of the correlations of some markets are not linear relationship, Copula functions have recently become popular. In this paper, we have tested for spillover effects in financial risk between the Shanghai market and the other main stock markets. We use the kernel smoothing function to estimate the marginal density distribution, and use the Copula functions to estimate the joint distribution of the marginal distribution. Furthermore, we use the bivariate Archimedean copula to estimate the symmetrical and asymmetrical distribution. The main findings are that Shanghai market is not affected by New York market significantly in the financial crisis, it can not exert on significant influence to New York market as well. The similar degree of market efficiency, the similar attitude about considering on risk and earnings are more important on leading to the spillover effect in stock markets than the real economic link between Shanghai market and New York market.
Emergence of Streptococcus pyogenes emm102 Causing Toxic Shock Syndrome in Southern Taiwan during 2005–2012

Background Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) is an uncommon but life-threatening disease caused by Streptococcus pyogenes. Methods To understand the clinical and molecular characteristics of STSS, we analyzed clinical data and explored the emm types, superantigen genes, and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of causative S. pyogenes isolates obtained between 2005 and 2012. Results In total, 53 patients with STSS were included in this study. The median age of the patients was 57 years (range: 9–83 years), and 81.1% were male. The most prevalent underlying disease was diabetes mellitus (45.3%). Skin and soft-tissue infection accounted for 86.8% of STSS. The overall mortality rate was 32.1%. Underlying diseases had no statistical impact on mortality. A total of 19 different emm types were identified. The most prevalent emm type was emm102 (18.9%), followed by emm11 (17%), emm1 (11.3%), emm87 (9.4%), and emm89 (7.5%). There was no statistically significant association between emm type and a fatal outcome. Among the superantigen genes, speB was the most frequently detected one (92.5%), followed by smeZ (90.6%), speG (81.1%), speC (39.6%), and speF (39.6%). The majority of emm102 strains were found to have speB, speC, speG, and smeZ. The presence of speG was negatively associated with a fatal outcome (P = 0.045). Conclusions Our surveillance revealed the emergence of uncommon emm types, particularly emm102, causing STSS in southern Taiwan. Characterization of clinical, epidemiological, and molecular characteristics of STSS will improve our understanding of this life-threatening disease.
The psychological autopsy, part I: applications and methods.

November 2008 393 This month’s guest column is the first of two articles by New York forensic psychiatrist James Knoll, IV, M.D. It addresses an important facet of one of the core topics in clinical and forensic psychiatry—suicide—and post hoc psychiatric/psychological assessment of manner of death. Dr. Knoll is very good at this and writes clearly about the professionally accepted procedures and crucial caveats associated with offering forensic opinions when the patient or victim is not available for personal examination. William H. Reid, MD, MPH
Generating realistic Kanji character images from on-line patterns

The availability of a large sample database is very important to design high accuracy classifiers for handwritten character recognition. Collecting image samples from human writers and practical documents is expensive particularly for large character sets, like with East-Asia-languages. We can therefore take advantage of existing online databases to generate additional off-line images. This paper proposes a method to generate realistic character images from online patterns. From the pen trajectory of an online pattern, the proposed method can generate numerous images of various stroke shapes using three painting modes: constant line mode, proportional mode and calligraphic mode. Particularly, the calligraphic mode combines the pen trajectory (representing the writing style of one concrete writer) with real stroke images (also representing individual writing style of a concrete writer) to generate character images that look as if they were produced with a brush or pen by human hand.
Finding incremental solutions for evolving requirements

This paper investigates aspects of the problem of software evolution resulting from top-level requirements change. In particular, while most research on design for software focuses on finding some correct solution, this ignores that such a solution is often only correct in a particular, and often short-lived, context. Using a logic-based goal-oriented requirements modeling language, the paper poses the problem of finding desirable solutions as the requirements change. Among other possible criteria of desirability, we consider minimizing the effort required to implement the new solution, which involves reusing parts of the old solution. In general, the solution of requirements problems is viewed as an exploration using a “requirements engineering knowledge base” (REKB), whose specification is formalized. The paper reports on experience implementing the REKB on top of a so-called “reason-maintenance system”, and provides evidence that incremental solution finding is indeed more efficient.
Establishment of a human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line highly expressing sodium iodide symporter for radionuclide gene therapy.

UNLABELLED To evaluate the possibility of radionuclide gene therapy and imaging in hepatocellular carcinoma cancer, we investigated the iodine accumulation of a human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line, SK-Hep1, by transfer of human sodium iodide symporter (hNIS) gene. By targeting NIS expression in SK-Hep1, we could also investigate whether these cells concentrate 99mTc-pertechnetate and 188Re-perrhenate as well as 125I in vitro and in vivo. METHODS The hNIS gene was transfected to human hepatocellular carcinoma SK-Hep1 cell lines using lipofectamine plus reagent. The uptake and efflux of 125I, 99mTc-pertechnetate, and 188Re-perrhenate were measured in the transfected and parental cells. Biodistribution was studied in nude mice bearing SK-Hep1 and SK-Hep1-NIS at 10 and 30 min and at 1, 2, 6, 16, and 23 h after injection of 125I, 99mTc- pertechnetate, or 188Re-perrhenate. In tumor imaging studies, the nude mice were intravenously injected with 188Re-perrhenate and imaged with a gamma-camera equipped with a pinhole collimator at 30 and 60 min after injection. The survival rate (%) was determined by the clonogenic assay after 37 MBq/10 mL (1 mCi/10 mL) 131I and 188Re-perrhenate treatment. RESULTS SK-Hep1-NIS, stably expressing the NIS gene, accumulated 125I up 150 times higher than that of SK-Hep1. Iodine uptake of SK-Hep1-NIS is completely blocked by perchlorate. NIS gene transfection into SK-Hep1 also resulted in 112- and 87-fold increases of 99mTc-pertechnetate and 188Re-perrhenate uptake, respectively. Iodide efflux from SK-Hep1-NIS was relatively slow, with only 10% released during the initial 5 min, and 60% remained at 25 min. In the biodistribution study using SK-Hep1-NIS-xenographed mice, the tumor uptake of 125I, 188Re-perrhenate, and 99mTc-pertechnetate was 68.0 +/- 15.0, 46.2 +/- 9.1, and 59.6 +/- 16.2 %ID/g (percentage injected dose per gram) at 2 h after injection, respectively. After 188Re-perrhenate injection in SK-Hep1 and SK-Hep1-NIS-xenographed nude mice, whole-body images clearly visualized the SK-Hep1-NIS tumor, whereas the control tumor was not visualized. The survival rate (%) of SK-Hep1-NIS was markedly reduced to 46.3% +/- 10.1% and 28.9% +/- 5.2% after 37 MBq/mL (1 mCi/10 mL) 131I and 188Re-perrhenate treatment compared with the survival rates of the parental cells. These results demonstrated that SK-Hep1-NIS could be selectively killed by the induced 131I and 188Re-perrhenate accumulation through NIS gene expression. CONCLUSION NIS-based gene therapy using beta-emitting radionuclides has the potential to be used in hepatocellular carcinoma management.
A combinational evaluation method of computer applications

- In this paper we will develop a combinational evaluation method for applications. Up to this day we have seen a lot of evaluation methods based on the design or on the ease of use of the application. Methods like [1], [5], [16] Heuristic evaluation, Thinking aloud protocol, Question asking protocol, Field observation, Questionnaires and User interviews, that cover an amount of the existing needs in evaluation. The combination, though, of all these methods increases the evaluations efficiency. In this article we are gong to view an evaluation idea, in which we combine several evaluation methods in order to increase the efficiency of the applications evaluation
Lightweight authentication for secure automotive networks

We propose a framework to bridge the gap between secure authentication in automotive networks and on the internet. Our proposed framework allows runtime key exchanges with minimal overhead for resource-constrained in-vehicle networks. It combines symmetric and asymmetric cryptography to establish secure communication and enable secure updates of keys and software throughout the lifetime of the vehicle. For this purpose, we tailor authentication protocols for devices and authorization protocols for streams to the automotive domain. As a result, our framework natively supports multicast and broadcast communication. We show that our lightweight framework is able to initiate secure message streams fast enough to meet the real-time requirements of automotive networks.
Hands-on interactive tabletop LEGO application

Presently, multi-touch interactive surfaces have widespread adoption as entertainment devices. Taking advantage of such devices, we present an interactive LEGO application, developed accordingly to an adaptation of building block metaphors and direct multi-touch manipulation. Our solution (LTouchIt) allows users to create 3D models on a tabletop surface. To prove the validity of our approach, we compared LTouchIt with two LEGO applications, conducting a user study with 20 participants. The results suggest that our touch-based application can compete with existing mouse-based applications. It provides users with a hands-on experience, which we believe to be more adequate for entertainment purposes.
Structural Equation Models and the Regression Bias for Measuring Correlates of Change

ANCOVA and regression both exhibit a directional bias when measuring correlates of change. This bias confounds the comparison of changes between naturally occurring groups with large pretest differences (ANCOVA), or for identifying predictors of change when the predictor is correlated with pretest (regression). This bias is described in some detail. A computer simulation study is presented, which shows that properly identified structural equation models are not susceptible to this bias. Neither gain scores (posttest minus pretest) nor structural equation models exhibit the “regression bias. ” Other factors, such as skewness, that may confound measurement of change are also discussed.
Research and Strategy to Inform the Design of Interactive Whiteboard Interfaces for Teachers

1 ABSTRACT There was great interest in the use of interactive whiteboards when they first began appearing in schools in the early 2000’s. However, many schools that have access to the boards have not been able to successfully integrate them into the curriculum, resulting in an underutilization of the technology. In this paper, we describe the process and results of a year long study of teachers and their use of interactive whiteboards. Strategies for integrating the boards as well as recommendations for designing interactive whiteboard software specifically for elementary school teachers and students are proposed.