Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Behavioral assessment of cell transplantation after focal cerebral ischemia in rats

We induced middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in rats using silicone-coated vascular embolus. We transplanted mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells after MCAO. Rats were tested behaviorally using motor and sensory function with neurological assessment. Functional effectiveness of the transplanted mES cells gradually improved the function of sensory and motor neurons. This study demonstrated that the transplanted cells have synaptic connection in the recipient brain. We suggest that stem cell transplantation can have a positive effect on behavioral recovery and reduction of infarct size in focal ischemic rats. Cell transplantation may induce certain functional recovery of the brain tissue by endogenous cell mediated effect. Our study suggests that intracerebrally injected mES cells survived and migrated into the infarct area from inoculation site and neuroglially differentiated in the ischemic brain area of adult rats. Therefore, mES cells may be a useful tool for the treatment in neurological diseases. In conclusion, cell transplantation therapy represents a novel approach that may enhance the efficacy and effectiveness of stem cell transplantation after ischemic stroke.
Neuropsychologic side‐effects of tacrolimus in pediatric renal transplantation

Calcineurin inhibition with tacrolimus has been used after renal transplantation (RTPL) as rescue therapy for insufficient immunological control or if cyclosporin A (CSA) toxicity occurred. Neurologic side‐effects occur but are rare in children, usually presenting as tremor; however, serious complications, e.g. the posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome are also documented. Twenty children (10 girls) were switched to tacrolimus: 11 (55%) for immunological reasons (n = 9: steroid‐resistant rejection; n = 2: recurrent rejections) and nine for CSA side‐effects. Tacrolimus was started at a median of 8 wk (range 10 d to 8.7 yr) after RTPL and was continued for a median of 2.5 yr (range 5 wk to 4.6 yr). Renal function significantly improved over a period of 12 months following conversion to tacrolimus (glomerular filtration rate 56 ± 19 vs. 66 ± 16 mL/min/1.73 m2; p < 0.03; n = 13). Fifteen of 20 (75%) patients tolerated tacrolimus well.
Bis(acetato-κO)bis(μ3-quinolin-8-olato-κ4 N,O:O:O)tetrakis(μ2-quinolin-8-olato-κ3 N,O:O)tetrazinc(II) dihydrate

In the centrosymmetric title compound, [Zn4(C9H6NO)6(C2H3O2)2]·2H2O, the ZnII atom that is bonded to one O atom of the acetate group is chelated by a quinolin-8-olate anion. This Zn atom is also bonded to the oxide O atoms of two other quinolin-8-olate anions, which themselves engage in chelation to the other ZnII atoms. The ZnII atom is five-coordinate in a square-pyramidal coordination geometry. The second ZnII atom is six-coordinate as it is linked to two oxide O atoms of the anions that chelate to the acetate-bound metal atom, and is chelated by two quinolin-8-olate ligands. The uncoordinated water molecule is disordered over two positions in a 4:1 ratio. O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds between the water molecules and the free O atoms of the carboxylate groups consolidate the crystal packing.
Restoring occluded regions using FW-PCA for face recognition

Occlusions in face images such as eyeglasses, hairs and whiskers decrease the performance of face recognition algorithms. Addressing this problem, this paper proposes a method for restoring occluded regions in face images. The proposed method employs Fast Weighted Principal Component Analysis (FW-PCA), which computes PCA only with effective pixels. The use of FW-PCA makes it possible to detect and restore occluded regions in face images. Through a set of experiments using public face databases, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method compared with the conventional methods.
The Compensation Approach Applied to a 2 × 2 Switch

In this paper we analyze an asymmetric 2 × 2 buffered switch, fed by two independent Bernoulli input streams. We derive the joint equilibrium distribution of the numbers of messages waiting in the two output buffers. This joint distribution is presented explicitly, without the use of generating functions, in the form of a sum of two alternating series of product-form geometric distributions. The method used is the so-called compensation approach, developed by Adan, Wessels, and Zijm.
Deterministic model for Acute Myelogenous Leukemia classification

Leukemia is a type of cancer that affects the blood and the bone marrow. Manual data analysis is time consuming and not accurate. Attempts to build partial/full automated systems based on segmentation and classification of cells are present in literature, but they are still in prototype stage. Most of the existing automatic systems extract features of the sub-images instead of the complete blood smear. [29]. The main objective of this paper is to a) demonstrate that the classification of peripheral blood smear images containing multiple nuclei can be fully automated, b) to validate the segmented images using hold-out cross validation method. The method has been evaluated using a set of 50 images (with 25 abnormal samples and 25 normal samples) obtained from American Society of Hematology [22]. The computer simulations show that the proposed system robustly segments and classifies Acute Myelogenous Leukemia based on complete microscopic blood images. 93.5% of the cases were correctly classified by the program, suggesting that the method yields good results in terms of classification of leukemia. The developed system can be used as ancillary/backup service to the physician.
On the Design of Constant Modulus Sequences with Low Correlation Sidelobes Levels

In many wireless communications/radar applications, constant modulus sequences with low correlation sidelobes levels are desired. In this letter, we present an efficient optimization method to design them. Firstly, we formulate a fourth-order polynomial, but unconstrained, minimization problem. And then, a customized LBFGS (Limited-Memory Broyden Fletcher Goldfarb and Shanno) iterative algorithm is proposed to solve it approximately. Numerical examples show that the proposed approach compares favorably with the state-of-the-art approach.
Enriching Language Data through Projected Structures

This paper explores the potential for annotating and enriching data for minority or endangered languages via the alignment and projection of structure from annotated and parsed data for a resource-rich language such as English. The work presented here draws inspiration from the work of (Yarowksy and Ngai, 2001), who tested the methods for projecting linguistic annotations from one language to another, where the resulting projections could be used to train automated part-of-speech taggers and NP bracketers. However, unlike Yarowsky and Ngai, who sought to develop tools and resources for the 200+ major languages of the world, we seek to develop enriched, searchable resources for a larger number of the world’s languages, most of which have no significant digital presence. We do this by tapping into the large body of Web-based linguistic data, most of which exists in small, analyzed chunks embedded in scholarly papers, journal articles, Web pages, and other online documents. By harvesting and enriching these data, we provide an automated means to search for them, facilitating a kind of structure-based, “construction” query. Further, the enriched data can be used to train and develop robust, statistically-based NLP tools, which can be used for the automated annotation and analysis of language data, especially that of resource-poor and computationally underrepresented languages.
Towards automated reformulation of specications

Several state-of-the-art systems and languages for constraint solving adopt a clear separation between the specification of a problem and its instances. Some of them additionally perform a limited form of reasoning on the spec, with the goal of choosing the most appropriate solver. In this paper we propose a more sophisticated form of reasoning on problem specs, with the goal of reformulating them so that they are more efficiently solvable. To this end, we present a reformulation technique that highlights constraints that can be safely “delayed”, and solved afterwards. Our main contribution is the characterization (with soundness proof) of safe-delay constraints wrt a syntactic criterion on the spec, thus obtaining a mechanism for the automated reformulation of specs applicable to a great variety of problems, e.g., graph coloring and job shop scheduling. Another contribution is a preliminary experimentation on the effectiveness of the proposed technique, which reveals promising time savings.
Software transactional memory for dynamic-sized data structures

We propose a new form of software transactional memory (STM) designed to support dynamic-sized data structures, and we describe a novel non-blocking implementation. The non-blocking property we consider is obstruction-freedom. Obstruction-freedom is weaker than lock-freedom; as a result, it admits substantially simpler and more efficient implementations. A novel feature of our obstruction-free STM implementation is its use of modular contention managers to ensure progress in practice. We illustrate the utility of our dynamic STM with a straightforward implementation of an obstruction-free red-black tree, thereby demonstrating a sophisticated non-blocking dynamic data structure that would be difficult to implement by other means. We also present the results of simple preliminary performance experiments that demonstrate that an "early release" feature of our STM is useful for reducing contention, and that our STM lends itself to the effective use of modular contention managers.
Discrete Wavelet Transform based steganography for transmitting images

The art of passing information in a manner that the very existence of the message is unknown is known as steganography. The detection of stegano-graphically encoded packages is called steganalysis. In this paper a novel steganographic technique using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) for transmitting pictures is proposed. Two different techniques are proposed one using three level wavelet decomposition taking a single plane of the cover image for embedding and processing the image as 4 × 4 blocks with swapping and another using single level wavelet decomposition. Experiments show that Peak Signal Noise Ratio (PSNR) generated by the proposed method is better than those generated by the existing schemes.
MicroRNAs in Plasma of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Patients as Novel Blood-Based Biomarkers of Disease

Development of minimally invasive biomarker assays for early detection and effective clinical management of pancreatic cancer is urgently needed to reduce high morbidity and mortality associated with this malignancy. We hypothesized that if aberrantly expressing microRNAs (miRNA) in pancreatic adenocarcinoma tissues are detected in blood plasma, then plasma profiling of these miRNAs might serve as a minimally invasive early detection biomarker assay for this malignancy. By using a modified protocol to isolate and quantify plasma miRNAs from heparin-treated blood, we show that miRNA profiling in plasma can differentiate pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients from healthy controls. We have profiled four miRNAs, miR-21, miR-210, miR-155, and miR-196a, all implicated in the development of pancreatic cancer with either proven or predicted target genes involved in critical cancer-associated cellular pathways. Of these, miR-155 has recently been identified as a candidate biomarker of early pancreatic neoplasia, whereas elevated expression of miR196a has been shown to parallel progression of disease. The results revealed a sensitivity of 64% and a specificity of 89% with the analyses of plasma levels for this panel of four miRNAs. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve were estimated at 0.82 and 0.78 without and with leave-one-out cross-validation scheme, respectively. These observations, although a “proof of principle” finding at this time, show the feasibility of developing plasma miRNA profiling as a sensitive and specific blood-based biomarker assay for pancreatic cancer that has the potential of translation to the clinic with additional improvements in the future.
A 32.4 μW RF front end for 2.4 GHz wake-up receiver

A 2.4 GHz ultra-low power RF front end for On-Off-Keying (OOK) modulation wakeup receiver has been designed and fabricated in a standard 0.18 μ m CMOS process. A comparison for ac and dc couple topology with same reference size is presented in this paper. It shows that dc couple is more suitable for ultra-low power RF front end design. A push-pull current reuse topology with bias controlled technique for RF front end improves 3.1 dB conversion gain under same core current consume. The implementation chip performs 26 dB maximum conversion gain and 32.4 μ W under 1.2 V supply with area of 0.64 mm2.
Dual-Band Bandpass Filter Design Using a Novel Feed Scheme

A planar dual-band bandpass filter based on a novel feed scheme is presented in this letter. The proposed filter employs two sets of resonators operating at diverse frequencies to generate two passbands. A novel scheme is introduced to feed the resonators. One set of resonators is utilized to not only generate the lower passband but also feed other resonators. Source-load coupling for upper passband is inherently realized. This scheme provides sufficient degrees of freedom to control the center frequencies and bandwidth of the two passbands. Four transmission zeros can be created close to passband edges, resulting in high skirt selectivity. To validate the proposed idea, a demonstration filter is implemented. The design methodology, filter sensitivity and experimental results are presented.
Experimenting with temporal relational databases

In this paper we describe an implementation of a temporal relational database management system based on attribute timestamping. The algebraic language of the system includes relational algebra operators, restructuring operators and temporrd operators. We then use this system to carry out experiments on the performance of different types of temporal databases: databases using attribute timestamping, databases using tuple timestamping where relations are in temporal normal form and databases using tuple timestamping where a single relation is used. We run sample queries against these types of temporal databases and measure the processing time of these queries. This study verifies that the major performance trade off between different types of temporaf databases is between the restructuring (unpack) operation needed in temporal databases using attribute timestamping and the join operation needed in temporal databases using tuple timestamping. Furthermore, the experiments show that keeping all temporal tuples in one single relation does not prove to be an effective alternative for temporal databases which use tuple timestamping.
Spreading Modulation for Multi-Level Non-Volatile Memories

The aggressive scaling of NAND flash memories has caused significant degradation in their reliability and endurance. One of the dominant factors in this degradation is the inter-cellinterference, by which the programming of a cell can affect nearby neighboring cells corrupting the information that they store. This paper proposes a new data representation scheme which increases endurance and significantly reduces the probability of error caused by inter-cell-interference. The method is based on using an orthogonal code to spread each bit across multiple cells, resulting in lower variance for the voltages being programmed in the cells. This new data representation method is also shown to present many of the advantages that spreading sequences bring to wireless communications. For example, multiple information sequences can be written on the same cells at different times without interfering with each other. It also allows storing additional information on an already programmed memory in such a way that the new information is hidden by the noise.
Myosin II and Dynamin Control Actin Rings to Mediate Fission during Activity-Dependent Bulk Endocytosis

Neuronal communication relies on neurotransmitter-filled synaptic vesicles (SVs) fusing with the presynaptic plasma membrane during neuronal activity. After exocytosis, SVs must be retrieved locally for a continual supply of SVs and neurotransmission to be maintained. Clathrin-mediated endocytosis (
Compensatory Thrombopoietin Production from the Liver and Bone Marrow Stimulates Thrombopoiesis of Living Rat Megakaryocytes in Chronic Renal Failure

Background/Aims: Decreased thrombopoiesis has been ascribed a role in the pathogenesis of uremic bleeding in chronic renal failure (CRF). However, serum thrombopoietin (TPO) levels are usually elevated in CRF patients, suggesting increased thrombopoiesis. The aim of this study was to determine the thrombopoietic activity in CRF. Methods: Male Sprague-Dawley rats that underwent 5/6 nephrectomy were used as the model of CRF. Age-matched sham-operated rats were used as controls. Single megakaryocytes were isolated from the rat bone marrow, and their size distribution was examined. Megakaryocyte membrane invaginations were monitored by confocal imaging of di-8-ANEPPS staining, and patch clamp whole-cell recordings of membrane capacitance. TPO gene expression was assessed in various tissues. Results: Circulating platelet counts and the number of large megakaryocytes were increased in the bone marrow of CRF rats. Massive di-8-ANEPPS staining and increased membrane capacitance in large megakaryocytes demonstrated increased membrane invaginations. Unaffected Kv1.3-channel currents per cell surface area demonstrated unaltered channel densities. TPO transcription was decreased in the renal cortex but increased in the liver and bone marrow of CRF rats. Conclusion: Increased thrombopoiesis in CRF was thought to be a reactive mechanism to platelet dysfunction. Increased TPO production from the liver and bone marrow compensated for decreased production from damaged kidneys.
The Activation of c-Jun NH2-terminal Kinase (JNK) by DNA-damaging Agents Serves to Promote Drug Resistance via Activating Transcription Factor 2 (ATF2)-dependent Enhanced DNA Repair*

The activating transcription factor 2 (ATF2) is a member of the ATF/cAMP-response element-binding protein family of basic-leucine zipper proteins involved in cellular stress response. The transcription potential of ATF2 is enhanced markedly by NH2-terminal phosphorylation by c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK) and mediates stress responses including DNA-damaging events. We have observed that four DNA-damaging agents (cisplatin, actinomycin D, MMS, and etoposide), but not the cisplatin isomer, transplatin, which does not readily damage DNA, strongly activate JNK, p38, and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), and strongly increase phosphorylation and ATF2-dependent transcriptional activity. Selective inhibition studies with PD98059, SB202190, SP600125, and the dominant negative JNK indicate that activation of JNK but not p38 kinase or ERK kinase is required for the phosphorylation and transcriptional activation of ATF2. Stable expression of ATF2 in human breast carcinoma BT474 cells increases transcriptional activity and confers resistance to the four DNA-damaging agents, but not to transplatin. Conversely, stable expression of a dominant negative ATF2 (dnATF2) quantitatively blocks phosphorylation of endogenous ATF2 leading to a marked decrease in transcriptional activity by endogenous ATF2 and a markedly increased sensitivity to the four agents as judged by decreased cell viability. Similarly, application of SB202190 at 50 μm or SP600125 inhibited JNK activity, blocked transactivation, and sensitized parental cells to the four DNA-damaging drugs. Moreover, the wild type ATF2-expressing clones exhibited rapid DNA repair after treatment with the four DNA-damaging agents but not transplatin. Conversely, expression of dnATF2 quantitatively blocks DNA repair. These results indicate that JNK-dependent phosphorylation of ATF2 plays an important role in the drug resistance phenotype likely by mediating enhanced DNA repair by a p53-independent mechanism. JNK may be a rational target for sensitizing tumor cells to DNA-damaging chemotherapy agents.
Unbalanced multiple description video communication using path diversity

Multiple description (MD) coders provide important error resilience properties. Specifically, MD coders are designed to provide good performance when the loss is limited to a single description, but it is not known in advance which description. Apostolopoulos (2001) combined MD video coding with a path diversity transmission system for packet networks such as the Internet, where different descriptions are explicitly transmitted through different network paths, to improve the effectiveness of MD coding over a packet network by increasing the likelihood that the loss probabilities for each description are independent. The available bandwidth in each path may be similar or different, resulting in the requirement of balanced or unbalanced operation, where the bit rate of each description may differ based on the available bandwidth along its path. We design a MD video communication system that is effective in both balanced and unbalanced operation. Specifically, unbalanced MD streams are created by carefully adjusting the frame rate of each description, thereby achieving unbalanced rates of almost 2:1 while preserving MD's effectiveness and error recovery capability.
Automatic Top-Down Processing Explains Common Left Occipito-Temporal Responses to Visual Words and Objects

Previous studies have demonstrated that a region in the left ventral occipito-temporal (LvOT) cortex is highly selective to the visual forms of written words and objects relative to closely matched visual stimuli. Here, we investigated why LvOT activation is not higher for reading than picture naming even though written words and pictures of objects have grossly different visual forms. To compare neuronal responses for words and pictures within the same LvOT area, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation and instructed participants to name target stimuli that followed briefly presented masked primes that were either presented in the same stimulus type as the target (word–word, picture–picture) or a different stimulus type (picture–word, word–picture). We found that activation throughout posterior and anterior parts of LvOT was reduced when the prime had the same name/response as the target irrespective of whether the prime-target relationship was within or between stimulus type. As posterior LvOT is a visual form processing area, and there was no visual form similarity between different stimulus types, we suggest that our results indicate automatic top-down influences from pictures to words and words to pictures. This novel perspective motivates further investigation of the functional properties of this intriguing region.
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of IS Security Policy Compliance Research. First Steps towards Evidence-Based Structuring of the IS Security Domain

Given the short supply of empiricism in ISS research, existing empir- ical evidence needs to be processed further than the scope of a single paper may allow. Other fields of science have long recognized the need for higher level analyses of research results in order to make them accessible to practitioners and develop a knowledge base. In our paper we perform an exhaustive literature research in the realm of empirical ISS research. As one of the recent research hotspots, we perform a systematic review of research results in Information Se- curity Policy (ISP) compliance. We analyze and discuss the heterogeneity of re- search results and suggest a presentation format that may allow ISS practition- ers to base their ISP design decisions on.