Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seasonal changes of 24-hour intraocular pressure rhythm in healthy Shanghai population

Abstract The aim of the present study was to investigate and compare the 24-hour intraocular pressure (IOP) rhythms in winter and summer in the healthy population of Shanghai, China. This is a cross-sectional study in which 24-hour IOP measurements were taken for all eligible healthy volunteers in winter and summer, respectively, and the temperature, hours of sunlight (sunlight time), and circulatory parameters, including heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure, were also recorded. The 24-hour IOP curves and IOP parameters (mean, peak, trough, and fluctuation of IOP together with the diurnal-to-nocturnal IOP change) in winter and summer were obtained and compared. The magnitude of IOP changes from summer to winter was also calculated. A total of 29 participants (58 eyes), 14 (48.28%) male and 15 (51.72%) female, aged 43.66 ± 12.20 (19–61) years, were considered eligible for this study. Generally, IOP decreased progressively before noon, increased notably in the nocturnal period, and peaked at 12:00 AM in winter and at 2:00 AM in summer. The pattern of 24-hour IOP in winter and summer was significantly different (P = 0.002). The average IOPs from 4:00 PM to 8:00 AM, except for 6:00 AM, were significantly higher in winter (P < 0.05). However, no significant differences were shown after adjusting for temperature and/or sunlight time. From summer to winter, the extent of IOP increase was mostly around 0 to 3 mm Hg, and the IOPs increased more significantly in the nocturnal period than in the diurnal period (P = 0.05). The 24-hour IOP rhythms were different in winter and summer, with higher IOP level in winter. Temperature and sunlight time, which are independent of heart rate and blood pressure, affected the 24-hour IOP rhythms in healthy people in Shanghai, China. Further investigations are expected for the rhythm of some endogenous substance secretion and the inner mechanism of regulation of IOP.
Inhaled prostanoid therapy for pulmonary arterial hypertension – a promise unfulfilled?

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is an incurable, progressive disease resulting from narrowing of the precapillary vasculature, ultimately leading to right ventricular failure and death. PAH-specific vasodilators have drastically altered the trajectory of this once fatal disease, improving walk distance and hemodynamics, reducing clinical worsening and enhancing quality of life. Although current treatments are aimed at restoring the balance of endogenous vasoactive agents by enhancing the beneficial effects of nitric oxide (NO) and prostacyclin and blunting the deleterious effects of endothelin, only continuous infusion prostacyclin therapy has demonstrated improved survival in randomized clinical trials [1]. Although highly efficacious, continuous infusion therapy remains cumbersome, requiring a portable pump, and either a central venous catheter for intravenous delivery or a smaller catheter for subcutaneous delivery. Inhaled prostacyclin therapies possess several potential advantages over continuous infusion and nonprostacyclin approved PAH therapies:
Immunogenicity assessment of Brucella mellitensis HSP and TF proteins by immunized rabbit serum.

1 Department of Pathobiology, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 2 Nanobiotechnology Research Center, Avicenna Research Institute, ACECR, Tehran, Iran 3 Immunology Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 4 Department of Bacterial Vaccines and Antigen Production, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran 5 Monoclonal Antibody Research Center, Avicenna Research Institute, ACECR, Tehran, Iran
A Novel Subtractive Antibody Phage Display Method to Discover Disease Markers*

Today’s research demands fast identification of potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets. We describe a novel phage display strategy to identify disease-related proteins that are specifically expressed in a certain (diseased) tissue or cells. Phages displaying antibody fragments are selected on complex protein mixtures in a two-step manner combining subtractive selection in solution with further enrichment of specific phages on two-dimensional Western blots. Targets recognized by the resulting recombinant antibodies are immunoaffinity-purified and identified by mass spectrometry. We used antibody fragment libraries from autoimmune patients to discover apoptosis-specific and disease-related targets. One of the three identified targets is the U1-70K protein, a marker for systemic lupus erythematosus overlap disease. Interestingly the epitope on U1-70K recognized by the selected recombinant antibody was shown to be apoptosis-dependent, and such epitopes are believed to be involved in breaking tolerance to self-antigens. The other two proteins were identified as polypyrimidine tract-binding protein-associated splicing factor (PSF)/nuclear RNA- and DNA-binding protein of 54 kDa (p54nrb) and heterogeneous ribonucleoprotein C.
Usability and security of out-of-band channels in secure device pairing protocols

Initiating and bootstrapping secure, yet low-cost, ad-hoc transactions is an important challenge that needs to be overcome if the promise of mobile and pervasive computing is to be fulfilled. For example, mobile payment applications would benefit from the ability to pair devices securely without resorting to conventional mechanisms such as shared secrets, a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), or trusted third parties. A number of methods have been proposed for doing this based on the use of a secondary out-of-band (OOB) channel that either authenticates information passed over the normal communication channel or otherwise establishes an authenticated shared secret which can be used for subsequent secure communication. A key element of the success of these methods is dependent on the performance and effectiveness of the OOB channel, which usually depends on people performing certain critical tasks correctly. In this paper, we present the results of a comparative usability study on methods that propose using humans to implement the OOB channel and argue that most of these proposals fail to take into account factors that may seriously harm the security and usability of a protocol. Our work builds on previous research in the usability of pairing methods and the accompanying recommendations for designing user interfaces that minimise human mistakes. Our findings show that the traditional methods of comparing and typing short strings into mobile devices are still preferable despite claims that new methods are more usable and secure, and that user interface design alone is not sufficient in mitigating human mistakes in OOB channels.
Robustness analysis of systems' safety through a new notion of input‐to‐state safety

In this paper, we propose a new robustness notion that is applicable for certifying systems' safety with respect to external disturbance signals. The proposed input‐to‐state safety notion allows us to certify systems' safety in the presence of the disturbances, which is analogous to the notion of input‐to‐state stability for analyzing systems' stability.
Metagenomic Profiling of Antibiotic Resistance Genes and Mobile Genetic Elements in a Tannery Wastewater Treatment Plant

Antibiotics are often used to prevent sickness and improve production in animal agriculture, and the residues in animal bodies may enter tannery wastewater during leather production. This study aimed to use Illumina high-throughput sequencing to investigate the occurrence, diversity and abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in aerobic and anaerobic sludge of a full-scale tannery wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Metagenomic analysis showed that Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria dominated in the WWTP, but the relative abundance of archaea in anaerobic sludge was higher than in aerobic sludge. Sequencing reads from aerobic and anaerobic sludge revealed differences in the abundance of functional genes between both microbial communities. Genes coding for antibiotic resistance were identified in both communities. BLAST analysis against Antibiotic Resistance Genes Database (ARDB) further revealed that aerobic and anaerobic sludge contained various ARGs with high abundance, among which sulfonamide resistance gene sul1 had the highest abundance, occupying over 20% of the total ARGs reads. Tetracycline resistance genes (tet) were highly rich in the anaerobic sludge, among which tet33 had the highest abundance, but was absent in aerobic sludge. Over 70 types of insertion sequences were detected in each sludge sample, and class 1 integrase genes were prevalent in the WWTP. The results highlighted prevalence of ARGs and MGEs in tannery WWTPs, which may deserve more public health concerns.
Enzymes involved in metabolism of extracellular nucleotides and nucleosides: Functional implications and measurement of activities

Abstract Extracellular nucleotides and nucleosides mediate diverse signaling effects in virtually all organs and tissues. Most models of purinergic signaling depend on functional interactions between distinct processes, including (i) the release of endogenous ATP and other nucleotides, (ii) triggering of signaling events via a series of nucleotide-selective ligand-gated P2X and metabotropic P2Y receptors as well as adenosine receptors and (iii) ectoenzymatic interconversion of purinergic agonists. The duration and magnitude of purinergic signaling is governed by a network of ectoenzymes, including the enzymes of the nucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolase (NTPDase) family, the nucleotide pyrophosphatase/phosphodiesterase (NPP) family, ecto-5′-nucleotidase/CD73, tissue-nonspecific alkaline phosphatase (TNAP), prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) and other alkaline and acid phosphatases, adenosine deaminase (ADA) and purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP). Along with “classical” inactivating ectoenzymes, recent data provide evidence for the co-existence of a counteracting ATP-regenerating pathway comprising the enzymes of the adenylate kinase (AK) and nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDPK/NME/NM23) families and ATP synthase. This review describes recent advances in this field, with special emphasis on purine-converting ectoenzymes as a complex and integrated network regulating purinergic signaling in such (patho)physiological states as immunomodulation, inflammation, tumorigenesis, arterial calcification and other diseases. The second part of this review provides a comprehensive overview and basic principles of major approaches employed for studying purinergic activities, including spectrophotometric Pi-liberating assays, high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) and thin-layer chromatographic (TLC) analyses of purine substrates and metabolites, capillary electrophoresis, bioluminescent, fluorometric and electrochemical enzyme-coupled assays, histochemical staining, and further emphasizes their advantages, drawbacks and suitability for assaying a particular catalytic reaction.
Automatic Video Segmentation using Spatiotemporal T-Junctions

The problem of figure‐ground segmentation is of great importance in both video editing and visual perception tasks. Classical video segmentation algorithms approach the problem from one of two perspectives. At one extreme, global approaches constrain the camera motion to simplify the image structure. At the other extreme, local approaches estimate motion in small image regions over a small number of frames and tend to produce noisy signals that are difficult to segment. With recent advances in image segmentation showing that sparse information is often sufficient for figure‐ ground segmentation it seems surprising then that with the extra temporal information of video, an unconstrained automatic figure‐ground segmentation algorithm still eludes the research community. In this paper we present an automatic video segmentation algorithm that is intermediate between these two extremes and uses spatiotemporal features to regularize the segmentation. Detecting spatiotemporal T-junctions that indicate occlusion edges, we learn an occlusion edge model that is used within a colour contrast sensitive MRF to segment individual frames of a video sequence. T-junctions are learnt and classified using a support vector machine and a Gaussian mixture model is fitted to the (foreground, background) pixel pairs sampled from the detected T-junctions. Graph cut is then used to segment each frame of the video showing that sparse occlusion edge information can automatically initialize the video segmentation problem.
Weighted Sum Throughput Maximization in Multicell OFDMA Networks

This paper addresses resource allocation for weighted sum throughput maximization (WSTM) in multicell orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) networks. Two suboptimal algorithms with polynomial-time complexity are provided. First, we determine a graph-based subcarrier allocation algorithm allowing joint transmission of two interfering links whenever such a transmission fulfills the pairwise WSTM objective. An analytical expression of the optimal power allocation with two interfering cells in single-carrier transmission is obtained, and the capacity region study serves as the basis to build the interference graph. Second, we present a distributed power-control algorithm suitable for any signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) regime. It rejects users and subcarriers with weighted SINR that is too low before operating in the high SINR regime for the remaining users and subcarriers. Both algorithms and their combination are assessed via dynamic simulations, where the weight of each user is proportional to its queue length. They are shown to significantly decrease resource consumption and efficiently balance users' queue lengths.
Deviant Learning Algorithm: Learning Sparse Mismatch Representations through Time and Space

Predictive coding (PDC) has recently attracted attention in the neuroscience and computing community as a candidate unifying paradigm for neuronal studies and artificial neural network implementations particularly targeted at unsupervised learning systems. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) has also recently been studied in relation to PC and found to be a useful ingredient in neural predictive coding systems. Backed by the behavior of living organisms, such networks are particularly useful in forming spatio-temporal transitions and invariant representations of the input world. However, most neural systems still do not account for large number of synapses even though this has been shown by a few machine learning researchers as an effective and very important component of any neural system if such a system is to behave properly. Our major point here is that PDC systems with the MMN effect in addition to a large number of synapses can greatly improve any neural learning system's performance and ability to make decisions in the machine world. In this paper, we propose a novel bio-mimetic computational intelligence algorithm – the Deviant Learning Algorithm, inspired by these key ideas and functional properties of recent brain-cognitive discoveries and theories. We also show by numerical experiments guided by theoretical insights, how our invented bio-mimetic algorithm can achieve competitive predictions even with very small problem specific data.
Therapeutic Potential of Novel Twin Compounds Containing Tetramethylpyrazine and Carnitine Substructures in Experimental Ischemic Stroke

Although studies have seen dramatic advances in the understanding of the pathogenesis of stroke such as oxidative stress, inflammation, excitotoxicity, calcium overload and apoptosis, the delivery of stroke therapies is still a great challenge. In this study, we designed and synthesized a series of novel twin compounds containing tetramethylpyrazine and carnitine substructures and explored their therapeutic potential and mechanism in stroke-related neuronal injury. We first screened the neuroprotective effects of candidate compounds and found that among the tested compounds, LR134 and LR143 exhibited significant neuroprotection as evidenced by reducing cerebral infarct and edema, improving neurological function as well as blood-brain barrier integrity in rats after cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury. We further demonstrated that the neuroprotective effects of compounds LR134 and LR143 were associated with the reduced inflammatory responses and NADPH oxidase- (NOX2-) mediated oxidative stress and the protection of mitochondria accompanied by the improvement of energy supply. In summary, this study provides direct evidence showing that the novel twin compounds containing tetramethylpyrazine and carnitine substructures have neuroprotective effects with multiple therapeutic targets, suggesting that modulation of these chemical structures may be an innovative therapeutic strategy for treating patients with stroke.
Dual-Band N-Way Series Power Divider Using CRLH-TL Metamaterials With Application in Feeding Dual-Band Linear Broadside Array Antenna With Reduced Beam Squinting

A general design for a non-radiating dual-band N-way series power divider (SPD) is presented in this paper. The non-linear phase responses of composite right and left handed transmission-line (CRLH-TL) and non-radiating CRLH-TL (NR-CRLH-TL) are used to achieve the desired dual-band performance. Theory and design procedure of this divider are analyzed in detail. For demonstration, a dual-band 3-way power divider was designed, fabricated and tested at two arbitrary design frequencies: 0.915 GH (UHF) and 2.440 GHz (ISM). There is nearly equal and in-phase power division to all three output ports in the two passbands while the measured input return loss remains below 10 dB. Also, the dual-band divider presents the benefit of setting the output ports arbitrarily apart. In addition, the dual-band nature of the proposed SPD, low cost and easy integration with printed antenna make it well suited for feeding dual-band planar antenna arrays. To verify the performance of the proposed divider, the designed dual-band 3-way SPD is used as a series feed network for a linear array of printed monopole antennas, designed to radiate in the broadside direction. It is shown that the proposed dual-band planar antenna array experiences a decrease in the amount of beam squinting with a change in frequency for both the operating bands.
The Use of Drama to Reduce Anxiety and Increase Confidence and Motivation towards Speaking English with Two Groups of English Language Learners

12 CHAPTER ONE 13 Introduction 13 Statement of the Problem 13 Purpose of Study and Research Questions 15 Definition of Terms 16 CHAPTER TWO 18 Review of the Literature 18 Krashen’s Second Language Learning Theories 18 Natural Approach to Second Language Acquisition 20 Psychological Factors of the Affective Filter 21 Anxiety 21 Confidence 22 Motivation 22 Cooperative Learning: The Natural Approach in Action 22 Educational Drama and Second Language Instruction 24 Effects of Drama on the Affective Filter 26 Effectiveness of Drama in Second Language Learning 27 Conclusion 28 CHAPTER THREE 29
Growing Up with Asperger’s Syndrome: Developmental Trajectory of Autobiographical Memory

Autobiographical memory (AM) and social cognition share common properties and both are affected in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). So far, most of the scant research in ASD has concerned adults, systematically reporting impairment of the episodic component. The only study to be conducted with children concluded that they have poorer personal semantic knowledge than typical developing children. The present study explores the development of both components of AM in an 8-year-old boy diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, based on three examinations in 2007, 2008, and 2010. On each occasion, he underwent a general neuropsychological assessment including theory of mind (ToM) tasks, and a specially designed AM task allowing us to test both the semantic and the episodic components for three lifetime periods (current year, previous year, and earlier years). We observed difficulties in strategic retrieval and ToM, with a significant improvement between the second and third examinations. Regarding AM, different patterns of performance were noted in all three examinations: (1) relative preservation of current year personal knowledge, but impairment for the previous and earlier years, and (2) impairment of episodic memory for the current and previous year, but performances similar to those of controls for the earlier years. The first pattern can be explained by abnormal forgetting and by the semanticization mechanism, which needs verbal communication and social interaction to be efficient. The second pattern suggests that the development of episodic memory only reached the stage of “event memory. ” This term refers to memory for personal events lacking in details or spatiotemporal specificity, and is usually observed in children younger than five. We conclude that the abnormal functioning of social cognition in ASD, encompassing social, and personal points of view, has an impact on both components of AM.
COMPAQ QuickSource: Providing the Consumer with the Power of Artificial Intelligence

This paper describes COMPAQ QuickSource, an electronic problem-solving and infornmation system for Compaq's line of networked printers. A major goal in designing this system was to empower Compaq's customers with expert system technology to allow them to solve advanced network printer problems entirely on their own. This process minimizes customer down-time, reduces the number of phone calls to the Compaq Customer Support Center (resulting in monetary savings), improved customer satisfaction, and, perhaps most importantly, differentiates Compaq printers in the marketplace by providing the best, and most technologically advanced, customer support facility. This approach also represents a re-engineering of Compaq's customer support strategy and implementation. in its first generation system, SMART, the objective was to provide expert knowledge to Compaq's help desk operation to better and more quickly answer customer calls and problems. QuickSource is a second generation system in that the customer support function is put directly in the hands of the consumers (an example of "knowledge publishing"). As a result, the design of QuickSource presented a number of different and challenging issues. Because the product would be used by a diverse and heterogeneous set of users, a significant amount of human factors research and analysis was performed to help design and implement the system. The analysis also dictated certain decisions on the organization and design of the expert system component. Since September 1992, Compaq has shipped more than 3,000 copies of QuickSource.
Automated Intrusion Detection for Video Surveillance Using Conditional Random Fields

In this paper, we propose a method for intrusion detection in a video surveillance scenario. For this purpose, we train a conditional random field (CRF) on features extracted from a video stream. CRFs estimate a state sequence, given a feature sequence. To detect intrusions, we analyze this state sequence. CRFs are usually trained in a supervised manner. Here, we especially propose a new training algorithm for CRFs based on expectation maximization, which can be used with unlabeled data. We apply the resulting trained CRF to separate normal activities from suspicious behavior. We have successfully tested our algorithm on 169 sequences.