Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Slow controlled-rate freezing of sequentially cultured human blastocysts: an evaluation of two freezing strategies.

BACKGROUND To optimize blastocyst cryopreservation, the prerequisite is to develop a better understanding of factors that influence their survival and implantation potential. Therefore, the aim of the present work was to evaluate, retrospectively, the outcome of blastocyst cryopreservation in a day 2/3 fresh embryo transfer programme. METHODS Two different freezing strategies were compared: a first strategy (strategy A: 3007 blastocysts frozen) consisted of freezing those blastocysts that had at least a cavity; a second strategy (strategy B: 3831 blastocysts frozen) consisted of freezing only more advanced stage blastocysts with a good quality inner cell mass and trophectoderm. The outcome of cryopreservation, as related to the two different freezing strategies, was analysed. In addition, after freezing and thawing, we evaluated the influence of blastocyst developmental characteristics on immediate morphological survival and further development in vitro. RESULTS The immediate morphological survival after thawing was higher for early blastocysts as compared to advanced and hatching blastocysts. The further developmental potential in vitro of thawed blastocysts was higher for advanced and hatching blastocysts as compared to early blastocysts. As a result, the percentage of deliveries, calculated as a percentage of started thawing cycle, and the percentage of children born, calculated as a percentage of embryos transferred, was not different for strategies A and B. CONCLUSION The results clearly indicate that culture conditions and cryopreservation procedures of blastocysts need to be further improved.
The amygdala: securing pleasure and avoiding pain

The amygdala has traditionally been associated with fear, mediating the impact of negative emotions on memory. However, this view does not fully encapsulate the function of the amygdala, nor the impact that processing in this structure has on the motivational limbic corticostriatal circuitry of which it is an important structure. Here we discuss the interactions between different amygdala nuclei with cortical and striatal regions involved in motivation; interconnections and parallel circuitries that have become increasingly understood in recent years. We review the evidence that the amygdala stores memories that allow initially motivationally neutral stimuli to become associated through pavlovian conditioning with motivationally relevant outcomes which, importantly, can be either appetitive (e.g. food) or aversive (e.g. electric shock). We also consider how different psychological processes supported by the amygdala such as conditioned reinforcement and punishment, conditioned motivation and suppression, and conditioned approach and avoidance behavior, are not only psychologically but also neurobiologically dissociable, being mediated by distinct yet overlapping neural circuits within the limbic corticostriatal circuitry. Clearly the role of the amygdala goes beyond encoding aversive stimuli to also encode the appetitive, requiring an appreciation of the amygdala's mediation of both appetitive and fearful behavior through diverse psychological processes.
Nanoparticle-Mediated Systemic Delivery of siRNA for Treatment of Cancers and Viral Infections

RNA interference (RNAi) is an endogenous post-transcriptional gene regulatory mechanism, where non-coding, double-stranded RNA molecules interfere with the expression of certain genes in order to silence it. Since its discovery, this phenomenon has evolved as powerful technology to diagnose and treat diseases at cellular and molecular levels. With a lot of attention, short interfering RNA (siRNA) therapeutics has brought a great hope for treatment of various undruggable diseases, including genetic diseases, cancer, and resistant viral infections. However, the challenge of their systemic delivery and on how they are integrated to exhibit the desired properties and functions remains a key bottleneck for realizing its full potential. Nanoparticles are currently well known to exhibit a number of unique properties that could be strategically tailored into new advanced siRNA delivery systems. This review summarizes the various nanoparticulate systems developed so far in the literature for systemic delivery of siRNA, which include silica and silicon-based nanoparticles, metal and metal oxides nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, graphene, dendrimers, polymers, cyclodextrins, lipids, hydrogels, and semiconductor nanocrystals. Challenges and barriers to the delivery of siRNA and the role of different nanoparticles to surmount these challenges are also included in the review.
Evolution of Peer-to-peer algorithms : Past , present and future

Today peer-to-peer applications are widely used for differ ent purposes. People chat, talk, play games, share resource and content using peer-to-peer technology every day. Such peer-to-peer applications as Skype (P2P telephony), ICQ (P2P instant messaging), Kazaa (P2P content sharing) and SETI@home (P2P resource sharing) have enjoyed huge popularity in recent years and are used by millions of people around the world. Peer-to-peer applications played an important role in the evolution of the Internet. The evolution path of P2P algorithms and applications is interesting and studying it can t ell us the direction in which the evolution will proceed in the future. In the current paper we intend to study this evolutio n by reviewing the existing literature and analysing it. We wi ll overview historical developments in this field, as well as on going research on the topic, then analyse our findings and try to figure out the future trends in this field.
Experimental Comparison of Automatic Tools for the Formal Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols

The tools for cryptographic protocols analysis based on state exploration are designed to be completely automatic and should carry out their job with a limited amount of computing and storage resources, even when run by users having a limited amount of expertise in the field. This paper compares four tools of this kind to highlight their features and ability to detect bugs under the same experimental conditions. To this purpose, the ability of each tool to detect known flaws in a uniform set of well-known cryptographic protocols has been checked.
Servant Leadership and Effective Changes Management in Schools

Effective leadership is one of the important indicators to determining the change management in school achievement. This study aimed to identify the influence of servant leadership on the change management in schools. This cross-sectional survey involved 342 secondary school teachers in the northern zone (Perlis, Kedah, Penang and Perak). The instrument included Servant Leadership Scale (SLS) and Change Facilitator Style Questionnaire (CFSQ). Results showed that servant leadership contributed to the change management in schools. Implications of this study is servant leadership contributed to the change management in schools. Thus, servant leadership should be applied and practiced by school leaders to improve the success of change management, thereby improving school performance .
A novel antimicrobial protein for plant protection consisting of a Xanthomonas oryzae harpin and active domains of cecropin A and melittin

Discoveries about antimicrobial peptides and plant defence activators have made possible the de novo and rational design of novel peptides for use in crop protection. Here we report a novel chimeric protein, Hcm1, which was made by linking the active domains of cecropin A and melittin to the hypersensitive response (HR)‐elicitor Hpa1 of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola, the causal agent of rice bacterial leaf streak. The resulting chimeric protein maintained not only the HR‐inducing property of the harpin, but also the antimicrobial activity of the cecropin A‐melittin hybrid. Hcm1 was purified from engineered Escherichia coli and evaluated in terms of the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and the 50% effective dose (ED50) against important plant pathogenic bacteria and fungi. Importantly, the protein acted as a potential pesticide by inducing disease resistance for viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens. This designed drug can be considered as a lead compound for use in plant protection, either for the development of new broad‐spectrum pesticides or for expression in transgenic plants.
A Case Study for GPGPU Program Verification

The goal of this research is to design a concurrent program that computes the edit distance between two strings and then verify the correctness of the program. The program is implemented in OpenCL and specication and verication is done using permission-based separation logic. The logic used for the (manual) verication is the same as used in the VerCors tool set, which is currently under development. The results of this research will assist in further development of VerCors.
GRIDiron

We present an interactive simulation framework for authoring surgical procedures of soft tissue manipulation using physics-based simulation to animate the flesh. This interactive authoring tool can be used by clinical educators to craft three-dimensional illustrations of the intricate maneuvers involved in craniofacial repairs, in contrast to two-dimensional sketches and still photographs which are the medium used to describe these procedures in the traditional surgical curriculum. Our virtual environment also allows surgeons-intraining to develop cognitive skills for craniofacial surgery by experimenting with different approaches to reconstructive challenges, adapting stock techniques to flesh regions with nonstandard shape, and reach preliminary predictions about the feasibility of a given repair plan. We use a Cartesian grid-based embedded discretization of nonlinear elasticity to maximize regularity, and expose opportunities for aggressive multithreading and SIMD accelerations. Using a grid-based approach facilitates performance and scalability, but constrains our ability to capture the topology of thin surgical incisions. We circumvent this restriction by hybridizing the grid-based discretization with an explicit hexahedral mesh representation in regions where the embedding mesh necessitates overlap or nonmanifold connectivity. Finally, we detail how the front-end of our system can run on lightweight clients, while the core simulation capability can be hosted on a dedicated server and delivered as a network service.
A two-level domain decomposition method for image restoration

Image restoration has drawn much attention in recent years and a surge of research has been done on variational models and their numerical studies. However, there remains an urgent need to develop fast and robust methods for solving the minimization problems and the underlying nonlinear PDEs to process images of moderate to large size. This paper aims to propose a two-level domain decomposition method, which consists of an overlapping domain decomposition technique and a coarse mesh correction, for directly solving the total variational minimization problems. The iterative algorithm leads to a system of small size and better conditioning in each subspace, and is accelerated with a piecewise linear coarse mesh correction. Various numerical experiments and comparisons demonstrate that the proposed method is fast and robust particularly for images of large size.
Myocardial infarction and prevalence of diabetes mellitus. Is increased casual blood glucose at admission a reliable criterion for the diagnosis of diabetes?

AIMS To investigate the prevalence of diabetes mellitus in patients with acute myocardial infarction and to determine whether casual blood glucose and haemoglobin A1c measured at admission could be used to diagnose diabetes mellitus. METHODS AND RESULTS A prospective study that included all patients with acute myocardial infarction hospitalized during a one-year period at a coronary care unit. Casual blood glucose was measured at admission, fasting blood glucose during the hospital stay and, if necessary for classification, 2-3 months after discharge. Haemoglobin A1c was measured once at admission. Of 305 patients included in the study, 285 could be classified into three groups: 21% of these had previously diagnosed diabetes, 4% had newly diagnosed diabetes and the remaining patients were categorized as non-diabetic. Casual blood glucose >or=11.1 mmol x l(-1)at admission was found in 12 patients with no previously known diabetes, but diabetes mellitus was confirmed in only six of these patients. Haemoglobin A1c showed considerable overlapping of values between the three groups of patients (i.e. patients with known diabetes mellitus, patients with newly diagnosed diabetes mellitus and non-diabetics). CONCLUSION One of four patients with acute myocardial infarction had diabetes mellitus. Increased casual blood glucose at admission was not a reliable measure to establish a diagnosis of diabetes and thus follow-up measures were necessary. Haemoglobin A1c was found to be an unreliable measure in the verification of diabetes.
Generating Optimal Face Image in Face Recognition System

In this paper, a new method of generating optimal face image is proposed for improving the performance of automatic face recognition system. In order to overcome the influences of variations in face pose and expression, it is essential to generate optimal face image for the face to be recognized. The optimal face image is the one which has the minimum pose rotation and neutral expression in image sequences. Through estimating face pose and expression and combining tensors decomposing in multi-linear algebra, we can generate optimal face images from three-route video inputs of CCD in parallel detecting system. A new module of optimal face image generation is built between face detecting module and face recognition module. The proposed method overcomes the problem which large pose angles affect face recognition rate. The recognition rate is improved after applying the proposed method.
Mutations in the Caenorhabditis elegans Na,K-ATPase alpha-subunit gene, eat-6, disrupt excitable cell function

We have cloned a Na,K-ATPase alpha-subunit gene from Caenorhabditis elegans and discovered that it is identical to the gene eat-6, eat-6 mutations cause feeble contractions and slow, delayed relaxations of pharyngeal muscle. The resting membrane potential of eat-6 mutant pharynxes is consistently depolarized compared to wild-type. The action potentials are smaller, and the return to resting potential is slower. To explain these abnormalities, we propose that a reduction of Na,K- ATPase activity in eat-6 mutants leads to a reduction of the ion concentration gradients that power membrane potential changes.
Research on reassembling fragments of documentary evidence

A number of documentary evidence pieces are often left in a crime scene, and the key to effectively identify suspects is to collect and restore fragment evidence in time. Obviously, some fragments show strong similarities in paper texture, geometric landmarks, and document content. After much thought and consideration, a solution to reassemble image fragments was proposed and implemented based on shape matching. Firstly, edges are recognized by fully exploiting the potential of Canny algorithm, and the most outer contour is intelligently inferred. Secondly, the contour was transformed into a series of vertices which can represent a polygon. A similarity is then computed based on the geometric landmarks between polygons, and a best matching fragment is elected. Lastly, the original documentary evidence is reassembled step by step in order of priority. The software developed here can increase efficiency in forensic investigations for police.
Hardware Accelerated Light Field Rendering

Light field rendering has become one of the major topics in image based rendering. To extend the wide-spread use of these techniques it is crucial to have fast and efficient rendering algorithms. In this paper we will present methods for accelerating the display of traditional two-plane-parametrized light fields and lumigraphs. The proposed algorithms use standard graphics hardware. First we analyse the well-known approaches to light field rendering. Then we improve them by introducing techniques for faster geometry setup and texture handling. Additionally some extensions to the common rendering methods are described and finally we show some results by comparing the known approaches with our new techniques. CR Categories: I.3. 3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Digitizing and scanning, Viewing algorithms
A new low-complexity super-resolution technique to localize two closely-spaced plane-wave sources

We propose a new simple and accurate approach to localize two equipowered plane-wave sources (i.e., harmonics) using a uniform linear array (ULA) of sensors. We exploit the particular form of the covariance matrix jointly with a least square fitting (LSF) to derive new simple closed-form expressions for the directions of arrival (or harmonics in general). Simulation results demonstrate that resorting to this new method, mainly in the case of very low angular separation, and even with a limited number of sensors, leads to highly accurate results while requiring low computational complexity.
3D Video Components Generation Using Multi-featured Object Tracking

2D-to-3D conversion that would be a solution of the lack of 3D contents has been a worthy and challenging research field. In this paper, we propose a computer interactive conversion method to capture components which is used to generate 3D sequences. First, we divide the key frame into foreground and background, and then label the objects by convenient computer interactive operation. Depth information of objects is labeled after segmentation. Second, we use the Multi-Feature Object Tracking method which synthesizes the advantages of kernel-based mean shift tracker and contour tracker to accomplish object depth capture for non-key frame. Finally, all the 3D information is prepared to render 3D sequences.
Evolving Perspectives of Human Information Behavior: Contexts, Situations, Social Networks and Information Horizons

This paper presents an evolving framework of human information behavior. The framework emerges from theories and empirical studies from a variety of research traditions, including information science, communication, sociology and psychology, that inform our understanding of human information behavior. First, fundamental concepts, such as context, situation, and social networks, are discussed. Using these concepts, a series of propositions that strive to elucidate, that is, provide a framework for exploring, human information behavior are proposed. Information human information behavior, including information exploration, seeking, filtering, use, and communication, are included (to varying degrees) in the framework. The framework also incorporates cognitive, social, and system perspectives. A key concept in the framework is the notion of an “information horizon. ” Within any context and situation is an “information horizon” in which individuals can act. Information horizons, which may consist of a variety of information resources, are determined socially and individually, and may be conceptualized as densely populated solution spaces. In a densely populated solution space, many solutions are assumed, and the information retrieval problem expands from determining the most efficient path to the best solution, to determining how to make possible solutions visible -to an individual(s) and to other information resources.
First Glimpse of the Peptide Presentation by Rhesus Macaque MHC Class I: Crystal Structures of Mamu-A*01 Complexed with Two Immunogenic SIV Epitopes and Insights into CTL Escape1

The infection of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) by the SIV is the best animal model for studying HIV infection and for AIDS vaccine development. A prevalent MHC class I allele, Mamu-A*01, is known to correlate with containment of SIV, which has been extensively explored in studies of CTL-based vaccination concepts. We determined the crystal structures of Mamu-A*01 complexed with two immunodominant SIV epitopes: the nonamer CM9 of group-specific Ag (Gag, 181–189; CTPYDINQM) and the octamer TL8 of transcription activator (Tat, 28–35; TTPESANL). The overall structures of the two Mamu-A*01 complexes are similar to other MHC class I molecules. Both structures confirm the presence of an absolutely conserved proline anchor residue in the P3 position of the Ag, bound to a D pocket of the Mamu-A*01 H chain with optimal surface complementarity. Like other MHC/peptide complex structures, the P2 and C-terminal residues of the epitopes are also important for anchoring to the MHC molecule, whereas the middle residues form an arch and their side chains are directed into solvent. These two structures reveal details of how Mamu-A*01 interacts with two well-studied epitopes at the atomic level. We discuss the structural basis of CTL escape, based on molecular models made possible by these two structures. The results we present in this study are most relevant for the rational design of Mamu-A*01-restricted CTL epitopes with improved binding, as a step toward development of AIDS vaccines.
Flux-weakening strategies for a five-phase PM synchronous machine

In order to get a low cost mild hybrid system, a global objective is to keep the actual thermal engine architecture as in Figure 1. As consequence, the current clawpole synchronous automotive generator must be replaced by a new more powerful electrical machine but with the same large speed range [0–18000 rpm]. In the project, a power of 15 kW and a DC bus voltage of 60V have been chosen to provide a regenerative breaking at minimum cost. With this payload (250A for the DC bus current), a five-phase machine appears to be interesting because MOSFET transistors of the voltage source inverter (VSI) have not to be used in parallel configuration (only two rated 150A transistors per leg for the VSI). As the speed range is large, a flux weakening must be applied. As the five-phase drives [16] have more degrees of freedom than three-phase ones [13], different flux weakening strategies can be considered. The aim of this paper is to compare one of them.
Cross-Validation EM Training for Robust Parameter Estimation

A new maximum likelihood training algorithm is proposed that compensates for weaknesses of the EM algorithm by using cross-validation likelihood in the expectation step to avoid overtraining. By using a set of sufficient statistics associated with a partitioning of the training data, as in parallel EM, the algorithm has the same order of computational requirements as the original EM algorithm. Analyses using a GMM with artificial data show the proposed algorithm is more robust for overtraining than the conventional EM algorithm. Large vocabulary recognition experiments on Mandarin broadcast news data show that the method makes better use of more parameters and gives lower recognition error rates than EM training.
Music Neurotechnology for Sound Synthesis

Music Neurotechnology is a new research area that is emerging at the crossroads of Neurobiology, Engineering Sciences and Music. Examples of ongoing research into this new area include the development of brain-computer interfaces to control music systems and systems for automatic classification of sounds informed by the neurobiology of the human auditory apparatus. In this paper we introduce neurogranular sampling, a new sound synthesis technique based on spiking neuronal networks (SNN). We have implemented a neurogranular sampler using the SNN model developed by Izhikevich, which reproduces spiking and bursting behavior of known types of cortical neurons. The neurogranular sampler works by taking short segments (or sound grains) from sound files and triggering them when any of the neurons fire.