Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elevated Intraocular Pressure in Diabetic Children

A case of juvenile glaucoma in a sixteen-year-old diabetic girl led to a survey of intraocular pressures in thirty-eight diabetic children. Seven (18 per cent) were classified as abnormal; one because of a positive water drinking test, and six because of tension higher than three standard deviations above the mean of a nondiabetic control group. Four (11 per cent) were classified as suspects because of tension higher than two standard deviations above the control mean. Diabetic children should have repeated eye examinations including accurate measurements of ocular tension.
The effect of self-reported habitual sleep quality and sleep length on autobiographical memory

A large number of studies have recently shown effects of sleep on memory consolidation. In this study the effects of the sleep quality and sleep length on the retention of autobiographical memories are examined, using an Internet-based diary technique (Kristo, Janssen, & Murre, 2009). Each of over 600 participants recorded one recent personal event and was contacted after a retention interval that ranged from 2 to 46 days. Recall of the content, time, and details of the event were scored and related to sleep quality and sleep length as measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that poor sleep quality, but not short sleep length, was associated with significantly lower recall at the longer retention periods (30–46 days), but not at the shorter ones (2–15 days), although the difference in recall between good and poor sleepers was small.
ECG Monitoring System Integrated With IR-UWB Radar Based on CNN

In the demand for protecting the increasing aged groups from heart attacks, the improvement of the mobile electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring systems becomes significant. The limitations of the arrhythmia classification in these systems are the lack of ability to cope with motion state and the low accuracy in new users' data. This paper proposes a system which applies the impulse radio ultra wideband radar data as additional information to assist the arrhythmia classification of ECG recordings in the slight motion state. Besides, this proposed system employs a cascade convolutional neural network to achieve an integrated analysis of ECG recordings and radar data. The experiments are implemented in the Caffe platform and the result reaches an accuracy of 88.89% in the slight motion state. It turns out that this proposed system keeps a stable accuracy of classification for normal and abnormal heartbeats in the slight motion state.
Non-water dyeing process of reactive dyes in two organic solvents with temperature-dependent miscibility

In this paper, a non-water dyeing process using two organic solvents with temperature-dependent miscibility was developed. Fixation of three conventional reactive dyes on cotton yarn could reach 97% using one dyeing bath consisting of two solvents. Only one washing step at room temperature was needed to get satisfactory fastness after the fixation process. In particular, the two selected organic solvents could interconvert from immiscible to miscible when the temperature interchanged from 30 to 90℃. This unique physical property makes the separation and recycling processes of organic solvents extremely easy and energy saving. A 1 kg yarn package was dyed using this dyeing process: the color deviation (△E) of the inner and outer yarns was less than 1.0 and the tensile strength decreased by 8.5–18.0%. The results show that this dyeing process is extremely promising.
TNFα enhances TLR3‐dependent effects on MMP‐9 expression in human mesangial cells

The role of MMPs (matrix metalloproteinases) in kidney diseases has been widely accepted, where they can regulate inflammatory response because of their effects on both recruitment and survival of inflammatory cells. TNFα (tumour necrosis factor α) has also been implicated in the pathogenesis of inflammatory kidney diseases, including forms of glomerulonephritis associated with viral diseases. Previously, we established the functional linkage between viral receptors of the innate immune system, the TLRs (Toll‐like receptors) and control of MMP activity in human MC (mesangial cells). Expression levels of MMP‐2, MMP‐7, MMP‐9, TIMP‐1 (tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase 1) and TIMP‐2 in human MC in culture were analysed by RT‐PCR (reverse transcription–PCR). TNFα significantly enhanced the TLR3‐dependent induction of MMP‐9 in human MC. Expression levels of MMP‐2, TIMP‐1 and TIMP‐2 were not significantly affected by the activation of TLR3 or TNFα stimulation. No significant MMP‐7 expression was found. We conclude that the role of MMP‐9 in chemotaxis, activation and proliferation of inflammatory cells is amplified by TNFα originating from infiltrating cells, especially monocytes, producing a regulatory loop that potentially leads to a self‐propagating inflammation.
Distribution of Aqueous-Deficient and Evaporative Dry Eye in a Clinic-Based Patient Cohort: A Retrospective Study

Purpose: To evaluate in a general clinic-based cohort of patients with dry eye disease (DED) the distribution of patients with aqueous-deficient or evaporative subtype of DED. Methods: Schirmer tests and meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) (Foulks–Bron scoring) were evaluated in both eyes of 299 normal subjects and DED patients (218 women and 81 men) across 10 sites in the European Union and the United States. Using the more severe measurement of the 2 eyes, subjects were considered to have pure aqueous-deficient dry eye (ADDE) with Schirmer values of <7 mm and MGD grades of ⩽5. Patients were classified as purely evaporative dry eye with MGD grades of >5 and Schirmer values of ≥7 mm. Subjects were placed into the mixed (hybrid) category if they exhibited both a low Schirmer value of <7 and evidence of MGD with a grade >5. Results: Of the 224 subjects classified with DED using an objective, composite, disease severity scale, 159 were classified into 1 of 3 categories: 79 were classified with only MGD, whereas only 23 were classified as purely aqueous deficient, and 57 showed evidence of both MGD and aqueous deficiency. Overall, 86% of these qualified DED patients demonstrated signs of MGD. The remaining 65 patients showed evidence of DED through other clinical signs, without overt evidence of MGD or ADDE, possibly because of the inherent variability of these signs. Conclusions: The proportion of subjects exhibiting signs of evaporative dry eye resulting from MGD far outweighs that of subjects with pure ADDE in a general clinic-based patient cohort.
HybridMR: a new approach for hybrid MapReduce combining desktop grid and cloud infrastructures

This paper introduces HybridMR, a novel model for the execution of MapReduce (MR) computation on hybrid computing environment. Using this model, high performance cloud resources and heterogeneous desktop personal computers (PCs) in Internet or Intranet can be integrated to form a hybrid computing environment. Thanks to HybridMR, the computation and storage capability of large scale desktop PCs can be fully utilized to process large scale datasets. HybridMR relies on two innovative solutions to enable such large scale data‐intensive computation. The first one is HybridDFS, which is a hybrid distributed file system. HybridDFS features reliable distributed storage that alleviates the volatility of desktop PCs, thanks to fault tolerance and file replication mechanism. The second innovation is a new node priority‐based fair scheduling (NPBFS) algorithm has been developed in HybridMR to achieve both data storage balance and job assignment balance by assigning each node a priority through quantifying CPU speed, memory size, and input and output capacity. In this paper, we describe the HybridMR, HybridDFS, and NPBFS. We report on performance evaluation results, which show that the proposed HybridMR not only achieves reliable MR computation, reduces task response time, and improves the performance of MR, but also reduces the computation cost and achieves a greener computing mode. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Evolving models at run time to address functional and non-functional adaptation requirements

Increasingly, applications need to dynamically self-reconfigure as new environmental conditions arise at run time. In order to selfreconfigure, an adaptive system must determine which target system configuration will yield the desired behavior based on current execution conditions. However, it may be impractical to evaluate all potential system configurations in a reasonable time frame. This paper presents a model-based approach that leverages evolutionary computation to automatically generate, at run time, target system models that balance tradeoffs between functional and non-functional requirements in response to run-time monitoring of environmental conditions. Specifically, this approach generates graph-based representations of architectural models for potential target system configurations. The current run-time system models serve to constrain the degree of change and novelty in the newly generated models. This approach is applied to the dynamic reconfiguration of a set of remote data mirrors, where operational and reconfiguration costs are minimized, while maximizing data reliability and network performance.
Gene therapy for patients with advanced solid tumors: a phase I study using gene electrotransfer to muscle with the integrin inhibitor plasmid AMEP

Abstract Background: Gene electrotrotransfer describes the use of electric pulses to transfer DNA to cells. Particularly skeletal muscle has potential for systemic secretion of therapeutic proteins. Gene electrotransfer to muscle using the integrin inhibitor plasmid AMEP (Antiangiogenic MEtargidin Peptide) was investigated in a phase I dose escalation study. Primary objective was safety. Material and methods: Patients with metastatic or locally advanced solid tumors, without further standard treatments available, were treated with once-only gene electrotransfer of plasmid AMEP to the femoral muscle. Safety was monitored by adverse events registration, visual analog scale (VAS) after procedure and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of treated muscles. Pharmacokinetics of plasmid AMEP in plasma and urine was determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Response was evaluated by positron emission tomography–computed tomography (PET–CT) scans. Results: Seven patients were enrolled and treated at dose levels from 50 to 250 μg of plasmid AMEP, the study was terminated early due to cessation of plasmid production. Minimal systemic toxicity was observed and only transient mild pain was associated with the delivery of the electric pulses. MRI of the treated muscles revealed discrete intramuscular edema 24 h after treatment. The changes in the muscle tissue resolved within 2 weeks after treatment. Peak concentrations of plasmid AMEP was detected only in plasma within the first 24 hours after injection. Protein AMEP could not be detected, which could be due to the limit of detection. No objective responses were seen. Conclusions: Gene electrotransfer of plasmid AMEP was found to be safe and tolerable. No objective responses were observed but other DNA drugs may be tested in the future using this procedure.
Is the Resorption of Grafted Fat Reduced in Cell-Assisted Lipotransfer for Breast Augmentation?

AbstractCell-assisted lipotransfer (CAL) is a cotransplantation of adipose tissue and stromal vascular fraction (SVF) including adipose-derived stem cells. But although CAL can get satisfactory outcomes in breast augmentation, the resorption of the grafted fat is still unclear. A total of 12 patients received breast augmentation using CAL. All of them completed 6 months of follow-up. In 1 mini-CAL case, 500-mL liposuction fluid was used to harvest the SVF cells. In 11 full-CAL cases, 250-mL aspirated fat was needed apart from 500-mL liposuction fluid. The percentage of adipose-derived stem cells in SVF cells was detected using flow cytometry and their multilineage potential ability was assessed with in vitro induction. The volumes of breasts and pectoral muscle were measured, and radiological image change was analyzed using magnetic resonance imaging before the operation and 3 and 6 months after the operation. Additionally, the subjective evaluation on the cosmetic outcomes was determined by surgeons and patients. Adipose-derived stem cells in SVF cells accounted for 40.27% and 3.34% in full-CAL cases and mini-CAL cases, respectively. Postoperative atrophy occurred within the first 3 months. At the 6 months postoperatively, breast volume is augmented, ranging from 60.71 to 197 mL, with a mean value of 125.35 (45.49) mL. The ultimate resorption of grafted fat at the 6 months postoperatively is 51.84% (16.74%). Newly formed cysts and nodules were detected in 2 cases. No calcification was found in all magnetic resonance images. Only 1 patient was unsatisfied with the cosmetic outcome. Our preliminary study displayed a satisfactory augmented volume with little complications using CAL for breast augmentation. But the resorption at the 6 months postoperatively [51.84% (16.74%)] showed no significant advantage over non-CAL technique (40%–60% reported), which suggested that SVF cells harvested from 250-mL aspirated fat and 500-mL liposuction fluid were insufficient to average 250-mL grafted fat for each breast in this study. More SVF cells are needed to achieve lower resorption.
A parallel circuit-partitioned algorithm for timing driven cell placement

Simulated annealing based standard cell placement for VLSI designs has long been acknowledged as a compute-intensive process. All previous work in parallel simulated annealing based placement has minimized area, but with deep submicron design, minimizing wirelength delay is also needed. The algorithm discussed in this paper is the first parallel algorithm for timing driven placement. We have used a very accurate Elmore delay model which is more complete intensive and hence the need for parallel placement is more apparent. Parallel placement is also needed for very large circuits that may not fit in the memory of a single processor. Therefore, our algorithm is circuit partitioned and can handle arbitrary large circuits on distributed memory multiprocessors. The algorithm, called mpi PLACE, has been tested on several large benchmarks on a variety of parallel architectures.
Performance evaluation of service discovery strategies in ad hoc networks

Service discovery is an important and necessary component of ad hoc networks. To fit within the context of such networks, a post-query model with several service discovery strategies named post-query strategies (Barbeau and Kranakis (2003)) have been proposed, which focus on locating services over an ad hoc network. Each strategy consists of a sequence of post-query protocols executed in rounds. These strategies include: the greedy, incremental, uniform memoryless and with memory post-query strategies. Inspired by these proposals, we define the conservative post-query strategy. This paper represents the performance evaluation of these five strategies in combination with the DSR protocol and DSDV protocol: based on the simulation results.
Direct kinematic solution of a Stewart platform

The Stewart platform is a fully parallel, six-degree-of-freedom manipulator mechanism. A solution of the direct kinematics problem for the Stewart platform is presented for the case in which the six limbs form three concurrent pairs at either the base or the hand member. The solution is shown to be reducible to a 24th-order polynomial equation in tan( phi /sub r//2). It is also shown that, for a given set of link lengths, the Stewart platform can be assembled in 24 different configurations. <<ETX>>
Serogroup, Virulence, and Genetic Traits of Vibrio parahaemolyticus in the Estuarine Ecosystem of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Forty-two strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus were isolated from Bay of Bengal estuaries and, with two clinical strains, analyzed for virulence, phenotypic, and molecular traits. Serological analysis indicated O8, O3, O1, and K21 to be the major O and K serogroups, respectively, and O8:K21, O1:KUT, and O3:KUT to be predominant. The K antigen(s) was untypeable, and pandemic serogroup O3:K6 was not detected. The presence of genes toxR and tlh were confirmed by PCR in all but two strains, which also lacked toxR. A total of 18 (41%) strains possessed the virulence gene encoding thermostable direct hemolysin (TDH), and one had the TDH-related hemolysin (trh) gene, but not tdh. Ten (23%) strains exhibited Kanagawa phenomenon that surrogates virulence, of which six, including the two clinical strains, possessed tdh. Of the 18 tdh-positive strains, 17 (94%), including the two clinical strains, had the seromarker O8:K21, one was O9:KUT, and the single trh-positive strain was O1:KUT. None had the group-specific or ORF8 pandemic marker gene. DNA fingerprinting employing pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) of SfiI-digested DNA and cluster analysis showed divergence among the strains. Dendrograms constructed using PFGE (SfiI) images from a soft database, including those of pandemic and nonpandemic strains of diverse geographic origin, however, showed that local strains formed a cluster, i.e., “clonal cluster,” as did pandemic strains of diverse origin. The demonstrated prevalence of tdh-positive and diarrheagenic serogroup O8:K21 strains in coastal villages of Bangladesh indicates a significant human health risk for inhabitants.
Presence of Human Pathogens in Produce from Retail Markets in Northern Germany

Two hundred fresh produce samples (cucumber, carrots, herbs, leaf lettuce, and ready-to-eat mixed salad leaves) were obtained from retail in northern Germany in 2015. These were investigated for microbial contamination and the presence of foodborne pathogens, including Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella serovars, presumptive Bacillus (B.) cereus, and Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli using culture-dependent (enrichment, plating on selective media) and -independent (real-time polymerase chain reaction [PCR]) techniques. Overall, our results showed that the fresh produce samples generally showed high mean aerobic mesophilic bacterial counts of between 7 and 8 log10 cfu/g. However, there was also a considerable variation in total aerobic bacterial counts between different product samples. Although real-time PCR signals for pathogenic E. coli were detected in 14.0% of total samples analyzed, only one (0.5%) Shiga toxin–producing E. coli isolate of serotype O26:H11 was recovered from mixed salad leaves and contained stx1, stx2, and eae genes. Two L. monocytogenes isolates (1% of total samples) were recovered from packaged mixed salad leaves and belonged to PCR serogroups IIb and IVb, respectively. One Salmonella isolate (0.5%) was recovered after selective enrichment also from mixed salad leaves and it was identified as Salmonella Szentes serotype 16:k:1,2. Overall the incidence of foodborne pathogens on the northern German retail market in 2015 was very low.
Versatile Wireless Platform for Low-power Applications

During the past decade numerous wireless sensor network (WSN) simulators have been proposed to gain deeper insight into the interactions between the sensor nodes that cooperate to achieve a common goal. While computer simulations are an essential first step to preliminarily validate new concepts, including ad-hoc network routing protocols, radio communication, node self-localization or time synchronization, they are inherently prone to oversimplifying assumptions. In response, several hardware platforms were developed to verify the simulation results with real-world measurements. Most of these platforms, such as the popular MicaZ [2] and TelosB [4], were designed with a simple architectural recipe in mind: a low-power microcontroller unit (MCU) attached to a commercial off-theshelf (COTS) radio chip. This approach allowed for small physical dimensions and true low-power duty cycling operation, but the lack of computational resources severely limited their use in WSN applications that require parallel processing of sensory data. Furthermore, as COTS radio chips incorporate the complete physical layer (PHY), they restrict access to the raw baseband radio signals, which could be used to experiment with novel PHY layers and localization protocols [7].
A Parallel Implementation of K-Means Clustering on GPUs

Graphics Processing Units (GPU) have recently been the subject of attention in research as an efficient coprocessor for implementing many classes of highly parallel applications. The GPUs design is engineered for graphics applications, where many independent SIMD workloads are simultaneously dispatched to processing elements. While parallelism has been explored in the context of traditional CPU threads and SIMD processing elements, the principles involved in dividing the steps of a parallel algorithm for execution on GPU architectures remains a significant challenge. In this paper, we introduce a first step towards building an efficient GPU-based parallel implementation of a commonly used clustering algorithm called K-Means on an NVIDIA G80 PCI express graphics board using the CUDA processing extensions. Clustering algorithms are important for search, data mining, spam and intrusion detection applications. Modern desktop machines commonly include desktop search software that can be greatly enhanced by these advances, while low-power machines such as laptops can reduce power consumption by utilizing the video chip for these clustering and indexing operations. Our preliminary results show over a 13x performance improvement compared to a baseline 3 GHz Intel Pentium(R) based PC running the same algorithm with an average spec G80 graphics card, the NVIDIA 8600GT. The low cost of these video cards (less than $100 market price as of 2008), and the high performance gains suggest that our approach is both practical and economical for common applications.
Influence of strain on dislocation core in silicon

Abstract First principles, density functional-based tight binding and semi-empirical interatomic potentials calculations are performed to analyse the influence of large strains on the structure and stability of a 60 dislocation in silicon. Such strains typically arise during the mechanical testing of nanostructures like nanopillars or nanoparticles. We focus on bi-axial strains in the plane normal to the dislocation line. Our calculations surprisingly reveal that the dislocation core structure largely depends on the applied strain, for strain levels of about 5%. In the particular case of bi-axial compression, the transformation of the dislocation to a locally disordered configuration occurs for similar strain magnitudes. The formation of an opening, however, requires larger strains, of about 7.5%. Furthermore, our results suggest that electronic structure methods should be favoured to model dislocation cores in case of large strains whenever possible.
Dependency Parsing and Machine Learning for Protein Interactions 1 Extracting Interacting Protein Pairs and Evidence Sentences by using Dependency Parsing and Machine Learning Techniques

The biomedical literature is growing rapidly. This increases the need for developing text mining techniques to automatically extract biologically important information such as protein-protein interactions from free texts. Besides identifying an interaction and the interacting pair of proteins, it is also important to extract from the full text the most relevant sentences describing that interaction. These issues were addressed in the BioCreAtIvE II (Critical Assessment for Information Extraction in Biology) challenge evaluation as sub-tasks under the protein-protein interaction extraction (PPI) task. We present our approach of using dependency parsing and machine learning techniques to identify interacting protein pairs from full text articles (Protein Interaction Pairs Sub-task 2 (IPS)) and extracting the most relevant sentences that describe their interaction (Protein Interaction Sentences Sub-task 3 (ISS)).