Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
3D Reconstruction of Indoor Environment Using the Kinect Sensor

In recent years, there have been more and more research and applications on three-dimensional model reconstruction. With the help of Kinect, a somatosensory device invented by Microsoft, we realized three-dimensional model reconstruction process. Firstly, this paper introduced the acquisition mechanism of color and depth images. Because the color camera and the depth camera are not coincident, precise alignment of them is presented. Then, the depth image is filtered to remove small gaps using median filtering method. For bigger black portions, the interpolation algorithm is proposed. Finally, with the tridimensional triangularization algorithm, the three-dimensional scene is reconstructed with both color and depth information. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can produce high quality maps.
Methylation Status of P16Ink4a in Human Papillomavirus-Associated Cancer of Oral Cavity and Oropharynx in Northeastern Thailand

Background: Over-expression of p16INK4a protein is a biomarker for human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cervical cancer. However, absence of p16INK4a protein expression in HPV-associated cancer of the oral cavity and oropharynx has been reported. Among a number of possible reasons for this is methylation, which is frequently noted in the promoter region of p16INK4a and is associated with silencing of the gene and disease severity. Methods: We investigated the relationships between p16INK4a protein expression, HPV infection and methylation status of the p16INK4a promoter in cancers of the oral cavity and oropharynx. Fifty-three formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) cancer tissue samples from the oral cavity (49 cases) and oropharynx (4 cases) were studied. P16INK4a protein expression was determined using immunohistochemical staining (IHC). Additional oral tissues lacking squamous intraepithelial lesions (SILs), and cervical tissues with high-level SILs, were used as negative and positive controls, respectively. High-risk HPV infection was detected using HPV E6/E7 mRNA in situ hybridization. Methylation status of the p16INK4a promoter was investigated using sodium bisulfite treatment and methylation-specific PCR (MS-PCR). Results: HPV infection was found in 40.8% (20/49) and 50.0% (2/4) of oral cavity and oropharynx cancers, respectively. Promoter methylation of p16INK4a occurred in 73.6 % of all cases and differed significantly in frequency between HPV-positive (90.9%, 20/22) and HPV-negative (61.3%, 19/31) samples. Expression of p16INK4a was found in 35.8% (19/53) and commonly detected in samples with p16INK4a unmethylation (79.5%). Interestingly, the silencing of p16INK4a (64.2%, 34/53) was significantly associated with methylation status (91.2%, 31/34), especially in HPV-infected samples in which the p16INK4a promoter was methylated (52.9%, 18/34). Conclusions: This result demonstrated high frequency of p16INK4a promoter methylation status in HPV-associated HNSCC subsets that could influence the silent p16INK4a expression and might promote disease severity.
Quasi-nonparametric blind inversion of Wiener systems

An efficient procedure for the blind inversion of a nonlinear Wiener system is proposed. We show that the problem can be expressed as a problem of blind source separation in nonlinear mixtures for which a solution has been previously proposed. Based on a quasi-nonparametric relative gradient descent, the proposed algorithm can perform efficiently even in the presence of hard distortions.
Complete Genome Sequence of Acinetobacter calcoaceticus CA16, a Bacterium Capable of Degrading Diesel and Lignin

ABSTRACT We report here the complete assembled genome sequence of Acinetobacter calcoaceticus CA16, which is capable of utilizing diesel and lignin as a sole carbon source. CA16 contains a 4,110,074-bp chromosome and a 5,920-bp plasmid. The assembled sequences will help elucidate potential metabolic pathways and mechanisms responsible for CA16’s hydrocarbon degradation ability.
Trends and research directions for privacy preserving approaches on the cloud

With advancements in hardware and software capabilities, cloud computing has evolved into a widely utilized paradigm for pay per use and robust computation. An unparalleled repository of user sensitive data that resides on the cloud poses severe threat to the privacy of individuals. Users authenticate, store and perform computations on their data using cloud services. From the cloud's perspective, it gathers additional user data via ubiquitous devices, mines this information to offer personalized services like recommendations and disseminates the results. However, the interactions between the cloud and user at each stage of this pipeline development is limited by privacy concerns. In recent years, much work has been done on designing privacy preserving approaches for improving cloud security and the trust network. A wide array of data mining, cryptography and information hiding techniques have been applied to cater to different aspects of providing risk free work environment in the cloud. Given the lack of management of this information, a systematic investigation is required to structurally organize the topics studied. This paper aims to clearly portray the stringent and urgent need for applying privacy preserving approaches to the cloud and highlight the relevant work that has been done along these lines. The key objective is to identify important areas of user-cloud interaction and demonstrate a survey on the state of the art algorithms that have led to improved cloud privacy in these areas The focus is on exploring criteria for the impact of such approaches on user cloud interaction. An understanding of the research issues associated with these sensitive areas of cloud computing may enable us to better leverage benefits of the cloud and reflect on future possibilities of exploration.
Cholic acid aids absorption , biliary secretion , and phase transitions of cholesterol in murine cholelithogenesis

Wang, David Q. -H. , Frank Lammert, David E. Cohen, Beverly Paigen, and Martin C. Carey. Cholic acid aids absorption, biliary secretion, and phase transitions of cholesterol in murine cholelithogenesis. Am. J. Physiol. 276 (Gastrointest. Liver Physiol. 39): G751–G760, 1999. —Cholic acid is a critical component of the lithogenic diet in mice. To determine its pathogenetic roles, we fed chow or 1% cholesterol with or without 0.5% cholic acid to C57L/J male mice, which because of lith genes have 100% gallstone prevalence rates. After 1 yr on the diets, we measured bile flow, biliary lipid secretion rates, hepatic cholesterol and bile salt synthesis, and intestinal cholesterol absorption. After hepatic conjugation with taurine, cholate replaced most tauro-b-muricholate in bile. Dietary cholic acid plus cholesterol increased bile flow and biliary lipid secretion rates and reduced cholesterol 7ahydroxylase activity significantly mostly via deoxycholic acid, cholate’s bacterial 7a-dehydroxylation product but did not downregulate cholesterol biosynthesis. Intestinal cholesterol absorption doubled, and biliary cholesterol crystallized as phase boundaries shifted. Feeding mice 1% cholesterol alone produced no lithogenic or homeostatic effects. We conclude that in mice cholic acid promotes biliary cholesterol hypersecretion and cholelithogenesis by enhancing intestinal absorption, hepatic bioavailability, and phase separation of cholesterol in bile.
Achieving Profitable, Productive Climate-Neutral Swedish Agriculture

A futuristic study by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in the 1990s on how to make Swedish agriculture environmentally and economically sustainable by 2021 has been updated. The updating was based on assumptions of far-reaching improvements in biological productivity and the replacement of all existing EU support with environmental payments based on landscape values and the climate utility of carbon sequestration. The results suggest that economically sustainable food production satisfying domestic demand can be achieved through large-scale labour- and capital-saving rationalization and compensation for additional costs arising from special Swedish animal welfare regulations. Such rationalization is also necessary for the economically sustainable preservation of landscape values, including grazed semi-natural pastures and remaining arable land in forest-dominated districts. Carbon sequestration by broad-leaved trees planted on pastures and on arable land not needed for food production could compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from food production.
Determination of proviral load in bovine leukemia virus-infected cattle with and without lymphocytosis.

OBJECTIVE To determine proviral load in bovine leukemia virus (BLV)-infected cattle with and without persistent lymphocytosis to assess the potential of transmitting the virus. ANIMALS Cattle in 6 dairy herds. PROCEDURES Blood samples from infected cows were evaluated 3 times at 6-month intervals for determination of proviral load via PCR assay, serologic results via ELISA, and hematologic status via differential cell counts. RESULTS Infected cattle were classified into lymphocytotic and nonlymphocytotic groups. Lymphocytotic cattle consistently had > 100,000 copies of integrated provirus/mug of DNA (ie, high proviral load) in peripheral blood leukocytes. Titers of antibodies against BLVgp51 and BLVp24 indicated a strong immune response. Nonlymphocytotic cattle comprised 2 subgroups: a group with high proviral load and strong immune response, and a group with a weaker immune response, mostly against BLVp24, and a proviral load of < 100 copies/microg of DNA (ie, low proviral load). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results emphasized the importance of characterizing nonlymphocytotic BLV-infected cattle during eradication programs. The risk of transmitting BLV infection from nonlymphocytotic cattle may differ depending on the proviral load. Nonlymphocytotic cattle with high proviral load could be efficient transmitters (as efficient as lymphocytotic cattle), whereas nonlymphocytotic cattle with low proviral load could be inefficient transmitters under standard husbandry conditions. Because most cattle with low proviral load do not develop anti-BLVp24 antibodies, it appears that lack of an anti-BLVp24 antibody response may be a good marker of this condition.
The Chartres Study: I. Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders Among French School-Aged Children

A survey of child psychiatric disorders was conducted in a community sample of 2441 French school-aged children selected from 18 public and private schools; children attending special classes were oversampled. A two-stage survey design was used to identify disorders. Measures were the Child Behavior Checklist and the Rutter teacher scale for screening. The Isle of Wight parental interview was used in the second phase for 217 home interviews, along with the Children Global Assessment Scale as an index of impaired functioning. Response rates were excellent, and non-respondents in the screening phase were shown to have higher levels of psychopathology as gauged by their teacher scale scores. Several weights were used in the analysis to adjust for differential probabilities of selection and participation in each survey phase. The overall prevalence rate among 8–11-year-olds was estimated to be 12.4% (5.9% for more severe disorders), with roughly equal rates of disruptive and emotional disorders (6.5% and 5.9%). Prevalence was higher in boys (15.0%) than in girls (9.5%), owing to a threefold increase in their frequency of conduct disturbances. Rates of disturbance were twice as high among children with special educational needs, while no difference was found between private and public schools. The frequency of behavioural problems appeared to be similar in the urban and semi-rural subsamples.
Forecasting stock composite index by fuzzy support vector machines regression

Financial time series forecasting methods such as exponential smoothing are commonly used for prediction on stock composition index (SCI) and have made great contribution in practice, but efforts on looking for superior forecasting method are still made by practitioners and academia. This paper deals with the application of a novel neural network technique, fuzzy support vector machines regression (FSVMR), in SCI forecasting. The objective of this paper is not only to examine the feasibility of FSVMR in SCI forecasting but presents our efforts on improving the accuracy of FSVMR in terms of data pre-processing, kernel function selection and parameters selection. A data set from Shanghai Stock Exchange is used for the experiment to test the validity of FSVMR. The experiment shows FSVMR a better method in SCI forecasting.
Challenges experienced by parents living with a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Objective: The aim of this South African study was to explore parents’ experiences of living with a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods: A qualitative research design was followed. Purposive sampling was used to select ten parents living with children diagnosed with ADHD receiving outpatient treatment at a psychiatric facility. Data, collected through unstructured individual interviews, were analysed using open coding. Measures to ensure trustworthiness and ethical research practices were applied. Results: Five themes emerged: burden of care; emotional effects; social effects; impact of the educational challenges, and attempts to cope with the burden of care. Conclusion: Parents living with a child with ADHD experience stress as they struggle to cope with the child’s symptoms amidst the stigmatising attitudes from family and community members. Parents experience burdensome emotions and impaired social and occupational functioning. Health care practitioners need to take note of the challenges inherent to parenting a child with ADHD in order to provide multi-disciplinary interventions aimed at empowering and supporting parents.
SGEBP, a giant protein from starfish oocytes able to interact with ERK

The mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway is a key regulator of animal meiotic divisions. It involves cascades of kinases whose specificity has been shown to depend on binding proteins acting as scaffolds. We searched for proteins interacting with starfish extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK) using the yeast two‐hybrid system. An interacting clone was found to encode the 5′ region of a giant 16.7‐kb transcript encoded by an intronless gene. The corresponding 630‐kDa protein could not be detected by Western blot, but the meiotic spindle was labelled by immunolocalization with an antibody against the ERK‐binding domain. A related gene was found in the genome of another starfish species, and similarities were also found to a 42.9‐kb open reading frame in the sea urchin genome. Yet, no conserved protein‐binding domain was detected in the amino acid sequence(s) compared to all the known motifs. Structure prediction software indicated that the encoded proteins are probably disordered while a query of the disordered protein database indicated some similarity with vertebrates microtubule‐associated protein 2 (MAP2). This predicts that SGEBP may function as a space‐filling polymer, having a role in both cytoskeleton organization and ERK targeting. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 80: 816–825, 2013. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Does the Addition of Functional Status Indicators to Case-Mix Adjustment Indices Improve Prediction of Hospitalization, Institutionalization, and Death in the Elderly?

Background:Case-mix adjustment is widely used in health services research to ensure that groups being compared are equivalent on variables predicting outcome. There has been considerable development and testing of comorbidity indices derived from diagnostic codes recorded in administrative databases, but increasingly, the benefit of clinical information and patient reported ratings of health and functional status is being recognized. One type of information that is highly valued but has so far not been captured by administrative health databases is functional status indicators (FSI). Objective:The purpose of this study was to estimate the extent to which prediction of health outcomes can be improved on by including information on functional status indicators (FSI). Research Design:The data for the current study was obtained from a clustered randomized trial evaluating computerized decision support for managing drug therapy in the elderly, conducted from 1997 to 1998. A total of 107 primary care physicians participated in this trial and 6465 of their patients (51%) completed a generic health status measure—the SF-12—before the intervention. C statistics and R2 were used to compare the predictive value of sociodemographic factors, 2 comorbidity indices, and 11 FSI predictor variables derived from the SF-12 and coded (possible for 8) using the International Classification of Functioning (ICF). Results:Using stepwise logistic regression, FSI, particularly limitation in stair climbing or doing moderate activities like housework, were found to be strong and independent predictors of all outcomes, even after controlling for sociodemographics and comorbidity. Conclusion:This study indicates that FSI provided as robust a prediction of health events as did complex comorbidity indices. Additionally, the ICF coding system provides a mechanism whereby information on FSI could be incorporated into administrative databases through the use of electronic health records that include a health or functional status measure.
Unanticipated regulatory roles for Arabidopsis phytochromes revealed by null mutant analysis

In view of the extensive literature on phytochrome mutants in the Ler accession of Arabidopsis, we sought to secure a phytochrome-null line in the same genetic background for comparative studies. Here we report the isolation and phenotypic characterization of phyABCDE quintuple and phyABDE quadruple mutants in the Ler background. Unlike earlier studies, these lines possess a functional allele of FT permitting measurements of photoperiod-dependent flowering behavior. Comparative studies of both classes of mutants establish that phytochromes are dispensable for completion of the Arabidopsis life cycle under red light, despite the lack of a transcriptomic response, and also indicate that phyC is nonfunctional in the absence of other phytochromes. Phytochrome-less plants can produce chlorophyll for photosynthesis under continuous red light, yet require elevated fluence rates for survival. Unexpectedly, our analyses reveal both light-dependent and -independent roles for phytochromes to regulate the Arabidopsis circadian clock. The rapid transition of these mutants from vegetative to reproductive growth, as well as their insensitivity to photoperiod, establish a dual role for phytochromes to arrest and to promote progression of plant development in response to the prevailing light environment.
A monolithic, low-noise, capacitive readout interface circuit for CMOS-MEMS resonator-based gravimetric chemical gas sensors

This paper presents a monolithic, low-noise capacitive readout interface circuit for CMOS-MEMS resonator based gravimetric chemical gas sensors. In these sensor devices, where the sense capacitances are usually very weak, the readout interface circuit plays a crucial role in determining the overall sensor performance. Noise is observed in various active and passive devices affecting circuit performances. Particularly at low frequencies, flicker noise is dominant in degrading the quality of output signals. A dual stage, open-loop continuous time voltage sensing with chopper stabilization technique is proposed in this work to cope with it and improve the total output signal SNR. The proposed circuit is designed based on MIMOS 0.35 μm AMS 3.3V CMOS technology. Cadence Spectre circuit simulator simulation results show, the proposed circuit achieves an input inferred noise of 11.6 n V/√(Hz), total gain of 48.1 dB and consumes a total power of 3.385 mW. The designed circuit is able to detect minute capacitance changes as low as 0.0365 aF with total sensitivity of 67.95 μV/aF.
A Lorentzian Stochastic Estimation for a Robust and Iterative Multiframe Super-Resolution Reconstruction

In the last decades, it has seen a great deal of work in the development of algorithms addressing the problem of super-resolution. Although many such algorithms have been proposed, the almost SRR (super-resolution reconstruction) estimations are based on L1 or L2 statistical norm estimation thus these SRR methods are usually very sensitive to their assumed model of data and noise that limits their utility. This paper reviews some of these SRR estimator methods and addresses their shortcomings. We propose a novel SRR approach based on the stochastic regularization technique of Bayesian MAP estimation by minimizing a cost function. The Lorentzian norm is used for measuring the difference between the projected estimate of the high-resolution image and each low resolution image, removing outliers in the data and Tikhonov regularization is used to remove artifacts from the final answer and improve the rate of convergence. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of our method and demonstrate its superiority to other super-resolution methods based on L1 and L2 norm for a several noise models such as noiseless, additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and salt & pepper noise
Genistein in Sanfilippo disease: A randomized controlled crossover trial

Sanfilippo disease (mucopolysaccharidosis type III [MPS III]) is a rare neurodegenerative metabolic disease caused by a deficiency of 1 of the 4 enzymes involved in the degradation of heparan sulfate (HS), a glycosaminoglycan (GAG). Genistein has been proposed as potential therapy but its efficacy remains uncertain. We aimed to determine the efficacy of genistein in MPS III.
In vitro assessment of antineoplastic effects of deuterium depleted water.

BACKGROUND In vitro, in vivo and clinical studies have demonstrated anti-cancer effects of deuterium depleted water (DDW). The nature of this agents action, cytotoxic or cytostatic, remains to be elucidated. We here aimed to address the point by examining effects on different cell lines. MATERIALS AND METHODS 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol- 2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) -based cytotoxicity analysis was conducted for human breast, stomach, colon, prostate cancer and glioblastoma multiforme cell lines as well as human dermal fibroblasts. The cell lines were treated with decreasing deuterium concentrations of DDW alone, paclitaxel alone and both. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS Treatment with different deuterium concentrations of DDW alone did not impose any significant inhibitory effects on growth of cell lines. Paclitaxel significantly decreased the survival fractions of all cell lines. DDW augmented paclitaxel inhibitory effects on breast, prostate, stomach cancer and glioblastoma cell lines, with influence being more pronounced in breast and prostate cases. CONCLUSIONS DDW per se does not appear to have inhibitory effects on the assessed tumor cell lines as well as normal fibroblasts. As an adjuvant, however, DDW augmented inhibitory effects of paclitaxel and thus it could be considered as an adjuvant to conventional anticancer agents in future trials.