Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimation of blood biochemical parameters of Banni buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) at different age, sex and physiological stages.

Blood biochemical profile forms the data base for most diagnostic investigations. Present study reports the reference values for different blood metabolites, minerals, electrolytes and some clinically important enzymes as well as their variation in serum concentration at different age, sex, physiological stages viz. pregnancy, dry and lactation of Banni buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). It was observed that the concentrations of glucose, total protein, creatinine, BUN, inorganic phosphorus, ALP, ALT, LDH and GGT showed significant variation (p < 0.05) with age, sex and/or physiological status unlike the other biochemical analytes. The values of glucose, total protein, albumin, globulin, total bilirubin, total cholesterol and creatinine were significantly higher in bulls than that of male calves. The levels of albumin, A/G ratio and creatinine were apparently lower in lactating buffaloes than dry buffaloes. Conversely, BUN, cholesterol and uric acid were higher in lactating buffaloes than dry buffaloes. The concentrations of calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium varied non significantly between male calves and bulls. Similarly, in case of calves, the variation observed in the levels of calcium, magnesium, inorganic phosphorus, potassium and chloride were also non-significant between male and female. The data generated may be useful as reference values for the scientific community. Further, it would be helpful to assess the metabolic health status of Banni buffaloes as well as to identify dietary causes of disease and low productivity.
Phase II study of intermediate‐dose cytarabine in patients with relapsed or refractory Ewing sarcoma: A report from the Children's Oncology Group

Patients with relapsed or refractory Ewing sarcoma have a poor outcome with conventional therapies. Cytarabine decreases EWS/FLI1 protein levels in Ewing sarcoma cells and has demonstrated preclinical activity against Ewing sarcoma in vitro and in vivo. The purpose of this phase II clinical trial was to estimate the response rate of intermediate‐dose cytarabine in patients with relapsed or refractory Ewing sarcoma.
Kinetic stable Delaunay graphs

The best known upper bound on the number of topological changes in the Delaunay triangulation of a set of moving points in ℜ2 is (nearly) cubic, even if each point is moving with a fixed velocity. We introduce the notion of a stable Delaunay graph (SDG in short), a dynamic subgraph of the Delaunay triangulation, that is less volatile in the sense that it undergoes fewer topological changes and yet retains many useful properties of the full Delaunay triangulation. SDG is defined in terms of a parameter ± > 0, and consists of Delaunay edges pq for which the (equal) angles at which p and q see the corresponding Voronoi edge epq are at least ±. We prove several interesting properties of SDG and describe two kinetic data structures for maintaining it. Both structures use O*(n) storage. They process O*(n2) events during the motion, each in O*(1) time, provided that the points of P move along algebraic trajectories of bounded degree; the O*(·) notation hides multiplicative factors that are polynomial in 1/± and polylogarithmic in n. The first structure is simpler but the dependency on 1/± in its performance is higher.
Using proximity to compute semantic relatedness in RDF graphs

Extracting the semantic relatedness of terms is an important topic in several areas, including data mining, information retrieval and web recommendation. This paper presents an approach for computing the semantic relatedness of terns in RDF graphs based on the notion of proximity. It proposes a formal definition of proximity in terms of the set paths connecting two concept nodes, and an algorithm for finding this set and computing proximity with a given error margin. This algorithm was implemented on a tool called Shakti that extracts relevant ontological data for a given domain from DBpedia - a community effort to extract structured data from the Wikipedia. To validate the proposed approach Shakti was used to recommend web pages on a Portuguese social site related to alternative music and the results of that experiment are also reported.
Effects of combined exogenous dextranase and sodium fluoride on Streptococcus mutans 25175 monospecies biofilms.

PURPOSE To investigate the effects of exogenous dextranase and sodium fluoride on a S. mutans monospecies biofilm. METHODS S. mutans 25175 was grown in tryptone soya broth medium, and biofilm was formed on glass slides with 1.0% sucrose. Exogenous dextranase and sodium fluoride were added alone or together. The biofilm morphology was analyzed by confocal laser scanning microscopy. The effects of the drug on the adhesion and exopolysaccharide production by the biofilms were evaluated by scintillation counting and the anthrone method, respectively. RESULTS In this study, we found that the structure of initial biofilm and mature biofilm were partly altered by dextranase and high concentrations of sodium fluoride separately. However, dextranase combined with a low concentration of sodium fluoride could clearly destroy the typical tree-like structure of the biofilm, and led to less bacterial adhesion than when the dextranase or fluoride were used alone (P < 0.05). The amounts of soluble and insoluble exopolysaccharide were significantly reduced by combining dextranase with a low concentration of sodium fluoride, much more than when they were used alone (P < 0.05). These data indicate that dextranase and a low concentration of sodium fluoride may have synergistic effects against S. mutans biofilm and suggest the application of a low concentration of sodium fluoride in anticaries treatment.
Cultivating sustainable developments with makerspaces | Cultivando desenvolvimento sustentável com espaços maker

RESUMO Em outubro de 2915, organizamos uma oficina para 80 pesquisadores e praticantes envolvidos em makerspaces na Europa. Nosso objetivo era explorar como os makerspaces podem fomentar desenvolvimento sustentavel. Este artigo relata a discussao na oficina e ideias sobre este topico, ilustrando o interesse no potencial deliberativo deste tipo de "laboratorio cidadao". Interessante notar que, dada a enfase nas praticas e ferramentas de muitos espacos maker, a discussao no nosso evento concentrou-se muito mais nas capacidades e habilidades de desenvolvimento comunitario na mobilizacao de aliancas para conscientizacao social. A discussao problematizou dversos tipos de sustentabilidade, observando que ambicoes sociais e economicas podem se alinhar com objetivos ambientais neste nivel de atividade, mas nem sempre sao desenhados para tal. No fundo, a oficina revelou a necessidade de estrategias contrarias as estruturas sociais vigentes que influenciam espacos maker ostensivamente "abertos", e portanto capacitam as ferramentas e capacidades disponiveis para desenvolvimentos mais sustentaveis. Palavras-chave: Desenvovimento Sustentavel; Desenvolvimento Comunitario; Makerspaces ; Conscientizacao Social. ABSTRACT In October 2015, we convened a workshop for 80 researchers and practitioners involved in makerspaces in Europe. Our aim was to explore how makerspaces can help cultivate sustainable developments. This paper reports workshop discussion and ideas on the topic, and illustrates interest in the deliberative potential for this kind of ‘citizen lab’. Interestingly, given the emphasis on tools and making practices in many makerspaces, discussion at our makerspace event focused much more on community development capabilities and skills for mobilising alliances for raising social awareness. Discussion problematized different kinds of sustainability, noting that social and economic ambitions can potentially align well with environmental goals at this level of activity, but are not always designed to do so. At heart, the workshop revealed the need for strategies that counter the incumbent social structures that influence ostensibly ‘open’ makerspaces, and thereby enable the tools and capacities available to work on more sustainable developments. Keywords: Sustainable Development; Makerspaces; Community Development; Social Awareness.
Touch play pool: Touch gesture interaction for mobile multifunction devices

In this paper, we introduce a novel touch interaction method that reduces chances of incorrect touch inputs and enhances user experience by means of a rich array of device feedback. A model prototype of this method can include a display and adjacent areas that are divided into “menu zone” and “execution zone”. The touch dragging-in/out action between the two zones is supported for user-system interaction.
Exploiting Value Prediction for Fault Tolerance

Technology scaling has led to growing concerns about reliability in microprocessors. Currently, fault tolerance techniques rely on explicit redundant execution for fault detection or recovery which incurs significant performance, power, or hardware overhead. This paper makes the observation that value predictability is a low-cost (albeit imperfect) form of program redundancy that can be exploited for fault tolerance. We propose to use the output of a value predictor to check the correctness of predicted instructions, and to treat any mismatch as an indicator that a fault has potentially occurred. On a mismatch, we trigger recovery using the same hardware mechanisms provided for mispeculation recovery. To reduce false positives that occur due to value mispredictions, we limit the number of instructions that are checked in two ways. First, we characterize fault vulnerability at the instruction level, and only apply value prediction to instructions that are highly susceptible to faults. Second, we use confidence estimation to quantify the predictability of instruction results, and apply value prediction accordingly. In particular, results from instructions with higher fault vulnerability are predicted even if they exhibit lower confidence, while results from instructions with lower fault vulnerability are predicted only if they exhibit higher confidence. Our experimental results show such selective prediction significantly improves reliability without incurring large performance degradation.
Quality-based channel selection in multi-channel radio-over-fiber system

Radio over Fiber (RoF) is a promising solution for wireless access services by transferring the heterogeneous radio signal via the optical fiber link. However, RoF devices have nonlinear characteristics which create intermodulation products in system. The intermodulation distortion (IMD) interferes uplink RF signals in the presence of coupling between downlink and uplink antennas in the base station (BS). This paper proposed the performance evaluation due to coupled downlink interfere to uplink antenna. The carrier to distortion plus noise ratio (CDNR) is evaluated for all combinations. By using NS3 network simulator, the result shows the best combination achieves better performance. Which coupled downlink interfere in uplink signal can be reduced when amount of downlink packet is decreased.
Chinese Ethnicity Is Associated With Concomitant Cartilage Injuries in Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tears

Background: Chinese ethnicity is associated with the presence of knee osteoarthritis. This raises the possibility that it may similarly be associated with concomitant meniscus and cartilage injuries in patients with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears. There are currently no published data on the effect of Chinese ethnicity in this regard. Purpose: The primary aim was to determine whether Chinese ethnicity is associated with concomitant intra-articular injuries in patients with ACL tears and to verify the correlation of age, sex, body mass index, mechanism of injury, cause of injury, and presence of bone contusions on magnetic resonance imaging with such injuries. A secondary purpose was to determine the optimal time frame for surgical reconstruction in patients with identified risk factors for concomitant injuries. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: The medical records of 696 patients from a multiethnic population who underwent ACL reconstruction from January 2013 to August 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify patient factors that were associated with medial meniscus tears, lateral meniscus tears, and cartilage injuries. Further univariate analysis was conducted to determine the earliest time point for surgery, after which the rate of concomitant injuries was significantly higher. Results: Over half (69.1%, n = 481) of our study population sustained at least 1 other concomitant knee injury. Meniscus tears were most frequently associated with ACL tears (24.1% medial, 25.6% lateral, and 15.5% medial and lateral meniscus tears). Cartilage injuries were present in 18.4% of our cohort. Chinese ethnicity was associated with concomitant cartilage injuries. Increased age (≥30 years) was significantly associated with cartilage injuries and male sex with medial and lateral meniscus tears. Among patients with these factors, significantly fewer medial meniscus tears and cartilage injuries were noted when surgery was carried out within 12 months of the index trauma. Conclusion: This is one of the first studies to have identified an association between Chinese ethnicity and concomitant cartilage injuries in ACL tears. This study also found an association between increased age and an increased prevalence of cartilage injuries. Male sex was associated with both medial and lateral meniscus tears. Definitive surgery should be performed within 12 months of the index injury to minimize further intra-articular injuries.
Communication Decision in Decentralized Control of Coordinated System

Although instantaneous and free communication simplifies multi-agent partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) to single-agent POMDPs, in practice, communication is not free and reducing the amount of communication is often desirable. We present a novel approach for using a DAG to maintain and reason the possible joint beliefs of the team at the less cost of memory, by which communication decisions are made in a decentralized style. Our algorithm, called DAG-DEC-COMM, makes a tradeoff between the performance achieved by the team and the amount of communication used in planning. The experimental results on the benchmark problem show that our approach drastically reduces the communication with a significant decrease in storing the possible joint beliefs while improving the performance of distributed execution.
Bacterial Thymidine Kinase as a Non-Invasive Imaging Reporter for Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Live Animals

Background Bacteria can be selectively imaged in experimentally-infected animals using exogenously administered 1-(2′deoxy-2′-fluoro-β-D-arabinofuranosyl)-5-[125I]-iodouracil ([125I]-FIAU), a nucleoside analog substrate for bacterial thymidine kinase (TK). Our goal was to use this reporter and develop non-invasive methods to detect and localize Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Methodology/Principal Findings We engineered a M. tuberculosis strain with chromosomally integrated bacterial TK under the control of hsp60 - a strong constitutive mycobacterial promoter. [125I]FIAU uptake, antimicrobial susceptibilities and in vivo growth characteristics were evaluated for this strain. Using single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), M. tuberculosis Phsp60 TK strain was evaluated in experimentally-infected BALB/c and C3HeB/FeJ mice using the thigh inoculation or low-dose aerosol infection models. M. tuberculosis Phsp60 TK strain actively accumulated [125I]FIAU in vitro. Growth characteristics of the TK strain and susceptibility to common anti-tuberculous drugs were similar to the wild-type parent strain. M. tuberculosis Phsp60 TK strain was stable in vivo and SPECT imaging could detect and localize this strain in both animal models tested. Conclusion We have developed a novel tool for non-invasive assessment of M. tuberculosis in live experimentally-infected animals. This tool will allow real-time pathogenesis studies in animal models of TB and has the potential to simplify preclinical studies and accelerate TB research.
Dynamic optimisation of alternating activated sludge processes

The study presents dynamic optimisation of a small size single basin wastewater treatment plant. The objectives are to determine an optimal sequence of aeration/non-aeration times and the corresponding periodical steady state subject to minimisation of energy consumption. Based on the optimal trajectories, two simple feedback rules are proposed that follow from properties of the optimal solution. Simulation results with these simple rules show very satisfactory control performance.
A Novel Teaching System for Industrial Robots

The most important tool for controlling an industrial robotic arm is a teach pendant, which controls the robotic arm movement in work spaces and accomplishes teaching tasks. A good teaching tool should be easy to operate and can complete teaching tasks rapidly and effortlessly. In this study, a new teaching system is proposed for enabling users to operate robotic arms and accomplish teaching tasks easily. The proposed teaching system consists of the teach pen, optical markers on the pen, a motion capture system, and the pen tip estimation algorithm. With the marker positions captured by the motion capture system, the pose of the teach pen is accurately calculated by the pen tip algorithm and used to control the robot tool frame. In addition, Fitts' Law is adopted to verify the usefulness of this new system, and the results show that the system provides high accuracy, excellent operation performance, and a stable error rate. In addition, the system maintains superior performance, even when users work on platforms with different inclination angles.
Stochastic Integrals and Conditional Full Support

We present conditions that imply the conditional full support (CFS) property, introduced in Guasoni, Rásonyi and Schachermayer (2008), for processes Z := H + ∫K dW, where W is a Brownian motion, H is a continuous process, and processes H and K are either progressive or independent of W. Moreover, in the latter case, under an additional assumption that K is of finite variation, we present conditions under which Z has CFS also when W is replaced with a general continuous process with CFS. As applications of these results, we show that several stochastic volatility models and the solutions of certain stochastic differential equations have CFS.
Use of Fourier and Karhunen-Loeve decomposition for fast pattern matching with a large set of templates

We present a fast pattern matching algorithm with a large set of templates. The algorithm is based on the typical template matching speeded up by the dual decomposition; the Fourier transform and the Karhunen-Loeve transform. The proposed algorithm is appropriate for the search of an object with unknown distortion within a short period. Patterns with different distortion differ slightly from each other and are highly correlated. The image vector subspace required for effective representation can be defined by a small number of eigenvectors derived by the Karhunen-Loeve transform. A vector subspace spanned by the eigenvectors is generated, and any image vector in the subspace is considered as a pattern to be recognized. The pattern matching of objects with unknown distortion is formulated as the process to extract the portion of the input image, find the pattern most similar to the extracted portion in the subspace, compute normalized correlation between them at each location in the input image, and find the location with the best score. Searching for objects with unknown distortion requires vast computation. The formulation above makes it possible to decompose highly correlated reference images into eigenvectors, as well as to decompose images in frequency domain, and to speed up the process significantly.
Effects of Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator in Sepsis-Induced Acute Kidney Injury and Multi-Organ Dysfunction

Background Despite advances in supportive care, sepsis-related mortality remains high, especially in patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). Erythropoietin can protect organs against ischemia and sepsis. This effect has been linked to activation of intracellular survival pathways, although the mechanism remains unclear. Continuous erythropoietin receptor activator (CERA) is an erythropoietin with a unique pharmacologic profile and long half-life. We hypothesized that pretreatment with CERA would be renoprotective in the cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) model of sepsis-induced AKI. Methods Rats were randomized into three groups: control; CLP; and CLP+CERA (5 µg/kg body weight, i.p. administered 24 h before CLP). At 24 hours after CLP, we measured creatinine clearance, biochemical variables, and hemodynamic parameters. In kidney tissue, we performed immunoblotting—to quantify expression of the Na-K-2Cl cotransporter (NKCC2), aquaporin 2 (AQP2), Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), erythropoietin receptor (EpoR), and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB)—and immunohistochemical staining for CD68 (macrophage infiltration). Plasma interleukin (IL)-2, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-10, interferon gamma, and tumor necrosis factor alpha were measured by multiplex detection. Results Pretreatment with CERA preserved creatinine clearance and tubular function, as well as the expression of NKCC2 and AQP2. In addition, CERA maintained plasma lactate at normal levels, as well as preserving plasma levels of transaminases and lactate dehydrogenase. Renal expression of TLR4 and NF-κB was lower in CLP+CERA rats than in CLP rats (p<0.05 and p<0.01, respectively), as were CD68-positive cell counts (p<0.01), whereas renal EpoR expression was higher (p<0.05). Plasma levels of all measured cytokines were lower in CLP+CERA rats than in CLP rats. Conclusion CERA protects against sepsis-induced AKI. This protective effect is, in part, attributable to suppression of the inflammatory response.
ORegAnno: an open-access community-driven resource for regulatory annotation

ORegAnno is an open-source, open-access database and literature curation system for community-based annotation of experimentally identified DNA regulatory regions, transcription factor binding sites and regulatory variants. The current release comprises 30 145 records curated from 922 publications and describing regulatory sequences for over 3853 genes and 465 transcription factors from 19 species. A new feature called the ‘publication queue’ allows users to input relevant papers from scientific literature as targets for annotation. The queue contains 4438 gene regulation papers entered by experts and another 54 351 identified by text-mining methods. Users can enter or ‘check out’ papers from the queue for manual curation using a series of user-friendly annotation pages. A typical record entry consists of species, sequence type, sequence, target gene, binding factor, experimental outcome and one or more lines of experimental evidence. An evidence ontology was developed to describe and categorize these experiments. Records are cross-referenced to Ensembl or Entrez gene identifiers, PubMed and dbSNP and can be visualized in the Ensembl or UCSC genome browsers. All data are freely available through search pages, XML data dumps or web services at: http://www.oreganno. org.