Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Food Texture and Sample Thickness on Mandibular Movement and Hardness Assessment during Biting in Man

This study was designed to investigate the relationship among jaw movements, physical characteristics of food, and sensory perception of hardness in man. Vertical movements of the mandible were recorded with an infrared tracking device in humans during biting on two test foods, carrot and cheese. Samples of standard length (2 cm) and width (2 cm) were prepared in three different thicknesses (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 cm). Nine subjects were asked to perform two types of bite with their incisor teeth. In the first, they cut through the food, then stopped and spat out the pieces (bite alone); in the second, biting was followed by mastication and swallowing (bite+chew). The 12 conditions (thickness x3, food x2, and bite x2) were presented in a random order within each block, and blocks were repeated five times (60 trials per subject). Subjects also estimated the hardness of the samples twice for each condition on visual analogue scales (VAS) 100 mm long. The duration, vertical amplitude, and maximum vertical velocity of the mandible during biting were calculated by computer for the three phases of the movements (opening, and fast and slow closing). Multilevel statistical models were used for data analysis. The estimated hardness scores associated with the first bite of thin carrot (59.0 VAS units) was significantly greater than for cheese (16.8 VAS units). The type of bite had no significant effect on these scores, but the estimate of hardness was significantly greater for the thickest sample (+13.3 VAS units). Food type had its strongest effect on the slow-closing phase. In particular, the peak velocity that followed the fracturing of the food sample was much greater for carrot than for cheese (thin, 34.1 mm.s-1 vs. 26.6 mm.s-1), and the difference between foods increased with thickness. The amplitude of opening was significantly greater for the thickest sample than for the other two. There were no significant relationships between VAS scores and the movement parameters. These results suggest that, when humans bite food: (1) changing the thickness of food has a greater effect on movement parameters than changing from soft to hard food, (2) the parameters of biting change little if biting is followed by mastication, (3) hardness perception is dependent on the thickness of food, (4) hardness perception is not different when food is removed from the mouth than when it is chewed and swallowed, and (5) there is no relationship between any of the parameters of movement that change with food type and the perceived hardness of food.
Movement Strategies among Groups of Chronic Ankle Instability, Coper, and Control

Introduction Comprehensive evaluation of movement strategies during functional movement is a difficult undertaking. Because of this challenge, studied movements have been oversimplified. Furthermore, evaluating movement strategies at only a discrete time point(s) provide limited insight into how movement strategies may change or adapt in chronic ankle instability (CAI) patients. This study aimed to identify abnormal movement strategies in individuals with a history of ankle sprain injury during a sports maneuver compared with healthy controls. Methods Sixty-six participants, consisting of 22 CAI patients, 22 ankle sprain copers, and 22 healthy controls, participated in this study. Functional profiles of lower extremity kinematics, kinetics, and EMG activation from initial contact (0% of stance) to toe-off (100% of stance) were collected and analyzed during a jump landing/cutting task using a functional data analysis approach. Results Compared with copers, CAI patients displayed landing positions of less plantarflexion, less inversion, more knee flexion, more hip flexion, and less hip abduction during the first 25% of stance. However, restricted dorsiflexion angle was observed in both CAI patients and copers relative to controls during the midlanding to mid–side-cutting phase when the ankle and knee reached its peak range of motion (e.g., dorsiflexion and knee flexion). Reduced EMG activation of tibialis anterior, peroneus longus, medial gastrocnemius, and gluteus medius may be due to altered kinematics that reduce muscular demands on the involved muscles. Conclusions CAI patients displayed altered movement strategies, perhaps in an attempt to avoid perceived positions of risk. Although sagittal joint positions seemed to increase the external torque on the knee and hip extensors, frontal joint positions appeared to reduce the muscular demands on evertor and hip abductor muscles.
Immunoblots and plasmid fingerprints compared with serotyping and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis for typing Clostridium difficile

Two new methods for typing Clostridium difficile, immunoblotting and plasmid fingerprinting, were compared with serotyping and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). Of these methods, immunoblotting was found to be the most valuable for use in a comprehensive typing system. More groups could be distinguished by immunoblotting than by serotyping or PAGE. Immunoblotting results were also more reproducible and distinctive than results by PAGE. Plasmid fingerprinting was an excellent marker for plasmid-bearing strains, but it had limited use because many isolates lacked plasmids. A unique plasmid profile observed for one group of isolates correlated with differences in phenotypic characteristics resolved by immunoblot analysis but not by serotyping or PAGE. Preliminary attempts to correlate typing results with pathogenicity of isolates were not successful but underscored the need for future studies to include careful assessment of the clinical significance of isolates.
Paediatric post‐marketing pharmacovigilance: comparison of the adverse event profile of vigabatrin prescribed to children and adults

Post‐marketing pharmacovigilance is a cornerstone of monitoring and evaluating the safety of medicines in children and adults. However the methods may require modification to detect paediatric signals. The aim of this study was to compare the adverse event (AE) profile of children and adults taking vigabatrin, using modified signal detection methods (SDMs).
Realizing Optimal Current Distributions for Radiation Efficiency in Practical Antennas

Modern antenna design is facing increasing issues with the radiation efficiency, since the space available for antennas is scarce and antennas are fitted into lossy environments. This letter presents a multiport antenna design method with a computationally efficient way to realize the port currents providing the highest radiation efficiency. In this method, an antenna is described with multiple excitation ports in electromagnetic simulations. The measurement results of an example design demonstrate the achieved benefit compared to traditional antenna design.
Immune tolerance to a defined heterologous antigen after intrasplenic hepatocyte transplantation: implications for gene therapy

Development of a host immune response against gene products expressed by genetically modified cells could be a serious limitation for gene therapy. During examination of whether site‐specific differences in antigen presentation could regulate the host immune response, we observed an absence of antibodies against hepatitis B virus surface antigen (HBsAg) when HBsAg producing transgenic hepatocytes were transplanted into the spleen. Intrasplenic transplantation resulted in translocation of a large number of cells into the portal vascular bed and liver sinusoids. In these recipients, HBsAg secreted by the transplanted hepatocytes circulated indefinitely in the blood. In contrast, subcutaneous or intraperitoneal transplantation of the transgenic hepatocytes induced an anti‐HBs response, followed by clearance of serum HBsAg. Rechallenge with HBsAg in a highly immunogenic form failed to break the tolerance in intrasplenic hepatocyte recipients even though these animals responded to another antigen (keyhole limpet hemocyanin). Immunization with HBsAg in intraperitoneal recipients of HBsAg producing hepatocytes further elevated anti‐HBs titers. Our results indicate that hepatocyte transplantation into the portal vascular bed via injection into the spleen can confer immune tolerance to secreted heterologous antigens. This finding should have important implications for human gene therapy as well as for analyzing the mechanisms of immune tolerance. — Vemuru, R. P., Davidson, A. , Aragona, E. , Chowdhury, J. R. , Burk, R. D. , Gupta, S. Immune tolerance to a defined heterologous antigen after intrasplenic hepatocyte transplantation: implications for gene therapy. FASEB J. 6: 2836‐2842; 1992.
Detecting DNS Tunnel through Binary-Classification Based on Behavior Features

DNS tunnel is a typical Internet covert channel used by attackers or bots to evade the malicious activities detection. The stolen information is encoded and encapsulated into the DNS packets to transfer. Since DNS traffic is common, most of the firewalls directly allow it to pass and IDS does not trigger an alarm with it. The popular signature-based detection methods and threshold-based methods are not flexible and make high false alarms. The approaches based on characters distribution features also do not perform well, because attackers can modify the encoding method to disturb the characters distributions.In this paper, we propose an effective and applicable DNS tunnel detection mechanism. The prototype system is deployed at the Recursive DNS for tunnel identification. We use four kinds of features including time-interval features, request packet size features, record type features and subdomain entropy features. We evaluate the performance of our proposal with Support Vector Machine, Decision Tree and Logistical Regression. The experiments show that the method can achieve high detection accuracy of 99.96%.
Novel description of the large conductance Ca2+‐modulated K+ channel current, BK, during an action potential from suprachiasmatic nucleus neurons

The contribution of the large conductance, Ca2+‐modulated, voltage‐gated K+ channel current, IBK, to the total current during an action potential (AP) from suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) neurons is described using a novel computational approach. An experimental recording of an SCN AP and the corresponding AP‐clamp recording of IBK from the literature were both digitized. The AP data set was applied computationally to a kinetic model of IBK that was based on results from a clone of the BK channel α subunit heterologolously expressed in Xenopus oocytes. The IBK model result during an AP was compared with the AP‐clamp recording of IBK. The comparison suggests that a change in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration does not have an immediate effect on BK channel kinetics. Rather, a delay of a few milliseconds may occur prior to the full effect of a change in Cai2+. As shown elsewhere, the β2 subunit of the BK channel in the SCN, which is present in the daytime along with the α subunit, shifts the BK channel activation curve leftward on the voltage axis relative to the activation curve of BK channels comprised of the α subunit alone. That shift may underlie the diurnal changes in electrical activity that occur in the SCN and it may also enhance the delay in the effect of a change in Cai2+ on BK kinetics reported here. The implication of these results for models of the AP for neurons in which BK channels are present is that an additional time dependent process may be required in the models, a process that describes the time dependence of the development of a change in the intracellular Ca2+ concentration on BK channel gating.
Grid-Interfacing Converter Systems With Enhanced Voltage Quality for Microgrid Application—Concept and Implementation

Grid-interfacing converter systems with enhanced voltage quality are proposed for microgrid applications in this paper. By adapting the conventional series-parallel structure, a group of grid-interfacing system topologies are proposed for the purpose of interfacing local generation/microgrid to the grid, or interconnecting microgrids. The functionality of the proposed systems is also reconfigured in order to ease the control design and to improve overall system performance, differing from existing series-parallel structure-based systems. Experiments with a concrete laboratory system are given to detail the proposed concepts and to demonstrate the practical implementations. Two three-phase four-leg inverters, together with dc microsources and nonlinear loads, are employed to construct a general series-parallel grid-interfacing system. Through the introduction of multilevel control objectives, it is illustrated that the proposed system could ride through voltage disturbances and continue the power transfer between the local generation and the grid, while a high-quality voltage is maintained for the local loads. The system also shows the possibility to achieve auxiliary functions such as voltage unbalance correction and harmonic current compensation. The main design aspects of the controllers are specified, and the entire system is effectively validated on a laboratory setup.
Inhaled iloprost for severe pulmonary hypertension.

BACKGROUND Uncontrolled studies suggested that aerosolized iloprost, a stable analogue of prostacyclin, causes selective pulmonary vasodilatation and improves hemodynamics and exercise capacity in patients with pulmonary hypertension. METHODS We compared repeated daily inhalations of 2.5 or 5.0 microg of iloprost (six or nine times per day; median inhaled dose, 30 microg per day) with inhalation of placebo. A total of 203 patients with selected forms of severe pulmonary arterial hypertension and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (New York Heart Association [NYHA] functional class III or IV) were included. The primary end point was met if, after week 12, the NYHA class and distance walked in six minutes were improved by at least one class and at least 10 percent, respectively, in the absence of clinical deterioration according to predefined criteria and death. RESULTS The combined clinical end point was met by 16.8 percent of the patients receiving iloprost, as compared with 4.9 percent of the patients receiving placebo (P=0.007). There were increases in the distance walked in six minutes of 36.4 m in the iloprost group as a whole (P=0.004) and of 58.8 m in the subgroup of patients with primary pulmonary hypertension. Overall, 4.0 percent of patients in the iloprost group (including one who died) and 13.7 percent of those in the placebo group (including four who died) did not complete the study (P=0.024); the most common reason for withdrawal was clinical deterioration. As compared with base-line values, hemodynamic values were significantly improved at 12 weeks when measured after iloprost inhalation (P<0.001), were largely unchanged when measured before iloprost inhalation, and were significantly worse in the placebo group. Further significant beneficial effects of iloprost treatment included an improvement in the NYHA class (P=0.03), dyspnea (P=0.015), and quality of life (P=0.026). Syncope occurred with similar frequency in the two groups but was more frequently rated as serious in the iloprost group, although this adverse effect was not associated with clinical deterioration. CONCLUSIONS Inhaled iloprost is an effective therapy for patients with severe pulmonary hypertension.
Digitally programmable reference voltage selector on 14nm FinFet technology

A novel approach for design method of digitally programmable reference voltage selector is presented. The main advantage of proposal is the ability to select between available reference voltage values, which may be higher than the maximum stress value of a transistor without any transistor operating under stress. The circuit can select between four available references with two input bits. The key point is that the architecture can be used in lower technological nodes due to its stress resistance. The circuit was designed and simulated in 14nm FinFET technological process using Synopsys mixed signal simulation tools.
Skeletal muscle channelopathies: nondystrophic myotonias and periodic paralysis.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The aim is to review the recent findings in relation to the genetics, pathophysiology, clinical phenotypes, investigation and treatment of the nondystrophic myotonias (NDMs) and periodic paralyses. RECENT FINDINGS The number of pathogenic mutations causing NDMs and periodic paralyses in known genes continues to expand. In addition, a mutation has been identified in the ryanodine receptor gene manifesting as an atypical periodic paralysis phenotype. Another recent study indicated that thyrotoxic hypokalaemic periodic paralysis is determined by mutations in a novel gene encoding an inwardly rectifying potassium channel, Kir2.6. Work studying molecular mechanisms indicates that 90% of the known mutations causing hypokalaemic periodic paralysis (HypoPP) result in loss of positively charged arginine residues in the S4 segments of either SCN4A or CACNA1S, possibly creating a gating-pore current that may be important in the pathogenesis of HypoPP. Recent studies evaluating clinical features and health status in NDM patients have provided more detailed insights into the significant morbidity associated with these diseases. Ultrasound has been successfully used to demonstrate muscle abnormalities in NDM patients and magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies applied to HypoPP patients suggest that this technique can demonstrate both disease-related and treatment-related changes. SUMMARY Recent discoveries in the skeletal muscle channelopathies have increased our understanding of the genetics and pathophysiology of these diseases. Studies reporting imaging techniques raise the possibility of improved disease monitoring and better outcome measures for clinical trials. Randomized controlled trials to establish an evidence base upon which to recommend standard treatments are required.
Low propensity for aerial dispersal in specialist spiders from fragmented landscapes

Aerial dispersal by ballooning is a passive flight, by which wind drag generates an upward lift on a silk thread. It is likely to reflect an aerial lottery, in which the absence of flight direction control is a serious cost for long–distance dispersal in a fragmented landscape. For species occurring in one patchily distributed habitat type, dispersal should evolve in a different way from morphological traits, directly linked to active dispersal. Therefore, we expect that if the risk of landing in an unsuitable habitat is lower than the probability of reaching a suitable habitat, selection should benefit a well–developed ballooning behaviour. We investigated interspecific variation in the ballooning–initiating tiptoe behaviour as it is linked to spider dispersal performance. Our results indeed indicate that ballooning performance is negatively related to habitat specialization in spiders from patchy grey dunes, so habitat specialists are characterized by poorly developed dispersal behaviour. These findings are concordant with recent insights that dispersal is selected as risk spreading in generalists, while it is selected against in specialist species.
Advances in Penumbra Imaging with MR

The concept of the ischaemic penumbra as critically hypoperfused and functionally impaired, but potentially viable brain, was introduced over 25 years ago. Recent studies have used a combination of perfusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (PWI) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to delineate the putative penumbra. PWI provides semiquantitative cerebral blood flow imaging and DWI is an index of the largely irreversible ischaemic core. PWI > DWI mismatch is an operational definition of the penumbra that was introduced in the late 1990s. This definition has been modified in recent years with the recognition that the PWI boundary includes a region of benign oligaemia and that a portion of the DWI core is potentially salvageable with rapid reperfusion. An MRI penumbral signature is present in the majority of patients within 6 h of stroke onset, often but not invariably associated with proximal arterial occlusion on magnetic resonance angiography, and is strictly time dependent. It has been postulated that penumbral imaging using MRI can provide a physiological ‘tissue clock’ and be used to predict benefit from thrombolytic therapy beyond the established 3-hour window. This has been suggested by pilot studies, but confirmation will rely on ongoing, prospective, randomized trials. The presence and extent of the penumbra may also predict the opportunity for tissue salvage with neuroprotection strategies. DWI and PWI parameters are being used in proof-of-principle stroke trials. Such trials can be performed with 100–200 patients randomized between treated and control groups and provide a biological signal of efficacy with only 10% of the sample size required for a Phase III study.
Fluviicoccus keumensis gen. nov., sp. nov., isolated from freshwater.

A Gram-stain-negative, non-spore-forming and coccus-shaped bacterial strain, designated 4DR5T, was isolated from freshwater and its taxonomic position was investigated using a polyphasic approach. Growth occurred at 10-40 °C (optimum 30 °C), at pH 6-9 (optimum pH 7) and in the presence of 0-0.4 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum 0 %) on R2A agar. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, strain 4DR5T was assigned to the family Moraxellaceae of the class Gammaproteobacteria, and its closest related taxa were species of the genera Perlucidibaca (93.67 % sequence similarity), Agitococcus (93.07 %), Paraperlucidibaca (92.31-92.38 %), Alkanindiges (91.79 %) and Acinetobacter (90.24-91.23 %). The predominant isoprenoid quinone detected in strain 4DR5T was Q-10. The major cellular fatty acids were a summed feature consisting of C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c, one consisting of C18 : 1ω7c and/or C18 : 1ω6c, and C16 : 0. The major polar lipid was phosphatidylethanolamine. The genomic DNA G+C content of the strain was 61.2 mol%. The phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic and biochemical data not only supported the affiliation of strain 4DR5T to the family Moraxellaceae, but also separated it from other established genera within the family. Therefore, the novel isolate evidently represents a novel species of a new genus of Moraxellaceae, for which the name Fluviicoccus keumensis gen. nov., sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain of Fluviicoccus keumensis is 4DR5T ( = KCTC 32475T = JCM 19370T).