Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short-term effects of stored homologous red blood cell transfusion on cardiorespiratory function and inflammation: an experimental study in a hypovolemia model

The pathophysiological mechanisms associated with the effects of red blood cell (RBC) transfusion on cardiopulmonary function and inflammation are unclear. We developed an experimental model of homologous 14-days stored RBC transfusion in hypovolemic swine to evaluate the short-term effects of transfusion on cardiopulmonary system and inflammation. Sixteen healthy male anesthetized swine (68±3.3 kg) were submitted to controlled hemorrhage (25% of blood volume). Two units of non-filtered RBC from each animal were stored under blood bank conditions for 14 days. After 30 min of hypovolemia, the control group (n=8) received an infusion of lactated Ringer's solution (three times the removed volume). The transfusion group (n=8) received two units of homologous 14-days stored RBC and lactated Ringer's solution in a volume that was three times the difference between blood removed and blood transfusion infused. Both groups were followed up for 6 h after resuscitation with collection of hemodynamic and respiratory data. Cytokines and RNA expression were measured in plasma and lung tissue. Stored RBC transfusion significantly increased mixed oxygen venous saturation and arterial oxygen content. Transfusion was not associated with alterations on pulmonary function. Pulmonary concentrations of cytokines were not different between groups. Gene expression for lung cytokines demonstrated a 2-fold increase in mRNA level for inducible nitric oxide synthase and a 0.5-fold decrease in mRNA content for IL-21 in the transfused group. Thus, stored homologous RBC transfusion in a hypovolemia model improved cardiovascular parameters but did not induce significant effects on microcirculation, pulmonary inflammation and respiratory function up to 6 h after transfusion.
Tartrazine removal from water using functionalized multiwall carbon nanotubes

This investigation presents the advantages and limitations of tartrazine azo dye sorption on oxygen functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (O-MWCNTs) synthesized by catalytic-CVD technique in LEREC laboratory, Algeria. Our adsorbent was characterized by FESEM, HR-TEM micrographs, Raman spectroscopy, ATG, XPS and specific surface area measurements (SBET). The effects of different operational parameters like contact time, initial concentration of tartrazine, adsorbent amount, pH and temperature on the sorption processes were studied in batch mode. Experiments showed that the O-MWCNT was efficient for the removal of tartrazine and the equilibrium can be reached in 60 min. The removal efficiency was found to be dependent on the initial dye concentration and there is no significant effect of temperature on the adsorption process. Also, acidic pH was found to be favorable for dye removal, while the adsorption capacity decreases with the O-MWCNTs amount. For comparison, a similar study has been performed with a commercial activated carbon (CAC) and it was found out that the functionalized MWCNT has a shorter equilibrium time and higher dye adsorption capacity than CAC, so that O-MWCNTs can be considered as potential adsorbents for dye removal from wastewater. The models of Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms are applicable to describe the process of tartrazine adsorption on the O-MWCNTs and also on the CAC conventional adsorbent.
PrIXP: Preserving the privacy of routing policies at Internet eXchange Points

Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) serve as landmarks where many network service providers meet to obtain reciprocal connectivity. Some of them, especially the largest, offer route servers as a convenient technology to simplify the setup of a high number of bi-lateral peerings. Due to their potential to support a quick and easy interconnection among the networks of multiple providers, IXPs are becoming increasingly popular and widespread, and route servers are exploited increasingly often. However, in an ever-growing level of market competition, service providers are pushed to develop concerns about many aspects that are strategic for their business, ranging from commercial agreements with other members of an IXP to the policies that are adopted in exchanging routing information with them. Although these aspects are notoriously sensitive for network service providers, current IXP architectures offer no guarantees to enforce the privacy of such business-critical information. We re-design a traditional route server and propose an approach to enforce the privacy of peering relationships and routing policies that it manages. Our proposed architecture ensures that nobody, not even a third party, can access such information unless it is the legitimate owner (i.e., the IXP member that set up the policy), yet allowing the route server to apply the requested policies and each IXP member to verify that such policies have been correctly deployed. We implemented the route server and tested our solutions in a simulated environment, tracking and analyzing the number of exchanged control plane messages.
Ambient assisted living spaces validation by services and devices simulation

The design of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) products is a very demanding challenge. AAL products creation is a complex iterative process which must accomplish exhaustive prerequisites about accessibility and usability. In this process the early detection of errors is crucial to create cost-effective systems. Computer-assisted tools can suppose a vital help to usability designers in order to avoid design errors. Specifically computer simulation of products in AAL environments can be used in all the design phases to support the validation. In this paper, a computer simulation tool for supporting usability designers in the creation of innovative AAL products is presented. This application will benefit their work saving time and improving the final system functionality.
A Population-Based Assessment of Urologic Procedures and Operations After Surgery or Pelvic Radiation for Cervical Cancer

Objective The treatment of cervical cancer can result in genitourinary morbidity. We measured selected urologic procedures after the treatment of cervical cancer with either surgery or radiation. Methods We used administrative data from the province of Ontario Canada to identify adult women who had nonmetastatic cervical cancer and were treated with surgery or radiation between 1994 and 2014. Study outcomes were surgical or procedure codes representing ureteric repair or fistula repair. Stress incontinence surgery, minimally invasive urologic procedures, open bowel/bladder surgeries, and secondary malignancy were measured to compare between treatment modalities. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used. Results Our final cohort consisted of 7311 women (median follow-up, 7.0 years [interquartile range, 2.9–13.3 years]), of which 3354 (44.9%) underwent radiation, and 3957 (54.1%) underwent surgery. After treatment of cervical cancer, ureteral repair was less common after surgery (3.4%) compared with radiation (10.3%) (hazard ratio [HR], 0.25; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.19–0.32). Fistula repair was uncommon (0.9%) and occurred significantly more often in the surgery and radiation group compared with the radiation-alone group (HR, 4.02; 95% CI, 1.80–9.00). Overall, stress incontinence surgery was uncommon (2.2%) but was significantly more likely after surgery versus radiation (HR, 3.73; 95% CI, 2.13–6.53). Minimally invasive urologic procedures were less common after surgery compared with radiation (HR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.44–0.54). Open bowel/bladder surgeries were similar among treatment modalities, and secondary malignancy was less common after treatment with surgery versus radiation (HR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.39–0.92; P = 0.02). Conclusions Women treated for cervical cancer undergo ureteral stricture interventions at 0.8% per year over the 20 years after their treatment; this risk is higher among women who receive radiation treatment. Fistula repair is rare after cervical cancer.
Fast and strongly-consistent per-item resilience in key-value stores

In-memory key-value stores (KVSs) provide different forms of resilience through basic r-way replication and complex erasure codes such as Reed-Solomon. Each storage scheme exhibits different tradeoffs in terms of reliability and resources used (memory, network load, latency, storage required, etc.). Unfortunately, most KVSs support only a single such storage scheme, forcing designers to employ different KVSs for different applications. To address this problem, we have designed a strongly consistent in-memory KVS, Ring, that empowers its users to set the level of resilience on a KV pair basis while still maintaining overall consistency and without compromising efficiency. At the heart of Ring lies a novel encoding scheme, Stretched Reed-Solomon coding, that combines hash key distributions of heterogeneous replication and erasure coding schemes. Ring utilizes RDMA to ensure low latencies and offload communication tasks. Its latency, bandwidth, and throughput are comparable to state-of-the-art systems that do not support changing resilience and, thus, have much higher memory overheads. We show use cases that demonstrate significant memory savings and discuss trade-offs between reliability, performance, and cost. Our work demonstrates how future applications that consciously manage resilience of KV pairs can reduce the overall operational cost and significantly improve the performance of KVS deployments.
Evaluation of antifungal effect of grape seed extract (GSE) on Candida glabrata and Candida krusei: in vitro study

Background: Recently, following the widespread use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and immunosuppressive treatments, the prevalence of mucosal and systemic infections caused by glabrata and Candida krusei has been increased significantly. On the other hand, in addition to the problems caused by side effects of common antifungal drugs, the conducted studies have been indicative of the failure of antifungal treatments on Candidiasis different clinical infections and drug resistance including triazoles group (e.g., fluconazole) in the long-term use of them, especially in patients with a weakened immune system problem. Objective: Comparing the antifungal effect of grape seed extract with fluconazole and Nystatin on glabrata and Candida krusei in vitro. Material and Methods: In the present study, to review the antifungal effect and to determine MIC (the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration of growth) of grape seed extract, CLSI (Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute) has been used. To ensure the correctness of the findings of macro dilution method, agar well diffusion method has been used. Finally, the obtained results are analyzed using SPSS 16 software. Findings: MIC of grape seed extract was 50 μg/ml for glabrata and Candida krusei. On the other hand, in evaluation of the effect of different concentrations of grape seed extract with well diffusion of Candida krusei method was almost equal to Candida glabrata in same concentrations. As a result, the results related to both well diffusion methods (agar well diffusion) and the maximum inhibitory concentration MIC (macro dilution) are confirming the same antimicrobial susceptibility of both glabrata and Candida krusei to GSE. Conclusion: Grape seed extract having benefits like low price, being available, suitable taste rather than Nystatin, and fewer side effects can be a good Candidate as antifungal drug to against infections caused by glabrata and Candida krusei, after clinical trial.
An android malware static detection scheme based on cloud security structure

With the popularity of Android system mobile phones, the security threat brought by its own security mechanism flaws is increasingly severe. Therefore, it is necessary to design a highly efficient and accurate detection scheme for Android malwares. In this paper, an Android malware static detection scheme which is based on cloud security structure is designed. For one thing, the main detection works of the detection scheme are deployed on the cloud servers, which can make the detection work efficient and fast. For another, use a highly efficient classifying algorithm to make a static analysis on the source code of targeted APK (Android Package) file can determine whether the application (app) is safe or malicious more accurately. Finally, in order to estimate the detection efficiency and accuracy, 1143 malware app samples and 2937 normal applied app samples are collected.
An invistigation on the thermal degredation performance of crude glycerol and date seeds blends using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA)

In this paper, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) of crude glycerol, date seeds and their blends in was performed. Blending solid biomass with crude glycerol is found in the literature to enhance the gasification of solid biomass and yield valuable syntheses gaseous fuels. The studied glycerol to date seeds ratios were [3:1], [1:1] and [1:3] respectively. The samples were heated from room temperature till 700°C at a ramp heating of 20°C/min in nitrogen environment supplied at 50 ml/min. The used crude glycerol was prepared from waste cooking oil. In addition, theoretical curves based on the proposed ratios were done and their results were compared to the experimental work. The main objective of this work is to study the effect of the glycerol content on the thermal degradation performance of the prepared samples. The results have shown that the crude glycerol presence in the blends has affected the TG behavior and implied some kind of chemical reaction occurring in the temperature range of 200C to 475C. Also, the theoretical curves had shown almost good agreement with the experimental ones specially at high temperature levels (475C to 700C) and indicated some kind of chemical reactions between the raw materials at lower temperature levels (200C to 475C).
Real-time adaptive QoS prediction using approximate matrix multiplication

We introduce a novel QoS prediction model as a real-time support for the selection of atomic service candidates based on their QoS properties while constructing composite applications. The proposed approach satisfies the following requirements: (i) fast and accurate prediction of QoS values and (ii) adaptability with respect to environment changes. The model precomputes the similarities between users and services using approximate matrix multiplication to reduce the time complexity. When calculating a prediction for a user-service pair, the model considers similar users and services, but enhances the prediction accuracy by incorporating the number of observed records. Time complexity is further reduced by storing the lists of similar users and services which are updated in real-time. The model adapts to the changing environment: newer records are set to have greater influence on the predictions. The experiments conducted on relevant service-oriented datasets show advantages of the proposed model in accuracy and time performance.
On the analysis of discrete time competing risks data

Regression methodology has been well developed for competing risks data with continuous event times, both for the cause‐specific hazard and cumulative incidence functions. However, in many applications, including those from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute, the event times may be observed discretely. Naive application of continuous time regression methods to such data is not appropriate. We propose maximum likelihood inferences for estimation of model parameters for the discrete time cause‐specific hazard functions, develop predictions for the associated cumulative incidence functions, and derive consistent variance estimators for the predicted cumulative incidence functions. The methods are readily implemented using standard software for generalized estimating equations, where models for different causes may be fitted separately. For the SEER data, it may be desirable to model different event types on different time scales and the methods are generalized to accommodate such scenarios, extending earlier work on continuous time data. Simulation studies demonstrate that the methods perform well in realistic set‐ups. The methodology is illustrated with stage III colon cancer data from SEER.
Biases from different DNA extraction methods in intestine microbiome research based on 16S rDNA sequencing: a case in the koi carp, Cyprinus carpio var. Koi

This study examined the technical bias associated with different DNA extraction methods used in microbiome research. Three methods were used to extract genomic DNA from the same intestinal microbiota sample that was taken from the koi carp Cyprinus carpio var. koi, after which their microbial diversity and community structure were investigated on the basis of a 16S rDNA high‐throughput sequencing analysis. Biased results were observed in relation to the number of reads, alpha diversity indexes and taxonomic composition among the three DNA extraction protocols. A total of 1,381 OTUs from the intestinal bacteria were obtained, with 852, 759, and 698 OTUs acquired, using the Lysozyme and Ultrasonic Lysis method, Zirmil‐beating Cell Disruption method, and a QIAamp Fast DNA Stool Mini Kit, respectively. Additionally, 336 OTUs were commonly acquired, using the three methods. The results showed that the alpha diversity indexes (Rarefaction, Shannon, and Chao1) of the community that were determined using the Lysozyme and Ultrasonic Lysis method were higher than those obtained with the Zirmil‐beating Cell Disruption method, while the Zirmil method results were higher than those measured, using the QIAamp Fast DNA Stool Mini Kit. Moreover, all the major phyla (ratio>1%) could be identified with all three DNA extraction methods, but the phyla present at a lower abundance (ratio <1%) could not. Similar findings were observed at the genus level. Taken together, these findings indicated that the bias observed in the results about the community structure occurred primarily in OTUs with a lower abundance. The results of this study demonstrate that possible bias exists in community analyses, and researchers should therefore be conservative when drawing conclusions about community structures based on the currently available DNA extraction methods.
Spatial determinants of quorum signaling in a Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection model

Significance Quorum sensing is a communication system that allows bacteria to coordinate their activities, and these systems are critical for virulence in several bacteria, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa. There is a significant gap in knowledge about how quorum sensing proceeds during infection, particularly how spatial organization of the infecting microbial community impacts signaling. Using a model that recapitulates the biogeographical properties of P. aeruginosa infection of the cystic fibrosis lung, we discovered that communication primarily occurs within P. aeruginosa aggregates and that communication between aggregates is only observed for very large aggregates containing ≥5,000 cells. This study identifies a critical role for spatial distribution and bacterial phenotypic heterogeneity in bacterial signaling during infection, and provides a platform for future ecological and evolutionary studies. Quorum sensing (QS) is a bacterial communication system that involves production and sensing of extracellular signals. In laboratory models, QS allows bacteria to monitor and respond to their own cell density and is critical for fitness. However, how QS proceeds in natural, spatially structured bacterial communities is not well understood, which significantly hampers our understanding of the emergent properties of natural communities. To address this gap, we assessed QS signaling in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a cystic fibrosis (CF) lung infection model that recapitulates the biogeographical aspects of the natural human infection. In this model, P. aeruginosa grows as spatially organized, highly dense aggregates similar to those observed in the human CF lung. By combining this natural aggregate system with a micro-3D–printing platform that allows for confinement and precise spatial positioning of P. aeruginosa aggregates, we assessed the impact of aggregate size and spatial positioning on both intra- and interaggregate signaling. We discovered that aggregates containing ∼2,000 signal-producing P. aeruginosa were unable to signal neighboring aggregates, while those containing ≥5,000 cells signaled aggregates as far away as 176 µm. Not all aggregates within this “calling distance” responded, indicating that aggregates have differential sensitivities to signal. Overexpression of the signal receptor increased aggregate sensitivity to signal, suggesting that the ability of aggregates to respond is defined in part by receptor levels. These studies provide quantitative benchmark data for the impact of spatial arrangement and phenotypic heterogeneity on P. aeruginosa signaling in vivo.
FSBI BRIEFING PAPER: NANOTECHNOLOGY IN FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Nanotechnology involves the application of materials at the nanoscale to new products or processes. It is a rapidly growing industry currently worth billions of U.S. dollars, with many potential benefits to society. There are opportunities for the fisheries and aquaculture industries to use existing nanotechnologies, and also to develop new applications specific to the industry. The potential benefits of nanotechnology for fisheries and aquaculture need to be balanced against concerns for the environment and the occupational health of workers. The key points are as follows: • Man-made nanomaterials (NMs), sometimes called engineered NMs or manufactured NMs, are novel materials that have at least one dimension <100 nm or have a primary size in the 1‐100 nm range. These materials are produced in many different physical forms including nanoparticles (NPs), nanorods, nanotubes, nanospheres and nanowires. The major chemical classes include metallic NPs, carbon-based NMs [carbon nanotubes (CNTs), carbon fullerene spheres] and a wide variety of composites made of more than one chemical substance. The surfaces of NMs can also be functionalised to create many different chemistries. • Manufactured NMs are already used in consumer products and exposure modelling predicts environmental concentrations of ng l −1 to low μ gl −1 levels of NMs in surface waters. The long-term impact of these predicted concentrations on fishes is currently unclear, and chronic effects on the environment cannot be excluded. • Nanotechnology is already being applied in the food industry. Applications for fisheries could include nanopolymers and coatings to strengthen food packaging in order to protect delicate fish fillets. The shelf life of fish and shellfish may be improved with the use of antibacterial nanocoatings, and transparent polymer films that can help exclude oxygen from around the food product. Nanosensors on the food packaging can also be used to report the deterioration of the fish or shellfish. A public engagement programme is needed to ensure public confidence in the food uses of nanotechnology by the industry.
A novel selective stimulus presentation for P300 speller

The P300 speller is one of the brain-computer interfaces, allowing users to spell letters just by thoughts. Due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of the P300, however, stimuli are repeatedly presented so that EEG signals can be averaged, which improves the accuracy but degrades the speed. The authors have proposed to discontinue the stimulus presentation adaptively to the P300 response and have shown its superiority in the performance over the standard way that presents a prefixed number of stimuli. In addition to this adaptive stimulus termination, this paper proposes to select stimuli to be presented to avoid presenting redundant stimuli. Both off-line and on-line experiments show that the proposed method is more effective than our conventional method.