Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Production and localization of beta-fructosidase in asynchronous and synchronous chemostat cultures of yeasts

In synchronized continuous cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae CBS 8066, the production of the extracellular invertase (EC 3.2.1.26) showed a cyclic behavior that coincided with the budding cycle. The invertase activity increased during bud development and ceased at bud maturation and cell scission. The cyclic changes in invertase production resulted in cyclic changes in amounts of invertase localized in the cell wall. However, the amount of enzyme invertase present in the culture liquid remained constant throughout the budding cycle. Also, in asynchronous continuous cultures of S. cerevisiae, the production and localization of invertase showed significant fluctuation. The overall invertase production in an asynchronous culture was two to three times higher than in synchronous cultures. This could be due to more-severe invertase-repressive conditions in a synchronous chemostat culture. Both the intracellular glucose-6-phosphate concentration and residual glucose concentration were significantly higher in synchronous chemostat cultures than in asynchronous chemostat cultures. In the asynchronous and synchronous continuous cultures of S. cerevisiae, about 40% of the invertase was released into the culture liquid; it has generally been believed that S. cerevisiae releases only about 5% of its invertase. In contrast to invertase production and localization in the chemostat cultures of S. cerevisiae, no significant changes in inulinase (EC 3.2.1.7) production and localization were observed in chemostat cultures of Kluyveromyces maxianus CBS 6556. In cultures of K. marxianus about 50% of the inulinase was present in the culture liquid.
Nanocarriers for brain specific delivery of anti-retro viral drugs: challenges and achievements

Abstract HIV/AIDS is a global pandemic and the deleterious effects of human immunodeficiency virus in the brain cannot be overlooked. Though the current anti-retro viral therapy is able to reduce the virus load in the peripheral tissues of the body, the inability of the anti-retro viral drugs to cross the blood brain barrier, as such, limits its therapeutic effect in the brain. The development of newer, successful nanoparticulate drug delivery systems to enhance the feasibility of the anti-retro viral drugs to the brain, offers a novel strategy to treat the AIDS-related neuronal degradation. This review summarised the neuropathogenesis of neuroAIDS, the challenges and achievements made in the delivery of therapeutics across the BBB and the use of nanocarriers as a safe and effective way for delivering anti-retro viral drugs to the brain.
Modeling using clinical examination indicators predicts interstitial lung disease among patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a severe extra-articular manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that is well-defined as a chronic systemic autoimmune disease. A proportion of patients with RA-associated ILD (RA-ILD) develop pulmonary fibrosis (PF), resulting in poor prognosis and increased lifetime risk. We investigated whether routine clinical examination indicators (CEIs) could be used to identify RA patients with high PF risk. A total of 533 patients with established RA were recruited in this study for model building and 32 CEIs were measured for each of them. To identify PF risk, a new artificial neural network (ANN) was built, in which inputs were generated by calculating Euclidean distance of CEIs between patients. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that the ANN performed well in predicting the PF risk (Youden index = 0.436) by only incorporating four CEIs including age, eosinophil count, platelet count, and white blood cell count. A set of 218 RA patients with healthy lungs or suffering from ILD and a set of 87 RA patients suffering from PF were used for independent validation. Results showed that the model successfully identified ILD and PF with a true positive rate of 84.9% and 82.8%, respectively. The present study suggests that model integration of multiple routine CEIs contributes to identification of potential PF risk among patients with RA.
Additional Stability for Single-Unit Pattern Generators

Legged robots have the potential to travel where wheeled robots cannot. While legged robots have many advantages that improve their maneuverability, they are notoriously difficult to control. However, neuroevolution, which combines the nature-inspired fields of neural networks with evolutionary computation, has shown promise in this task. The aim of this paper is to extend prior work that introduced an approach called single-unit pattern generators (SUPGs), which generate oscillatory patterns of activation for controlling the many moving parts of a legged robot. The extended SUPG approach employs a novel adjustment mechanism uniquely suited for SUPGs that allows fine-grained modulation of the SUPG oscillation pattern to potentially react effectively to more challenging conditions such as noise or rough terrain.
Synthesis and optoelectronic properties of imidic peri-xanthenoxanthene derivatives

Nowadays polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been the object of study in the search for novel semiconductor materials. Synthetic research in this field is ongoing since the beginning of the century, but it was only in recent years that technological development caused an increased interest for the optoelectronic properties of such systems. As a result, spectroscopic studies revealed interesting properties of peri-xanthenoxanthene (PXX) and its derivatives that will be extensively presented and discussed in this thesis. Concerning the tuning and tailoring of the optoelectronic properties of PAHs, many strategies can be applied in the quest for novel and better performing materials. One of the most common and efficient techniques is the atom doping that consists of a replacement of a carbon atom with a heavier one, such as oxygen or sulphur. In Chapter 1, before addressing the detailed investigation of this thesis work, a brief introduction on the nature and applications of organic semiconductor materials is given. Optoelectronic properties of well-known perylene diimides (PDIs) are compared and the discussion eventually moves to PXX derivatives that are the core of this thesis. In Chapter 2, a variety of synthetic pathways is explored in order to prepare PXX imide derivatives bearing electron-withdrawing groups in the peri position. The bottom-up approach is used to afford novel PXX systems. The synthesis of the desired systems is shown and discussed exploiting the key hydroxynaphthalene anhydride substrate. As a conclusion of this thesis, Chapter 3 deals with the characterisation of the optoelectronic properties of PXX imide derivatives. Furthermore, PXX substrates have been screened as photoredox systems to perform dehalogenation reactions and the mechanism of the photo-triggered chemical transformation has been investigated.
Re-Engineering Letter-to-Sound Rules

Using finite-state automata for the text analysis component in a text-to-speech system is problematic in several respects: the rewrite rules from which the automata are compiled are difficult to write and maintain, and the resulting automata can become very large and therefore inefficient. Converting the knowledge represented explicitly in rewrite rules into a more efficient format is difficult. We take an indirect route, learning an efficient decision tree representation from data and tapping information contained in existing rewrite rules, which increases performance compared to learning exclusively from a pronunciation lexicon.
Hardware Architectures for Frequent Itemset Mining Based on Equivalence Classes Partitioning

Frequent item set mining algorithms have proved their effectiveness to extract all the frequent itemsets in datasets, however in some cases they do not produce the expected results in an acceptable time according to the application requirements. For this reason, FPGA-based hardware architectures for frequent item set mining have been proposed in the literature to accelerate this task. Most of the reported architectures are limited by the number of distinct items that could be processed and the available resources in the employed FPGA device. This study proposes a compact hardware architecture for frequent item set mining capable of minimg all the frequent itemsets regardless of the number of distinct items and transactions in the dataset. The proposed architectural design implements a partition strategy based on equivalence classes. The partition on equivalence classes allows to divide the search space into disjoint sets that can be processed in parallel. Accordingly, a parallel architecture is proposed to exploit the benefits of the proposed search strategy.
Serum gonadotropins and steroid hormones and the development of ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVE To prospectively examine the association between endogenous hormones and development of ovarian cancer. DESIGN Nested case-control study. SETTING A population-based serum bank in Washington County, Maryland. PARTICIPANTS Serum samples were collected in 1974 from 20305 county residents and stored at -70 degrees C. From 1975 through 1989, a total of 31 cases of ovarian cancer were identified in women who were not taking hormones at the time of blood collection. These cases were matched to 62 controls on age, menopausal status, and, for premenopausal women, number of days from the beginning of the last menstrual period. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Prediagnostic endogenous hormone levels of cases and controls were compared. RESULTS Mean follicle-stimulating hormone levels were lower among cases (43.3 IU/L) compared with controls (54.4 IU/L) (P = .04), and increasing levels were associated with significantly lower risk (P for trend = .01), particularly among postmenopausal women. Luteinizing hormone levels were 9% lower among cases than controls, but the difference was not statistically significant (P = .39). Compared with controls, cases had higher androstenedione levels (4.5 nmol/L vs 3.3 nmol; P = .03) and higher dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) levels (15.9 nmol/L vs 9.7 nmol/L; P = .02). The risk of ovarian cancer increased with higher levels of androstenedione and DHEA sulfate (P for trend = .008 and .11, respectively). These associations were not materially different between premenopausal and postmenopausal women. CONCLUSION The results suggest that women with low serum gonadotropin levels or high androgen levels have an increased risk of ovarian cancer. These findings do not support the hypothesis that pituitary gonadotropins increase the risk of ovarian cancer. Replication of the study in other populations is highly desirable.
Sling techniques in the treatment of genuine stress incontinence

Sling procedures with many different modifications have been used for almost a hundred years in the treatment of female incontinence. The common feature of sling operations is the use of a strip of material which is passed completely beneath the urethra or bladder neck and anchored, usually to some point on the abdominal wall. Throughout this century, the popularity of sling operations has varied with episodes of enthusiasm as new methods have been used, and periods of disillusionment as complications have become apparent. Currently there is renewed interest in the use of sling techniques as greater understanding of their mechanism of action has developed, and means of avoiding some of the pitfalls have been discovered. In addition, the advent of a novel procedure, the tension free vaginal tape (TVT, Ethicon, Edinburgh, UK) procedure, which has many of the characteristics of a sling operation, has stimulated interest in this type of surgery among gynaecologists, urologists and women themselves. In the early part of the century, sling type procedures were devised to compress the urethra. They produced partial obstruction leading to a high incidence of voiding problems. It would appear that urethral obstruction is not necessary for successful sling surgery and it is probable that optimal sling tension is much less than was previously thought. A successful sling does not need to increase resting urethral pressure but supports the urethra during stress and allows more effective pressure transmission. The trend has been to reduce sling tension, decreasing the obstructive nature of the procedure and leading to a lower incidence of post-operative voiding difficulties and detrusor instability. We performed a Medline search to identify reports of sling techniques published from 1966 to April 1999. In addition, a hand search of relevant journals was undertaken and any other references from the papers reviewed were obtained. We intended to perform a meta-analysis of the available data but it became apparent that there are, in fact, no prospective randomised studies available on which to base a meta-analysis. This article therefore reviews the published literature on sling procedures and aims to discuss and to draw informed conclusions regarding the mechanism, success, and likely complications of this type of surgery.
Parallel Distributed Breadth First Search on the Kepler Architecture

We present the results obtained by using an evolution of our CUDA-based solution for the exploration, via a breadth first search, of large graphs. This latest version exploits at its best the features of the Kepler architecture and relies on a combination of techniques to reduce both the number of communications among the GPUs and the amount of exchanged data. The final result is a code that can visit more than 800 billion edges in a second by using a cluster equipped with 4,096 Tesla K20X GPUs.
O(logT) Projections for Stochastic Optimization of Smooth and Strongly Convex Functions

Traditional algorithms for stochastic optimization require projecting the solution at each iteration into a given domain to ensure its feasibility. When facing complex domains, such as the positive semidefinite cone, the projection operation can be expensive, leading to a high computational cost per iteration. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm that aims to reduce the number of projections for stochastic optimization. The proposed algorithm combines the strength of several recent developments in stochastic optimization, including mini-batches, extra-gradient, and epoch gradient descent, in order to effectively explore the smoothness and strong convexity. We show, both in expectation and with a high probability, that when the objective function is both smooth and strongly convex, the proposed algorithm achieves the optimal O(1/T) rate of convergence with only O(log T) projections. Our empirical study verifies the theoretical result.
A New Efficient Algorithm for Solving Systems of Multivariate Polynomial Equations

The security of many recently proposed cryptosystems is based on the difficulty of solving large systems of quadratic multivariate polynomial equations. The classical algorithm for solving such a system is Buchberger’s algorithm for constructing Grobner bases. Another algorithm for solving such a system is XL algorithm. For sparse system, Buchberger’s algorithm benefits from sparsity of the system, but its complexity is impractical and hard to determine. XL could not make a good use of sparse structure of the system, since XL has no good strategy of choosing the multiply monomials. In this paper, based on Extended Dixon Resultants, a new algorithm DR is proposed to solve systems of multivariate polynomial equations. The basic idea of DR is to apply Extended Dixon Resultants method to system of multivariate polynomial equations, by taking x1 . xn−1 as variables and xn as parameter. The time complexity of DR technique is evaluated, it seems to be polynomial when the system is sparse and m = n and mixed volume is polynomial. As far as we know, it is the first algorithm which has better behavior than exhaustive search for some sparse systems over large field. Moreover, DR technique is compared with Buchberger’s algorithm and XL technique in this paper. It is shown that DR is far more efficient than Buchberger’s algorithm and XL when m = n. DR is a quite efficient algorithm, it makes a good use of the sparsity of the sparse system. Besides its efficiency, another advantage of DR is that its complexity is easy to determine.
A 60-GHz millimeter-wave CMOS RFIC-on-chip triangular monopole antenna for WPAN applications

In this paper, a 60-GHz CMOS RFIC-on-chip triangular monopole antenna is presented. A planar triangular-monopole structure fed by the CPW line is adopted to design the on-chip antenna. The FEM-based 3D full-wave EM solver, Ansoft HFSS, is used for the design simulation. The antenna chip is fabricated with a 0.18-mum CMOS process. The on-wafer measurement in a microwave probe station is conducted to measure the input VSWR and the antenna gain of the designed RFIC-on-chip antenna.
Using Bio-inspired intelligence for Web opinion Mining

work proposes a bio-inspired based methodology in order to extract and evaluate user's web texts / posts. To validate the methodology, a dataset is constructed using real data arising from Greek fora. The obtained results are compared with a commonly used machine learning technique (decision trees- C4.5 algorithm). The bio-inspired algorithm (namely the hybrid PSO/ACO2 algorithm) achieved average classification accuracy 90.59% in a 10 fold cross validation experiment, outperforming the C4.5 algorithm (83.66%). The proposed methodology could be easily integrated with a decision support system providing services in the fields of e- commerce or e-government in order to help merchants acquire customer satisfaction or public administrators capture common understanding.
Moduli Space of Semistable Bundles

Given an automorphism τ of a smooth complex algebraic curve X, there is an induced action on the moduli space M of semi-stable rank 2 holomorphic bundles with fixed determinant. We give a complete description of the fixed variety in terms of moduli spaces of parabolic bundles on the quotient curve X/τ .
Scene classification based on category-specific representations created through prototype feature selection

In this paper, we propose a novel approach to coping with scene classification. In natural scenes, images from different categories often share similar components. As a result, it is difficult to distinguish them directly. In order to overcome this problem, for an input image, we propose to create a set of category-specific representations and use them to model the image as a probability distribution over the categories. Specifically, we first create a prototype for each scene category by pooling local features of its sample images together. Then, based on the category prototypes, given an input image, its salient local features corresponding to each category are extracted and used for creating a category-specific representation, respectively. Here, salient features for a scene category are defined as features that appear frequently in its instance images. In the classifier training stage, corresponding to one category prototype, the category-specific representations of a set of training images are used to train a multi-class SVM classifier. Thereafter, the obtained SVM classifiers are used to classify another set of training images in a probabilistic way, so that for each category-specific representation of the second set of training images, a probability vector is able to be obtained. Subsequently, all probability vectors of a training image are concatenated as its final representation, which are used to train another SVM classifier. For an unknown image, the same process is applied to it for classification. The proposed method is evaluated on datasets scene categories 8 and scene categories 15, experiment results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Warburg Micro syndrome is caused by RAB18 deficiency or dysregulation

RAB18, RAB3GAP1, RAB3GAP2 and TBC1D20 are each mutated in Warburg Micro syndrome, a rare autosomal recessive multisystem disorder. RAB3GAP1 and RAB3GAP2 form a binary ‘RAB3GAP’ complex that functions as a guanine-nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for RAB18, whereas TBC1D20 shows modest RAB18 GTPase-activating (GAP) activity in vitro. Here, we show that in the absence of functional RAB3GAP or TBC1D20, the level, localization and dynamics of cellular RAB18 is altered. In cell lines where TBC1D20 is absent from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), RAB18 becomes more stably ER-associated and less cytosolic than in control cells. These data suggest that RAB18 is a physiological substrate of TBC1D20 and contribute to a model in which a Rab-GAP can be essential for the activity of a target Rab. Together with previous reports, this indicates that Warburg Micro syndrome can be caused directly by loss of RAB18, or indirectly through loss of RAB18 regulators RAB3GAP or TBC1D20.
A cross-laboratory preclinical study on the effectiveness of interleukin-1 receptor antagonist in stroke

Stroke represents a global challenge and is a leading cause of permanent disability worldwide. Despite much effort, translation of research findings to clinical benefit has not yet been successful. Failure of neuroprotection trials is considered, in part, due to the low quality of preclinical studies, low level of reproducibility across different laboratories and that stroke co-morbidities have not been fully considered in experimental models. More rigorous testing of new drug candidates in different experimental models of stroke and initiation of preclinical cross-laboratory studies have been suggested as ways to improve translation. However, to our knowledge, no drugs currently in clinical stroke trials have been investigated in preclinical cross-laboratory studies. The cytokine interleukin 1 is a key mediator of neuronal injury, and the naturally occurring interleukin 1 receptor antagonist has been reported as beneficial in experimental studies of stroke. In the present paper, we report on a preclinical cross-laboratory stroke trial designed to investigate the efficacy of interleukin 1 receptor antagonist in different research laboratories across Europe. Our results strongly support the therapeutic potential of interleukin 1 receptor antagonist in experimental stroke and provide further evidence that interleukin 1 receptor antagonist should be evaluated in more extensive clinical stroke trials.
Penetrating Injuries of the Chest: Indications for Operation

Penetrating injuries to the chest present a frequent and challenging problem. The majority of these injuries can be managed non-operatively. The selection of patients for operation or observation can be made by clinical examination and appropriate investigations. The trauma ultrasound has become a valuable first-line tool to rule out pericardial tamponade. Spiral computed tomography of the chest is increasingly used to evaluate transmediastinal gunshot wounds and direct, if needed, further organ-specific tests, such as esophagography, aortography, or bronchoscopy. Minimally invasive techniques have found sound application in the thoracoscopic evacuation of undrained hemothorax and the laparoscopic evaluation of diaphragmatic trauma. In the operative arena, lung-sparing techniques with the use of staplers, like wedge resection and tractotomy, have allowed easier, faster, and effective control of bleeding without sacrificing unnecessarily normal pulmonary parenchyma. Knowledge of the new advancements in the field of thoracic trauma will allow surgeons to provide expert care and improved outcomes.