Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Sonication on the Elution of Antibiotics from Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA)

Background: In the setting of prosthetic joint infections treated with a two-stage procedure, spacers can be sonicated after removal. We hypothesize that the sonication process may cause an increased elution of antibiotics from the spacer, leading to elevated concentrations of antibiotics in the sonication fluid inhibiting bacterial growth. We aimed to evaluate in vitro the influence of sonication on the elution of antibiotics from polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) over time and to determine whether these concentrations are above the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) for microorganisms relevant in prosthetic joint infections. Methods: PMMA blocks impregnated with vancomycin, fosfomycin, gentamicin or daptomycin were incubated in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) at 37°C for up to 6 weeks. PBS was changed once a week. Concentrations were determined from samples of each antibiotic every week, and after 5 minutes of sonication at 2, 4 and 6 weeks. Results: With sonication there was a trend toward an increase of the elution of antibiotics. This increase was significant for vancomycin at 2 and 4 weeks (p=0.008 and 0.002 respectively) and for fosfomycin at 2 weeks (p=0.01). Conclusion: The effect of sonication could play a role in clinical results, especially for daptomycin and gentamicin for which the MIC is close to the concentration of antibiotics at 4 and 6 weeks. We conclude that elution of antibiotics from PMMA along with the effect of sonication could inhibit bacterial growth from spacers, resulting in false negative results in the setting of two-stage exchange procedures for prosthetic joint infections.
Plant transposable elements generate the DNA sequence diversity needed in evolution

Two germinal and 16 somatic reversion events induced by the Enhancer (En) transposable element system at the wx‐8::Spm‐I8 allele of Zea mays were cloned and studied by sequence analysis. Excision of the Spm‐I8 receptor element from the wx gene results in various mutant DNA sequences. This leads to altered gene products, some of which are still capable of restoring the wild‐type phenotype. Possible ‘footprint’ sequences that may have arisen by the excision of transposable elements were observed when intron sequences of the wild‐type (wx+) and the mutant (wx‐m8) alleles of the wx gene were compared. The sequence divergence generated by visitation of a locus by plant transposable elements is discussed with respect to the molecular evolution of new gene functions.
Controlling field-directed assembly of nanowires: towards nanomanufacturing for biosensors and transparent electrodes

The remarkable mechanical, optical, thermal and electronic properties of onedimensional structures such as nanotubes or nanowires (NWs) have enabled the construction of devices of extraordinary capabilities. Nanotube resonators, for example, were recently used to demonstrate response to single-proton mass. However, such landmark demonstrations are limited to a small number of devices in research laboratories, since the cost of making them by traditional top-down methods is prohibitive, being proportional to the number of devices. This thesis makes contributions towards a new family of methods, field-directed assembly, to enable reliable and cost-effective fabrication of large numbers of nanodevices. This provides a path towards nanomanufacturing, to help bring the extraordinary capabilities of nanodevices into widespread commercial and scientific use. Field-directed assembly is a cost-effective technique in which NWs are first synthesized, suspended in a fluid medium and then directed by fields, to predetermined positions between electrodes patterned on a substrate. When the gap size between
Smoking cessation after acute myocardial infarction: effects of a nurse-managed intervention.

STUDY OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of a nurse-managed intervention for smoking cessation in patients who have had a myocardial infarction. DESIGN Randomized, with a 6-month treatment period and a 6-month follow-up. SETTING Kaiser Foundation hospitals in Redwood City, Santa Clara, Hayward, and San Jose, California. PATIENTS Sequential sample of 173 patients, 70 years of age or younger, who were smoking before hospitalization for acute myocardial infarction. Eighty-six patients were randomly assigned to the intervention and 87 to usual care; 130 patients (75%) completed the study and were available for follow-up. INTERVENTION Nurse-managed and focused on preventing relapse to smoking, the intervention was initiated in the hospital and maintained thereafter primarily through telephone contact. Patients were given an 18-page manual that emphasized how to identify and cope with high-risk situations for smoking relapse. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS One year after myocardial infarction, the smoking cessation rate, verified biochemically, was 71% in the intervention group compared with 45% in the usual care group, a 26% difference (95% CI, 9.5% to 42.6%). Assuming that all surviving patients lost to follow-up were smoking, the 12-month smoking cessation rate was 61% in the intervention group compared with 32% in the usual care group, a 29% difference (95% CI, 14.5% to 43.5%). Patients who either resumed smoking within 3 weeks after infarction or expressed little intention of stopping in the hospital were unlikely to have stopped by 12 months. CONCLUSIONS A nurse-managed smoking cessation intervention largely conducted by telephone, initiated in the hospital, and focused on relapse prevention can significantly reduce smoking rates at 12 months in patients who have had a myocardial infarction.
Exploring Risks of Financial Markets through Agent-Based Modeling

To investigate the risks of financial markets is one of the critical issues in risk management. This paper proposes an agent-based model to clarify microscopic and macroscopic links between investor behaviors and price fluctuations in a financial market. The analysis presented in the paper focuses on the role that investors' overconfidence plays in the financial market. From the simulation study of the agent-based virtual market, we have found that (1) overconfident investors emerge in a bottom-up fashion in the market, and (2) these overconfident investors have the ability to contribute to the market, in which the trading prices are coincide with theoretical fundamental values
Environmental drivers of coccolithophore abundance and calcification across Drake Passage (Southern Ocean)

Abstract. Although coccolithophores are not as numerically common or as diverse in the Southern Ocean as they are in subpolar waters of the North Atlantic, a few species, such as Emiliania huxleyi, are found during the summer months. Little is actually known about the calcite production (CP) of these communities or how their distribution and physiology relate to environmental variables in this region. In February 2009, we made observations across Drake Passage (between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula) of coccolithophore distribution, CP, primary production, chlorophyll a and macronutrient concentrations, irradiance and carbonate chemistry. Although CP represented less than 1 % of total carbon fixation, coccolithophores were widespread across Drake Passage. The B/C morphotype of E. huxleyi was the dominant coccolithophore, with low estimates of coccolith calcite (∼ 0.01 pmol C coccolith−1) from biometric measurements. Both cell-normalised calcification (0.01–0.16 pmol C cell−1 d−1) and total CP (
AAS 11-592 TRACKING CONTROL OF NANOSATELLITES WITH UNCERTAIN TIME VARYING PARAMETERS

The focus of this study is an adaptive control scheme that mai ntains consistent satellite attitude tracking performance in the presence of uncertain time-varying inertia parameters. Potentially large variations in the in ertia matrix may occur due to changes in fuel mass, fuel slosh, and deployable appendag s such as booms and solar arrays. As such, the assumption of a constant inertia m atrix may not suffice for precise tracking maneuvers. The present investigation develops an appropriate description for a class of time-dependent inertia uncertai nty. An adaptive control law is implemented to recover closed-loop stability an d accurate attitude and angular velocity tracking in the face of such parametric unc ertainty.
Stochastic Modeling and Optimization of Stragglers

MapReduce framework is widely used to parallelize batch jobs since it exploits a high degree of multi-tasking to process them. However, it has been observed that when the number of servers increases, the map phase can take much longer than expected. This paper analytically shows that the stochastic behavior of the servers has a negative effect on the completion time of a MapReduce job, and continuously increasing the number of servers without accurate scheduling can degrade the overall performance. We analytically model the map phase in terms of hardware, system, and application parameters to capture the effects of stragglers on the performance. Mean sojourn time (MST), the time needed to sync the completed tasks at a reducer, is introduced as a performance metric and mathematically formulated. Following that, we stochastically investigate the optimal task scheduling which leads to an equilibrium property in a datacenter with different types of servers. Our experimental results show the performance of the different types of schedulers targeting MapReduce applications. We also show that, in the case of mixed deterministic and stochastic schedulers, there is an optimal scheduler that can always achieve the lowest MST.
A novel region growing approach using similarity set score and homogeneity based on neutrosophic set for ultrasound image segmentation

Breast tumor segmentation is an essential step in a computer aided diagnosis (CAD) system. Due to the speckle noise, various size and locations of lesions, it is a challenging task to segment the tumors on breast ultrasound (BUS) image accurately. In this paper, we propose a region growing method which applies the similarity score and homogeneity based on the neutrosophic set (NS) domain to segment and detect tumors. At first, the original BUS image is transferred to the NS domain and calculate the different NS elements to obtain the NS image. Then, a thresholding method and morphology method are used to locate seed regions, and after that each seed region grows separately. The direction of region growing depends on the homogeneity vector, similarity set score vector and distance vector between the candidate points and seed regions. The suspensive condition also lies on the homogeneity vector and similarity set score vector between the seed region and the NS image. Finally, a pretrained deep learning network and transfer learning scheme are used for false positive reduction. Experiment on various clinic BUS images has suggested that the proposed method is able to segment the BUS image and extract tumor accurately.
Left main coronary artery acute thrombosis related to energy drink intake.

A 24-year-old previously healthy black man presented the emergency department with a 10-hour history of nausea, multiple episodes of emesis, palpitations, and severe retrosternal chest pain, described as constant pressure. His symptoms started 1 or 2 hours after he had 3 drinks of vodka mixed with an energy drink at a local party. He used marijuana in the week before but denied cocaine or other recreational drug use. Two of his friends who shared the drinks had similar symptoms but without chest pain. There was no family history of premature coronary artery disease. The patient smokes no more than 5 cigarettes weekly. At admission, his vital signs were blood pressure 138/94 mm Hg, pulse 63 bpm, breathing rate 18 respirations per minute, temperature 36°C, and 99% oxygen saturation on room air. …
Methods for studying the zebrafish brain: past, present and future

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is one of the most promising new model organisms. The increasing popularity of this amazing small vertebrate is evident from the exponentially growing numbers of research articles, funded projects and new discoveries associated with the use of zebrafish for studying development, brain function, human diseases and screening for new drugs. Thanks to the development of novel technologies, the range of zebrafish research is constantly expanding with new tools synergistically enhancing traditional techniques. In this review we will highlight the past and present techniques which have made, and continue to make, zebrafish an attractive model organism for various fields of biology, with a specific focus on neuroscience.
Anticardiolipin Antibodies in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Background: There is controversy about an increased prevalence of antiphospholipid antibodies in diabetic patients. The possible implications are little known. Methods: We prospectively studied all consecutive outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) attended to in an Internal Medicine office. IgM and IgG anticardiolipin antibodies (ACA) were determined by standardized enzyme-linked immunoassay. Results: Fifty-six patients were included. Only one patient (1.8%) had a titer of IgM ACA higher than 15 MPL units and no patient had a titer of IgG ACA higher than 15 GPL units. Six patients (10.7%) had low IgM ACA titers (4–15 MPL units) and 18 patients (32.1%) had low IgG ACA titers (4–15 GPL units). There were no differences in the frequencies of a low IgM or IgG ACA titer or in the means of IgM and IgG ACA titers in patients with complicated and uncomplicated DM, with and without cardiovascular disease, with and without nephropathy, or with and without retinopathy. Conclusions: Moderate to high ACA titers must be exceptional in patients with type 2 DM. Low ACA titers may occur in patients with type 2 DM. These low titers do not seem to be associated with complicated DM, cardiovascular disease, nephropathy or retinopathy.
Neural network application for fault detection in electric motors

This research describes the monitoring of the fundamental spectral features of the bearing damage through accelerated aging studies for induction motors with a power rating of 5 HP. For this aim, the bearing damage is characterized between 2–4 kHz through the spectral analysis methods applied to motor vibration signals. Also, coherence analysis approach, defined between the stator currents and vibration signals, is used for as another indicator of the bearing damage. After the computation of the coherences, a neuro-detector based on the auto-associative neural structure is trained in the frequency domain. Hence, the bearing damage detection is realized by observing the changes in the errors (residuals) generated by the neural net
Magnetohydrodynamics simulation in a sphere by Yin-Yang-Zhong grid

For numerical simulations in a sphere, we have recently proposed a new spherical grid system called Yin-Yang-Zhong grid. The Yin-Yang-Zhong grid is composed of three components — Yin, Yang, and Zhong — that are combined to cover a spherical region with partial overlaps on their borders. Mutual interpolations are applied to sew the components together, following the overset grid methodology. We review the idea of the Yin-Yang-Zhong grid and its applications to magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations in a sphere. We also present visualization methods employed to analyze the Yin-Yang-Zhong simulations.
Statistics and Mathematics: Tension and Cooperation

1. INTRODUCTION. It has become a truism, at least among statisticians, that while statistics is a mathematical science, it is not a subfield of mathematics. We even have apho-risms to express some ways in which our science differs from mathematics. George Box: " All models are wrong, but some are useful. " George Cobb: " In mathematics, context obscures structure. In data analysis, context provides meaning. " David Moore: " Mathematical theorems are true; statistical methods are sometimes effective when used with skill. " That versions of these aphorisms apply whenever mathematics models phenomena in another field only emphasizes that statistics is another field. Cobb and Moore [2] discuss the implications of this fact for the teaching of statistics. Our present focus is neither the scientific distinction between mathematics and statistics nor the teaching of these subjects. We are concerned with the environment in which the fields now operate and the implications of our environment for our future prospects and for opportunities for synergy. We believe in particular that increased cooperation between the American Statistical Association (ASA) and the MAA could serve the interests of both mathematicians and statisticians. Both mathematics and statistics are of course served by other major societies, the Amer-ican Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). These are in fact the most important societies in supporting academic research, and as such they play a large role in the culture of the two fields. The AMS is particularly significant, if only because most mathematicians are academics and most statisticians are not. Our recommendations focus on the ASA and the MAA because these groups have been more active in areas such as undergraduate education and because more statisticians are involved in the MAA than in the AMS. We begin with a simple thesis: statistics has cultural strengths that might greatly assist mathematics, while mathematics has organizational strengths that can provide shelter for academic statistics, shelter that may be essential for its survival. Better relations between these two connected fields could help both. It is mainly cultural differences that prevent closer relations. We might say that mathematics is French, while statistics is resolutely Anglo-Saxon. The French, proud of a long history and high culture, are wary of aggressive Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. In the words attributed to a French diplomat, " It works in practice , but does it work in theory? " Cultural change is never easy, …
A spatio-temporal equalization method for indoor wireless LANs with beamforming criterion selection

Spatio-temporal equalization is a technique which utilizes both spatial and temporal information of the received signal to compensate for intersymbol interference due to multipath fading. Considering the application of a spatio-temporal equalizer to high speed wireless communications systems, such as wireless LANs, this paper proposes a new spatio-temporal equalization method using a cascade configuration of an adaptive array and a DFE (decision feedback equalizer), which can be realized with small number of weights, and hence, low computational complexity. However, it has to pay a price for the simplicity, namely, the error performance surface becomes a fourth-order function of the weights, and possibly has two minima. In order to avoid a wrong trap by a local minimum during the adaptation of the MMSE (minimum mean-squared error) based adaptation algorithm with any initial values, the proposed equalizer calculates the weights of the adaptive array and the DFE separately in two steps, and the adaptive array selects a path or paths to capture depending on channel conditions. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve good performance in various channel models, which are based on measurement reports, in low computational complexity.
Study on the design method of high speed permanent magnet synchronous machine

In this paper, the remarkable advantages, main applications, key technology and research status of high speed electrical machines are summarized. A design method of high speed permanent magnet synchronous machine is proposed. The structures of stator and rotor are improved. The electromagnetic design, analysis of rotor strength and rigidity, and calculation of temperature rise are mainly introduced. In addition, aiming at high speed pump, a 30000rpm, 15kW high speed permanent magnet synchronous machine is designed and produced. The design and analysis methods are verified correct.
Programming bots by synthesizing natural language expressions into API invocations

At present, bots are still in their preliminary stages of development. Many are relatively simple, or developed ad-hoc for a very specific use-case. For this reason, they are typically programmed manually, or utilize machine-learning classifiers to interpret a fixed set of user utterances. In reality, real world conversations with humans require support for dynamically capturing users expressions. Moreover, bots will derive immeasurable value by programming them to invoke APIs for their results. Today, within the Web and Mobile development community, complex applications are being stringed together with a few lines of code — all made possible by APIs. Yet, developers today are not as empowered to program bots in much the same way. To overcome this, we introduce BotBase, a bot programming platform that dynamically synthesizes natural language user expressions into API invocations. Our solution is two faceted: Firstly, we construct an API knowledge graph to encode and evolve APIs; secondly, leveraging the above we apply techniques in NLP, ML and Entity Recognition to perform the required synthesis from natural language user expressions into API calls.
Head and Heart Metaphors for Moral Decision Making: Conceptual or Communicative?

When faced with a moral dilemma, following your head versus your heart can result in very different decisions. Earlier work has argued that people who “self-locate” in the head tend to make more rational and less emotional decisions to moral dilemmas than those who “self-locate” in the heart. We replicate this finding, suggest an alternative interpretation of the result, and then extend it with a novel experiment. In a metaphor framing task, we manipulated the salience of the head/heart metaphors—by using them (a) in a single sentence, (b) a more elaborate paragraph, or (c) by emphasizing one in contrast to the other. We found that people who received the head metaphor made more rational decisions than those who received the heart metaphor, but only in the high salience condition that contrasted the two metaphors. This finding illustrates the communicative value of metaphor, which can be enhanced through comparison.
Algebraic properties of a family of Jacobi polynomials

La famille des polynomes a un seul parametre J n (x,y) = ∑ n j =0 ( Y j +j )x j est une sous-famille de la famille (a deux parametres) des polynomes de Jacobi. On montre que pour chaque n ≥ 6, quand on specialise en y o ∈ Q, le polynome J n (x,y 0 ) est irreductible sur Q, sauf pour un nombre fini des valeurs y0 ∈ Q. Si n est impair, sauf pour un nombre fini des valeurs y 0 ∈ Q, le groupe de Galois de J n (x,y 0 ) est S n ; si n est pair, l'ensemble exceptionnel est mince.
Continuous time digitizer utilizing multiphase sampling technique

In this paper, the new architecture of a high-speed continuous time digitizer is proposed. With the aid of a two-level multiphase sampling technique, the time digitizer can use only 16 delay cells and DFFs to perform the flash-type conversion of 64-stage interpolation. The time digitizer can obtain 78 ps resolution with a reference frequency running at 200 MHz. The continuous input clock frequency can be up to 250 MHz. The test chip is fabricated in TSMC 0.18 mum 1P6M mixed mode process. The layout area occupies 1.08 mm2. The DNL is within -0.62 ~ +0.51 and INL within -0.99 ~ +0.98. A novel clock multiplier is also introduced to provide multiphase generation with the frequency output range within 0.64 ~ 1.8 GHz.