Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of melt-blown technology in the manufacturing of a solvent vapor-sensitive, non-woven fabric composed of poly(lactic acid) loaded with multi-walled carbon nanotubes

We evaluated a solvent vapor-sensitive, non-woven fabric made from a biodegradable, poly(lactic acid) (PLA) polymer loaded with multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The sensory properties of the fabric were obtained by optimizing the process parameters for manufacturing the melt-blown, non-woven fabric composed of 98% PLA 4060D (Nature Works) and 2% multi-walled carbon nanotubes (Nanocyl®). The diffusion of polar and non-polar solvent molecules influenced the electron flow between the separated carbon nanotubes in percolation paths built into the PLA, resulting in an increase of the resistance of the melt-blown, non-woven fabrics. The statistically significant differences between the mean values of electrical resistance before and after the influence of the tested solvent vapors were achieved for the non-woven fabrics manufactured at high air velocity and low extruder screw speed, taking the values of 30 m3/h and 20 rpm, respectively. The results obtained for the non-woven fabric manufactured in the optimal conditions show that methanol vapor response has the lowest amplitude of 15%, whereas for benzene, acetone and toluene sensitivity reaches values of 60%, 40%, and 35%, respectively. The values of the relative resistance amplitude correspond with Flory–Huggins interaction parameters κPLA\benzene < κPLA\acetone < κPLA\toluene < κPLA\methanol.
A method for NoC-based MPSoC energy consumption estimation

NoC-based MPSoCs are well suited for applications requiring high performance while maintaining a low-power profile. Therefore, it is important to estimate the energy consumption at early stages of the design flow due to the limited power budget imposed by the batteries. State-of-the-art proposals estimate the energy due to the NoC or the processing elements. Few works address the energy modeling and estimation for a NoC-based MPSoCs. This paper presents a method to estimate the energy/power for NoCs and processors from an RTL description, applying the proposed method to an MPSoC (36 processing elements interconnected by a 2D-mesh NoC) executing 4 real applications controlled by a multi-task operating system. The paper presents a set of results, identifying the energy due to the applications, to each element of the system, as well as the effect of two low power strategies.
The Possible Role of TLR2 in Chronic Hepatitis B Patients with Precore Mutation

Recognition mechanisms of innate immune response help to improve immunotherapeutic strategies in HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) is an important component of innate immunity. In this study, the frequency of precore mutations of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and serum TLR2 were evaluated in CHB patients. Fifty-one patients with chronic hepatitis B, negative for HBeAg and detectable HBV DNA, were examined for the presence of mutations in pre-core region of HBV genome by direct sequencing. Serum TLR2 was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Interactions of truncated HBeAg and TLR2 proteins were evaluated with molecular docking software. The G1896A pre-core mutation were detected in 29 (57%) which was significantly associated with higher concentration of serum TLR2 in comparison with patients without this mutation (4.8 ± 2.9 versus 3.4 ± 2.2 ng/mL, P = 0.03). There was also a significant correlation between serum ALT and TLR-2 (r = 0.46; P = 0.01). Docking results illustrated residues within the N-terminus of truncated HBeAg and TLR2, which might facilitate the interaction of these proteins. These findings showed the dominance of G1896A pre-core mutation of HBV variants in this community which was correlated with serum TLR2. Moreover TLR2 is critical for induction of inflammatory cytokines and therefore ALT elevation.
EXPLAINING JAMAICA ’ S GROWTH PUZZLE : A COMPARATIVE GROWTH ACCOUNTING EXERCISE WITH OTHER CARIBBEAN COUNTRIES

Jamaica’s economic growth averaged 0.7 per cent over the last 10 years in spite of investment as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) averaging 28.8 per cent over the period. This investment to GDP ratio is high when compared to other Caribbean and Latin American economies, yet real growth has remained below that of the region. The objective of the paper is to explain this growth puzzle by analysing the contribution of key factors using growth accounting and regression analysis. The result highlights the importance of the quality of political and institutional climates in driving economic growth within the Caribbean region. Capital investment and FDI are found to be significant and positive contributors to economic growth, while labour and terms of trade growth are found to be insignificant.
Identification of Two Cytochrome Monooxygenase P450 Genes, CYP321A7 and CYP321A9, from the Tobacco Cutworm Moth (Spodoptera Litura) and Their Expression in Response to Plant Allelochemicals

Larvae of the polyphagous tobacco cutworm moth, Spodoptera litura (S. litura), encounter potentially toxic allelochemicals in food. It is therefore important for S. litura to produce detoxification enzymes such as cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (P450s). In this study, we have identified two novel cytochrome P450 genes of S. litura, named CYP321A7 and CYP321A9. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that they belong to the CYP321A subfamily. Expression levels of these genes at different development stages were determined by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The highest expression was found in the midgut and the fat body. Larvae fed with a diet supplemented with xanthotoxin or coumarin showed a strongly increased expression of CYP321A7 and CYP321A9 in the midgut and fat body as compared to larvae that consumed a control diet. In contrast, larvae consuming a diet containing aflatoxin B1 or quercetin did not induce the expression of these genes. CYP321A7 and CYP321A9 showed different expression profiles with respect to certain allelochemicals. For example, a diet containing cinnamic acid stimulated the expression of CYP321A9, whereas no changes were observed for CYP321A7. We suggest that the fine tuning of P450 gene expression is an important adaptation mechanism that allows polyphagous S. litura larvae to survive in a changing chemical environment.
Tokenism or true partnership: Parental involvement in the child’s acute pain care facilitated by nurses within a culture of family centred care in general children’s wards

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Writing as a Tool for Learning Software Engineering

This paper presents an educational method used to improve teaching of tedious topics in software engineering courses that can be difficult for students to comprehend without any reference to own practical experience. The method utilizes the students existing software engineering knowledge to understand new theory, methods, and techniques. The goals of the method are to improve student participation in the lectures and to enable the students to think through the topics on their own before giving answers and explanations. The method allows the students to learn in three different settings: Individually, in groups, and in class. This paper describes experiences using the method, and proposes how it can be used in software engineering courses
Incomplete Reporting of Baseline Characteristics in Clinical Trials: An Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials and Systematic Reviews Involving Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the reporting of relevant prognostic information in a sample of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that investigated treatments for patients with chronic low back pain (LBP). We also analysed how researchers conducting the meta-analyses and systematic reviews addressed the reporting of relevant prognostic information in RCTs. Methods We searched the Cochrane Database to identify systematic reviews that investigated non-surgical treatments for patients with chronic LBP. The reported prognostic information was then extracted from the RCTs included in the reviews. We used a purpose-defined score to assess the quantity of information reported in the RCTs. We also determined how the authors of systematic reviews addressed the question of comparability of patient populations between RCTs. Results Six systematic reviews met our inclusion criteria, and we analysed 84 RCTs. Based on the scores, the reporting of important prognostic variables was incomplete in almost half of the 84 RCTs. Information regarding patients’ general health, social support, and work-related conditions was rarely reported. Almost half of the studies included in one of the meta-analyses provided insufficient information that did not allow us to determine whether patients in the primary trials were comparable. Conclusions Missing prognostic information potentially threatens the external validity (i.e. the generalizability or applicability) not only of primary studies but also of systematic reviews that investigate treatments for LBP. A detailed description of baseline patient characteristics that includes prognostic information is needed in all RCTs to ensure that clinicians can determine the applicability of the study or review results to their patients.
A context-aware approach for service selection using ontologies

Selecting the right parties to interact with is a fundamental problem in open and dynamic environments. The problem is exemplified when the number of interacting parties is high and the parties' reasons for selecting others vary. We examine the problem of service selection in an e-commerce setting where consumer agents cooperate to identify service providers that would satisfy their service needs the most. Previous approaches to service selection are based on capturing and exchanging the ratings of consumers to providers. Contrary to previous, rating-based service selection, this paper advocates an objective experience-based approach for service provider selection, in which consumers record their experiences with service providers rather than the overall, subjective ratings for a provider. A consumer's experience with a service provider is represented using an ontology that can capture subtle details including the context in which the service was requested. When a service consumer decides to share her experiences with a second service consumer, the receiving consumer evaluates the experience using its own context and evaluation criteria. By sharing experiences rather than ratings, the service consumers can model service providers more accurately and thus can select the service providers for their needs more correctly.
Lightweight Data Compression in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Huffman Coding

This paper presents a lightweight data compression method for wireless sensor networks monitoring environmental parameters with low resolution sensors. Instead of attempting to devise novel ad hoc algorithms, we show that, given general knowledge of the parameters that must be monitored, it is possible to efficiently employ conventional Huffman coding to represent the same parameter when measured at different locations and time periods. When the data collected by the sensor nodes consists of integer measurements, the Huffman dictionary computed using statistics inferred from public datasets often approaches the entropy of the data. Results using temperature and relative humidity measurements show that even when the proposed method does not approach the theoretical limit, it outperforms popular compression mechanisms designed specifically for wireless sensor networks.
Edgebreaker: Connectivity Compression for Triangle Meshes

Edgebreaker is a simple scheme for compressing the triangle/vertex incidence graphs (sometimes called connectivity or topology) of three-dimensional triangle meshes. Edgebreaker improves upon the storage required by previously reported schemes, most of which can guarantee only an O(t log(t)) storage cost for the incidence graph of a mesh of t triangles. Edgebreaker requires at most 2t bits for any mesh homeomorphic to a sphere and supports fully general meshes by using additional storage per handle and hole. For large meshes, entropy coding yields less than 1.5 bits per triangle. Edgebreaker's compression and decompression processes perform identical traversals of the mesh from one triangle to an adjacent one. At each stage, compression produces an op-code describing the topological relation between the current triangle and the boundary of the remaining part of the mesh. Decompression uses these op-codes to reconstruct the entire incidence graph. Because Edgebreaker's compression and decompression are independent of the vertex locations, they may be combined with a variety of vertex-compressing techniques that exploit topological information about the mesh to better estimate vertex locations. Edgebreaker may be used to compress the connectivity of an entire mesh bounding a 3D polyhedron or the connectivity of a triangulated surface patch whose boundary need not be encoded. The paper also offers a comparative survey of the rapidly growing field of geometric compression.
Integrated (Meta) Genomic and Synthetic Biology Approaches to Develop New Biocatalysts

In recent years, the marine environment has been the subject of increasing attention from biotechnological and pharmaceutical industries as a valuable and promising source of novel bioactive compounds. Marine biodiscovery programmes have begun to reveal the extent of novel compounds encoded within the enormous bacterial richness and diversity of the marine ecosystem. A combination of unique physicochemical properties and spatial niche-specific substrates, in wide-ranging and extreme habitats, underscores the potential of the marine environment to deliver on functionally novel biocatalytic activities. With the growing need for green alternatives to industrial processes, and the unique transformations which nature is capable of performing, marine biocatalysts have the potential to markedly improve current industrial pipelines. Furthermore, biocatalysts are known to possess chiral selectivity and specificity, a key focus of pharmaceutical drug design. In this review, we discuss how the explosion in genomics based sequence analysis, allied with parallel developments in synthetic and molecular biology, have the potential to fast-track the discovery and subsequent improvement of a new generation of marine biocatalysts.
Chronic Nicotine Cell Specifically Upregulates Functional α4* Nicotinic Receptors: Basis for Both Tolerance in Midbrain and Enhanced Long-Term Potentiation in Perforant Path

Understanding effects of chronic nicotine requires identifying the neurons and synapses whose responses to nicotine itself, and to endogenous acetylcholine, are altered by continued exposure to the drug. To address this problem, we developed mice whose α4 nicotinic receptor subunits are replaced by normally functioning fluorescently tagged subunits, providing quantitative studies of receptor regulation at micrometer resolution. Chronic nicotine increased α4 fluorescence in several regions; among these, midbrain and hippocampus were assessed functionally. Although the midbrain dopaminergic system dominates reward pathways, chronic nicotine does not change α4* receptor levels in dopaminergic neurons of ventral tegmental area (VTA) or substantia nigra pars compacta. Instead, upregulated, functional α4* receptors localize to the GABAergic neurons of the VTA and substantia nigra pars reticulata. In consequence, GABAergic neurons from chronically nicotine-treated mice have a higher basal firing rate and respond more strongly to nicotine; because of the resulting increased inhibition, dopaminergic neurons have lower basal firing and decreased response to nicotine. In hippocampus, chronic exposure to nicotine also increases α4* fluorescence on glutamatergic axons of the medial perforant path. In hippocampal slices from chronically treated animals, acute exposure to nicotine during tetanic stimuli enhances induction of long-term potentiation in the medial perforant path, showing that the upregulated α4* receptors in this pathway are also functional. The pattern of cell-specific upregulation of functional α4* receptors therefore provides a possible explanation for two effects of chronic nicotine: sensitization of synaptic transmission in forebrain and tolerance of dopaminergic neuron firing in midbrain.
Improve the quality of diagnostic parameters of an electronystagmogram using signal filtration in the time-frequency domain and adaptatively adjusted characteristics

The present study introduces the application of adaptative signal filtration in the time-frequency domain for the determination of the ENG (electronystagmogram) diagnostic parameters. In commonly used methods, the imprecision in phases delimitation-caused by constant-characteristics signal filtration-is the main source of inaccuracies in diagnostic parameters. Since the signal is very fragile and the acquisition conditions are not stable in time, the need for adaptive filtration seems to be evident. The use of the reversible wavelet transform of the ENG signal makes it possible to modify each "atom" of signal independently. A significant improvement in quality of the calculated diagnostic parameters has been achieved, expressed by a simultaneous occurrence of minimum inaccuracies and a minimum number of interpretation errors.
Differences of supranucleosomal organization in different kinds of chromatin: cell type-specific globular subunits containing different numbers of nucleosomes

Fractions of homogeneously-sized supranucleosomal particles can be obtained in high yield and purity from various types of cells by brief micrococcal nuclease digestion (10 or 20 s) of condensed chromatin in 100 mM NaCl followed by sucrose gradient centrifugation and agarose gel electrophoresis. These chromatin particles, which contain only DNA and histones, differed according to cell type. Sea urchin spermatozoa (Paracentrotus lividus) gave rise to heavy particles (ca. 260 S) with a mean diameter (48 nm). These resembled the unit chromatin fibrils fixed in situ, which contain an average of 48 nucleosomes, as determined both by electron microscopy after unraveling in low salt buffer and gel electrophoresis. In contrast, higher order particles from chicken erythrocyte chromatin were smaller (105 S; 36-nm diam) and contained approximately 20 nucleosomes. The smallest type of supranucleosomal particle was obtained from chicken and rat liver (39 S; 32-nm diam; eight nucleosomes). Oligomeric chains of such granular particles could be recognized in regions of higher sucrose density, indicating that distinct supranucleosomal particles of globular shape are not an artifact of exposure to low salt concentrations but can be obtained at near-physiological ionic strength. The demonstration of different particle sizes in chromatin from different types of nuclei is contrary to the view that such granular particles are produced by artificial breakdown into "detached turns" from a uniform and general solenoid structure of approximately six nucleosomes per turn. Our observations indicate that the higher order packing of the nucleosomal chain can differ greatly in different types of nuclei and the supranucleosomal organization of chromatin differs between cell types and is related to the specific state of cell differentiation.
Synergistic Utility of Brain Natriuretic Peptide and Left Ventricular Strain in Patients With Significant Aortic Stenosis

Background In aortic stenosis (AS), symptoms and left ventricular (LV) dysfunction represent a later disease state, and objective parameters that identify incipient LV dysfunction are needed. We sought to determine prognostic utility of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) and left ventricular global longitudinal strain (LV‐GLS) in patients with aortic valve area <1.3 cm2. Methods and Results Five‐hundred and thirty‐one patients between January 2007 and December 2008 with aortic valve area <1.3 cm2 (86% with aortic valve area ≤1.1 cm2) and left ventricular ejection fraction ≥50% who had BNP drawn ≤90 days from initial echo were included. Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) score and mortality were recorded. Mean STS score, glomerular filtration rate, and median BNP were 11±5, 73±35 mL/min per 1.73 m , and 141 (60–313) pg/mL, respectively; 78% were in New York Heart Association class ≥II. Mean LV‐stroke volume index (LV‐SVI) and LV‐GLS were 39±10 mL/m2 and −13.9±3%. At 4.7±2 years, 405 patients (76%) underwent aortic valve replacement; 161 died (30%). On multivariable survival analysis, age (hazard ratio [HR] 1.46), New York Heart Association class (HR 1.27), coronary artery disease (HR 1.72), decreasing glomerular filtration rate (HR 1.15), increasing BNP (HR 1.16), worsening LV‐GLS (HR 1.13) and aortic valve replacement (time dependent) (HR 0.34) predicted survival (all P<0.01). For mortality, the c‐statistic incrementally increased as follows (all P<0.01): STS score (0.60 [0.58–0.64]), STS score+BNP (0.67 [0.62–0.70]), and STS score+BNP+LV‐GLS (0.74 [0.68–0.78]). Conclusions In normal LVEF patients with significant aortic stenosis, BNP and LV‐GLS provide incremental (additive not duplicative) prognostic information over established predictors, suggesting that both play a synergistic role in defining outcomes.
Electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS) as a noninvasive means to monitor the kinetics of cell spreading to artificial surfaces.

This article describes the optimization of an experimental technique referred to as electric cell-substrate impedance sensing (ECIS) to monitor attachment and spreading of mammalian cells quantitatively and in real time. The method is based on measuring changes in AC impedance of small gold-film electrodes deposited on a culture dish and used as growth substrate. Based on experimental data and theoretical considerations we demonstrate that high-frequency capacitance measurements (f = 40 kHz) are most suited to follow the increasing surface coverage of the electrode due to cell spreading. The excellent time resolution of the method allowed an in-depth analysis of cell spreading kinetics under various experimental conditions. Using ECIS we studied the attachment and spreading of epithelial MDCK cells (strain II) on different protein coatings, and investigated the influence of divalent cations on spreading kinetics. We quantified the inhibitory effect of soluble peptides that mimic the recognition sequence of fibronectin and other extracellular matrix proteins (RGDS). We also applied the ECIS technique to monitor the detachment of confluent fibroblastic cell layers (WI38/VA-13) by means of these peptides.
Fast and robust dominant point detection on digital curves

A new and fast method for dominant point detection and polygonal representation of a discrete curve is proposed. Starting from results of discrete geometry [1, 2], the notion of maximal blurred segment of width ν has been proposed, well adapted to possibly noisy and/or not connected curves [3]. For a given width, the dominant points of a curve C are deduced from the sequence of maximal blurred segments of C in O ( n log 2 n ) time. Comparisons with other methods of the literature prove the efﬁcacity of our approach.