Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visualization of the biochemical markers of atherosclerotic plaque with the use of Raman, IR and AFM

In this work, we describe a methodology to visualize the biochemical markers of atherosclerotic plaque in cross sections of brachiocephalic arteries (BCA) taken from ApoE/LDLR–/– mice. The approach of the visualization of the same area of atherosclerotic plaque with the use of Raman, IR and AFM imaging enables the parallel characterisation of various features of atherosclerotic plaques. This support to the histochemical staining is utilized mainly in studies on mice models of atherosclerotic plaques, where micro and sub‐micro resolutions are required. This work presents the methodology of the measurement and visualization of plaque features important for atherosclerosis development and plaques vulnerability analysis. Label‐free imaging of cholesterol, cholesteryl esters, remodeled media, heme, internal elastic lamina, fibrous cap and calcification provides additional knowledge to previously presented quantitative measurements of average plaque features. AFM imaging enhanced the results obtained with the use of vibrational microspectroscopies with additional topographical information of the sample. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work which demonstrates that co‐localized measurement of atherosclerotic plaque with Raman, IR and AFM imaging provides a comprehensive insight into the biochemical markers of atherosclerotic plaques, and can be used as an integrated approach to assess vulnerability of the plaque. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
The Impact of Post-Synthetic Linker Functionalization of MOFs on Methane Storage: The Role of Defects

Natural gas is increasingly being viewed as one of the most viable alternatives to gasoline. Its vehicular application however will only be widespread if safe and high-capacity methane stores are developed. In this work report an over 33% increase in methane uptake on a post-synthetically modified metal-organic framework. The underlying mechanism for this dramatic increase is due to lattice defects formed upon post-synthetic modification. This method may open new approaches to natural gas storage.
Adaptive neural network imaging in medical systems

Recent technological advances in medicine has facilitated the development of sophisticated equipment enabling the better delivery of health care services. In parallel, artificial neural networks have emerged as promising tools for the application and implementation of intelligent systems. The aim of this paper is to provide a snapshot of the application of neural network systems in medical imaging. The paper highlights neural network applications in the analysis of cervicovaginal smears, mammography, microscopy, ultrasound imaging, and lesion placement in pallidotomy. It is anticipated that the application of neural network systems in medicine will provide the framework for the development of emerging medical systems, enabling the better delivery of health care.
Surface Integrity when Drilling Nickel-Based Superalloy under MQL Supply

The components being manufactured in aerospace industry must be capable of being utilized for long periods without failure. Thus, the functional behavior of these machined components is greatly dependent upon their surface integrity. The present work compares the performance of palm oil and synthetic ester on surface integrity when drilling of Inconel 718. The results indicate the substantial benefit of MQL by palm oil on microhardness, surface roughness, surface defects and sub-surface deformation.
Neuronal activity in the hub of extrasynaptic Schwann cell-axon interactions

The integrity and function of neurons depend on their continuous interactions with glial cells. In the peripheral nervous system glial functions are exerted by Schwann cells (SCs). SCs sense synaptic and extrasynaptic manifestations of action potential propagation and adapt their physiology to support neuronal activity. We review here existing literature data on extrasynaptic bidirectional axon-SC communication, focusing particularly on neuronal activity implications. To shed light on underlying mechanisms, we conduct a thorough analysis of microarray data from SC-rich mouse sciatic nerve at different developmental stages and in neuropathic models. We identify molecules that are potentially involved in SC detection of neuronal activity signals inducing subsequent glial responses. We further suggest that alterations in the activity-dependent axon-SC crosstalk impact on peripheral neuropathies. Together with previously reported data, these observations open new perspectives for deciphering glial mechanisms of neuronal function support.
Use soft-decision error-correction codes in Phase-Change Memory

Researches indicate that the resistance of phase-change material will become larger over the time. Use time-aware based soft-decision error correction code, which needs LLR to decode, can correct the errors in multilevel PCM effectively. Accurate LLR needs to read the resistance accurately, which will lead to a longer transmission latency. In this paper, we proposed a non-uniform correction strategy, which can reduce the read levels maintaining bit-error-rate performance. We use LDPC in correction of 4-level per cell PCM, and get the result via computer simulation.
Evaluation and Analysis of Spectrum-Based Fault Localization with Modified Similarity Coefficients for Software Debugging

During the process of fault localization, the spectrum-based techniques are frequently used and widely studied since they can automatically and effectively localize the faults of software and be implemented easily. So far most of spectrum-based fault localization techniques have relied heavily on the use of similarity coefficients. However, we noticed that existing similarity coefficients for fault localization may lack measure(s) to properly reflect the relationship between failing and passing test cases. It also has to note that the failing test cases usually are expected to provide more information to the similarity coefficients than the passing test cases. In order to evaluate the importance of failing and passing test cases in the similarity coefficients, a number of modified similarity coefficients in fault localization are presented and discussed. The modified similarity coefficients which are assigned the weights of the failing and/or passing test cases will be studied and analyzed with the multi-coverage-combined techniques. Five open source programs and 75 faulty versions in total from Siemens suite, which have been widely used for software testing and comparison of fault localization techniques, were selected as experiment subjects. Detailed analysis of the results shows that assigning the weights of failing and passing test cases to the similarity coefficients would be able to localize the faults more effectively and accurately.
Solid Lipid Microparticles (SLM) Containing Juniper Oil as Anti-Acne Topical Carriers: Preliminary Studies

Solid lipid microparticles (SLM) were used as carriers of juniper oil and proposed for the topical treatment of acne vulgare. The formulations were obtained by the o/w emulsification method. Compritol and Precirol were employed as lipidic materials. Emulsions containing 1.5% (w/w) of lipophilic phase (lipid and oil) and two different lipid to oil ratios (1:1 and 2:1) were prepared. Blank particles were also prepared, as a comparison. The SLM were characterized in terms of encapsulation efficiency, size, and morphology. The particle size stability in aqueous dispersions was monitored over one month. Evaporation of volatile compounds of oil from microparticles by weight loss was investigated. The qualitative composition of Juniper oil before and after the encapsulation process was determined by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography/mass spectrum (GC/MS) analyses. The antimicrobial activity of the oil encapsulated into the lipid microparticles against P. acnes was studied as contact time assay and compared to the activity of the oil not encapsulated. The emulsification method here described was a good technique for the encapsulation of essential oils. Percentage yields of production and encapsulation efficiencies were higher for Compritol preparations than for these prepared using Precirol. All preparations were characterized by similar particle size distributions (dvs about 3–4 µm) regardless of lipid type and lipid to oil ratios. Microscopy observations showed that the microparticles in aqueous dispersions had almost spherical shape, independently from their composition. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analyses showed that when the particles were dried, they had an irregular shape and a rough surface. The SLM dispersions based on Compritol revealed particle size stability over the investigated period of 30 days. In contrast, an increase of the mean dimensions in the preparations containing Precirol was observed. A low loss of volatile oil compounds owing to evaporation from dry particles was found in all preparations. This indicated that the microparticles were able to substantially maintain the oil loaded inside their lipidic structure, reducing its volatility. Some modifications of composition were found in the oil encapsulated in SLM with respect to the juniper oil raw material, but these modifications did not decrease the antibacterial activity of the oil. The SLM here described are promising carriers for the development of anti-acne topical formulations containing Juniper oil.
(LP) 2 , an Adaptive Algorithm for Information Extraction from Web-related Texts

(LP) is an algorithm for adaptive Information Extraction from Web-related text that induces symbolic rules by learning from a corpus tagged with SGML tags. Induction is performed by bottom-up generalisation of examples in a training corpus. Training is performed in two steps: initially a set of tagging rules is learned; then additional rules are induced to correct mistakes and imprecision in tagging. Shallow NLP is used to generalise rules beyond the flat word structure. Generalization allows a better coverage on unseen texts, as it limits data sparseness and overfitting in the training phase. In experiments on publicly available corpora the algorithm outperforms any other algorithm presented in literature and tested on the same corpora. Experiments also show a significant gain in using NLP in terms of (1) effectiveness (2) reduction of training time and (3) training corpus size. In this paper we present the machine learning algorithm for rule induction. In particular we focus on the NLP-based generalisation and the strategy for pruning both the search space and the final rule set.
Non-Uniform Strain Field in a Wurtzite GaN Cylinder under Compression and the Related End Friction Effect on Quantum Behavior of Valence-Bands

Strain has a considerable effect on the band structure where conduction and valence bands are shifted and split apart. As a result, the knowledge of strain distributions is essential for the analysis of the optoelectronic properties of the semiconductors. In this paper, an analytical solution for the non-uniform strain field within a finite, transversely isotropic cylinder of wurtzite GaN under compression with end frictions is derived. The method follows Lekhnitskii's stress function approach to decouple the equations of equilibrium. Numerical results reveal that all of the strain components, including the axial, radial, circumferential and shear strains, are non-uniform in both distribution pattern and magnitude. In addition, by employing the effective-mass Hamiltonian, the effect of strain on the valence-band structure of wurtzite GaN is studied. It is found that strain can induce band splitting and alter the shape of constant energy surfaces of the heavy-hole, light-hole and split-off bands of wurtzite GaN.
Large Plasmid in Shigella boydii Is Responsible for Epithelial Cell Penetration

A large plasmid in a virulent Shigella boydii 5 strain was transferred to plasmid‐cured avirulent strains of S. boydii 5, S. boydii 12, S. sonnei form II, and Escherichia coli K12. The transconjugants acquired the ability to invade tissue culture cells, which indicated that the large plasmid in S. boydii is responsible for epithelial cell invasiveness.
FlexPRICE: Flexible Provisioning of Resources in a Cloud Environment

Cloud computing aims to give users virtually unlimited pay-per-use computing resources without the burden of managing the underlying infrastructure. We claim that, in order to realize the full potential of cloud computing, the user must be presented with a pricing model that offers flexibility at the requirements level, such as a choice between different degrees of execution speed and the cloud provider must be presented with a programming model that offers flexibility at the execution level, such as a choice between different scheduling policies. In such a flexible framework, with each job, the user purchases a virtual computer with the desired speed and cost characteristics, and the cloud provider can optimize the utilization of resources across a stream of jobs from different users. We designed a flexible framework to test our hypothesis, which is called FlexPRICE (Flexible Provisioning of Resources in a Cloud Environment) and works as follows. A user presents a job to the cloud. The cloud finds different schedules to execute the job and presents a set of quotes to the user in terms of price and duration for the execution. The user then chooses a particular quote and the cloud is obliged to execute the job according to the chosen quote. FlexPRICE thus hides the complexity of the actual scheduling decisions from the user, but still provides enough flexibility to meet the users actual demands. We implemented FlexPRICE in a simulator called PRICES that allows us to experiment with our framework. We observe that FlexPRICE provides a wide range of execution options --from fast and expensive to slow and cheap-- for the whole spectrum of data-intensive and computation-intensive jobs. We also observe that the set of quotes computed by FlexPRICE do not vary as the number of simultaneous jobs increases.
Proportionally Fair Distributed Resource Allocation in Multiband Wireless Systems

A challenging problem in multiband multicell self-organized wireless systems, such as femtocells/picocells in cellular networks, multichannel Wi-Fi networks, and more recent wireless networks over TV white spaces, is of distributed resource allocation. This in general involves four components: channel selection, client association, channel access, and client scheduling. In this paper, we present a unified framework for jointly addressing the four components with the global system objective of maximizing the clients throughput in a proportionally fair manner. Our formulation allows a natural dissociation of the problem into two subparts. We show that the first part, involving channel access and client scheduling, is convex and derive a distributed adaptation procedure for achieving a Pareto-optimal solution. For the second part, involving channel selection and client association, we develop a Gibbs-sampler-based approach for local adaptation to achieve the global objective, as well as derive fast greedy algorithms from it that achieve good solutions often.
Efficient Nash equilibrium approximation through Monte Carlo counterfactual regret minimization

Recently, there has been considerable progress towards algorithms for approximating Nash equilibrium strategies in extensive games. One such algorithm, Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR), has proven to be effective in two-player zero-sum poker domains. While the basic algorithm is iterative and performs a full game traversal on each iteration, sampling based approaches are possible. For instance, chance-sampled CFR considers just a single chance outcome per traversal, resulting in faster but less precise iterations. While more iterations are required, chance-sampled CFR requires less time overall to converge. In this work, we present new sampling techniques that consider sets of chance outcomes during each traversal to produce slower, more accurate iterations. By sampling only the public chance outcomes seen by all players, we take advantage of the imperfect information structure of the game to (i) avoid recomputation of strategy probabilities, and (ii) achieve an algorithmic speed improvement, performing O(n2) work at terminal nodes in O(n) time. We demonstrate that this new CFR update converges more quickly than chance-sampled CFR in the large domains of poker and Bluff.
Biosorption of lead by Bacillus cereus isolated from industrial effluents

Aims: To study the biosorption of lead ions from soln. using Bacillus cereus isolated from industrial effluents collected from Peenya industrial area, Bangalore, India and to det. the optimum conditions for biosorption. Study Design: Exptl. study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Microbiol. and Biotechnol. , Bangalore University, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, between Oct. 2008 and Dec. 2009. Methodol. : Sixty bacterial strains were isolated from industrial effluents collected from Peenya industrial area. Among the sixty isolates only six were selected for further investigation due to their high min. inhibition concn. for lead. Lead biosorption studies were carried out for all the six isolates using at. absorption spectrometry. The optimum conditions (temp., pH and culture age) for biosorption were detd. for the isolate showing highest lead biosorption. Results: The lead biosorption capability of all six isolates was studied at different concns. of lead (100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 mg​/l)​. The isolate 6 showed highest lead biosorption capability and was identified as Bacillus cereus. Studies on the control of environmental factors revealed that an optimum temp. of 30°C and pH 5, facilitates max. biosorption of lead by 24h old culture of Bacillus cereus. Conclusion: Biosorption is an alternative to traditional physicochem. methods for removing toxic metals from wastewaters. The results of this study are discussed in the light of the biosorption capacity of Bacillus cereus that could be exploited in the bioremediation of lead.
Turbo-SPC codes

This letter is concerned with a family of modified turbo-type codes, referred to as turbo-SPC (single parity check) codes. A technique based on the SPC code is introduced to replace puncturing for rate adjustment. A noticeable feature of the proposed scheme is the significantly reduced decoding complexity compared with the standard punctured turbo code. The cost reduction factor becomes more noticeable as rate increases (over ten times for rate /spl rarr/1). The error-rate floor problem known to turbo codes can also be improved using the proposed scheme. For moderate to high rates, performances of about 0.5 dB from the theoretical limits at BER=10/sup -5/ have been observed for turbo-SPC codes.
Feasibility of Manual Teach-and-Replay and Continuous Impedance Shaping for Robotic Locomotor Training Following Spinal Cord Injury

Robotic gait training is an emerging technique for retraining walking ability following spinal cord injury (SCI). A key challenge in this training is determining an appropriate stepping trajectory and level of assistance for each patient, since patients have a wide range of sizes and impairment levels. Here, we demonstrate how a lightweight yet powerful robot can record subject-specific, trainer-induced leg trajectories during manually assisted stepping, then immediately replay those trajectories. Replay of the subject-specific trajectories reduced the effort required by the trainer during manual assistance, yet still generated similar patterns of muscle activation for six subjects with a chronic SCI. We also demonstrate how the impedance of the robot can be adjusted on a step-by-step basis with an error-based, learning law. This impedance-shaping algorithm adapted the robot's impedance so that the robot assisted only in the regions of the step trajectory where the subject consistently exhibited errors. The result was that the subjects stepped with greater variability, while still maintaining a physiologic gait pattern. These results are further steps toward tailoring robotic gait training to the needs of individual patients.
An Agile Formal Development Methodology

The demand for more complex but also more reliable and correct computer based systems on the one hand, and the fact that several changes in the user requirements through the development cycle on the other hand, leads to the need for more formal but also agile development methodologies. This report proposes XFun, which is a development methodology that adopts the unified process, and proposes as the core modelling technique the X-machine formal method. This amalgamation creats a formal agile methodology aiming for the development of computerised systems that will be reliable and correct with respect to user requirements.
The PlA1/A2 Polymorphism of Glycoprotein IIIa as a Risk Factor for Myocardial Infarction: A Meta-Analysis

Background The PlA2 polymorphism of glycoprotein IIIa (GPIIIa) has been previously identified as being associated with myocardial infarction (MI), but whether this represents a true association is entirely unclear due to differences in findings from different studies. We performed a meta-analysis to evaluate whether this polymorphism is a risk factor for MI. Methods Electronic databases (MEDLINE and EMBASE) were searched for all articles evaluating genetic polymorphisms of GPIIIa. For studies where acute coronary events were recorded in association with genetic analysis, pooled odds ratios (ORs) were calculated using fixed-effects and random-effects models. The primary outcome measure was MI, and a secondary analysis was also performed for acute coronary syndromes (ACS) more generally. Findings 57 studies were eligible for statistical analysis and included 17,911 cases and 24,584 controls. Carriage of the PlA2 allele was significantly associated with MI (n = 40,692; OR 1.077, 95% CI 1.024–1.132; p = 0.004) but with significant publication bias (p = 0.040). The degree of association with MI increased with decreasing age of subjects (≤45 years old: n = 9,547; OR 1.205, 95% CI 1.067–1.360; p = 0.003) and with adjustment of data for conventional cardiovascular risk factors (n = 12,001; OR 1.240, 95% CI 1.117–1.376; p<0.001). There was a low probability of publication bias for these subgroup analyses (all p<0.05). Conclusions The presence of significant publication bias makes it unclear whether the association between carriage of the PlA2 allele and MI is true for the total population studied. However for younger subjects, the relative absence of conventional cardiovascular risk factors results in a significant association between carriage of the PlA2 allele and MI.