Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reduction of Both Harmonic Current and Torque Ripple for Dual Three-Phase Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Machine Using Modified Switching-Table-Based Direct Torque Control

Due to the fixed and limited sampling period in the real-time system, three-phase permanent-magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) drives using switching-table-based direct torque control (ST-DTC) usually suffer from steady-state error and ripple of torque. For the case of the dual three-phase system that has been widely investigated recently, the harmonic currents inevitably occur, which can be regarded as the third issue. This harmonic currents lead to the increase of losses and the decrease of system efficiency. Previous literature has addressed the aforementioned issues but only deals with either the torque ripple issues or harmonic currents. Therefore, this paper first introduces two types of synthetic vectors, which can reduce the harmonic currents effectively, as well as the most suitable switching sequences. Then, a modified five-level torque regulator has been proposed to improve the torque performance. With the proposed method, not only the harmonic currents have been suppressed, but also the steady-state error and ripple of torque can be considerably reduced, whereas the merits of classical ST-DTC, such as simple structure and excellent dynamic performance, are preserved. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.
Levels of foot pad dermatitis in broiler chickens reared in 5 different systems

1. The prevalence and severity of foot pad dermatitis (FPD) was examined in 359 flocks of broiler chickens comprising about 3·93 million birds produced on 91 farms and reared under 5 types of system: standard intensive, free-range, organic, systems complying with the RSPCA Freedom Food scheme, and corn-fed. 2. The mean prevalence of FPD in standard systems was 14·8%. Flocks that had access to the outside (free-range and organic systems) showed higher prevalence of FPD than those kept entirely indoors (standard, corn-fed and Freedom Food systems). The lowest prevalence of FPD (9·6%) and severity of the lesions occurred in Freedom Food systems, and the highest prevalence (98·1%) and severity in organic systems. 3. The implication from the results is that there are large variations in the prevalence and severity of FPD in birds reared under different systems and this needs to be taken into account when assessing the overall welfare associated with each type of system.
Circulating CD4 and CD8 T cells have little impact on host defense against experimental vaginal candidiasis

The etiology of recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis in otherwise healthy women of child-bearing age remains an enigma. To date, results from both clinical studies and a murine model of vaginal candidiasis indicate that Candida vaginitis can occur in the presence of Candida-specific Th1-type cell-mediated immunity expressed in the peripheral circulation. The present study was designed to determine the role of circulating CD4 and CD8 cells in primary and secondary vaginal infections with Candida albicans. Vaginal fungal burden, Candida-specific delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH), and lymph node cell Th1/Th2 cytokine production were monitored in CD4 and/or CD8 cell-depleted mice during persistent primary vaginal infections and secondary vaginal infections against which partial protection was observed. Treatment of mice with anti-CD4 or anti-CD8 antibodies resulted in 90% or greater depletion of the respective cell populations. Mice depleted of CD4 cells had significantly reduced Candida-specific DTH and lymph node cell Th1-type cytokine production during a primary vaginal infection, as well as reduced anamnestic DTH during a secondary vaginal infection. In contrast, mice depleted of CD8 cells showed only reduced gamma interferon production during a primary infection; no alterations in DTH were observed. Despite reductions in DTH and cytokine production, however, CD4 and/or CD8 cell depletion had no effect on vaginal C. albicans burden in mice after a primary or secondary vaginal inoculation. Taken together, these results suggest that while circulating CD4 and CD8 cells contribute to systemic Candida-specific cell-mediated immunity in vaginally infected mice, neither CD4 nor CD8 circulating T cells appear to provide significant host defenses against C. albicans at the vaginal mucosa.
Detecting the Maintenance Disruption in Competitive Queue

The aim of the paper is to adopt the game theory models to determine the appropriate moment to stop the stochastic (queue) system in order to correct its parameter (to do service of the system). There are M point processes which form the M-variate counting process. Each of them has a random moment of changing the parameters. The resultant marked point process can change its characteristics in many moments. If there are observers of each coordinating process to detect the change point and their discoveries are collected in the maintenance center then the set of critical security events could be defined. On this basis, action is being taken on maintaining the system in standby mode. In the presented research the definition of the maintenance time is proposed based on observers' discoveries with the game theory model. The observers' action is administered to collect information or make decisions based on conditions of rivalry and cooperation following the rules of the management system. The former research on such problem has been devoted to the discrete time systems (cf. [27], [41]). The results insignificantly extend the range of application, explain the structure of the optimal detector in various circumstances and shows new details of the solution construction. The problem is reformulated to optimal stopping of the observed sequences by the players. The detailed analysis of the problem is presented to show the form of optimal decision function.
Enhanced low voltage cell electropermeabilization by boron nitride nanotubes

Boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) are a structural analogue of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), with alternating B and N atoms which entirely substitute for C atoms in a graphitic-like sheet with almost no change in atomic spacing. BNNTs have generated considerable interest within the scientific community by virtue of their unique properties. Very recently, biomedical applications of BNNTs have also been proposed. In the present in vitro study, we demonstrate that BNNTs can be used as nanotools to enable cell electropermeabilization with very low electric fields (40–60 V cm−1). An explanation of this behaviour based on the dielectric response of BNNTs to static electric fields is proposed.
Prognostic Implications of Chronic Kidney Disease on Patients Presenting with ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction with versus without Stent Thrombosis

Background: Limited data is present regarding long-term outcomes in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients presenting with stent thrombosis (ST). We evaluated the possible implications of CKD on long-term mortality in patients presenting with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and its interaction with the presence of ST. Methods: We retrospectively studied 1,722 STEMI patients treated with primary PCI. Baseline CKD was categorized as an estimated glomerular filtration rate <60 mL/min/1.73 m2 at presentation. The presence of ST was determined using the Academic Research Consortium definitions. Patients were evaluated for the presence of CKD and ST, as well as for long-term mortality. Results: A total of 448/1,722 (26%) patients had baseline CKD. Patients with CKD were older and had more comorbidities and a higher rate of ST (4 vs. 7%, respectively, p < 0.001). In a univariate analysis, long-term mortality was significantly higher among those with CKD compared to those without CKD (17.6 vs. 2.7%, p < 0.001). The presence of ST did not alter long-term mortality in both CKD and no-CKD patients. In a Cox regression model, CKD was an independent predictor of long-term mortality (hazard ratio 2.04, 95% confidence interval 1.17-3.56, p = 0.01), while ST as a covariate was not significantly associated with long-term mortality. Conclusion: Among STEMI patients, CKD, but not ST, is a predictor of long-term mortality.
Non-incineration Microwave Assisted Sterilization of Medical Waste

A non-incineration method for sterilizing hospital infectious wastes has been studied and realized. A small apparatus operating at 2.45 GHz and at a power of 3 kW was designed to optimize power transfer from the electromagnetic field to the infectious materials, which have been previously shredded and moisture-corrected. The high pressure reached in the reactor, 7 atm, was enough to ensure complete sterilization in just a few minutes for a batch of several hundred grams of waste. Sterilization efficacy during microwave irradiation was also optimized with a new procedure using thermal, microbiological and water vapour sensors in a single test.
Information Precision and Common Value Partnership Dissolution: An Experimental Study

This paper develops a simple model of ½ auctions in a partnership dissolution game with common values, analyzes how information precision affects the equilibrium, and uses a laboratory study to test the model's predictions. Consistent with the model's prediction, the study shows that when bidders have the same quality information, higher precision leads to more extreme bids. In the case of unequal precision, bidders must use the same bidding functions regardless of their own information quality, and thus, the equilibrium strategy should be the same for both bidders. The experimental results, however, contradicts this prediction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Using genetic variation to infer associations with climate in the common frog, Rana temporaria

Recent and historical species' associations with climate can be inferred using molecular markers. This knowledge of population and species‐level responses to climatic variables can then be used to predict the potential consequences of ongoing climate change. The aim of this study was to predict responses of Rana temporaria to environmental change in Scotland by inferring historical and contemporary patterns of gene flow in relation to current variation in local thermal conditions. We first inferred colonization patterns within Europe following the last glacial maximum by combining new and previously published mitochondrial DNA sequences. We found that sequences from our Scottish samples were identical to (92%), or clustered with, the common haplotype previously identified from Western Europe. This clade showed very low mitochondrial variation, which did not allow inference of historical colonization routes but did allow interpretation of patterns of current fine‐scale population structure without consideration of confounding historical variation. Second, we assessed fine‐scale microsatellite‐based patterns of genetic variation in relation to current altitudinal temperature gradients. No population structure was found within altitudinal gradients (average FST = 0.02), despite a mean annual temperature difference of 4.5 °C between low‐ and high‐altitude sites. Levels of genetic diversity were considerable and did not vary between sites. The panmictic population structure observed, even along temperature gradients, is a potentially positive sign for R. temporaria persistence in Scotland in the face of a changing climate. This study demonstrates that within taxonomic groups, thought to be at high risk from environmental change, levels of vulnerability can vary, even within species.
The survival and characteristics of older people with and without dementia who are hospitalised following intentional self‐harm

Characteristics of older people with and without dementia who are hospitalised following self‐harm remains largely unexplored. This research compares the characteristics of older people with and without dementia who self‐harm, compares associations of mental health‐related diagnoses with those hospitalised for a self‐harm and a non‐self‐harm injury and examines mortality by injury intent.
Toxicological profiling of chemical and environmental samples using panels of test organisms and optical oxygen respirometry

A simple and versatile methodology for high throughput toxicological assessment of chemical and environmental samples is presented. It uses panels of test organisms ranging from prokaryotic (E. coli, V. fischeri) and eukaryotic (Jurkat) cells to invertebrate (Artemia salina) and vertebrate (Danio rerio) organisms, to analyze alterations in their oxygen consumption by optical oxygen respirometry. All the assays are carried out in a convenient microtiter plate format using commercial reagents (phosphorescent oxygen probe, microplates) and detection on a standard fluorescent plate reader. Simple experimental set‐up and mix‐and‐measure procedure allow parallel assessment of up to 96 samples (or assay points) in 2 h, easy generation of dose‐ and time‐dependent responses, and EC50 values. The methodology was demonstrated with several different classes of chemicals including heavy metal ions, PAHs, pesticides, their mixtures, and also validated with complex environmental samples such as wastewater from a wastewater treatment plant. It has been shown to provide high sensitivity, sample throughput and information content, flexibility and general robustness. It allows ranking and profiling of samples, compares favorably with alternative methods such as MicroTox and mortality tests with animal models, and is well suited for large‐scale monitoring programs such as CWA and WFD. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol, 2009.
Severity Prediction of Traffic Accident Using an Artificial Neural Network

In this paper, an artificial neural network (ANN) was used to predict the injury severity of traffic accidents based on 5973 traffic accident records occurred in Abu Dhabi over a 6-year period (from 2008 to 2013). For each accident record, 48 different attributes had been collected at the time of the accident. After data preprocessing, the data were reduced to 16 attributes and four injury severity classes. In this study, WEKA (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis) data-mining software was used to build the ANN classifier. The traffic accident data were used to build two classifiers in two different ways. The whole data set were used for training and validating the first classifier (training set), while 90% of the data were used for training the second classifier and the remaining 10% were used for testing it (testing set). The experimental results revealed that the developed ANN classifiers can predict accident severity with reasonable accuracy. The overall model prediction performance for the training and testing data were 81.6% and 74.6%, respectively. To improve the prediction accuracy of the ANN classifier, traffic accident data were split into three clusters using a k-means algorithm. The results after clustering revealed significant improvement in the prediction accuracy of the ANN classifier, especially for the training dataset. In this work, and in order to validate the performance of the ANN model, an ordered probit model was also used as a comparative benchmark. The dependent variable (i.e. degree of injury) was transformed from ordinal to numerical (1, 2, 3, 4) for (minor, moderate, sever, death). The R tool was used to perform an ordered probit. For each accident, the ordered probit model showed how likely this accident would result in each class (minor, moderate, severe, death). The accuracy of 59.5% obtained from the ordered probit model was clearly less than the ANN accuracy value of 74.6%. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Optimal Power Splitting in Two-Way Decode-and-Forward Relay Networks

This letter investigates simultaneous wireless information and power transfer in two-way decode-and-forward relay networks, where the relay is an energy-constrained node but is capable of harvesting energy from the radio frequency signal transmitted by the source nodes for forwarding its information. The achievable sum-rate of such network with the power splitting relay protocol is analyzed first. Then, the optimal design of the power allocated for energy harvesting and for information decoding in the sense of maximum achievable sum-rate is determined. Simulation results are presented to assess the influence of various system parameters. The performance of the optimal design is compared with that of amplify-and-forward relay protocols.
Cardioversion and Defibrillation Using a Catheter Electrode: Myocardial Damage Assessed at Autopsy

A technique has been described for countershock in an intensive care setting using a catheter electrode in patients with recurrent ventricular tachyarrhythmias. During defibrillation or cardioversion an electrode in the superior vena cava acts as an anode and an eieclrode in the right ventricular apex is the cathode. This report describes the resultant changes in the hearts of four men who died with recent, large myocardiai infarcts and who had received eight to 55 countershocks of 2.5–50 joules through the catheter. Mural thrombus and/or focal endothelial hemorrhage wasfound in three hearts at the anode site. Thrombus was seen at the cathode site in two hearts. Myocardial necrosis, secondary to the catheter, was present in only one heart which had a 2 mm rim of granulation tissue around the distal electrode. It is unlikely that this focal area of right ventricular damage would be dinicalIy important. We conclude, therefore, that repeated counlershocks delivered through the catheter system produce little myocardia] damage.
Efficacy and Safety Profile of Antibiotic Prophylaxis Usage in Clean and Clean-Contaminated Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

BackgroundThere is no consensus with regard to antibiotic prophylaxis usage in clean and clean-contaminated plastic and reconstructive surgery. This meta-analysis sought to assess the efficacy and safety of antibiotic prophylaxis and to determine appropriate duration of prophylaxis. MethodsAn English language literature search was conducted using PubMed and the Cochrane Collaboration for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluate the use of antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent postoperative surgical site infection (SSI) in patients undergoing clean and clean-contaminated plastic and reconstructive surgery. Data from intention-to-treat analyses were used where available. For the dichotomous data, results for each study were odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) and combined for meta-analysis using the Mantel-Haenszel method or the DerSimonian and Laird method. Study quality was critically appraised by 2 reviewers using established criteria. STATA version 12 was used for meta-analyses. ResultsTwelve RCTs involving 2395 patients were included, of which 8 trials were considered to be of high methodological quality. Effect of antibiotic prophylaxis in plastic and reconstructive surgery was found favorable over placebo in SSI prevention (13 studies; 2449 participants; OR, 0.53; 95% CI, 0.4–0.7; P < 0.01) and the other wound complication (OWC) prevention (9 studies; 1843 participants; OR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.15–0.84; P < 0.02). Subgroup analysis performed according to surgical wound type or the duration of prophylaxis did not modify the results except for the OWC with short-term antibiotic treatment. Compared with short-term antibiotic prophylaxis, long-term administration showed no evidence of a difference in risk of SSI (7 studies; 1012 participants; OR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.63–1.55; P < 0.95), OWC (5 studies; 824 participants; OR, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.46–1.86; P < 0.82), and adverse event relative to antibiotic administration (3 studies; 653 participants; OR, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.01–4.92; P < 0.35). ConclusionsThis meta-analysis of RCTs provides evidence supporting that antibiotic prophylaxis reduced postoperative SSI in clean plastic surgeries with high-risk factors and clean-contaminated plastic surgeries. Besides, a short-course administration regimen seemed to be of adequate efficacy and safety. High-quality prospective trials on larger scale are needed to further confirm these findings.
Prognostic value of immunohistochemical markers in malignant thymic epithelial tumors.

BACKGROUND Thymic epithelial tumors (TET) are rare neoplasms with inconsistent treatment strategies. When researching for molecular pathways to find new therapies, the correlation between specific molecular markers and outcome has only rarely been investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between survival, metastatic potential and invasiveness of aggressive subtypes of TET and immunohistochemical markers. METHODS Overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), progression-free survival (PFS) and metastasis-free survival (MFS) of patients with WHO type B2/B3 mixed type thymoma (MT), thymoma type B3 (B3) and thymic carcinoma (TC), undergoing surgery [1998-2013] were determined. Tumor specimens were stained using a tissue microarray (TMA) (CD117, CD5, p63, p40, p21, p27, p53, Bcl-2, Ki67, podoplanin, synaptophysin, PTEN and Pax8). Invasive behavior of primary tumors and the presence of extrathoracic metastases were assessed. RESULTS We found in 23 patients included into this study (four MT, ten B3, nine TC) that (I) p21 expression in the cytoplasm significantly correlated with a decrease of OS (P=0.016), PFS (P=0.034) and MFS (P=0.005); (II) MFS was significantly shorter when the combination of p21-low p27-low p53-high was present (P=0.029); and (III) nuclear p27 (P=0.042), Ki-67 (P=0.024) and podoplanin (P=0.05) expression correlated with the presence of extrathoracic metastases. CONCLUSIONS The main finding of this study is that cytoplasmic p21 expression negatively influences the outcome of malignant TETs and correlates with metastatic activity. Additionally, selected immunohistochemical markers correlate with the distant metastatic potential of TETs. These results may contribute to the stratification of diagnosis and improvement of treatment strategies for thymic malignancies.
Correlated mutations: Advances and limitations. A study on fusion proteins and on the Cohesin‐Dockerin families

Correlated mutations have been repeatedly exploited for intramolecular contact map prediction. Over the last decade these efforts yielded several methods for measuring correlated mutations. Nevertheless, the application of correlated mutations for the prediction of intermolecular interactions has not yet been explored. This gap is due to several obstacles, such as 3D complexes availability, paralog discrimination, and the availability of sequence pairs that are required for inter‐ but not intramolecular analyses. Here we selected for analysis fusion protein families that bypass some of these obstacles. We find that several correlated mutation measurements yield reasonable accuracy for intramolecular contact map prediction on the fusion dataset. However, the accuracy level drops sharply in intermolecular contacts prediction. This drop in accuracy does not occur always. In the Cohesin‐Dockerin family, reasonable accuracy is achieved in the prediction of both intra‐ and intermolecular contacts. The Cohesin‐Dockerin family is well suited for correlated mutation analysis. Because, however, this family constitutes a special case (it has radical mutations, has domain repeats, within each species each Dockerin domain interacts with each Cohesin domain, see below), the successful prediction in this family does not point to a general potential in using correlated mutations for predicting intermolecular contacts. Overall, the results of our study indicate that current methodologies of correlated mutations analysis are not suitable for large‐scale intermolecular contact prediction, and thus cannot assist in docking. With current measurements, sequence availability, sequence annotations, and underdeveloped sequence pairing methods, correlated mutations can yield reasonable accuracy only for a handful of families. Proteins 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.