Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phage libraries--a new route to clinically useful antibodies.

Antibodies can bind with high affinity and specificity to molecules of virtually any shape and to antigens ranging from small organic compounds to large proteins. These characteristics have led to the widespread use of antibodies as laboratory reagents, in diagnostic tests, and for therapeutic purposes. The immune system produces antibodies by a process of natural selection. In this article we describe how the strategy of natural selection can be used in bacteria to produce antibodies with novel characteristics and binding properties. This technology is opening up new diagnostic and therapeutic applications of antibodies. Antibody Production in Vivo In vivo, antigen-driven .
A DC voltage control method of cascaded H-bridge inverter for power quality conditioner

In recent years, multilevel technology has become an effective and practical solution for moderate and high voltage application field. In all multilevel technology, cascade multilevel inverters have become the major circuits used in power quality conditioners. Evidently,the voltage balancing problem of DC capacitors of cascade inverters is a key problem to the power quality conditioners. This paper explores voltage balancing control fundament. A model for charge and discharge processes of DC capacitor is established based on the point of output pulses of H-bridge inverters. Furthermore, based on the above discussing, a novel algorithm is proposed to balance the dc capacitor voltages. The simulation and experiment results illustrate that the voltage of each capacitor is controlled and balanced while working.
A dose‐dependent facilitation and inhibition of peripheral nerve regeneration by brain‐derived neurotrophic factor

The time‐dependent decline in the ability of motoneurons to regenerate their axons after axotomy is one of the principle contributing factors to poor functional recovery after peripheral nerve injury. A decline in neurotrophic support may be partially responsible for this effect. The up‐regulation of BDNF after injury, both in denervated Schwann cells and in axotomized motoneurons, suggests its importance in motor axonal regeneration. In adult female Sprague–Dawley rats, we counted the number of freshly injured or chronically axotomized tibial motoneurons that had regenerated their axons 1 month after surgical suture to a freshly denervated common peroneal distal nerve stump. Motor axonal regeneration was evaluated by applying fluorescent retrograde neurotracers to the common peroneal nerve 20 mm distal to the injury site and counting the number of fluorescently labelled motoneurons in the T11–L1 region of the spinal cord. We report that low doses of BDNF (0.5–2 µg/day for 28 days) had no detectable effect on axonal regeneration after immediate nerve repair, but promoted axonal regeneration of motoneurons whose regenerative capacity was reduced by chronic axotomy 2 months prior to nerve resuture, completely reversing the negative effects of delayed nerve repair. In contrast, high doses of BDNF (12–20 µg/day for 28 days) significantly inhibited motor axonal regeneration, after both immediate nerve repair and nerve repair after chronic axotomy. The inhibitory actions of high dose BDNF could be reversed by functional blockade of p75 receptors, thus implicating these receptors as mediators of the inhibitory effects of high dose exogenous BDNF.
Reconfigurable hardware architecture for saving power consumption on a sensor node

We propose the use of a reconfigurable hardware architecture to reduce the power consumption of small sensor node that has various sensors and wireless communication facilities, that were the result of an adaptive function specialization mechanism. Traditional sensor nodes must have had a powerful and multi functional Micro-Controller Unit (MCU) to satisfy the requirements for processing any kinds of application. However, most of these systems only use a part of the functions provided by an MCU. In other words, such a unit often consumes a great dead of power for unused circuits. To avoid this situation, we propose the use of a reconfigurable architecture based on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) instead of an MCU because this array dynamically changes the circuit to the optimal one that is just used for the calculation required by an application. Moreover, we implemented a prototype system to do a preliminary evaluation of our proposed mechanism. In this evaluation, we show the performance of our proposed reconfigurable architecture by comparison with traditional architecture that uses processing time and power consumption. The experimental result shows that our proposed mechanism reduces enough power of its sensor nodes to prolong the lifetime of nodes without decreasing the processing time.
Understanding Community-Specific Rape Myths

Using multiple measurement methods offers an opportunity to gain culturally specific information about rape myths. This study focuses on the subculture of student athletes and uses a survey, focus groups, and individual interviews to explore the meaning and role of rape myths. Although the survey indicates a low acceptance of rape myths, this finding is contradicted by the results of the focus groups and individual interviews. Subtle, yet pervasive, rape myths are discovered, as are myths that are unique to the student athlete community. This method provides a framework for social workers to explore rape myths in other communities and to subsequently develop appropriate educational and intervention programs to address and ultimately prevent rape.
The structure of pathological narcissism and its relationships with adult attachment styles: A study of italian nonclinical and clinical adult participants

The aim of this study was to evaluate the structure of pathological narcissism and its relationships with adult attachment styles in 394 Italian nonclinical volunteers and in 103 consecutively admitted Italian outpatients. All participants were administered the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) and the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ). Confirmatory factor analyses replicated the 2-factor model of the PNI found in English-speaking samples in both nonclinical and clinical samples. Structural equation models showed that adult attachment insecurities were characteristically associated with the PNI Narcissistic Vulnerability scale, whereas the PNI Narcissistic Grandiosity scale was positively associated with the ASQ Confidence scale in both samples. Overall, our findings support the hypothesis that pathological narcissists are both vulnerable and grandiose and suggest that assessing adult attachment may be important in understanding pathological narcissism in adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
Global atmospheric particle formation from CERN CLOUD measurements

Observations made in the CLOUD chamber at CERN illuminate atmospheric particle formation. How new particles form New particle formation in the atmosphere produces around half of the cloud condensation nuclei that seed cloud droplets. Such particles have a pivotal role in determining the properties of clouds and the global radiation balance. Dunne et al. used the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) chamber at CERN to construct a model of aerosol formation based on laboratory-measured nucleation rates. They found that nearly all nucleation involves either ammonia or biogenic organic compounds. Furthermore, in the present-day atmosphere, cosmic ray intensity cannot meaningfully affect climate via nucleation. Science, this issue p. 1119 Fundamental questions remain about the origin of newly formed atmospheric aerosol particles because data from laboratory measurements have been insufficient to build global models. In contrast, gas-phase chemistry models have been based on laboratory kinetics measurements for decades. We built a global model of aerosol formation by using extensive laboratory measurements of rates of nucleation involving sulfuric acid, ammonia, ions, and organic compounds conducted in the CERN CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) chamber. The simulations and a comparison with atmospheric observations show that nearly all nucleation throughout the present-day atmosphere involves ammonia or biogenic organic compounds, in addition to sulfuric acid. A considerable fraction of nucleation involves ions, but the relatively weak dependence on ion concentrations indicates that for the processes studied, variations in cosmic ray intensity do not appreciably affect climate through nucleation in the present-day atmosphere.
Origins of Modern Ideas on Love and Loss: Contrasting Forerunners of Attachment Theory

In this article we examine some origins of John Bowlby's attachment theory, a highly influential scientific approach to love and loss in contemporary society. Although some potential influences have been well-documented, others have either received no recognition or have failed to have an impact. We focus specifically on three of Bowlby's predecessors, exploring how these were differentially influential on his work. The first of these, Charles Darwin, was amply endorsed by Bowlby, both in terms of the adaptive background to his theory and more specifically in relation to Darwin's study of the emotions associated with grief. The second, Alexander Shand, was recognized as important but is cited little and omitted from the central issue of the resolution of grief. The third, Bertrand Russell, formulated ideas on attachment and separation before Bowlby, and possibly contributed to the intellectual forces that influenced him too. To our knowledge, Russell's work was not cited by Bowlby, despite the fact that it contained the seeds of many of Bowlby's ideas on attachment. It remains unclear whether this was because he had not read Russell or through omission; there is no definitive evidence either way. Tracing these historical origins illustrates how theory development involves a process of integration and selection, how even radical theories are rooted in previous scholarship, and how it can take decades for inspiring ideas to develop into full-blown, well-tested, theories.
Regularization and preconditioning of KKT systems arising in nonnegative least‐squares problems

A regularized Newton‐like method for solving nonnegative least‐squares problems is proposed and analysed in this paper. A preconditioner for KKT systems arising in the method is introduced and spectral properties of the preconditioned matrix are analysed. A bound on the condition number of the preconditioned matrix is provided. The bound does not depend on the interior‐point scaling matrix. Preliminary computational results confirm the effectiveness of the preconditioner and fast convergence of the iterative method established by the analysis performed in this paper. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Fast cooperative distributed learning

We consider distributed optimization where N agents in a network minimize the sum equation of their individual convex costs. To solve the described problem, existing literature proposes distributed gradient-like algorithms that are attractive due to computationally simple iterations k, but have a drawback of slow convergence (in k) to a solution. We propose a distributed gradient-like algorithm, that we build from the (centralized) Nesterov gradient method. For the convex fi's with Lipschitz continuous and bounded gradients, we show that our method converges at rate O(log k/k). The achieved rate significantly improves over the convergence rate of existing distributed gradient-like methods, while the proposed algorithm maintains the same communication cost per k and a very similar computational cost per k. We further show that the rate O(log k/k) still holds if the bounded gradients assumption is replaced by a certain linear growth assumption. We illustrate the gains obtained by our method on two simulation examples: acoustic source localization and learning a linear classifier based on l2-regularized logistic loss.
The Cloze Test Studied from an Oral Communicative Point of View

AbstractSixty-four pupils aged 14 years in two classes of a German technical school (Realschule) who were in their fourth year of learning English were given three tests to measure their achievement in English: an informal text-book independent test to measure overall achievement, a standardized interview test, and a cloze test. This last test was evaluated according to the “exact word” method. Two further methods, an adequate word method and Darnell’s clozentropy procedure, were based on answers given by a criterion group of 21 native speakers of the same age as the German pupils. Rank correlations and partial rank correlations were calculated. Conclusions suggest that the three methods of evaluating a cloze test do not render different results. Where oral interviews are not feasible a cloze test may be appropriate to estimate pupils’ oral expression and rank them.
Lungscape: Resected Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer Outcome by Clinical and Pathological Parameters

Introduction: The Lungscape project was designed to address the impact of clinical, pathological, and molecular characteristics on outcome in resected non–small- cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Materials and Methods: A decentralized biobank with fully annotated tissue samples was established. Selection criteria for participating centers included sufficient number of cases, tissue microarray building capability, and documented ethical approval. Patient selection was based on availability of comprehensive clinical data, radical resection between 2003 and 2009 with adequate follow-up, and adequate quantity and quality of formalin-fixed tissue. Results: Fifteen centers contributed 2449 cases. The 5-year overall survival (OS) was 69.6% and 63.6% for stages IA and IB, 51.6% and 47.7% for stages IIA and IIB, and 29.0% and 13.0% for stages IIIA and IIIB, respectively (p < 0.001). Median and 5-year relapse-free survival (RFS) were 52.8 months and 47.3%, respectively. Distant relapse was recorded for 44.4%, local for 26.0%, and both for 16.9% of patients. Based on multivariate analysis for the OS, RFS, and time to relapse, the factors significantly associated with all of them are performance status and pathological stage. Conclusion: The aim of this report is to present the results from Lungscape, the first large series reporting on NSCLC surgical outcome measured not only by OS but also by RFS and time to relapse and including multivariate analysis by significant clinical and pathological prognostic parameters. As tissue from all patients is preserved locally and is available for detailed molecular investigations, Lungscape provides an excellent basis to evaluate the influence of molecular parameters on the disease outcome after radical resection, besides providing an overview of the molecular landscape of stage I to III NSCLC.
Feature Extraction from 2D Gesture Trajectory in Dynamic Hand Gesture Recognition

Vision-based hand gesture recognition is a popular research topic for human-machine interaction (HMI). We have earlier developed a model-based method for tracking hand motion in complex scene by using Hausdorff tracker. In this paper, we now propose to extract certain features from the gesture trajectory so as to identify the form of the trajectory. Thus, these features can be efficiently used for trajectory guided recognition/classification of hand gestures. Our experimental results show 95% of accuracy in identifying the forms of the gesture trajectories. This indicates that the trajectory features proposed in this paper are appropriate for defining a particular gesture trajectory
EyeRecToo: Open-source Software for Real-time Pervasive Head-mounted Eye Tracking

: Head-mounted eye tracking offers remarkable opportunities for research and applications regarding pervasive health monitoring, mental state inference, and human computer interaction in dynamic scenarios. Although a plethora of software for the acquisition of eye-tracking data exists, they often exhibit critical issues when pervasive eye tracking is considered, e.g., closed source, costly eye tracker hardware dependencies, and requiring a human supervisor for calibration. In this paper, we introduce EyeRecToo , an open-source software for real-time pervasive head-mounted eye-tracking. Out of the box, EyeRecToo offers multiple real-time state-of-the-art pupil detection and gaze estimation methods, which can be easily replaced by user implemented algorithms if desired. A novel calibration method that allows users to calibrate the system without the assistance of a human supervisor is also integrated. Moreover, this software supports multiple head-mounted eye-tracking hardware, records eye and scene videos, and stores pupil and gaze information, which are also available as a real-time stream. Thus, EyeRecToo serves as a framework to quickly enable pervasive eye-tracking research and applications. Available at: available-after-proceedings-publication-february-2017
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology Object Recognition Based on Invariance Features for Image Classification

Invariance is an important aspect in image object recognition. Invariance of the output with respect to certain transformations of the input is a typical example of a priori knowledge. The concept of tangent vectors, which compactly represent the essence of these transformation invariances, and two classes of algorithms " tangent distance " and " tangent propagations " , make use of these invariances to improve performance. Results obtained with an extended tangent distance incorporated in a kernel density based Bayesian classifier to compensate for affine image variations are presented in the paper. An image distortion model for local variations is introduced and its relationship to tangent distance is considered. The classification algorithms are evaluated on databases of different domains. An excellent result of 2.2% error rate on the original USPS handwritten digits recognition task is obtained. On a database of radiographs from daily routine, best results are obtained by combining tangent distance and the distortion model.
Achievement and Climate Outcomes for the Knowledge is Power Program in an Inner-City Middle School

This study was designed to examine the effects of a whole school reform, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), specifically designed to raise academic achievement of at-risk urban middle school students by establishing an extended school day and year, a rigorous curriculum, after-school access to teachers, and increased family-school connections. In our mixed-methods design, qualitative (interview and observation) and quantitative (survey and achievement test) measures are employed to determine first-year program implementation and student outcomes for the KIPP:DIAMOND (Daring Individual Achievers Making Outstanding New Dreams) Academy (KIPP:DA), an inner-city school in a large, high-poverty urban district. For the achievement analyses, 49 KIPP:DA students were individually matched to highly comparable control students of the same ethnicity, socioeconmic status, gender, and ability, who attended different district schools in the same neighborhood. Statistically significant and educationally meaningful advantages for KIPP:DA students were found on 4 out of 6 standardized tests. The achievement results are interpreted in relation to the key program elements, the positive school climate established, and the quality of the 1st-year implementation.
Participatory planning for project sustainability of environmental education projects: a case study of the Secondary Teacher Training Environmental Education Project (St2eep) in Zimbabwe

Within the first year of the Secondary Teacher Training Environmental Education Project (St2eep) in Zimbabwe, project stakeholders, including lecturers, college administrators, local project coordinators, and donor representatives, expressed concern about the non‐sustainability of the project due to its over‐reliance on its international donor. In response to this challenge, a process of critical self‐reflection through self‐assessment workshops was started to give an opportunity for key project stakeholders to explore the challenge of project sustainability. Applying the principles of expansive learning theory to St2eep’s reflection processes, this paper shows how the contradictions that emerge from the interaction between different project stakeholders can be powerful sources for learning. This has resulted in new forms of activity to address the challenge of project sustainability in St2eep. The insights of this paper may be useful for other donor‐funded environmental education projects that are confronted with the challenge of project sustainability.
Characteristics of Self-Help Group Leaders: The Significance of Professional and Founder Statuses

A sample of sixty-three self-help group leaders, representative of non-12 step groups listed in the Kansas Self-Help Network, was interviewed in order to provide descriptive information about the characteristics of self-help group leaders and leadership diversification. Twenty-seven percent of the leaders held dual statuses as both experiential peers and professionally trained helpers. Dual status leaders reported “helping others” as a source of satisfaction more frequently than single status leaders. Thirty-three percent of the leaders were founders of their local groups. There was less diversification of leadership in founder-led groups than in successor-led groups, and leadership diversification was negatively correlated with Emotional Exhaustion (a sub-scale of the Maslach Burnout Inventory). The findings add to our knowledge by documenting that professionally trained helpers and experiential peer helpers are frequently one and the same person. The characteristics of self-help group leaders and the extent to which leadership is diversified within groups are two factors which are important for self-help researchers to describe and understand more fully. Researchers, and others who write about self-help groups, have traditionally categorized leaders as either experiential peers or professionally trained helpers. This dichotomy continues to be used to distinguish between self-help groups, support, and psychotherapy
In Vitro Model of Mycobacterial Growth Arrest Using Nitric Oxide with Limited Air

ABSTRACT An in vitro model of mycobacterial growth arrest was developed using Mycobacterium bovis BCG. When an exponentially growing culture was transferred to an evacuated tube, growth continued; treatment with a source of nitric oxide (diethylenetriamine-nitric oxide adduct [DETA-NO] at 50 μM) halted growth immediately, and aeration restored growth. When the period of growth arrest exceeded 4 h, a time lag occurred before aeration could restore growth. The lag time was maximal (24 h) after 16 h of growth arrest. These time lags indicated that one transition period was required for cells to achieve full arrest of growth and another for them to recover fully from growth arrest. DETA-NO-induced growth arrest failed to protect from the lethal effects of anaerobic shock, which caused rapid lysis of both growing and growth-arrested cells. While growth arrest had little effect on the lethal action of rifampin, it eliminated isoniazid lethality. Growth arrest reduced but did not eliminate fluoroquinolone lethality. Two fluoroquinolones, moxifloxacin and gatifloxacin, were equally lethal to exponentially growing cells, but moxifloxacin was more active during growth arrest. This difference is attributed to the fluoroquinolone C-7 ring structure, the only difference between the compounds. Collectively these data characterize a new system for halting mycobacterial growth that may be useful for evaluating new antituberculosis agents.