Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of therapeutic bronchoalveolar lavage and partial liquid ventilation on meconium-aspirated newborn piglets

Objective:To investigate the therapeutic effects of bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) with either diluted surfactant (SBAL) or perfluorochemical liquid (PBAL), followed by either conventional mechanical ventilation (CMV) or partial liquid ventilation (PLV), on lung injury and proinflammatory cytokine production induced by meconium aspiration in newborn piglets. Design:A prospective, randomized, experimental study. Setting:An animal research laboratory at a medical center. Subjects:Anesthetized and mechanically ventilated newborn piglets (n = 27). Interventions:The animals were instilled with 3–5 mL/kg 25% human meconium via an endotracheal tube to induce meconium aspiration syndrome (MAS). After stabilization, animals were randomly assigned to either CMV group (no BAL) or one of the treatment groups (SBAL-CMV, SBAL-PLV, PBAL-CMV, and PBAL-PLV). Measurements and Main Results:Cardiopulmonary variables were monitored, and interleukin-1β and interleukin-6 content of the serum and lung tissue was measured. The animals without any treatment (CMV group) displayed the worst outcome; the animals in the PBAL-PLV group had the best gas exchange, lung compliance, and least pulmonary damage; and the SBAL-CMV, PBAL-CMV, and SBAL-PLV groups had intermediate effects. The serum interleukin-1β concentration of the CMV group was significantly higher than all other groups over time (p < .05), and interleukin-6 concentration was significantly higher than the PBAL-PLV group (p < .05). The tissue interleukin-1β and interleukin-6 contents were also highest in the CMV group and lowest in the PBAL-PLV group. Conclusions:Initial therapeutic BAL and therapeutic BAL followed by PLV with the same perfluorochemical liquid provided significant therapeutic effects in treating an animal model with severe MAS and therefore warrant consideration in cases that are intractable to other therapies.
High‐Dimensional Cox Models: The Choice of Penalty as Part of the Model Building Process

The Cox proportional hazards regression model is the most popular approach to model covariate information for survival times. In this context, the development of high‐dimensional models where the number of covariates is much larger than the number of observations ( $p \,{\gg }\, n$ ) is an ongoing challenge. A practicable approach is to use ridge penalized Cox regression in such situations. Beside focussing on finding the best prediction rule, one is often interested in determining a subset of covariates that are the most important ones for prognosis. This could be a gene set in the biostatistical analysis of microarray data. Covariate selection can then, for example, be done by L1‐penalized Cox regression using the lasso (Tibshirani ( 1997 ). Statistics in Medicine 16, 385–395). Several approaches beyond the lasso, that incorporate covariate selection, have been developed in recent years. This includes modifications of the lasso as well as nonconvex variants such as smoothly clipped absolute deviation (SCAD) (Fan and Li ( 2001 ). Journal of the American Statistical Association 96, 1348–1360; Fan and Li ( 2002 ). The Annals of Statistics 30, 74–99). The purpose of this article is to implement them practically into the model building process when analyzing high‐dimensional data with the Cox proportional hazards model. To evaluate penalized regression models beyond the lasso, we included SCAD variants and the adaptive lasso (Zou ( 2006 ). Journal of the American Statistical Association 101, 1418–1429). We compare them with “standard” applications such as ridge regression, the lasso, and the elastic net. Predictive accuracy, features of variable selection, and estimation bias will be studied to assess the practical use of these methods. We observed that the performance of SCAD and adaptive lasso is highly dependent on nontrivial preselection procedures. A practical solution to this problem does not yet exist. Since there is high risk of missing relevant covariates when using SCAD or adaptive lasso applied after an inappropriate initial selection step, we recommend to stay with lasso or the elastic net in actual data applications. But with respect to the promising results for truly sparse models, we see some advantage of SCAD and adaptive lasso, if better preselection procedures would be available. This requires further methodological research.
A homogeneous region based methodology for text extraction from natural scene images

Signs are ubiquitous indoors and outdoors, which are used for way finding, finding shops and businesses, accessing variety of services. But the information of signs is inaccessible to many visually impaired people unless they are represented in a non-visual form such as Braille, tactile graphic, and speech. Automatic reading text from signs in natural images becomes a vital application in visually impaired people assistance. However, finding the text in scene images is a great challenge, because it cannot be assumed that the acquired image contains only characters. Natural scene images usually contain diverse complex text of different size, styles and colors with complex backgrounds. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel method for text extraction from scene images. The algorithm is implemented and evaluated using a set of natural scene images. Accuracy, precision and recall rates of the proposed method are analyzed to determine the success and limitation. Recommendations for improvements are given based on the results.
Olfactory performance and resting state functional connectivity in non‐demented drug naïve patients with Parkinson's disease

Olfactory performance in Parkinson's disease (PD) is closely associated with subsequent cognitive decline. In the present study, we analyzed the olfaction‐dependent functional connectivity with a hypothesis that olfactory performance would influence functional connectivity within key brain areas of PD. A total of 110 nondemented drug‐naïve patients with PD were subdivided into three groups of high score (PD‐H, n = 23), middle score (PD‐M, n = 64), and low score (PD‐L, n = 23) based on olfactory performance. We performed the resting‐state functional connectivity with seed region of interest in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and caudate. An analysis of functional connectivity revealed that PD‐L patients exhibited a significant attenuation of cortical functional connectivity with the PCC in the bilateral primary sensory areas, right frontal areas, and right parietal areas compared to PD‐H or PD‐M patients. Meanwhile, PD‐L patients exhibited a significant enhancement of striatocortical functional connectivity in the bilateral occipital areas and right frontal areas compared to PD‐H or PD‐M patients. In the voxel‐wise correlation analysis, olfactory performance was positively associated with cortical functional connectivity with the PCC in similar areas of attenuated cortical connectivity in PD‐L patients relative to PD‐H patients. On the other hand, the cortical functional connectivity with the caudate was negatively correlated with olfactory performance in similar areas of increased connectivity in PD‐L patients relative to PD‐H patients. The present study demonstrated that resting state functional connectivity exhibits a distinctive pattern depending on olfactory performance, which might shed light on a meaningful relationship between olfactory impairment and cognitive dysfunction in PD. Hum Brain Mapp 36:1716–1727, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
HerMES: disentangling active galactic nuclei and star formation in the radio source population

We separate the extragalactic radio source population above ∼50 μJy into active galactic nuclei (AGN) and star-forming sources. The primary method of our approach is to fit the infrared spectral energy distributions (SEDs), constructed using Spitzer/IRAC (Infrared Array Camera) and Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS) and Herschel/SPIRE photometry, of 380 radio sources in the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South. From the fitted SEDs, we determine the relative AGN and star-forming contributions to their infrared emission. With the inclusion of other AGN diagnostics such as X-ray luminosity, Spitzer/IRAC colours, radio spectral index and the ratio of star-forming total infrared flux to k-corrected 1.4 GHz flux density, q_(IR), we determine whether the radio emission in these sources is powered by star formation or by an AGN. The majority of these radio sources (60 per cent) show the signature of an AGN at some wavelength. Of the sources with AGN signatures, 58 per cent are hybrid systems for which the radio emission is being powered by star formation. This implies that radio sources which have likely been selected on their star formation have a high AGN fraction. Below a 1.4 GHz flux density of 1 mJy, along with finding a strong contribution to the source counts from pure star-forming sources, we find that hybrid sources constitute 20–65 per cent of the sources. This result suggests that hybrid sources have a significant contribution, along with sources that do not host a detectable AGN, to the observed flattening of the source counts at ∼1 mJy for the extragalactic radio source population.
The molecular response of the white‐rot fungus Dichomitus squalens to wood and non‐woody biomass as examined by transcriptome and exoproteome analyses

The ability to obtain carbon and energy is a major requirement to exist in any environment. For several ascomycete fungi, (post-)genomic analyses have shown that species that occupy a large variety of habitats possess a diverse enzymatic machinery, while species with a specific habitat have a more focused enzyme repertoire that is well-adapted to the prevailing substrate. White-rot basidiomycete fungi also live in a specific habitat, as they are found exclusively in wood. In this study, we evaluated how well the enzymatic machinery of the white-rot fungus Dichomitus squalens is tailored to degrade its natural wood substrate. The transcriptome and exoproteome of D. squalens were analyzed after cultivation on two natural substrates, aspen and spruce wood, and two non-woody substrates, wheat bran and cotton seed hulls. D. squalens produced ligninolytic enzymes mainly at the early time point of the wood cultures, indicating the need to degrade lignin to get access to wood polysaccharides. Surprisingly, the response of the fungus to the non-woody polysaccharides was nearly as good a match to the substrate composition as observed for the wood polysaccharides. This indicates that D. squalens has preserved its ability to efficiently degrade plant biomass types not present in its natural habitat.
Secure and privacy-preserving concentration of metering data in AMI networks

The industry has recognized the risk of cyber-attacks targeting to the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). A potential adversary can modify or inject malicious data, and can perform security attacks over an insecure network. Also, the network operators at intermediate devices can reveal private information, such as the identity of the individual home and metering data units, to the third-party. Existing schemes generate large overheads and also do not ensure the secure delivery of correct and accurate metering data to all AMI entities, including data concentrator at the utility and the billing center. In this paper, we propose a secure and privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme based on additive homomorphic encryption and proxy re-encryption operations in the Paillier cryptosystem. The scheme can aggregate metering data without revealing the actual individual information (identity and energy usage) to intermediate entities or to any third-party, hence, resolves identity and related data theft attacks. Moreover, we propose a scalable algorithm to detect malicious metering data injected by the adversary. The proposed scheme protects the system against man-in-the-middle, replay, and impersonation attacks, and also maintains message integrity and undeniability. Our performance analysis shows that the scheme generates manageable computation, communication, and storage overheads and has efficient execution time suitable for AMI networks.
Parental age and risk of complete and partial hydatidiform mole

Summary. The relation between age of parents and the risk of complete and partial hydatidiform mole was examined using data from a casecontrol study conducted in Northern Italy of 149 histologically confirmed complete moles, 45 partial moles and 306 controls subjects who delivered normal babies. Compared to women aged 21 to 35, the relative risk (RR) of complete mole was elevated for teenage women (RR = 1·9) and for those aged 36–40 (RR = 1·9) or over 40 (RR = 7·5). There was no association between women's age and partial mole. Likewise, older paternal age (>45) was related with the risk of complete mole (RR = 4·9, though allowance for women's age reduced this point estimate to 2·9), but not of partial mole. The present findings indicate that there are important differences in the epidemiology of complete and partial hydatidiform mole.
Memory CCR6+CD4+ T Cells Are Preferential Targets for Productive HIV Type 1 Infection Regardless of Their Expression of Integrin β7

HIV type 1 infection is associated with a rapid depletion of Th17 cells from the GALT. The chemokine receptor CCR6 is a marker for Th17 lineage polarization and HIV permissiveness in memory CD4+ T cells. CCR6+ T cells have the potential to migrate into the GALT via the gut-homing integrin α4β7, a newly identified HIV-gp120 binding receptor. In this study, we investigated whether memory T cells coexpressing CCR6 and integrin β7 are selective HIV targets and whether retinoic acid (RA)-induced imprinting for gut-homing selectively increases CCR6+ T cell permissiveness to infection. We demonstrated that β7−R6+ and β7+R6+ compared with β7−R6− and β7+R6− T cells were highly permissive to HIV, produced Th17 cytokines, and their frequency was decreased in the peripheral blood of HIV-infected subjects. RA upregulated integrin α4 and β7 coexpression in both CCR6+ and CCR6− T cells, but increased HIV permissiveness selectively in CCR6+ T cells via entry (CCR5 upregulation) and postentry mechanisms. In conclusion, these results demonstrate that CCR6, but not the integrin β7, is a discriminative marker for memory T cells imprinted with a transcriptional program favorable to HIV replication. Nevertheless, given the ability of integrin β7 to regulate cell migration into the GALT and bind HIV-gp120, CCR6+ T cells coexpressing integrin β7 and CCR5 might have an extraordinary ability to disseminate HIV from the portal sites of entry. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of memory CCR6+ T cell differentiation is critical for the design of new therapeutic strategies that should interfere with viral permissiveness but not Th17 lineage commitment and gut-homing potential in CCR6+ T cells.
Requirement for an Interaction of XRCC4 with DNA Ligase IV for Wild-type V(D)J Recombination and DNA Double-strand Break Repairin Vivo *

The XRCC4 gene is required for the repair of DNA double-strand breaks in mammalian cells. Without XRCC4, cells are hypersensitive to ionizing radiation and deficient for V(D)J recombination. It has been demonstrated that XRCC4 binds and stimulates DNA ligase IV, which has led to the hypothesis that DNA ligase IV is essential for both of these processes. In this study deletion mutants of XRCC4 were tested for their ability to associate with DNA ligase IVin vitro and for their ability to reconstitute XRCC4-deficient cells in vivo. We find that a central region of XRCC4 from amino acids 100–250 is necessary for DNA ligase IV binding and that deletions within this region functionally inactivates XRCC4. Deletions within the C-terminal 84 amino acids neither affect DNA ligase IV binding nor the in vivofunction of XRCC4. The correlation between the ability or inability of XRCC4 to bind DNA ligase IV and its ability or failure to reconstitute wild-type DNA repair in vivo, respectively, demonstrates for the first time that the physical interaction with DNA ligase IV is crucial for the in vivo function of XRCC4. Deletions within the N-terminal 100 amino acids inactivate XRCC4 in vivo but leave DNA ligase IV binding unaffected. This indicates further DNA ligase IV-independent functions of XRCC4.
A Point Mutation in the Sensor Histidine Kinase SaeS of Staphylococcus aureus Strain Newman Alters the Response to Biocide Exposure

ABSTRACT Staphylococcus aureus reacts to changing environmental conditions such as heat, pH, and chemicals through global regulators such as the sae (S. aureus exoprotein expression) two-component signaling system. Subinhibitory concentrations of some antibiotics were shown to increase virulence factor expression. Here, we investigated the S. aureus stress response to sublethal concentrations of a commonly used biocide (Perform), by real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR), promoter activity assay, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, and a flow cytometric invasion assay. Perform, acting through the production of reactive oxygen species, generally downregulated expression of extracellular proteins in strains 6850, COL, ISP479C but upregulated these proteins in strain Newman. Upregulated proteins were sae dependent. The Perform component SDS, but not paraquat (another oxygen donor), mimicked the biocide effect. Eap (extracellular adherence protein) was most prominently augmented. Upregulation of eap and sae was confirmed by qRT-PCR. Promoter activity of sae P1 was increased by Perform and SDS. Both substances enhanced cellular invasiveness, by 2.5-fold and 3.2-fold, respectively. Increased invasiveness was dependent on Eap and the sae system, whereas agr, sarA, sigB, and fibronectin-binding proteins had no major effect in strain Newman. This unique response pattern was due to a point mutation in SaeS (the sensor histidine kinase), as demonstrated by allele swapping. Newman saePQRS ISP479C behaved like ISP479C, whereas saePQRS Newman rendered ISP479C equally responsive as Newman. Taken together, the findings indicate that a point mutation in SaeS of strain Newman was responsible for increased expression of Eap upon exposure to sublethal Perform and SDS concentrations, leading to increased Eap-dependent cellular invasiveness. This may be important for understanding the regulation of virulence in S. aureus.
HUMAN REASONING IS BOTH LOGICAL AND PRAGMATIC

Le raisonnement humain est a la fois logique et pragmatique. Nous soutenons qu'une competence logique ou mathematique dans le raisonnement humain est fondamentale, bien qu'une telle competence se voie refuser tout role significatif par certains eminents adversaires de cette position. Notre approche du raisonnement logique consiste en : a) un ensemble de schemas d'inference de base associes aux particules logiques telles que si, et, (ne) pas, ou, qui rendent compte de la competence ; b) un programme de raisonnement qui les met en oeuvre ; et c) un ensemble de principes pragmatiques justifies independamment. Nous presentons des donnees qui corroborent notre approche, puis nous discutons plusieurs arguments qui ont ete avances contre les modeles de competence. Nous concluons que ceux qui critiquent ces modeles n'ont pas reussi leur demonstration. Les erreurs de raisonnement semblent plutot resulter de contraintes strategiques et pragmatiques qui sont en dehors du champ d'application d'une competence de base. Finalement, nous discutons la comprehension de texte en tant que cas typique qui montre comment les processus logiques et pragmatiques collaborent au raisonnement dans une meme direction pour fournir une representation coherente et integree. de principes pragmatiques justifies independamment. Nous presentons des donnees qui corroborent notre approche, puis nous discutons plusieurs arguments qui ont ete avances contre les modeles de competence. Nous concluons que ceux qui critiquent ces modeles n'ont pas reussi leur demonstration. Les erreurs de raisonnement semblent plutot resulter de contraintes strategiques et pragmatiques qui sont en dehors du champ d'application d'une competence de base. Finalement, nous discutons la comprehension de texte en tant que cas typique qui montre comment les processus logiques et pragmatiques collaborent au raisonnement dans une meme direction pour fournir une representation coherente et integree.
Performance evaluation of discrete track perpendicular media for high recording density

In this paper, the evaluation results of the performance of discrete track perpendicular media is described. Discrete track patterns for data area and servo patterns such as address marks and burst patterns for each sector are formed by nano-imprint lithography and the dry etching process. Comparison of the error rate profile in both the discrete track media and conventional media is shown. Write and read operations are conducted by a perpendicular magnetic head which has MWW of 195 nm and MRW of 100 nm. In the conventional media, the error rate of the center-track is degraded due to the side-writing and cross talk. On the other hand, in the discrete track media, the error rate is kept unchangeable. This is because the grooves between the tracks prevent the side-writing and cross talk. In addition, higher SNR is observed at the narrower track pitch in the discrete track media.
Relativistic Dynamos in Magnetospheres of Rotating Compact Objects

The kinematic evolution of axisymmetric magnetic fields in rotating magnetospheres of relativistic compact objects is analytically studied, based on relativistic Ohm's law in stationary axisymmetric geometry. By neglecting the poloidal flows of plasma in simplified magnetospheric models, we discuss a self-excited dynamo due to the frame-dragging effect (originally pointed out by Khanna & Camenzind) and propose alternative processes to generate axisymmetric magnetic fields against ohmic dissipation. The first process (which may be called "induced excitation") is caused by the help of a background uniform magnetic field in addition to the dragging of inertial frames. It is shown that excited multipolar components of poloidal and azimuthal fields are sustained as stationary modes, and outgoing Poynting flux converges toward the rotation axis. The second process is a self-excited dynamo through azimuthal convection current, which is found to be effective if plasma rotation becomes highly relativistic with a sharp gradient in the angular velocity. In this case, no frame-dragging effect is needed, and the coupling between charge separation and plasma rotation becomes important. We discuss briefly the results in relation to active phenomena in the relativistic magnetospheres.
Event driven Camera based Eye Tracking

This study proposes a general diagnostic approach based on a camera based eye-tracking technique and a discrete Kalman filter as an iris tracker. In an event driven scenario, the proposed iris-tracking method is used to locate and track the subject’s eye movement and gesture by comparing it to a set of classified normal and typical gestures. The database is based on available videos as well as a number of experiments conducted with normal subjects. Proposed approach Utilized feature based methods of face, such as skin color while detection of the eyes utilized a histogram-based approach and SVM was used as a two-class classifier to divide region into eyes and noneyes patterns. Based on the results, the proposed approach provide an efficient eye detection and tracking method with an average of 99.1% accuracy. KEYWORD Eye detection, Iris tracking, Kalman filter.