Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intrasplenic or Subperitoneal Hepatocyte Transplantation to Increase Survival after Surgically Induced Hepatic Failure?

Background: As a basis for future clinical questions, we evaluated the efficacy of hepatocyte transplantation in a surgical model using a subperitoneal or intrasplenic approach for cell implantation. Methods: In rats, acute liver failure was induced by subtotal hepatectomy. Series of allogenic hepatocyte transplantations were performed by varying cell number, site, and sequence of cell transplantation. Results: Following subperitoneal or intrasplenic cell implantation subsequent to liver surgery, no survival benefit was achieved when compared to the control groups. However, intrasplenic cell implantation 24 h prior to liver surgery revealed a statistically significantly higher animal survival (72 vs. 29%). Conclusion: According to our experience, both timing and site of cell implantation played an important role in hepatocyte transplantation. Intrasplenic hepatocyte transplantation 1 day before liver surgery showed the best results in terms of survival. Consequently, we were able to establish a model of hepatocyte transplantation which may be the basis for further investigations evaluating potential treatment modalities to overcome deleterious postoperative liver insufficiency.
Anthrax Toxin Uptake by Primary Immune Cells as Determined with a Lethal Factor-β-Lactamase Fusion Protein

Background To initiate infection, Bacillus anthracis needs to overcome the host innate immune system. Anthrax toxin, a major virulence factor of B. anthracis, impairs both the innate and adaptive immune systems and is important in the establishment of anthrax infections. Methodology/Principal Findings To measure the ability of anthrax toxin to target immune cells, studies were performed using a fusion of the anthrax toxin lethal factor (LF) N-terminal domain (LFn, aa 1–254) with β-lactamase (LFnBLA). This protein reports on the ability of the anthrax toxin protective antigen (PA) to mediate LF delivery into cells. Primary immune cells prepared from mouse spleens were used in conjunction with flow cytometry to assess cleavage and resulting FRET disruption of a fluorescent β-lactamase substrate, CCF2/AM. In spleen cell suspensions, the macrophages, dendritic cells, and B cells showed about 75% FRET disruption of CCF2/AM due to cleavage by the PA–delivered LFnBLA. LFnBLA delivery into CD4+ and CD8+ T cells was lower, with 40% FRET disruption. When the analyses were done on purified samples of individual cell types, similar results were obtained, with T cells again having lower LFnBLA delivery than macrophages, dendritic cells, and B cells. Relative expression levels of the toxin receptors CMG2 and TEM8 on these cells were determined by real-time PCR. Expression of CMG2 was about 1.5-fold higher in CD8+ cells than in CD4+ and B cells, and 2.5-fold higher than in macrophages. Conclusions/Significance Anthrax toxin entry and activity differs among immune cells. Macrophages, dendritic cells, and B cells displayed higher LFnBLA activity than CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in both spleen cell suspension and the purified samples of individual cell types. Expression of anthrax toxin receptor CMG2 is higher in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which is not correlated to the intracellular LFnBLA activity.
Assuring system goals under uncertainty with active formal models of self-adaptation

Designing software systems with uncertainties, such as incomplete knowledge about changing system goals, is challenging. One approach to handle uncertainties is self-adaptation, where a system consists of a managed system and a managing system that realizes a feedback loop. The promise of self-adaptation is to enable a system to adapt itself realizing the system goals, regarding uncertainties. To realize this promise it is critical to provide assurances for the self-adaptive behaviours. Several approaches have been proposed that exploit formal methods to provide these assurances. However, an integrated approach that combines: (1) seamless integration of offline and online verification (to deal with inherent limitations of verification), with (2) support for runtime evolution of the system (to deal with new or changing goals) is lacking. In this paper, we outline a new approach named Active FORmal Models of Self-adaptation (ActivFORMS) that aims to deal with these challenges. In ActivFORMS, the formal models of the managing system are directly deployed and executed to realize self-adaptation, guaranteeing the verified properties. Having the formal models readily available at runtime paves the way for: (1) incremental verification during system execution, and (2) runtime evolution of the self-adaptive system. Experiences with a robotic system show promising results.
Ageing of acrylate‐based resins for stereolithography: thermal and humidity ageing behaviour studies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the ageing behaviour of acrylate‐based resins for stereolithography (SL) technology using different test methods and to investigate these effects on polymers.Design/methodology/approach – Controlling the polymer degradation requires an understanding of many different phenomena, including the different chemical mechanisms underlying structural changes in polymer macromolecules, the influences of polymer morphology, the complexities of oxidation chemistry and the complex reaction pathways of polymer additives. Several ageing characterization experiments are given.Findings – The paper covers the ageing process analysis of acrylate‐based polymers. An overview of the ageing behaviour is given, along with the bandwidth of material characteristics for a prolonged lifetime of this material class.Research limitations/implications – For research and development in the field of rapid prototyping (RP) materials data about ageing behaviour and environmental effects ar.
Increased performance in genetic manipulation by modeling the dielectric properties of the rodent brain

Genetic approaches to control DNA expression in different brain areas have provided an excellent system to characterize gene function in health and disease of animal models. With respect to others, in utero electroporation of exogenous DNA into progenitor cells committed to specific brain areas is the optimal solution in terms of simplicity and velocity. Indeed, this method entails one quick and easy surgical procedure aimed at DNA injection in the embryonic brain followed by brief exposure to a strong electric field by a bipolar electrode. Nevertheless, the technique is still lacking the necessary control and reliability in addressing the field. Moving from a theoretical model that accounts for the morphology and the dielectric properties of the embryonic brain, we developed here a set of novel and reliable experimental configurations based on the use of three electrodes for electroporation in mouse. Indeed, by means of a full 3D model of the embryonic brain and the surrounding environment, we showed that the distribution of the electric field can be finely tuned in order to target specific brain regions at a desired temporal window by proper placement of the three electrodes. In the light of this theoretical background, we manufactured a three-electrode device and performed model-guided experimental sessions. The result was an increased spatial control, extended time frames and unprecedented reliability of the genetic manipulation, with respect to the current state of the art. In particular, the outcomes of this method applied into the mouse model are reported here for the first time.
Sentence Level Machine Translation Evaluation as a Ranking

The paper proposes formulating MT evaluation as a ranking problem, as is often done in the practice of assessment by human. Under the ranking scenario, the study also investigates the relative utility of several features. The results show greater correlation with human assessment at the sentence level, even when using an n-gram match score as a baseline feature. The feature contributing the most to the rank order correlation between automatic ranking and human assessment was the dependency structure relation rather than BLEU score and reference language model feature.
String Metrics and Word Similarity applied to Information Retrieval

Over the past three decades, Information Retrieval (IR) has been studied extensively. The purpose of information retrieval is to assist users in locating information they are looking for. Information retrieval is currently being applied in a variety of application domains from database systems to web information search engines. The main idea of it is to locate documents that contain terms the users specify in their queries. The thesis presents several string metrics, such as edit distance, Q-gram, cosine similarity and dice coefficient. All these string metrics are based on plain lexicographic term matching and could be applied to classical information retrieval models such as vector space, probabilistic, boolean and so on. Experiment results of string distance metrics on real data are provided and analyzed. Word similarity or semantic similarity relates to computing the similarity between concepts or senses of words, which are not lexicographically similar. WordNet, can be classified into two categories: one uses solely semantic links, the other combines corpus statistics with taxonomic distance. Five similarity measures belonging to these two categories are selected to conduct the experiment on the purpose of comparison. Hierarchical clustering algorithms including both single-linkage clustering and complete-linkage clustering are studied by employing word similarity measures as clustering criteria. Stopping criteria including Calinski & Harabasz, Hartigan and WB-index are used to find the proper hierarchical level in the clustering algorithms. Experiments on both synthetic datasets and real datasets are conducted and the results are analyzed. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Pasi Fränti for the advice, encouragement and support he provided to me in supervising this thesis eort. I would also like to thank Qinpei Zhao, for her critical analyses, technical advice and recommendations. Special thanks go to Dr. Olli Virmajoki for his reviews and recommendations.
Noninvasive (Input) Impedance, Pulse Wave Velocity, and Wave Reflection in Healthy Middle-Aged Men and Women

The relation between arterial function indices, such as pulse wave velocity and augmentation index with parameters derived from input impedance analysis, is still incompletely understood. Carotid pressure, central flow waveforms, and pulse wave velocity were noninvasively acquired in 2026 apparently healthy, middle-aged subjects (1052 women and 974 men) 35 to 55 years old at inclusion. Input and characteristic impedance, reflection coefficient, the ratio of backward-to-forward pressure amplitude (reflection magnitude), and augmentation index were derived. Pulse wave velocity increased by 15% (from 6.1 to 7.0 m/s) both in men and women. In qualitative terms, input impedance evolved from a pattern indicative of wave transmission and reflection to a pattern more compatible with a windkessel-like system. In women, a decrease in total arterial compliance led to an increased input impedance in the low frequency range, whereas few changes were observed in men. Characteristic impedance did not change with age in women and even decreased in men (P<0.001) and could not be identified as the primary determinant of central pulse pressure. Augmentation index increased with age, as was expected, and was systematically higher in women (P<0.001). Reflection coefficient and reflection magnitude increased with age (P<0.001) without gender differences. We conclude that, in healthy middle-aged subjects, the age-related increase in arterial stiffness (pulse wave velocity) is not fully paralleled by an increase in arterial impedance, suggesting a role for age-dependent modulation of aortic cross-sectional area. Wave reflection increases with age and is not higher in women than in men.
Two-handed input in a standard configuration of notebook with external mouse

This paper discusses two-handed input for interaction with notebooks, motivated by the observation that notebooks are often used with an external mouse. We present results of a survey of 905 notebook users, of which 63.8% reported occasional, and 47.0% regular use of a mouse instead of the built-in pointing device (a touchpad in 95.8% of the reported configurations). Based on this finding, we propose use of the built-in touchpad with the non-dominant hand when an external mouse is used as primary pointing device. We provide a systematic analysis of the input space of such a configuration, and contribute a set of techniques that specifically exploit touchpad properties for input with the non-dominant hand. These techniques include flick, scale and rotate gestures; absolute positioning with tokens; and touchpad use as key modifier. The techniques are demonstrated in a variety of GUI applications in a standard environment of notebook with external mouse.
General aspects of solid on liquid growth mechanisms

Liquids, in general, tend to have a lower density as solids and therefore it is not straightforward to deposit solid over liquids in a way that the liquid becomes hermetically sealed under the solid layer. The authors review that several phenomena that can easily be observed in nature are only due to particular anomalies and solid on liquid is rather an exception as the rule. Natural solid on liquid systems are lacking of thermal, mechanical or chemical stability. It is not surprising, that one is not at all used thinking about to e.g. replace the gate oxide in a thin film transistor by a thin film of oil, or, to find in other microsystems functional liquids between a stack of thin solid films. However, once this becomes a serious option, a large variety of new Microsystems with new functionalities can be easily designed. In another paper (this conference and [1]) the authors pioneered that the polymer Parylene (poly(p-xylylene)) can be deposited on liquids coming already quite close to the above mentioned vision. In this paper the authors ask if one can synthesize other solid on liquid systems and surprisingly conclude, based on experimental evidence, that solid on liquid deposition seems to rather be the rule and not the exception.
A Note on Concurrent Graph Sharing Games

In the concurrent graph sharing game, two players, called First and Second, share the vertices of a connected graph with positive vertex-weights summing up to $1$ as follows. The game begins with First taking any vertex. In each proceeding round, the player with the smaller sum of collected weights so far chooses a non-taken vertex adjacent to a vertex which has been taken, i.e., the set of all taken vertices remains connected and one new vertex is taken in every round. (It is assumed that no two subsets of vertices have the same sum of weights.) One can imagine the players consume their taken vertex over a time proportional to its weight, before choosing a next vertex. In this note we show that First has a strategy to guarantee vertices of weight at least $1/3$ regardless of the graph and how it is weighted. This is best-possible already when the graph is a cycle. Moreover, if the graph is a tree First can guarantee vertices of weight at least $1/2$, which is clearly best-possible.
Superfast Line Spectral Estimation

A number of recent works have proposed to solve the line spectral estimation problem by applying off-the-grid extensions of sparse estimation techniques. These methods are preferable over classical line spectral estimation algorithms because they inherently estimate the model order. However, they all have computation times that grow at least cubically in the problem size, thus limiting their practical applicability in cases with large dimensions. To alleviate this issue, we propose a low-complexity method for line spectral estimation, which also draws on ideas from sparse estimation. Our method is based on a Bayesian view of the problem. The signal covariance matrix is shown to have Toeplitz structure, allowing superfast Toeplitz inversion to be used. We demonstrate that our method achieves estimation accuracy at least as good as current methods and that it does so while being orders of magnitudes faster.
The Poststimulation Program of CD4 Versus CD8 T Cells (Death Versus Activation-Induced Nonresponsiveness)1

Both CD8 and CD4 T cells undergo autocrine IL-2-induced proliferation and clonal expansion following stimulation with Ag and costimulation. The CD8 T cell response is transient because the cells rapidly become activation-induced nonresponsive (AINR) and exhibit split anergy. In these cells, the capacity for IL-2 production is lost, but TCR-mediated IFN-γ production and cytotoxicity are maintained. At this point, the CTL become dependent on IL-2 provided by CD4 Th cells for continued expansion. If IL-2 is available to support expansion for a brief period, AINR is reversed and the cells regain the ability to produce IL-2. In this study, we show that CD4 T cells do not become AINR, but instead are rendered susceptible to Fas-mediated activation-induced cell death following stimulation through TCR and CD28. Using z-VAD-fmk or anti-Fas ligand mAb to inhibit cell death, we demonstrate that previously activated CD4 T cells retain the ability to up-regulate c-Jun N-terminal kinase activity and IL-2 mRNA levels upon TCR engagement and no longer require costimulation. This rewiring of signaling pathways is similar to that seen following reversal of AINR in CD8 T cells. Thus, CD8 and CD4 T cells appear to use distinct mechanisms, AINR and activation-induced cell death, respectively, to limit excessive clonal expansion following a productive response, while permitting important effector functions to be expressed.
Informing a new business‐to‐business relationship:: Corporate identity and the emergence of a relationship identity

Purpose – Firms face the challenge of working with other firms in their business network so as to increase the value of products and services offered to end customers and consumers. This often requires managers to invest in developing strong and effective business‐to‐business relationships. While an extensive literature examines the different dimensions of successful business‐to‐business relationships, little research examines how perceived corporate identity is likely to influence market relationships. This paper aims to explore how a buyer and supplier draw on their own identities and the identities of each other in ways that enable them to develop a basis on which to conceptualise and operationalise a strategic sourcing relationship. Specifically, the paper seeks to investigate the emergent relationship identity that results from buyer‐seller interactions.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses an in‐depth, longitudinal case study of a buyer‐supplier relationship which involves an engineering buye.
Performance Evaluation of QOS Parameters of Hybrid ACO/PSO for Mobile ADHOC Networks

multicast describes the distribution of structures from just one single node to number of destinations. These real-time services have a stringent necessity of QoS factors like bandwidth, delay, jitter etc. to ensure clean, consistent, and fair sign to the receivers. In this paper, in the proposed technique the issue of multi-cast tree has been removed using clustering based technique. First of all multi-radio and multichannel based cluster has been deployed and these cluster head are responsible for the multicasting which decrease the overall energy consumption of nodes and complexity of intelligent algorithms. The path has been evaluated based upon the ant colony optimization. Thus it improves the overall performance of the QoS parameters of Ad-hoc networks.
Renormalization of the electron-phonon interaction by strong electronic correlations in high-Tc superconductors.

The renormalization of the electron-phonon interaction by strong electronic correlations is studied using a one-band Hubbard model with infinite repulsion and nearest ({ital t} model) and nearest and second-nearest ({ital tt}` model) neighbor hopping terms and an on-site electron-phonon coupling. Using Hubbard`s {ital X} operators and an extension from 2 to {ital N} degrees of freedom for the electrons the leading contributions for the electron self-energy and the vertex function in 1/{ital N} and the electron-phonon coupling constant are given and numerically evaluated for a square lattice. We find that the momentum dependence of the vertex function depends strongly on doping: For large dopings it is rather weak, with decreasing doping it becomes more and more pronounced leading to a strong reduction of the vertex at larger momentum transfers until, for very small dopings, the vertex essentially consists of a forward scattering peak with a width proportional to the doping. This behavior occurs both in the {ital t} and the {ital tt}{prime} models and also in one dimension where analytic expressions are derived. Correlation effects also change {alpha}{sup 2}{ital F} in general: The full-symmetric component {alpha}{sup 2}{ital F}{sub 1} is in the {ital t} model somewhat, in the {ital tt}{prime}more » model rather strongly suppressed, especially near half-filling; the other symmetry components {alpha}{sup 2}{ital F}{sub {ital i}} with {ital i}=2,. ,5 increase strongly with decreasing doping and are of similar magnitude as {alpha}{sup 2}{ital F}{sub 1} near half-filling. Including also direct Coulomb repulsion nontrivial symmetries such as {ital d} wave become more stable than the {ital s}-wave order parameter below a critical value for the doping even for the considered phonon-mediated superconductivity. Most dramatic is the quenching of the resistivity due to electron-phonon scattering both in the {ital t} and the {ital tt}` models at intermediate and small dopings. « less
Participatory Design of Socially Assistive Robots for Preventive Patient-Centered Healthcare *

This paper presents an ongoing project using participatory design methods to develop socially assistive robots (SARs) for older adults diagnosed with depression and cooccurring physical illness. We frame SARs development in the context of preventive patient-centered healthcare, which empowers patients as the primary drivers of health and aims to the delay the onset of disease rather than focusing on treatment. We describe how SARs can be of particular benefit in this new direction in healthcare, and detail our participatory design study with older adults and therapists aimed at developing preventive SARs applications for this population.
Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on the Association between Outpatient Statins Use and Infectious Disease-Related Mortality

Background To update and refine systematic literature review on the association between outpatient statins use and mortality in patients with infectious disease. Materials and Methods We searched articles published before September 31, 2012, on the association between statins and infectious disease-related mortality through electronic databases. Eligible articles were analyzed in Review Manager 5.1. We conducted stratification analysis by study design, infection types, clinical outcomes and study locations. Results The pooled odds ratio (OR) for death (statins use vs. no use) across the 41 included studies was 0.71 (95% confidence interval: 0.64, 0.78). The corresponding pooled ORs were 0.58 (0.38, 0.90), 0.66 (0.57, 0.75), 0.71 (0.57, 0.89) and 0.83 (0.67, 1.04) for the case-control study, retrospective cohort studies, prospective cohort studies and RCTs; 0.40 (0.20, 0.78), 0.61 (0.41, 0.90), 0.69 (0.62, 0.78) and 0.86 (0.68, 1.09) for bacteremia, sepsis, pneumonia and other infections; 0.62 (0.534, 0.72), 0.68 (0.53, 0.89), 0.71 (0.61, 0.83) and 0.86 (0.70, 1.07) for 30-day, 90-day, in-hospital and long-term (>1 year) mortality, respectively. Conclusions Outpatient statins use is associated with a lower risk of death in patients with infectious disease in observational studies, but in a less extent in clinical trials. This association also varies considerably by infection types and clinical outcomes.