Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Polarimetric Image Discrimination With Depolarization Mueller Matrix

Polarimetric imaging techniques exploit the polarization characteristics of objects and, thus, can achieve a better discriminative performance. In this paper, an adaptive discrimination method based on the classification of depolarization Mueller matrix is proposed. According to the Mueller-Jones theory, the general formula of Mueller matrix for depolarization optical system is analyzed. In addition, a two-channel imaging platform is constructed to obtain a polarization-difference image with certain states of polarization. Under this methodology, every pixel of the image can be expanded as a combination of independent entries of the Mueller matrix, with polarization states as the representative coefficients. Thus, the optimal polarization states can be obtained via support vector machine (SVM), and a high contrast image is achieved. Finally, experiments on two groups of different materials are conducted to demonstrate the applicability and performance of the proposed method. The related criteria (e.g., Fisher ratio) are introduced to quantitatively evaluate the results. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method shows advantages for image discriminations.
A Piecewise Hybrid Stochastic Resonance Method for Early Fault Detection of Roller Bearings

An unsaturated stochastic resonance (USR) method to overcome the output saturation phenomenon observed in the classical bistable stochastic resonance (CBSR) method has been examined. However, the parameters of USR models can lead to inaccurate results while identifying the characteristic frequency amid high levels of background noise. To overcome this limitation, an adaptive piecewise hybrid stochastic resonance (APHSR) method that introduces a parameter <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula> to improve the performance of fault characteristic detection is proposed. The optimal parameters are determined automatically using both 3D reverse positioning and least-squares methods, combing with signal-to-noise ratio and spectral value as evaluation criteria. The significance of parameter <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula> is demonstrated by analyzing the critical amplitude and Kramers’ escape rate. When the results were evaluated through comparison with the CBSR and USR methods via a simulation and two experiments on a motor and a parallel gearbox, it was demonstrated to be more capable of diagnosing the early faults of rotating machinery especially in high levels of background noise.
Partial Aminoglycoside Lesions in Vestibular Epithelia Reveal Broad Sensory Dysfunction Associated with Modest Hair Cell Loss and Afferent Calyx Retraction

Although the effects of aminoglycoside antibiotics on hair cells have been investigated for decades, their influences on the dendrites of primary afferent neurons have not been widely studied. This is undoubtedly due to the difficulty in disassociating pathology to dendritic processes from that resulting from loss of the presynaptic hair cell. This was overcome in the present investigation through development of a preparation using Chinchilla laniger that enabled direct perilymphatic infusion. Through this strategy we unmasked gentamicin’s potential effects on afferent calyces. The pathophysiology of the vestibular neuroepithelia after post-administration durations of 0.5 through 6 months was assessed using single-neuron electrophysiology, immunohistochemistry, and confocal microscopy. Hair cell densities within cristae central zones (0.5-, 1-, 2-, and 6-months) and utricle peri- and extrastriola (6-months) regions were determined, and damage to calretinin-immunoreactive calyces was quantified. Gentamicin-induced hair cell loss exhibited a profile that reflected elimination of a most-sensitive group by 0.5-months post-administration (18.2%), followed by loss of a second group (20.6%) over the subsequent 5.5 months. The total hair cell loss with this gentamicin dose (approximately 38.8%) was less than the estimated fraction of type I hair cells in the chinchilla’s crista central zone (approximately 60%), indicating that viable type I hair cells remained. Extensive lesions to afferent calyces were observed at 0.5-months, though stimulus-evoked modulation was intact at this post-administration time. Widespread compromise to calyx morphology and severe attenuation of stimulus-evoked afferent discharge modulation was found at 1 month post-administration, a condition that persisted in preparations examined through the 6-month post-administration interval. Spontaneous discharge was robust at all post-administration intervals. All calretinin-positive calyces had retracted at 2 and 6 months post-administration. We found no evidence of morphologic or physiologic recovery. These results indicate that gentamicin-induced partial lesions to vestibular epithelia include hair cell loss (ostensibly reflecting an apoptotic effect) that is far less extensive than the compromise to stimulus-evoked afferent discharge modulation and retraction of afferent calyces (reflecting non-apoptotic effects). Additionally, calyx retraction cannot be completely accounted for by loss of type I hair cells, supporting the possibility for direct action of gentamicin on the afferent dendrite.
Metabolism of the Aliphatic Nitramine 4-Nitro-2,4-Diazabutanal by Methylobacterium sp. Strain JS178

ABSTRACT The aliphatic nitramine 4-nitro-2,4-diazabutanal (NDAB; C2H5N3O3) is a ring cleavage metabolite that accumulates during the aerobic degradation of the energetic compound hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) by various Rhodococcus spp. NDAB is also produced during the alkaline hydrolysis of either RDX or octahydro-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX) and during the photolysis of RDX. Traces of NDAB were observed in a soil sampled from an ammunition-manufacturing facility contaminated with both HMX and RDX, suggesting natural attenuation. In this study, we report the isolation of a soil bacterium that is able to degrade NDAB under aerobic conditions. The isolate is a pink-pigmented facultative methylotroph affiliated with the genus Methylobacterium. The strain, named Methylobacterium sp. strain JS178, degrades NDAB as a sole nitrogen source, with concomitant growth and formation of 1 molar equivalent of nitrous oxide (N2O). Comparison of the growth yield of strain JS178 grown on NDAB, nitrite (NO2−), or ammonium (NH4+) as a nitrogen source revealed that 1 N equivalent is assimilated from each mole of NDAB, which completes the nitrogen mass balance. In radiotracer experiments, strain JS178 mineralized 1 C of the [14C]NDAB produced in situ from [14C]RDX by Rhodococcus sp. strain DN22. Studies on the regulation of NDAB degradation indicated that allantoin, an intermediate in the purine catabolic pathway and a central molecule in the storage and transport of nitrogen in plants, up-regulated the enzyme(s) involved in the degradation of the nitramine. The results reveal the potential for the sequential participation of rhodococci and methylobacteria to effect the complete degradation of RDX.
Observation of a One-Dimensional Tonks-Girardeau Gas

We report the observation of a one-dimensional (1D) Tonks-Girardeau (TG) gas of bosons moving freely in 1D. Although TG gas bosons are strongly interacting, they behave very much like noninteracting fermions. We enter the TG regime with cold rubidium-87 atoms by trapping them with a combination of two light traps. By changing the trap intensities, and hence the atomic interaction strength, the atoms can be made to act either like a Bose-Einstein condensate or like a TG gas. We measure the total 1D energy and the length of the gas. With no free parameters and over a wide range of coupling strengths, our data fit the exact solution for the ground state of a 1D Bose gas.
RBF-based terminal sliding mode control for a class of underactuated mechanical system

In this paper, a radial basis function (RBF) based terminal sliding mode controller is proposed for a class of underactuated mechanical system (UMS). Instead of the conventional terminal sliding mode control, a new terminal sliding surface is designed for the second order system to eliminate the singularity problem. An adaptive RBF neural networks method is utilized to deal with the system uncertainties and external disturbances whose upper bounds are not required to be known in advance. The proposed performance of the system is evaluated through the control of planar underactuated two-link manipulator. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
Proteasome inhibitors can alter the signaling pathways and attenuate the P‐glycoprotein‐mediated multidrug resistance

Numerous signaling pathways were reported to be involved in the resistance for conventional cytotoxic drugs, although one of the main reasons is the overexpression of P‐glycoprotein (P‐gp) in multidrug resistant cancer cells. The overexpression of P‐gp has been associated with the resistance to a wide range of anticancer drugs. Doxorubicin and paclitaxel are substrates of this transporter system and have an important role for the various human malignancies. In the present study, drug‐sensitive MCF7 and multidrug resistant MCF7/ADR (characterized by overexpression of P‐gp) human breast cancer cell lines were used as an experimental model. We have found that PS341 and MG132, proteasome inhibitors, reduced the degree of the multidrug resistance (MDR) in MCF7/ADR cells. This phenomenon was accompanied by a decrease in the IC50 value of doxorubicin and paclitaxel from 55.9 ± 3.46 to 0.60 ± 0.08 μM, and from 17.61 ± 1.77 to 0.59 ± 0.12 μM, respectively. The IC50 values of sensitive cells for doxorubicin and paclitaxel were about 0.42 and 0.83 μM, respectively. The effect of PS341 and MG132 on MCF7/ADR cells was associated with a significant decrease in both protein and gene levels of P‐gp expression. Moreover, with regard to the expression of possible signal transduction pathways of mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) related to the activation of mdr1, proteasome inhibitors did significantly influence the activation of these proteins. Western blot analysis revealed that 24 hr exposure of multidrug resistant MCF7/ADR cells with proteasome inhibitors did change the levels of DNA binding activity of nuclear factor‐kappaB (NF‐kappaB), pERK1/2, c‐Jun, and p‐c‐Jun. In conclusion, we could remark that proteasome inhibitors (especially PS341) attenuate the resistance of MCF7/ADR cells for P‐gp substrate drugs of doxorubicin and paclitaxel. Several proteins are supposed to be associated with the resensitization of the cells to conventional cytotoxic drugs, although decreased activity of P‐gp is at least involved in the proteasome inhibitor‐related resensitization. And influence with MAPK pathways, which have been reported to be associated with the regulation of P‐gp, might be contributed to the resensitization brought by proteasome inhibitors. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Improving web search ranking by incorporating summarization

Though link analysis based page ranking approaches have reached great success in commercial search engines (SE), the content based relevance computing approaches also play a very important role in the ranking of information retrieval results. Since most of existing relevance computing algorithms are running on the full text of a web page, this paper is focused on the relevance computing between user's query and the auto-generated text summarization of each webpage. The first part of this paper provides a brief introduction of the state of art of relevance computing in SE. The inference network approach is especially concerned in this paper since it is the baseline method in our experiment SE system. Then the auto text summarization method based on multi-source integration is introduced, and the full text of each web page is replaced by its auto-generated abstract to compute the relevance between the webpage and user query. To evaluate the effect of the condensation representation of full text on the relevance based page rank of a system, several experiments are conducted in the last part of this paper, which include the method remarked above with different compress ratio, and the full text based ranking. In addition to the efficiency gain of the SE system, the experiment results also shows that the ranking results based on the summary generated by our text summarization system with 30% compress ratio can also get 11.29% of the precision improvement for the SE system.
Superiority of Serum Cystatin C Over Creatinine in Prediction of Long-Term Prognosis at Discharge From ICU

Objectives: Renal outcomes after critical illness are seldom assessed despite strong correlation between chronic kidney disease and survival. Outside hospital, renal dysfunction is more strongly associated with mortality when assessed by serum cystatin C than by creatinine. The relationship between creatinine and longer term mortality might be particularly weak in survivors of critical illness. Design: Retrospective observational cohort study. Patients: In 3,077 adult ICU survivors, we compared ICU discharge cystatin C and creatinine and their association with 1-year mortality. Exclusions were death within 72 hours of ICU discharge, ICU stay less than 24 hours, and end-stage renal disease. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: During ICU admission, serum cystatin C and creatinine diverged, so that by ICU discharge, almost twice as many patients had glomerular filtration rate less than 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 when estimated from cystatin C compared with glomerular filtration rate estimated from creatinine, 44% versus 26%. In 743 patients without acute kidney injury, where ICU discharge renal function should reflect ongoing baseline, discharge glomerular filtration rate estimated from creatinine consistently overestimated follow-up glomerular filtration rate estimated from creatinine, whereas ICU discharge glomerular filtration rate estimated from cystatin C well matched follow-up chronic kidney disease status. By 1 year, 535 (17.4%) had died. In survival analysis adjusted for age, sex, and comorbidity, cystatin C was near-linearly associated with increased mortality, hazard ratio equals to 1.78 (95% CI, 1.46–2.18), 75th versus 25th centile. Conversely, creatinine demonstrated a J-shaped relationship with mortality, so that in the majority of patients, there was no significant association with survival, hazard ratio equals to 1.03 (0.87–1.2), 75th versus 25th centile. After adjustment for both creatinine and cystatin C levels, higher discharge creatinine was then associated with lower long-term mortality. Conclusions: In contrast to creatinine, cystatin C consistently associated with long-term mortality, identifying patients at both high and low risk, and better correlated with follow-up renal function. Conversely, lower creatinine relative to cystatin C appeared to confer adverse prognosis, confounding creatinine interpretation in isolation. Cystatin C warrants further investigation as a more meaningful measure of renal function after critical illness.
Adaptive image denoising method based on non-local means filtering

This paper proposes an adaptive image denosing method. Conventional non-local means(NLM) method is not able to adaptively choose filter parameter. According to the characteristic value of different image patch, we build a prediction function, which is used to choose a suitable NLM parameter for the image, thus realize the adaptive non-local means filtering. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed method is superior to the traditional non-local means in both peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjective denoising quality for images.
Association between the NQO1 C609T polymorphism with hepatocellular carcinoma risk in the Chinese population.

BACKGROUND Associations between the NQO1 C609T polymorphism and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) risk are a subject of debate. We therefore performed the present meta-analysis to evaluate links with HCC susceptibility. MATERIALS AND METHODS Several major databases (PubMed, EBSCO), the Chinese national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) and the Wanfang database were searched for eligible studies. Crude odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used to measure the strength of associations. RESULTS A total of 4 studies including 1,325 patients and 1,367 controls were identified. There was a significant association between NQO1 C609T polymorphism and HCC for all genetic models (allelic model: OR=1.45, 95%CI=1.23-1.72, p<0.01; additive model: OR=1.96, 95%CI=1.57-2.43, p<0.01; dominant model: OR=1.62, 95%CI=1.38-1.91, p<0.01; and recessive model: OR=1.53, 95%CI=1.26-1.84, p<0.01). On subgroup analysis, similarly results were identified in Asians. For Asians, the combined ORs and 95% CIs were (allelic model: OR=1.50, 95%CI=1.24-1.82, p<0.01; additive model: OR=2.11, 95%CI=1.48-3.01, p<0.01; dominant model: OR=1.69, 95%CI=1.42-2.02, p<0.01; and recessive model: OR=1.59, 95%CI=1.16-2.19, p<0.01). CONCLUSIONS The current meta-analysis suggested that the NQO1 C609T polymorphism could be a risk factor for developing HCC, particularly in the Chinese population.
Validation of the protective Ostertagia ostertagi ES‐thiol antigens with different adjuvantia

Intramuscular immunization of calves with an excretory–secretory antigen fraction enriched for cysteine proteinase activity (ES‐thiol) and QuilA as adjuvant induces a protective immune response against the abomasal nematode Ostertagia ostertagi. The objectives of the present study were to confirm the protective capacity of ES‐thiol in combination with QuilA, to test Al(OH)3 as adjuvant for vaccination against O. ostertagi and to look for correlations between protection and immunological effector responses. Calves(seven animals/group) were vaccinated three times intramuscularly with 100 µg antigen and/or adjuvant (ES‐thiol with QuilA, ES‐thiol with Al(OH)3, QuilA alone and Al(OH)3 alone) and subsequently challenged with a trickled oral infection of 25 000 infective larvae in total over 25 days. Faecal egg counts in the ES‐thiol QuilA group were reduced by 56% during the two‐month period of the trial compared to the QuilA control group (P < 0·002). Calves immunized with ES‐thiol QuilA had significantly smaller adult worms (P < 0·002) and less eggs/female worm (P < 0·05) compared to the QuilA control group. No differences in egg output, worm counts or parameters of worm fitness were observed in the ES‐thiol Al(OH)3 group compared to the Al(OH)3 control group. Although the protective immune mechanism against O. ostertagi remains unknown, protection in the ES‐thiol QuilA group was associated with high levels of parasite‐specific antibodies in the abomasal mucosa.
Migraine in young females with irritable bowel syndrome: still a challenge

Migraine without aura is frequently reported in female patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but knowledge about the relationship between these two conditions is still lacking. This study was aimed to explore the particularities of migraine without aura in young female patients with IBS in order to establish a possible link between them. From a cohort of young female patients hospitalized with IBS in the Internal Medicine Department, 30 joined this pilot study, and they were assigned into two groups on the basis of presence or absence of migraine. In this sample, 15 patients have mild to moderate migraine without aura, with a recently taken normal brain scan, and 15 were without migraine. Diseases and conditions not related to migraine and other possible specific female comorbidities were ruled out. Patients undertook a thorough clinical examination in order to assess fibromyalgia (FM) and chronic pelvic pain (CPP), Questionnaires for migraine disability assessment (MIDAS) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) were performed. Laboratory testing of blood, urine, and stool were also performed. Optimized lymphocyte proliferation test for food allergy (FA) and a fecal microbiota (microbiological semiquantitative method) for dysbiosis (DB) assessment were performed. Based on the results, migraine-positive group displayed more severe comorbidities: FM (p=0.0002), FA (p=0.0006), CPP (p=0.026), higher scores of anxiety (GAD, p=0.0008), and more severe DB (p=0.0009). We noticed a strong positive correlation between MIDAS and GAD (r=0.83), a good positive correlation between MIDAS and DB (r=0.56), and a moderate positive correlation between MIDAS, FM, and FA (r=0.46 and 0.41). In conclusion, young female patients with IBS and migraine without aura displayed more severe associated issues – anxiety, intestinal DB, FM, FA, and CPP. The severity of migraine correlated well with anxiety range and DB magnitude and moderately with FM and FA.
Prognostic and predictive roles of high-degree microsatellite instability in colon cancer: a National Cancer Institute-National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project Collaborative Study.

PURPOSE The role of high-degree microsatellite instability (MSI-H) as a marker to predict benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy remains unclear. PATIENTS AND METHODS To help define its impact, we conducted an analysis of National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) patients who were randomly assigned to a surgery-alone group (untreated cohort) and patients assigned to an adjuvant fluorouracil (FU) -treated group (treated cohort). MSI-H and other potential markers were assessed (TGF-BRII, p53, thymidylate synthase, and Ki67). RESULTS In all, 98 (18.1%) of 542 patients exhibited MSI-H, and there was a strong inverse relationship between MSI-H and mutant p53 status (P < .001). The prognostic analyses showed increased recurrence-free survival (RFS) for MSI-H patients versus MSS/MSI-L patients (P = .10), but showed no difference in overall survival (OS; P = .67). There was a potential interaction between MSI-H and mutant p53 in terms of improved RFS (P = .03). In the predictive marker analysis, we observed no interaction between MSI status and treatment for either RFS (P = .68) or OS (P = .62). Hazard ratios (HR) for RFS for MSI-H versus MSS/MSI-L patients were 0.77 (95% CI, 0.40 to 1.48) in the untreated-patients group and 0.60 (95% CI, 0.30 to 1.19) in the treated-patients group. HRs for OS were 0.82 (95% CI, 0.44 to 1.51) and 1.02 (95% CI, 0.56 to 1.85) for the respective groups. There was a trend toward improved RFS in patients with MSI-H and mutant p53. CONCLUSION These results do not support the use of MSI-H as a predictive marker of chemotherapy benefit.
Quantifying the Potential Benefits of On-chip Near-Data Computing in Manycore Processors

Increasing data set sizes motivate for a shift of focus from computation-centric systems to data-centric systems, where data movement is treated as a first-class optimization metric. An example of this emerging paradigm is in-situ computing in largescale computing systems. Observing that data movement costs are increasing at an exponential rate even at a node level (as a node itself is fast-becoming a large manycore system), this paper provides a limit study of near-data computing within a manycore chip. Specifically, it makes the following two contributions. First, it quantifies the potential performance benefits of three incarnations of the near-data computing paradigm under the assumption of zero on-chip network latency and an infinite number of extra cores for offloading computations close to data they require. Our detailed experimental evaluation indicates that the most successful of these incarnations can boost the performance of the original execution by as much as 75%. The second contribution of this paper is an investigation of more realistic schemes that can approximate the potential savings achieved by perfect near-data computing. Our results demonstrate performance improvements ranging between 44% and 52%, over the original execution. We also discuss the pros and cons of each of these realistic schemes, and point to further research directions.