Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Synthesis and Characterization of Polystyrene-Poly( Ethylene Oxide) -Heparin Block Copolymers

A procedure for the preparation of new block copolymers composed of a hydrophobic block of polystyrene, a hydrophilic spacer-block of poly(ethylene oxide) and a bioactive block of heparin was investigated. Polystyrene with one amino group per chain was synthesized by free radical oligomerization of styrene in dimethylformamide, using 2-aminoethanethiol as a chain transfer agent. This amino group was used in the coupling reaction with amino-telechelic poly(ethylene oxide) to produce an AB type diblock copolymer with one amino group per polystyrene (PSt)-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) chain. The amino-semitelechelic oligo-styrene was converted into the isocyanate-semitelechelic oligo-styrene using toluene 2,4-diisocyanate and subsequent coupling with H2N-PEO-NH2 afforded AB type block copolymers with terminal amino groups. The coupling of PSt-PEO-NH2 with heparin was performed in a DMF-H2O mixture, first by activating the heparin carboxylic groups with EDC at pH 5.1-5.2 and subsequently reacting the activated carboxylic groups with the amino groups of the PSt-PEO-NH2 at pH 7.5. Depending on the molecular weights of the diblock copolymer used 25-29% w/w heparin was incorporated. These polymers will be further evaluated for their blood-compatibility.
The Moderating effects of Contextual Factors on a Buyer's Trust in E-Commerce Platforms and Sellers

Drawing on trust transfer theory and signal theory, we investigate how perceived effectiveness of ecommerce institutional mechanisms (PEEIM) and perceived website quality of the seller (PWQS) moderate the relationships between trust in platform, trust in seller and purchase intention in the context of Consumer to Consumer (C2C) platforms. To test our proposed model, we surveyed 224 buyers of TaoBao, a major Chinese C2C portal. The results indicate that PEEIM has no effect on the relationship between trust in platform and trust in seller, yet it positively moderates the relationship between trust in seller and purchase intention. In addition, PWQS positively moderates the relationship between trust in platform and trust in seller, but negatively moderates the relationship between trust in seller and purchase intention. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
WEB BASED MEDICAL DIAGNOSIS SYSTEM USING ANN - ARM FOR THE DIABETES MELLITUS

Diabetes is a chronic disease and a major public health challenge worldwide. According to the International Diabetes Federation, there are currently 246 million diabetic people worldwide, and this number is expected to rise to 430 million by 2030. Furthermore, 3.8 million deaths are attributable to diabetes complications each year. It has been shown that 80% of type 2 diabetes complications can be prevented or delayed by early identification of people at risk. Early detection of diabetes would be of great value given the fact that at least 50% and 80% in some countries, of all people with diabetes are unaware of their condition and will remain unaware until complications appear. Several data mining and machine learning methods have been used for the diagnosis, prognosis, and management of diabetes. In this study it is decided to fuse Artificial Neural Network (ANN) with Association Rule Mining (ARM) for better accuracy. The proposed study is to Design and Develop a Web based Artificial Neural Network with Association Rule Mining for the diagnosis of Diabetic Disease.
Test Selection with Application to Detecting Disease Association with Multiple SNPs

We consider the motivating problem of testing for association between a phenotype and multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within a candidate gene or region. Various statistical approaches have been proposed, including those based on either (combining univariate) single-locus analyses or (multivariate) multilocus analyses. However, it is known in theory that there is no single uniformly most powerful test to detect association with multiple SNPs. On the other hand, several tests have been shown to be among frequent winners across a range of practical situations, but the identity of the most powerful one changes with the situation in an unknown way. Here we propose a novel test selection procedure to select from five such tests: a so-called UminP test that combines multiple univariate/single-locus score tests by taking the minimum of their p values as its test statistic, a multivariate score test and its two modifications, and a so-called sum test. We also illustrate its application to selecting genotype codings for the sum test since the performance of the sum test depends on its genotype coding in an unknown way. Our major contributions include the methodology of estimating the power of a given test with a given dataset and the idea of using the estimated power as the criterion for test selection. We also propose a fast simulation-based method to calculate p values for the test selection procedure and for any method of combining p values. Our numerical results indicated that the proposed test selection procedure always yielded power close to the most powerful test among the candidate tests at any given situation, and in particular, our proposed test selection performed either better than or as well as the popular combining method of taking the minimum p value of the candidate tests.
Optimisation et réduction de la dose d'irradiation au scanner : aspects techniques et impact en pratique clinique courante. (CT radiation dose optimization and reduction : technical aspects and impact in clinical pratice)

Depuis son introduction dans les annees 1970, le scanner est devenu une technique d’imagerie medicale incontournable grâce a son excellente performance pour le diagnostic de nombreuses pathologies. Toutefois, le scanner est un examen d’imagerie irradiant. Compte-tenu des risques potentiels de cancer radio-induit lies aux faibles doses de rayons X, la reduction de la dose d’irradiation au scanner est primordiale. Dans ce travail, nous avons etudie plusieurs facteurs techniques et comportementaux qui permettent d’optimiser et de reduire la dose d’irradiation au scanner, tout en preservant une excellente performance diagnostique. Du cote des facteurs comportementaux, la sensibilisation des equipes medicales et paramedicales est fondamentale dans une demarche d’optimisation de la dose d’irradiation au scanner. De meme, la limitation du nombre de phases d’acquisition et la reduction de la couverture d’acquisition sont deux manieres simples pour reduire les doses delivrees. Du cote des facteurs techniques, nous avons montres que l’utilisation des reconstructions iteratives, par rapport aux reconstructions standards en retroprojection filtree, permet de reduire de moitie la dose d’irradiation des scanners, a qualite d’image equivalente. L’acquisition en mode volumique pour les scanners avec une faible couverture d’acquisition et l’utilisation de la modulation automatique du milliamperage permettent aussi de reduire et d’optimiser les doses. Enfin, nous nous sommes interesses a l’optimisation de protocoles de scanner en pratique clinique courante en se focalisant sur les scanners realises pour la recherche d’une colique nephretique et pour les scanners en imagerie osteo-articulaire. Dans ce dernier domaine, nous avons aussi propose des protocoles de scanner pour des applications cliniques avancees comme le scanner dynamique des articulations ou le scanner de perfusion tumorale
Psychoacoustics: Facts and Models

This description of the processing of sound by the human hearing system presents the quantitative relationship between sound stimuli and auditory perceptions in terms of hearing sensations, and implements these relationships in model form. Modern views are outlined of peripheral activity in the inner ear, which plays an important role in the development of many hearing sensations. The dependence of these sensations on acoustic parameters is described in psychoacoustical terms.
Proactive temperature management in MPSoCs

Preventing thermal hot spots and large temperature variations on the die is critical for addressing the challenges in system reliability, performance, cooling cost and leakage power. Reactive thermal management methods, which take action after temperature reaches a given threshold, maintain the temperature below a critical level at the cost of performance, and do not address the temperature variations. In this work, we propose a proactive thermal management approach, which estimates the future temperature using regression, and allocates workload on a multicore system to reduce and balance the temperature to avoid temperature induced problems. Our technique reduces the hot spots and temperature variations significantly in comparison to reactive strategies.
The effects of an emotional intelligence education program on the emotional intelligence of children

Our aim was to research the effect of emotional intelligence education on the emotional intelligence of young children. The sample group were 6-year-old children attending preschool classes ( N = 120). A subgroup of 40 students attended a 12-week emotional intelligence program. After 12 weeks the children were measured using the Sullivan Emotional Intelligence Scale (Sullivan, 1999); results showed that an emotional intelligence education program contributed significantly to children’s emotional intelligence levels.
Working Memory Load Attenuates Emotional Enhancement in Recognition Memory

Emotionally arousing stimuli are perceived and remembered better than neutral stimuli. Under threat, this negativity bias is further increased. We investigated whether working memory (WM) load can attenuate incidental memory for emotional images. Two groups of participants performed the N-back task with two WM load levels. In one group, we induced anxiety using a threat of shock paradigm to increase attentional processing of negative information. During task performance we incidentally and briefly flashed emotional distracter images which prolonged response times in both load conditions. A subsequent unannounced immediate recognition memory test revealed that when load at exposure had been low, recognition was better for negative items in both participant groups. This enhancement, however, was attenuated under high load, leaving performance on neutral items unchanged regardless of the threat of shock manipulation. We conclude that both in threat and in normal states WM load at exposure can attenuate immediate emotional memory enhancement.
Vicarious traumatization and secondary traumatic stress: A research synthesis

Vicarious traumatization (VT) refers to harmful changes that occur in professionals’ views of themselves, others, and the world, as a result of exposure to the graphic and/or traumatic material of their clients. Secondary traumatic stress (STS) refers to a set of psychological symptoms that mimic post-traumatic stress disorder, but is acquired through exposure to persons suffering the effects of trauma. Numerous studies have sought to identify correlates of both VT and STS, yet there still exists a lack of conceptual clarity in the literature about VT, STS, and the related constructs of burnout and compassion fatigue. This has made it difficult to use the literature to inform practice and training. This study clarifies the definitions of VT and STS and uses levels of evidence analysis to synthesize the research findings to date. Originally planned as a meta-analysis, the study was re-designed as methodological issues in the literature became apparent that would call into question the validity of a meta-analysis. The current method of analysis documents the degree of evidence for the most commonly researched factors that have been researched as possible contributors to the development of both VT and STS, synthesizing the findings of published research and dissertations written in the English language from 1994–2003. Findings indicate that persuasive evidence exists for personal trauma history, reasonable evidence for perceived coping style, and some evidence for supervision experiences, as important predictors of VT. Persuasive evidence for amount of exposure to trauma material and reasonable evidence for personal trauma history are indicated as important in the development of STS. Limitations of the current study and directions for further research are discussed. *An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 112th Annual Conference of the American Psychological Association, 31 July 2004, Honolulu Hawaii, USA
Structural Patterns in Translation

Our project seeks to analyze word alignments between translated texts. The motivation for this study was the inversion transduction grammar proposed by Dekai Wu [6]. It models the alignments between bilingual sentence pairs through the use of parse trees that represent the alignments as rearrangements of phrases between the two translations. Ultimately, we hope to bring about a better understanding of word rearrangements in translation, which could be used to improve automated translators.
Speeding up top-down attention control learning by using full observation knowledge

We present a general mathematical description of the top-down attention control problem. Three important components are identified in the model: context extraction, attention focus and decision making. The context gives a coarse blurry representation of the whole input; the attention module models the focus of attention on a limited part of input, and the decision making component accounts the final decision of the agent for its motory actions. In order to achieve a faster convergence of attention learning in the online phase, an offline optimization step is performed in advance. To do so, we incorporate the knowledge of a full observer agent that has approximately learned the optimal decision making of the task. The simulation results show that by employing our algorithm, the learning speed is improved.
High isolation MMIC switch design technique based on novel high-/low-pass switch concept

This paper describes the proposal of novel high-/low-pass RF switch concept. This proposed RF switch concept is completely different from the conventional switch circuits because the broadband perfect reflection occurs in the off-state, which is essential to achieve broadband high isolation characteristics. By changing the gate bias of FETs between two states of high and low voltages, two functions can be switched between high-pass filter and low-pass filter. By utilizing the stopband of high-pass filter below its cut-off frequency, extremely high isolation can be achieved. And also, broadband low insertion loss can be obtained by using the passband below its cut-off frequency of low-pass filter. High isolation of more than 79 dB SPST MMIC switch with less than 1.6 dB insertion loss have been successfully demonstrated below 6 GHz by using this novel switch concept with small chip size of 1.1 mm × 1.0 mm.
Right ventricular dysplasia with biventricular involvement.

A23-year-old man was admitted to the hospital with severe heart failure and cachexia. Ventricular arrhythmias and progressive heart failure (predominantly right heart) had been observed in the previous 3 years. Physical examination was unremarkable except for a widely split second heart sound, a systolic left precordial lift, third and fourth heart sounds, and signs of increased venous pressure. Chest radiography showed significant cardiomegaly. The ECG was characterized by right atrial enlargement, low QRS voltages, wide complexes in the right precordial leads (epsilon waves? ), and negative T waves. Nonsustained ventricular tachycardia with polymorphic configuration was observed at ambulatory ECG monitoring. The echocardiogram (Figure 1⇓) disclosed severe right ventricular enlargement, with aneurysm at the level of the outflow, severe depression …
PER-7, an Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase with Increased Activity toward Broad-Spectrum Cephalosporins in Acinetobacter baumannii

ABSTRACT Acinetobacter baumannii isolate AP2 was recovered from a bronchial lavage sample of a patient hospitalized in Paris, France. A. baumannii AP2 was resistant to all β-lactams, including carbapenems, and expressed the extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) PER-7, which differs from PER-1 by 4 amino acid substitutions. Compared to PER-1, PER-7 possessed higher-level hydrolytic activities against cephalosporins and aztreonam. The blaPER-7 gene was chromosomally located and associated with a mosaic class 1 integron structure. Additionally, isolate AP2 expressed the carbapenem-hydrolyzing oxacillinase OXA-23 and the 16S RNA methylase ArmA, conferring high-level resistance to aminoglycosides.
Reconstruction of Ancestral Genomic Sequences Using Likelihood

A challenging task in computational biology is the reconstruction of genomic sequences of extinct ancestors, given the phylogenetic tree and the sequences at the leafs. This task is best solved by calculating the most likely estimate of the ancestral sequences, along with the most likely edge lengths. We deal with this problem and also the variant in which the phylogenetic tree in addition to the ancestral sequences need to be estimated. The latter problem is known to be NP-hard, while the computational complexity of the former is unknown. Currently, all algorithms for solving these problems are heuristics without performance guarantees. The biological importance of these problems calls for developing better algorithms with guarantees of finding either optimal or approximate solutions. We develop approximation, fix parameter tractable (FPT), and fast heuristic algorithms for two variants of the problem; when the phylogenetic tree is known and when it is unknown. The approximation algorithm guarantees a solution with a log-likelihood ratio of 2 relative to the optimal solution. The FPT has a running time which is polynomial in the length of the sequences and exponential in the number of taxa. This makes it useful for calculating the optimal solution for small trees. Moreover, we combine the approximation algorithm and the FPT into an algorithm with arbitrary good approximation guarantee (PTAS). We tested our algorithms on both synthetic and biological data. In particular, we used the FPT for computing the most likely ancestral mitochondrial genomes of hominidae (the great apes), thereby answering an interesting biological question. Moreover, we show how the approximation algorithms find good solutions for reconstructing the ancestral genomes for a set of lentiviruses (relatives of HIV). Supplementary material of this work is available at www.nada. kth.se/~isaac/publications/aml/aml.html.
Free-space quasi-optical spectrometer for material characterization in the 50–500 GHz frequency range

A compact free-space setup is designed based on 90-degree off-axis parabolic mirrors and pyramidal horn antennas to cover a wide frequency range from 50 GHz to 500 GHz. A commercial VNA with frequency extenders is used to measure s-parameters and provide raw data to extract intrinsic material characteristics. The calibration process is simplified and a method is presented to extract both real and imaginary part of permittivity. Several materials were measured and the extracted parameters are presented.
A comparative study of some non-parametric spectral classifiers. Applications to problems with high-overlapping training sets

In this paper we show some alternative classifiers to the widely used maximum likelihood (ML) classifier in order to obtain high accuracy classifications. The ML classifier does not provide high accuracy classifications when the training sets are high-overlapping in the representation space due to the shape of the decision boundaries it imposes. In these cases, it is preferred to adopt another classifier that may adjust the decision boundaries in a better fashion. This objective may be achieved with several non-parametric classifiers and by using the regularized discriminant classifier, as shown in this paper.
The Genomic Architecture of Novel Simulium damnosum Wolbachia Prophage Sequence Elements and Implications for Onchocerciasis Epidemiology

Research interest in Wolbachia is growing as new discoveries and technical advancements reveal the public health importance of both naturally occurring and artificial infections. Improved understanding of the Wolbachia bacteriophages (WOs) WOcauB2 and WOcauB3 [belonging to a sub-group of four WOs encoding serine recombinases group 1 (sr1WOs)], has enhanced the prospect of novel tools for the genetic manipulation of Wolbachia. The basic biology of sr1WOs, including host range and mode of genomic integration is, however, still poorly understood. Very few sr1WOs have been described, with two such elements putatively resulting from integrations at the same Wolbachia genome loci, about 2 kb downstream from the FtsZ cell-division gene. Here, we characterize the DNA sequence flanking the FtsZ gene of wDam, a genetically distinct line of Wolbachia isolated from the West African onchocerciasis vector Simulium squamosum E. Using Roche 454 shot-gun and Sanger sequencing, we have resolved >32 kb of WO prophage sequence into three contigs representing three distinct prophage elements. Spanning ≥36 distinct WO open reading frame gene sequences, these prophage elements correspond roughly to three different WO modules: a serine recombinase and replication module (sr1RRM), a head and base-plate module and a tail module. The sr1RRM module contains replication genes and a Holliday junction recombinase and is unique to the sr1 group WOs. In the extreme terminal of the tail module there is a SpvB protein homolog—believed to have insecticidal properties and proposed to have a role in how Wolbachia parasitize their insect hosts. We propose that these wDam prophage modules all derive from a single WO genome, which we have named here sr1WOdamA1. The best-match database sequence for all of our sr1WOdamA1-predicted gene sequences was annotated as of Wolbachia or Wolbachia phage sourced from an arthropod. Clear evidence of exchange between sr1WOdamA1 and other Wolbachia WO phage sequences was also detected. These findings provide insights into how Wolbachia could affect a medically important vector of onchocerciasis, with potential implications for future control methods, as well as supporting the hypothesis that Wolbachia phages do not follow the standard model of phage evolution.