Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AMOVIP: advanced modeling of visual information processing

The AMOVIP project is a joint initiative for a cooperation in specific aspects of vision research and their applications, involving EU partners in Spain and Portugal together with developing countries Mexico and Brazil in Latin America. Models of visual perception concern primarily the local brightness as perceived at different spatial luminance patterns. The main aim of this project is to develop a 2D brightness model that is able to predict most if not all known brightness effects, such as illusions, and to apply this in practical applications for improving medical diagnosis, feature detection in remote sensing, as well as image coding.
Ministère de l’écologie, du développement et de l’aménagement durables

Réf. : Article L.572-1 à L.572-11 du code de l’environ nement Décret n°2006-361 du 24 mars 2006 relatif à l’éta blissement des cartes de bruit et des plans de prévention du bruit dans l’environnement et modi fiant le code de l’urbanisme et ses deux arrêtés d’application des 3 et 4 avril 2006 Lettre de la DPPR du 28 février 2007 aux préfets d département relative à la mise en œuvre de la directive européenne 2002/49/CE du 25 juin 20 02
Effects of season on the maintenance requirements of mature beef cows.

Sixty mature, nonpregnant, nonlactating beef cows of two breed types, Angus and Simmental, were used in a four-period, split-plot study to determine the effects of season on maintenance requirements. Periods were chosen to represent each of the four seasons and ran consecutively from June 14, 1986 through June 20, 1987. All cows were fed at one of four feeding levels (75, 87.5, 112.5, and 125% of estimated ME required for maintenance) a cottonseed hull-based diet in each of the four seasons and were rotated such that all cows received all feeding levels during the study. Retained energy for all cows within periods was determined through changes in body composition determined initially and at the end of each period. Mean DM digestibility (DMD) was similar for both breeds (54.4%), and in both breeds DMD was similar in the summer, fall, and spring and lower (P less than .05) in the winter. Mean DE was 61.4% and also was similar between breeds. Season affected DE, which was greatest (P less than .05) for both breeds in the fall (62.5%). Simmental cows had a 16.1% greater (P less than .05) overall daily ME requirement for weight maintenance than Angus cows (123.5 vs 103.6 kcal/kg.75), and both breeds had greater (P less than .05) requirements during the summer and lower (P less than .05) requirements during the winter (122.6 vs 91.4 and 145.9 vs 109.3 kcal/kg.75 for Angus and Simmental cows, respectively). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Resilience of the Tower Test to Response Bias

Neurocognitive response bias is a concern of clinical neuropsychologists, as accurate assessment is not possible if the patient being tested is not putting forth maximum effort during testing. Despite decades of research in this area, very little study has specifically examined the resilience of neuropsychological tests to incomplete effort. When college students asked to feign cognitive deficits are assessed on the Tower Test from the Delis - Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), they perform similarly to control participants (asked to do their best) on several Tower Test scales and significantly better than those with known clinical deficits. These results suggest that the Tower Test may have some resiliency to neurocognitive response bias.
Repair strength of tendons of varying gliding curvature: a study in a curvilinear model.

PURPOSE This study was done to investigate changes in the strength of the repaired tendons by different curvatures of tendon motion arcs. METHOD Forty-two fresh-frozen digital flexor tendons were divided into 4 groups and were repaired by the modified Kessler method with a running peripheral suture. The tendons were pulled over pulleys with tension at a fixed angle of 90 degrees, but radii of gliding curvature of the pulleys were set at 2.0, 1.5, and 1.0 cm in 3 groups, respectively. The tendons in the other group were subjected to linear tension. These tendons were tested in an Instron tensile machine to determine the 2-mm gap formation force and ultimate strength of the repairs. RESULTS The 2-mm gap formation force of the tendons pulled over the curvature of a 2.0-, 1.0-, and 0.5-cm radius was, respectively, 69%, 61%, and 49% of that pulled linearly. The ultimate strength of the tendons over curvatures of 2.0-, 1.5-, and 1.0-cm radius was, respectively, 77%, 73%, and 63% of that of tendons pulled with linear tension. The gap formation force and ultimate strength were statistically the lowest in the tendons with a gliding radius of curvature of 1.0 cm. Both the gap formation force and the ultimate strength of tendon repairs decreased as the radius decreased. CONCLUSIONS The curvature of tendon motion arcs affects the repair strength of the tendons. The findings suggest an increased likelihood of repair ruptures in the tendons that glide along curvatures over the sheaths, pulleys, or joints.
Phenotypic & molecular characterization of AmpC β-lactamases among Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp. & Enterobacter spp. from five Indian Medical Centers

Background & objectives: AmpC β-lactamases which are often plasmid mediated hydrolyze all β-lactam antibiotics except cefepime and carbapenems. We evaluated the presence of AmpC β-lactamases among Enterobacteriaceae strains recovered prospectively from patients at five Indian tertiary care centres. Methods: The study included 909 consecutive Gram-negative isolates recovered from clinically significant specimens during June 2007 - May 2008 as part of an ICMR-ESBL study. Among the study isolates, 312 were found to be cefoxitin resistant by disc diffusion test (DDT). Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination by E test was done against amikacin, levofloxacin, impinem, meropenem, ertapenem, tigecycline and piperacillin-tazobactam. Combined DDT using phenyl boronic acid as inhibitor with cefoxitin was used for phenotypic confirmation of AmpC phenotype. The common Amp C genotypes ACC, FOX, MOX, DHA, CIT and EBC were detected by multiplex PCR. Results: Plasmid mediated Amp C phenotype was confirmed in 114 of the 312 (36.5%) cefoxitin resistant isolates with 255 (81.7%) showing multidrug resistance. Susceptibility to tigecycline was highest (99%) followed by imipenem, meropenem (97%), ertapenem (89%), amikacin (85%), and piperacillin-tazobactam (74.6%). Levofloxacin resistance was 82 per cent. ESBL co carriage was observed among 92 per cent of Amp C producers. Among 114 Amp C producers, 48 could be assigned a genotype, this included CIT- FOX (n=25), EBC (n=10), FOX (n = 4), CIT (n=3), EBC-ACC (n=2) and one each of DHA, EBC-DHA, FOX -DHA and FOX-EBC-DHA. Interpretation & Conclusions: Overall, AmpC phenotypes were found in 12.5 per cent isolates, multidrug resistance and ESBL co-carriage among them was high suggesting plasmid mediated spread. The study results have implications in rational antimicrobial therapy and continued surveillance of mechanisms of resistance among nosocomial pathogens.
Trusted transport mode based cluster-merkle-tree for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensors networks (WSNs) are susceptible because of its characters. The traditional security mechanisms can not be use to protect the WSNs. In the paper, a trusted transport mode based on cluster-merkle-tree for WSNs (TTMCMT) is proposed, which can provide a method of trusted transport with WSNs of great restriction. The object of scheme is to realize secure authentication and secure message transmission and resist forgery attack, replay attack tamper attack and intrusion attack. We describe the trusted scheme and present performance analyses, which clearly show the scheme is trusted, secure and effective in wireless sensor networks with minimal cost.
ASSESSMENT OF PHYTOREMEDIATION AS BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICE FOR DEGRADED ENVIRONMENTS

Phytoremediation, the use of plants to improve degraded environments, is touted as a low-cost, ‘clean green’ solution to ameliorate degraded lands, and a possible method of mining high-value metals from low-grade ores. The effectiveness of this new technology is, however, variable and highly site-dependent. The decision to implement phytoremediation is usually made on cost. Phytoremediation should compare favourably to the cost of inaction and the best alternative technology. One of major barriers to the use of this technology is uncertainty of its performance on a given site, as compared to ‘tried and true’ alternatives. A robust assessment of the likely success and cost of phytoremediation for each site may help circumvent this barrier. This assessment necessarily has to consider biogeochemical, climatic and economic variables. A phytoremediation decision support system (phyto-DSS) was constructed to integrate environmental and economic data to provide a rapid assessment of phytoremediation as an appropriate management practice across various scenarios. The phyto-DSS calculates daily plant water-use, plant metal uptake, leaching and the cost-benefit of the operation. The system requires daily climate data, as well as data on the substrate and the plants that are to be used. An economic assessment is made by comparing the costs of phytoremediation with those of inaction, and the best alternative technology. The phyto-DSS was used to assess the viability of a commercial phytoremediation operation. Mesocosm and field trials were used to parameterise the inputs. Based on phyto-DSS outputs, phytoremediation was implemented on a 3.6 ha sawdust pile in New Zealand, that is leaching unacceptable amounts of boron into a local stream. In 2000, the site was planted in poplars to control leaching and remove boron from the pile. When the trees are mature, selective coppicing will be used to remove boron from the site. Plant material could even be used as an organic mulch on nearby boron deficient orchards. Leaching has been reduced to three months of the year. The leaching that occurs is collected in a small pond at the foot of the pile and used for irrigation during the summer months. The cost of phytoremediation was US$ 50,000 with annual costs of US$ 5000 for fertiliser and running costs of the irrigation system. The cost of capping the site, the best alternative technology, was estimated at US$ 600,000.
An unsupervised classification method of uterine electromyography signals using wavelet decomposition

The purpose of this study is to classify the uterine contractions in the electromyography (EMG) signal. As the frequency content of the contraction changes from one woman to another and during the pregnancy, wavelet decomposition is used to extract the parameters of each contraction, and an unsupervised statistical classification method based on Fisher test is used to classify events. A principal component analysis projection is then used to evidence the groups resulting from this classification. Results show that uterine contractions may be classified into independent groups according to their frequency content.
Spectral decomposition in multichannel recordings based on multivariate parametric identification

A method of spectral decomposition in multichannel recordings is proposed, which represents the results of multivariate (MV) parametric identification in terms of classification and quantification of different oscillating mechanisms. For this purpose, a class of MV dynamic adjustment (MDA) models in which a MV autoregressive (MAR) network of causal interactions is fed by uncorrelated autoregressive (AR) processes is defined. Poles relevant to the MAR network closed-loop interactions (cl-poles) and poles relevant to each AR input are disentangled and accordingly classified. The autospectrum of each channel can be divided into partial spectra each relevant to an input. Each partial spectrum is affected by the cl-poles and by the poles of the corresponding input; consequently, it is decomposed into the relevant components by means of the residual method. Therefore, different oscillating mechanisms, even at similar frequencies, are classified by different poles and quantified by the corresponding components. The structure of MDA models is quite flexible and can be adapted to various sets of available signals and a priori hypotheses about the existing interactions; a graphical layout is proposed that emphasizes the oscillation sources and the corresponding closed-loop interactions. Application examples relevant to cardiovascular variability are briefly illustrated.
Ab initio lattice dynamics and charge fluctuations in alkaline-earth oxides.

within the local-density approximation. We show phonon dispersion curves along several symmetry directions in the Brillouin zone. The calculated frequencies agree well with the available experimental data. The investigation of the phonon-induced charge-density jIuctuations of MgO and CaO at the I point of the Brillouin zone partially supports the breathing-shell model of lattice dynamics and rules out the charge-transfer model for this class of materials. Moreover, our calculations show that the breathinglike charge-density response is more pronounced for oxygen than for the cations in these compounds.
ECGi Metrics in Atrial Fibrillation Dependency on Epicardium Segmentation

Noninvasive electrocardiographic imaging (ECGi) is a useful tool that can be used to guide ablation procedures in atrial fibrillation (AF patients). Most ECGi resolutions are based on the Boundary Element Method, and thus application of Green's theorem, that requires that electrical sources reside inside a closed volume. The objective of this work is to quantify the error in atrial fibrillation metrics than can be expected if two volumes are segmented for the atria instead of just one. Our results show that segmenting the atria of the patients into two volumes instead of one does impact on rotor-related AF metrics that can be derived from ECGi whereas dominant-frequency metrics are less affected.
Handover based on AP load in software defined Wi-Fi systems

Existing wireless systems do not work efficiently under changing environment. Due to its inflexible and proprietary hardware based architectural limitations it's not easy for an operator to change the network strategy under heavy loads, which enables vendors to try and implement new networking protocols. The software defined network (SDN) is proposed to bring flexibility and programmability, which allows the control plane of switch to be controlled and managed remotely using open-flow channels. Taking the advantage of SDN in wireless networks, a new SDN based Wi-Fi architecture is introduced and an access point (AP) load balance based handover algorithm is proposed. Mininet Wi-Fi emulator is used to construct the desired topology for experiments and performance analysis. Simulation results show a successful handover from an overloaded AP to a lightly loaded AP. A significant improvement observed in the throughput with low latency.
Creating a system to share user experience best practices at eBay

Increasingly, organizations are looking for ways to use technology to document and share information in order to increase effectiveness and foster a sense of community [1, 3]. As one example of a "community of practice" [4, 10], the eBay User Experience & Design group recently created a knowledge management system known as the Playbook to enable the eBay design community to share design best practices and other information. This paper describes the considerations that went into creating the Playbook and how the working team enabled the rest of the eBay design community throughout the world to contribute their best practices. We also discuss how the group as a whole has benefited from this system as well as lessons learned during this process which may help other design communities outside of eBay.
Improving text summarization using neuro-fuzzy approach

ABSTRACT In today’s digital era, it becomes a challenge for netizens to find specific information on the internet. Many web-based documents are retrieved and it is not easy to digest all the retrieved information. Automatic text summarization is a process that identifies the important points from all the related documents to produce a concise summary. In this paper, we propose a text summarization model based on classification using neuro-fuzzy approach. The model can be trained to filter high-quality summary sentences. We then compare the performance of our proposed model with the existing approaches, which are based on fuzzy logic and neural network techniques. ANFIS showed improved results compared to the previous techniques in terms of average precision, recall and F-measure on the Document Understanding Conference (DUC) data corpus.
Preexisting Immunity to Poliovirus Does Not Impair the Efficacy of Recombinant Poliovirus Vaccine Vectors

ABSTRACT Recombinant viruses are attractive candidates for the development of novel vaccines. A number of viruses have been engineered as vaccine vectors to express antigens from other pathogens or tumors. Inoculation of susceptible animals with this type of recombinant virus results in the induction of both humoral and cellular immune responses directed against the foreign antigens. A general problem to this approach is that existing immunity to the vector can diminish or completely abolish the efficacy of the viral vector. In this study, we investigated whether poliovirus recombinants are capable of inducing effective immunity to the foreign antigen in previously vaccinated animals. Antipoliovirus immunity was induced in susceptible mice by intraperitoneal immunization with live poliovirus. Immunized mice developed antibodies directed against capsid proteins that effectively neutralized poliovirus in vitro and protected animals from a lethal challenge with a high dose of pathogenic poliovirus. To test whether preexisting immunity reduces the efficacy of vaccination with recombinant poliovirus, immunized mice were inoculated with a recombinant poliovirus expressing the C-terminal half of chicken ovalbumin (Polio-Ova). Animals developed ovalbumin-specific antibodies and cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL). While the antibody titers observed in preimmune and naive mice were similar, the overall CTL response appeared to be reduced in preimmune mice. Importantly, vaccination with Polio-Ova was able to effectively protect preimmune mice against lethal challenge with a tumor expressing the antigen. Thus, preexisting immunity to poliovirus does not compromise seriously the efficacy of replication-competent poliovirus vaccine vectors. These results contrast with those observed for other viral vaccine vectors and suggest that preexisting immunity does not equally affect the vaccine potential of individual viral vectors.
Sensor Networks, Where Theory Meets Practice

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Maintenance of Immunological Homeostasis by Indukantha Ghritha in Patients with Recurrent Upper Respiratory Tract Infections—A Pilot Study

Indukantha Ghritha (IG), a polyherbal drug used for centuries in Ayurveda, is claimed to be successful in the treatment of respiratory diseases and as a rejuvenating drug. To date, little is known about the immunomodulatory role of IG in recurrent upper respiratory tract infections (RURIs). This study was designed to scientifically validate and evaluate the immunological response mechanisms in patients with RURI. Primarily, immunological functioning of the lymphocyte subsets, Th1 and Th2 cytokines, and immunoglobulins was evaluated before and after administration of IG in patients (n = 48) and normal subjects (n = 25) for a period of 28 days. Flow cytometry revealed a significant increase in the CD3+, CD4+ T cells and CD56+ natural killer cells with a concomitant reduction of percentage of B cells during IG treatment. Increased Th1 cytokines, IL‐2 and IFN‐γ, and decreased Th2 cytokine, IL‐4, were also observed with IG treatment. IgG was markedly decreased, and IgM was increased with no changes in IgA. Assessment of liver and kidney functions and cholesterol levels was within normal limits in patients administered IG, which reinforces its drug utility as a non‐toxic polyherbal drug. Overall, IG provides symptomatic relief by functioning as a potent immunostimulator that can induce type 1 and decrease type 2 immune responses thereby maintaining immunological homeostasis in RURI patients. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Serum visfatin is differentially regulated by insulin and free Fatty acids in healthy men.

CONTEXT Serum visfatin is elevated in insulin-resistant states, ie, obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and polycystic ovary syndrome, thus linking visfatin with the pathogenesis of insulin resistance. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to evaluate the effect of hyperinsulinemia and the acute elevation of free fatty acids (FFAs) on serum visfatin in humans. DESIGN, SETTING AND SUBJECTS We estimated serum visfatin during hyperinsulinemia and the insulin-resistant conditions caused by an acute elevation of FFAs in 19 healthy male volunteers (mean age, 25 ± 7 years; body mass index, 26 ± 4 kg/m(2)) at a university hospital. INTERVENTIONS Intervention included a 6-hour euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp without and with Intralipid/heparin infusion. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Measurements were made of serum visfatin at baseline and at 2 and 6 hours during both clamp studies. RESULTS Hyperinsulinemia resulted in a significant decrease in serum visfatin concentration (P = .043). Concomitant Intralipid/heparin infusion, which caused a reduction of insulin sensitivity by 40% (P < .0001), resulted in a marked increase in serum visfatin (P < .0001), which was already observed after 2 hours of FFAs increase (P < .0001). Serum visfatin during the clamp study after 2 and 6 hours of Intralipid/heparin infusion was significantly higher than respective values during the clamp study without the elevation of FFAs (both P < .0001). The increase in serum visfatin during Intralipid/heparin infusion was positively related to body weight (r = 0.54, P = .016) and γ-glutamyltransferase activity (r = 0.56, P = .011). CONCLUSIONS Serum visfatin is differentially regulated by insulin and FFAs. One might hypothesize that the induction of insulin resistance by FFAs suppresses insulin inhibition of visfatin secretion, resulting in a serum visfatin increase in insulin-resistant conditions.
rac-(1S*,4aS*,8aS*)-4a-Hydroxy-2-methylperhydrospiro[isoquinoline-4,1′-cyclohexan]-2′-one

In the title compound, C15H25NO2, all three six-membered rings adopt chair conformations. The cyclohexane and piperidine rings within the perhydroisoquinoline are trans–trans fused. The N atom has a trigonal–pyramidal geometry (the sum of the bond angles is 328.0°). The methyl substituent occupies the sterically preferrable equatorial position. In the crystal, molecules form infinite [100] chains via O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds.