Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A system for reading USA census '90 hand-written fields

A specifically designed recognition system is presented for reading the Industry or Employer section of the Official 1990 U.S. Census form. This system was a participant in the 2nd Census OCR Systems Conference, organised by the U.S. Bureau of Census and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It handles the complete reading task starting from the scanned raster image of the form arriving to an ASCII string containing what was written in the fields of the original form. The system is based on several building blocks, connected in a suitable way. In particular, the main operations of the recognition engine are: form identification, field isolation and bounding box removal, field and blob segmentation, broken character joining, isolated character recognition, word building, dictionary correction and finally, hypothesis and confidence generation. Each processing step is described an detail. Results on the NIST Special Database 13 are also reported.
Motor neuron target selectivity and survival after prolonged axotomy.

PURPOSE After a cut peripheral nerve is repaired, motor neurons usually regenerate across the lesion site, however they often enter an inappropriate Schwann cell tube and may be directed to an inappropriate target organ such as skin, resulting in continued loss of function. In fact, only about 10% of adults who receive a peripheral nerve repair display full functional recovery. The reasons for this are many and complex, however one aspect is whether the motor neuron has undergone a prolonged period of axotomy prior to nerve repair. Previous studies have suggested a deleterious effect of prolonged axotomy. METHODS We examined the influence of prolonged axotomy on target selectivity using a cross-reinnervation model of rat obturator motor neurons regrowing into the distal femoral nerve, with its normal bifurcating pathways to muscle and skin. RESULTS Surprisingly, we found that a prolonged period of axotomy resulted in an increase in motor neuron regeneration accuracy. In addition, we found that regeneration accuracy could be increased even further by a simple surgical manipulation of the distal terminal nerve pathway to skin. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that under certain conditions prolonged axotomy may not be detrimental to the final accuracy of motor neuron regeneration and highlight that a simple manipulation of terminal nerve pathways may be one approach to increase such regeneration accuracy.
Identifying effective initiators in OSNs: from the spectral radius perspective

In this paper, we focus on maximizing the influence of online social networks OSNs. Particularly, we try to answer how to select proper information initiators such that information can propagate as widely as possible. We stress our attention on the susceptible-infected model, a type of epidemic models, to describe the process of information diffusion. In general, OSNs can be classified into two categories, Facebook-like OSNs and Twitter-like OSNs. The former ones require bidirectional connections, while the latter do not, so we use the undirected unweighted graph and directed unweighted graph to describe them, respectively. We also pay additional attention to the nonidentity of the link probability on information transmission and build the weight graph, which can also cover both the two types of OSNs. In order to determine values of weight graph's weights, we introduce a learning method to obtain useful factors from raw data for assessing the true link probability on information transmission. Based on spectral analysis within the three graphs, our investigations on the information diffusion show that the spectral radius of the graph adjacency matrix can reflect the capability of information propagation, according to which we could determine effective initiators. We conduct our simulations on real OSNs. Experimental results show that our approach could effectively discover the initiators that spread information widely. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Stochastically Equivalent Dynamical System Approach to Nonlinear Deterministic Prediction

We propose a new prediction method for the nonlinear time series based on the paradigm of deterministic chaos. Introducing the stochastically equivalent dynamical system to the original map, a prediction system is derived by minimizing the random term that defines intervals in which a good prediction performance is obtained. The use of the present method is illustrated for some chaotic systems with particular emphasis on issues of choices of variable time steps that are necessary when discretizing the stochastic differential equation. Applying to some systems, it is found that the present method works well.
A new evolutionary microRNA marker selection using next-generation sequencing data

Next-generation sequencing allows high-throughput measurements of non-coding RNA expression levels in tissues. Analysis of microRNAs (miRNAs) is particularly effective in differentiation of cancerous tissue samples, based on patterns of their expression levels. The paper presents a wrapper feature selection approach based on t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE), Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-Es) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The advantage of t-SNE is amplification of pairwise similarities by the means of t-Student neighborhood function. The attributes are embedded into 1-D space to reveal similarities between the features. Such information is used by CMA-ES through real-valued encoding in order to model pairwise relations between miRNAs with covariance matrices. Finally, the wrapper uses SVM to evaluate the objective, which expresses the tradeoff between classification quality and the desired number of features. The approach is tested on eight different cancer types from The Cancer Genome Atlas. It allows to find small sets of miRNAs to differentiate cancer types from a single tumor class to the normal one with high certainty.
The Tetraspanin CD 9 Affords High-Purity Capture of All Murine Hematopoietic Stem Cells

General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. SUMMARY Prospective isolation is critical for understanding the cellular and molecular aspects of stem cell heteroge-neity. Here, we identify the cell surface antigen CD9 as a positive marker that provides a simple alternative for hematopoietic stem cell isolation at high purity. Crucially, CD9 affords the capture of all hematopoietic stem cells in murine bone marrow in the absence of contaminating populations that lack authentic stem cell function. Using CD9 as a tool to subdivide hematopoietic stem-cell-containing populations , we provide evidence for heterogeneity at the cellular, functional, and molecular levels.
Bipolar Radiofrequency Ablation of Typical Atrial Flutter

Radiofrequency catheter ablation (RFCA) of typical atrial flutter (AFL) is an effective and widely used method of treatment. Confirmation of conduction block in the cavotricuspid isthmus (CTI) is the end point of the procedure. Acute success rate is high, but in some cases may be difficult or not possible to achieve with conventional unipolar energy sources. We describe a case of successful CTI redo procedure using bipolar ablation in a 37-year-old male who in 2010 underwent unsuccessful RFCA for drug-resistant typical AFL. The procedure lasted 120 minutes. A complete lesion creation was not possible using an 8-mm ablation catheter, even with high power settings (60 Watts). An additional problem was impaired steerability of ablation catheter because of the presence of overdeveloped Chiari’s network (CN). The arrhythmia continued to be resistant to class IC
The MCP-1 Gene A-2518G Polymorphism Confers an Increased Risk of Vascular Complications in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients.

OBJECTIVE We aimed to evaluate the correlation of the monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) A-2518G polymorphism with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and vascular complications in T2DM, to aid in understanding its role in pathogenesis. METHODS A total of 150 T2DM patients and 50 healthy controls (group A) were enrolled. The T2DM patients were divided into three groups based on the absence of complications (group B) presence of microvascular disease (group C) or macrovascular disease (group D). DNA of all enrolled subjects was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) for the MCP-1 A-2518G polymorphism. Serum MCP-1 levels were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RESULTS Participants in group D had increased serum MCP-1 levels relative to group B, group C, and group A (all p<0.01). Compared with group A, the frequencies of the MCP-1 A-2518G G/G genotype and G allele were significantly higher in group C and group D (all p<0.05). In contrast to group B, group C had higher frequencies of the G/G genotype and G allele, while group D had higher G allele frequencies (all p<0.05). Logistic regression analysis showed that lower body-mass index (BMI) and free cholesterol (FC), as well as higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) levels may be the protective factors for T2DM, while higher levels of triglycerides (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), and G/G genotype frequency were independent risk factors for T2DM. CONCLUSIONS Our data indicates a correlation between the MCP-1 A-2518G polymorphism with macrovascular complications in T2DM patients; lower BMI and FC, as well as higher HDL-C levels may be the protective factors for T2DM, while higher levels of TG, LDL-C, and G/G genotype frequency were independent risk factors for T2DM.
Electrosynthesis of Commodity Chemicals by an Autotrophic Microbial Community

ABSTRACT A microbial community originating from brewery waste produced methane, acetate, and hydrogen when selected on a granular graphite cathode poised at −590 mV versus the standard hydrogen electrode (SHE) with CO2 as the only carbon source. This is the first report on the simultaneous electrosynthesis of these commodity chemicals and the first description of electroacetogenesis by a microbial community. Deep sequencing of the active community 16S rRNA revealed a dynamic microbial community composed of an invariant Archaea population of Methanobacterium spp. and a shifting Bacteria population. Acetobacterium spp. were the most abundant Bacteria on the cathode when acetogenesis dominated. Methane was generally the dominant product with rates increasing from <1 to 7 mM day−1 (per cathode liquid volume) and was concomitantly produced with acetate and hydrogen. Acetogenesis increased to >4 mM day−1 (accumulated to 28.5 mM over 12 days), and methanogenesis ceased following the addition of 2-bromoethanesulfonic acid. Traces of hydrogen accumulated during initial selection and subsequently accelerated to >11 mM day−1 (versus 0.045 mM day−1 abiotic production). The hypothesis of electrosynthetic biocatalysis occurring at the microbe-electrode interface was supported by a catalytic wave (midpoint potential of −460 mV versus SHE) in cyclic voltammetry scans of the biocathode, the lack of redox active components in the medium, and the generation of comparatively high amounts of products (even after medium exchange). In addition, the volumetric production rates of these three commodity chemicals are marked improvements for electrosynthesis, advancing the process toward economic feasibility.
Changes in brain functional network connectivity after stroke

Studies have shown that functional network connection models can be used to study brain network changes in patients with schizophrenia. In this study, we inferred that these models could also be used to explore functional network connectivity changes in stroke patients. We used independent component analysis to find the motor areas of stroke patients, which is a novel way to determine these areas. In this study, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets from healthy controls and right-handed stroke patients following their first ever stroke. Using independent component analysis, six spatially independent components highly correlated to the experimental paradigm were extracted. Then, the functional network connectivity of both patients and controls was established to observe the differences between them. The results showed that there were 11 connections in the model in the stroke patients, while there were only four connections in the healthy controls. Further analysis found that some damaged connections may be compensated for by new indirect connections or circuits produced after stroke. These connections may have a direct correlation with the degree of stroke rehabilitation. Our findings suggest that functional network connectivity in stroke patients is more complex than that in hea-lthy controls, and that there is a compensation loop in the functional network following stroke. This implies that functional network reorganization plays a very important role in the process of rehabilitation after stroke.
Laser cooling of solids: latest achievements and prospects

Laser cooling of solids, also known as optical refrigeration, is an area of optical science investigating the interaction of light with condensed matter to remove thermal energy of a solid through the interaction of the pump photons and phonons in a solid. Apart from being of fundamental scientific interest, this topic addresses a number of important practical issues such as the development of all solid state optical cryo-coolers, and biological applications. A short history of laser cooling as well as latest achievement of optical refrigeration in rare-earth (RE) doped macro-samples are presented and discussed in the paper. The main technique of laser cooling of RE doped solids based on anti-Stokes fluorescence is presented in this paper. The new approach to optical refrigeration based on the Raman cooling is also considered. It is shown that the future prospects of the research are connected with laser cooling of μm- and nm-sized samples, are in their applications in biophysics in the fundamental studies of low-temperature physics.
Quantum Principal Component Analysis

Principal component analysis is a multivariate statistical method frequently used in science and engineering to reduce the dimension of a problem or extract the most significant features from a dataset. In this paper, using a similar notion to the quantum counting, we show how to apply the amplitude amplification together with the phase estimation algorithm to an operator in order to procure the eigenvectors of the operator associated to the eigenvalues defined in the range [a, b], where a and b are real and 0 ≤ a ≤ b ≤ 1. This makes possible to obtain a combination of the eigenvectors associated to the largest eigenvalues and so can be used to do principal component analysis on quantum computers.
Influence of a Top Crust of Entangled Nanotubes on the Structure of Vertically Aligned Forests of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

The time evolution of the growth process of vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes (or V-SWNTs) on a flat substrate was examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), resonant Raman spectroscopy, and angle-resolved X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES). This detailed characterization gives evidence for the growth of a thin layer (crust) of randomly oriented single-walled carbon nanotubes during the first stages of the growth process. This crust is responsible for the unique forest-like morphology exhibited by this type of SWNT structure.
The measurement of adult blood pressure and management of hypertension before elective surgery

This guideline aims to ensure that patients admitted to hospital for elective surgery are known to have blood pressures below 160 mmHg systolic and 100 mmHg diastolic in primary care. The objective for primary care is to fulfil this criterion before referral to secondary care for elective surgery. The objective for secondary care is to avoid spurious hypertensive measurements. Secondary care should not attempt to diagnose hypertension in patients who are normotensive in primary care. Patients who present to pre‐operative assessment clinics without documented primary care blood pressures should proceed to elective surgery if clinic blood pressures are below 180 mmHg systolic and 110 mmHg diastolic.
Repairing Polygonal Meshes for Volume Meshing

In this paper a systematic approach of repairing polygonal meshes is developed for volume meshing, which can then be used in finite element analyses. All poor-quality elements are classified into three general categories: point element, line element, and overlapped element. A robust iterative scheme is proposed to remove all poor-quality elements progressively, leading to a successful volume meshing for finite element analyses. Our method is general, robust, and capable of handling non-manifold surface meshes as long as the input mesh is watertight, which is the basic requirement for volume meshing. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Enhanced production of Aspergillus niger laccase‐like multicopper oxidases through mRNA optimization of the glucoamylase expression system

In filamentous fungi, most of the strategies used for the improvement of protein yields have been based on an increase in the transcript levels of a target gene. Strategies focusing at the translational level have been also described, but are far less explored. Here the 5′ untranslated sequence of the glaA mRNA, a widely used expression system for the expression of recombinant proteins, was modified by the introduction of different nucleotide elements that have positive role in the translation process. Five Aspergillus niger laccase‐like multicopper oxidases (MCOs) coding genes were fused to the native glaA 5′UTR and the three synthetic versions (sUTR1, sUTR2, and sUTR3) as well, and placed under the control of the glucoamylase gene promoter. Afterwards, a total of 20 fungal transformations were done using A. niger N593 as a recipient strain and 50 transformants per transformation were isolated and analyzed. The result of the incorporation of the synthetic 5′UTRs on the overall productivity of the transformants was assessed, on one hand by monitoring the laccase activity of all the isolated transformants, and on the other hand by quantifying and comparing the activity of those secreting the highest level of each MCO. For this purpose, a high‐throughput method for the screening and selection of the best producers was developed. Once the best transformants producing the highest yield of McoA, McoB, McoC, McoD, and McoJ laccases were selected, their production level was quantified in supernatants of liquid cultures. The results obtained in this work indicate that modifications in the native glaA 5′UTR can lead to improvements in protein yields. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2013; 110: 543–551. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Repression by RB1 characterizes genes involved in the penultimate stage of erythroid development

Retinoblastoma-1 (RB1), and the RB1-related proteins p107 and p130, are key regulators of the cell cycle. Although RB1 is required for normal erythroid development in vitro, it is largely dispensable for erythropoiesis in vivo. The modest phenotype caused by RB1 deficiency in mice raises questions about redundancy within the RB1 family, and the role of RB1 in erythroid differentiation. Here we show that RB1 is the major pocket protein that regulates terminal erythroid differentiation. Erythroid cells lacking all pocket proteins exhibit the same cell cycle defects as those deficient for RB1 alone. RB1 has broad repressive effects on gene transcription in erythroid cells. As a group, RB1-repressed genes are generally well expressed but downregulated at the final stage of erythroid development. Repression correlates with E2F binding, implicating E2Fs in the recruitment of RB1 to repressed genes. Merging differential and time-dependent changes in expression, we define a group of approximately 800 RB1-repressed genes. Bioinformatics analysis shows that this list is enriched for terms related to the cell cycle, but also for terms related to terminal differentiation. Some of these have not been previously linked to RB1. These results expand the range of processes potentially regulated by RB1, and suggest that a principal role of RB1 in development is coordinating the events required for terminal differentiation.
Generic Conceptual Models

Several authors have pointed out that conceptual models have two main shortcomings: first, they are clearly oriented to a specific development paradigm (structured, object oriented, etc.); second, once the conceptual models have been obtained, it is really difficult to change to another development paradigm, because the model orientation to a specific development approach. This fact induces problems in the development process, because developers are encouraged to think in terms of a solution before the problem at hand is well understood, thus anticipating perhaps bad design decisions. A successful analysis task requires models be independent of any implementation issues. In concrete, models should support developers to understand the problem and its constraints before any solution be identified. This paper shows such an alternative approach to conceptual modelling.
Effects of thickness of the flow channel, melt temperature and mold temperature on the flow behavior of polypropylene/silicon carbide composites using injection molding simulation

Computer-aided engineering tools for plastic injection molding have been used to resolve problems of material, part, and mold design. This work analyses the flow behaviour of polypropylene/silicon carbide composites simulated by the injection molding simulation software, Moldex3D, using the spiral flow mold. The spiral flow mold was initially modelled by CATIA, and then the part model was imported into the Moldex3D for the simulation of the injection molding process. The effect of injection parameters, such as thickness of the flow channel (i.e., 2, 3 and 4 mm), melt temperature (i.e., 190, 210 and 230 °C), and mold temperature (i.e., 40, 55 and 70 °C) on the process were investigated. The tested material is polypropylene filled with silicon carbide 15% by weight. The flow ability is expressed as the length of the characterization mold filled under a specified set of parameters. Results showed that the flow length of polymer composites increased with increasing thickness of the flow channel. The rate of change decreased with increasing thickness of the flow channel from 2 mm to 3 mm, and 3 mm to 4 mm, respectively. The flow length of polymer composites increased with increasing melt temperature from 190 °C to 210 °C , and mold temperature also exhibited improvement in flow ability. Furthermore, the effect of injection parameters on shrinkage of the parts of the samples was also investigated. Results indicate that the melt temperature had an influence on the shrinkage. Shrinkage of polymer composites increases with increased melt temperature, whereas thickness of flow channel and mold temperature had no significant effect on shrinkage.