Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunochemical, chromatographic, and milk-clotting activity measurements for quantification of milk-clotting enzymes in bovine rennets

Summary Monospecific rabbit antibodies were produced against bovine chymosin (rennin) and bovine pepsin A and used for quantitative measurements of these enzymes by rocket immunoelectrophoresis. Bovine pepsin B was identified and measured quantitatively in tandem crossed immunoelectrophoresis, using a polyspecific antibody preparation. Chromatographically purified chymosin B and bovine pepsins A and B were used as standards. The contents of chymosin and bovine pepsin A were also determined by 2 forms of DEAE chromatography, and by an assay utilizing the ratio of milk-clotting activity at pH 6·0 and 6·5. Results obtained by measurements on 3 bovine rennets (calf rennet, adult bovine rennet, and a mixture of such types) by the different methods of analysis were in good agreement. The advantages of the immunochemical methods are direct and simultaneous identification and quantitation of enzymes.
TSGen: a tool for modeling of frame loss in streaming video

Packet loss affects the quality of streaming video. We describe a new Time Series Generator (TSGen) tool to generate a time series that models video packet loss phenomena by capturing both the moment and autocorrelation signatures of frame loss in a video stream. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The sophisticated kind theory

ABSTRACT Generic sentences are commonsense statements of the form ‘Fs are G,’ like ‘Bears have fur’ or ‘Rattlesnakes are poisonous. ’ Kind theories hold that rather than being general statements about individual objects, they are particular statements about kinds. This paper examines the standard objections against the kind theory and argues that they only apply to the most simplified version of the theory. The more sophisticated version, which has received little discussion in the literature in spite of having been formulated concurrently with the simple version, is immune to this standard battery of objections. After discussing four distinctive features of generic sentences, the paper then presents a modernized extension of the sophisticated kind theory which explains the presence of these features. Although the choice between a kind theory and the more standardly accepted adverbial quantificational theory is complex, these considerations suggest that the two approaches are at least deserving of equal consideration for the purposes of natural language semantics.
Towards a Science of Alzheimer's Disease Management: A Model Based Upon Current Knowledge of Retrogenesis

Background: General relationships between dotage and infancy and childhood have been acknowledged for more than two millennia. Recent findings indicate precise relationships between functional, praxic, and feeding changes in the course of the degenerative dementia of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and inverse corresponding developmental sequences. Similar inverse relationships between AD and human development can be described for cognition and language skills; for physiologic measures of electroencephalographic activity, brain glucose metabolism, and developmental neurologic reflex changes; and for the neuropathologic and neuroanatomic progression of these processes. In AD, these processes may be termed “retrogenesis. ” The relevance of the retrogenesis model for AD management is explored. Method: The functional stages of AD can be translated into developmental age equivalents that can be utilized to explicate observed changes in the disease. Results: The retrogenesis-based developmental age model can usefully inform an understanding of the general care needs, emotional and behavioral changes, and activity needs of the AD patient. This model must be amended by necessary caveats regarding physical differences, variations in age-associated pathology, differences in social and societal reactions, and differences in background between AD patients and their developmental age “peers. ” Conclusions: Knowledge of retrogenesis and the developmental age of the AD patients can form a nidus for the development of a nascent science of disease management. Such a science must ultimately incorporate not only appropriate caveats but also relevant universal human needs, such as those for dignity, love, and movement.
Piecewise-Planar StereoScan: Sequential Structure and Motion Using Plane Primitives

The article describes a pipeline that receives as input a sequence of stereo images, and outputs the camera motion and a Piecewise-Planar Reconstruction (PPR) of the scene. The pipeline, named Piecewise-Planar StereoScan (PPSS), works as follows: the planes in the scene are detected for each stereo view using semi-dense depth estimation; the relative pose is computed by a new closed-form minimal algorithm that only uses point correspondences whenever plane detections do not fully constrain the motion; the camera motion and the PPR are jointly refined by alternating between discrete optimization and continuous bundle adjustment; and, finally, the detected 3D planes are segmented in images using a new framework that handles low texture and visibility issues. PPSS is extensively validated in indoor and outdoor datasets, and benchmarked against two popular point-based SfM pipelines. The experiments confirm that plane-based visual odometry is resilient to situations of small image overlap, poor texture, specularity, and perceptual aliasing where the fast LIBVISO2 [1] pipeline fails. The comparison against VisualSfM+CMVS/PMVS [2] , [3] shows that, for a similar computational complexity, PPSS is more accurate and provides much more compelling and visually pleasant 3D models. These results strongly suggest that plane primitives are an advantageous alternative to point correspondences for applications of SfM and 3D reconstruction in man-made environments.
The nominal and real effects of hospital global budgets in France.

If global budgets consistently reduce health care expenditures by cutting inefficiency and economic rents (i.e., by lowering the relative price of services), their appeal as a public policy tool is clear. This paper shows the French inpatient global budget policy, implemented in 1984, was successful in slowing expenditure growth. It did so, however, by reducing the volume of services; the relative price of these services remained constant. Compared with previous research, these findings suggest the effect of global budgets depends on the method of implementing the policy and the health care infrastructure on which the expenditure policy is imposed.
A retrospective, observational study comparing the four available immunomodulatory treatments for relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis

We performed an observational, retrospective analysis of outcome in a sequential cohort of patients with relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) in Argentina. Patients treated for 16 months with interferon β‐1a (Avonex®; 30 μg intramuscularly, once a week), interferon β‐1a (Rebif®; 44 μg subcutaneously, thrice weekly), interferon β‐1b (Betaferon®; 250 μg subcutaneously, every other day) or glatiramer acetate (Copaxone®; 20 mg subcutaneously daily) were compared with a non‐treated group of patients. The different treatment groups were similar in baseline demographic and clinical variables. A significant fall in the annual relapse rate was observed for all four treatments, with the largest effect observed with glatiramer acetate (81% reduction in relapse rate, compared with pre‐treatment values). The proportion of patients remaining relapse‐free for the entire 16‐month treatment period varied from 37% in untreated patients to 83% in the glatiramer acetate treated group. No statistically significant changes in disability scores were observed over the treatment period. This first such comparative study in Latin America shows that treatment of multiple sclerosis patients with immunomodulatory therapies in the context of current standards of care in Argentina provides clinically important benefit, and suggest that some of these therapies may be better than others.
Endogenous TRPC1, TRPC3, and TRPC7 Proteins Combine to Form Native Store-operated Channels in HEK-293 Cells*

Endogenously expressed canonical transient receptor potential (TRPC) homologs were investigated for their role in forming store-operated, 1-oleoyl-2-acetyl-sn-glycerol-stimulated, or carbachol (CCh)-stimulated calcium entry pathways in HEK-293 cells. Measurement of thapsigargin-stimulated Ba2+ entry indicated that the individual suppression of TRPC1, TRPC3, or TRPC7 protein levels, by small interfering RNA (siRNA) techniques, dramatically inhibited (52–68%) store-operated calcium entry (SOCE), whereas suppression of TRPC4 or TRPC6 had no effect. Combined suppression of TRPC1-TRPC3, TRPC1-TRPC7, TRPC3-TRPC7, or TRPC1-TRPC3-TRPC7 gave only slightly more inhibition of SOCE (74–78%) than seen with suppression of TRPC1 alone (68%), suggesting that these three TRPC homologs work in tandem to mediate a large component of SOCE. Evidence from co-immunoprecipitation experiments indicates that a TRPC1-TRPC3-TRPC7 complex, predicted from siRNA results, does exist. The suppression of either TRPC3 or TRPC7, but not TRPC1, induced a high Ba2+ leak flux that was inhibited by 2-APB and SKF96365, suggesting that the influx is via leaky store-operated channels. The high Ba2+ leak flux is eliminated by co-suppression of TRPC1-TRPC3 or TRPC1-TRPC7. For 1-oleoyl-2-acetyl-sn-glycerol-stimulated cells, siRNA data indicate that TRPC1 plays no role in mediating Ba2+ entry, which appears to be mediated by the participation of TRPC3, TRPC4, TRPC6, and TRPC7. CCh-stimulated Ba2+ entry, on the other hand, could be inhibited by suppression of any of the five endogenously expressed TRPC homologs, with the degree of inhibition being consistent with CCh stimulation of both store-operated and receptor-operated channels. In summary, endogenous TRPC1, TRPC3, and TRPC7 participate in forming heteromeric store-operated channels, whereas TRPC3 and TRPC7 can also participate in forming heteromeric receptor-operated channels.
SDL-based feasible test generation for communication protocols

Generation of test cases from a protocol specification for the purposes of testing both control and data flow aspects of a protocol implementation is a challenging problem. We propose an approach for protocols based on extended finite state machine (EFSM) models. Basically, we use the method of H. Ural and A. Williams (see Formal Description Techniques, vol.VI no.C-22, p.335-50, 1994). We extend the method to deal with more than one SDL process. The use of the improved method upgraded with simulation feasibility checking is illustrated by a practical example of test case generation for V5.2 startup procedure that involves the CTRL (control) and LNK (link) protocols with appropriate processes.
Learning the identity effect as an artificial language: bias and generalisation*

The results of two artificial grammar experiments show that individuals learn a distinction between identical and non-identical consonant pairs better than an arbitrary distinction, and that they generalise the distinction to novel segmental pairs. These results have implications for inductive models of learning, because they necessitate an explicit representation of identity. While identity has previously been represented as root-node sharing in autosegmental representations (Goldsmith 1976, McCarthy 1986), or implicitly assumed to be a property that constraints can reference (MacEachern 1999, Coetzee & Pater 2008), the model of inductive learning proposed by Hayes & Wilson (2008) assumes strictly feature-based representations, and is unable to reference identity directly. This paper explores the predictions of the Hayes & Wilson model and compares it to a modification of the model where identity is represented (Colavin et al.2010). The results of both experiments support a model incorporating direct reference to identity.
CD45RB-targeting strategies for promoting long-term allograft survival and preventingchronic allograft vasculopathy1

Background. CD45RB is a potent immunomodulatory target to achieve long-term allograft survival. We evaluated the in vivo effect of anti-CD45RB monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatment in combination with conventional immunosuppression or costimulatory blockade strategies as a therapeutic modality for future clinical application. Methods. A fully MHC-mismatched vascularized mouse cardiac allograft model was used to test the interactions between anti-CD45RB mAb and conventional immunosuppressive drugs or costimulatory blockade of the CD40/CD154 or B7/CD28 pathway. Chronic rejection was examined histologically for development of chronic allograft vasculopathy. Results. Cyclosporine significantly abrogated the effect of anti-CD45RB therapy. In contrast, rapamycin acted synergistically with anti-CD45RB mAb in promoting long-term allograft survival. CD154 blockade further enhanced the tolerogenic efficacy of anti-CD45RB mAb. These synergistic effects of combination treatments also prevented the development of chronic allograft vasculopathy. Conclusion. CD45RB-targeting strategy in combination with the use of rapamycin or costimulatory blockade promotes allograft tolerance and prevents chronic rejection.
Comparison of CORE network emulation platforms

CORE (Common Open Research Emulator) is a network emulation tool that uses virtualization provided by FreeBSD jails, Linux OpenVZ containers, and Linux namespaces containers. Here the modular architecture is described that makes supporting these three platforms possible, and the relative performance of each is compared. Initial work in integrating this tool with higher-fidelity link- and physical- layer emulation is also described.
AN INTELLIGENT – AGENT BASED FRAMEWORK FOR LIVER DISORDER DIAGNOSIS USING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNIQUES 1

Artificial intelligence is an emerging area of modern research that aims at infusing machine intelligence through computational techniques. Data mining (DM) enables efficient knowledge extraction from large datasets, in order to discover hidden or non-obvious patterns in data. Our motivation for using DM was based on the hypothesis that the application of the appropriate DM technique on patient records could form a suitable mechanism for the knowledge extraction representing the correlation between patient symptoms and disease. The extracted knowledge was then used for the provision of personalised recommendations to patients in collaboration with the agent-based framework developed. The agent – based system developed interacts with different modules of the overall integrated system developed to support liver disease diagnostic system. This research work aims at exploring the impact of machine learning techniques in liver disorder detection on two different datasets comprising of more than 900 patient records acquired from the University of California, Irvine, Machine Learning Repository . The findings revealed that C4.5 decision tree algorithm and the Random Tree algorithm produced 100 percent accuracy in classification of the liver disorders and we believe implementation of the proposed intelligent agent-based system will raise a precise and accurate diagnostic system for clinical ailments of diverse kind. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore this large collection of supervised machine learning techniques in the design of intelligent agent-based clinical systems for diagnostic purposes.
ThinICA-CSP algorithm for discrimination of multiclass motor imagery movements

This paper presents a ThinICA-CSP1 algorithm for discrimination of multiclass motor imagery (MI) movements for Brain Computer Interfacing (BCI) applications. This algorithm performs a joint approximate diagonalization of the second and higher order statistics of the observations with the aim of identifying the relevant independent components of the EEG signals and their corresponding spatial filters. In order to speed up the convergence, the algorithm is initialized from the multiclass Common Spatial Pattern (CSP) filter matrix. This helps the ICA algorithm to find the closest solution to the problem. The algorithm was tested on BCI competition IV dataset 2a and the obtained performance was compared with two existing methods. An improvement in classification performance is observed using the ThinICA-CSP algorithm.
Gender-Specific Differences in Skeletal Muscle 11β-HSD1 Expression Across Healthy Aging.

CONTEXT Cushing's syndrome is characterized by marked changes in body composition (sarcopenia, obesity, and osteoporosis) that have similarities with those seen in aging. 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) converts glucocorticoids to their active form (cortisone to cortisol in humans), resulting in local tissue amplification of effect. OBJECTIVE To evaluate 11β-HSD1 expression and activity with age, specifically in muscle. To determine putative causes for increased activity with age and its consequences upon phenotypic markers of adverse aging. DESIGN Cross-sectional observational study. SETTING National Institute for Health Research-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, Birmingham, United Kingdom. PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS Healthy human volunteers age 20 to 81 years (n = 134; 77 women, 57 men). INTERVENTIONS Day attendance at research facility for baseline observations, body composition analysis by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, jump-plate mechanography, grip strength analysis, baseline biochemical profiling, urine collection, and vastus lateralis muscle biopsy. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S) Skeletal muscle gene expression, urine steroid profile, bivariate correlations between expression/activity and phenotypic/biochemical variables. RESULTS Skeletal muscle 11β-HSD1 expression was increased 2.72-fold in women over 60 years of age compared to those aged 20-40 years; no differences were observed in men. There was a significant positive correlation between skeletal muscle 11β-HSD1 expression and age in women across the group (rho = 0.40; P = .009). No differences in expression of 11β-HSD type 2, glucocorticoid receptor, or hexose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase between age groups were observed in either sex. Urinary steroid markers of 11β-HSD1, 11β-HSD type 2, or 5α-reductase were similar between age groups. Skeletal muscle 11β-HSD1 expression was associated with reduced grip strength in both sexes and correlated positively with percentage of body fat, homeostasis model of assessment for insulin resistance, total cholesterol, LH, and FSH and negatively with bone mineral content and IGF-1 in women. CONCLUSIONS Skeletal muscle 11β-HSD1 is up-regulated with age in women and is associated with reduced grip strength, insulin resistance, and an adverse body composition profile. Selective inhibition of 11β-HSD1 may offer a novel strategy to prevent and/or reverse age-related sarcopenia.
Theory and practice of the ternary relations model of information management

This thesis proposes a new, highly generalised and fundamental, information-modelling framework called the TRM (Ternary Relations Model). The TRM was designed to be a model for converging a number of differing paradigms of information management, some of which are quite isolated. These include areas such as: hypertext navigation; relational databases; semi-structured databases; the Semantic Web; ZigZag and workflow modelling. While many related works model linking by the connection of two ends, the TRM adds a third element to this, thereby enriching the links with associative meanings. The TRM is a formal description of a technique that establishes bi-directional and dynamic node-link structures in which each link is an ordered triple of three other nodes. The key features that makes the TRM distinct from other triple-based models (such as RDF) is the integration of bi-directionality, functional links and simplicity in the definition and elements hierarchy. There are two useful applications of the TRM. Firstly it may be used as a tool for the analysis of information models, to elucidate connections and parallels. Secondly, it may be used as a “construction kit” to build new paradigms and/or applications in information management. The TRM may be used to provide a substrate for building diverse systems, such as adaptive hypertext, schemaless database, query languages, hyperlink models and workflow management systems. It is, however, highly generalised and is by no means limited to these purposes.
Online Serial Manipulator Calibration Based on Multisensory Process Via Extended Kalman and Particle Filters

An online robot self-calibration method based on an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a position sensor is presented in this paper. In this method, a position marker and an IMU are required to be rigidly attached to the robot tool to obtain the position of the manipulator from the position sensor and the orientation of the manipulator from the IMU in real time. An efficient approach that incorporates a Kalman filter (KF) and a particle filter to estimate the position and orientation of the manipulator is proposed in this paper. The use of these pose (orientation and position) estimation methods improves the reliability and accuracy of pose measurements. Finally, an extended KF is used to estimate the kinematic parameter errors. The primary advantage of this method over existing automated self-calibration methods is that it does not involve complex steps, such as camera calibration, corner detection, and laser alignment, which makes the proposed robot calibration procedure more autonomous in a dynamic manufacturing environment. Moreover, the reduction of complex steps improves the accuracy of calibration. Experimental studies on a GOOGOL GRB3016 robot show that the proposed method has better accuracy, convenience, and effectiveness.
Analysis and Experimentation of Transpose Jacobian-based Cartesian Regulators

Transpose Jacobian-based controllers represent an attractive approach to robot control in Cartesian space. These controllers attempt to drive the robot end-effector posture to a specified desired position and orientation without solving either the inverse kinematics nor computing the robot inverse Jacobian. A wide class of transpose Jacobian-based regulators obtained from the energy shaping plus damping injection technique is analyzed in this paper. Our main theoretical contribution is the introduction of a novel analysis which does not invoke any assumption on Jacobian singularities to ensure local asymptotic stability for a family of nonredundant robots. The performance of four transpose Jacobian-based regulators is illustrated via experimental tests conducted on a direct-drive vertical arm.