Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Ghrelin on Testicular Functions in Streptozotocin Induced Type 1 Diabetic Rats

Physiology department-Faculty of medicine-Zagazig University Abstract Background: Oxidative stress is increased in Diabetes mellitus (DM). Ghrelin is a peptide hormone produced by different tissues and its circulating level is decreased in type 1 DM. Recently, it has been shown to have antioxidant properties. Objective: This study is designed to investigate the effects of diabetes mellitus on testicular functions and the role of ghrelin in the modulation of these effects in a rat model of type 1 diabetes mellitus induced by Streptozotocin. Materials and methods: 32 healthy adult albino male rats of 170-195 gm initial body weight were utilized. The Rats were randomly and equally divided into 4 groups, group (1a): Vehicle treated (control) group, group (1b): Ghrelin treated normal group, group (IIa): STZ-diabetic group and group (IIb): Ghrelin treated diabetic group. Rats were weighed and checked for the serum levels of glucose, insulin, FSH, LH& testosterone levels, epididymal sperm count and motility, testicular malondialdhyde (MDA) level and superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) & glutathione peroxidase (GPX) activities and testicular weight & histopathology. Results and discussion: STZ-induced diabetes significantly decreased body weight, testes weight, serum insulin, FSH, LH & testosterone levels, epididymal sperm count & motility and testicular SOD, CAT & GPX activities. However, they significantly increased serum glucose & testicular malondialdhyde levels parallel with deterioration of the testicular histoarchitecture. In addition, it was found that exogenous administration of ghrelin resulted in a significant recovery of the above mentioned parameters in the diabetic group, while in the normal group, it was only associated with potentiating of the testicular antioxidant system as well as a significant increase in the body and testes weights. Conclusion: Ghrelin has a potential protective role against diabetes-induced pituitary testicular dysfunction which may be due to its antioxidant properties and maintenance of glucose and insulin homeostasis.
Usage of change-related non-invasive imaging paradigms to investigate the representation of sound in the human brain

To efficiently recognize and localize sounds is of paramount importance for our everyday life. However, the computational processes that underlie these capabilities in the human brain are still not fully understood. A powerful tool to study the representation and transformation of sensory information in the human brain are change-related paradigms. This text reviews three recent examples from our lab that employed change-related paradigms with different brain imaging modalities to characterize the representation of sounds in the human brain. Specifically, a first experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging and signal response suppression after stimulus repetition to characterize the representation of natural sounds. A second magnetoencephalo-graphic experiment, used a two-tone paradigm to describe the time-course of adaptation to natural sounds. In a third experiment, we employed a spatial mismatch negativity oddball paradigm during electroencephalography to test for head-related versus allocentric representation of sound sources in the human brain.
Evaluation of European Mutual funds Performance Romana Bangash

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Evaluation of European Mutual funds Performance Romana Bangash
Electronic Nose Feature Extraction Methods: A Review

Many research groups in academia and industry are focusing on the performance improvement of electronic nose (E-nose) systems mainly involving three optimizations, which are sensitive material selection and sensor array optimization, enhanced feature extraction methods and pattern recognition method selection. For a specific application, the feature extraction method is a basic part of these three optimizations and a key point in E-nose system performance improvement. The aim of a feature extraction method is to extract robust information from the sensor response with less redundancy to ensure the effectiveness of the subsequent pattern recognition algorithm. Many kinds of feature extraction methods have been used in E-nose applications, such as extraction from the original response curves, curve fitting parameters, transform domains, phase space (PS) and dynamic moments (DM), parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC), energy vector (EV), power density spectrum (PSD), window time slicing (WTS) and moving window time slicing (MWTS), moving window function capture (MWFC), etc. The object of this review is to provide a summary of the various feature extraction methods used in E-noses in recent years, as well as to give some suggestions and new inspiration to propose more effective feature extraction methods for the development of E-nose technology.
Mobilization of Plasmids and Chromosomal DNA Mediated by the SXT Element, a Constin Found in Vibrio cholerae O139

ABSTRACT The Vibrio cholerae SXT element encodes resistance to multiple antibiotics and is a conjugative, self-transmissible, and chromosomally integrating element (a constin). Excision and self-transfer of the SXT element require an element-encoded integrase. We now report that the SXT element can also mobilize the plasmids RSF1010 and CloDF13 in trans as well as chromosomal DNA in an Hfr-like manner. SXT element-mediated mobilization of plasmids and chromosomal DNA, unlike its self-transfer, is not dependent upon excision of the element from the chromosome. These results raise the possibility that the SXT element and other constins play a general role in horizontal gene transfer among gram-negative bacteria.
THE MITRAGYNA SPECIES OF GHANA

The morphology and detailed anatomy of the leaves, stipules and young stems of Mitragyna stipulosa (D.C.) O. Kuntze, and Mitragyna ciliata Aubr. et Pellegr. have been described. Although the histological feaures are almost identical, the leaf of Mitragyna stipulosa has a typical shade leaf structure and that of Mitragyna ciliata a typical sun leaf structure.
Segmenting Brain Tumors with Symmetry

We explore encoding brain symmetry into a neural network for a brain tumor segmentation task. A healthy human brain is symmetric at a high level of abstraction, and the high-level asymmetric parts are more likely to be tumor regions. Paying more attention to asymmetries has the potential to boost the performance in brain tumor segmentation. We propose a method to encode brain symmetry into existing neural networks and apply the method to a state-of-the-art neural network for medical imaging segmentation. We evaluate our symmetry-encoded network on the dataset from a brain tumor segmentation challenge and verify that the new model extracts information in the training images more efficiently than the original model.
Parallel transient analysis for circuit simulation

We discuss the application of domain decomposition methods to circuit simulation. This coarse grain parallelization guarantees low communication and this achieves good speedup results on a workstation cluster. The communication can be reduced to a minimum, especially with multilevel Newton methods and iteration latency techniques. The application of these techniques make our parallel implementation very well suited for a workstation cluster with low communication performance.
Determination of Lead from Tailings of Gold Matrix using Proton Induced X-ray Emission

Proton induced x-ray emission (pixe) was utilized in this research to determine the lead from five geological samples of tailings of gold ores collected from different holes within the same local mining area of maga village under Danko-fasagu zuru emirate, kebbi state Nigeria. The samples was prepared to a scale interrogated by nondestructive technique (PIXE),using 1.7MeV tandem accelerator at the Centre for Energy Research and Development (CERD), Obafemi Awulowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife, Osun state Nigeria. After samples activation with an ion beam of proton, atomic interactions occur that give off electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths in the x-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrums specific to those elements contained in the samples. The spectrum generated from the samples revealed that lead concentration is above the normal. The results of the irradiation of the samples shows that lead (pb) alongside with the other elements were obtained such as Ca, K, Zr, Ba, Ti, Si, Fe, Mn, Cl, Ce, Cu, Sr, S. The work look into the determination of naturally occurring element (lead),whose concentration was found to be above the normal. According to the results obtained from this research indicated that the communities living around the local mining area of maga are at the risk of lead poisoning, due to its high concentration in the area. This is because the tailings (left over) of gold ores at the mining area are spreading through air and water. People inhaled the air into their lungs down to the bloodstream, drink and cook with the water. These increase the potential danger of lead poisoning.
Estimating the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution Using Mortgage Notches

Using a novel source of quasi-experimental variation in interest rates, we develop a new approach to estimating the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution (EIS). In the UK, the mortgage interest rate features discrete jumps – notches – at thresholds for the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. These notches generate large bunching below the critical LTV thresholds and missing mass above them. We develop a dynamic model that links these empirical moments to the underlying structural EIS. The average EIS is small, around 0.1, and quite homogeneous in the population. This finding is robust to structural assumptions and can allow for uncertainty, a wide range of risk preferences, portfolio reallocation, liquidity constraints, present bias, and optimization frictions. Our findings have implications for the numerous calibration studies that rely on larger values of the EIS.
On Implementing Mehrotra's Predictor-Corrector Interior-Point Method for Linear Programming

Mehrotra [Tech. Report 90-03, Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 1990] recently described a predictor–corrector variant of the primal–dual interior-point algorithm for linear programming. This paper describes a full implementation of this algorithm, with extensions for solving problems with free variables and problems with bounds on primal variables. Computational results on the NETLIB test set are given to show that this new method almost always improves the performance of the primal–dual algorithm and that the improvement increases dramatically as the size and complexity of the problem increases. A numerical instability in using Schur complements to remove dense columns is identified, and a numerical remedy is given.
Culture dimensions of information systems security in Saudi Arabia national health services

 Abstract — The study of organisations’ information security cultures has attracted scholars as well as healthcare services industry to research the topic and find appropriate tools and approaches to develop a positive culture. The vast majority of studies in Saudi national health services are on the use of technology to protect and secure health services information. On the other hand, there is a lack of research on the role and impact of an organisation’s cultural dimensions on information security. This research investigated and analysed the role and impact of cultural dimensions on information security in Saudi Arabia health service. Hypotheses were tested and two surveys were carried out in order to collect data and information from three major hospitals in Saudi Arabia (SA). The first survey identified the main cultural-dimension problems in SA health services and developed an initial information security culture framework model. The second survey evaluated and tested the developed framework model to test its usefulness, reliability and applicability. The model is based on human behaviour theory, where the individual’s attitude is the key element of the individual’s intention to behave as well as of his or her actual behaviour. The research identified a set of cultural and sub-cultural dimensions in SA health information security and services.
2 Background : Latent Alignment and Neural Attention

Neural attention has become central to many state-of-the-art models in natural language processing and related domains. Attention networks are an easy-to-train and effective method for softly simulating alignment; however, the approach does not marginalize over latent alignments in a probabilistic sense. This property makes it difficult to compare attention to other alignment approaches, to compose it with probabilistic models, and to perform posterior inference conditioned on observed data. A related latent approach, hard attention, fixes these issues, but is generally harder to train and less accurate. This work considers variational attention networks, alternatives to soft and hard attention for learning latent variable alignment models, with tighter approximation bounds based on amortized variational inference. We further propose methods for reducing the variance of gradients to make these approaches computationally feasible. Experiments show that for machine translation and visual question answering, inefficient exact latent variable models outperform standard neural attention, but these gains go away when using hard attention based training. On the other hand, variational attention retains most of the performance gain but with training speed comparable to neural attention.
The Relationship of Estrogen Receptor-α and -β Genes with Osteoarthritis of the Hand

Objective. We examined reported associations between radiographic hand osteoarthritis (OA) and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in 2 candidate genes associated with OA in other joints: estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) and beta (ESR2). Methods. In 539 Framingham Offspring Study participants (49% men; mean age 61 ± 9 yrs) joint-specific radiographic hand OA was defined as Kellgren/Lawrence (K/L) scores ≥ 2 in the first carpometacarpal joint (CMC), distal interphalangeal joints (DIP), first-digit interphalangeal joint (IP), or proximal interphalangeal joints (PIP). Four SNP were genotyped for ESR1 (PvuII-rs2234693, XbaI-rs9340799, rs2077647, and rs1801132) and 4 for ESR2 (rs1256031, rs1256034, rs1256059, rs944460). Logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate the relationships between genotypes and hand OA, adjusting for age, sex, height, and weight. Results. Radiographic hand OA was identified in at least one investigated joint of DIP (39%), PIP (33%), and first CMC (40%). There was no evidence of association between OA and genotype at any polymorphism. We found no significant association between our OA phenotypes or generalized or severe generalized OA as defined by Ushiyama and heterozygosity for rs2234693 and rs9340799, although in metaanalysis with the former study this heterozygosity remained significantly associated with generalized or severe generalized OA. Conclusion. We found no significant association between hand OA and the investigated polymorphisms of ESR1 or ESR2 despite published reports of association and a priori hypotheses implicating their potential roles. However, we could not absolutely exclude associations with rs2234693, rs9340799, or rs944460.
The Dirac algebra and grand unification

A representation of the Dirac algebra, derived from first principles, can be related to the combinations of unit charges which determine particle structures. The algebraic structure derives from a broken symmetry between 4-vectors and quaternions which can be applied to the broken symmetry between the three nongravitational interactions. The significance of this relation for Grand Unification is derived by explicit calculation of the running values of the fine structure constants, with suggestions for the calculation of particle masses.
Reducing Costs of LIPA Handover Through Bearer Reservation With Preemption

In long-term evolution-advanced (LTE-Advanced) networks, a local IP access (LIPA) mechanism allows packets to be routed locally between home eNodeBs (HeNBs) without being passed back to the core network. When a user equipment (UE) communicates with another UE through LIPA and hands over to an eNodeB (eNB), lots of unnecessary message exchanges are required to release and reestablish bearers between HeNB and eNB. To reduce the handover costs, we propose a bearer reservation with preemption (BRP) scheme to reserve bearers instead of releasing bearers for handover sessions. To ensure that normal sessions are not affected by the reserved bearers, the reserved bearers are preemptible by normal sessions. Results of performance evaluation show that, in most cases, more than $50 \%$ of message exchanges can be reduced by the BRP scheme.
LMDD: Light-Weight Magnetic-Based Door Detection with Your Smartphone

Doors are important landmarks for indoor positioning systems. Hence an accurate and light-weight door detection approach is highly desired. The state-of-the-art solutions are either vision based or infrastructure based, which incur nontrivial device or management cost. This paper presents a novel approach, Light-weight Magnetic-based Door Detection (LMDD), which only relies on the information from built-in sensors of a smartphone. LMDD detects a door by analyzing the change of magnetic signal and extracting special features caused by doors. It is light-weight in both computation and infrastructure cost. We have implemented a prototype of LMDD that has been installed on various Android phones. Experimental results show that LMDD achieves door detection accuracy of 74% in average, ranging from 66% to 85% in various typical environments such as offices, classrooms, residential houses, and a hospital.
Flux-weakening control of PMSM for washing machine applications

The flux-weakening control strategy must be adopted in the PMSM control system to meet the wide speed range need of washing machine and other applications. In comparison with the traditional flux-weakening control strategy, a flux-weakening voltage control loop is added to compensate the cross-axis current command in this paper. A simplified and easily implemented overmodulation algorithm is proposed, which can generate greater torque for the motor. In order to save costs, the rotor magnetic pole position is detected by the hall sensors, while the phase current is measured by two shunts in the low leg of the IGBT. Experimental results show that the proposed control system has more wide speed range, good dynamic and static characters and strong anti-interference ability, the system has good practical value.
Landscape Patterns Affect Precipitation Differing across Sub-climatic Regions

Assessment of the impacts of landscape patterns on regional precipitation will help improve ecosystem management and strategies for adaption to global changes. This study aimed to identify the key landscape metrics that affect precipitation across three sub-climatic regions in Inner Mongolia, China, using 266 landscape metrics and daily precipitation data from 38 weather stations for 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2015. Pearson correlation, stepwise linear regression, and Redundancy analysis were used to identify the contributions of landscape patterns to local precipitation in each sub-climatic region. Three-year datasets were used for model development and a one-year data set was used for validation. It was found that the contribution of landscape patterns is higher than that of climatic variations in semi-arid or humid regions. The Core Area Coefficient of Variance (CACoV) of grasslands and Landscape Area (TLA) in non-irrigated croplands have a negative relationship with precipitation in arid regions. Further, the Total Core Area Index (TCAI) of grasslands has a negative correlation with precipitation, while the area proportion (C%LAND) in waters has a significant positive relationship with precipitation in semi-arid regions. Additionally, the Mean Core Area (MCA), Core Area (CA), and Core Area Standard Deviation (CASD) of grasslands and Total Core Area Index (TCAI) of waters are negatively related to precipitation in humid regions. Suitable land use configuration and composition, especially the proportion of grasslands and waters, should be considered in ecosystem management for alleviating the possible harmful effects due to climate change.
A static aspect language for checking design rules

Design rules express constraints on the behavior and structure of a program. These rules can help ensure that a program follows a set of established practices, and avoids certain classes of errors.Design rules often crosscut program structure and enforcing them is emerging as an important application domain for Aspect Oriented Programming. For many interesting design rules, current general purpose AOP languages lack the expressiveness to characterize them statically and enforce them at compile time.We have developed a domain specific language called Program Description Logic (PDL). PDL allows succinct declarative definitions of programmatic structures which correspond to design rule violations. PDL is based on a fully static and expressive pointcut language. PDL pointcuts allow characterizing a wide range of design rules without sacrificing static verification.We evaluate PDL by comparing it to FxCop, an industrial strength tool for checking design rules.
'Near-miss' or 'near-myth' for sudden infant death syndrome? Clinical observations on 57 infants.

A clinical approach to infants who may have 'nearly missed' Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is suggested as appropriate whether or not the eventual conclusion is that there is no connection between these surviving infants and those who die of SIDS. A non-restrictive investigative approach has been applied to 57 infants with episodes causing similar levels of alarm and recourse to medical aid but not exclusively having documented apnoea or need for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Similarities among patients in past history, recent minor symptoms, modes of presentation and positive investigations support the concept that they may show a common response to a variety of pathophysiologic stresses. Epidemiological similarities to SIDS cases support the suggestion that SIDS may be the end-stage inadequate response to such stresses. Future studies should address the reasons for 'inappropriate' collapse, its treatment and prevention and be alert to any resultant effect upon the incidence of SIDS or further evidence of a link between the conditions.