Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A rat model of sustained hypobaric hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension

Objectives: High-altitude pulmonary hypertension (HAPH) is a worldwide public health issue in mountainous areas, while the underlying mechanism of it is still unclear. This study aims to establish a rat model of hypobaric hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension through sustained exposure to a simulated high altitude atmospheric environment in plain area. Methods: Twelve healthy male SD rats were randomly and equally divided into a model group and a control group. The model group was housed in an automatic adjusting hypobaric hypoxia chamber for 4 weeks, and the control group was housed under normobaric normoxic condition in the same room. The mean pulmonary arterial pressure (mPAP), right ventricular pressure (RVSP), the right ventricle (RV) weight, left ventricular (LV) weight, interventricular septum (S) weight, right ventricular hypertrophy index (RVHI), hematoxylineosinstaining, elastic fibers staining, ratio of the thickness of vascular wall to its outer diameter (MT%), ratio of the cross-sectional area of the middle vascular wall to the total vascular cross-sectional area (MA%), α-SMA positive ratio were detected to evaluate the pulmonary hypertension. Results: As compared to that in control group, rats in model group showed significant increases on mPAP (36.39±4.26 mmHg versus 16.27±6.99 mmHg, P<0.001), RVSP (45.29±6.09 mmHg versus 28.12±4.67mmHg, P<0.001), RVHI (0.44±0.08 versus 0.18±0.05, P<0.001), MT% (44.50±8.96 versus 19.50±4.88, P<0.001), MA% (64.00±6.66 versus 40.45±7.08, P<0.001), α-SMA positive% (57.00±6.87 versus 30.50±6.83, P<0.001). Conclusion: The rat model of hypobaric hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension has been successfully established by automatic adjusting hypobaric hypoxia chamber. Sustained exposure to a low oxygen environment at a simulate-altitude of 5,000 meter for 4 weeks have caused the pathological remodeling of pulmonary vascular walls and pulmonary hypertension, and further led to a series of pathological changes, including right ventricular hypertrophy. This model is easy to be replicated with good reproducibility and can be widely used in further studies.
Interactive comment on “ Constraining black carbon aerosol over Southeast Asia using OMI aerosol absorption optical depth and the adjoint of GEOS-Chem ”

This paper is outlining a method and procedure by which emissions of BC are estimated from South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, using various combinations of modeled fields and some information of UV absorption from OMI. The idea behind the paper is interesting. If it is executed correctly, it will provide a worthwhile and significant step forward. However, at the present time, the paper is far too undeveloped, it lacks clarity and reproducibility, it mis-uses measurements, it shows a lack of understanding of absorption in the UV and how that is different from absorption in the visible, it confuses model values in the vertical as being equivalent with measurements in the vertical, and makes gross assumptions in the model space. In addition, although ex-
Towards Flexible Information Architecture for Fractal Information Systems

In information systems development and usage the correspondence between concepts used at the business level and data structures processed at the computer systems level is to be established and maintained. The complexity of this task depends on the enterprise and information systems architectures that underlie a particular information system as well as on dynamic properties of information systems environment. In cases of heterogeneous domain ontologies and complex enterprise and information systems architectures, the fractal approach to information systems design can support balanced change propagation from business domain to computer systems domain that, in turn, allows to define and maintain flexible information architecture that supports business goals and processes. Fractal approach allows applying various systems development methods at different administrative levels of the business organization and thus can accelerate the IS development process and change management during the systems maintenance.
Unsupervised Anomaly Detection for Unlabelled Wireless Sensor Networks Data

With the advances in sensor technology, sensor nodes, the tiny yet powerful device are used to collect data from the various domain. As the sensor nodes communicate continuously from the target areas to base station, hundreds of thousands of data are collected to be used for the decision making. Unfortunately, the big amount of unlabeled data collected and stored at the base station. In most cases, data are not reliable due to several reasons. Therefore, this paper will use the unsupervised one-class SVM (OCSVM) to build the anomaly detection schemes for better decision making. Unsupervised OCSVM is preferable to be used in WSNs domain due to the one class of data training is used to build normal reference model. Furthermore, the dimension reduction is used to minimize the resources usage due to resource constraint incurred in WSNs domain. Therefore one of the OCSVM variants namely Centered Hyper-ellipsoidal Support Vector Machine (CESVM) is used as classifier while Candid-Covariance Free Incremental Principal Component Analysis (CCIPCA) algorithm is served as dimension reduction for proposed anomaly detection scheme. Environmental dataset collected from available WSNs data is used to evaluate the performance measures of the proposed scheme. As the results, the proposed scheme shows comparable results for all datasets in term of detection rate, detection accuracy and false alarm rate as compared with other related methods.
Fire and Paper: An Examination of the Materials and Techniques of Lee Bontecou's Soot Drawings

One of these early soot drawings, Untitled, from 1958 (fig. 2), came into the paper conservation lab at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) for assessment. A long, vertical mark in the right portion of the drawing raised some questions. It appeared to be a scratch, approximately ten inches long and half an inch wide. Once it was confirmed with the artist, through the intermediary of Knoedler Gallery which represents the artist, that the mark was damage and not part of the drawing, the curator requested that the drawing be treated. An understanding of the medium was necessary to determine an appropriate approach to treatment and long-term preservation. Bontecou’s working method and manipulation of the medium were investigated with visual examination and mock-ups. Visits to other institutions and private collections ABSTRACT
Genetic Susceptibility to Non-Necrotizing Erysipelas / Cellulitis Hannula-Jouppi , Katariina 2013-0220

Background: Bacterial non-necrotizing erysipelas and cellulitis are often recurring, diffusely spreading infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissues caused most commonly by streptococci. Host genetic factors influence infection susceptibility but no extensive studies on the genetic determinants of human erysipelas exist. Methods:We performed genome-wide linkage with the 10,000 variant Human Mapping Array (HMA10K) array on 52 Finnish families with multiple erysipelas cases followed by microsatellite fine mapping of suggestive linkage peaks. A scan with the HMA250K array was subsequently performed with a subset of cases and controls. Results: Significant linkage was found at 9q34 (nonparametric multipoint linkage score (NPLall) 3.84, p = 0.026), which is syntenic to a quantitative trait locus for susceptibility to group A streptococci infections on chromosome 2 in mouse. Sequencing of candidate genes in the 9q34 region did not conclusively associate any to erysipelas/cellulitis susceptibility. Suggestive linkage (NPLall.3.0) was found at three loci: 3q22-24, 21q22, and 22q13. A subsequent denser genome scan with the HMA250K array supported the 3q22 locus, in which several SNPs in the promoter of AGTR1 (Angiotensin II receptor type I) suggestively associated with erysipelas/cellulitis susceptibility. Conclusions: Specific host genetic factors may cause erysipelas/cellulitis susceptibility in humans. Citation: Hannula-Jouppi K, Massinen S, Siljander T, Mäkelä S, Kivinen K, et al. (2013) Genetic Susceptibility to Non-Necrotizing Erysipelas/Cellulitis. PLoS ONE 8(2): e56225. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0056225 Editor: Ramy K. Aziz, Cairo University, Egypt Received October 2, 2012; Accepted January 7, 2013; Published February 20, 2013 Copyright: 2013 Hannula-Jouppi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was supported by the Academy of Finland/Microbes and Man Research Program, Helsinki Biomedical Graduate School, Sigrid Jusélius Foundation, and the Swedish Research Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: katariina.hannula@helsinki.fi
Sampling Natural Viral Communities from Soil for Culture-Independent Analyses

ABSTRACT An essential first step in investigations of viruses in soil is the evaluation of viral recovery methods suitable for subsequent culture-independent analyses. In this study, four elution buffers (10% beef extract, 250 mM glycine buffer, 10 mM sodium pyrophosphate, and 1% potassium citrate) and three enumeration techniques (plaque assay, epifluorescence microscopy [EFM], and transmission electron microscopy [TEM]) were compared to determine the best method of extracting autochthonous bacteriophages from two Delaware agricultural soils. Beef extract and glycine buffer were the most effective in eluting viable phages inoculated into soils (up to 29% recovery); however, extraction efficiency varied significantly with phage strain. Potassium citrate eluted the highest numbers of virus-like particles from both soils based on enumerations by EFM (mean, 5.3 × 108 g of dry soil−1), but specific soil-eluant combinations posed significant problems to enumeration by EFM. Observations of virus-like particles under TEM gave confidence that the particles were, in fact, phages, but TEM enumerations yielded measurements of phage abundance (mean, 1.5×108 g of dry soil−1) that were about five times lower. Clearly, the measurement of phage abundance in soils varies with both the extraction and enumeration methodology; thus, it is important to assess multiple extraction and enumeration approaches prior to undertaking ecological studies of phages in a particular soil.
Traffic Flow Detection Algorithm Based on Intensity Curve of High-Resolution Image

A new vehicle detection algorithm for high resolution images is proposed in this paper. The new method is based on intensity curve of images. It can detect the presence of vehicles via different intensity curve characters between moving objects and background. Our approach is a real-time detection algorithm. It outperforms the existing traditional algorithms, such as mixture Gaussian background Model and Bayes background Model. The experimental result for 20-minutes high resolution video shows that our algorithms accuracy is up to 98%.
A Nanostructural Zinc Oxide Electrode Prepared by a Hydrothermal Method for Dye-Sensitized Solar-Cell Application

In this study, zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods were synthesized on indium-tin-oxide (ITO) glass substrates by a hydrothermal process using various molar concentrations of Zn(NO3)2•6H2O+C6H12N4. Subsequently, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and x-ray diffraction (XRD) were used to obtain the surface morphology, chemical composition, and crystallographic structure of the nanorods. These nanorods were then submerged in a dye solution and used as the working electrode for a dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC). The I-V and optoelectronic characteristics of DSSCs using the nanorods prepared by various concentrations of Zn(NO3)2•6H2O+C6H12N4 as the electrodes were measured to obtain their fill factors and conversion efficiency. The experimental results revealed that the ZnO film prepared by 0.2M of this compound exhibits a uniform distribution of dense nanorods whose shape and microstructure are beneficial to dye adsorption and carrier transport. Therefore, the DSSC fabricated with the nanorods prepared by the 0.2M process has an improved short-circuit current, fill factor, and conversion efficiency.
Metacognition and its association with intrinsic motivation and student attitude in engineering students

The statistical association between metacognition, intrinsic motivation and student attitude in students of the Engineering Faculty of the University of Guajira was investigated. The instrument for measuring metacognition and intrinsic motivation was the "Learning Self-Regulation Inventory" designed by Lindner, Harris and Gordon (1993), which was modified for the research requirements and validated by Cronbach's Alpha. To do the relationship analysis, the contingency tables were made and the bar diagrams were constructed. The statistical significance between the variables was made by the Chi-square test. The values of 0.90 and 0.88 for the Cronbach's Alpha allowed to validate the instruments used. The results showed that there is statistical significance (p <0.05) between metacognition with intrinsic motivation (p = 0.036) and student attitude (p = 0.034) with a confidence level of 95%. This allowed us to conclude that by increasing or decreasing the intrinsic motivation and student attitude, metacognition does so in the same proportion.
ff ects transfer via distribution-aware texture synthesis

In this paper, we explore the problem of fantastic special-effects synthesis for the typography. The main challenge of this problem lies in the model diversities to illustrate varied text effects for different characters. To address this issue, we exploit the key analytics on the high regularity of the texture spatial distribution for text effects to guide the synthesis process. Specifically, we characterize the stylized patches by their normalized positions relative to the text skeleton and the optimal scales to depict their style elements. Our method first estimates these two features and derives their correlation statistically. They are then converted into soft constraints for texture transfer to accomplish adaptive multi-scale texture synthesis and to make style element distribution uniform. It allows our algorithm to produce artistic typography that well consists with both local texture patterns and the global spatial distribution in the source example. Furthermore, stroke similarities are considered to control the varieties of text effects among multiple characters in a word. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of our distribution-aware method for various text effects over conventional style transfer methods. In addition, we validate the effectiveness of our algorithm with extensive artistic typography library generation and apply our method to a general application of special effects transfer for stroke-based
Direct pattern matching on compressed text

We present a fast compression and decompression technique for natural language texts. The novelty is that the exact search can be done on the compressed text directly, using any known sequential pattern matching algorithm. Approximate search can also be done efficiently without any decoding. The compression scheme uses a semi static word based modeling and a Huffman coding where the coding alphabet is byte oriented rather than bit oriented. We use the first bit of each byte to mark the beginning of a word, which allows the searching of the compressed pattern directly on the compressed text. We achieve about 33% compression ratio for typical English texts. When searching for simple patterns, our experiments show that running our algorithm on a compressed text is almost twice as fast as running agrep on the uncompressed version of the same text. When searching complex or approximate patterns, our algorithm is up to 8 times faster than agrep.
Initial Reactions in Anaerobic Oxidation ofm-Xylene by the Denitrifying Bacterium Azoarcussp. Strain T

ABSTRACT The initial enzymatic steps in anaerobic m-xylene oxidation were studied in Azoarcus sp. strain T, a denitrifying bacterium capable of mineralizing m-xylene via 3-methylbenzoate. Permeabilized cells of m-xylene-grownAzoarcus sp. strain T catalyzed the addition ofm-xylene to fumarate to form (3-methylbenzyl)succinate. In the presence of succinyl coenzyme A (CoA) and nitrate, (3-methylbenzyl)succinate was oxidized toE-(3-methylphenyl)itaconate (or a closely related isomer) and 3-methylbenzoate. Kinetic studies conducted with permeabilized cells and whole-cell suspensions of m-xylene-grownAzoarcus sp. strain T demonstrated that the specific rate of in vitro (3-methylbenzyl)succinate formation accounts for at least 15% of the specific rate of in vivo m-xylene consumption. Based on these findings, we propose that Azoarcus sp. strain T anaerobically oxidizes m-xylene to 3-methylbenzoate (or its CoA thioester) via (3-methylbenzyl)succinate and E-(3-methylphenyl)itaconate (or its CoA thioester) in a series of reactions that are analogous to those recently proposed for anaerobic toluene oxidation to benzoyl-CoA. A deuterium kinetic isotope effect was observed in the (3-methylbenzyl)succinate synthase reaction (and the benzylsuccinate synthase reaction), suggesting that a rate-determining step in this novel fumarate addition reaction involves breaking a C-H bond.
Exploring A Space For Emergent Learning To Occur: Encouraging creativity And Innovation In The Workplace

This research set out to explore perceptions about the concept of an emergent learning space within private organisations, as the current literature on learning does not adequately differentiate between organised learning and emergent learning. The research objectives explored the existence of, and perceived level of organisational encouragement and support for, emergent learning. Utilising a grounded research approach, the researcher was able to explore how organisations can and do provide a space for emergent learning to occur. In support of social constructionist learning theory, it has shown that this space for emergent learning is strongly influenced by three main factors: the existence of peer discussions, active two-way communications between managers and staff, and a have a go coaching style of management. Constructivist learning theory was supported by the findings that many managers and employees actively seek out opportunities for creativity and innovation, through their own initiative and motivation. Emergent learning is further positively influenced by the existence of and support for organised training programs in the workplace, and the particular company structure and availability of resources. At the edge of chaos, the space for emergent learning was supported by strong two-way communications between managers and staff; the have a go management coaching style; willing peer discussions; ready access to training programs; the company structure and its resources, and the individuals own initiative and motivation. Factors that discouraged the creation of a space for emergent learning to occur were shown to be a resistance to change and insufficient time. The significance of this research lies in two areas. Firstly, the research contributes to the literature on emergent learning in organisations, and provides definition of and support for this type of learning. Secondly, the research assists in the often-cited need for improvement of managerial skills within organisations, by providing managers with ways in which they can ensure their organisations thrive in the 21st century through the active encouragement and support for emergent learning in the workplace.
The wicked problem of the intersection between supervision and evaluation

The purpose of this research was to explore how principals in eight high-functioning elementary schools in one American school district balanced teacher supervision and evaluation in their role as an instructional leader. Using the theoretical framework of ‘wicked problems’, to unpack the circular used to problematize teacher supervision and evaluation, the findings analyse how elementary principals in these eight buildings acknowledge the tensions and conflicts between supervision and evaluation, specifically as they relate to improving teacher instruction. Specifically, the results of this study highlight not only the differences between supervision and evaluation, but also the intersection between the two functions, as well as how high-performing elementary school principals serve as an instructional coach rather than a manager of teachers. While the two functions of supervision and evaluation are inherently different, it is the acknowledgement of the intersection between the two functions that can allow building principals to progress as instructional coaches who can better develop human resources and create higher-functioning school systems. Overall, this study points toward the importance of elementary principals having the instructional leadership skills to differentiate supervision and professional development need for teachers, which in turn influences the evaluation of a teacher is in her/his respective career.
Debt Bias in Corporate Taxation and the Costs of Banking Crises in the EU

During the period 2008-2012, EU governments incurred substantial costs bailing out banks. As corporate income taxation (CIT) in most countries still favors debt- over equityfinancing, reducing or eliminating this debt bias would complement regulatory reforms reducing costs of financial crises. To estimate this effect, we use a two-step approach. First, using panel regressions on a dataset of 32,833 bank-year observations we find sizable long-run effects of CIT on leverage in the EU. Second, we simulate the effect of tax reforms on bank losses using a Vasicek-based model with actual banks’ balance sheets to estimate costs of systemic crises for six large EU member states. Even if the tax elasticity of bank leverage is taken at the lower end of the ranges found in recent literature, eliminating the debt bias could lead to reductions of public finance losses in the range of 60 to 90%. The results hold even when considering much smaller effects for banks that are close to the regulatory minimum capital requirement of the Basel III framework. Even when asset portfolio risk is allowed to increase endogenously and considering conservative ranges of the parameter space, we conclude that tax reforms to remove the debt bias can result in very sizable reductions in risks and costs of financial crises.