Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A COMPARISON OF MESOTHELIAL CELLS AND MACROPHAGES IN MICE AFTER THE INTRAPERITONEAL INOCULATION OF MELANIN GRANULES

O ne f ace t of a series of s tud ie s w h i c h h a s b e e n s t a r t e d in t h i s l a b o r a t o r y a n d w h i c h i nvo lves t he cells a s soc ia t ed w i t h t he p e r i t o n e a l c a v i t y a n d those free in t he p e r i t o n e a l fluid, is a c o m p a r i s o n of t he r e a c t i o n of m e s o t h e l i a l ceils a n d m a c r o p h a g e s to the p re sence of p a r t i c u l a t e m a t t e r in t he p e r i t o n e a l cavi ty . F o r t h i s e x p e r i m e n t m e l a n i n g r anu l e s were u sed as a source of r e l a t i v e l y i n e r t pa r t i c l e s n a t i v e to t he s t r a i n of mice chosen.
Image Completion Assisted By Transformation Domain Patch Approximation

In this paper, we propose a novel image completion method using transform domain patch approximation method and kd-tree based nearest neighbor field (NNF) computation in multiscale fashion. In NNF, two important processes are initialization of image target region and candidate patch searching method. Most of the previous techniques choose random initialization with arbitrary source image pixels or garbage values. It may misguide to image completion process and allow to select the bad candidate patches. We solve the problem using higher order singular value decomposition (HOSVD). It smoothly generates information in the target region enhancing the edge sharpness which helps to complete image structure quite successfully. It also preserves texture color in the target region. To overcome the problem of patch searching, we introduce robust kd-tree search method in our patch approximation step. Our experiment and analysis shows that the proposed method can be applied to the various types of image editing tools for natural images.
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Outbreak in an Intensive Care Nursery: Potential for Interinstitutional Spread

Background: After surveillance surveys documented the absence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in our intensive care nursery, an outbreak of MRSA infection occurred there during a 7-month period in 2005. Methods: Control measures included reinforcement of hand hygiene and contact precautions procedures. Active surveillance cultures were obtained on all neonates, including interinstitutional transfers. A cohort unit was dedicated exclusively for neonates with MRSA. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was performed on isolates to determine relatedness. We surveyed transferring hospitals to evaluate MRSA activity and surveillance practices in their nurseries. Results: Twenty-five neonates were colonized with MRSA; 9 of these had clinical infections. Isolates from 18 of 21 neonates from this outbreak and 4 neonates from a previous cluster were identical, including 1 isolate obtained upon transfer from another institution. Admission and discharge logs from a 9-month period showed that 127 of 460 admissions (27.6%) were admitted from 34 hospitals, and 247 of 460 (53.7%) were discharged to 32 hospitals. Among 30 transferring hospitals responding to our survey, MRSA activity occurred in 2 of 28 (7%) level 1 nurseries, 4 of 11 (36%) level 2 nurseries and 6 of 10 (60%) level 3 nurseries. Nine of the 30 hospitals (30%) performed some active surveillance. Conclusions: Interinstitutional transfer can play a role in the initiation and propagation of MRSA outbreaks in neonatal nurseries. The burden of MRSA in area nurseries and the rate of transfers affect the potential for interhospital spread of MRSA and may justify changes in policy regarding surveillance for MRSA and communication between hospitals.
Motor unit firing rates during spasms in thenar muscles of spinal cord injured subjects

Involuntary contractions of paralyzed muscles (spasms) commonly disrupt daily activities and rehabilitation after human spinal cord injury (SCI). Our aim was to examine the recruitment, firing rate modulation, and derecruitment of motor units that underlie spasms of thenar muscles after cervical SCI. Intramuscular electromyographic activity (EMG), surface EMG, and force were recorded during thenar muscle spasms that occurred spontaneously or that were triggered by movement of a shoulder or leg. Most spasms were submaximal (mean: 39%, SD: 33 of the force evoked by median nerve stimulation at 50 Hz) with strong relationships between EMG and force (R2 > 0.69). Unit recruitment occurred over a wide force range (0.2–103% of 50 Hz force). Significant unit rate modulation occurred during spasms (frequency at 25% maximal force: 8.8 Hz, 3.3 SD; at maximal force: 16.1 Hz, 4.1 SD). Mean recruitment frequency (7.1 Hz, 3.2 SD) was significantly higher than derecruitment frequency (5.4 Hz, 2.4 SD). Coactive unit pairs that fired for more than 4 s showed high (R2 > 0.7, n = 4) or low (R2:0.3–0.7, n = 12) rate-rate correlations, and derecruitment reversals (21 pairs, 29%). Later recruited units had higher or lower maximal firing rates than lower threshold units. These discrepant data show that coactive motoneurons are drive both by common inputs and by synaptic inputs from different sources during muscle spasms. Further, thenar motoneurons can still fire at high rates in response to various peripheral inputs after SCI, supporting the idea that low maximal voluntary firing rates and forces in thenar muscles result from reduced descending drive.
A Nonlocal Method with Modified Initial Cost and Multiple Weight for Stereo Matching

This paper presents a new nonlocal cost aggregation method for stereo matching. The minimum spanning tree (MST) employs color difference as the sole component to build the weight function, which often leads to failure in achieving satisfactory results in some boundary regions with similar color distributions. In this paper, a modified initial cost is used. The erroneous pixels are often caused by two pixels from object and background, which have similar color distribution. And then inner color correlation is employed as a new component of the weight function, which is determined to effectively eliminate them. Besides, the segmentation method of the tree structure is also improved. Thus, a more robust and reasonable tree structure is developed. The proposed method was tested on Middlebury datasets. As can be expected, experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms the classical nonlocal methods.
Structural kinetics of myosin by transient time-resolved FRET

For many proteins, especially for molecular motors and other enzymes, the functional mechanisms remain unsolved due to a gap between static structural data and kinetics. We have filled this gap by detecting structure and kinetics simultaneously. This structural kinetics experiment is made possible by a new technique, (TR)2FRET (transient time-resolved FRET), which resolves protein structural states on the submillisecond timescale during the transient phase of a biochemical reaction. (TR)2FRET is accomplished with a fluorescence instrument that uses a pulsed laser and direct waveform recording to acquire an accurate subnanosecond time-resolved fluorescence decay every 0.1 ms after stopped flow. To apply this method to myosin, we labeled the force-generating region site specifically with two probes, mixed rapidly with ATP to initiate the recovery stroke, and measured the interprobe distance by (TR)2FRET with high resolution in both space and time. We found that the relay helix bends during the recovery stroke, most of which occurs before ATP is hydrolyzed, and two structural states (relay helix straight and bent) are resolved in each nucleotide-bound biochemical state. Thus the structural transition of the force-generating region of myosin is only loosely coupled to the ATPase reaction, with conformational selection driving the motor mechanism.
Corpus-trained Text Generation for Summarization

We explore how machine learning can be employed to learn rulesets for the traditional modules of content planning and surface realization. Our approach takes advantage of semantically annotated corpora to induce preferences for content planning and constraints on realizations of these plans. We applied this methodology to an annotated corpus of indicative summaries to derive constraint rules that can assist in generating summaries for new, unseen material.
Fight risk with risk: reflexivity of risk and globalization in IS

In this paper, we address the following research question: “How can we understand the nature of risk in IS projects in the context of globalization? ” Based on a case study conducted over a period of two years in a Norwegian hospital on the development and implementation of a Electronic Patient Record (EPR), the paper contributes to the current discussion on the conceptualization of risk in IS projects. Drawing upon the concept of reflexive modernization (Beck 1999) the paper makes two key contributions: firstly, it shows the limits of current risk management approaches in understanding the nature of new risks in IS generated by globalization processes; secondly, it suggest a possible theoretical framework for analyzing such nature. The research question is addressed by providing a historical and contingent analysis of the risk management dynamics emerging from the case.
MzPIP2;1: An Aquaporin Involved in Radial Water Movement in Both Water Uptake and Transportation, Altered the Drought and Salt Tolerance of Transgenic Arabidopsis

Background Plants are unavoidably subjected to various abiotic stressors, including high salinity, drought and low temperature, which results in water deficit and even death. Water uptake and transportation play a critical role in response to these stresses. Many aquaporin proteins, localized at different tissues, function in various transmembrane water movements. We targeted at the key aquaporin in charge of both water uptake in roots and radial water transportation from vascular tissues through the whole plant. Results The MzPIP2;1 gene encoding a plasma membrane intrinsic protein was cloned from salt-tolerant apple rootstock Malus zumi Mats. The GUS gene was driven by MzPIP2;1 promoter in transgenic Arabidopsis. It indicated that MzPIP2;1 might function in the epidermal and vascular cells of roots, parenchyma cells around vessels through the stems and vascular tissues of leaves. The ectopically expressed MzPIP2;1 conferred the transgenic Arabidopsis plants enhanced tolerance to slight salt and drought stresses, but sensitive to moderate salt stress, which was indicated by root length, lateral root number, fresh weight and K+/Na+ ratio. In addition, the possible key cis-elements in response to salt, drought and cold stresses were isolated by the promoter deletion experiment. Conclusion The MzPIP2;1 protein, as a PIP2 aquaporins subgroup member, involved in radial water movement, controls water absorption and usage efficiency and alters transgenic plants drought and salt tolerance.
Bearing damage detection via wavelet packet decomposition of the stator current

Bearing faults are one of the major causes of motor failures. The bearing defects induce vibration, resulting in the modulation of the stator current. In this paper, the stator current is analyzed via wavelet packet decomposition to detect bearing defects. The proposed method enables the analysis of frequency bands that can accommodate the rotational speed dependence of the bearing defect frequencies. The wavelet packet decomposition also provides a better treatment of nonstationary stator current than currently used Fourier techniques.
Fast adaptive rate control for video data transmission over HSDPA networks

Video streaming over mobile handsets is among most effective media distribution technologies to reach out end users. In this research we investigate the multiuser shared channel for unidirectional video transmission with adaptive time-varying channel capacity. By providing users with immediate access to video databases across various service providers, the quality of experience and network traffic optimization are two important parameters which are investigated in this paper. According to the video packet type, the new rate control algorithm either exploits a fast adaptation in order to protect user's perceived video quality or helps the operator to increase network throughput. Generally, network throughput and perceptual quality of received video are important parameters of concern in this research. The combined strategy is shown to yield both throughput and video quality that are arbitrarily close to the optimal operating point achieved in video transmission contexts over modern multimedia networks.
Escherichia coli mutants induced by multi-ion irradiation

Wild-type Escherichia coli K12 strain W3110 was irradiated by 10 keV nitrogen ions. Specifically, irradiation was performed six times by N+ ions, followed by the selection of lac constitutive mutants, and each time a stable S55 mutant was produced. By sequencing the whole genome, the fine map of S55 was completed. Compared with reference sequences, a total of eighteen single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), two insertions and deletions (Indels), and nine structural variations (SVs) were found in the S55 genome. Among the 18 SNPs, 11 are transversional from A, T or C to G, accounting for 55.6% of point mutations. GCCA insertion occurs in the target gene lacI. Four SNPs, including three in rlpB and one in ygbN, are connected with cell envelope and transport. All nine structural variations of S55 are deletions and contain insertion sequence (IS) elements. Six deleted SVs contain disrupted ISs, nonfunctional pseudogenes, and one more 23 252 bp SV in the Rac prophage region. Overall, our results show that deletion bias observed in E. coli K12 genome evolution is generally related to the deletion of some nonfunctional regions. Furthermore, since ISs are unstable factors in a genome, the multi-ion irradiations that caused these deleted fragments in S55 turn out to be beneficial to genome stability, generating a wider mutational spectrum. Thus, it is possible that the mutation of these genes increases the ability of the E. coli genome to resist etch and damage caused by ion irradiation.
Evolution of Software Processes and of their Models: A Multiple Strategy Approach

This paper deals with a new approach to modify software process models and their software processes. Such an approach, in contrast with existing ones, supports the different evolution strategies for the software process models, and allows the adaptation of software process during execution. The integration of these two types of evolution is based on a chaining of phases (generation/evolution/simulation/ execution). It allows the change of software process models as and when executed without inconsistencies, to perfect software processes through simulation and to define new ones dynamically.
The Las-Vegas processor identity problem (how and when to be unique)

One of the fundamental problems in distributed computing is how identical processes with identical local memory can choose unique IDs provided they can flip a coin. The variant considered is the asynchronous shared memory model (atomic registers), and the basic correctness requirement is that upon termination the processes must always have unique IDs. The authors study this problem from several viewpoints. On the positive side, they present the first Las-Vegas protocol that solves the problem. The protocol terminates in (optimal) O(log n) expected time, using O(n) shared memory space, where n is the number of participating processes. On the negative side, they show that there is no Las-Vegas protocol unless n is known precisely, and that no finite-state Las-Vegas protocol can work under schedules that may depend on the history of the shared variable. For the case of arbitrary adversary, they present a Las-Vegas protocol that uses O(n) unbounded registers. <<ETX>>
Geometric Features for Improving Continuous Appearance-based Sign Language Recognition

In this paper we present an appearance-based sign language recognition system which uses a weighted combination of different features in the statistical framework of a large vocabulary speech recognition system. The performance of the approach is systematically evaluated and it is shown that a significant improvement can be gained over a baseline system whe n appropriate features are suitably combined. In particular, the word err or rate is improved from 50% for the baseline system to 30% for the optimized system.
PERMANENT MAGNET THRUST BEARING: THEO- RETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

This paper presents the design and analysis of permanent magnet (PM) thrust bearing made up of three ring pairs for flve degrees of freedom of the inner rings (rotor rings). The arrangement pattern of rings in PM bearing is considered in two ways: conventional structure and Halbach structure. The simplifled three dimensional (3D) mathematical models employing Coulombian approach and vector method are used to design the bearing. MATLAB codes are written to evaluate the axial force, stifiness and moments in both the structures for flve degrees of freedom, thereby the efiect of axial, radial and angular displacements of the rotor on the aforementioned characteristics is addressed. The results of the mathematical model are validated by the results of 3D Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and experiments. It is observed that, the conventional structure seems to be more sensitive to the angular displacement, as the percentage decrease in force and stifiness is more with respect to angular displacement than the Halbach structure. The efiect of angular displacement of the rotor on the performance of bearing in both the structures is crucial.
Technical infrastructure for a Pan-European federation of testbeds

The Pan-European laboratory - Panlab - is based on federation of distributed testbeds that are interconnected, providing access to required platforms, networks and services for broad interoperability testing and enabling the trial and evaluation of service concepts, technologies, system solutions and business models. In this context a testbed federation is the interconnection of two or more independent testbeds for the temporary creation of a richer environment for testing and experimentation, and for the increased multilateral benefit of the users of the individual independent testbeds. The technical infrastructure that supports the federation is based on a web service through which available testing resources can be queried and requested. The available resources are stored in a repository, and a processing engine is able to identify, locate and provision the requested testing infrastructure, based on the testing users' requirements. The concept is implemented using a gateway approach at the border of each federated testbed. Each testbed is an independent administrative domain and implements a reference point specification in its gateway.
Closed-form solutions for forced vibrations of piezoelectric energy harvesters by means of Green’s functions

In this article, the closed-form solutions are obtained for the forced vibrations of cantilevered unimorph piezoelectric energy harvesters. A tip mass is attached at the free end, and the moment of its inertia to the fixed end is considered. Timoshenko beam assumptions are used to establish a coupled electromechanical model for the harvester. Two damping effects, transverse and rotational damping effects, are taken into account. Green’s function method and Laplace transform technique are used to solve the coupled electromechanical vibration system. The conventional case of a harmonic base excitation is considered, and numerical calculations are performed. The present model is validated by comparing its predictions with the existing data, the experimental results, and the finite element method solutions. The influences of shear deformation and rotational inertia on the predictions are discussed. The effect of load resistance on the electrical power is studied, and the optimal load resistances are obtained. Ultimately, the optimal schemes are proposed to improve electricity generation performance for the soft piezoelectric materials: PZT-5A/5H.
APSK Constellation with Gray Mapping

Amplitude phase shift keying (APSK) constellation is superior to its quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) counterpart from the mutual information point of view. However, due to the lack of Gray mapping, it introduces high independent demapping loss. In this letter, a special kind of APSK constellations with Gray mapping (Gray-APSK) is proposed, which provides considerable shaping gain compared with the QAM constellations with Gray mapping (Gray-QAM) in both independent and iterative demapping scenarios, as verified by average mutual information analysis and bit error rate simulations.
The Performance and Scientific Rationale for an Infrared Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrograph on a Large Space Telescope

We describe a concept for an imaging spectrograph for a large orbiting observatory such as NASA's proposed Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) based on an imaging Fourier transform spectrograph (IFTS). An IFTS has several important advantages that make it an ideal instrument to pursue the scientific objectives of NGST. We review the operation of an IFTS and make a quantitative evaluation of the signal‐to‐noise performance of such an instrument in the context of NGST. We consider the relationship between pixel size, spectral resolution, and diameter of the beam splitter for imaging and nonimaging Fourier transform spectrographs and give the condition required to maintain spectral modulation efficiency over the entire field of view. We give examples of scientific programs that could be performed with this facility.
Linking global patterns in biodiversity to evolutionary dynamics using metabolic theory.

Starting in 2002, with a paper entitled ‘‘Global biodiversity, biochemical kinetics and the energeticequivalence rule,’’ we have been developing a theoretical framework to understand the mechanisms underlying broadscale biodiversity gradients, particularly the latitudinal gradient. This work is part of a broader Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) being developed to predict various aspects of the structure and function of ecological systems (Brown et al. 2004). Although MTE has been criticized (see Hawkins et al. 2007), support for its predictions continues to grow (Anderson et al. 2006, Anfodillo et al. 2006, Lopez-Urrutia et al. 2006, Meehan 2006,Robinson 2006). In the preceding paper,Hawkins et al. (2007) criticize the original work of Allen et al. (2002) based on their analyses of a large number of empirical data sets. Here we respond to their major criticisms and discuss important issues raised by their paper.
Effect of thyroxine on abnormal pancreatic proteomes of the hypothyroid rdw rat

A mutation in the thyroglobulin (Tg) gene is the primary cause of hereditary dwarfism and hypothyroidism in the rdw rat. Despite the Tg mutation that causes a Tg shortage, rdw rats survive. The present study examines the influences of this condition on the pancreatic proteome. Normal control (group 1; n = 19) and rdw rats that did not receive L‐thyroxine (T4) (group 2; n = 27) were sacrificed from 4 to 56 weeks after birth. The rdw rats were supplemented either with daily intraperitoneal injections of T4 from 3 to 28 days after birth (group 3; n = 4) or with normal thyroid tissues grafted at 4 weeks of age (group 4; n = 3). Groups 3 and 4 were sacrificed 12 weeks after birth. Pancreatic proteomes analyzed by two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis showed that levels of at least four pancreatic proteins were higher in group 2 than in group 1, and that those of four were lower. Cluster decomposition and principal component analysis of the eight protein contents showed that groups 1 and 2 were separated into two clusters and that pancreatic proteomes of group 4 were better normalized than those of group 3. Injecting T4 into group 3 was temporarily effective, whereas the thyroid graft to group 4 provided a continuous positive effect, which concurred with the increased body weight of the other two groups of rdw rats that received grafts of normal thyroids.