Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diabetes imaging—quantitative assessment of islets of Langerhans distribution in murine pancreas using extended-focus optical coherence microscopy

Diabetes is characterized by hyperglycemia that can result from the loss of pancreatic insulin secreting β-cells in the islets of Langerhans. We analyzed ex vivo the entire gastric and duodenal lobes of a murine pancreas using extended-focus Optical Coherence Microscopy (xfOCM). To identify and quantify the islets of Langerhans observed in xfOCM tomograms we implemented an active contour algorithm based on the level set method. We show that xfOCM reveals a three-dimensional islet distribution consistent with Optical Projection Tomography, albeit with a higher resolution that also enables the detection of the smallest islets (≤ 8000 μm3). Although this category of the smallest islets represents only a negligible volume compared to the total β-cell volume, a recent study suggests that these islets, located at the periphery, are the first to be destroyed when type I diabetes develops. Our results underline the capability of xfOCM to contribute to the understanding of the development of diabetes, especially when considering islet volume distribution instead of the total β-cell volume only.
Spatially resolved Brillouin spectroscopy to determine the rheological properties of the eye lens

Presbyopia is closely associated with the loss of accommodation, and hence with a decline in the viscoelastic properties of the human eye lens. In this article we describe a method for obtaining spatially resolved in vivo measurements of the rheological properties of the eye lens, based on the spectroscopic analysis of spontaneous Brillouin scattering using a virtually imaged phased array (VIPA). The multi-pass configuration enhances resolution to the extent that measurements are possible in elastic biological tissue characterized by intense scattering. We also present spatially resolved measurements obtained in extracted animal eyes and lenses. The results yield entirely new insights into the aging process of the eye lens.
The TickerTAIP Parallel RAID Architecture

Traditional disk arrays have a centralized architecture, with a single controller through which all requests flow. Such a controller is a single point of failure, and its performance limits the maximum size that the array can grow to. We describe here TickerTAIP, a parallel architecture for disk arrays that distributed the controller functions across several loosely-coupled processors. The result is better scalability, fault tolerance, and flexibility. This paper presents the TickerTAIP architecture and an evaluation of its behavior. We demonstrate the feasibility by an existence proof; describe a family of distributed algorithms for calculating RAID parity; discuss techniques for establishing request atomicity, sequencing and recovery; and evaluate the performance of the TickerTAIP design in both absolute terms and by comparison to a centralized RAID implementation. We conclude that the TickerTAIP architectural approach is feasible, useful, and effective.
The Birmingham-CfA cluster scaling Project – I. Gas fraction and the M-Tx relation

We have assembled a large sample of virialized systems, comprising 66 galaxy clusters, groups and elliptical galaxies with high-quality X-ray data. To each system we have fitted analytical profiles describing the gas density and temperature variation with radius, corrected for the effects of central gas cooling. We present an analysis of the scaling properties of these systems and focus in this paper on the gas distribution and M‐T X relation. In addition to clusters and groups, our sample includes two early-type galaxies, carefully selected to avoid contamination from group or cluster X-ray emission. We compare the properties of these objects with those of more massive systems and find evidence for a systematic difference between galaxy-sized haloes and groups of a similar temperature. We derive a mean logarithmic slope of the M‐T X relation within R200 of 1.84 ± 0.06, although there is some evidence of a gradual steepening in the M‐T X relation, with decreasing mass. We recover a similar slope using two additional methods of calculating the mean temperature. Repeating the analysis with the assumption of isothermality, we find the slope changes only slightly, to 1.89 ± 0.04, but the normalization is increased by 30 per cent. Correspondingly, the mean gas fraction within R200 changes from (0.13 ± 0.01) h −3/2 70 to (0.11 ± 0.01) h −3/2 70 , for the isothermal case, with the smaller fractional change reflecting different behaviour between hot and cool systems. There is a strong correlation between the gas fraction within 0.3R200 and temperature. This reflects the strong (5.8σ ) trend between the gas density slope parameter, β, and temperature, which has been found in previous work. These findings are interpreted as evidence for self-similarity breaking from galaxy feedback processes, active galactic nuclei heating or possibly gas cooling. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of a hierarchical structure formation scenario.
Instance Annotation for Multi-Instance Multi-Label Learning

Multi-instance multi-label learning (MIML) is a framework for supervised classification where the objects to be classified are bags of instances associated with multiple labels. For example, an image can be represented as a bag of segments and associated with a list of objects it contains. Prior work on MIML has focused on predicting label sets for previously unseen bags. We instead consider the problem of predicting instance labels while learning from data labeled only at the bag level. We propose a regularized rank-loss objective designed for instance annotation, which can be instantiated with different aggregation models connecting instance-level labels with bag-level label sets. The aggregation models that we consider can be factored as a linear function of a “support instance” for each class, which is a single feature vector representing a whole bag. Hence we name our proposed methods rank-loss Support Instance Machines (SIM). We propose two optimization methods for the rank-loss objective, which is nonconvex. One is a heuristic method that alternates between updating support instances, and solving a convex problem in which the support instances are treated as constant. The other is to apply the constrained concave-convex procedure (CCCP), which can also be interpreted as iteratively updating support instances and solving a convex problem. To solve the convex problem, we employ the Pegasos framework of primal subgradient descent, and prove that it finds an ε-suboptimal solution in runtime that is linear in the number of bags, instances, and 1/ε. Additionally, we suggest a method of extending the linear learning algorithm to nonlinear classification, without increasing the runtime asymptotically. Experiments on artificial and real-world datasets including images and audio show that the proposed methods achieve higher accuracy than other loss functions used in prior work, e.g., Hamming loss, and recent work in ambiguous label classification.
Concurrent read/write: real-time theory and practice

Read/write conflicts, be it on the task or transaction level, may have harmful consequences for the real-time performance, particularly in distributed systems. Under safety-critical constraints (where task arrival is unpredictable) such conflicts would then impose an unpredictable overhead. Static solutions of conflict handling by utilizing shadow copies have been suggested, even under non-preemptive object access (where shadow copies are almost useless). This paper reports on research concerning adaptive preemptive methods for handling record-based read/write access to objects providing shadow copies. We present a new refined task and resource scheduling method based on measures that take task or transaction criticality into account. A potential advantage with shadow copies stems from the fact that shadow copies are still available to readers once a writer has been preempted whereas otherwise all scheduled (conflicting) readers have to wait until the writer has been finished (unless the write action is rolled back). In our model, readers that are preempted through writers (or writers that are preempted through readers) need not acquire their locks anew after preemption thus allowing for a higher scheduling flexibility and choice through keeping their locks. We study the trade-off between the higher flexibility of preemptive shadow copy models and the higher overhead they incur, due to refreshing shadow copies in due time.
XML policy representation for secure multicast

With the wide range of communication devices being used there is a definite requirement to be able to specify security policies depending upon the context of usage, in a manner which can be easily interpreted by various devices and easily visualized by network administrators. Multicast is largely being accepted as the delivery mechanism for delivering high bandwidth content to a large number of receivers. The MSEC group within IETF has been working to develop a secure multicast framework. Their work includes the development of multicast policy architecture for interpreting, translating and representing policies. This paper shows how XML can be used for representing multicast policies. With the wide range of tools available for XML and cross-platform advantages offered by XML, it is the natural choice for policy representation. The paper also identifies various important multicast policies.
A Crazy State: Violence, Psychiatry, and Colonialism in Aceh, Indonesia, ca. 1910–1942

This article investigates the ways in which the Dutch colonial state dealt with a phenomenon known as the Atjeh-moorden (‘Aceh murders’), the persistent suicide-attacks directed at the lives of Dutch residents, committed by Acehnese hoping to become syahid (martyrs to the Islamic faith). Concentrating on the development of colonial psychiatry, and its influence on colonial discourses and practices, I show how Dutch dealings with the Atjeh-moorden were, simultaneously, part and parcel of the construction of an Acehnese subject, and indicative of the administrative ambivalence found in the approach of the colonial state toward violence and criminality.
Asymmetries in the German diesel retail market

Economists often analyze asymmetric cost pass-through between retail fuel prices and oil prices (`Rockets and Feathers') as a proxy for market power. Such asymmetries have been analyzed for different countries and time periods. However, few studies have been conducted for the German market. Furthermore, no study has differentiated between company types in this context. In this paper, we analyze market behavior in the German diesel market. We compare the pricing strategies of independent petrol stations with the general diesel market. Independent petrol stations have no connection with popular fuel brands and therefore might decrease market power of dominating brand stations. We use an error correction model for the period from 2011 to 2012 to evaluate the specific market behavior. We conclude that asymmetric pricing behavior is given for independent petrol stations as well as for the whole German market.
The dual control of TFIIB recruitment by NC2 is gene specific

Negative co-factor 2 (NC2) is a conserved eukaryotic complex composed of two subunits, NC2α (Drap1) and NC2β (Dr1) that associate through a histone-fold motif. In this work, we generated mutants of NC2, characterized target genes for these mutants and studied the assembly of NC2 and general transcription factors on target promoters. We determined that the two NC2 subunits mostly function together to be recruited to DNA and regulate gene expression. We found that NC2 strongly controls promoter association of TFIIB, both negatively and positively. We could attribute the gene-specific repressor effect of NC2 on TFIIB to the C-terminal domain of NC2β, and define that it requires ORF sequences of the target gene. In contrast, the positive function of NC2 on TFIIB targets is more general and requires adequate levels of the NC2 histone-fold heterodimer on promoters. Finally, we determined that NC2 becomes limiting for TATA-binding protein (TBP) association with a heat inducible promoter under heat stress. This study demonstrates an important positive role of NC2 for formation of the pre-initiation complex on promoters, under normal conditions through control of TFIIB, or upon activation by stress via control of TBP.
Loosely Connected RPC: An Approach for Extendable Interface of Web Services

To make distributed software systems evolve easily, it is desirable to make connections between services and clients loose. The recent success of Web based technologies may be attributed to the core characteristic, i.e. being more loosely connected than the traditional RPC technologies such as CORBA, DCOM and Java RMI. Web services are distributed systems built on the Web based technologies; however, in many cases the programming model used in Web services is similar with the traditional RPC that leads to tight connections between services and clients. For example, in many cases the return value must have the exact type that the client expects. To tackle this problem, we propose an approach for extendable interface of remote objects. For this purpose, we apply XML pattern matching to a SOAP message to extract data it conveys. Because XML pattern matching is applied only to a fragment of information provided by a SOAP message and does not require the whole information of objects it conveys, the client programs equipped with XML pattern matching still work correctly even when the service evolves.
A continuum model for nematic alignment of self-propelled particles

A continuum model for a population of self-propelled particles interacting through nematic alignment is derived from an individual-based model. The methodology consists of introducing a hydrodynamic scaling of the corresponding mean-field kinetic equation. The resulting perturbation problem is solved thanks to the concept of generalized collision invariants. It yields a hyperbolic but non-conservative system of equations for the nematic mean direction of the flow and the densities of particles flowing parallel or anti-parallel to this mean direction. Diffusive terms are introduced under a weakly non-local interaction assumption and the diffusion coefficient is proven to be positive. An application to the modeling of myxobacteria is outlined.
Numeracy skills deficit among bioscience entrants

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[Application of morcellator in transurethral bipolar plasmakinetic anatomical enucleation of the prostate].

OBJECTIVE To assess the safety and therapeutic effect of morcellator in transurethral bipolar plasmakinetic anatomical enucleation (TUPKAEP) of benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH). METHODS The clinical data of 47 patients with BPH receiving TUPKAEP between January and July, 2015 were analyzed. During the operation, morcellator was used to smash the enucleated BPH which was aspirated with subatmospheric pressure in 29 cases, and the tissue was smashed with bipolar electrosurgical loop slicing from top to bottom and aspirated by ellic suction in 18 cases. RESULTS s The procedures were completed successfully in all the 47 cases. The time used for adenoma dissociation was 2.24∓1.09 with morcellator at the speed of 18.43∓6.01 g/min, and was 17.19∓11.74 min with bipolar electrosurgical loop at the speed of 1.91∓0.65 g/min; the mean total operation time was significantly shorter in morcellator group (28.13∓14.71 vs 43.22∓25.39 min). The 2 groups showed no significant difference in postoperative continuous bladder irrigation time, postoperative indwelling time of urinary catheter or postoperative hospital stay. CONCLUSION s Morcellator is safe and feasible for application in TUPKAEP and helps to shorten the operation time.
Unique Eomes+ NK Cell Subsets Are Present in Uterus and Decidua During Early Pregnancy

Decidual and uterine natural killer (NK) cells have been shown to contribute to the successful pregnancy both in humans and mice. NK cells represent “cytotoxic” group 1 innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) and are distinct from the recently described “helper” ILC1. Here, we show that both in humans and mice the majority of group 1 ILC in endometrium/uterus and decidua express Eomesodermin (Eomes), thus suggesting that they are developmentally related to conventional NK cells. However, they differ from peripheral NK cells. In humans, Eomes+ decidual NK (dNK) cells express CD49a and other markers of tissue residency, including CD103, integrin β7, CD9, and CD69. The expression of CD103 allows the identification of different subsets of IFNγ-producing Eomes+ NK cells. We show that TGFβ can sustain/induce CD103 and CD9 expression in dNK cells and decidual CD34-derived NK cells, indicating that the decidual microenvironment can instruct the phenotype of Eomes+ NK cells. In murine decidua and uterus, Eomes+ cells include CD49a−CD49b+ conventional NK cells and CD49a+ cells. Notably, Eomes+CD49a+ cells are absent in spleen and liver. Decidual and uterine Eomes+CD49a+ cells can be dissected in two peculiar cell subsets according to CD49b expression. CD49a+CD49b− and CD49a+CD49b+ cells are enriched in immature CD11blowCD27high cells, while CD49a−CD49b+ cells contain higher percentages of mature CD11bhighCD27low cells, both in uterus and decidua. Moreover, Eomes+CD49a+CD49b− cells decrease during gestation, thus suggesting that this peculiar subset may be required in early pregnancy rather than on later phases. Conversely, a minor Eomes−CD49a+ ILC1 population present in decidua and uterus increases during pregnancy. CD49b−Eomes± cells produce mainly TNF, while CD49a−CD49b+ conventional NK cells and CD49a+CD49b+ cells produce both IFNγ and TNF. Thus, human and murine decidua contains unique subsets of group 1 ILCs, including Eomes+ and Eomes− cells, with peculiar phenotypic and functional features. Our study contributes to re-examination of the complexity of uterine and decidual ILC subsets in humans and mice and highlights the role of the decidual microenvironment in shaping the features of these cells.
LYSOSOMAL AND ULTRASTRUCTURAL CHANGES IN HUMAN "TOXIC" NEUTROPHILS DURING BACTERIAL INFECTION

"Toxic" neutrophils from humans with severe bacterial infections, identified by the presence of Döhle bodies, "toxic" granules, and vacuoles were shown to differ from normal neutrophils both in ultrastructure and in lysosome activity. Döhle bodies were identified as lamellar aggregates of rough endoplasmic reticulum. Toxic granules corresponded to the azurophilic granules usually identified by Romanowsky stains only in neutrophil precursors. By electron microscopy such granules were large, electron-dense, and peroxidase positive; they could usually be distinguished from the smaller, less dense, "specific" granules also present in control neutrophils, but in the latter they became visible by light microscopy only after prolonged staining or following fixation with glutaraldehyde. These observations suggest that toxic granules represent an abnormal staining reaction of the large dense granules in the toxic cells, and not phagocytized material, newly formed abnormal granules or autophagic bodies. Alkaline phosphatase activity was significantly greater in toxic neutrophils than in normal ones; 80% of the activity of both was located in the lysosome fraction. Beta glucuronidase was normal. Total acid phosphatase was normal, but the percentage located in the nonlysosome fraction of toxic neutrophils was increased, suggesting that lysosomes were "labilized. " Formation of neutral red vacuoles in supravitally stained preparations, an index of lysosome activity, occurred more rapidly in toxic neutrophils. This reaction paralleled degranulation and the formation of clear vacuoles in unstained wet mounts and could be blocked by colchicine, a lysosome stabilizer, or enhanced by procedures which activate lysosomes. "Autophagic" vacuoles were observed by electron microscopy in some toxic neutrophils. These observations are discussed in relation to the concept that the "toxic" neutrophils in severe bacterial infection reflect cellular immaturity and/or stimulation or degeneration.
Face Recognition Using Legendre Moments

The wide range of variations in human face due to view point, pose, illumination and expression deteriorate the recognition performance of the existing Face recognition systems. This paper proposes a new approach to face recognition problem using Legendre moments for representing features and nearest neighbor classifier for classification. The Legendre moments are orthogonal and scale invariant in its characteristics and hence it is suitable for representing the features of the face images. The obtained feature vectors are transformed using Linear Discriminant Analysis and stored in the database and are compared using Nearest neighbor classifier during testing. For testing the proposed approach, Legendre feature vector of size 12 is used for the images of ORL (Olivetty Research Laboratories) database with 40 subjects and each of them having 10 orientations. Similarly the Hu moments, Discrete Cosine Transforms (DCT) are also used for feature extraction. The recognition percentage is compared with the proposed approach. The recognition percentage of 98.25% is achieved using Legendre moments which are comparatively superior than other Face recognition approaches using central moments (Hu), DCT or other statistical approaches.
FU-Fighters Small Size 2004

Our F180 team, the FU-Fighters, takes part for the sixth time in the RoboCup competition. This year, we have improved our omnidirectional robots in the following ways: we added a fourth wheel and a modified shooting device with a new magnet coil, we added Plug & Play components to the vision system, we use new color markers, Bluetooth communication modules, an improved microcontroller board, and a new behavior framework. Our team won third place in the small size league competition in 2003 (1). We won second place in 1999, 2000, and 2002.