Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of microRNAs and their target genes and pathways associated with ovarian follicle development in cattle.

Development of ovarian follicles is controlled at the molecular level by several gene products whose precise expression leads to regression or ovulation of follicles. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression through sequence-specific base pairing with target messenger RNAs (mRNAs) causing translation repression or mRNA degradation. The aim of this study was to identify miRNAs expressed in theca and/or granulosa layers and their putative target genes/pathways that are involved in bovine ovarian follicle development. By using miRCURY microarray (Exiqon) we identified 14 and 49 differentially expressed miRNAs (P < 0.01) between dominant and subordinate follicles in theca and granulosa cells, respectively. The expression levels of four selected miRNAs were confirmed by qRT-PCR. To identify target prediction and pathways of differentially expressed miRNAs we used Union of Genes option in DIANA miRPath v.2. 0 software. The predicted targets for these miRNAs were enriched for pathways involving oocyte meiosis, Wnt, TGF-beta, ErbB, insulin, P13K-Akt, and MAPK signaling pathways. This study identified differentially expressed miRNAs in the theca and granulosa cells of dominant and subordinate follicles and implicates them in having important roles in regulating known molecular pathways that determine the fate of ovarian follicle development.
Attribute Based Multi-signature Scheme in the Standard Model

Attribute based signature scheme is an important cryptographic primitive which provides a powerful way for users to control their privacy. Due Attribute based signature scheme is an important cryptographic primitive which provides a powerful way for users to control their privacy. Due to the fact that it can reduce the bandwidth needed to transmit attribute based signatures and the time needed to verify the signature at the same time, attribute based multi-signature scheme (ABMS) is proposed in this paper. We also formalized ABMS scheme and proved the security of this scheme in the standard model. The analysis shows that our ABMS scheme has less signature length and needs less computing verification than the traditional ABS scheme. to the fact that it can reduce the bandwidth needed to transmit attribute based signatures and the time needed to verify the signature at the same time, attribute based multi-signature scheme(ABMS) is proposed in this paper. We also formalized ABMS scheme and proved the security of this scheme in the standard model. The analysis shows that our ABMS scheme has less signature length and needs less computing verification than the traditional ABS scheme.
ECG biometrics: A template selection approach

Electrocardiography (ECG) biometrics is emerging as a viable biometric trait. Recent developments at the sensor level have shown the feasibility of performing signal acquisition at the fingers and hand palms, using one-lead sensor technology and dry electrodes. These new locations lead to ECG signals with lower signal to noise ratio and more prone to noise artifacts; the heart rate variability is another of the major challenges of this biometric trait. In this paper we propose a novel approach to ECG biometrics, with the purpose of reducing the computational complexity and increasing the robustness of the recognition process enabling the fusion of information across sessions. Our approach is based on clustering, grouping individual heartbeats based on their morphology. We study several methods to perform automatic template selection and account for variations observed in a person's biometric data. This approach allows the identification of different template groupings, taking into account the heart rate variability, and the removal of outliers due to noise artifacts. Experimental evaluation on real world data demonstrates the advantages of our approach.
Pediatric bronchiectasis: Correlation of HRCT, ventilation and perfusion scintigraphy, and pulmonary function testing

Bronchiectasis in children, although occurring with diminished frequency, continues as a major challenge for the pediatric pulmonologist. The method of choice for the diagnosis of the condition is high‐resolution computed tomography (HRCT). The aim of the present study was to correlate the relationship(s) of HRCT, lung function, ventilation lung scintigraphy (VLS), and perfusion lung scintigraphy (PLS) in children with bronchiectasis. Sixteen children ranging in age from 4–18 years with clinical and chest X‐ray evidence of bronchiectasis were enrolled in the study. The degree of bronchiectasis was assessed by HRCT scores, decrease in attenuation on expiratory scans, VLS, and PLS. HRCT scores for bronchiectasis and decreased lung attenuation showed a strong correlation with PLS (ρ = 0.82; P < 0.001) and with VLS (ρ = 0.72; P < 0.01). There was a moderate negative correlation between FEV1 and HRCT bronchiectasis scores (ρ = −0.53; P = 0.02), decreased lung attenuation score (ρ = −0.64; P = 0.007), and atelectasis score (ρ = −0.54; P = 0.03). In conclusion, HRCT provides a complete and precise assessment of children with bronchiectasis. Ventilation/perfusion scans and lung functions are additive tools to understand the complexity of the disease process and to improve diagnosis and therapeutic strategies. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2004; 38:298–303. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A similarity measure for text processing

In this paper, we propose a novel similarity measure for document data processing. For two document vectors, the proposed measure takes three cases into account: a) The feature considered appears in both documents, b) the feature considered appears in only one document, and c) the feature considered appears in none of the documents. For the first case, we give a lower bound and decrease the similarity according to the difference between the feature values of the two documents. For the second case, we give a fixed value disregarding the magnitude of the feature value. For the last case, we treat it as an identity, Experimental results show that our proposed method can work more effectively than others.
A Predictive System for detection of Bankruptcy using Machine Learning techniques

Bankruptcy is a legal procedure that claims a person or organization as a debtor. It is essential to ascertain the risk of bankruptcy at initial stages to prevent financial losses. In this perspective, different soft computing techniques can be employed to ascertain bankruptcy. This study proposes a bankruptcy prediction system to categorize the companies based on extent of risk. The prediction system acts as a decision support tool for detection of bankruptcy Keywords: Bankruptcy, soft computing, decision support tool
Mid- to Long-term Clinical Outcomes of Hancock II Bioprosthesis in Chinese Population

Background: Compared to the Western countries, Chinese patients present a special primary disease spectrum, diverse valvular pathogenesis, and different postoperational anticoagulation strategy. This research aimed to evaluate the mid- to long-term clinical performance of Hancock II bioprosthesis in the Chinese population. Methods: This study retrospectively reviewed all patients who received surgical treatments with at least one Hancock II bioprosthesis implantation from January 2004 to December 2013 at a single center in China. Totally 647 patients were included in the clinical evaluation, and 629 patients were successfully discharge, among whom 605 patients were completely followed-up. The follow-up rate was 96.2%. The mean and median follow-up time was 62.0 ± 59.0 and 56.0 months, respectively. Postoperative outcomes of survival rates, reoperations and valve related morbidities were assessed. Continuous and categorical variables were compared using the t -test and Chi-square test, respectively. Survival and freedom from adverse events were calculated by using a Kaplan–Meier method. Results: The overall in-hospital mortality was 2.8% (18/647) while there were 34 deaths (5.6%, 34/605) in the follow-up stage after discharge. The overall survival rate was 94.6% and 82.7% at 5 years and 10 years, respectively. The cumulative survival rate of 10 years was 82.8% in AVR group, 84.4% in MVR group, and 78.4% in DVR group. The overall rate of freedom from reoperations was 95.5% at 5 years and 86.8% at 10 years. The freedom from reoperation at 10 years was 87.0%, 88.1%, and 84.0% in AVR, MVR, and DVR group, respectively. The freedom from morbidities at 10 years was: 90.3% for thromboembolism, 95.2% for hemorrhage, 97.5% for prosthesis endocarditis, 95.9% for paravalvular leak, and 94.6% for structural valve deterioration, respectively. Conclusions: Hancock II bioprosthesis exhibited a satisfactory mid- to long-term durability and promising clinical performance in the Chinese population. The occurrence rates of death and other adverse events in this single-center study were overall coincident and quite acceptable when compared with existing data.
Content management systems for mobile, context-dependent augmented reality applications

In the last few years, the proliferation of mobile devices with internet access, especially smartphones and tablets, has grown strongly. This has also positively influenced the mobile augmented reality (AR) market and allowed AR applications to achieve a high number of users. The necessary tools and frameworks for developing such applications are numerously available. However, there is still the question how to store and manage the displayed contents of the applications in an effective way. This is true, especially if the management of user individual content is considered. This paper describes how content management systems (CMS) for mobile AR applications can be designed, in order to allow an effective and efficient management of context-dependent and personalized content. Because of the possibility to create individual AR contents for each user, with context-dependent and personalized content management an improved effect on advertising and marketing activities can be achieved. The architecture of the described system additionally considers important system characteristics, which lead to high user acceptance and high customer value.
Improving Lexical Embeddings with Semantic Knowledge

Word embeddings learned on unlabeled data are a popular tool in semantics, but may not capture the desired semantics. We propose a new learning objective that incorporates both a neural language model objective (Mikolov et al., 2013) and prior knowledge from semantic resources to learn improved lexical semantic embeddings. We demonstrate that our embeddings improve over those learned solely on raw text in three settings: language modeling, measuring semantic similarity, and predicting human judgements.
PHAST: Spoken document retrieval based on sequence alignment

This paper presents a new approach to spoken document information retrieval for spontaneous speech corpora. Classical approach to this problem is the use of an automatic speech recognizer (ASR) combined with standard information retrieval techniques, based on terms or n-grams. However, state-of-the-art large vocabulary continuous ASRs produce transcripts of spontaneous speech with a word error rate of 25% or higher, which is a drawback for retrieval techniques based on terms or n-grams. In order to overcome such a limitation, our method is based on a sequence alignment algorithm drawn from the field of bioinformatics to search
Magnetic resonance imaging-guided brachytherapy for cervical cancer: initiating a program

Over the past decade, the application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has increased, and there is growing evidence to suggest that improvements in accuracy of target delineation in MRI-guided brachytherapy may improve clinical outcomes in cervical cancer. To implement a high quality image guided brachytherapy program, a multidisciplinary team is required with appropriate expertise as well as an adequate patient load to ensure a sustainable program. It is imperative to know that the most important source of uncertainty in the treatment process is related to target delineation and therefore, the necessity of training and expertise as well as quality assurance should be emphasized. A short review of concepts and techniques that have been developed for implementation and/or improvement of workflow of a MRI-guided brachytherapy program are provided in this document, so that institutions can use and optimize some of them based on their resources to minimize their procedure times.
Stochastic Proximal Gradient Descent with Acceleration Techniques

Proximal gradient descent (PGD) and stochastic proximal gradient descent (SPGD) are popular methods for solving regularized risk minimization problems in machine learning and statistics. In this paper, we propose and analyze an accelerated variant of these methods in the mini-batch setting. This method incorporates two acceleration techniques: one is Nesterov's acceleration method, and the other is a variance reduction for the stochastic gradient. Accelerated proximal gradient descent (APG) and proximal stochastic variance reduction gradient (Prox-SVRG) are in a trade-off relationship. We show that our method, with the appropriate mini-batch size, achieves lower overall complexity than both APG and Prox-SVRG.
Effects of pozzolans on acid resistance of shotcrete for sewer tunnel rehabilitation

This study aims to investigate the use of pozzolans–fly ash (FA), metakaolin (MK), and silica fume (SF)—which can be sourced from local mine waste to improve acid resistance of rehabilitation shotcrete. Cement was replaced with these pozzolanic materials at ratios of 5%, 10%, 20%, and 30% to prepare cylindrical samples. These samples were immersed in sulfuric acids (H2SO4) with various pH for 3 months. Then the mass change and uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) at various immersion ages were monitored as possible indicators of degradation. It was found that FA and SF mixes demonstrated reasonable improvement on acid resistance; of the 13 mixes, 5% SF replacement exhibited the least mass loss after 3 months of immersion. However, optimal percentages with the least UCS change varied depending on the acidity of the immersing acid. Furthermore, the effectiveness of mass change and UCS change was discussed regarding the evaluation of acid resistance.
Inhibition of Reproductive Maturation and Somatic Growth of Fischer 344 Rats by Photoperiods Shorter than L14:D10 and by Gradually Decreasing Photoperiod1

Abstract Photoperiod is the major regulator of reproduction in temperate-zone mammals. Laboratory rats are generally considered to be nonphotoresponsive, but young male Fischer 344 (F344) rats have a uniquely robust response to short photoperiods of 8 h of light. Rats transferred at weaning from a photoperiod of 16 h to photoperiods of < 14 h of light slowed in both reproductive development and somatic growth rate. Those in photoperiods < 13 h of light underwent the strongest responses. The critical photoperiod of F344 rats can be defined as 13.5 h of light, but photoperiods of ≤ 12.5 h are required to fully suppress reproduction and somatic growth. This demonstrates that the 12-h photoperiod that is standard in some laboratory colonies would have significant effects on reproductive maturation and growth rate of this common rat strain. Young F344 rats in decreasing photoperiods that mimic natural change experienced delayed reproductive development and decreased growth rate to a greater extent and for a longer duration than those transferred at birth to a short photoperiod. The effects of gradual changes in photoperiod persisted for at least 12 wk after weaning. This indicates that young male F344 rats possess responses to photoperiod that would result in functional photoperiodism in a wild mammal.
Nicotine Pretreatment Increases Dysphoric Effects of Alcohol in Luteal-Phase Female Volunteers

The present report shows that nicotine enhances some of alcohol’s positive and negative effects in women and that these effects are most pronounced during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. Ten low progesterone and 10 high progesterone/luteal-phase women received nicotine patch pretreatments (placebo or 21 mg) 3 hours before an alcohol challenge (0.4 g/kg). Subjective effects were recorded on mood adjective scales and the Addiction Research Center Inventory (ARCI). Heart rate and skin temperature were recorded. Luteal-phase women reported peak positive (e.g. “stimulated”) and peak negative effects (e.g. “clumsy”, “dizzy”) almost twice as great as low progesterone women.
Quality is in the eye of the beholder: meeting users' requirements for Internet quality of service

Growing usage and diversity of applications on the Internet makes Quality of Service (QoS) increasingly critical [15]. To date, the majority of research on QoS is systems oriented, focusing on traffic analysis, scheduling, and routing. Relatively minor attention has been paid to user-level QoS issues. It is not yet known how objective system quality relates to users' subjective perceptions of quality. This paper presents the results of quantitative experiments that establish a mapping between objective and perceived QoS in the context of Internet commerce. We also conducted focus groups to determine how contextual factors influence users' perceptions of QoS. We show that, while users' perceptions of World Wide Web QoS are influenced by a number of contextual factors, it is possible to correlate objective measures of QoS with subjective judgements made by users, and therefore influence system design. We argue that only by integrating users' requirements for QoS into system design can the utility of the future Internet be maximized.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE ACTION CURRENTS PRODUCED BY HEART MUSCLE AND OTHER EXCITABLE TISSUES IMMERSED IN EXTENSIVE CONDUCTING MEDIA

The action currents produced by heart muscle and other tissues immersed in or in contact with a large body of conducting material are distributed in accordance with the laws that govern the flow of electric currents in volume conductors. The curve obtained when one electrode (the exploring electrode) is placed very close to and the other (the indifferent electrode) very far from the active tissue may be regarded as representing the potential variations of the exploring electrode alone; the. potential of the indifferent electrode is by comparison nearly constant. Curves obtained by this method of leading from the surface of the mammalian auricle indicate that the electrical effects produced by the passage of the excitation wave along a single muscle fiber are nearly the same as those that would occur if the crest of this wave were immediately preceded by a source and followed by a sink. A study of the electric field of a polarized membrane immersed in a volume conductor shows that this conclusion may be derived on theoretical grounds from the membrane theory of Bernstein.
Complex Event Detection via Event Oriented Dictionary Learning

Complex event detection is a retrieval task with the goal of finding videos of a particular event in a large-scale unconstrained internet video archive, given example videos and text descriptions. Nowadays, different multimodal fusion schemes of low-level and high-level features are extensively investigated and evaluated for the complex event detection task. However, how to effectively select the high-level semantic meaningful concepts from a large pool to assist complex event detection is rarely studied in the literature. In this paper, we propose two novel strategies to automatically select semantic meaningful concepts for the event detection task based on both the events-kit text descriptions and the concepts high-level feature descriptions. Moreover, we introduce a novel event oriented dictionary representation based on the selected semantic concepts. Towards this goal, we leverage training samples of selected concepts from the Semantic Indexing (SIN) dataset with a pool of 346 concepts, into a novel supervised multi-task dictionary learning framework. Extensive experimental results on TRECVID Multimedia Event Detection (MED) dataset demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed method.
THE BINDING OF DRUGS TO HEPATOCYTES AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES

The binding of 17 drugs to rat hepatocytes has been determined using equilibrium dialysis in combination with metabolic inhibitors and a kinetic model for the binding and dialysis processes. Metabolic inhibitors were used to retard the main routes of metabolism such that the half-life for turnover of the drugs was comparable to or greater than the time scale of the equilibrium dialysis process. Further experiments were carried out to determine the kinetics of diffusion of the compounds across the dialysis membrane and the observed extent of binding to hepatocytes. Knowledge of the rate of metabolism of the drugs in the presence of the inhibitors, the kinetics of the dialysis process, and the observed extent of binding was then used with a kinetic model of the system to give true free fractions of the drugs in live hepatocytes. Further studies show that, for this set of compounds, there is no significant difference in the extent of binding to live or dead hepatocytes. The extent of hepatocyte binding is correlated with lipophilicity, and the best model for binding uses log P for basic compounds and log D7.4 for acidic and neutral compounds. Hepatocyte binding is also demonstrated to be highly correlated with microsome binding.
Vertical root fracture resistance of simulated immature permanent teeth filled with MTA using different vehicles

Background The aim of the study is to evaluate the resistance vertical root fracture (VRF) of mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) filled-immature permanent roots by using three different vehicles. Material and Methods Forty-extracted human single-rooted mandibular premolars were selected and the root length was standardized to the length of 9 mm. For simulation of immature tooth apices, peeso reamers were introduced into the root canals and the prepared roots were assigned into three experimental groups according the used vehicle (distilled water-DW, prophylene glycol-PG, chlorhexidine-CHX) and control group (n=10). To simulate a periodontal membrane, the apical 7 mm of all roots was covered with wax to obtain a 0.2- to 0.3-mm-thick layer before embedding the roots into acrylic cylinders. A vertical force was applied (1mm/min) using a universal testing machine and the maximum load (F-max) that fracture occurred and the fracture mode (splint or comminuted) was recorded. Data were presented as mean and standard deviations. Statistical analysis was performed using Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney U Test was used for multiple comparisons. Results There were significant differences between fracture strength of experimental groups with that of control group (p<0.05). However, no statistically significant differences were found amongst the fracture strength values of the experimental groups (p>0.05). In all groups, split fracture was the most common fracture mode. Conclusions MTA increases resistance of immature permanent teeth to VRF. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that mixing MTA with CHX or PG as the vehicle do not alter VRF resistance of simulated immature permanent roots. Key words:Immature teeth, MTA, vehicle, vertical root fracture.