Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diabetes, Insulin Resistance, and Dementia Among HIV-1-Infected Patients

Objectives: Metabolic complications have been associated with HIV-1 infection and with long-term use of antiretroviral (ARV) medications. In some studies, such complications have been linked to cardiovascular events, yet limited data exist concerning metabolic complications and dementia. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between HIV-associated dementia (HAD) and diabetes among patients with HIV-1 infection. Design: Cross-sectional analysis of entry data for a longitudinal cohort study. Methods: A total of 203 participants who were enrolled in the Hawaii Aging with HIV Cohort between October 2001 and November 2003 served as the study population. Research case definitions of HAD were determined in consensus conferences by a panel that included neurologists, neuropsychologists, and a geriatrician. Diabetes was determined by self-report or a fasting glucose level > 125 mg/dL. Results: Participants' ages ranged between 20-76 years at enrollment with approximately one-half aged ≥50 years. After adjustment for important covariates including age, education, ethnicity, CD4 lymphocyte count, duration of HIV infection, and protease inhibitor-based ARV therapy, we found a statistically significant association of diabetes with HAD (odds ratio 5.43, 1.66-17.70). A significant association remained after adjustment for other vascular risk factors. Among participants without diabetes, fasting glucose levels were higher with increasing impairment category. Conclusions: Within the Hawaii Aging with HIV Cohort, a longitudinal study enriched with older HIV-1-infected individuals, diabetes is associated with prevalent dementia. This finding is not fully explained by age or coexisting vascular risk factors. Evaluation of underlying mechanisms is warranted.
Response of Soybean (Glycine max L.) to Subsurface Drip Irrigation with Different Dripline Placements at a Sandy-loam Soil

Received: January 22, 2018 Revised: April 6, 2018 Accepted: April 26, 2018 Subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) system is considered one of the most effective methods for water application. A 2-year field study was conducted to investigate the effect of SDI systems with various dripline spacing (0.7 or 1.4 m) and position (under furrow or ridge) on soybean (Glycine max L.) production at a sandy-loam soil in Miryang, South Korea. For 2016-2017, average grain yield in SDI irrigated plots, 3.16 Mg ha-1, was statistically greater than rainfed irrigated plot (2.63 Mg ha-1). Soybean grain yield averaged 3.25 Mg ha-1 for the 0.7 m dripline spacing and 3.07 Mg ha-1 for the 1.4 m spacing for the two-year period compared to a rainfed irrigated average of 2.63 Mg ha-1 for the same period. Soybean treated with SDI system had significantly greater values of normalized difference vegetation index and stomatal conductance, indicating that soybean plants in SDI plots had greater photosynthetic and stomatal activity due to the higher water availability in soil. Irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE) was greatest in the plot of 0.7 m spacing installed under ridge position than any other plot across growing season. Average soil water content in plots with 0.7 m dripline spacing was 0.21 m3 m-3 at 5 cm depth layer, which was 45% greater compared to the plots with 1.4 m spacing, even though the gross irrigation amounts were greater in 1.4 m spacing plots. It is concluded that wide dripline spacing (1.4 m) is probably the more economical installation design for SDI system compared to 0.7 m spacing in this study soil because the initial cost for dripline may be reduced with wide spacing design, even though the IWUE is greater in the plot of 0.7 m dripline spacing.
Performance gain of precaching at users in small cell networks

The throughput of small cell networks (SCNs) is limited by intercell interference. Except numerous techniques of interference coordination, simply caching several popular files at each user provides an alternative approach to reduce interference by pre-offloading. This becomes possible nowadays due to the facts that the cost of memory devices is reducing quickly and content delivery is gradually dominating the traffic load. In this paper, we quantify the performance gain introduced by precaching at users. We derive the average throughput for non-coordinated downlink SCN with precaching, and compare with the SCN without caching and with existing prefetching policy. We use simulation to validate the analytical results and further evaluate the average download time of different policies. Our results show that the caching gain is remarkable when the traffic load is high and the popularity distribution is far from uniform.
Effects of different starter culture combinations on microbial counts and physico‐chemical properties in dry fermented mutton sausages

Abstract This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of inoculation with different mixed starter culture combinations on microbial counts, physico‐chemical properties, and proteolytic and lipolytic properties of dry fermented mutton sausages during fermentation and ripening. Four different batches of mutton sausages were manufactured: CO batch, no starter cultures, used as control; LB batch with Lactobacillus sakei; LS batch with L. sakei + Staphylococcus xylosus; and LSS batch with L. sakei + S. xylosus + Staphylococcus carnosus. The results showed that adding starter culture caused Lactobacillus and Staphylococcus to become dominant bacteria and reduced the Enterobacteriaceae count in the inoculated sausages. The mixed starter cultures (LS & LSS) accelerated acidification and reduced water activity and lipid oxidation. Statistical analysis revealed that the use of mixed starter cultures, especially the combination L. sakei + S. xylosus + S. carnosus, contributed to proteolysis and lipolysis, increasing total free amino acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids. The above results demonstrate that the use of mixed starter cultures contributes to improving the composition of free amino acids and free fatty acids as well as the hygienic quality of dry fermented mutton sausages.
Screening for Sterilizing Activity of Antibiotic Combinations in an Acid Model of Rapidly Growing Mycobacteria during the Stationary Phase of Growth

Background: In view of the problems of correlation between the data provided by classical microbiological studies and clinical response, we designed an in vitro method to screen for the sterilizing activity of various antibiotics, individually or in combinations, against clinical isolates of various rapidly growing mycobacteria in the stationary phase. Material and Methods: We screened a large number of antibiotic combinations (4–16 μg/ml) for their sterilizing capacity in 26 Mycobacterium fortuitum clinical isolates, 7 Mycobacterium chelonae and 2 Mycobacterium abscessus clinical isolates (105 CFU). Results: The best results against M. fortuitum were obtained with moxifloxacin, both on its own (13/26 strains) and in combination. This drug is also very active against M. chelonae (3/7 strains), and in combination with clarithromycin and amikacin exhibits sterilizing activity against all the strains studied. Combinations of clarithromycin with moxifloxacin or linezolid at high doses (16 μg/ml) exhibit activity against M. abscessus. Conclusions: The most relevant finding of our study is the good activity of moxifloxacin against these microorganisms in the stationary phase. This indicates the need to confirm these data in animal models or clinical trials in order to determine their true clinical importance.
Error bounds for Bregman denoising and structured natural parameter estimation

We analyze an estimator based on the Bregman divergence for recovery of structured models from additive noise. The estimator can be seen as a regularized maximum likelihood estimator for an exponential family where the natural parameter is assumed to be structured. For all such Bregman denoising estimators, we provide an error bound for a natural associated error measure. Our error bound makes it possible to analyze a wide range of estimators, such as those in proximal denoising and inverse covariance matrix estimation, in a unified manner. In the case of proximal denoising, we exactly recover the existing tight normalized mean squared error bounds. In sparse precision matrix estimation, our bounds provide optimal scaling with interpretable constants in terms of the associated error measure.
Exploring Symbioses by Single-Cell Genomics

Single-cell genomics has advanced the field of microbiology from the analysis of microbial metagenomes where information is “drowning in a sea of sequences,” to recognizing each microbial cell as a separate and unique entity. Single-cell genomics employs Phi29 polymerase-mediated whole-genome amplification to yield microgram-range genomic DNA from single microbial cells. This method has now been applied to a handful of symbiotic systems, including bacterial symbionts of marine sponges, insects (grasshoppers, termites), and vertebrates (mouse, human). In each case, novel insights were obtained into the functional genomic repertoire of the bacterial partner, which, in turn, led to an improved understanding of the corresponding host. Single-cell genomics is particularly valuable when dealing with uncultivated microorganisms, as is still the case for many bacterial symbionts. In this review, we explore the power of single-cell genomics for symbiosis research and highlight recent insights into the symbiotic systems that were obtained by this approach.
Modeling for a metamorphic quadruped robot with a twisting trunk: Kinematic and workspace

Up to now the quadruped robots are equipped with the trunks which are rigid bodies or consist of two blocks connected by passive joints. This paper proposes a metamorphic quadruped robot with a moveable trunk which can implement active trunk motions, called MetaRobot I. Its trunk is constructed by a planar 6-bar linkage. Due to this linkage, it can change its trunk into multiple shapes, which give the robot the ability to imitate different animals, as well as more actions of natural quadrupeds. Specially, it can imitate the natural quadrupeds to perform trunk twisting which never been done by any quadruped robots before. Due to the twisting trunk, kinematics of this metamorphic quadruped robot is different from traditional quadruped robots. Also through the trunk twisting the body and leg workspace of the quadruped robot are increased. The mathematical model of kinematics and inner relationship between body and leg workspace and the twisting angle are analyzed in the paper. The increased body and leg workspace will help to increase the stability margins and locomotion speed. At last a simulation and an experiment on physical prototype are carried out to show the stability margins and locomotion speed impacted by the increased body workspace and leg workspace.
Myocardin Enhances Smad3-Mediated Transforming Growth Factor-β1 Signaling in a CArG Box-Independent Manner: Smad-Binding Element Is an Important cis Element for SM22α Transcription In Vivo

Transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 is an important cytokine involved in various diseases. However, the molecular mechanism whereby TGF-β1 signaling modulates the regulatory network for smooth muscle gene transcription remains largely unknown. To address this question, we previously identified a Smad-binding element (SBE) in the SM22α promoter as one of the TGF-β1 response elements. Here, we show that mutation of the SBE reduces the activation potential of a SM22α promoter in transgenic mice during embryogenesis. Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays reveal that TGF-β1 induces Smad3 binding to the SM22α promoter in vivo. A multimerized SBE promoter responsive to TGF-β1 signaling is highly activated by Smad3 but not by the closely related Smad2. Intriguingly, myocardin (Myocd), a known CArG box-dependent serum response factor coactivator, participates in Smad3-mediated TGF-β1 signaling and synergistically stimulates Smad3-induced SBE promoter activity independent of the CArG box; no such synergy is seen with Smad2. Importantly, Myocd cooperates with Smad3 to activate the wild-type SM22α, SM myosin heavy chain, and SMα-actin promoters; they also activate the CArG box-mutated SM22α promoter as well as the CArG box-independent aortic carboxypeptidase-like protein promoter. Immunopreciptiation assays reveal that Myocd and Smad3 directly interact both in vitro and in vivo. Mutagenesis studies indicate that the C-terminal transactivation domains of Myocd and Smad3 are required for their functional synergy. These results reveal a novel regulatory mechanism whereby Myocd participates in TGF-β1 signal pathway through direct interaction with Smad3, which binds to the SBEs. This is the first demonstration that Myocd can act as a transcriptional coactivator of the smooth muscle regulatory network in a CArG box-independent manner.
Oxidation and Degradation Products of Papaverine, Part II[1]: Investigations on the Photochemical Degradation of Papaverine Solutions

The structure of the final degradation product formed in papaverine solutions in either water or chloroform was found to be a 2, 3, 9, 10‐tetramethoxy‐12‐oxo‐12H‐indolo [2, 1‐a] isoquinolinylium salt (a dibenzo [b, g] pyrrocolonium derivative). Its formation from papaverine oxidation products that is papaverinol, papaveraldine, and papaverine‐N‐oxide chloroformsolutions under the influence of UV light, was investigated and possible reaction pathways are discussed.
Transfer in Cognition

The purpose of this paper is to review the cognitive literature regarding transfer in order to provide a context for the consideration of transfer in neural networks. We consider transfer under the three general headings of analogy, skill transfer and metaphor. The emphasis of the research in each of these areas is quite different and the literatures are largely distinct. Important common themes emerge, however, relating to the role of similarity, the importance of 'surface content' and the nature of the representations that are used. We will draw out these common themes and note ways of facilitating transfer. We also briefly note possible implications for the study of transfer in neural networks.
Improving Topic Quality of Scripts by Using Scene Similarity Based Word Co-Occurrence

Scripts are one of the basic text resources to understand broadcasting contents. Topic modeling is the method to get the summary of the broadcasting contents from its scripts. Generally, scripts represent contents descriptively with directions and speeches, and provide scene segments that can be seen as semantic units. Therefore, a script can be topic modeled by treating a scene segment as a document. Because scene segments consist of speeches mainly, however, relatively small co-occurrences among words in the scene segments are observed. This causes inevitably the bad quality of topics by statistical learning method. To tackle this problem, we propose a method to improve topic quality with additional word co-occurrence information obtained using scene similarities. The main idea of improving topic quality is that the information that two or more texts are topically related can be useful to learn high quality of topics. In addition, more accurate topical representations lead to get information more accurate whether two texts are related or not. In this paper, we regard two scene segments are related if their topical similarity is high enough. We also consider that words are co-occurred if they are in topically related scene segments together. By iteratively inferring topics and determining semantically neighborhood scene segments, we draw a topic space represents broadcasting contents well. In the experiments, we showed the proposed method generates a higher quality of topics from Korean drama scripts than the baselines. Keywords—Broadcasting contents, generalized Polya urn model, scripts, text similarity, topic model.
How was the activity? A visualization support for a case of location-based learning design

Over the last few years, the use of mobile technologies has brought the formulation of location-based learning approaches shaping new or enhanced educational activities. Involving teachers in the design of these activities is important because the designs need to be aligned with the requirements of the specific educational settings. Yet analysing the implementation of the activities with students is also critical, not only for assessment purposes but also for enabling the identification of learning design elements that should be revised and improved. This paper studies a case that applies visualizations to support students' self-assessment and teachers' inquiry of a mobile learning design. The design is a gamified location-based learning activity composed by geolocated questions and implemented with the “QuesTInSitu: The Game” mobile application. The activity was designed by seven teachers and enacted by 81 secondary education students organized in a total of 23 groups. Log files, gathered from “QuesTInSitu: The Game,” provided the data for the visualizations, which represented relevant aspects of the group activity enactment (both time used to answer questions and to reach the geographical zone of the questions, scores obtained per zone, etc). On the one hand, the visualizations were discussed with the teachers as a learning analytics tool potentially useful to consider when redesigning the activity, if needed. On the other hand, the study shows that the visualizations led students to make a better diagnosis of their own activity performance.
Regression models with memory for the linear response of turbulent dynamical systems

Calculating the statistical linear response of turbulent dynamical systems to the change in external forcing is a problem of wide contemporary interest. Here the authors apply linear regression models with memory, AR(p) models, to approximate this statistical linear response by directly fitting the autocorrelations of the underlying turbulent dynamical system without further computational experiments. For highly nontrivial energy conserving turbulent dynamical systems like the Kruskal-Zabusky (KZ) or Truncated Burgers-Hopf (TBH) models, these AR(p) models exactly recover the mean linear statistical response to the change in external forcing at all response times with negligible errors. For a forced turbulent dynamical system like the Lorenz-96 (L-96) model, these approximations have improved skill comparable to the mean response with the quasi-Gaussian approximation for weakly chaotic turbulent dynamical systems. These AR(p) models also give new insight into the memory depth of the mean linear response operator for turbulent dynamical systems.
Advanced simulations of photonic structures by FDTD method

Finite-Difference Time-Domain method (FDTD) is based on numerical solution of Maxwell’s equations, nowadays widely used for simulating optical response of photonic structures. This paper provides brief introduction to the FDTD method and several important extensions which make the basic code much more versatile. In order to broaden analysis of photonic structures, transfer matrix method (TMM) is also involved. The code is firstly tested using simple model structures which optical response might be compared with different numerical or even analytical approaches. Debugged code is used to improve photonic crystals for enhanced sensitivity of biosensing devices based on refractive index changes of sensed medium. Last but not the least, properties (sensitivity and Q-factor of resonant peak) of holey waveguide are investigated in one-, twoand three-dimensional simulation. It is shown here, that even this simple structure may compete with complex photonic crystals in the field of biosensors.
Identification of an anion‐specific channel in the cell wall of the Gram‐positive bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum

A cation‐selective channel (porin), designated PorA, facilitates the passage of hydrophilic solutes across the cell wall of the mycolic acid‐containing actinomycete Corynebacterium glutamicum. Biochemical and electrophysiological investigations of the cell wall of the mutant strain revealed the presence of an alternative channel‐forming protein. This porin was purified to homogeneity and studied in lipid bilayer membranes. It forms small anion‐selective channels with a diameter of about 1.4 nm and an average single‐channel conductance of about 700 pS in 1 M KCl. The PorBCglut channel could be blocked by citrate in a dose‐dependent manner. This result was in agreement with growth experiments in citrate as sole carbon source where growth in citrate was impaired as compared with growth in other carbon sources. The PorBCglut protein was partially sequenced and based on the resulting amino acid sequence of the corresponding gene, which was designated as porB, was identified as an unannotated 381 bp long open reading frame (ORF) in the published genome sequence of C. glutamicum ATCC13032. PorBCglut contains 126 amino acids with an N‐terminal extension of 27 amino acids. One hundred and thirty‐eight base pairs downstream of porB, we found an ORF that codes for a protein with about 30% identity to PorBCglut, which was named PorCCglut. The arrangement of porB and porC on the chromosome suggested that both genes belong to the same cluster. RT‐PCR from overlapping regions between genes from wild‐type C. glutamicum ATCC 13032 and its ATCC 13032ΔporA mutant demonstrated that this is the case and that porB and porC are cotranscribed. The gene products PorBCglut and PorCCglut represent obviously other permeability pathways for the transport of hydrophilic compounds through the cell wall of C. glutamicum.
Entwicklung von Kreuzungsassistenzsystemen und Funktionalitätserweiterungen durch den Einsatz von Kommunikationstechnologien

Die Analyse von internationalen Unfallstatistiken zeigt Kreuzungen als einen relevanten Unfallschwerpunkt. Detaillierte Rekonstruktionen reprasentativer Unfalle fuhren zu der Erkenntnis, dass vor allem die Fehlinterpretation der Situationen durch die Fahrer die Unfallursache darstellt. An dieser Stelle kann die Verkehrssicherheit durch eine gezielte Fahrerassistenz gesteigert werden. Bisherige Ansatze der Fahrerassistenz verwenden hauptsachlich eine Situationserfassung durch bordautonome Sensorik. Durch die Einfuhrung neuartiger Kommunikationstechnologien lasst sich der Erfassungshorizont durch die gezielte Ubermittlung von Daten aus der Infrastruktur und auch von anderen Fahrzeugen deutlich erweitern. Exemplarisch werden in diesem Beitrag die Assistenz an Ampeln fur die Kommunikation mit der Infrastruktur und die Querverkehrsassistenz fur die Kommunikation mit anderen Fahrzeugen betrachtet.