Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Magnetic single-walled carbon nanotubes as efficient drug delivery nanocarriers in breast cancer murine model: noninvasive monitoring using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging as sensitive imaging biomarker

Purpose Targeting doxorubicin (DOX) by means of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) nanocarriers may help improve the clinical utility of this highly active therapeutic agent. Active targeting of SWCNTs using tumor-specific antibody and magnetic attraction by tagging the nanotubes with iron oxide nanoparticles can potentially reduce the unnecessary side effects and provide enhanced theranostics. In the current study, the in vitro and in vivo efficacy of DOX-loaded SWCNTs as theranostic nanoprobes was evaluated in a murine breast cancer model. Methods Iron-tagged SWCNTs conjugated with Endoglin/CD105 antibody with or without DOX were synthetized and extensively characterized. Their biocompatibility was assessed in vitro in luciferase (Luc2)-expressing 4T1 (4T1-Luc2) murine breast cancer cells using TiterTACS™ Colorimetric Apoptosis Detection Kit (apoptosis induction), poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (marker for DNA damage), and thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (oxidative stress generation) assays, and the efficacy of DOX-loaded SWCNTs was evaluated by measuring the radiance efficiency using bioluminescence imaging (BLI). Tumor progression and growth were monitored after 4T1-Luc2 cells inoculation using noninvasive BLI and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) before and after subsequent injection of SWCNT complexes actively and magnetically targeted to tumor sites. Results Significant increases in apoptosis, DNA damage, and oxidative stress were induced by DOX-loaded SWCNTs. In addition, a tremendous decrease in bioluminescence was observed in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Noninvasive BLI and MRI revealed successful tumor growth and subsequent attenuation along with metastasis inhibition following DOX-loaded SWCNTs injection. Magnetic tagging of SWCNTs was found to produce significant discrepancies in apparent diffusion coefficient values providing a higher contrast to detect treatment-induced variations as noninvasive imaging biomarker. In addition, it allowed their sensitive noninvasive diagnosis using susceptibility-weighted MRI and their magnetic targeting using an externally applied magnet. Conclusion Enhanced therapeutic efficacy of DOX delivered through antibody-conjugated magnetic SWCNTs was achieved. Further, the superiority of apparent diffusion coefficient measurements using diffusion-weighted MRI was found to be a sensitive imaging biomarker for assessment of treatment-induced changes.
A Locally Conservative Eulerian-Lagrangian Method for a Model Two-Phase Flow Problem in a One-Dimensional Porous Medium

Motivated by possible generalizations to more complex multiphase multicomponent systems in higher dimensions, we develop an Eulerian--Lagrangian numerical approximation for a system of two conservation laws in one space dimension modeling a simplified two-phase flow problem in a porous medium. The method is based on following tracelines, so it is stable independent of any CFL constraint. The main difficulty is that it is not possible to follow individual tracelines independently. We approximate tracing along the tracelines by using local mass conservation principles and self-consistency. The two-phase flow problem is governed by a system of equations representing mass conservation of each phase, so there are two local mass conservation principles. Our numerical method respects both of these conservation principles over the computational mesh (i.e., locally), and so is a fully conservative traceline method. We present numerical results that demonstrate the ability of the method to handle problems with shoc.
Analysis of BRCA1 Variants in Double‐Strand Break Repair by Homologous Recombination and Single‐Strand Annealing

Missense substitutions of uncertain clinical significance in the BRCA1 gene are a vexing problem in genetic counseling for women who have a family history of breast cancer. In this study, we evaluated the functions of 29 missense substitutions of BRCA1 in two DNA repair pathways. Repair of double‐strand breaks by homology‐directed recombination (HDR) had been previously analyzed for 16 of these BRCA1 variants, and 13 more variants were analyzed in this study. All 29 variants were also analyzed for function in double‐strand break repair by the single‐strand annealing (SSA) pathway. We found that among the pathogenic mutations in BRCA1, all were defective for DNA repair by either pathway. The HDR assay was accurate because all pathogenic mutants were defective for HDR, and all nonpathogenic variants were fully functional for HDR. Repair by SSA accurately identified pathogenic mutants, but several nonpathogenic variants were scored as defective or partially defective. These results indicated that specific amino acid residues of the BRCA1 protein have different effects in the two related DNA repair pathways, and these results validate the HDR assay as highly correlative with BRCA1‐associated breast cancer.
Towards a single sensor passive solution for automated fall detection

Falling in the home is one of the major challenges to independent living among older adults. The associated costs, coupled with a rapidly growing elderly population, are placing a burden on healthcare systems worldwide that will swiftly become unbearable. To facilitate expeditious emergency care, we have developed an artificially intelligent camera-based system that automatically detects if a person within the field-of-view has fallen. The system addresses concerns raised in earlier work and the requirements of a widely deployable in-home solution. The presented prototype utilizes a consumer-grade camera modified with a wide-angle lens. Machine learning techniques applied to carefully engineered features allow the system to classify falls at high accuracy while maintaining invariance to lighting, environment and the presence of multiple moving objects. This paper describes the system, outlines the algorithms used and presents empirical validation of its effectiveness.
Classification of statement and question intonations in Mandarin

Conflicting reports abound in the literature regarding the critical characteristics of statement and question intonations in Mandarin. In this paper, decision trees with three different sets of feature vectors are implemented to determine the most significant elements in an utterance that signify its sentence type (statement vs. question). For 10-syllable utterances, the highest correct classification rate (85%) is achieved when normalized (to remove the effects of speaker, tone, and focus) final F0’s of the 7th and the last syllables are included in the tree construction. This performance is close to previously reported human performance (89%) for the same testing set. The results confirm the previous finding that the difference between statement and question intonations in Mandarin is manifested by an increasing departure from a common starting point toward the end of the sentence.
Trajectories of Childbearing among HIV Infected Indian Women: A Sequence Analysis Approach

Background HIV infection closely relates to and deeply affects the reproductive career of those infected. However, little is known about the reproductive career trajectories, specifically the interaction of the timing of HIV diagnosis with the timing and sequencing of reproductive events among HIV infected women. This is the first study to describe and typify this interaction. Methods Retrospective calendar data of ever married HIV infected women aged 15-45 attending a HIV clinic in Pune, Maharashtra, Western India (N=622) on reproductive events such as marriage, cohabitation with the partner, use of contraception, pregnancy, childbirth and HIV diagnosis were analyzed using sequence analysis and multinomial logistic regression. Results Optimal matching revealed three distinct trajectories: 1) HIV diagnosis concurrent with childbearing (40.7%), 2) HIV diagnosis after childbearing (32.1%), and 3) HIV diagnosis after husband’s death (27.2%). Multinomial logistic regression (trajectory 1 = baseline) showed that women who got married before the age of 21 years and who had no or primary level education had a significantly higher risk of knowing their HIV status either after childbearing or close to their husband’s death. The risk of HIV diagnosis after husband’s death was also higher among rural women and those who were diagnosed before 2005. Conclusions Three distinct patterns of interaction of timing of HIV diagnosis with timing and sequencing of events in the reproductive career were observed that have clear implications for (i) understanding of the individual life planning process in the context of HIV, (ii) formulation of assumptions for estimating HIV infected women in need of PMTCT services, and (iii) provision of care services.
Automatic generation of evolutionary operators: a study with mutation strategies for the differential evolution

Genetic Programming (GP) is presented as an approach for the automatic generation of high quality mutation strategies for the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm. To evaluate the generated mutation strategies, some well known continuous global optimization problems were selected. Also, a multi-layer perceptron neural network was trained for regression and classification tasks. Statistical analysis of the results showed quite satisfactory performance of the discovered mutation strategy (dubbed ADAM), presenting competitive or better results than classical mutation strategies. The contribution of this work is to show that GP is a potential tool for exploring new ideas in metaheuristics development, allowing for an automatic generation of mutation strategies that can present fast performance and high quality solutions.
Single and double whole-mount in situ hybridization in red flour beetle (Tribolium) embryos.

INTRODUCTION The red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, has emerged as an important model system for studying the evolution of development. Studies with Tribolium complement the vast amount of research done with Drosophila. Developmental features that are conserved between Drosophila and Tribolium, such as body segmentation, are achieved by quite different means, and thus comparison of developmental mechanisms between these two insects can address many interesting questions concerning the evolution of morphology and other characters. Most in situ protocols used for Tribolium have been adapted from Drosophila studies. Whole-mount in situ hybridization is a standard technique to visualize the activity of genes in embryos. The single and double staining protocol presented here uses two nonfluorescent stains to reveal gene activity. The development of both stains can be monitored visually, allowing the strength of the signal to be adjusted as needed. Cells that express both of the genes under investigation are readily detected using a microscope. The use of EGTA during fixation increases the proportion of embryos that devitellinize upon methanol treatment.
Effect of Polymeric Diets in Patients on Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis

Objective To determine if a diet complemented with calcium caseinate is better than a natural high protein diet for increasing serum albumin levels in patients on continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). Patients and Methods A 4-month clinical trial involving 100 patients older than 18 years was performed. Patients were randomized into two groups: group A, high protein diet (1.4 g natural protein/kg target weight/day and 35 kcal/kg target weight/day); and group B, calcium caseinate (0.7 g calcium caseinate plus 0.7 g natural protein diet/kg target weight/day and 35 kcal/kg target weight/day). Serum levels of albumin, total proteins (TP), BUN, creatinine, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium, and hematocrit, leukocytes, erythrocytes, and hemoglobin were analyzed at baseline and every 30 days. Results The final mean albumin value was, for group A, 3.04 ± 0.39 g/dL, and for group B, 3.1±2 0.41 g/dL (p < 0.05); TP for group A, 6.29 ± 0.47 g/dL, and for group B, 6.49 ± 0.51 g/dL (p < 0.05); leukocytes for group A, 688 ± 8 1282/mm3, for group B, 7288 ± 1878/mm3 (p = 0.05); BUN for group A, 47 ± 11 mg/dL, for group B, 50 ± 16 mg/dL (p = 0.05). Regression analysis showed a treatment effect in serum albumin and TP levels from the third month in both groups. In group B, a constant elevation of serum albumin of 0.19 mg/dL and TP of 0.27 mg/dL was observed in every month of treatment with calcium caseinate. In the regression analysis of group A we observed a smaller increase in serum albumin, 0.06 mg/dL, and in TP, 0.11 mg/dL, in each month of treatment with the high protein diet. Both differences are significant (p < 0.05). Conclusion Calcium caseinate used in CAPD patients suffering from malnutrition increases serum albumin levels.
Hybrid effect of carbon nanotube film and ultrathin carbon fiber prepreg composites

This paper successfully interlaced floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition-grown carbon nanotube film and ultrathin carbon fiber prepreg to achieve strong and flexible carbon nanotube/carbon fiber hybrid composites with high carbon nanotube loading. Epoxidation was also introduced to improve interlaminar interfacial bonding. It was found that pristine carbon nanotube film/carbon fiber interply hybrid composite (carbon fiber/carbon nanotube/carbon fiber) showed sudden and brittle failure, while epoxidation caused a gradual failure behavior. Hybrid effect analysis suggested that the improved tensile performance and synergistic effect of epoxidized carbon nanotube film/carbon fiber hybrid composite were attributed to good load transfer and suppressed delamination induced by improved interfacial bonding. In addition carbon fiber/carbon nanotube/carbon fiber manifested excellent damping capacity with the maximum loss factor of 0.13. The in-plane electrical conductivity of composite with global carbon nanotube content of 21 wt% increased to the same order of magnitude as carbon nanotube film composite. The excellent mechanical, damping, and electrical properties demonstrated great potential for both structural and multifunctional applications of the resultant hybrid composites.
Quantum-dot based microdisk lasers and semiconductor optical amplifiers operating at 1.55 μm

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Presymptomatic cortical thinning in familial Alzheimer disease

Objective: To identify a cortical signature pattern of cortical thinning in familial Alzheimer disease (FAD) and assess its utility in detecting and tracking presymptomatic neurodegeneration. Methods: We recruited 43 FAD mutation carriers—36 PSEN1, 7 APP (20 symptomatic, 23 presymptomatic)—and 42 healthy controls to a longitudinal clinical and MRI study. T1-weighted MRI scans were acquired at baseline in all participants; 55 individuals (33 mutation carriers; 22 controls) had multiple (mean 2.9) follow-up scans approximately annually. Cortical thickness was measured using FreeSurfer. A cortical thinning signature was identified from symptomatic FAD participants. We then examined cortical thickness changes in this signature region in presymptomatic carriers and assessed associations with cognitive performance. Results: The cortical signature included 6 regions: entorhinal cortex, inferior parietal cortex, precuneus, superior parietal cortex, superior frontal cortex, and supramarginal gyrus. There were significant differences in mean cortical signature thickness between mutation carriers and controls 3 years before predicted symptom onset. The earliest significant difference in a single region, detectable 4 years preonset, was in the precuneus. Rate of change in cortical thickness became significantly different in the cortical signature at 5 years before predicted onset, and in the precuneus at 8 years preonset. Baseline mean signature thickness predicted rate of subsequent thinning and correlated with presymptomatic cognitive change. Conclusions: The FAD cortical signature appears to be similar to that described for sporadic AD. All component regions showed significant presymptomatic thinning. A composite signature may provide more robust results than a single region and have utility as an outcome measure in presymptomatic trials.
Network Extractor Protocols

We design efficient protocols for processors to extract private randomness over a network with Byzantine faults, when each processor has access to an independent weakly-random n-bit source of sufficient min-entropy.We give several such network extractor protocols in both the information theoretic and computational settings.For a computationally unbounded adversary, we construct protocols in both the synchronous and asynchronous settings.These network extractors imply efficient protocols for leader election (synchronous setting only) and Byzantine agreement which tolerate a linear fraction of faults,even when the min-entropy is only 2(log n) Omega(1). For larger min-entropy,in the synchronous setting the fraction of tolerable faults approaches the bounds in the perfect-randomness case.Our network extractors for a computationally bounded adversary work in the synchronous setting even when 99% of the parties are faulty, assuming trapdoor permutations exist. Further, assuming a strong variant of the Decisional Diffie-Hellman Assumption, we construct a network extractor in which all parties receive private randomness. This yields an efficient protocol for secure multi-party computation with imperfect randomness, when the number of parties is at least polylog (n) and where the parties only have access to an independent source with min-entropy nOmega(1).
Spin valve magnetoresistive sensor with antiparallel pinned layer and improved exchange bias layer, and magnetic recording system using the sensor

Spin valve magnetoresistive (SVMR) sensor with an improved antiferromagnetic (AF) exchange bias layer combination laminated antiparallel (AP) pinned layer that includes separated by a nonmagnetic coupling film layers iron magnetic film whose magnetization antiparallel orientation strongly coupled together antiferromagnetically. Desired rotational SVMR sensor's free layer weak field The laminated AP pinned layer is magnetically rigid in which two magnetic moments of the ferromagnetic layer near the same, the net magnetic moment of the pinned layer is small. Large exchange field, because it is inversely proportional to the net magnetic moment. Laminated AP-pinned layer magnetization is fixed or rolling nail material AF, which is strong but the corrosion exchange anisotropy too small to be used in conventional SVMR sensors.
A discriminative model for continuous speech recognition based on Weighted Finite State Transducers

This paper proposes a discriminative model for speech recognition that directly optimizes the parameters of a speech model represented in the form of a decoding graph. In the process of recognition, a decoder, given an input speech signal, searches for an appropriate label sequence among possible combinations from separate knowledge sources of speech, e.g., acoustic, lexicon, and language models. It is more reasonable to use an integrated knowledge source, which is composed of these models and forms an overall space to be searched by a decoder, than to use separate ones. This paper aims to estimate a speech model composed in this way directly in the search network, unlike discriminative training approaches, which estimate parameters in acoustic or language model layers. Our approach is formulated as the weight parameter optimization of log-linear distributions in the decoding arcs of a Weighted Finite State Transducer (WFST) to efficiently handle a large network statically. The weight parameters are estimated by an averaged perceptron algorithm. The experimental results show that, especially when the model size is small, the proposed approach provided better recognition performance than the conventional maximum likelihood and comparable to or slightly better performance than discriminative training approaches.
Quantification of the bone healing process using information of B-Mode ultrasound image

Ultrasound provides a promising non-invasive, safe, objective means of monitoring and quantifying bone healing. In this paper, the relationship between the ultrasound image intensity and the acoustic impedance was exploited to develop a quantitative measure towards assessment and monitoring of the bone healing process. Information theoretic criterion (KLD) was used to quantify the degree of bone healing using the intensity histogram of the callus region obtained from B-Mode ultrasound. Results from a pilot experimental study, show that the proposed method is capable of accurately quantifying the degree of bone healing.
Using Fermat number transform to accelerate convolutional neural network

Convolutional neural network (CNN), has achieved a significant breakthrough on image recognition and natural language processing. However, CNNs still suffer from the prohibitive computation complexity. Many efforts have been made to reduce the arithmetic complexity of direct convolution. Aiming at lower multiplication complexity, an efficient convolution architecture based on Fermat number transform (FNT) is proposed in this paper. We first present the FNT algorithm and Overlap-and-Add (OaA) method. To cope with convolution computation in CNNs, the FNT is extended to two-dimensional (2D) FNT and corresponding calculation methodology is introduced. The pipelined FNT architecture is also proposed for efficient realization of FNT. Then an overall architecture of CNN accelerator is given based on OaA FNT. Complexity analysis has demonstrated that the proposed OaA FNT convolution method reduces 5.59× and 2.56× of multiplication complexity compared to direct convolution and OaA FFT method. We also conduct evaluation on the FPGA platform Xilinx Virtex-7 XC7VX485t and comparison is made with respect to convolution throughput and resource efficiency (GOP/s/DSP). The proposed architecture achieves 1.41× convolution throughput with 3.05× less DSPs compared to the state-of-the-art design. 4.29× improvement is gained in terms of the resource efficiency.
Do the Ends Justify the Means? A Test of Alternatives to the FDA Proposed Cigarette Warning Labels

Three studies provide empirical, social scientific tests of alternatives to the originally proposed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cigarette package warning labels on health risk beliefs, perceived fear, and effectiveness. Our research addresses questions at the root of the legal disputes surrounding FDA regulation of cigarette package warning labels. Specifically, we describe results from three studies that investigate the mediating role of health beliefs and perceived fear in shaping message effectiveness and intentions to quit. The first study featured nonsmoking young adults, while the second and third studies sampled adult daily smokers. Each study was a randomized experiment with five warning-label image conditions: full-color graphic warning labels, black-and-white graphic warning labels, warning text (no graphic image), Surgeon General’s warning labels, and no warning. Results consistently indicate that graphic warning labels (in both color and black-and-white) promote increased perceptions of fear, which in turn are associated with greater (perceived and actual) effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of the results, highlighting implications, public policy considerations, and suggestions for future research.