Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Alisma plantago-aquatica Linn extract on chronic prostatitis in rats

Purpose: To study the effect of Alisma plantago-aquatica Linn. extract (APLE) on chronic prostatitis in rats. Methods: Experimental chronic non-bacterial prostatitis (CNP) was induced in rats by injecting carrageenan into prostate. Rats in drug-treated groups were administered APLE or cernilton (positive control, i.e., reference standard) for 3 weeks while rats in normal and negative control groups were treated with saline at the same time. After treatment, prostate index (PI) and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) of all the rats were examined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). In addition, the relative inflammatory factors, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin 1β (IL-1β), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), prostaglandin E2 (PEG2), transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) of the prostate tissues were measured by ELISA. Results: A high dose of APLE (480 mg/kg) significantly decreased PI (0.7 ± 0.2 mg/g) relative to reference group (2.8 ± 0.3 mg/g, p < 0.01), and significantly decreased PSA level (128.6 ± 12.3 pg/mL) relative to reference group (321.3 ± 16.4 pg/mL, p < 0.01). Compared with reference group, TNF-α level (109.7 ± 9.3 pg/mL, p < 0.01), IL-1β level (98.3 ± 12.5 pg/mL, p < 0.01), PEG2 level (81.5 ± 4.2 pg/mL, p < 0.01), COX-2 level (10.5 ± 2.6 pg/mL, p < 0.01), TGF-β1 level (86.8 ± 7.3 pg/mL, p < 0.01) and CTGF level (70.3 ± 4.3 pg/mL, p < 0.01) of prostate tissues of high-dose APLE group rats decreased significantly. Conclusion: APLE shows significant anti-chronic prostatitis activity in rats. Further studies are, however, required to ascertain its therapeutic potentials in humans Keywords: Alisma plantago-aquatica , Chronic prostatitis, Inflammation, Prostate index, Morphometric analysis, Interstitial fibrosis
A survey on deep learning: one small step toward AI

Deep learning is a recently-developed ﬁeld belonging to Artiﬁcial Intelligence. It tries to mimic the human brain, which is capable of processing the complex input data, learning diﬀerent knowledges intellectually and fast, and solving diﬀerent kinds of complicated tasks well. Switching these features of human brain to a learning model, we wish the model can deal with the high-dimensional data, support a fast and intellectual learning algorithm and perform well in the complicated AI tasks like computer vision or speech recognition. Deep architecture is believed to be such kind of model, with good learning algorithms for the deep learning and an excellent performance in solving AI tasks. This survey reviews a history of deep learning, summarizing the components of Convolutional Neural Networks(CNNs) and Deep Belief Networks(DBNs) together with their learning algorithms and their performances in diﬀerent applications
Mutational analysis ofthe zincmetalloproteaseEmpAofVibrio anguillarum

The extracellular zinc metalloprotease, EmpA, is a putative virulence factor involved in pathogenicity of the fish pathogen Vibrio anguillarum. The 611-amino acid precursor of this enzyme is encoded by the empA gene. The residues His, His, Glu, Glu, His, Tyr and Asp are highly conserved and putatively function together at the active site of the enzyme. In this study, empA was inserted into pET24d(1) and expressed in Escherichia coli strain BL21(DE3) as a 6 His tagged protein (r-EmpA). All the conserved residues of EmpAmentioned above were individually mutated by site-directed mutagenesis and the mutants were also expressed (m-r-EmpAs). r-EmpA and m-r-EmpAs were purified, and assayed for their proteolytic activities with azocasein as the substrate and cytotoxicities on a flounder gill cell line. m-r-EmpAs that had been mutated at His, His, Glu and Glu almost completely lost their proteolytic activity and cytotoxicity, pointing towards the essential roles played by these residues. In contrast, those mutated at Tyr, His and Asp still retained a partial proteolytic activity and cytotoxicity. Our results indicate that these conserved residues play important roles in enzymatic activity and that the proteolytic activity of the enzyme is involved in the pathogenesis of V. anguillarum.
Bandwidth Enhancement Techniques

In this chapter, a variety of procedures proposed in the literature to increase the imped- ance bandwidth of microstrip patch antennas are presented and discussed. Intrinsic techniques, proximity coupled and aperture-coupled patches, applying horizontally coupled patches to driven patch on a single layer and stacked patches are discussed. Beside the linear polarised solutions, some techniques for designing wideband circular polarised patch antennas are also presented. Furthermore, some other techniques proposed in the literature including log-periodic array of patches, E-shaped patch, L-shaped feeding, microstrip monopole slotted antenna, defected ground/patch technique and the latest works during the recent years are introduced and investigated. It is tried to make a com- parison between different methods giving a typical bandwidth that can be obtained using each method, beside discussing about the benefits or limitations that each method has.
An Ultra Low Power Successive Approximation ADC for Wireless Sensor Network

In this paper, a new low-power SARADC is presented. In the presented design, the frequency dependency of the power rather than the conventional supply voltage is emphasized. Our evaluations show that when the frequency of a mixed signal system drops down, the ratio of power consumption in analog and digital units have different patterns. In this respect, for our target study of SARADC the power share in analog is about constant while the share of digital sections is rapidly reduced. This means that to lower the total power, the analog section must be optimized. In our target study, the SARADC has a major analog unit as a comparator. The frequency of the target design is selected in range 50 KHz - 200 KHz, which is the conventional range of operations for ADC in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes. The 6bit SARADC reported here consumes only 4.96 µW at 100 KHz. Ultra low power consumption of our ADC makes this suitable for WSN node applications. The proposed 6bit SARADC is designed and simulated in 90nm CMOS at 1v supply voltage.
Dear Prof. Hans Linderholm and two reviewers, Thank you very much for giving us a chance to revise our manuscript “A 424-year tree-ring based PDSI reconstruction of Cedrus deodara D. Don from Chitral HinduKush Range of Pakistan: linkages

Thank you very much for giving us a chance to revise our manuscript “A 424-year tree-ring based PDSI reconstruction of Cedrus deodara D. Don from Chitral HinduKush Range of Pakistan: linkages to the ocean oscillations” (cp-2019). We greatly appreciate the two reviewers for their valuable and helpful comments. We have revised our manuscript according their comments. The manuscript has been greatly improved after the revision. The point by point response to the reviewers’ comments can be found in the following pages. The reviewer’s comments are listed in black, and our response are in blue. Thank you for all your help in processing our manuscript. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Title Fusion with stem cell makes the hepatocellular carcinoma cellssimilar to liver tumor-initiating cells

Background: Cell fusion is a fast and highly efficient technique for cells to acquire new properties. The fusion of somatic cells with stem cells can reprogram somatic cells to a pluripotent state. Our research on the fusion of stem cells and cancer cells demonstrates that the fused cells can exhibit stemness and cancer cell-like characteristics. Thus, tumor-initiating cell-like cells are generated. Methods: We employed laser-induced single-cell fusion technique to fuse the hepatocellular carcinoma cells and human embryonic stem cells (hESC). Real-time RT-PCR, flow cytometry and in vivo tumorigenicity assay were adopted to identify the gene expression difference. Results: We successfully produced a fused cell line that coalesces the gene expression information of hepatocellular carcinoma cells and stem cells. Experimental results showed that the fused cells expressed cancer and stemness markers as well as exhibited increased resistance to drug treatment and enhanced tumorigenesis. Conclusions: Fusion with stem cells transforms liver cancer cells into tumor initiating-like cells. Results indicate that fusion between cancer cell and stem cell may generate tumor initiating-like cells.
Improving performance of indoor localization using compressive sensing and normal hedge algorithm

: Accurate indoor localization technologies are currently in high demand in wireless sensor networks, which strongly drive the development of various wireless applications including healthcare monitoring, patient tracking and endoscopic capsule localization. The precise position determination requires exact estimation of the time varying characteristics of wireless channels. In this paper, we address this issue and propose a three-phased scheme, which employs an optimal single stage TDOA/FDOA/AOA indoor localization based on spatial sparsity. The first contribution is to formulate the received unknown signals from the emitter as a compressive sensing problem. Then, we solve an ℓ 1 minimization problem to localize the emitter’s position. To combat the nonstationary behavior of wireless channels between sensor nodes, the results of our proposed localization algorithm are finally fused using a novel fusion method based on the adaptive normal hedge algorithm. To improve the accuracy of the estimated location, an optimal set of weighed coefficients are derived through introducing a new loss function. Monte Carlo simulation results show that the accuracy of the proposed localization framework is superior compared to the existing indoor localization schemes in low SNR regimes.
Modular Latent Space Transfer with Analytic Manifold Learning

—Sim2Real can be effective when using photorealistic simulators with accurate physics. However, the target appearance might be unknown a-priori and simulated dynamics might resemble reality only in some aspects. We propose an approach that uses simulation to help learning latent state representations without requiring a match in visual appearance or domain randomization. For this, we learn to encode the dynamics properties of simulated/source domains in a set of independent analytic relations that hold on sequences of low-dimensional simulation states. Then, we impose these relations onto the latent space when learning on the target domain (e.g. reality). Deﬁning independence rigorously allows us to obtain modular representations and ensure that each relation captures a new aspect of the dynamics. This approach also enables transferring common properties from a set of related domains, instead of being conﬁned to modeling a speciﬁc task. We show that our approach improves the quality of the latent space of unsupervised learners that train from non-stationary high-dimensional observations. We also outline potential for adaptive partial transfer, which would entail adapting the strength of imposing relations during transfer.
Asymmetric Price Transmission in the Israeli Citrus Export Sector in the Aftermath of Liberalization

The Israeli citrus export sector was liberalized in 1991 with the aim to increase citrus growers' income and to improve overall efficiency of the international citrus marketing channel. However, the former government export monopoly's activities were mainly taken over by four large companies accounting for over 90% of total Israeli citrus market exports. In addition, citrus exporters maintained the monopoly's consignment system, substantially limiting transparency on how the grower price is determined. This lead the government to intervene in the newly liberalized market by implementing a minimum price agreement in the 1994/95 season to protect citrus growers against exporters' abuse of market power. In this paper we analyze whether market power was exerted by exporting companies over citrus growers in the form of asymmetric price transmission. Our study is unique in that it investigates vertical price transmission across international borders, i.e. in the context of Israeli grapefruit exports to France. We explicitly account for possible changes in exporters' pricing behaviour in the post-liberalization period. We apply an error correction model (ECM) to disaggregated firm-level Israeli grower price and French import price data. An ECM is estimated individually for each of the major exporting companies within a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) framework. We find asymmetric price transmission in the first years after liberalisation, but symmetry in the second half of the 1990s. Our results indicate that growers' losses due to asymmetry amounted to as much as 2.5% of their total revenues. Our results suggest that liberalization improved the efficiency of the Israeli citrus international marketing channel, but that this took time and was probably accelerated by government intervention.
WHO FAMILY OF INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATIONS NETWORK MEETING

There is an increasing interest in using computers for recording findings and images with endoscopy. A specific code system for endoscopic terminology has never been widely used. The aim of this study was to develop a comprehensive code system for gastrointestinal endoscopic terminology based on ICD-10. ICD-10 is not specific enough for the terminology used to describe gastrointestinal endoscopies. Therefore, chapters 1, 2, 9, 11, 18 and 21 are extended, to be able to use every relevant gastrointestinal endoscopic term for the description of a health condition. Subdivisions and gradings of specific gastrointestinal disorders and endoscopic locations are added, as well as indications, medication and complications. A new chapter is developed for terminology not available in ICD-10, such as therapeutic procedures. The extended code system is entitled Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Terminology Coding (GET-C). A project, the TRANS.IT project, is running to evaluate endoscopic examinations and GET-C in the Netherlands. The program Endobase III® is used and a central database has been build. Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Terminology Coding (GET-C) is a code system that can be used within every database-program for all specific endoscopic terms. The extended ICD-10 subcategories are recommended for inclusion in ICD and GET-C is recommended as a candidate for adoption as a related member of the Family of International Classifications.
Synthetic Aperture Radar Three-Dimensional Imaging——From TomoSAR and Array InSAR to Microwave Vision

Synthetic Aperture Radar three-dimensional (SAR 3D) imaging technology can eliminate severe overlap in 2D images, and improve target recognition and 3D modeling capabilities, which have become an important trend in SAR development. After decades of development of SAR 3D imaging technology, many types of 3D imaging methods have been proposed. In this study, the history of SAR 3D imaging technology is systematically reviewed and the characteristics of existing SAR 3D imaging technology are analyzed. Given that the 3D information contained in SAR echo and images is not fully used by existing techniques, a new concept of SAR microwave vision 3D imaging has been proposed for the first time. This new concept is integrated with microwave scattering mechanism and image visual semantics to realize three-dimensional reconstruction, which form the theory and method of SAR microwave vision 3D imaging and can achieve high-efficiency and low-cost SAR 3D imaging. This study also analyzes the concept, goal and key scientific problems of SAR microwave vision 3D imaging and provides a preliminary solution, which will contribute in several ways to our understanding of SAR 3D imaging and provide the basis for further research.
Journal of Emerging Trends in Marketing and Management

This research study explores the extent to which parents rely on gender marketing when purchasing products for their children, and how these consumers would react in a genderless informational world. The project presents theories found in consumer behavior and child psychology, including Scott Wards Theory of Consumer Socialization, Judith Butler’s views of sex, gender, and gender identity, and the idea of Unconscious Branding by professor Douglas Van Praet. The methodology used for the completion of this research can be subdivided into two forms of primary research: an open questionnaire and an online survey. The study uses APA formatting to structure the above-mentioned section, and alters it to include both a discussion and a methodology evaluation subsection. The project gives examples of gender marketing and its uses for the past decade, it shows how parents aim to control the practice, and it identifies the existence of three types of parent buyers: The Id -Mom, Ego-Dad and Super-Ego-Parents.Gender marketing does, to different degrees, influence parent-buying behavior both consciously and unconsciously. The extent to which these forces impact each parent is directly correlated to the level of critical thought and social desirability bias they find within. These three categories define parents that would react independently from one another when faced with a genderless informational world. Future directions of research suggest an extension of the research study to include a longitudinal design that will allow for the tracking of the respondents’ actions and opinions over time.
Teamwork in Multi-Agent System — a case study of soccer playing agents —

What is teamwork in multi-agent systems? It is not trivial to give a suitable definition of teamwork for teams of agents working together, because agents do not have innate goals, purposes, or instincts. Especially, this difficulty becomes clear when we consider teamwork in soccer-playing teams of agents in which all agents share the same goal and purpose. In order to approach to suitable definitions, I investigateteamwork from several points of view and try to figure out the possible definitions.
Cross-lingual Correspondences of Terms in Texts and Terminologies: Theoretical Issues and Practical Implications

Terms are items in language that represent concepts. This relation of representation does not change through use. As such, terms have a unique status in language, second only to proper names. Due to this, clarifying the identity of concepts represented by terms becomes an important issue at the level of what is represented, and control of terms representing the same concept also becomes an important issue at the level of representation. These problems with which terminologists are concerned, though not clear at first glance, are in fact relevant to general words and vocabulary to a lesser extent. In this paper I first clarify theoretical issues of terms and terminologies and what they imply for terminology processing in particular and lexical and lexicological processing in general. I then pick up some terminological applications, examine their status and suggest a few issues that can be addressed in terminology processing.
GLP-1 receptor agonists for NAFLD treatment in patients with and without type 2 diabetes: an updated meta-analysis

Aim: Recent randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have tested the efficacy of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RA) to specifically treat non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We performed a meta-analysis of RCTs to investigate the efficacy of GLP-1 RAs for treatment of NAFLD or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Methods: We systematically searched PubMed and ClinicalTrials.Gov databases utilizing specific terms to identify placebo-controlled or head-to-head RCTs (last research on March 1, 2020) involving NAFLD patients with the aim of evaluating the efficacy of GLP-1 RAs to treat NAFLD/NASH. Primary outcomes were changes in serum liver enzymes, liver fat content, or histologic resolution of NASH. Weighted mean differences (WMD) were used to test the differences between the treatment arms. Results: Overall, we found 7 placebo-controlled or head-to-head RCTs involving 472 middle-aged individuals (66% men; 77% with established diabetes) followed for a median of 16 weeks that have used liraglutide or exenatide to treat NAFLD on imaging (n = 6) or biopsy (n = 1). Compared to placebo or reference therapy, treatment with GLP-1 RAs decreased serum alanine aminotransferase [n = 7 studies; WMD: -8.77 IU/L, 95% confidence intervals (CI) -17.69 to 0.14 IU/L; I2 = 87.3%], gamma-glutamyltransferase levels (n = 4 studies; WMD: -10.17 IU/L, 95% CI -14.27 IU/L to -6.07 IU/L; I2 = 0%) and imaging-defined liver fat content (n = 4 studies; WMD: -6.23%, 95% CI -8.95% to -3.51%; I2 = 85.9%). In one RCT involving 55 patients with biopsy-proven NASH, a 48-week treatment with liraglutide also led to a greater histological resolution of NASH than placebo. Conclusions: GLP-1 RAs (mostly liraglutide) seem to be a promising treatment option for NAFLD or NASH. Open Access Meta-Analysis © The Author(s) 2020. This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Exploration of Medicine
Measuring Both Ends of the Big 5 Personality Scales Independently

This paper outlines the development of the Lumina Spark psychometric tool designed to reduce evaluative bias (Bäckström, Björklund & Larsson, 2014) in the profiling of personality. Big Five personality theory guided the inductive development of 10 scale pairs in the new measure representing the two poles of each Big 5 factors. The 10 scale pairs have been further broken down into 32 facets. The results from Factor Analyses of the 32 facets from an international sample of 1,925 mixed working population, mapped significantly onto the Big Five Factors. Results showed that structuring personality, based upon measuring both polarities of the big five dimensions as scalar opposites and independent constructs, adds resilience and nuance to the subsequent personality profile whilst also reducing evaluative bias.
Open CurlTM Cloud Computing Test Structure: Confederate Data Centers for Open Source Systems and Services Research

-There are a number of important and useful test structure, such as PlanetLab, EmuLab, IBM/Google cluster, and Amazon EC2/S3, that enable researchers to study different aspects of distributed computing. However, no single test structure supports research spanning systems, applications, services, open-source development, and datacenters. Towards this end, we have developed Open Cirrus, a cloud computing test structure for the research community that federates heterogeneous distributed data centers. Open Cirrus offers a cloud stack consisting of physical and virtual machines, and global services, such as sign-on, monitoring, storage, and job submission. By developing the test structure and making it available to the research community, we hope to help spur innovation in cloud computing and catalyze the development of an open source stack for the cloud.
The Importance and the Limitations of Sim2Real for Robotic Manipulation in Precision Agriculture

In recent years Sim2Real approaches have brought great results to robotics. Techniques such as model-based learning or domain randomization can help overcome the gap between simulation and reality, but in some situations simulation accuracy is still needed. An example is agricultural robotics, which needs detailed simulations, both in terms of dynamics and visuals. However, simulation software is still not capable of such quality and accuracy. Current Sim2Real techniques are helpful in mitigating the problem, but for these specific tasks they are not enough.