Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enrichment of Murine CD 68 ( + ) CCR 2 ( + ) and CD 68 ( + ) CD 206 ( + ) Lung Macrophages in Acute Pancreatitis-Associated Acute Lung Injury

Acute lung injury (ALI) is an important cause of mortality in critically ill patients. Acute pancreatitis (AP) is one of the risk factors for developing this syndrome. Among the inflammatory cells, macrophages have a key role in determining the severity of the acute lung injury. In the lungs, macrophages constitute a heterogeneous cell population distributed in different compartments. Changes in not only the macrophage count, but also in their phenotype have been seen during the course of lung injury. A murine ductal ligation model of acute pancreatitis showed substantial morphological changes in the pancreas and lungs. Immunohistochemistry showed neutrophil recruitment into both organs after 9 hours and later on. F4/ 80 cells in the pancreas increased in the ligated animals, though there was not a significant difference in their number in the lungs as compared to sham operated animals. Flow cytometry analysis of lung macrophages demonstrated an enrichment of F4/80 CD68CCR2 and F4/80 CD68CD206 lung macrophages in ligated animals (AP) as compared to the sham operated group. The level of interleukin-6 in plasma increased 3 hours after ligation compared to the sham operated group, as a first indicator of a systemic inflammatory response. This study suggests a role for F4/80 CD68 macrophages in the pathogenesis of acute lung injury in acute pancreatitis. Studying lung macrophages for different phenotypic markers, their polarization, activation and recruitment, in the context of acute lung injury, is a novel area to potentially identify interventions which may improve the outcome of acute lung injury. Citation: Akbarshahi H, Menzel M, Posaric Bauden M, Rosendahl A, Andersson R (2012) Enrichment of Murine CD68CCR2 and CD68CD206 Lung Macrophages in Acute Pancreatitis-Associated Acute Lung Injury. PLoS ONE 7(10): e42654. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0042654 Editor: Pal Bela Szecsi, Gentofte University Hospital, Denmark Received June 4, 2012; Accepted July 9, 2012; Published October 22, 2012 Copyright: 2012 Akbarshahi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The study was supported by the Evy and Gunnar Sandberg Foundation, Malmö, Sweden. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: roland.andersson@med.lu. se
The use of Pulse Compression and Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave to improve Ultrasonic Non Destructive Evaluation of highly-scattering materials

Different approaches have been investigated for the transmission of signals through highly attenuating and scattering materials. Chirp signals are sent through the material, and then processed using either time-multiplication or cross-correlation with a template to obtain information concerning the sample. The use of both narrow bandwidth piezoelectric transducers and wide bandwidth piezocomposites is also discussed.
Coping with unfair ratings in reputation systems based on learning approach

ABSTRACT One of the problems in service-oriented environments is the existence of deceptive agents and their intentional or unintentional malicious behaviour. A more complex challenge is unpredictable changes that some agents make to their behaviour, which is a cause of performance decrease in trust systems. Many trust models have been developed based on feedback mechanisms, but most of them are unable to detect inaccurate information that a deceptive agent may generate; therefore, the trust systems face difficulties in separating the fair from the unfair agents. In this paper, we used learning automata to separate fair from deceptive agents based on an aggregation of their feedback from the votes on each service attribute. The main contribution of this work was a new scheme for separating fair from unfair agents and for estimating the quality of services. We took a more detailed view of service attributes by decomposing a service to its qualitative elements to reach a better match between recommended service characteristics and user preferences. The experimental simulations showed that the new method outperformed other existing models, especially within open environments, in terms of convergence time, accuracy of trust values for unknown agents, user demand modelling, service selection performance and scalability.
Angular velocity estimation of fast spinning object using an imaging sensor

We propose a new spinning object angular velocity estimation method using an imaging sensor. Most of the previous algorithms require a knowledge of the attitude or of the body vector measurements. For a fast spinning object, however, the body vector measurement is a difficult task due to flows of the object image. To overcome this difficulty, we search for the angular velocity which minimizes the cost function defined by the Euclidean distance differences of the observed star traces and the derivative star traces of an estimated angular velocity. With this formulation, angular velocity determination becomes a kind of minimization problem in 3D of the angular velocity vector. To reduce the search dimensions and use search techniques in 1D, we randomly sample points on the star traces and these random points assign a constraint to the possible angular velocity vector according to the kinematics equation. A numerical simulation for fast spinning cases is carried out to establish the results.
Design and simulation of readout circuit for mems sensor

Output from any MEMS Sensor usually lacks the power that can be fed directly to any interface circuit. Hence there is a need to add additional circuitry in between the output of the MEMS sensor and the interface circuit. In this paper the authors have compared two combinations of modulator / demodulator circuitry which can be used in the readout circuitry for any MEMS sensors. The two combinations are Gilbert multiplier as modulator and demodulator and the second one is Gilbert Multiplier as Modulator and Chopper circuit as demodulator. A detailed analysis of the two combinations is presented in the paper. The simulations were carried out using gpdk 350nm technology file in Cadence tool. The layout has been generated for each block and DRC and back annotation has been done to note overall circuit delay as 118ns.
Research on Applicability of Sentence Similarity Algorithms in Text Copy Detection

Sentence similarity computation is the research topic of domain of natural language processing, and plays an important role in the example-based machine translation, information retrieval, text mining and other fields. Those sentence similarity algorithms have different applicability in different environments. This paper reviewed and analyzed five kinds of sentence similarity algorithm, and tested them in the field of text copy detection. In the end, the effect of different sentence similarity algorithms to the result of text copy detection was analyzed and evaluated.
Predictors of At-Risk Intoxication in a University Field Setting: Social Anxiety, Demographics, and Intentions

Abstract Objective: The determinants of alcohol consumption among university students were investigated in a downtown field setting with blood alcohol content (BAC) as the dependent variable. Participants: In total, 521 participants completed a brief survey and had their BAC assessed during April 2013. Methods: Between 10:00 pm and 2:00 am, teams of researchers recruited passersby at 3 heavy-drinking locations near a university campus. Before the BAC assessment, participants completed a questionnaire regarding their drinking intentions, drinking group, and social anxiety. Results: The average BAC of drinking students was 0.107 g/dL, which was 0.033 g/dL higher than their intended BAC. Males and members of a Greek-life organization consumed significantly more alcohol than their demographic counterparts. A significant positive curvilinear relationship was observed between social anxiety and BAC. Conclusions: University students achieve high levels of intoxication, often exceeding their intended BAC. Social anxiety may be an informative predictor of alcohol consumption in this setting.
Monocular optical flow navigation using sparse SURF flow with multi-layer bucketing screener

This paper presents an approach capable of recovering the trajectory from the image sequence of a single camera based on sparse SURF flow with multi-layer bucketing screener. The main novelty of the proposed approach is that we designed a multi-layer screener to screen good features detected by SURF algorithm. The bucketing scheme firstly divides the image into several buckets. For each bucket, both mismatched and redundant feature pairs will be rejected so that the accuracy of SURF flow will be improved, and also the maximal number of selected features is kept in order to reduce the computational complexity. Besides, the distribution of optical flow is tuned to be more uniform, which turns out to be important for reducing drift rate of motion estimation. Based on the accurate and uniformly distributed SURF flow, a fundamental matrix estimation combining RANSAC and the eight-point algorithm is applied to compute the relative pose between every consecutive pair of frames. Experiments show that the ego-motion estimation using the optical flow generated by our method is clearly superior compared to other optical flow based techniques in terms of accuracy.
Microcapsule of type III strains of group B Streptococcus: production and morphology

The yield of purified type III polysaccharide of group B Streptococcus was significantly improved by modification of the growth medium. Culture of organisms in standard Todd-Hewitt broth resulted in acid accumulation during the exponential phase of growth and poor yield of type III polysaccharide when extracted from cells by washing with neutral buffer solution. By increasing the buffering capacity of the broth medium, acid accumulation was prevented, and the number of viable cells was increased at the stationary phase of growth. Further, by increasing the concentration of glucose in the buffered medium, the yield of type III polysaccharide was increased two to three times. Electron microscopic investigations of cells grown in the modified broth medium demonstrated a thicker microcapsule than was found in organisms grown in standard broth.
Secrecy Performance Analysis of Location-Based Beamforming in Rician Wiretap Channels

We propose a new optimal Location-Based Beamforming (LBB) scheme for the wiretap channel, where both the main channel and the eavesdropper's channel are subject to Rician fading. In our LBB scheme the two key inputs are the location of the legitimate receiver and the location of the potential eavesdropper. Notably, our scheme does not require as direct inputs any channel state information of the main channel or the eavesdropper's channel, making it easy to deploy in a host of application settings in which the location inputs are known. Our beamforming solution assumes a multiple-antenna transmitter, a multiple-antenna eavesdropper, and a single-antenna receiver, and its aim is to maximize the physical layer security of the channel. To obtain our solution we first derive the secrecy outage probability of the LBB scheme in a closed-form expression that is valid for arbitrary values of the Rician K-factors of the main channel and the eavesdropper's channel. Using this expression we then determine the location-based beamformer solution that minimizes the secrecy outage probability. To assess the usefulness of our new scheme, and to quantify the value of the location information to the beamformer, we compare our scheme to other schemes, some of which do not utilize any location information. Our new beamformer solution provides optimal physical layer security for a wide range of location-based applications.
Assessment of Cellular Proliferation of Sebaceous Neoplasms by AgNOR Counts and Immunohistochemical Demonstrations of PCNA and Ki‐67

We assessed cellular proliferation of sebaceous neoplasms by AgNOR counts and the immunohistochemical demonstration of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) and Ki‐67, using formalin‐fixed and paraffin‐embedded tissue specimens. We used three categories of sebaceous neoplasms: four cases of sebaceoma, three cases of basal cell carcinoma with sebaceous differentiation (BCSD), and seven cases of sebaceous carcinoma (SC). Significant differences were noted between SC and non‐SC tumors (sebaceoma and BCSD) in AgNOR counts and semi‐quantitative grading of PCNA and Ki‐67 labelling indices (P<0.01). When a cut‐off value of 6 was chosen, the AgNOR value discriminated SC from non‐SC tumors with high specificity and sensitivity. When a cut‐off value of 25% was chosen, PCNA and Ki‐67 labelling indices also discriminated between these tumors. Significant differences were not observed between sebaceoma and BCSD with PCNA and Ki‐67 labelling indices. AgNOR counts of BCSD were a little higher than those of sebaceoma, but the number of cases was too small to perform statistical assessment. We consider AgNOR counts and semi‐quantitative grading of PCNA and Ki‐67 labelling indices to be useful in differentiating SC from BCSD and sebaceoma.
Physical Activity Patterns of the Spanish Population Are Mostly Determined by Sex and Age: Findings in the ANIBES Study

Background Representative data for the Spanish population regarding physical activity (PA) behaviors are scarce and seldom comparable due to methodological inconsistencies. Aim Our objectives were to describe the PA behavior by means of the standardized self-reported International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) and to know the proportion of the Spanish population meeting and not meeting international PA recommendations. Material and Methods PA was assessed using the IPAQ in a representative sample of 2285 individuals (males, 50.4%) aged 9–75 years and living in municipalities of at least 2,000 inhabitants. Data were analyzed according to: age groups 9–12, 13–17, 18–64, and 65–75 years; sex; geographical distribution; locality size and educational levels. Results Mean total PA was 868.8±660.9 min/wk, mean vigorous PA 146.4±254.1 min/wk, and mean moderate PA 398.1±408.0 min/wk, showing significant differences between sexes (p<0.05). Children performed higher moderate-vigorous PA than adolescents and seniors (p<0.05), and adults than adolescents and seniors (p<0.05). Compared to recommendations, 36.2% of adults performed <150 min/week of moderate PA, 65.4% <75 min/week of vigorous PA and 27.0% did not perform any PA at all, presenting significant differences between sexes (p<0.05). A total of 55.4% of children and adolescents performed less than 420 min/week of MVPA, being higher in the later (62.6%) than in the former (48.4%). Highest non-compliance was observed in adolescent females (86.5%). Conclusion Sex and age are the main influencing factors on PA in the Spanish population. Males engage in more vigorous and light PA overall, whereas females perform more moderate PA. PA behavior differs between age groups and no clear lineal increase with age could be observed. Twenty-seven percent of adults and 55.4% of children and adolescents do not meet international PA recommendations. Identified target groups should be addressed to increase PA in the Spanish population.
The in vivo differentiation of strains of yellow fever virus in mice.

Strains of yellow fever virus isolated since 1927 in Africa and the Americas, and strains derived from them, have been differentiated by the responses of mice of different ages to intraperitoneal (i.p.) or intracerebral (i.c.) infection. Infection, antibody conversion, protection and death have been presented on age-dose response phase diagrams that serve as in vivo 'fingerprints' for the differentiation of virus strains and their modifications through passage and selection. Correlations between marker characteristics are discussed in terms of the efficiency of infection, regulatory (pre-challenge) and protective (post-challenge) immunity, and the expression of virulence. The requirement in virus strain specification for the resolution of events on pathogenic and immunogenic pathways is discussed.
Rates of assay success and genotyping error when single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping in non‐model organisms: a case study in the Antarctic fur seal

Although single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are increasingly being recognized as powerful molecular markers, their application to non‐model organisms can bring significant challenges. Among these are imperfect conversion rates of assays designed from in silico resources and the enhanced potential for genotyping error relative to pre‐validated, highly optimized human SNPs. To explore these issues, we used Illumina’s GoldenGate assay to genotype 480 Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella) individuals at 144 putative SNPs derived from a 454 transcriptome assembly. One hundred and thirty‐five polymorphic SNPs (93.8%) were automatically validated by the program GenomeStudio, and the initial genotyping error rate, estimated from nine replicate samples, was 0.004 per reaction. However, an almost tenfold further reduction in the error rate was achieved by excluding 31 loci (21.5%) that exhibited unclear clustering patterns, manually editing clusters to allow rescoring of ambiguous or incorrect genotypes, and excluding 18 samples (3.8%) with unreliable genotypes. After stringent quality filtering, we also found a counter‐intuitive negative relationship between in silico minor allele frequency and the conversion rate, suggesting that some of our assays may have been designed from paralogous loci. Nevertheless, we obtained over 45 000 individual SNP genotypes with a final error rate of 0.0005, indicating that the GoldenGate assay is eminently capable of generating large, high‐quality data sets for non‐model organisms. This has positive implications for future studies of the evolutionary, behavioural and conservation genetics of natural populations.
Leucine‐rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2): A key player in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder, with a prevalence of more than 1% after the age of 65 years. Mutations in the gene encoding leucine‐rich repeat kinase‐2 (LRRK2) have recently been linked to autosomal dominant, late‐onset PD that is clinically indistinguishable from typical, idiopathic disease. LRRK2 is a multidomain protein containing several protein interaction motifs as well as dual enzymatic domains of GTPase and protein kinase activities. Disease‐associated mutations are found throughout the multidomain structure of the protein. LRRK2, however, is unique among the PD‐causing genes, because a missense mutation, G2019S, is a frequent determinant of not only familial but also sporadic PD. Thus, LRRK2 has emerged as a promising therapeutic target for combating PD. In this Mini‐Review, we look at the current state of knowledge regarding the domain structure, amino acid substitutions, and potential functional roles of LRRK2. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Increasing variance in North Pacific climate relates to unprecedented ecosystem variability off California

Changes in variance are infrequently examined in climate change ecology. We tested the hypothesis that recent high variability in demographic attributes of salmon and seabirds off California is related to increasing variability in remote, large‐scale forcing in the North Pacific operating through changes in local food webs. Linear, indirect numerical responses between krill (primarily Thysanoessa spinifera) and juvenile rockfish abundance (catch per unit effort (CPUE)) explained >80% of the recent variability in the demography of these pelagic predators. We found no relationships between krill and regional upwelling, though a strong connection to the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO) index was established. Variance in NPGO and related central Pacific warming index increased after 1985, whereas variance in the canonical ENSO and Pacific Decadal Oscillation did not change. Anthropogenic global warming or natural climate variability may explain recent intensification of the NPGO and its increasing ecological significance. Assessing non‐stationarity in atmospheric‐environmental interactions and placing greater emphasis on documenting changes in variance of bio‐physical systems will enable insight into complex climate‐marine ecosystem dynamics.
Modeling from Multiple Images

Although the visual perception of 3D shape from 2D images is a basic capability of human beings, it remains challenging to computers. Hence, one goal of vision research is to computationally understand and model the latent 3D scene from the captured images, and provide human-like visual system for machines. In this paper, we present a method that is capable of building a realistic 3D model for the latent scene from multiple images taken at different viewpoints. Specifically, the reconstruction proceeds in two steps. First, generate dense depth map for each input image by a Bayesian-based inference model. Second, build a complete 3D model for the latent scene by integrating all reliable 3D information embedded in the depth maps. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Modeling and grid connection of a solid oxid fuel cell (SOFC) based on P-Q theory for stationary loads

This paper presents the dynamic modeling of a Solid Oxid Fuel Cell (SOFC) and the device necessary to perform its grid connection. Since there is a voltage drop with increasing load, the DC/DC Converter boosts the cell's output voltage and keeps it regulated. The DC/AC inverter interfaces the DC output of the converter side with the AC grid side. In order to control the injection of active and reactive power into the grid, the inverter control is based on the p-q theory. It is also shown that the inherent slow response of the fuel cell would make it improper for sudden load changes, but the addition of power electronics makes the presented set feasible for such load behaviors. Simulation in Power System Computer Aided Design (PSCAD) helps validate the stated above, including the attempt to generate more power than the cell's rated power capacity, which is taken into consideration.