Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reactivity of human serum antibody with lipopolysaccharide O 78 antigen from enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli

SUMMARY Fifteen and five of 20 volunteers challenged with the enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strain O 78·H11 showed a fourfold titre increase of serum ELISA antibody to the homologous O 78 and the heterologous O 8 lipopolysaccharide antigen, respectively. Sixty-three of 191 sera from 1- to 48-month-old German children showed serum antibody reactive with O 78 antigen, all but two of these O 78-positive sera also showed reactivity with at least one further O antigen. Only 14 of the O 78 reactive sera also showed antibody to heat-labile enterotoxin. In addition, soluble O 8 antigen could inhibit the binding of serum antibody to absorbed O 78 in 68% of the German children. Antibody reactive with O 78 antigen is thus not a reliable serological marker for enterotoxigenic E. coli infection in German children.
Implementing Smart Antenna System using Genetic Algorithm and Artificial Immune System

The current antenna systems have limited capacity when it comes to the frequency usage. Smart antennas provide a smart solution to this problem by steering the beam power in the desired direction and pointing nulls in the undesired direction. Genetic Algorithm is an optimization algorithm which mimics the underlying phenomenon of evolution of natural species and genetic recombination. In this paper we propose an application of genetic algorithm towards the implementation of two important properties of smart antenna system which are the direction of arrival detection and beamforming. Here we also incorporate the property of dasiamemorypsila from artificial immune system to make the system faster.
A Novel Co-Design Approach for Soft Errors Mitigation in Embedded Systems

There is an increasing concern about the mitigation of radiation effects in embedded systems. This fact is demanding new flexible design methodologies and tools that allow dealing with design constraints and dependability requirements at the same time. This paper presents a novel proposal to design radiation-tolerant embedded systems combining hardware and software mitigation techniques. A hardening infrastructure, which facilitates the design space exploration and the trade-offs analyses, has been developed to support this fault tolerance co-design approach. The advantages of our proposal are illustrated by means of a case study.
Sexual agreements in the partnerships of Internet-using men who have sex with men

Abstract Recent studies among men who have sex with men (MSM) have found that the majority of HIV transmission results from sex with a main partner. One factor likely to affect the risk of transmission is the type of agreements the couple has regarding sexual behaviour within and outside the relationship. This study recruited 732 Internet-using MSM through Facebook banner ads. Participants completed an online questionnaire regarding demographic characteristics of the respondent and their main partner, the sexual behaviour of the couple, the existence of a sexual agreement, and the strength of investment in that agreement. The Pearson chi-square test was used to assess the association between sexual agreements (categorized as open, closed, or none) and the predictive variables. Respondents' investment in their sexual agreement was measured using the sexual agreement investment scale (a composite score ranging from 0 to 52). Ninety-one percent of respondents had some form of sexual agreement in place with their main partner. The presence and type of sexual agreement was found to be strongly associated with many characteristics of the individual and couple, including the respondent's HIV status, length of time with the main partner, having unprotected anal intercourse with a man other than their main partner, and happiness in the relationship. Increases in the strength of respondents' investment in their sexual agreement were found to be associated with newness of the relationship, relationship happiness, having a closed relationship, and decreases in risky sexual behaviour. This study offers further evidence of the important role that sexual agreements play in male couples. The overwhelming prevalence of sexual agreements and their association with relationship happiness and risky sexual behaviours has important implications for future HIV prevention and control strategies, including the implementation of couples voluntary counseling and testing.
MIP-Nets: Enabling Information Sharing in Loosely-Coupled Teamwork

People collaborate in carrying out such complex activities as treating patients, co-authoring documents and developing software. While technologies such as Dropbox and Github enable groups to work in a distributed manner, coordinating team members' individual activities poses significant challenges. In this paper, we formalize the problem of "information sharing in loosely-coupled extended-duration teamwork. " We develop a new representation, Mutual Influence Potential Networks (MIP-Nets), to model collaboration patterns and dependencies among activities, and an algorithm, MIP-DOI, that uses this representation to reason about information sharing.
[Discriminating power of socio-demographic and psychological variables on addictive use of cellular phones among middle school students].

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the degrees of cellular phone usage among middle school students and to identify discriminating factors of addictive use of cellular phones among sociodemographic and psychological variables. METHODS From 123 middle schools in Busan, potential participants were identified through stratified random sampling and 747 middle school students participated in the study. The data was collected from December 1, 2004 to December 30, 2004. Descriptive and discriminant analyses were used. RESULTS Fifty seven percent of the participants were male and 89.7% used cellular phones at school. The participants were grouped into three groups depending on the levels of the cellular phone usage: addicted (n=117), dependent (n=418), non-addicted (n=212). Within the three groups, two functions were produced and only one function was significant, discriminating the addiction group from non-addiction group. Additional discriminant analysis with only two groups produced one function that classified 81.2% of the participants correctly into the two groups. Impulsiveness, anxiety, and stress were significant discriminating factors. CONCLUSION Based on the findings of this study, developing intervention programs focusing on impulsiveness, anxiety and stress to reduce the possible addictive use of cellular phones is suggested.
Morphology and Ionization of the Interstellar Cloud Surrounding the Solar System

The first encounter between the sun and the surrounding interstellar cloud appears to have occurred 2000 to 8000 years ago. The sun and cloud space motions are nearly perpendicular, an indication that the sun is skimming the cloud surface. The electron density derived for the surrounding cloud from the carbon component of the anomalous cosmic ray population in the solar system and from the interstellar ratio of Mg+ to Mg� toward Sirius support an equilibrium model for cloud ionization (an electron density of 0.22 to 0.44 per cubic centimeter). The upwind magnetic field direction is nearly parallel to the cloud surface. The relative sun-cloud motion indicates that the solar system has a bow shock.
Easier : An Approach to Automatically Generate Active Ontologies for Intelligent Assistants

Intelligent assistants are ubiquitous and will grow in importance. Apple's well-known assistant Siri uses Active Ontologies to process user input and to model the provided functionalities. Supporting new features requires extending the ontologies or even building new ones. The question is no longer "How to build an intelligent assistant? " but "How to do it efficiently? " We propose EASIER, an approach to automate building and extending Active Ontologies. EASIER identifies new services automatically and classifies unseen service providers with a clustering-based approach. It proposes ontology elements for new service categories and service providers respectively to ease ontology building. We evaluate EASIER with 292 form-based web services and two different clustering algorithms from Weka, DBScan and spectral clustering. DBScan achieves a F1 score of 51% in a ten-fold cross validation but is outperformed by spectral clustering, which achieves a F1 score of even 70%.
Growth/differentiation factor 5 and glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor enhance survival and function of dopaminergic grafts in a rat model of Parkinson's disease

Growth/differentiation factor 5 is a member of the transforming growth factor β superfamily, which has neurotrophic and neuroprotective effects on dopaminergic neurons both in vitro and in vivo. Here we investigate the effects of growth/differentiation factor 5 on foetal mesencephalic grafts transplanted into a rat model of Parkinson's disease, and compare them with those of glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor. Mesencephalic tissue was suspended in solutions containing either growth/differentiation factor 5 or glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor prior to transplantation into the left striatum of rats with 6‐hydroxydopamine lesions of the left medial forebrain bundle. Both proteins enhanced graft‐induced compensation of amphetamine‐stimulated rotations. Positron emission tomography studies showed that both neurotrophins increased graft‐induced recovery of striatal binding of [11C]RTI‐121, a marker for dopaminergic nerve terminals. Post mortem analysis at 8 weeks after transplantation showed that both neurotrophins significantly increased the survival of grafted dopaminergic neurons. This study shows that growth/differentiation factor 5 is at least as effective as glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor in enhancing the survival and functional activity of mesencephalic grafts, and thus is an important candidate for use in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.
Pituitary-dependent effects of estradiol-17-beta on catecholamine turnover rates, gamma-aminobutyric acid and glutamate concentrations in various hypothalamic and limbic brain structures.

Estrogens exert many effects in a variety of hypothalamic and mesolimbic structures. Whether the actions of the estrogens are direct or indirect, possibly involving anterior pituitary hormones, is largely unknown. We therefore studied catecholamine turnover rates, gamma-aminobutyric acid and glutamate concentrations in various hypothalamic and mesolimbic structures in estrogen-treated hypophysectomized (hypox) rats and compared the measured parameters with those in sham hypophysectomized (sham) animals. Results clearly demonstrate that many of the effects of estrogen require an intact pituitary. Dopamine turnover rates in hypox rats were significantly reduced in the hypothalamus and the striatum, whereas they increased in the medial septum and medial preoptic area in comparison with sham rats. Norepinephrine turnover rates were reduced in the anterior mediobasal hypothalamus, somatosensory cortex and the nucleus accumbens of hypox animals in comparison with the sham-operated animals. In contrast, norepinephrine turnover was accelerated in the mediocortical amygdala and posterior medial basal hypothalamus of hypox rats. A significant reduction of epinephrine turnover was evident in the nucleus accumbens of hypox rats. Gamma-aminobutyric acid concentrations increased in the medial septum, anterior and posterior part of the mediobasal hypothalamus, but decreased in the mediocortical amygdala of hypox animals. Concentrations of glutamate were also decreased in the mediocortical amygdala in hypox animals. These results indicate that many direct effects of estrogens in the brain are accompanied by indirect effects which require an intact pituitary. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Brn‐4 is upregulated in the deafferented hippocampus and promotes neuronal differentiation of neural progenitors in vitro

Fimbria‐fornix (FF), the septo‐hippocampal pathway, was transected to model Alzheimer's disease (AD), which is characterized by loss of cholinergic afferent fibers in hippocampus. Various alternations may happen in the deafferented hippocampus. In this study, we determined the expression of Brn‐4 in hippocampus after FF lesion. RT‐PCR and Western blot showed that mRNA transcription and protein of Brn‐4 increased significantly and reached to the peak at day 14 after FF lesion. Hybridization and immunohistochemistry indicated that Brn‐4 signals in hippocampus and dentate gyrus (DG) of the deafferented side were significantly stronger than the normal side. More Brn‐4 positive cells were identified in the DG of deafferented hippocampus. In the pyramidal and granular cells, Brn‐4 positive cells were all NeuN positive neurons, whereas in the neurogenic area, subgranular zone (SGZ), only a part of Brn‐4 positive cells were NeuN positive, and these Brn‐4/NeuN double positive neurons in SGZ and hilus of DG increased significantly after the trauma induced by FF lesion. In vitro Brn‐4 antibody attenuated the role of extract from deafferented hippocampus in promoting differentiation of hippocampal progenitors into MAP‐2 positive neurons. This study demonstrated that after FF lesion, Brn‐4 in the deafferented hippocampus was upregulated and might play an important role in inducing local progenitors to differentiate into neurons, which may compensate for the loss of cholinergic afferent fibers or other dysfunctions. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Compensated Convexity, Multiscale Medial Axis Maps and Sharp Regularity of the Squared-Distance Function

In this paper we introduce a new stable mathematical model for locating and measuring the medial axis of geometric objects, called the quadratic multiscale medial axis map of scale $\lambda$, and provide a sharp regularity result for the squared-distance function to any closed nonempty subset $K$ of $\mathbb{R}^n$. Our results exploit properties of the function $C^l_{\lambda}(\mathrm{dist}^2(\cdot;\, K))$ obtained by applying the quadratic lower compensated convex transform of parameter $\lambda$ [K. Zhang, Ann. Inst. H. Poincare Anal. Non Lineaire, 25 (2008), pp. 743--771] to $\mathrm{dist}^2(\cdot;\, K)$, the Euclidean squared-distance function to $K$. Using a quantitative estimate for the tight approximation of $\mathrm{dist}^2(\cdot;\, K)$ by $C^l_{\lambda}(\mathrm{dist}^2(\cdot;\, K))$, we prove the $C^{1,1}$-regularity of $\mathrm{dist}^2(\cdot;\, K)$ outside a neighborhood of the closure of the medial axis $M_K$ of $K$, which can be viewed as a weak Lusin-type theorem for $\mathrm{dist}^2(\cdot;\, .
Trust under the Prospect Theory and Quasi-Hyperbolic Preferences: A Field Experiment in Vietnam

We conduct a field experiment in Vietnamese villages to explore the effect of the prospect theory and of quasi-hyperbolic time preferences parameters on trust and trustworthiness. We find that risk aversion, loss aversion, and present bias do not influence trustors’ decisions, but higher time discounting increases the amount sent to trustees in the south of Vietnam and probability weighting decreases it in the north. If time discounting and loss aversion do not influence trustworthiness, we show that more risk-averse and less present-biased trustees return a higher share of their wealth to the trustors. These results suggest that adopting a perspective other than the expected utility theory and the exponential-discounting approach of time preferences enables one to uncover some channels by which risk and intertemporal time preferences influence trusting behavior in societies.
Low-Noise In-Pixel Comparing Active Pixel Sensor Using Column-Level Single-Slope ADC

A conventional active pixel sensor (APS) uses a source follower (SF) in a pixel as a buffer. This SF is one of the major causes of nonlinearity, sensitivity degradation, and pixel readout noise. The proposed in-pixel comparing APS uses pixel transistors as a part of comparator for a single-slope ADC instead of using them as an SF. The prototype sensor was fabricated using a 0.35-mum 2P3M CMOS process. Experimental results show 15-times linearity improvement, 26% sensitivity enhancement, and 33% noise reduction over the conventional APS.
Aβ Oligomers Induce Neuronal Cell Cycle Events in Alzheimer's Disease

Neurons subject to degeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) exhibit evidence of re-entry into a mitotic cell cycle even before the development of substantial AD brain pathology. In efforts to identify the initiating factors underlying these cell cycle events (CCEs), we have characterized the appearance of the neuronal CCEs in the genomic-based R1.40 transgenic mouse model of AD. Notably, R1.40 mice exhibit neuronal CCEs in a reproducible temporal and spatial pattern that recapitulates the neuronal vulnerability seen in human AD. Neuronal CCEs first appear at 6 months in the frontal cortex layers II/III. This is 6–8 months before detectable amyloid β (Aβ) deposition, suggesting that specific amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing products are responsible for the induction of neuronal CCEs. Furthermore, a reduction in the levels of Aβ (achieved by shifting the genetic background from C57BL/6 to the DBA/2 mouse strain) dramatically delays the appearance of neuronal CCEs. More significantly, elimination of β-secretase activity blocks the appearance of CCEs, providing direct genetic evidence that the amyloidogenic processing of APP is required for the induction of CCEs. Finally, in vitro preparations of oligomeric, but not monomeric, Aβ induce DNA synthesis in dissociated cortical neurons, and this response is blocked by antioligomer specific antibodies. Together, our data suggest that low molecular weight aggregates of Aβ induce neuronal cell cycle re-entry in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease.
Internet and Mobile Phone Addiction among High School Students: A Cross Sectional Study from Iran

Addiction to internet and mobile phone may be affecting all aspect of student’s life. Knowledge about prevalence and related factors of internet and mobile phone addiction is necessary for planning for prevention and treatment. This study was conducted to evaluate the prevalence of internet and mobile phone addiction among Iranian students. Methods: This cross sectional study conducted from Jun to April 2015 in Rasht Iran. With using stratified sampling method, 581 high school students from two region of Rasht in North of Iran were recruited as the subjects for this study. Data were collected with using demographics questionnaire, Cell phone Overuse Scale (COS), and the Internet Addiction Test (IAT). Analysis was performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 17 21 version. Results: Of the 581 students, who participate in present study, 53.5% were female and the rest were male. The mean age of students was 16.28±1.01 years. The mean score of IAT was 42.03±18.22. Of the 581 students, 312 (53.7%), 218 (37.5%) and 51 (8.8%) showed normal, mild and moderate level of internet addiction. The mean score of COS was 55.10±19.86. Of the 581 students, 27(6/4%), 451(6/77) and 103 (7/17) showed low, moderate and high level of mobile phone addiction. Conclusion: according to finding of present study, rate of mobile phone and internet addiction were high among Iranian students. Health care authorities should pay more attention to these problems. Keywords: Internet addiction, mobile phone addiction, students, developing country, Cell phone Overuse Scale, the Internet Addiction Test
System safety and ISO 26262 compliance for automotive lithium-ion batteries

Lithium ion batteries pave the way for today's plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. However, these batteries contain the potential of thermal runaway, posing a higher safety risk from thermal incidences than NiMH batteries. Thermal runaway can be mitigated using electronic control systems, which are intended to maintain a safe state of the battery under all operating conditions. When safety depends on these control systems, any malfunction of the system or its elements (such as sensors, microcontrollers, contactors, software, etc.) may lead to a dangerous state. The newly published ISO 26262 standard provides processes and methods for the proper design, development and manufacturing of E/E automotive systems to ensure functional safety. In this paper, the ISO 26262 standard is applied to several example scenarios involving lithium-ion batteries for plug-in vehicles. Key concepts are explored and conclusions drawn regarding several of the standard's required processes, including hazard analysis and risk assessment, functional safety concept, functional safety and technical safety requirements, and related topics.
SNARE proteins and ‘membrane rafts’

The original ‘lipid raft’ hypothesis proposed that lipid‐platforms/rafts form in the exoplasmic plasmalemmal leaflet by tight clustering of sphingolipids and cholesterol. Their physical state, presumably similar to liquid‐ordered phases in model membranes, would confer detergent resistance to rafts and enriched proteins therein. Based on this concept, detergent resistant membranes (DRMs) from solubilized cells were considered to reflect pre‐existing ‘lipid rafts’ in live cells. To date, more than 200 proteins were found in DRMs including also members of the SNARE superfamily, which are small membrane proteins involved in intracellular fusion steps. Their raft association indicates that they are not uniformly distributed, and, indeed, microscopic studies revealed that SNAREs concentrate in submicrometre‐sized, cholesterol‐dependent clusters at which vesicles fuse. However, the idea that SNARE clusters are ‘lipid rafts’ was challenged, as they do not colocalize with raft markers, and SNAREs are excluded from liquid‐ordered phases in model membranes. Independent from this disagreement, in recent years the solubilization criterion has been criticized for several reasons, calling for a more exact definition of rafts. At a recent consensus on a revised raft model, the term ‘lipid rafts’ was replaced by ‘membrane rafts’ that were defined as ‘small (10–200 nm), heterogeneous, highly dynamic, sterol‐ and sphingolipid‐enriched domains that compartmentalize cellular processes’. As a result, after dismissing the terms ‘detergent resistant’ and ‘liquid‐ordered’, it now appears that SNARE clusters are bona fide‘membrane rafts’.