Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assembly Simulation through a Digital Mock-up Application

“Design for X” includes a set of techniques to realize the best product yet during the design avoiding reworks and loose of time and money. Among these, the design for assembly covers an important role and aims to design a product “thinking” to the physical assembling moment. Digital Mock-Up (DMU) is a process to enhance assembly feasibility and efficiency through specific design analysis and allow reproducing a product virtual assembling. Based on an action research based on a collaboration among company and university researchers, the paper aims to describe the development of a DMU application in a naval Italian aerospace company to improve a ship fuel system assembling. Technical features of the application are described.
Melatonin ameliorates liver fibrosis induced by bile-duct ligation in rats.

BACKGROUND Hepatic stellate cells, the main mediators in the pathogenesis of fibrosis, are triggered by free radicals and produce collagen. Melatonin is a powerful physiologic scavenger of hydroxyl radicals. It is also involved in the inhibitory regulation of the collagen content in tissue. There is no effective treatment available for liver fibrosis. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of melatonin on liver fibrosis induced by bile-duct ligation (BDL) in rats. METHODS We divided male Wistar rats (n = 32) into 4 groups. Two groups received BDL and 2 groups received sham operations. One of the BDL groups and one of the sham groups were administered melatonin (100 mg/kg/day via intraperitoneal injection), and the controls were given vehicle only. After 1 month, we biochemically evaluated the changes in hepatic fibrosis by measuring tissue collagen levels and histopathologic examination. We evaluated the levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), glutathione (GSH), luminal and lucigenin in tissue homogenates, and we studied proinflammatory cytokines in serum using commercially available kits. RESULTS Bile-duct ligation caused hepatic fibrotic changes, whereas melatonin suppressed these changes in 5 of 8 rats (p < 0.001). Bile-duct ligation resulted in increased collagen, MDA, luminal and lucigenin levels and decreased GSH levels, whereas melatonin reversed these effects. CONCLUSION We found that melatonin functions as an effective fibrosuppressant and antioxidant, and the results suggest that it can be used as a therapeutic option.
EMBL-Align: a new public nucleotide and amino acid multiple sequence alignment database

UNLABELLED The submission of multiple sequence alignment data to EMBL has grown 30-fold in the past 10 years, creating a problem of archiving them. The EBI has developed a new public database of multiple sequence alignments called EMBL-Align. It has a dedicated web-based submission tool, Webin-Align. Together they represent a comprehensive data management solution for alignment data. Webin-Align accepts all the common alignment formats and can display data in CLUSTALW format as well as a new standard EMBL-Align flat file format. The alignments are stored in the EMBL-Align database and can be queried from the EBI SRS (Sequence Retrieval System) server. AVAILABILITY Webin-Align: http://www.ebi. ac.uk/embl/Submission/align_top. html, EMBL-Align: ftp://ftp.ebi. ac.uk/pub/databases/embl/align, http://srs.ebi. ac.uk/
Image-Based Localization for Indoor Environment Using Mobile Phone

Real-time indoor localization based on supporting infrastructures like wireless devices and QR codes are usually costly and labor intensive to implement. In this study, we explored a cheap alternative approach based on images for indoor localization. A user can localize him/herself by just shooting a photo of the surrounding indoor environment using the mobile phone. No any other equipment is required. This is achieved by employing image-matching and searching techniques with a dataset of pre-captured indoor images. In the beginning, a database of structured images of the indoor environment is constructed by using image matching and the bundle adjustment algorithm. Then each image’s relative pose (its position and orientation) is estimated and the semantic locations of images are tagged. A user’s location can then be determined by comparing a photo taken by the mobile phone to the database. This is done by combining quick image searching, matching and the relative orientation. This study also try to explore image acquisition plans and the processing capacity of off-the-shell mobile phones. During the whole pipeline, a collection of indoor images with both rich and poor textures are examined. Several feature detectors are used and compared. Pre-processing of complex indoor photo is also implemented on the mobile phone. The preliminary experimental results prove the feasibility of this method. In the future, we are trying to raise the efficiency of matching between indoor images and explore the fast 4G wireless communication to ensure the speed and accuracy of the localization based on a client-server framework.
Improving Holm's procedure using pairwise dependencies

Seneta & Chen (2005) tightened the familywise error rate control of Holm's procedure by sharpening its critical values using pairwise dependencies of the $p$-values. In this paper we further sharpen these critical values in the case where the distribution functions of the pairwise maxima of null $p$-values are convex, a property shown to hold in some applications of Holm's procedure. The newer critical values are uniformly larger, providing tighter familywise error rate control than the approach of Seneta & Chen (2005), significantly so under high pairwise positive dependencies. The critical values can be further improved under exchangeable null $p$-values.
IS THERE A ROLE OF ACTH IN INCREASED CHOROIDAL THICKNESS IN CUSHING SYNDROME?

Purpose: To evaluate choroidal thickness (CT) in patients with Cushing syndrome (CS) with enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography. Methods: Twenty-eight patients with CS and 38 healthy volunteers were enrolled in this observational cross-sectional study. Patients with newly diagnosed CS who have been admitted to Erciyes University Department of Endocrinology in 3 years time interval were compared with age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. Choroidal thickness was measured at the fovea and 2 points nasal and 2 points temporal to the fovea with 500-&mgr;m intervals each. Results: Choroidal thickness measurements were higher in patients with CS than in the control group at all examination points; however, the difference was found to be significant at the center of the fovea (367.8 ± 94.4 &mgr;m vs. 329 ± 90.5 &mgr;m) and 1,000 &mgr;m temporal to the fovea. Choroidal thickness measurements were significantly higher in adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH)–dependent CS group than in the control group at all measurement points (CT at fovea 388.2 ± 92.4 &mgr;m vs. 329.1 ± 90.5 &mgr;m). All CT measurements were found to be correlated with ACTH levels. Conclusion: Cushing syndrome is associated with increased CT. The ACTH-dependent CS may increase CT more than ACTH-independent CS. This effect may be directly related to ACTH itself or increased plasma cortisol levels or both.
Interplay of Wiener--Hopf and Hankel operators with almost periodic Fourier symbols on standard and variable exponent Lebesgue spaces

Wiener-Hopf plus Hankel and Wiener-Hopf minus Hankel operators in both frameworks of standard and variable exponent Lebesgue spaces are considered in this paper. The main aim is to describe certain dependencies between the Fredholm property of some Wiener-Hopf operators acting between variable exponent Lebesgue spaces and the invertibility of Wiener-Hopf plus and minus Hankel operators on all the standard Lebesgue spaces. Diﬀerent types of Fourier symbols will be used but special focus will be considered on the Wiener subclass of almost periodic matrix functions. In the ﬁrst part of the paper we will give a survey of investigations on related results. This will be useful at the end of the paper to derive the above mentioned dependencies between the operators under study.
'Edge' or 'Edgeless' Cities? Urban Spatial Structure in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1980 to 2000

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of spatial trends in six US metropolitan areas. The results show that jobs continued to decentralize from the metropolitan core to the suburbs and generalized jobs dispersion was more common than subcentering in the 1980s and 1990s. Three distinctive patterns of spatial development were identified: Jobs dispersion was a predominant spatial process in Portland and Philadelphia; the traditional centers remained strong agglomerations in New York and Boston; and progressive employment subcentering occurred in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They seem to have developed unique paths of job dispersion, in light of their histories and circumstances, that limit the growth of mean commute times.
Determining whether the non-protein-coding DNA sequences are in a complex interactive relationship by using an artificial intelligence method

Non protein coding regions of the human genome contain many complex patterns which regulate the cellular activity. Studying the human genome is limited by the lack of understanding of its features and their complex interactions. However, recent advances in AI research have enabled automatically learning representations of high dimensional complex data without feature engineering, using deep neural networks. Therefore, in this paper, we demonstrate that a convolutional neural network can learn a representation of DNA sequence without specifying any motifs or patterns, such that it becomes capable of predicting whether a DNA sequence is natural or artificial. The trained model could distinguish scrambled vs real DNA sequences for scrambling lengths of 2 bp, 10 bp, 50 bp and even 100 bp, with a significantly higher accuracy than linear SVMs. With this study, we have discovered that regions of non protein coding DNA might have meaningful interactions at even longer than 100 bp distances even though they do not code proteins.
University education tailored to labour market expectations

This article discusses the implementation of projected changes in the Polish course tertiary education at Computer Science/Information Technology faculties. The project aims at enabling the students to get educated and skilled in view of their prospective IT employers' demands and expectations, and enhancing their offer's attractiveness in the labour market. This is being carried out through cooperation and collaboration with IT businesses for preparation and delivery of targeted education, and through inclusion in the syllabuses of research conducted at the Lublin University of Technology.
“Open y” technique in vessel diameter discrepancy

For the last 20 years, free tissue transfers have increasingly become the mainstay of plastic surgery. Size discrepancy between the vessels during tissue transfers are frequently encountered in clinical practice, and this may potentially be an important factor in the patency of anastomosis. In our clinic, we first studied a rat model and a fresh sheep cadaver to improve the diameter discrepancy in microvascular anastomosis with “open y” technique. At the end of our research, we progressed to success, and the open y technique was applied to nine patients in our clinic with a diameter discrepancy in microvascular anastomosis. After finding the bifurcation of vessels (artery, vein, or a vein graft) that are prepared for anastomosis, a distal cut of 2–3 mm was made for the anastomosis, which is considered to increase the diameter. Both legs of the resultant “y”‐shaped vessel were united after inserting the microscissors from one leg and exiting from the other. Performing an end‐to‐end anastomosis between the vessels, we obtain an increase in the diameter. By using this method, we eliminated the diameter discrepancy in microvascular anastomosis in nine patients in our clinic. There was not any flap loss. To increase the usage of this technique, when we come across a problem of size discrepancy, it is important to use the open y technique, both to the recipient vessels, donor vessels, and to the vein grafts. Owing to its high prevalence and the ease of application, we are convinced that this is a suitable technique in appropriate cases. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. Microsurgery, 2006.
Research on the diagnosis of MV power cable insulation based on PD and VLF-Tanδ

Reliability of power cable insulation is the key to the security of power system. In this paper, A comprehensive method for the diagnosis on insulation condition of distribution Cross Linked Polyethylene cable is presented, which including on-line and off-line Partial Discharge test and Very Low Frequency dielectric dissipation factor test. The Level in addition to the location of Partial Discharge and the assessment for condition of cable can be done by respectively using Partial Discharge and Very Low Frequency dielectric dissipation factor test. Experimental results have proved that this method is useful to assess the condition of Cross Linked Polyethylene cable.
Cellular lysis of Streptococcus faecalis induced with triton X-100

Lysis of exponential-phase cultures of Streptococcus faecalis ATCC 9790 was induced by exposure to both anionic (sodium dodecyl sulfate) and nonionic (Triton X-100) surfactants. Lysis in response to sodium dodecyl sulfate was effective only over a limited range of concentrations, whereas Triton X-100-induced lysis occurred over a broad range of surfactant concentrations. The data presented indicate that the bacteriolytic response of growing cells to Triton X-100: (i) was related to the ratio of surfactant to cells and not the surfactant concentration per se; (ii) required the expression of the cellular autolytic enzyme system; and (iii) was most likely due to an effect of the surfactant on components of the autolytic system that are associated with the cytoplasmic membrane. The possibility that Triton X-100 may induce cellular lysis by releasing a lipid inhibitor of the cellular autolytic enzyme is discussed.
Faster and Non-ergodic O(1/K) Stochastic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers

We study stochastic convex optimization subjected to linear equality constraints. Traditional Stochastic Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers and its Nesterov's acceleration scheme can only achieve ergodic O(1/\sqrt{K}) convergence rates, where K is the number of iteration. By introducing Variance Reduction (VR) techniques, the convergence rates improve to ergodic O(1/K). In this paper, we propose a new stochastic ADMM which elaborately integrates Nesterov's extrapolation and VR techniques. We prove that our algorithm can achieve a non-ergodic O(1/K) convergence rate which is optimal for separable linearly constrained non-smooth convex problems, while the convergence rates of VR based ADMM methods are actually tight O(1/\sqrt{K}) in non-ergodic sense. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that achieves a truly accelerated, stochastic convergence rate for constrained convex problems. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm is significantly faster than the existing state-of-the-art stochastic ADMM methods.
Estimation of number, mean size and size distribution of human spermatozoa in oligospermia using a Coulter counter.

Summary. A Coulter counter, Model Zb Industrial, was calibrated for the size distribution of cells. A method was then developed for the counting and sizing of human spermatozoa after the removal of con-taminating matter with Zaponin. For twenty-five men with normospermia (>40\m=x\106 spermatozoa/ml semen) the mean sperm size was a volume of 25\m=. \6 \g=m\m3 or a diameter of 3\m=. \65 \g=m\m, both in terms of an equivalent sphere. The size distribution was positively skewed with a mode at a volume of 19\m=. \4\g=m\m3 or a diameter of 3 \m=. \33 \g=m\m. A number of these specimens showed gross structural abnormalities on microscopic examination and it was very difficult to define a normal semen specimen. There were three men with Grade I oligospermia (>30\m=x\106 spermatozoa/ml) and twenty-five men with Grade II oligospermia (>20\m=x\106 spermato-zoa/ml). Of the latter, eighteen showed a peak (mode) in the size distribution similar to that found in the cases of normospermia and Grade I oligospermia, except that the peak was less sharp and often shifted significantly from the normal range of values. Samples from the remaining seven showed no peak. Below 12\m=x\106 spermatozoa/ml which was taken as the dividing line for Grade III oligospermia, none of the curves showed a peak. The smooth curves indicated a greater degree of abnormality, as was shown by microscopical examination. As the sperm count in the series gradually decreased, the proportion of abnormal forms gradually increased. The various abnormalities could not be identified in terms of the known developmental stages in normal spermatogenesis. There were nine cases of azoospermia, but the Coulter counter was not
An acidic microenvironment impairs the generation of non‐major histocompatibility complex‐restricted killer cells

The microenvironment within solid tumours has often been shown to exhibit an acidic local pH. In recent studies we could demonstrate that an acidic extracellular pH (pHe) inhibits the non‐major histocompatibility complex (MHC) ‐restricted cytotoxicity of immunocompetent effector cells. However, within tumours the activation of cytotoxic cells may already be impaired by low pHe. Therefore, we investigated the influence of acidic conditions on the generation of active killer cells. The cytotoxic activity of natural killer (NK) as well as lymphokine‐activated killer (LAK) cells against K562, Daudi and Raji cells was analysed after an activation period of 3 days at pHe 7·2–6·5. A minor reduction of pHe from 7·2 to 7·0 during the culture period resulted in a strong inhibition of the natural cytotoxicity of NK cells. Furthermore, acidic pHe below 7·2 prevented the generation of activated LAK cells by interleukin‐2 (IL‐2). The cytotoxic capacity could not be reconstituted if cells cultured at a pHe of 6·5 were returned to physiological pH for another 24 hr. Analysis of the cellular subtypes within the various cultures did not reveal differences regarding the frequencies of NK cells, CD8+ T cells, or CD4+ T cells. However, an acidic pHe clearly inhibited the activation‐induced increase of relevant adhesion molecules. The production of cytokines which are involved in the regulation of the cytotoxic process (tumour necrosis factor‐α, interferon‐γ, IL‐10, IL‐12 and transforming growth factor‐β1) was also affected by pHe, as their release was strongly inhibited at pHe 7·0. Furthermore, we observed a considerable decrease in the metabolic activity of effector cells at acidic pHe. In summary, our findings suggest that an acidic microenvironment impairs the induction of an anti‐tumoral immune response within solid tumours.
Reentrant layer-by-layer growth: A numerical study.

Reentrant layer-by-layer growth is studied using a Monte Carlo simulation of a solid-on-solid model. A previously proposed explanation of the phenomenon based on the existence of an activation barrier for adatom hops off descending steps has been used to reproduce correctly most of the available experimental data. However, based on a detailed inspection of the growth kinetics, we propose a different interpretation of the origin of low-temperature layer-by-layer growth, which stresses the importance of the incorporation mechanism of an atom arriving on the surface
Absorbed dose and image quality in examinations of the colon with digital and analogue techniques

Purpose: Image quality and the absorbed dose to the patient are issues of primary interest in the change-over from the conventional analogue technique to the digital technique in the examination of the colon by means of fluoroscopy. the aim of this study was to compare the incident radiation and to evaluate the image quality in two different X-ray equipment types, one digital and one analogue Material and Methods: A kerma-area product meter was used to measure the incident radiation to the patient. Both fluoroscopy and total-examination times were measured as was the number of images. an evaluation of image quality was made and statistically analysed Results and Conclusion: No significant difference in the irradiation dose was observed between the two techniques. the fluoroscopy time was significantly lower with the conventional technique but the total-examination time decreased by 18% with the digital technique. the total number of images taken was higher with the digital technique (25 images compared to 19) owing to the limited field of the image intensifier. Significantly more noise and less sharpness were observed with the digital system but there was no significant difference in contrast or image quality in the various anatomical structures. Although the change-over to the digital system produced a reduction in sharpness and an increase in noise, and no significant dose saving was measured, the digital system was faster to work with and could well be used for diagnostic purposes
New analytical lower bounds on the clique number of a graph

This paper proposes three new analytical lower bounds on the clique number of a graph and compares these bounds with those previously established in the literature. Two proposed bounds are derived from the well-known Motzkin–Straus quadratic programming formulation for the maximum clique problem. Theoretical results on the comparison of various bounds are established. Computational experiments are performed on random graph models such as the Erdös-Rényi model for uniform graphs and the generalized random graph model for power-law graphs that simulate graphs with different densities and assortativity coefficients. Computational results suggest that the proposed new analytical bounds improve the existing ones on many graph instances.
Validity of a multi-sensor armband in estimating rest and exercise energy expenditure.

UNLABELLED The SenseWear Armband (SWA; BodyMedia, Inc.), using multiple sensors, was designed to estimate energy expenditure (EE) in free-living individuals. PURPOSE To examine the reliability and validity of the SWA during rest and exercise compared with indirect calorimetry (IC). METHODS EE was assessed with SWA and IC in 13 males during two resting and one cycle ergometry (40 min at 60% VO2peak) sessions. In a second experiment, 20 adults walked on a treadmill for 30 min at three intensities (80.5 m x min, 0% grade; 107.3 m x min, 0% grade; 107.3 m x min, 5% grade) while IC and SWA measured EE. RESULTS At rest, no significant differences were found between EE measurements from the SWA (1.3 +/- 0.1 kcal x min) and IC (1.3 +/- 0.1 kcal x min), and the two methods were highly correlated (r = 0.76; P < 0.004). The SWA EE estimation was reliable when comparing the two resting visits (r = 0.93; P < 0.001). For the ergometer protocol, no significant differences were found between the SWA and IC measurements of EE early, mid, or late in exercise or for the total bout, although the measurements were poorly correlated (r = 0.03-0.12). The SWA EE estimate of walking increased with treadmill speed but not with incline. The SWA significantly overestimated (13-27%) the EE of walking with no grade (P < 0.02) and significantly underestimated (22%) EE on the 5% grade (P < 0.002). The SWA estimation of EE correlated moderately with IC (r = 0.47-0.69). CONCLUSION The SWA provided valid and reliable estimates of EE at rest and generated similar mean estimates of EE as IC on the ergometer; however, individual error was large. The SWA overestimated the EE of flat walking and underestimated inclined walking EE.