Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
NMDA receptor NR1 and NR2A/B subunit expression in trigeminal neurons during early postnatal development

Trigeminal motoneurons (Mo5), mesencephalic trigeminal neurons (Me5), and supratrigeminal (Su5) and intertrigeminal (I5) neurons are important constituents of the neural circuitry responsible for jaw movements observed during ingestive behaviors. In addition, in adult animals, N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptors are a critical component of the brainstem circuitry responsible for reflex‐ and centrally activated jaw movements. However, little is known about the expression of this receptor in circuitry used to produce neonatal jaw movements. Receptor immunohistochemistry was used to describe changes in the expression of NMDA NR1 and NR2A/B receptor subunits in Mo5, Me5, Su5, and I5 neurons during postnatal development. Rats at postnatal days (P) 1, 3, 8, 15–16, 21–24, and 28–35 were used. An affinity‐purified polyclonal antibody against the NR1 subunit and an affinity‐purified polyclonal antibody that recognizes both NR2A and 2B subunits were used to depict the expression of these subunits. In Mo5, immunoreactivity was noted for both antibodies throughout the time frame sampled. NR1 expression in Me5 neurons emerged at P1. NR2A/B expression emerged at P3 in caudal and middle regions of Me5 and at P8 for rostral regions of the nucleus. NR1 immunoreactivity was present at P1 for neurons in I5 and at P3 for neurons in the Su5 region. NR2A/B subunit expression in Su5 and I5 neurons emerged at P8. These results provide evidence for NMDA receptor subunits in neonatal trigeminal neurons used in oral–motor circuitry and suggest a role for the NMDA receptor in synaptogenesis associated with these neurons during postnatal development. J. Comp. Neurol. 409:237–249, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Cascaded Symmetrical Hybrid Multilevel Dc-Ac converter

This paper proposes the cascading of Symmetrical Hybrid Multilevel Inverters based on the three-levels cell (TC). The inverter operates with dc power sources of equal value and two distinct switching frequencies. The presented inverter presents high modularity as an advantage, which makes it very reliable since it can be designed with redundancy in the number of cascaded modules. The modulation strategy for driving the switches is based on the sinusoidal PWM technique known as Phase-Shifted Disposition (PSD). The output voltages for N cascaded cells are represented by means of its Fourier series. A single-phase low power prototype has been built, operating at 1.5 kHz for the fast switches and 50 Hz for the slow switches in order to validate the operating principle.
Weight loss and body-composition changes in men and women infected with HIV 1 – 3

Background: The nature of body-composition changes in HIVassociated weight loss is unclear. Objective: We examined the relation between the initial percentage of body fat and the composition of weight loss in men and women with HIV infection. Design: HIV-positive adults were seen at semiannual clinic visits, at which time weight, fat, and fat-free mass were determined. The unit of analysis was the person-interval. Results: Five hundred fifty-one persons contributed 2266 intervals of data, of which 311 (14%) were intervals in which weight loss was ≥ 5% of initial (start of interval) weight. Of these, 208 (67%) intervals met the criteria for analysis (123 from men and 85 from women). Loss of fat-free mass was dependent on the initial percentage of body fat in the men with < 32% body fat. A plot of the initial percentage of body fat compared with loss of fat-free mass (kg) suggested a nonlinear relation over the range of body fat examined. There was no clear relation between the initial percentage of body fat and loss of fat-free mass in the women. Conclusions: In men with HIV-associated weight loss, the weight lost as fat-free mass depends on the initial percentage of body fat at low levels of body fat but appears to be independent of initial percentage of body fat at high levels of body fat. In women with HIV-associated weight loss who have normal-to-high body fat stores, loss of fat-free mass is independent of the initial percentage of body fat. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:1428–34.
Dielectrophoresis with 3D microelectrodes fabricated by surface tension assisted lithography

This paper demonstrates the utilization of 3D semispherical shaped microelectrodes for dielectrophoretic manipulation of yeast cells. The semispherical microelectrodes are capable of producing strong electric field gradients, and in turn dielectrophoretic forces across a large area of channel cross‐section. The semispherical shape of microelectrodes avoids the formation of undesired sharp electric fields along the structure and also minimizes the disturbance of the streamlines of nearby passing fluid. The advantage of semispherical microelectrodes over the planar microelectrodes is demonstrated in a series of numerical simulations and proof‐of‐concept experiments aimed toward immobilization of viable yeast cells.
Experimental Investigation on Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics of Air Flow over a Staggered Flat Tube Bank in Crossflow

This paper presents an experimental investigation into the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of air flow in a staggered flat tube bank in crossflow with laminarforced convection. Measurements were conducted for sixteen tubes in the direction of flow and four tubes in rows. The air velocity varies between 0.6–1.0 m/s and the Reynolds number varied from 373 to 623. The total heat flux supplied in all tubes are changed from 967.92 to 3629.70 W/m2. The results indicate that the average Nusselt number for all the flat tubes increased by 11.46–46.42%, with the Reynolds numbers varying from 373 to 623 at the fixed heat flux. The average Nusselt number increased by 21.39–84%, and the total heat flux varyied between 967.92–3629.70 W/m2 with a constant Reynolds number Re = 498. In addition, the pressure drop decreased with an increase in the Reynolds number. A new mean Nusselt number-Reynolds number correlation was found, and the correlation yielded good predictions for the measured data with a confidence interval of 98.9%.
Characteristic Analysis of Grid-Connected PM Wind Power Generators based on Transfer Relations and Performance Evaluation

For the comparative investigation on direct-drive permanent magnet (PM) wind power generators, this paper presents the analytical approach based on transfer relations. Considering various generator types, this paper provides analytical solutions for those generators' characteristic prediction, and the analyzed results are verified. In addition, since our analysis models are designed to be connected to a grid, the power loss characteristics according to grid output power variation are presented considering harmonics in generator current caused by the grid-connected power converter.
Syntactic parsing of unrestricted Spanish text

This research focusses on the syntactical parsing of morphologycal tagged corpora. A proposal for a corpus oriented Spanish grammar is presented in this document. This work has been developed in the framework of the ITEM project and its main goal is to provide multilingual background for information extraction and retrieval tasks. The main goal of Tacat analyser is to provide a way of obtaining large amounts of bracketed and parsed corpora, both general land specific domain. Tacat uses context free grammars and has as input following categories of Parole specification.The incremental methodology that we use allows us to recognise different levels of complexity in the analysis and to produce compatible outputs of all the grammars.
Balancing between Estimated Reward and Uncertainty during News Article Recommendation for ICML 2012 Exploration and Exploitation Challenge

Recommending relevant contents to users automatically in a web service is an important aspect that links with the income of many internet companies. The ICML 2012 Exploration & Exploitation Workshop holds an open challenge that aims at building stateof-the-art news article recommendation system on the Yahoo! platform. We propose an ecient scoring model that recommends the news article with the highest score during each user visit. The scoring model exploits by recommending the article with the highest estimated reward and explores articles with high reward potential by uncertainty measures. Three important aspects, global quality of articles, personal preference of users, and time eects are all considered in the scoring model. Furthermore, during the challenge, we adopt a systemic parameter tuning process to optimize the performance of the model. The tuned scoring model wins the rst place of phase one of the challenge.
FxLMS algorithm with variable step size and variable leakage factor for active vibration control

This paper discusses a novel adaptive algorithm termed variable step size and variable leakage factor filtered-x least-mean-square (VSSVLFxLMS) algorithm for applications in active vibration control (AVC). For such applications, the leaky filtered-x LMS (LFxLMS) algorithm has been considered for stability purposes. However, when the standard LFxLMS algorithm (with fixed leakage) is used, the control performance is strongly dependent on the selected leakage value. A similar result is noticed concerning the chosen step-size value. Thus, by using the proposed VSSVLFxLMS algorithm better step-size and leakage values are obtained, improving considerably the control performance. The conjectures of this work are confirmed by implementing the referred algorithm in an experimental setup of an AVC system.
Boosting 3D model retrieval with class vocabularies and distance vector revision

Visual-based 3D model retrieval presents great potential, for its broad application prospects and relatively high accuracy. A branch of visual-based methods utilizes scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) on 2D rendered images of a 3D model viewed from regularly sampled locations on a sphere, and then the bag-of-words framework is employed to improve the retrieval precision. However, in existing research literature, the universal vocabulary is usually trained from all the considered classes of models in database, which ignores the significant class information. To overcome this problem, we present a novel 3D model retrieval algorithm based on class vocabularies (CV-3DMR), which uses the category information of the classified database. Concretely, the class vocabularies are obtained through the adaptation of the universal vocabulary using class-specific data and the maximum a posterior (MAP) criterion. To boost the retrieval accuracy, we propose a distance vector revision strategy based upon the primary query results in top ranking. This strategy could be popularized to other approaches directly to promote their retrieval performance. Experimental results on the Princeton Shape Benchmark show that the proposed method makes a significant improvement over the compared 3D model retrieval algorithms.
Prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance among children and adolescents with marked obesity.

BACKGROUND Childhood obesity, epidemic in the United States, has been accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents. We determined the prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance in a multiethnic cohort of 167 obese children and adolescents. METHODS All subjects underwent a two-hour oral glucose-tolerance test (1.75 g [DOSAGE ERROR CORRECTED] of glucose per kilogram of body weight), and glucose, insulin, and C-peptide levels were measured. Fasting levels of proinsulin were obtained, and the ratio of proinsulin to insulin was calculated. Insulin resistance was estimated by homeostatic model assessment, and beta-cell function was estimated by calculating the ratio between the changes in the insulin level and the glucose level during the first 30 minutes after the ingestion of glucose. RESULTS Impaired glucose tolerance was detected in 25 percent of the 55 obese children (4 to 10 years of age) and 21 percent of the 112 obese adolescents (11 to 18 years of age); silent type 2 diabetes was identified in 4 percent of the obese adolescents. Insulin and C-peptide levels were markedly elevated after the glucose-tolerance test in subjects with impaired glucose tolerance but not in adolescents with diabetes, who had a reduced ratio of the 30-minute change in the insulin level to the 30-minute change in the glucose level. After the body-mass index had been controlled for, insulin resistance was greater in the affected cohort and was the best predictor of impaired glucose tolerance. CONCLUSIONS Impaired glucose tolerance is highly prevalent among children and adolescents with severe obesity, irrespective of ethnic group. Impaired oral glucose tolerance was associated with insulin resistance while beta-cell function was still relatively preserved. Overt type 2 diabetes was linked to beta-cell failure.
Ultrastructural studies of early mouse embryos obtained by oocyte fusion

Summary Oocyte fusion induced by inactivated Sendai virus results in the production of ‘zygotes’that are able to undergo the first stages of embryonic development. The oocyte fusion products (OFP) obtained follow a morphological developmental pattern equivalent to that of control embryos, at least up to the 8-cell stage. The percentage of OFP that reach the 8-cell stage is extremely low(3%)compared with control embryos cultured in vitro(95%). On light microscopy, the OFP obtained show morphological characteristics identical to control embryos, although their cell diameters are larger. The cortical reaction, meiotic reactivation, extrusion of second polar bodies and pronucleus formation take place as observed in controls. The ultrastructural characteristics of oocyte fusion products at the 1-2-4- and 8- cell stages are analogous to those of controls, including the presence of structures related to the activation of the embryo genome. However some differences concerning cell ultrastructure, mainly in the nucleus, are observed and discussed in the text.
Multi-cell effects during unclamped inductive switching of Power MOSFETs

In this paper, we describe the crucial dependence of avalanche behavior on epitaxial layer thickness and gate resistance during undamped inductive switching (TJIS) especially for high currents for power MOSFET devices employing field-plate compensation in the drift region. All transient simulations were performed using Medici's mixed-mode simulation approach including self-heating. A higher epitaxial layer thickness eventually resulted in a higher avalanche ruggedness but also in higher on-state resistance. Thus, a trade-off exists.
Independent Component Analysis for Removing X-ray Scatter in X-ray Images

Cone beam CT has a capability for the 3-dimensional imaging of large volumes with isotropic resolution. But the main limitation of cone beam CT is a larger amount of X-ray scatter. The X-ray scatter may enhance the noise in the reconstructed images. In this paper, we propose a new method based on independent component analysis (ICA) for removing the X-ray scatter in the observed X-ray images. The observed X-ray images can be considered as a linear mixture of scattered X-ray and primary X-ray. We show that the scattered X-ray and the primary X-ray can be blindly separated from two observed X-ray images by the use of ICA. The results indicate that the proposed method is effective for removing X-ray scatter from the X-ray images.
[Secondary cases of meningococcal disease in The Netherlands, 1989-1990; a reappraisal of chemoprophylaxis].

OBJECTIVE To assess the secondary attack rate (SAR) of meningococcal disease among the household contacts of primary patients and to describe the use of chemoprophylaxis in the Netherlands. DESIGN Descriptive, nation-wide survey. METHODS Information was collected of patients with meningococcal disease, reported between April 1st, 1989 and April 30th, 1990, and their household contacts. A household contact suffering from meningococcal disease between 24 hours and 1 month after hospital admission of the primary patient, was considered to be a secondary case. Chemoprophylaxis was considered appropriate if rifampicin or minocycline had been prescribed to all household contacts within a maximum of one day after admission of the primary patient. RESULTS There were 5 secondary cases (SAR: 0.3%). Chemoprophylaxis was prescribed to 627 of 1130 household contacts (55%). Of those the prophylaxis was considered appropriate in 46%. 2 secondary cases were not given any prophylaxis, 2 received penicillin and 1 rifampicin. Of the primary patients, 6% were given prophylaxis during their hospital stay. All meningococci, isolated from pairs of secondary and primary patients, were rifampicin sensitive. CONCLUSIONS The SAR of meningococcal disease in the Netherlands is similar to that in other countries. Although prescription of chemoprophylaxis is not recommended by the government, it is prescribed to 55% of the household contacts, and in almost half of these instances it was considered to be appropriate. Chemoprophylaxis is rarely prescribed to primary patients. Recommendations concerning chemoprophylaxis in the Netherlands are in need of reappraisal. Based on the results from this study and the literature, the prescription of chemoprophylaxis to all household contacts of a patient with meningococcal disease, and to the index patient, is recommended.
The symptomatic relief of anxiety with meprobamate, phenobarbital and placebo.

Fifty-two pychoneurotic outpatients with anxiety symptoms were treated in a controlled clinical study with meprobamate 400 mg. q.i. d. , phenobarbital 16 mg. q.i. d. and placebo q.i. d. The patients were divided into 2 comparable groups of 26, each group treated by a different psychiatrist. In the combined population of 52 patients, no significant differences appeared in the effectiveness of the 3 agents. The data then were analyzed for each psychiatrist's group separately. In one psychiatrist's group, the 3 agents were equally effective. In the other psychiatrist's group, the 2 active drugs were equally effective, but superior to placebo. Differences in the expectations of the 2 psychiatrists are discussed as a possible factor in these results, despite successful operation of the "double-blind" technique.
Internalized stigma and HIV status disclosure among HIV-positive black men who have sex with men

Abstract Black men who have sex with men (BMSM) are severely affected by the HIV epidemic, yet research on the relationship between HIV stigma and status disclosure is relatively limited among this population. Within this epidemic, internalized HIV stigma, the extent to which people living with HIV/AIDS endorse the negative beliefs associated with HIV as true of themselves, can negatively shape interpersonal outcomes and have important implications for psychological and physical health. In a sample of HIV-positive BMSM (N=156), the current study examined the effect of internalized stigma on HIV status disclosure to sexual partners, which can inform sexual decision-making in serodiscordant couples, and HIV status disclosure to family members, which can be beneficial in minimizing the psychological distress associated with HIV. Results revealed that greater internalized stigma was associated with less HIV status disclosure to participants’ last sexual partner and to family members. Findings from this study provide evidence that internalized negative beliefs about one's HIV status are linked to adverse interpersonal consequences. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to prevention and intervention efforts to reduce HIV stigmatization.
Oxidative stress in acute pancreatitis: lost in translation?

Abstract Oxidative stress has been implicated in the pathogenesis of acute pancreatitis, a severe and debilitating inflammation of the pancreas that carries a significant mortality, and which imposes a considerable financial burden on the health system due to patient care. Although extensive efforts have been directed towards the elucidation of critical underlying mechanisms and the identification of novel therapeutic targets, the disease remains without a specific therapy. In experimental animal models of acute pancreatitis, increased oxidative stress and decreased antioxidant defences have been observed, changes also detected in patients clinically. However, despite the promise of studies evaluating the effects of antioxidants in these model systems, translation to the clinic has thus far been disappointing. This may reflect many factors involved in the design of both preclinical and clinical evaluations of antioxidant therapy, not least the fact that most experimental studies have focussed on pre-treatment rather than post-injury assessment. This review has examined evidence relating to the involvement of oxidative stress in the pathophysiology of acute pancreatitis, focussing on experimental models and the clinical experience, including the experimental techniques employed and potential of antioxidant therapy.
Severe hepatic and peripheral insulin resistance as evidenced by euglycemic clamps in genetically obese fa/fa rats.

The action of insulin on glucose metabolism and hepatic glucose production was studied in vivo over a wide range of insulin concentrations in lean and genetically obese (fa/fa) rats, using the euglycemic clamp technique. While total glucose metabolism was stimulated 3-fold by insulin in lean animals (half-maximal stimulation at 400 microU/ml insulin), the hormone had no significant effect on glucose metabolism in obese animals, whatever the concentration used. In lean rats, the endogenous (i.e. hepatic) glucose production was completely suppressed at a steady state insulin concentration of about 360 microU/ml. In obese rats, an insulin concentration as high as 10,000 microU/ml was needed to suppress the hepatic glucose production. These results suggest that, in obese rats 1) basal plasma insulin levels appear to maximally stimulate peripheral glucose metabolism, and the presence of postreceptor defects prevents any further stimulatory effect of the hormone on glucose metabolism; 2) grave impairments of the action of insulin on hepatic glucose production are present, despite a normal responsiveness obtained at pharmacological concentrations of the hormone. These hepatic alterations could be due to postbinding and/or intracellular defects, as well as to defects, yet to be defined, of the homeostasis of insulin counterregulatory hormones.
Insurance Value of International Reserves: An Option Pricing Approach

A quantitative framework is developed to bring forward the insurance motive of holding international reserves. The insurance value of reserves is quantified as the market price of an equivalent option that provides the same insurance coverage as the reserves. This quantitative framework is applied to calculating the cost of a regional insurance arrangement (e.g., an Asian Monetary Fund) and to analyzing one leg of an optimal reserve-holding decision.