Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A system for integrated measurement of ventilator settings, lung volume change and blood gases during high-frequency oscillatory ventilation

To describe and validate a system for integrated measurement of ventilator settings and dependent physiological variables during high-frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV). A custom interface was built for data acquisition. Lung volume change was determined by respiratory inductive plethysmography (RIP), modified to sampling rates of 140 Hz. Blood gas analysis was obtained using a continuous intra-arterial blood gas monitoring system. FIO2 was measured by means of an electrochemical sensor. Pressure at the airway opening and trachea (microtip transducer) were sampled. The data acquired were sent to a laptop computer for analysis, display and storage. The system was tested during a lung recruitment procedure in an animal model of respiratory distress. Linearity of the RIP was checked by gas volume injection using a supersyringe. The system operated succesfully. Agreement between RIP-measured volume with injected volume was excellent; bias was 5 ml; limits of agreement were 1-9 ml. Graphs were obtained, showing the relationship between imposed mean airway pressure and lung volume change, and oxygenation. The integration of ventilator settings and dependent physiological variables may provide useful information for clinical, instructional and research application.
Membrane and cytoplasmic marker exchange between malignant neoplastic cells and fibroblasts via intermittent contact: increased tumour cell diversity independent of genetic change

We previously demonstrated that human osteosarcoma cells (SAOS‐2) induce contact‐dependent apoptosis in endothelium, and expected similar apoptosis in human gingival fibroblasts (h‐GF) using SAOS‐2 alkaline phosphatase (AP) to identify cells. However, h‐GF apoptosis did not occur, despite reduction in AP‐negative h‐GF number (p < 0.01) and enhancement of this by h‐GF TNFα pretreatment (p < 0.01). We suggest that TNFα‐enhanced transfer of membrane AP from SAOS‐2 to h‐GF would explain these data. This idea was investigated using fluorescence prelabelled cells and confocal laser scanning microscopy. Co‐cultures of membrane‐labelled h‐GF (marker‐DiO) and SAOS‐2 (marker‐DiD) generated dual‐labelled cells, primarily at the expense of single labelled h‐GF (p < 0.001), suggesting predominant membrane transfer from SAOS‐2 to h‐GF. However, opposite directional transfer predominated when membrane labels were reversed; SAOS‐2 further expressed green fluorescent protein (GFP) in cytoplasm and nuclei, and h‐GF additionally bore nuclear label (Syto59) (p < 0.001). Cytoplasmic exchange was investigated using h‐GF prelabelled with cytoplasmic DDAO‐SE and nuclear Syto59, co‐cultured with SAOS‐2 expressing GFP in cytoplasm and nuclei, and predominant cytoplasmic marker transferred from h‐GF to SAOS‐2 (p < 0.05). Pretreating h‐GF with TNFα increased exchange of membrane markers (p < 0.04) but did not affect either cell surface area profile or circularity. Dual‐labelled cells had a morphological phenotype differing from SAOS‐2 and h‐GF (p < 0.001). Time‐lapse microscopy revealed extensive migration of SAOS‐2 and cell process contact with h‐GF, with the appearance of SAOS‐2 indulging in ‘cellular sipping’ from h‐GF. Similar exchange of membrane was seen between h‐GF and with other cell lines (melanoma MeIRMu, NM39, WMM175, MM200‐B12; osteosarcoma U20S; ovarian carcinoma cells PE01, PE04 and COLO316), while cytoplasmic sharing was also seen in all cell lines other than U20S. We suggest that in some neoplasms, cellular sipping may contribute to phenotypic change and the generation of diverse tumour cell populations independent of genetic change, raising the possibility of a role in tumour progression. Copyright © 2012 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Reconstruction of Causal Networks in Physiology

We systematically compare strengths and weaknesses of two methods that can be used to quantify causal links between time series: Granger-causality and Bivariate Phase Rectified Signal Averaging (BPRSA). While a statistical test method for Granger-causality has already been established, we show that BPRSA causality can also be probed with existing statistical tests. Our results indicate that more data or stronger interactions are required for the BPRSA method than for the Granger-causality method to detect an existing link. Furthermore, the Granger-causality method can distinguish direct causal links from indirect links as well as links that arise from a common source, while BPRSA cannot. However, in contrast to Granger-causality, BPRSA is suited for the analysis of non-stationary data. We demonstrate the practicability of the Granger-causality method by applying it to polysomnography data from sleep laboratories. An algorithm is presented, which addresses the stationarity condition of Granger-causality by splitting non-stationary data into shorter segments until they pass a stationarity test. We reconstruct causal networks of heart rate, breathing rate, and EEG amplitude from young healthy subjects, elderly healthy subjects, and subjects with obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that leads to disruption of normal respiration during sleep. These networks exhibit differences not only between different sleep stages, but also between young and elderly healthy subjects on the one hand and subjects with sleep apnea on the other hand. Among these differences are 1) weaker interactions in all groups between heart rate, breathing rate and EEG amplitude during deep sleep, compared to light and REM sleep, 2) a stronger causal link from heart rate to breathing rate but disturbances in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (breathing to heart rate coupling) in subjects with sleep apnea, 3) a stronger causal link from EEG amplitude to breathing rate during REM sleep in subjects with sleep apnea. The Granger-causality method, although initially developed for econometric purposes, can provide a quantitative, testable measure for causality in physiological networks.
Determining a functional responsibility allocation between public and private parties in a long-term maintenance contract for waterworks

A proper allocation of risks and responsibilities is vital for the success of long-term maintenance contracts. This paper focuses on a method to identify an adequate allocation of responsibilities for the maintenance of waterworks. The Dutch agency recently started outsourcing the maintenance of their waterworks in DBFM contracts. In order to meet the Dutch Water Act during the whole life cycle of the lock, Risk Based Asset Management is contractually required. However, how to distribute the risks and responsibilities between the public and private parties is an open question. This paper presents a functional risk allocation method, existing of a risk allocation matrix and risk allocation conditions.
Design and comparison of various coupled line Tx-filters for a Ku-band block upconverter

In this contribution common coupled line filter topologies are developed for their application as Tx-filter in a Ku-band block upconverter (BUC) from 13.75 - 14.5 GHz. Tough requirements of Rx-, LO- and second harmonic suppression were achieved by a detailed analysis of the metallic losses as well as equalizing even- and odd-mode velocities of the coupled line section. Four different filters were designed on an alumina substrate resulting in high measured performance values and small size compared to other work. By using a hairpin topology a designed filter achieves a low insertion loss (IL) less than 1.5 dB, a return loss (RL) of better than 20 dB, for a 3 dB fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 14.7% while maintaining a second harmonic suppression of more than 20 dB.
Weighted k-Nearest-Neighbor Techniques for High Throughput Screening Data

The k-nearest neighbors (knn) is a simple but effective method of classification. In this paper we present an extended version of this technique for chemical compounds used in High Throughput Screening, where the distances of the nearest neighbors can be taken into account. Our algorithm uses kernel weight functions as guidance for the process of defining activity in screening data. Proposed kernel weight function aims to combine properties of graphical structure and molecule descriptors of screening compounds. We apply the modified knn method on several experimental data from biological screens. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method. Keywords—biological screening, kernel methods, KNN, QSAR
SPIRIT: A Tree Kernel-Based Method for Topic Person Interaction Detection (Extended Abstract)

In this paper, we investigate the interactions between topic persons to help readers construct the background knowledge of a topic. We proposed a rich interactive tree structure to represent syntactic, context, and semantic information of text, and this structure is incorporated into a tree-based convolution kernel to identify segments that convey person interactions and further construct person interaction networks. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in detecting and extracting the interactions between topic persons in the text, and outperforms other extraction approaches used for comparison. Furthermore, readers will be able to easily navigate through the topic persons of interest within the interaction networks, and further construct the background knowledge of the topic to facilitate comprehension.
Metabolic and endocrine findings in appropriate and small for gestational age fetuses

The oxygenation and metabolism in appropriate (AGA) and small for gestational age (SGA) fetuses has been investigated by cordocentesis. The umbilical venous and arterial pO2 and pH decrease with gestational age while pCO2 increases and blood lactate concentration does not change. The mean umbilical venous blood glucose concentration is higher than in the umbilical artery indicating that there is fetal glucose uptake from the placenta. Similarly, the maternal glucose concentration is higher than the fetal and the levels in the two compartments are significantly correlated. The plasma insulin concentration increases exponentially with gestation reflecting the progressive maturation of the fetal pancreas. The fetal plasma cortisol does not change but the fetal plasma ACTH increases with gestation. Fetal plasma triglyceride concentration decreases exponentially with gestation and this is likely to be the result of increased utilization by the fetus for deposition into adipose tissue. There is a high correlation between fetal and maternal levels for individual amino acids and the concentration in the fetus is higher than in the mother, supporting the active transport of amino acids by the placenta. Some SGA fetuses are compromised by hypoxemia, hypercapnia, hyperlacticemia and acidosis, are starved of glucose and amino acids, and are hypertriglyceridemic. Furthermore, some of these fetuses are hypoinsulinemic and the degree of hypoinsulinemia is disproportional to the degree of hypoglycemia suggesting pancreatic dysfunction. In SGA fetuses the plasma cortisol is increased and the plasma ACTH decreased. Knowledge of human fetal oxygenation and metabolism may help in deciding the optional timing of delivery but may also constitute a basis for future fetal therapy in the form of oxygen and nutrient supplementation.
A novel VLSI iterative divider architecture for fast quotient generation

In this paper, a novel VLSI iterative divider architecture for fast quotient generation that is based on radix-2 non-restoring division is proposed. To speed up the quotient generation, our method makes use of the magnitude difference between the partial dividend and the divisor for the next iteration so that the proper weight of the quotient can be obtained more rapidly than the conventional methods. Our proposed architecture is very simple compared to the multiplication-based methods such as those that are based on Newton-Raphson. Simulation results show that our proposed method can achieve less than half the number of iterations required by the conventional division (i.e. less than nil vs. n, where n is the bit-width of the dividend and the divisor). The proposed architecture has been synthesized in 0.13 mum CMOS standard cell library to demonstrate the delay and the power efficiency.
Identification of Kir 2 . 1 Channel Activity in Cultured Trabecular Meshwork Cells

RESULTS. A strong inwardly rectifying current at negative potentials to the equilibrium potential for K (EK1) and highly selective for K was detected in 60% of cultured BTM cells. The slope conductance of the inward rectification was more pronounced when the extracellular [K] was increased and was proportional to [K]. The current was blocked by Ba and Cs in a voltageand concentration-dependent manner, with Kd at 0 mV, of 74.7 mM and 45.6 mM, respectively. Current amplitude was reduced by increasing extracellular [Ca]. The current was insensitive to 10 mM glibenclamide and 10 nM tertiapin. The application of 100 mM 8-Br-cAMP reduced the current by 50%. Kir2.1 channel expression was detected in confluent monolayers of BTM and HTM cells by Western blot analysis.
A review on availability of remote sensing data

The satellite images are applied on a wide range of applications. It plays a vital role in monitoring and maintaining the environmental changes and also in many agricultural applications. Nowadays, the Land degradation, Ground water scarcity and other climatic hazards are intensively high and it needs development of more advanced prediction models. These models can be deployed more effectively on using satellite images. Due to the launch of many modern satellites the availability of satellite images are high but still the exploitation of these resources are very scarce. It is due to the lack of knowledge over varied properties and the availability of different sources of satellite images. Though the moderate resolution satellite images are freely available, the rate of exploitation of these resources is still very less. Hence, this paper focuses on detailing the diverse characteristics and availability of satellite images which could be a great help for beginners in remote sensing research. In addition the details on major satellite derived products which are applied widely in different mapping applications are also listed. Further, the importance of satellite images in few notable applications is also explained.
Opinion Polarity Detection in Twitter Data combining Sequence Mining and Topic Modeling

We propose a pipeline process to analyze opinion about festivals and cultural events by automatically detecting polarity in Twitter data. Previous studies have focused in the polarity classification of individual tweets. However, to understand the polarity of opinion on a domain, it is important to find themes or topics that occur in the corpus. The first phase is to find the optimal number of topics and to identify the major topics via the latent Dirichlet analysis (LDA) topic model. The second stage is to detect polarity in tweets using the sequence mining approach mainly founded on sequences extracted from tweets using a LCM-seq algorithm [9]. The results showed that the polarity detection accuracy of the sequence mining was 84.78%, indicating that the proposed method was valid in most cases.
Hemodialysis Patient Care in Renal Dialysis Unit among Selected Hospitals in the Sultanate of Oman

Chronic kidney disease is a major health problem due to the significant financial burden for the healthcare system and likewise for the patient who needs the treatment. The patient’s whole life situation is turned upside down with chronic kidney disease when they are confronted with the forced change to start treatment with hemodialysis. Patients undergoing hemodialysis require direct and continuous care. Identifying the barriers to and factors facilitating hemodialysis care can improve care quality. The increasing number of patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) has caused a substantial rise in the number of individuals receiving hemodialysis. A literature review was conducted through sources of data base available in the Medline/Pub Med, Google Scholar, Science Direct, and EBSCO Academic Search Complete for studies published in Gulf countries. Fourteen studies were found to be related to the domains of hemodialysis patient care in the Sultanate of Oman. Almost 34 percent of the published studies (four studies) were from Saudi Arabia, another four each from Iran, two each form Iraq and Oman respectively, one each from Qatar and the entire GCC. Although the current status of the hemodialysis patient care in the Sultanate of Oman is affected by several factors and necessitates the need for identifying the satisfaction on patient care in renal dialysis unit, concerns of patient undergoing hemodialysis, and health care providers’ experiences on patient care in renal dialysis unit, and the barriers and facilitators on patient care in renal dialysis unit. Future studies should be conducted to identify other factors that could influence the hemodialysis patient care in the Sultanate of Oman and the development of interventions to help both the HD patients and the health providers.
Effects of animal age, marbling score, calpastatin activity, subprimal cut, calcium injection, and degree of doneness on the palatability of steaks from limousin steers.

Strip loin (longissimus lumborum), sirloin (gluteus medius) and round (semimembranosus) subprimals from 114 purebred and crossbred Limousin steers were used to identify main effects and interactions of animal age, marbling score, calpastatin activity, subprimal cut, calcium injection (5% wt/wt with a 200 mM CaCl2 solution at 48 h postmortem), and degree of doneness on the palatability of cooked beef steaks. Steaks were aged for 14 d, frozen, thawed, cooked to different internal temperature end points, visually scored for degree of doneness, sheared on a Warner-Bratzler shear machine, and evaluated by a trained taste panel. Raw and cooked steaks from carcasses of higher USDA quality grades had higher fat and lower moisture percentages (P < .05). Higher degrees of doneness resulted in lower moisture percentages (P < .05). Lower shear force values were associated with less variation in shear force. Younger slaughter age and lower calpastatin activity both resulted in greater tenderness (P < .05). Shear force was lowest between "medium rare" and "medium" and increased toward both ends of the degree of doneness scale for round and sirloin steaks; however, shear force increased linearly with degree of doneness in strip loin steaks (P < .05). Subprimal cut had the largest effect on taste panel tenderness ratings, and degree of doneness had the largest effect on taste panel juiciness ratings. The improvement in shear force due to CaCl2 injection was greater for strip loin and sirloin steaks than for round steaks (P < .05 for the interaction). Injection with CaCl2 improved all taste panel attributes. In addition, CaCl2 injection reduced the toughening effects of cooking (P < .05).
The Use of Torpor in Reproductive Female Hemprich’s Long‐Eared Bats (Otonycteris hemprichii)

We investigated the patterns of torpor use and body temperature (Tb) in reproductive Hemprich’s long‐eared bats (Otonycteris hemprichii; body mass ∼20 g) in the central Negev Desert highlands. We hypothesized that Tb regulation in female O. hemprichii during reproduction is shaped by a trade‐off between the energy and temperature requirements of embryo and pup growth and the mother’s own need to use torpor and passive rewarming to save energy and water. We predicted that patterns of torpor use change during pregnancy but change little if at all during nursing. We used radio telemetry to track, find the roosts of, and measure the skin temperatures of eight pregnant and 15 nursing bats during the years 2002–2004; we measured roost temperature (Tr) using temperature data loggers. Before field data collection, we simultaneously measured skin temperature and Tb in three female bats in the laboratory and derived field body temperatures (Tbf) from these data. Female bats often used both deep and shallow daily torpor during the first two trimesters of pregnancy, with Tbf frequently dropping as low as 15°C. Pregnant females used only shallow torpor during the last trimester of pregnancy, perhaps to permit faster growth of the embryo. During nursing, the bats used only shallow torpor, with Tbf always >29°C, possibly to facilitate milk production. Tbf of pregnant and nursing bats varied with daily oscillations in Tr. Passive rewarming was not evident before the animals exited their roosts to forage.
A transducer array design for acoustic frozen waves generation with a kerf optimization for biomedical applications

In this paper, a design of transducer array to implement Biomedical Applications by Acoustics Frozen Waves, such as diathermy, hyperthermia, tissue ablation tissue, is presented. The example shows a method to obtain an optimal space between rings (kerf) for each Fz, based on minimization of RMSE. The results of kerf VS RMSE, for our synthesizing functions Fz, show that the minimum kerf is the best for a minor RMSE. However, the optimum kerf is dependent of field pattern Fz, over z axis. Finally, we proposed the inspection of other parameters such as the position of each ring, the harmonic distortion of the driving signals, the variations on the amplitude and phase of the driving signals, and others, are proposed.
Supervision of renewable energy for its integration in the electrical system

As renewable electricity generation is increasing, several concerns are addressed by the Transmission System Operators (TSO) towards the management and the security of the electrical grid. This paper reviews solutions to ease the integration of renewable energy in the electrical systems through enhanced supervision of renewable generation as well as utilisation of short term or medium term storage system. Amount these solutions, supervision and storage allow to smooth output power, avoid congestion and participate in primary frequency control. Dynamic power system simulations are shown to illustrate the efficiency of the supervision methods.
New Late Permian paleomagnetic data from Argentina: Refinement of the apparent polar wander path of Gondwana

The Late Paleozoic–Early Mesozoic apparent polar wander path of Gondwana is largely constructed from relatively old paleomagnetic results, many of which are considered unreliable by modern standards. Paleomagnetic results derived from sedimentary sequences, which are generally poorly dated and prone to inclination shallowing, are especially common. Here we report the results of a joint paleomagnetic‐geochronologic study of a volcanic complex in central Argentina. U‐Pb dating of zircons has yielded a robust age estimate of 263.0 +1.6/−2.0 Ma for the complex. Paleomagnetic analysis has revealed a pretilting (primary Permian) magnetization with dual polarities. Rock magnetic experiments have identified pseudo‐single domain (titano)magnetite and hematite as the mineralogic carriers of the magnetization. Lightning‐induced isothermal remagnetizations are widespread in the low‐coercivity magnetic carriers. The resulting paleomagnetic pole is 80.1°S, 349.0°E, A95 = 3.3°, N = 35, and it improves a Late Permian mean pole calculated from a filtered South American paleomagnetic data set. More broadly, this new, high‐quality, igneous‐based paleomagnetic pole falls between the previously distinct Late Permian segments of the Laurussian and Gondwanan apparent polar wander paths, suggesting that the long‐recognized disparity between these large paleomagnetic data sets may be primarily due to the inclusion of low‐quality or systemically biased data.