Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Accurate Implicit Field Representation for Meshes and Its Adapted Triangulation Algorithms

The classic implicit scalar field distance transform representation of a mesh is very useful to perform many mesh processing operations and to obtain better results than with other methods. In this paper we propose a new and more accurate implicit vector field distance transform representation of a mesh. We adapt Marching Cube and Marching Triangle, the two most widely used triangulation algorithms, to our new vector field representation to correctly reconstruct the final mesh after data processing in the implicit domain. According to a reliable surface error metric, we show our new vector field is more accurate than the classic scalar field to implicitly represent a mesh. We adapt to our vector field a previously introduced mesh denoising algorithm performed on the scalar field. Results show mesh denoising with our vector field outperforms the one with classic scalar field in terms of an error metric comparison. Categories and Subject Descriptors (according to ACM CCS): I.3. 5 [Computer Graphics]: Computational Geometry and Object Modeling – Curve, surface, solid, and object representations; Geometric algorithms, languages, and systems; Hierarchy and geometric transformations. I.4. 3 [Image Processing and Computer Vision]: Enhancement – Filtering; Geometric correction; Smoothing.
Age and accumulation of persistent organochlorines: A study of arctic‐breeding glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus)

We studied the relationship between increasing age and blood concentrations of four persistent organochlorines (OCs), hexachlorbenzene (HCB), oxychlordane, p,p′‐dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), and 2,2′,4,4′,5,5′‐hexachlorbiphenyl (PCB‐153), in arctic‐breeding glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus). We measured OC concentrations in 31 individuals of known age and took repeated blood samples of 64 individuals in different years, either one year apart or three or four years apart. The age of individuals was not related to the blood concentrations for any of the four compounds, and in birds whose values were measured repeatedly, there was no effect of the length of time (number of years) between sampling events on the relative change in OC concentration. This indicates that steady‐state levels were reached before the age of first breeding. However, breeding area significantly influenced the changes in OC concentration between sampling events. In areas in which birds fed on prey from higher trophic levels, the OC concentrations showed large increases between sampling events; in areas in which birds fed at lower trophic levels, OC concentrations increased relatively little or not at all. This indicates that individual birds had different equilibrium concentrations, which are reached at different ages depending on the intake of OCs through the food. It also indicates that some individuals had not reached steady‐state concentrations at the onset of reproduction. Changes in body condition and amount of blood lipids were of lesser importance than trophic level and influenced the concentrations of HCB and oxychlordane more strongly than DDE and PCB‐153. In conclusion, this study indicates that steady‐state concentrations of persistent OCs are reached early in life in most glaucous gulls, considering the long life span of the species.
Daring to be different: colicin N finds another way

The mechanisms by which colicins, protein toxins produced by Escherichia coli, kill other E. coli, have become much better understood in recent years. Most colicins initially bind to an outer membrane protein receptor, and then search for a separate nearby outer membrane protein translocator that serves as a pathway into target cells. Many colicins use the outer membrane porin, OmpF, as that translocator, while using a different primary receptor. Colicin N is unique among known colicins in that only OmpF had been identified as being required for uptake of the colicin and it was presumed to somehow serve as both receptor and translocator. Genetic screens also identified a number of genes required for lipopolysaccharide (LPS) synthesis as uniquely required for killing by colicin N, but not by other colicins. Johnson et al. show that the receptor‐binding domain of colicin N binds to LPS, and does not require OmpF for that binding. LPS of a minimal length is required for binding, explaining the requirement for specific elements of the LPS biosynthetic pathway. For colicin N, the receptor‐binding domain does not recognize a protein, but rather the most abundant component of the outer membrane itself, LPS.
Nanotechnology-based drug delivery of ropinirole for Parkinson’s disease

Abstract A new drug delivery system is developed for ropinirole (RP) for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD) consisting of biodegradable poly (D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) nanoparticles (NPs). The formulation selected was prepared with 8 mg RP and 50 mg PLGA 502. This formulation exhibited mean encapsulation efficiency of 74.8 ± 8.2%, mean particle size lower than 155 nm, the zeta potential of −14.25 ± 0.43 mV and zero-order in vitro release of RP (14.13 ± 0.17 μg/h/10 mg NPs) for 5 d. Daily doses of the neurotoxin rotenone (2 mg/kg) given i.p. to male Wistar rats induced neuronal and behavioral changes similar to those of PD. Once neurodegeneration was established (15 d) animals received RP in saline (1 mg/kg/d for 35 d) or encapsulated within PLGA NPs (amount of NPs equivalent to 1 mg/kg/d RP every 3 d for 35 d). Brain histology and immunochemistry (Nissl-staining, glial fibrillary acidic protein and tyrosine hydroxylase immunohistochemistry) and behavioral testing (catalepsy, akinesia, rotarod and swim test) showed that RP-loaded PLGA NPs were able to revert PD-like symptoms of neurodegeneration in the animal model assayed.
Improved Chemical Detection and Ultra-Fast Recovery Using Oxygen Functionalized Epitaxial Graphene Sensors

Oxygen functionalized epitaxial graphene (OFEG) sensors are demonstrated toward the sensing of polar chemical vapors at room temperature. The electrical characteristics of the sensor show an increase in resistance upon exposure to polar protic chemicals while the resistance decreased for polar aprotic vapors The average response and recovery times of the OFEG sensor to all analyte vapors are 10 and 100 s, respectively. In comparison, non-functionalized epitaxial graphene (NFEG) sensors show similar response times as OFEG, but with extremely long recovery rates in the range of ~1.5-2 hours. The dipole moment of the chemical is found to have a strong impact on the magnitude of the response for both OFEG and NFEG which increased with the increasing dipole moment from 2.0 D to 4.1 D. However, OFEG exhibits significantly higher sensitivity (twofold increase) to all polar chemicals over NFEG sensors. For example, exposing OFEG to n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone vapors produces a 45% change in resistance, in comparison to a 27% resistance change displayed by NFEG sensors. The noise spectral density of NFEG follows a typical 1/f dependence upon exposure to di-methylformamide vapors but with a lower change in noise from 1 × 10-18A2/Hz to 1 × 10-17 A2/Hz at 1 Hz. In contrast, OFEG displays a unique 1/f2 behavior at lower frequency range (1-10 Hz) with a significant change to the sensor noise from 3 × 10-18A2/Hz to 2 × 10-15 A2/Hz.
Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)

The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) has been in use in the Internet for a decade, and remains one of the most popular protocols (by volume) in use today. This document is a replacement for RFC 977, and officially updates the protocol specification. It clarifies some vagueness in RFC 977, includes some new base functionality, and provides a specific mechanism to add standardized extensions to NNTP. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
Microfluidic chip for rapid electrofusion of homogeneous and heterogeneous cells

We present a cell electrofusion chip fabricated using soft lithography technique, which combines the rapid and precise cell pairing microstructures with high yield electrofusion micro-electrodes to improve the cell fusion. The design uses hydrodynamic trapping combined with positive dielectrophoresis (pDEP) to achieve cell fusion. The chip consists of total 960 pairs of trapping sites, which are capable of pairing and fusing both homogeneous and heterogeneous types of cells. The fused cells can be easily taken out of the chip that makes this device distinguishable from other designs. We observe pairing efficiency of 68% with fusion efficiency of 64%.
Bose-Einstein Condensation of Cesium

Bose-Einstein condensation of cesium atoms is achieved by evaporative cooling using optical trapping techniques. The ability to tune the interactions between the ultracold atoms by an external magnetic field is crucial to obtain the condensate and offers intriguing features for potential applications. We explore various regimes of condensate self-interaction (attractive, repulsive, and null interaction strength) and demonstrate properties of imploding, exploding, and non-interacting quantum matter.
Arsenic in drinking water: A worldwide water quality concern for water supply companies

For more than a decade it has been known that shallow tube wells in Bangladesh are frequently contaminated with arsenic concentrations at a level that is harmful to human health. By now it is clear that a disaster of an unheard magnitude is going on: the World Health Organization has estimated that long-term exposure to arsenic in groundwater, at concentrations over 500 ? g L? 1, causes death in 1 in 10 adults. Other studies show that problems with arsenic in groundwater/drinking water occur in many more countries worldwide, such as in the USA and China. In Europe the focus on arsenic problems is currently confined to countries with high arsenic levels in their groundwater, such as Serbia, Hungary and Italy. In most other European countries, the naturally occurring arsenic concentrations are mostly lower than the European drinking water standard of 10 ? g L? 1. However, from the literature review presented in this paper, it is concluded that at this level health risks cannot be excluded. As consumers in European countries expect the drinking water to be of impeccable quality, it is recommended that water supply companies optimize arsenic removal to a level of <1 ? g L? 1, which is technically feasible. OA-fund TU Delft
Significance of Novel WSD Algorithms

Abstract Word sense disambiguation (WSD) is considered to be a difficult problem in computational linguistics. Single-approach solutions to this problem consisting of only one module are unlikely to yield high performance levels, while hybrid systems formed by combining a number of modules tend to offer a better performance in tackling WSD problems. We propose the strong POS + Frequency baseline as a basic easy-to-implement platform for testing how well algorithms can do when combined with other high-accuracy modules. After giving an overview of the field, we discuss our proposed novel model for WSD, which is a stand-alone contribution in a field in which ideas are repeated. Under the umbrella of our novel WSD model, called Sense Space Model (SSM), we show that significant and interesting algorithms exist. While the accuracy of some of the unsupervised offspring algorithms of the model can be low compared to the strong POS + Frequency baseline (and also compared to the top hybrid systems), sometimes even having an accuracy lower than a random system, such algorithms can still act significantly better than a random system when combined to the strong baseline, considering a meticulous 1% significance level. Therefore, ruling out such lower-accuracy modules from a hybrid system, which might otherwise appear to be a necessary elimination, is challenged. One of these significant algorithms was recently improved by introducing “a threshold” and could beat the implemented POS + Frequency baseline. This confirms that considering such lower-accuracy algorithms as significant is reasonable.
Leadership and a casualty response system for eliminating preventable death

ABSTRACT Combat casualties who die from their injuries do so primarily in the prehospital setting. Although most of these deaths result from injuries that are nonsurvivable, some are potentially survivable. Of injuries that are potentially survivable, most are from hemorrhage. Thus, military organizations should direct efforts toward prehospital care, particularly through early hemorrhage control and remote damage control resuscitation, to eliminate preventable death on the battlefield. A systems-based approach and priority of effort for institutionalizing such care was developed and maintained by medical personnel and command-directed by nonmedical combatant leaders within the 75th Ranger Regiment, U.S. Army Special Operations Command. The objective of this article is to describe the key components of this prehospital casualty response system, emphasize the importance of leadership, underscore the synergy achieved through collaboration between medical and nonmedical leaders, and provide an example to other organizations and communities striving to achieve success in trauma as measured through improved casualty survival.
FIAT-fault injection based automated testing environment

An automated real-time distributed accelerated fault injection environment (FIAT) is presented as an attempt to provide suitable tools for the validation process. The authors present the concepts and design, as well as the implementation and evaluation of the FIAT environment. As this system has been built, evaluated and is currently in use, an example of fault tolerant systems such as checkpointing and duplicate and match is used to show its usefulness. <<ETX>>
Transcriptional tumor‐selective promoter targeting of E. coli purine nucleoside phosphorylase for pancreatic cancer suicide gene therapy

Pancreatic cancer remains a rapidly fatal disease. Suicide gene therapy has been shown to be an effective tool for pancreatic tumor cell destruction, but a cell‐specific gene delivery is required to limit host toxicity. The objective of this study was both to design recombinant vectors in which the suicide gene E. coli purine nucleoside phosphorylase (ePNP) is under the control of either CEA or MUC1 promoter sequences and to investigate on experimental pancreatic carcinomas the selective killing effects of the conditional ePNP/prodrug (MePdR) system.
Calcium carbonate formation and dissolution.

3.3. 7. Nucleation of Calcium Carbonate 357 3.4. Dissolution Reactions 359 3.4. 1. Calcite Dissolution Kinetics 359 3.4. 2. Aragonite Dissolution 360 3.4. 3. Magnesian Calcite Dissolution Kinetics 360 3.5. Biominerals and Nanophase Carbonates 361 3.5. 1. General Considerations 361 3.5. 2. Biomineralization 361 3.5. 3. Biogeochemistry, Geomicrobiology 361 3.5. 4. Nanophase Carbonates 362 3.6. Calcium Carbonate−Organic Matter Interactions 363
Lead(II)-induced allosteric G-quadruplex DNAzyme as a colorimetric and chemiluminescence sensor for highly sensitive and selective Pb2+ detection.

The lead ion (Pb(2+)) has been proven to induce a conformational change of K(+)-stabilized G-quadruplex DNAzyme and inhibit the peroxidase-like activity [Li, T. ; Wang, E. ; Dong, S. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 15082-15083]. This provides a rationale for utilizing Pb(2+)-induced allosteric G-quadruplex DNAzyme to probe aqueous Pb(2+). Here, we choose a common G-quadruplex DNAzyme named PS2.M to develop a novel Pb(2+) sensor with two detection means: colorimetry and chemiluminescence (CL). In the presence of K(+), PS2.M (with hemin as a cofactor) exhibits a superior DNAzyme activity and effectively catalyzes the H(2)O(2)-mediated oxidation of 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) or luminol, which results in a color change or generates CL emission. Upon the addition of Pb(2+), K(+)-stabilized PS2.M is induced to convert to the Pb(2+)-stabilized structure with higher stability but lower DNAzyme activity, which is reflected by an obvious increase in DNA melting temperature but a sharp decrease in readout signal. This allows us to utilize PS2.M for quantitative analysis of aqueous Pb(2+) using the ABTS-H(2)O(2) colorimetric system and luminol-H(2)O(2) CL system. In each case, the readout signal is linearly dependent on the logarithm of Pb(2+) concentration within a certain range. Nevertheless, two sensing systems provide different sensitivity for Pb(2+) analysis. With colorimetry, Pb(2+) can be detected at a level of 32 nM (approximately 7 ppb), whereas the detection limit of Pb(2+) is 1 nM (0.2 ppb) when utilizing the CL method. In addition to high sensitivity, the above sensing systems exhibit good selectivity for Pb(2+) over other metal ions. These results demonstrate the facility and effectivity of our introduced DNAzyme-based sensor for quantitative Pb(2+) analysis.
Mutation in the plasmid pUB110 Rep protein affects termination of rolling circle replication

We isolated a mutant of plasmid pUB110 that has the following properties in Bacillus subtilis: (i) it is toxic for recA and add cells, particularly at elevated temperature; (ii) it has a copy number threefold higher than that of the parental plasmid, and the extra copies are present as multimers; and (iii) it can efficiently complement replication of a cmp- satellite plasmid, despite being cmp+. All these properties are due to a single change in the plasmid replication protein, i.e., Gly at position 148 to Glu. These properties of the mutant Rep protein reflect a diminished ability to terminate rolling circle replication. We propose that the Rep protein may have a diminished affinity for the plasmid origin; alternatively, it may be impaired for recognition of the plasmid conformations which distinguish initiation and termination.
Wavelet decomposition on high-performance computing systems

Wavelet transforms have favorable characteristics over Fourier transform. Due to the recent discovery of a fast sequential algorithm, the past years had a remarkable increase in applying Wavelets. In this paper we present and compare efficient Wavelet decomposition algorithms on parallel architectures. We report and analyze experimental measurements, using NASA remotely sensed images. The results show that the algorithms achieve significant performance gains on current parallel systems and meet applications requirements.
[ENCOPREVENIMSS 2004. 5. Intake of healthy or potentially unhealthy food].

OBJECTIVE to know the prevalence of healthy or potentially unhealthy food intake in the population insured by the Mexican Institute of Social Security. MATERIAL AND METHODS food intake was obtained from frequency questionnaires classified as healthy (HF) or potentially unhealthy food (PUF), and according to its nature and frequency consumption. The prevalences according to age groups were obtained for <1 year old and every five years until 19; then, they were recorded by decades, sex, location and place of residence, with or without coast. RESULTS in the first year of age, the consumption of HF is low, and the intake of PUF starts, with industrialized juices and soft drinks. Between the first and the ninth year of age, the consumption of HF increases; however, the intake of PUF increases too; there is not a significant intake of red meat, eggs and fish. Throughout adolescence, HF intake and diversity increases, although PUF consumption is higher too. In adults and senior citizens, the kind of HF most frequently consumed were cereals and leguminous plants, but they barely ate fruits and vegetables. The HF of greatest consumption were those of animal origin, and the riskiest ones were very greasy daily products with saturated fat, as well as soft drinks. We found that the population living in the Pacific coast consumes more sea food than the one living in the Gulf coast. We also found that, as people get older, the intake of PUF decreases. CONCLUSION in the first years of life, the proper intake of meat, eggs and fish should be promoted, as well as the consumption of HF and the decrease of food with refined sugar, saturated fat or salt.
PRIVACY-PRESERVING APPROACH TO POLICY-BASED CONTENT DISSEMINATION USING KEY-MANAGEMENT

Cloud computing is revolutionizing many ecosystems by providing organizations with computing resources featuring easy deployment, connectivity, configuration, automation and scalability. This paradigm shift raises a broad range of security and privacy issues that must be taken into consideration. Multi-tenancy, loss of control, and trust are key challenges in cloud computing environments. This paper reviews the existing technologies and a wide array of both earlier and state-of-the-art projects on cloud security and privacy. In this paper, we propose CloudKeyBank, the first unified key management framework that addresses all the three goals above. Under our framework, the key owner can perform privacy and controllable authorization enforced encryption with minimum information leakage. To implement CloudKeyBank efficiently, we propose a new cryptographic primitive named Searchable Conditional Proxy Re-Encryption (SC-PRE) which combines the techniques of Hidden Vector Encryption (HVE) and Proxy Re-Encryption (PRE) seamlessly, and propose a concrete SC-PRE scheme based on existing HVE and PRE schemes. Our experimental results and security analysis show the efficiency and security goals are well achieved.
A Unifying Polynomial Model for Efﬁcient Discovery of Frequent Itemsets

It is well-known that developing a unifying theory is one of the most important issues in Data Mining research. In the last two decades, a great deal has been devoted to the algorithmic aspects of the Frequent Itemset (FI) Mining problem. We are motivated by the need of formal modeling in the field. Thus, we introduce and analyze, in this theoretical study, a new model for the FI mining task. Indeed, we encode the itemsets as words over an ordered alphabet, and state this problem by a formal series over the counting semiring (N,+,x,0,1), whose the range constitutes the itemsets and the coefficients their supports. This formalism offers many advantages in both fundamental and practical aspects: The introduction of a clear and unified theoretical framework through which we can express the main FI-approaches, the possibility of their generalization to mine other more complex objects, and their incrementalization and/or parallelization; in practice, we explain how this problem can be seen as that of word recognition by an automaton, allowing an efficient implementation in O(|Q|) space and O(|FL||Q|]) time, where Q is the set of states of the automaton used for representing the data, and FL the set of prefixial maximal FI.
Peri-operative exercise training programme for hip arthroplasty: the effect on locomotion

Arthroplasty is a recognised surgical intervention to relieve pain in patientswith hip osteoarthritis (OA). Previous studies showed impairments and functional limitations lasting at least 1 year following hip arthroplasty. Strength deficit of the hip abductor muscles may lead to postural instability, a reduced walking speed and disability when climbing stairs (Trudelle-Jackson et al. 2002). In the case of hip OA, asymmetries in the gait pattern are also reported preand post-operatively. Patientswaiting for hip arthroplasty tend to develop adaptive strategies (i.e. limping) in order to improve function or to limit the pain. However, these strategies may persist even after patients have undergone successful treatment and rehabilitation. Only a few studies evaluated the effect of a peri-arthroplasty (preand post-operatively) exercises training programme in patients suffering from hip OA. To our knowledge, no studies focusing on 3D gait analysis and strength symmetry were performed preand post-operatively. Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterise the biomechanical and strength symmetry between the operated and non-operated legs during locomotion after a peri-operative exercise programme.