Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of storage time and processing on chemical composition and in vitro ruminal fermentation of olive cake.

Olive oil extraction generates olive cake (OC) that could be used in ruminant feeding. However, the chemical composition of OC is affected by multiple factors, being therefore highly variable. The objective of this study was to analyse the influence of storage time and further processing: crude, exhausted (subjected to a second oil extraction) and cyclone (obtained from a cyclone separator) on nutritive value of OC samples. Twelve samples (six crude and six exhausted) were obtained monthly from the same pond from 1 to 6 storage months, and nine samples (three crude, three exhausted and three cyclone) were obtained monthly from a different pond from 6 to 9 months storage. Chemical composition was analysed, and OC samples were fermented in vitro with sheep rumen fluid. Increasing storage time up to 6 months decreased sugars and total soluble polyphenols content but increased fibre content in OC. Dry matter effective degradability (DMED) decreased linearly (p < 0.001) by 35.9 and 45.5% as storage time augmented from 1 to 6 months for crude and exhausted OC, respectively. Crude OC had lower DMED values than exhausted OC (averaged values 0.255 and 0.294 g/g, respectively). Both potential production and rate of gas production were lower (p ≤ 0.018) in crude compared with exhausted OC, which was attributed to the high fat content of crude OC (≥86 g/kg dry matter). For samples stored longer than 6 months, cyclone had greater (p < 0.05) DMED than crude and exhausted OC (averaged values 0.207, 0.164 and 0.164 g/g, respectively). The results indicate that ruminal degradability of OC is reduced with advancing storage time, but only subtle changes were observed during the first two months. Cyclone showed greater degradability than crude and exhausted OC, but differences between crude and exhausted OC became negligible after five storage months.
Phoneme recognition by phoneme filter neural networks

A phoneme filter neural network (PFN) approach to vowel recognition is described. The PFN is a multilayer neural network with fewer hidden units than input units prepared for each of the phoneme categories. Each network is trained as identity mapping by speech data belonging to one phoneme category. In the recognition process, the similarity between the input data and output data is computed for each network. The results of an experiment involving the Japanese vowel recognition task showed that the PFN recognition rates for the top two or more choices are higher than those of a conventional three-layer neural network and the PFN outputs represented candidate likelihoods. It was also confirmed that the PFN has a mapping ability and recognition performance superior to those of the linear K-L transformation method because of the nonlinearity of the PFN. <<ETX>>
Inflammatory monocytes provide a niche for Salmonella expansion in the lumen of the inflamed intestine

Salmonella exploit host-derived nitrate for growth in the lumen of the inflamed intestine. The generation of host-derived nitrate is dependent on Nos2, which encodes inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), an enzyme that catalyzes nitric oxide (NO) production. However, the cellular sources of iNOS and, therefore, NO-derived nitrate used by Salmonella for growth in the lumen of the inflamed intestine remain unidentified. Here, we show that iNOS-producing inflammatory monocytes infiltrate ceca of mice infected with Salmonella. In addition, we show that inactivation of type-three secretion system (T3SS)-1 and T3SS-2 renders Salmonella unable to induce CC- chemokine receptor-2- and CC-chemokine ligand-2-dependent inflammatory monocyte recruitment. Furthermore, we show that the severity of the pathology of Salmonella- induced colitis as well as the nitrate-dependent growth of Salmonella in the lumen of the inflamed intestine are reduced in mice that lack Ccr2 and, therefore, inflammatory monocytes in the tissues. Thus, inflammatory monocytes provide a niche for Salmonella expansion in the lumen of the inflamed intestine.
Mobile phone camera benchmarking: combination of camera speed and image quality

When a mobile phone camera is tested and benchmarked, the significance of quality metrics is widely acknowledged. There are also existing methods to evaluate the camera speed. For example, ISO 15781 defines several measurements to evaluate various camera system delays. However, the speed or rapidity metrics of the mobile phone’s camera system have not been used with the quality metrics even if the camera speed has become more and more important camera performance feature. There are several tasks in this work. Firstly, the most important image quality metrics are collected from the standards and papers. Secondly, the speed related metrics of a mobile phone’s camera system are collected from the standards and papers and also novel speed metrics are identified. Thirdly, combinations of the quality and speed metrics are validated using mobile phones in the market. The measurements are done towards application programming interface of different operating system. Finally, the results are evaluated and conclusions are made. The result of this work gives detailed benchmarking results of mobile phone camera systems in the market. The paper defines also a proposal of combined benchmarking metrics, which includes both quality and speed parameters.
Carnosine and Lung Disease.

Carnosine (b-alanyl-L-histidine) is a small dipeptide with numerous activities, including antioxidant effects, metal ion chelation, proton buffering capacity, and inhibitory effects on protein carbonylation and glycation. Carnosine has been mostly studied in organs where it is abundant, including skeletal muscle, cerebral cortex, kidney, spleen, and plasma. Recently, the effect of supplementation with carnosine has been studied in organs with low levels of carnosine, such as the lung, in animal models of influenza virus- or lipopolysaccharide-induced acute lung injury and pulmonary fibrosis. Among the known protective effects of carnosine, its antioxidant effect has attracted increasing attention for potential use in treating lung disease. In this review, we describe the in vitro and in vivo biological and physiological actions of carnosine. We also report our recent study and discuss the roles of carnosine or its related compounds in organs where carnosine is present in only small amounts (especially the lung) and its protective mechanisms.
Content presentation modes in mobile language listening tasks: English proficiency as a moderator

This study investigated whether the modality effect of content presentation modes on students' cognitive load and listening comprehension depends on the moderating effect of the learners' language proficiencies in a mobile learning context. One hundred and sixty-two students majoring in English in a technology university used personal digital assistants (PDAs) as the learning tool for a mobile listening comprehension activity. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two presentation modes: (1) a single mode in which students were engaged in auditory materials only and (2) a dual mode in which they were exposed to audio and textual inputs simultaneously. Hierarchical regression was employed to examine the moderating effect of the learners' proficiencies. The results confirmed the moderator role of English proficiency on cognitive load: students with lower proficiency appeared to be more perceptive of the text aid. However, the moderating effect was not obtained on the task performance in that students provided with the dual mode outperformed their single mode counterpart across the proficiency level. This study recommends that written text be displayed when students are engaged in a mobile English listening comprehension task to reduce learners' cognitive load. The study also provides pedagogical implications for mobile language learning.
The Arithmetic and Its Implementation of the Long Sequence Linear Correlation Based on TMS320C54x DSP

This paper introduces arithmetic to calculate correlation of two long sequences by using fast correlation method, and the design method of the FFT coefficient table using DSPLIB library function. Using this method, the author accomplished the linear correlation operation of two 1024-dot real sequences on the platform of TMS320C54x DSP. Compared with direct correlation, this method is easier, rapider and more practical
The ecology of prelinguistic vocal learning: parents simplify the structure of their speech in response to babbling

Abstract What is the function of babbling in language learning? We examined the structure of parental speech as a function of contingency on infants’ non-cry prelinguistic vocalizations. We analyzed several acoustic and linguistic measures of caregivers’ speech. Contingent speech was less lexically diverse and shorter in utterance length than non-contingent speech. We also found that the lexical diversity of contingent parental speech only predicted infant vocal maturity. These findings illustrate a new form of influence infants have over their ambient language in everyday learning environments. By vocalizing, infants catalyze the production of simplified, more easily learnable language from caregivers.
A Performance Comparison of CNN-based Image Denoising Methods: The Effect of Loss Functions on Low-dose CT Images.

PURPOSE Convolutional neural network (CNN)-based image denoising techniques have shown promising results in low-dose CT denoising. However, CNN often introduces blurring in denoised images when trained with a widely used pixel-level loss function. Feature-level loss and adversarial loss have been proposed recently to further improve the image denoising performance. In this paper, we investigate the effect of different loss functions on image denoising performance using task-based image quality assessment methods for various signals and dose levels. METHODS We used a modified version of U-net that was effective at reducing the correlated noise in CT images. The loss functions used for comparison were two pixel-level losses (i.e., the mean squared error and the mean absolute error), VGG-based perceptual loss (VGG loss), adversarial loss used to train the Wasserstein generative adversarial network with gradient penalty (WGAN-GP), and their weighted summation. Each image denoising method was applied to reconstructed images and sinogram images independently and validated using the XCAT simulation and Mayo datasets. In the XCAT simulation, we generated fan-beam CT datasets with four different dose levels (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of a normal-dose level) using 10 XCAT phantoms and inserted signals in a test set. The signals had two different shapes (spherical and spiculated), sizes (4 and 12 mm), and contrast levels (60 and 160 Hounsfield units). To evaluate signal detectability, we used a detection task SNR (tSNR) calculated from a non-prewhitening model observer with an eye filter. We also measured the noise power spectrum (NPS) and modulation transfer function (MTF) to compare the noise and signal transfer properties. RESULTS Compared to CNNs without VGG loss, VGG-loss-based CNNs achieved a more similar tSNR to that of the normal-dose CT for all signals at different dose levels except for a small signal at the 25% dose level. For a low-contrast signal at 25% or 50% dose, adding other losses to the VGG loss showed more improved performance than only using VGG loss. The NPS shapes from VGG-loss-based CNN closely matched that of normal-dose CT images while CNN without VGG loss overly reduced the midhigh-frequency noise power at all dose levels. MTF also showed VGG-loss-based CNN with better-preserved high resolution for all dose and contrast levels. It is also observed that additional WGAN-GP loss helps improve the noise and signal transfer properties of VGG-loss-based CNN. CONCLUSIONS The evaluation results using tSNR, NPS, and MTF indicate that VGG-loss-based CNNs are more e_ective than those without VGG loss for natural denoising of low-dose images and WGAN-GP loss improves the denoising performance of VGG-loss-based CNNs, which corresponds with the qualitative evaluation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Harmonic broadcasting for video-on-demand service

Using conventional broadcasting, if we want to support a 120-minute popular movie every 10 minutes, we need 12 video channels. Assuming the set-top box at the client end can buffer portions of the playing video on a disk, pyramid broadcasting schemes can reduce the bandwidth requirements to 5.7 channels. We present a new scheme which only needs 3.2 channels. For a movie with length D minutes, if we want to reduce the viewer waiting time to D/N minutes, we only need to allocate H(N) video channels to broadcast the movie periodically, where H(N) is the harmonic number of N, H(N)=1+1/2+. +1/N. In order to support video-on-demand service for a popular movie, the new scheme greatly reduces the bandwidth requirements.
Predictive block-matching motion estimation schemes for video compression. II. Inter-frame prediction of motion vectors

For pt. I see ibid., vol.2, p.1088 (1991). A novel predictive block matching motion estimation scheme is proposed for efficient video codec design. The proposed scheme is based on the 'inertia' effect of natural video scenes and takes advantage of the motion vectors obtained in the previous frames. Not only are motion searching time and overhead significantly reduced, but the proposed scheme also provides a realistic motion tendency, which is very useful for frame-skipping/interpolation techniques. These advantages are demonstrated by experimental results obtained on the Abekas video system. <<ETX>>
Continuous Near-infrared Spectroscopy Monitoring in Adult Traumatic Brain Injury: A Systematic Review

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) may provide a noninvasive way to monitor cerebral oxygenation in patients with traumatic brain injury, therein allowing for timely intervention aimed at reversing regional brain tissue hypoxia. We conducted a systematic review of NIRS-based oximetry measurements and their association with (A) patient functional outcome (B) other neurophysiological parameters. We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, SCOPUS, BIOSIS, GlobalHealth and Cochrane Databases from inception to December 2018 and relevant conference proceedings published over the last 5 years. A total of 42 studies meeting our inclusion criteria were found (37 prospective observational, 5 retrospective designs). Seven studies reporting on the association between NIRS-based cerebral oxygenated hemoglobin measurements, mortality, modified Rankin Scale, Glasgow Outcome Scale, or Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale were identified. Forty-two studies exploring associations with neurophysiological parameters were included. Notwithstanding significant gaps in the currently available literature, our analysis suggests a link between NIRS-detected cerebral hypoxia during the acute phase of traumatic brain injury and poor functional outcome. NIRS measurements appear to reflect changes in intracranial pressure, invasively monitored brain tissue oxygen tension and various cerebrovascular reactivity indices although low quality contradicting data exist. More importantly, our review highlights the need for more prospective work before routine integration of NIRS-based techniques into multimodality monitoring regimen.
Pattern-Corrected Mitotic Activity Index (PMAI): A Novel Prognosticator of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Objective: The main aim was to assess the efficiency of the Mitotic Activity Index (MAI) and a novel index devised by us, the Pattern-Corrected Mitotic Activity Index (PMAI) in prognostication of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma in terms of lymph node involvement, margin, recurrence and survival status. Material and Method: The study group consisted of 60 cases of histologically-proven Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma with known status of prognostic indicators. Hematoxylin and eosin stained sections of the tumor proper were utilized for assessment of mitotic activity and pattern of invasion. The Mitotic Activity Index and Pattern-Corrected Mitotic Activity Index were then calculated and correlated with the prognosticators. Results: Mitotic Activity Index was higher in patients who had better survival and low recurrence rates. Pattern-Corrected Mitotic Activity Index showed the greatest percentage increase in relation to lymph node involvement as compared to the other indices. Kaplan Meier survival analysis showed that a higher Pattern-Corrected Mitotic Activity Index (>1.45) was associated with poorer survival (37.19 months). Conclusion: Lack of significant association of the Mitotic Activity Index in relation to prognosticators could be attributed to a tumor having a migratory phenotype rather than a proliferative phenotype as seen in late-stage tumors. Late-stage tumors have more of a poorer pattern of invasion which is reflected best by Pattern-Corrected Mitotic Activity Index by correlating with poorer survival and lymph node involvement.
Clinical Factors and Cellular Responses of In Situ Human Alveolar Bone-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Associated With Early Periimplant Marginal Bone Loss: A Prospective Cohort Pilot Study.

PURPOSE To investigate clinical factors and cellular responses of in situ human alveolar bone-derived mesenchymal stromal cells involved in early periimplant marginal bone loss. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-seven completely or partially edentulous patients were enrolled in this study. Periapical radiographs were taken at the time of implant surgery, at 3-month follow-up, and at 1-year follow-up. Univariate analysis and multiple logistic regression were performed to investigate the associations between marginal bone loss and study variables. The mRNA expression levels of 21 bone-remodeling- and tissue-healing-associated genes were analyzed by subgroup. RESULTS Thirty-one patients with 98 implants were followed. The incidence and mean amount of bone loss were higher for overdentures than for other prosthesis and higher for the maxilla than for the mandible. The bone loss group showed lower mRNA expression levels of runt-related transcription factor-2, bone morphogenetic protein-2, and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma-2 and higher receptor activator of NKκB ligand/osteoprotegerin (RANKL/OPG) ratio. CONCLUSION Within the limitations of the study, certain genes involved in bone remodeling (runt-related transcription factor-2 [Runx-2], bone morphogenetic protein-2 [BMP-2], and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma-2 [PPARγ-2]) and RANKL/OPG are correlated with early periimplant bone loss, with the type of suprastructure and the involved jaw being significant clinical factors.
The Ability of Ultrasonic Backscatter Parametric Imaging to Characterize Bovine Trabecular Bone

The ultrasonic backscatter technique holds the promise of characterizing bone density and microstructure. This paper conducts ultrasonic backscatter parametric imaging based on measurements of apparent integrated backscatter (AIB), spectral centroid shift (SCS), frequency slope of apparent backscatter (FSAB), and frequency intercept of apparent backscatter (FIAB) for representing trabecular bone mass and microstructure. We scanned 33 bovine trabecular bone samples using a 7.5 MHz focused transducer in a 20 mm × 20 mm region of interest (ROI) with a step interval of 0.05 mm. Images based on the ultrasonic backscatter parameters (i.e., AIB, SCS, FSAB, and FIAB) were constructed to compare with photographic images of the specimens as well as two-dimensional (2D) μ-CT images from approximately the same depth and location of the specimen. Similar structures and trabecular alignments can be observed among these images. Statistical analyses demonstrated that the means and standard deviations of the ultrasonic backscatter parameters exhibited significant correlations with bone density (|R| = 0.45-0.78, p < 0.01) and bone microstructure (|R| = 0.44-0.87, p < 0.001). Some bovine trabecular bone microstructure parameters were independently associated with the ultrasonic backscatter parameters (ΔR2 = 4.18%-44.45%, p < 0.05) after adjustment for bone apparent density (BAD). The results show that ultrasonic backscatter parametric imaging can provide a direct view of the trabecular microstructure and can reflect information about the density and microstructure of trabecular bone.
Communications for the digitized battlefield of the 21st century

Technology base investments by the US Army will exploit the wealth of emerging commercial telecommunications services, as an operational supplement to classical tactical communications systems. This paper presents a series of technology components that collectively form the basis for the Army's Battlefield Information Transmission System and will provide the underlying seamless, global, "ubiquitous" transmission system for the Force XXI warfighter. The technical and system architectures of the 21st century will evolve through a gradual process of development, acquisition, and experimentation. This process, by definition, is a combined effort relying on the Army Materiel Command (AMC) Research, Development and Engineering Center (RDECs) working with the TRADOC battlelabs. The battlelabs, through a formal series of Advanced Warfighting Experiments (AWEs), play a crucial role in testing and adapting the technology produced by the AMC RDECs and commercial providers. Commercial technology is also directly exploited in TRADOC user environments as part of the Army's ACT II program. >
Crosstalk between bacterial conjugation and motility is mediated by plasmid-borne regulators.

Plasmid conjugation is a major horizontal gene transfer mechanism. The acquisition of a plasmid may cause a perturbation of the cell functions in addition to provide advantageous properties for the recipient cell, such as the gaining of antibiotic resistances. The interplay between plasmid and chromosomal functions has been studied using the IncHI1 plasmid R27. Plasmids of the incompatibility group HI1, isolated from several Gram-negative pathogens, are associated with the spread of multidrug resistance. Their conjugation is tightly regulated by temperature, being repressed at temperatures within the host (37 °C). In this report, we described that at permissive temperature, when conjugation of plasmid R27 is prompted, a reduction in the motility of the cells is observed. This reduction is mediated by the plasmid-encoded regulators TrhR/TrhY, which together with HtdA form a plasmid -borne regulatory circuit controlling R27 conjugation. TrhR/TrhY, required to induce R27 conjugation, are responsible of the downregulation of the flagella synthesis and the consequent decrease in motility. TrhR/TrhYrepress, direct or indirectly, the expression of the specific flagellar sigma subunit FliA and, consequently, the expression of all genes located bellow in the flagellar expression cascade. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.