Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Relationship between Plasma Concentration and Disappearance Rate of Immunoreactive Insulin in the Conscious Dog

The relationship between plasma concentration and disappearance (infusion) rate of insulin was determined during infusion of insulin via the portal circulation of 14 normal euglycaemic dogs when somatostatin was infused to block endogenous insulin secretion. The relationship could be represented by one straight line over the plasma immunoreactive insulin range 0 to 110 microU/ml (r = 0.99) but above 110 microU/ml the fractional insulin disappearance rate declined. The results indicate the existence in the dog of a saturable pathway of insulin degradation that could conceivably be located in liver and which may become saturated only at insulin concentrations in the portal vein exceeding approximately 330 microU/ml.
Isolation and Characterization of Single-Chain Protein S

Summary Protein S is a vitamin K-dependent cofactor of activated protein C in the proteolytic cleavage and concomitant inactivation of the coagulation factors Va and Villa. Protein S is sensitive to proteolysis by thrombin which reduces its functional activity. Uncontrolled proteolytic breakdown, leading to the generation of a two-chain molecule, is commonly encountered during the purification of both human and bovine protein S. In this study we demonstrate that human, single-chain, intact protein S can be isolated from plasma in a single step by affinity chromatography using a monoclonal antibody, CLB PS 52, directed to an epitope located within the thrombin-sensitive region of protein S. The product of purification was readily cleaved by thrombin after Arg49, resulting in a two-chain molecule which demonstrated a lower reactivity towards CLB-PS 52 than the parent single-chain protein. This study for the first time shows that intact protein S can be isolated directly from plasma using a monoclonal antibody selected for its ability to recognize uncleaved protein S.
Tangible play: research and design for tangible and tabletop games

This workshop addresses questions related to the areas of tangible interaction, game design and emerging technologies for tangible and tabletop games. We bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields related to these topics, such as HCI, computer science, interaction design and game design. We seek collaborative ways to move forward the field of tangible and tabletop games.
Optimal Cutoff Point for Immunoperoxidase Detection of C4d in the Renal Allograft: Results From a Multicenter Study

Background. Although C4d deposition in peritubular capillaries has been identified as a strong risk factor for subsequent renal allograft loss, the optimal cutoff for the fraction of peritubular capillaries needed to establish a positive stain in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded material has not been defined systematically. The objective of this study was to establish the threshold for positive staining that best predicts renal outcome in renal biopsies in a multicenter study in which local and central pathologic conditions were compared. Methods. Unstained renal biopsy slides were obtained from 296 patients. The percentage of peritubular capillaries staining positively for C4d was detected by immunoperoxidase staining. Results. The percentage C4d deposition ranged from 0% to 90% with 44% (129/296) having a positive percentage of C4d staining. The median for positive cases was 25%. Local C4d+ results were reported qualitatively, with 28% recorded as positive for C4d. Using a centrally determined cutoff of 10%, tests for agreement of local and central C4d staining were fair (&kgr; 0.40, 95% confidence interval 0.29–0.51). Raising the centrally determined cutoff to 25% or 50% did not change the &kgr; values (0.44 and 0.41, respectively). By Cox proportional hazards model, C4d positivity (centrally determined assessment) using a cutoff of 10% was the strongest predictor of time to graft loss (hazard ratio 2.66, 95% confidence interval 1.68–4.21). Centrally determined C4d positivity correlated with Banff scores indicative of acute inflammation but not with scores indicative of fibrosis/atrophy or transplant glomerulopathy. Conclusions. Our findings indicate that C4d positivity, defined as more than or equal to 10% by immunoperoxidase, is a strong predictor of graft loss.
Enhancing performance of image watermarks using Contourlet Transform

In this paper a robust Contourlet based image watermarking technique for copyright protection is presented. The main idea is to utilize the decomposition performed by the Contourlet Transform in embedding a robust watermark into the host image and choosing the best locations for the embedding without causing visual degradation in the image. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed technique in resisting various attacks.
Marijuana liberalization policies: why we can’t learn much from policy still in motion.

California legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes nearly 17 years ago, representing a major challenge to the federal government’s scheduling of marijuana as a Schedule I drug in the 1970 Controlled Substance Act. As many predicted, California was simply the first. As of May 2013, 19 states and the District of Columbia now provide legal protection to patients, and in many cases caregivers, for possession and supply of marijuana for medicinal purposes. In November 2012, Colorado and Washington went even further legalizing the sale and possession of marijuana for recreational purposes. Given the tremendous natural experiment that is taking place, one might expect that much would already be known about the benefits and harms of liberalizing marijuana policies. Unfortunately, however, the tremendous uncertainty regarding what protections actually exist, and for whom, in addition to the enormous heterogeneity in the medical marijuana laws that continue to change over time, has meant that we do not yet know as much as we should. The questions of whether marijuana is medicine and whether recreational marijuana use is harmless are necessarily intertwined in all of the debates over policy reform, but these are not the focus of this discussion. There is legitimate evidence that active cannabinoids available in the marijuana plant are useful in the treatment of some medical conditions and symptoms (Leung, 2011; Watson, Benson, & Joy, 2000; Institute of Medicine, 1999) and has been for centuries (Eddy, 2010; Grinspoon, 2005). As such, it is not surprising that the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a resolution in 2009 urging the federal government to review the case for rescheduling marijuana, noting that doing so would facilitate research and development of cannabinoid-based medicine and avoid the patchwork of inadequate state laws that do not focus on establishing clinical guidelines or standards for medically prescribing marijuana (AMA, 2009). There is also evidence in the biomedical and public health literatures of reasonable pathways through which marijuana can harm health or impact health outcomes (see Hall & Pacula, 2003; Hall & Degenhardt, 2009; Room et al., 2010; or Caulkins et al., 2012 for extensive reviews). However, the causal linkage between recreational marijuana use and many of these health outcomes has yet to be fully established and continues to be a matter of scientific inquiry due to imprecise information on amounts consumed or potency of the substance used. Nonetheless, state liberalization policies move forward, and scientists are trying to use these natural experiments to assist in the identification of benefits and harms from these policies.
Computer‐based neuropsychological screening for AIDS dementia complex

ObjectiveTo test the efficacy of reaction time (RT) measures as a screening test for AIDS dementia complex (ADC). Design and methodsForty-two patients with mild-to-moderate ADC and 33 healthy HIV-1-seronegative control subjects took a computer-administered battery of four RT measures: simple RT, choice RT, and two types of sequential RT (1 and 2). ResultsThe performance of the ADC group was significantly worse than that of the control group on all four RT measures, but not all tasks were equally sensitive. The two tests of sequential RT were found to be the best discriminators, and receiver operating characteristic curves analyses indicated that the optimal cut-off score was 1.0 for both tests. ConclusionsThese preliminary results suggest that computer-based RT, using these two measures of sequential RT, may provide a sensitive method of detecting HIV-1 -associated cognitive deficits.
An Evolution Equation Approach to Nonautonomous Linear Systems with State, Input, and Output Delays

We propose a new approach which brings nonautonomous linear systems with state, input, and output delays in the line with the standard theory of nonautonomous linear systems. To this purpose, we establish, using the concept of Lebesgue extensions, a new variation of constants formula for nonhomogenous delay equations. From this we deduce another new one for nonautonomous linear systems with state and input delays. Inspiriting from this formula we show that a given delay system determines a nonautonomous absolutely regular linear system with the same input and output spaces as of the delay system. Our abstract results will be applied to investigate the existence and the uniqueness of the solutions for a class of nonautonomous neutral equations in Banach spaces.
Crosstalk reduction for VLSI

The performance of high-speed electronic systems is limited by interconnect-related failure modes such as coupled noise. We propose new techniques for alleviating the problems caused by coupling between signal lines on integrated circuits. We show that models used by previous work on coupled noise-constrained layout synthesis do not allow the use of several important degrees of freedom. These degrees of freedom include the ability to utilize dynamic noise margins rather than static noise margins, the dependence of coupled noise on drive strength, and the possibility of using overlaps to reduce susceptibility to noise. We derive an expression for the coupled noise integral and a bound for the peak coupled noise voltage which shows order of magnitude improvements in both accuracy and fidelity compared to the charge sharing model used in previous work. We use the new bounds to guide a greedy channel router, which manipulates exact adjacency information at every stage, allowing it to introduce jogs or doglegs when necessary for coupled noise reduction. Experimental results indicate that our algorithm compares favorably to previous work. The coupled noise is significantly reduced on benchmark instances.
Improvement of Fermentation Quality of Rice Straw Silage by Application of a Bacterial Inoculant and Glucose

The improvement of the fermentation quality of rice straw silage by application of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and glucose was investigated in this study. Sixteen rice varieties were harvested at the maturity stage and the rice straw was ensiled with LAB inoculant (1×10 5 cfu/g of fresh weight) and glucose (2% of fresh weight). Inoculation with LAB improved the fermentation as reflected in reductions in pH, acetic acid (by 3.7 to 78.3%), butyric acid (by -6.0 to 100.0%) and ammonia nitrogen (by 1.0 to 71.7%) concentrations, and increases in lactic acid (by 43.9 to 282.9%) and crude protein concentrations compared with the control. Application of LAB plus glucose was more effective in improving fermentation quality than LAB alone. The variety of rice straw which contained relatively high levels of water soluble carbohydrates (WSC) tended to obtain better fermentation quality. The results suggested that LAB application and selection of rice varieties whose straw contained high levels of WSC were effective in improvement of the fermentation quality of rice straw silage.
Genetic Analysis of Behavior in Drosophila

The main function of brains is to generate adaptive behavior. Far from being the stereotypical, robot-like insect, the fruit fly Drosophila exhibits astounding flexibility and choses different courses of actions even under identical external circumstances. Due to the power of genetics, we now are beginning to understand the neuronal mechanisms underlying this behavioral flexibility. Interestingly, the evidence from studies of disparate behaviors converges on common organizational principles common to many if not all behaviors, such as modified sensory processing, involvement of biogenic amines in network remodeling, ongoing activity and modulation by feedback. Seemingly foreseeing these recent insights, already the first research fields in Drosophila behavioral neurogenetics reflected this constant negotiation between internal and external demands on the animal as the common mechanism underlying adaptive behavioral choice in Drosophila.
Photovoltaic-assisted CMOS rectifier circuit for synergistic energy harvesting from ambient radio wave

In this study, we realized efficient energy harvesting from ambient radio waves using a photovoltaic (PV) assisted CMOS rectifier. The rectifier operates truly synergistically. A p-n junction diode acting as a PV cell converts light energy to a dc bias voltage, which compensates the threshold voltage of the MOSFETs and enhances the RF to DC power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the rectifier even under extremely low input power condition. Under ambient light conditions, a PCE greater than 20% was achieved at an RF input power, frequency, and output load of -20 dBm, 920 MHz and 47 kΩ, respectively, which is twice the value obtained from a conventional rectifier without PV assistance.
Toward an Unsupervised Approach for Daily Gesture Recognition in Assisted Living Applications

Activity Recognition is important in assisted living applications to monitor people at home. Over the past, inertial sensors have been used to recognize different activities, spanning from physical activities to eating ones. Over the last years, supervised methods have been widely used, but they require an extensive labeled data set to train the algorithms and this may represent a limitation of concrete approaches. This paper presents a comparison of unsupervised and supervised methods in recognizing nine gestures by means of two inertial sensors placed on the index finger and on the wrist. Three supervised classification techniques, namely random forest, support vector machine, and multilayer perceptron, as well as three unsupervised classification techniques, namely k-Means, hierarchical clustering, and self-organized maps, were compared with the recognition of gestures made by 20 subjects. The obtained results show that the support vector machine classifier provided the best performances (0.94 accuracy) compared with the other supervised algorithms. However, the outcomes show that even in an unsupervised context, the system is able to recognize the gestures with an average accuracy of ~0.81. The proposed system may be therefore involved in future telecare services that could monitor the activities of daily living, allowing an unsupervised approach that does not require labelled data.
Facile synthesis and excellent microwave absorption properties of FeCo-C core–shell nanoparticles

FeCo-C core–shell nanoparticles (NPs) with diameters of 10–50 nm have been fabricated on a large scale by one-step metal-organic chemical vapor deposition using the mixture of cobalt acetylacetonate and iron acetylacetonate as the precursor. The Fe/Co molar ratio of the alloy nanocores and graphitization degree of C shells, and thus the magnetic and electric properties of the core–shell NPs, can be tuned by the deposition temperature ranging from 700 °C to 900 °C. Comparative tests reveal that a relatively high Fe/Co molar ratio and low graphitization degree benefit the microwave absorption (MA) performance of the core–shell NPs. The composite with 20 wt% core–shell NP obtained at 800 °C and 80 wt% paraffin exhibits an optimal reflection loss ( R L ) of −60.4 dB at 7.5 GHz with a thickness of 3.3 mm, and an effective absorption bandwidth (frequency range for RL ≤10 dB) of 9.2 GHz (8.8–18.0 GHz) under an absorber thickness of 2.5 mm. Our study provides a facile route for the fabrication of alloy-C core–shell nanostructures with high MA performance.
Tumor suppression by apoptotic and anti‐angiogenic effects of mortalin‐targeting adeno‐oncolytic virus

Adeno‐oncolytic (Adon) viruses offer an effective cancer therapeutic tool with several advantages, including wide host cell permeability, high transduction efficiency, safety, tumor selectivity, non‐invasiveness, high genetic modifiability and high level of expression of the integrated transgenes. Armed Adon viruses in which the therapeutic efficacy of virus is enhanced by their coupling with cytotoxic, anti‐angiogenic or anti‐vascular gene products have gained importance because they engage additional mechanisms for tumor cell killing. In the present study, we selected mortalin, a stress chaperone that is tightly involved in human carcinogenesis, constructed a mortalin‐targeting Adon (mot‐Adon) virus and examined its therapeutic potential both in vitro and in vivo.
Three‐dimensional projection imaging with half the number of projections

This study demonstrates a sampling scheme for three‐dimensional projection imaging with half the number of projections. The angular distribution of projections is designed so that the oversampling of the low spatial frequencies, in tandem with a partial Fourier algorithm, can be used to recreate purposely missing projections. The performance of the sampling scheme and its associated reconstruction algorithm are illustrated with computer‐simulated as well as experimental data sets. We find that this technique produces images of comparable quality to the conventional projection imaging scheme. Although a 30% loss of signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) results from its use, the algorithm should prove useful for applications where robustness against motion artifacts and reduced T2* signal loss are desired.
Patterns Configuring the Network Model Designing Experiments and Simulations Documenting the Outcome

While the high performance computing (HPC) community is relying on simulations increasingly to co-design and optimize HPC interconnects, the simulation community lacks a coherent set of practices to be followed when validating the simulators and network models. Validation of HPC network simulation models is a multi-step process starting with the selection of representative communication patterns, configuring the network model, followed by designing the set of experiments, and finally, documenting the outcome for reproducibility. In this paper, we present a set of recommended practices for each of these steps in the validation process. If the recommendations are followed, the end result should be a validated network model that can make reasonably accurate predictions and convince the community about the correctness of the model.
Pokeweed antiviral protein (PAP) mutations which permit E.coli growth do not eliminate catalytic activity towards prokaryotic ribosomes.

Pokeweed antiviral protein (PAP) has N-glycosidase activity towards both eukaryotic and prokaryotic ribosomes. This is in marked contrast with the A chains of type 2 ribosome inactivating proteins (RIPs) such as ricin and abrin, which inactivate only eukaryotic ribosomes. A recent report described spontaneous mutations in PAP that implicated specific amino acids to be involved in determining the activity of PAP towards prokaryotic ribosomes. As part of an ongoing study into RIP--ribosome interactions these mutations were specifically recreated in a PAP clone encoding the mature 262 amino acid PAP sequence. Mutants were tested for their N-glycosidase activity by analysing the integrity of eukaryotic and prokaryotic ribosomes after mutant protein expression. Mutations of F196Y and K211R, either individually or within the same clone, were active toward both classes of ribosome, indicating that these amino acid positions are not involved in differentiating ribosomal substrates. Mutation R68G led to a protein that appeared to be inactive towards prokaryotic ribosomes, but also very poorly active towards eukaryotic ribosomes. This mutation is currently under further investigation.
Distortion of Price Discount Perceptions: The Right Digit Effect

We use four experiments to examine consumers' processing of comparative regular and sale price information in advertisements. Consistent with our hypothesized right digit effect, we find that, when consumers view regular and sale prices with identical left digits, they perceive larger price discounts when the right digits are "small" (i.e., less than 5) than when they are "large" (i.e., greater than 5). As a result, they may attribute greater value and increased purchase likelihood to higher-priced, lower-discounted items. We examine alternate processing explanations for this right digit effect, as well as the moderating impact of price presentation format. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc.
Synthesis and Characterization of Tin Oxide Nanoparticles by Co-precipitation Method

Present study shows synthesis of Tin Oxide (SnO2) nanoparticles by simple precipitation method at room temperature. SnO2 nanoparticles were synthesized by using hydrated stannic chloride (SnCl4.5H2O) as precursor and sodium carbonate as precipitating reagent. Triton X-100 and Lauryl alcohol were used as surfactants. The precipitate was calcinated at 325 0 C for one hour. The size of the as prepared particles of SnO2 with and without surfactants was estimated using X-ray diffraction(XRD). The particle sizes with surfactants are found to be less than that without surfactants.
New germ tube induction medium for the identification of Candida albicans

A new germ tube induction medium, composed of three parts Rabbit Coagulase Plasma with EDTA (BBL Microbiology Systems) and two parts Tryp-Soy broth (Scott Laboratories, Inc.), was effective for the presumptive identification of Candida albicans. This medium was safer to use, more accurate, and less expensive than other commercial germ tube induction media.
The Ideal Point Topic Model : Predicting Legislative Roll Calls from Text

We develop the ideal point topic model, a probabilistic model of legislative text. Our model – drawing on ideas from ideal point estimation and topic modeling – predicts voting patterns based on the contents of bills and the inferred political leanings of legislators. It also provides an exploratory window into how legislative language is correlated with political support. Across 14 years of legislative data, we predict specific voting patterns with high accuracy.
Phage TP901-1 Site-Specific Integrase Functions in Human Cells

ABSTRACT We demonstrate that the site-specific integrase encoded by phage TP901-1 of Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris has potential as a tool for engineering mammalian genomes. We constructed vectors that express this integrase in Escherichia coli and in mammalian cells and developed a simple plasmid assay to measure the frequency of intramolecular integration mediated by the integrase. We used the assay to document that the integrase functions efficiently in E. coli and determined that for complete reaction in E. coli, the minimal sizes of attB and attP are 31 and 50 bp, respectively. We carried out partial purification of TP901-1 integrase protein and demonstrated its functional activity in vitro in the absence of added cofactors, characterizing the time course and temperature optimum of the reaction. Finally, we showed that when expressed in human cells, the TP901-1 integrase carries out efficient intramolecular integration on a transfected plasmid substrate in the human cell environment. The TP901-1 phage integrase thus represents a new reagent for manipulating DNA in living mammalian cells.