Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Non-invasive estimation of left ventricle elastance using a multi-compartment lumped parameter model and gradient-based optimization with forward-mode automatic differentiation

Accurate estimates of left ventricle elastances based on non-invasive measurements are required for clinical decision-making during treatment of valvular diseases. The present study proposes a parameter discovery approach based on a lumped parameter model of the cardiovascular system in conjunction with optimization and non-invasive, clinical input measurements to approximate important cardiac parameters, including left ventricle elastances. A subset of parameters of a multi-compartment lumped parameter model was estimated using 1st order Adam gradient descent and hybrid Adam and 2nd order quasi-Newton limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno optimization routines. Forward-mode automatic differentiation was used to estimate the Jacobian matrices and compared to the common finite differences approach. Synthetic data of healthy and diseased hearts were generated as proxies for non-invasive clinical measurements and used to evaluate the algorithm. Twelve parameters including left ventricle elastances were selected for optimization based on 99% explained variation in mean left ventricle pressure and volume. The hybrid optimization strategy yielded the best overall results compared to 1st order optimization with automatic differentiation and finite difference approaches, with mean absolute percentage errors ranging from 6.67% to 14,14%. Errors in left ventricle elastance estimates for simulated aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation were smallest when including synthetic measurements for arterial pressure and valvular flow rate at approximately 2% and degraded to roughly 5% when including volume trends as well. However, the latter resulted in better tracking of the left ventricle pressure waveforms and may be considered when the necessary equipment is available.
Status of occlusal contact during sleep bruxism in patients who visited dental clinics – A study using a Bruxchecker®

Abstract Objective: Bruxism-induced mechanical load causes various dental problems, and its treatment is challenging. The present study analyzed upper and lower tooth contacts to determine actual occlusal contact during sleep bruxism. Methods: Tooth contact patterns were analyzed in 49 patients attending dental clinics, using a Bruxchecker®, cephalograms, and condylographs. Results: Approximately 80% of individuals demonstrated contact from the anterior teeth to the molar region (ICPM); about 96% had mediotrusive grinding and contact. The tooth contact area increased with the flatness of the anterior occlusal plane. The ratio of the contact area of the anterior teeth to the overall tooth contact area increased with overbite. Bilateral ICPM and mediotrusive contact patterns were associated with a high frequency of temporomandibular disorder symptoms, clicking, and/or pain. Discussion: The tooth contact area, anterior occlusal plane, and overbite are closely related, suggesting that tooth contact with the anterior teeth should be controlled with occlusal therapy.
The task-level evaluation model for a flexible assembly task with an industrial dual-arm robot

This paper is aimed to propose an evaluation model for a flexible assembly task with an industrial dual-arm robot. A simple peg-in-hole insertion process is initially realized by a Kawada Nextage Open dual-arm robot equipped with a vision system in a structured environment. Several assumptions are used to satisfy the scenario in practical manufacturing, and various kinds of evaluation performance indices are introduced to analyze the task-level performance in a robotic assembly system with the development of an evaluation model based on CTMC for practitioners to assess the performance of the robotic assembly system. Finally, we implement the peg-in-hole task by means of two strategies respectively. The generated experimental results are combined with the evaluation model to verify the cost-effectiveness for these two strategies.
Marital Quality in the Context of Mild Cognitive Impairment

Profound behavioral changes in persons with dementia often negatively affect the quality of marital relationships. Yet, little is known about the extent to which the marital relationship may be affected when the care recipient has milder degrees of cognitive impairment. This study characterizes marital quality among 27 adults who live with a spouse with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). This study demonstrates that at mild levels of cognitive impairment, specific behaviors in the affected person are distressing and may degrade the quality of the marital relationship. These results have implications for clinical practice and the delivery of health care and social services to these families. It is important to develop interventions to address the needs of these individuals and their caregivers. Results of this study suggest the need for mental health interventions designed to preserve the quality of these marital relationships.
Transcriptional activity of avian retroviral long terminal repeats directly correlates with enhancer activity

Retroviral long terminal repeats (LTRs) contain elements responsible for the control of proviral transcription and gene expression. Molecular clones of the LTR region of a number of avian retroviruses have been isolated, and DNA sequence analysis of these clones reveals the existence of a related, but heterogeneous, family of LTRs. To examine the functional significance of the observed sequence differences, we have directly tested the abilities of several different avian retrovirus LTRs to act as promoters and enhancers of mRNA transcription. Our results indicate that large differences in LTR transcriptional activity exist and that these differences in gene expression directly correlate with LTR enhancer activity. In particular, we show that the LTR of Fujinami sarcoma virus is intermediate in both transcriptional and enhancer activity when compared with the very active LTRs of the exogenous viruses RAV-2 and Schmidt-Ruppin B and the much less active LTRs of the endogenous virus RAV-0 and its provirus ev-2. These results suggest that LTR enhancer activity may be the primary determinant of avian retroviral LTR transcriptional activity and, hence, oncogenic potential.
Automated Assessment of Open-ended Student Answers in Tutorial Dialogues Using Gaussian Mixture Models

Open-ended student answers often need to be assessed in context. However, there are not many previous works that consider context when automatically assessing student answers. Furthermore, student responses vary significantly in their explicit content and writing style which leads to a wide range of assessment scores for the same qualitative assessment category, e.g. correct answers vs. incorrect answers. In this paper, we propose an approach to assessing student answers that takes context into account and which handles variability using probabilistic Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs). We developed the model using a recently released corpus called DT-Grade which was manually annotated, taking context into account, with four different levels of answer correctness. Our best GMM model outperforms the baseline model with a margin of 9% in terms of accuracy.
Continuous Production of Mixed Lactic Starters Containing Probiotics Using Immobilized Cell Technology

The production of a mixed lactic culture containing Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis biovar. diacetylactis MD and Bifidobacterium longum ATCC 15707 was studied during a 17‐day continuous immobilized‐cell culture at different temperatures between 32 and 37 °C. The two‐stage fermentation system was composed of a first reactor (R1) containing cells of the two strains separately immobilized in κ‐carrageenan/locust bean gum gel beads and a second reactor (R2) operated with free cells released from the first reactor. The system allowed continuous production of a concentrated mixed culture with a strain ratio whose composition depended on temperature and fermentation time. A stable mixed culture (with a 22:1 ratio of L. diacetylactis and B. longum) was produced at 35 °C in the effluent of R2, whereas the mixed culture was rapidly unbalanced in favor of B. longum at a higher temperature (37 °C) or L. diacetylactis at a lower temperature (32 °C). Strain redistribution in beads originally immobilizing pure cultures of L. diacetylactis or B. longum was observed. At the end of culture, the strain ratio (7:1 L. diacetylactis/B. longum) in bulk bead samples was similar to that of individual beads. The determination of the spatial distribution of the two strains in gel beads by immunofluorescence and confocal laser‐scanning microscopy showed that bead cross‐contamination was limited to a 100 μm peripheral layer. Data from this study validate a previous model for population dynamics and cell release in gel beads during mixed immobilized‐cell cultures.
Efficacy of edaravone on coronary artery bypass patients with myocardial damage after ischemia and reperfusion: a meta analysis.

OBJECTIVES To assess the efficacy and safety of edaravone for myocardial damage during myocardial ischemia and reperfusion (I/R). METHODS We included randomized controlled trials that compared edaravone with placebo or no intervention in patients with acute myocardial infarction or undergoing coronary artery bypass. Two authors selected eligible trials, assessed trial quality and independently extracted the data. RESULTS Seven clinical trials were eventually included and analyzed in this study, involving 148 participants. Four trials were defined as waiting assessment. All of the three remaining trials compared edaravone and another treatment combined with other treatment alone, used the same dose of edaravone injections (60 mg per day) and course of treatment (14 days), evaluated the effect of edaravone at different times, applied different methods, reported adverse events, and showed no differences between the treatment group and the control group. When pooling all of the trials in one dataset, edaravone appeared to decrease the proportion of participant with marked myocardial damage during I/R as compared with the control group. The meta-analysis also revealed decreased CK-MB, cTnI and MDA, and increased content of SOD. CONCLUSIONS Due to the moderate risk of bias and small sample, our observation of an effective treatment trend of edaravone for I/R requires future larger, high-quality trials to confirm.
Pareto-Improving Firing Costs?

We examine self-enforcing contracts between risk-averse workers and risk-neutral firms (the ‘invisible handshake’) in a labor market with search frictions. Employers promise as much wage smoothing as they can, consistent with incentive conditions that ensure they will not renege during low-profitability times. Equilibrium is inefficient if these incentive constraints bind, with risky wages for workers and a risk premium that employers must pay. Mandatory firing costs can help, by making it easier for employers to promise credibly not to cut wages in low-profitability periods. We show that firing costs are more likely to be Pareto-improving if they are not severance payments, or (for affluent economies) if the economy is open.
On the dynamics and control of complex phenomena in parametrically driven chains of pendulums

A model of a multidimensional system, consisting of a chain of nonlinearly coupled chaotic pendula subjected to a chaos-inducing harmonic parametric excitation, is introduced. The nonlinear dynamics of the chain is analyzed with attention to the synchronization phenomena. The control of chaos (suppression and enhancement) through the introduction of a second periodic excitation is investigated, by a numerical approach (Lyapunov exponents), firstly with reference to the simple case of a single pendulum; then the effectiveness of the method is studied on the chain, by applying the localized control on a minimal number of pendula.
Prospective Evaluation of Semiquantitative Strain Ratio and Quantitative 2D Ultrasound Shear Wave Elastography (SWE) in Association with TIRADS Classification for Thyroid Nodule Characterization

Abstract Purpose To evaluate the diagnostic performance of strain ratio elastography (SRE) and shear wave elastography (SWE) alone and in combination with Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TIRADS) classification parameters to improve differentiation between benign and malignant thyroid nodules. Materials and Methods In this prospective study benign (n = 191) and malignant (n = 52) thyroid nodules were examined with high-resolution ultrasound (US) features using the TIRADS lexicon and SRE semiquantitative and SWE quantitative findings using histology or cytology as the gold standard with a 12-month follow-up. Sensitivity (Se), specificity (Sp) and the area under the ROC curve (AUROC) were used to evaluate the diagnostic performance of each feature and combinations of the methods. Results TIRADS score showed a sensitivity of 59.6 %, a specificity of 83.8 % with an AUROC of 0.717, a PPV of 50.0 % and an NPV of 88.4 %. SRE yielded the highest performance with a sensitivity of 82.7 %, a specificity of 92.7 % with AUROC of 0.877, a PPV 75.4 % and an NPV of 95.2 %. SWE (kPa) had a sensitivity and specificity of 67.3 % and 82.7 %, respectively, with an AUROC of 0.750, a PPV of 51.5 % and an NPV of 90.3 %. Differences were significant for SRE only but not for SWE. Conclusion Ultrasound elastography may improve thyroid nodule discrimination. In particular, SRE has a better performance than TIRADS classification, while their combination improves sensitivity.
Antioxidant potential of commercially available cumin (Cuminum cyminuml inn) in Pakistan

Owing to increased safety concerns about synthetic antioxidants, exploitation of safer antioxidants based on natural origin is the focus of research nowadays. Cumin is a common spice and is used as a routine supportive cooking agent. Extracts of cumin were prepared in methanol, ethanol, dichloromethane and hexane by employing Soxhlet extraction apparatus. Determination of the total phenolic content, chelating activity, reducing power and free radical scavenging activity were taken as parameters for the assessment of antioxidant properties. The findings of this study suggest cumin to be a potent source of antioxidants. Results from the different parameters were in agreement with one another.
Rapid Determination of the Amino Acid Configuration of Xenotetrapeptide

An E. coli strain with deletions in five transaminases (ΔaspC ΔilvE ΔtyrB ΔavtA ΔybfQ) was constructed to be unable to degrade several amino acids. This strain was used as an expression host for the analysis of the amino acid configuration of nonribosomally synthesized peptides, including the novel peptide “xenotetrapeptide” from Xenorhabdus nematophila, by using a combination of labeling experiments and mass spectrometry. Additionally, the number of D‐amino acids in the produced peptide was assigned following simple cultivation of the expression strain in D2O.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome: ‘SARS’ or ‘not SARS’

Abstract: Accurate clinical diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) based on the current World Health Organization definition is difficult and at times impossible at the early stage of the disease. Both false positive and false negative cases are commonly encountered and this could have far‐reaching detrimental effects on the patients, their family and the clinicians alike. Contact history is particularly important in diagnosing SARS in children as their presenting features are often non‐specific. The difficulty in making a correct diagnosis is further compounded by the lack of a sensitive rapid diagnostic test. Serology is not particularly helpful in the initial triaging of patients as it takes at least 3 weeks to become positive. Co‐infection and other treatable conditions should not be missed and conventional antibiotics should remain as part of the first‐line treatment regimen. We report five cases to illustrate the difficulties and dilemmas faced by clinicians in diagnosing SARS in children.
Mathematical models of the Neolithic transition: a review for non-mathematicians

Section 2 presents the classical model by Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza. Some later refinements of their model are surveyed in sections 3 to 6. We also compare the speed predicted by each model to that implied by the archaeological data. Section 7 contains a new derivation of a recent model. Regional variability is discussed in sections 8 and 9 (using archaeological data and mathematical models, respectively). Finally, section 10 is devoted to concluding remarks.
Foil-to-Foil System Integration Through Capillary Self-Alignment Directed by Laser Patterning

This paper introduces a new integration technology for cost-effective high-precision mechanical and electrical integration of mesoscopic functional foil components onto foil substrates. The foil-to-foil assembly process is based on topological surface structuring via laser patterning that enables accurate capillarity-driven self-alignment of foil dies. The concurrent establishment of high-yield electrical interconnections is obtained through conductive adhesives. The foil surface energy controls the acceptance window of initial offsets for optimal self-alignment performance. The proposed topological patterning and system design enable alignment accuracies for centimeter-sized foil dies as high as 15 μm, barely influenced by the evaporation of the assembly liquid and curing of the conductive paste. Full foil-to-foil system integration is demonstrated through the electrically functional assembly of an array of Au-sputtered capacitive humidity sensors onto a patterned base foil circuitry.
The Dutch EPIC food frequency questionnaire. II. Relative validity and reproducibility for nutrients.

BACKGROUND A self-administered semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was developed for the Dutch cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). METHODS The reproducibility and relative validity of nutrient intake as assessed by this questionnaire were investigated in a population of 121 men and women. To assess the relative validity, 12 monthly 24-hour recalls served as reference method, together with four determinations of 24-hour urinary nitrogen excretion, predicted basal metabolic rate, and serum beta-carotene and alpha-tocopherol levels. RESULTS Protein and among women, energy intake were underestimated by the questionnaire compared to urinary nitrogen excretion and the basal metabolic rate, respectively. The underestimation for protein decreased with increasing protein intake. Pearson correlation coefficients between nutrient intakes assessed by repeated questionnaires ranged from 0.70 to 0.94 among men and from 0.59 to 0.94 among women. Correlation coefficients between nutrient intakes assessed by the questionnaire and 24-hour recalls ranged from 0.26 to 0.83 for men and from 0.35 to 0.90 for women, with medians of 0.59 and 0.58, respectively. Correlation coefficients between 0.2 and 0.5 were observed for beta-carotene and vitamin C for men and for beta-carotene and vitamin E for women. Associations with serum beta-carotene (r = -0.16 for men; 0.13 for women) and alpha-tocopherol (0.23 and 0.15, respectively) were much poorer than those obtained with 24-hour recalls. Correlations between protein intake and 24-hour urinary nitrogen excretion were 0.47 and 0.53, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The FFQ seems adequate for ranking subjects according to intake of energy, macronutrients, dietary fibre and retinol, but it does not yield such good results for beta-carotene, vitamin C for men, vitamin E for women.
Numerical computations of cardiac AP using level set based geometries

This article proposes two avenues to help improve the realism of numerical computations for cardiac electrophysiology while maintaining manageable computational resources. We first propose an asymptotic analysis to adjust the parameters and use a simple two-variable ionic model to reproduce the main characteristics of the cardiac action potential (AP) in various myocardial regions. This ionic model is embedded in the bidomain model that is used to propagate the AP in the heart. Our second contribution is a finite element method that couples the heart with the torso in a single variational formulation and allows non body fitted meshes at the interface between the myocardium and the torso/ventricle cavities. This interface is described through a level-set function obtained from the segmentation of patient medical images. Using a 2D test case, we compare the use of body-fitted and non body-fitted meshes and analyze the impact of both approaches on the accuracy of the solutions, including an anisotropic mesh adaptation strategy.
Energy-efficient power control for OFDMA cellular networks

In this paper, we study the energy efficiency (EE) of orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) cellular networks. Our objective is to present a power allocation scheme that maximizes the EE of downlink communications. We propose a novel explicit expression of the optimal power allocation to each subcarrier. We also present the power control when the transmit power is limited by power budget constraint or/and minimal rate constraint and we highlight the occurrence of some transmission outage events depending on the constraints' parameters. In the numerical results, we show that our proposed power control improves the EE especially at high power budget regime and low minimal rate regime. In addition, we show that having a higher number of subcarriers enhances the OFDMA EE.
Nuclear Import of Adenovirus DNA Involves Direct Interaction of Hexon with an N-Terminal Domain of the Nucleoporin Nup214

ABSTRACT In this study, we characterized the molecular basis for binding of adenovirus (AdV) to the cytoplasmic face of the nuclear pore complex (NPC), a key step during delivery of the viral genome into the nucleus. We used RNA interference (RNAi) to deplete cells of either Nup214 or Nup358, the two major Phe-Gly (FG) repeat nucleoporins localized on the cytoplasmic side of the NPC, and evaluated the impact on hexon binding and AdV infection. The accumulation of purified hexon trimers or partially disassembled AdV at the nuclear envelope (NE) was observed in digitonin-permeabilized cells in the absence of cytosolic factors. Both in vitro hexon binding and in vivo nuclear import of the AdV genome were strongly reduced in Nup214-depleted cells but still occurred in Nup358-depleted cells, suggesting that Nup214 is a major binding site of AdV during infection. The expression of an NPC-targeted N-terminal domain of Nup214 in Nup214-depleted cells restored the binding of hexon at the NE and the nuclear import of protein VII (pVII), indicating that this region is sufficient to allow AdV binding. We further narrowed the binding site to a 137-amino-acid segment in the N-terminal domain of Nup214. Together, our results have identified a specific region within the N terminus of Nup214 that acts as a direct NPC binding site for AdV. IMPORTANCE AdVs, which have the largest genome of nonenveloped DNA viruses, are being extensively explored for use in gene therapy, especially in alternative treatments for cancers that are refractory to traditional therapies. In this study, we characterized the molecular basis for binding of AdV to the cytoplasmic face of the NPC, a key step for delivery of the viral genome into the nucleus. Our data indicate that a 137-amino-acid region of the nucleoporin Nup214 is a binding site for the major AdV capsid protein, hexon, and that this interaction is required for viral DNA import. These findings provide additional insight on how AdV exploits the nuclear transport machinery for infection. The results could promote the development of new strategies for gene transfer and enhance understanding of the nuclear import of other viral DNA genomes, such as those of papillomavirus or hepatitis B virus that induce specific cancers.