Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sculpting and animating in a desktop VR environment

Precise control of the shape of a flexible object during animation is a time-consuming task for the animator, for which there is, as yet, no universally-applicable method. This paper describes a system which provides improved support in this area. In the system, objects are modelled within a stereoscopic environment, and the user interfaces with the system via two hand-held devices, a SpaceBall and a mouse. The object is positioned and oriented by "holding" it in one hand, while the other hand employs the mouse to sculpt the object as if it were made of clay, using a "point and click" paradigm, rather than the conventional "pick and drag" approach. The object is sculpted at several pre-defined key positions before animation begins-these are defined parametrically, allowing animation of the object by interpolation in a straightforward way. To support this process and to ensure that the shape of the object remains sensible between the key positions, an extension to NURBS, called CISSes, has been developed. As a result of rests of a prototype system, the Basic CISS was further developed into the Cuboid CISS. The coherence of the object under animation can be mathematically demonstrated for the Cuboid CISS. This paper describes the Virtual Sculpting environment, the mathematical background of the CISS, and the results obtained using this approach for the animation of a limb. The final section identifies outstanding problems and future areas of work.
Heparan sulfate proteoglycan expression in the optic chiasm of mouse embryos

Previous studies have demonstrated that heparan sulfate (HS) proteoglycans (PGs) regulate neurite outgrowth through binding to a variety of cell surface molecules, extracellular matrix proteins, and growth factors. The present study investigated the possible involvement of HS‐PGs in retinal axon growth by examining its expression in the retinofugal pathway of mouse embryos by using a monoclonal antibody against the HS epitope. Immunoreactive HS was first detected in all regions of the retina at embryonic day (E) 11. The staining was gradually lost in the central regions and restricted to the retinal periphery at later developmental stages (E12–E16). Prominent staining for HS was consistently found in the retinal fiber layer and at the optic disk, indicating a possible supportive role of HS‐PGs in axon growth in the retina. At the ventral diencephalon, immunostaining for HS was first detected at E12, before arrival of any retinal axons. The staining matched closely the neurons that are immunopositive for the stage‐specific embryonic antigen 1 (SSEA‐1). At E13 to E16, when axons are actively exploring their paths across the chiasm, immunoreactivity for HS was particularly intense at the midline. This characteristic expression pattern suggests a role for HS‐PGs in defining the path of early axons in the chiasm and in regulating development of axon divergence at the midline. Furthermore, HS immunoreactivity is substantially reduced at regions flanking both sides of the midline, which coincides spatially to the position of actin‐rich growth cones from subpial surface to the deep regions of the optic axon layer at the chiasm. Moreover, at the threshold of the optic tract, immunoreactive HS was localized to deep parts of the fiber layer. These findings indicate that changes in age‐related fiber order in the optic chiasm and optic tract of mouse embryos are possibly regulated by a spatially restricted expression of HS‐PGs. J. Comp. Neurol. 436:236–247, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Interlaboratory agreement study of a double set of PCR plasmid primers for detection of Chlamydia trachomatis in a variety of genitourinary specimens

We conducted a tricenter interlaboratory agreement study to assess the agreement of PCR results obtained for detection of Chlamydia trachomatis in genitourinary specimens. A total of 120 specimens (49 positive and 71 negative), including 20 first-void urine samples, 50 endocervical and 50 urethral swabs (40 males), were coded and sent from a reference laboratory (laboratory A) to two other laboratories. Laboratories B and C were provided with a standardized protocol and reagent package including two sets of plasmid PCR primers (KL1-KL2 and T1-T2) and were asked to test each specimen with the first set of primers (KL1-KL2) and to confirm positives with the second set of primers (T1-T2). Laboratory B identified 47 of 49 positives and 69 of 70 negatives (one specimen dried up on shipping) following the initial PCR, for an accuracy of 97.5% (116 of 119), and 47 of 49 positives and 70 of 70 negatives after confirmatory testing of the positives, for an accuracy of 98.3% (117 of 119). Laboratory C identified 42 of 49 positives and 70 of 70 negatives for the initial PCR, for an accuracy of 94.1% (112 of 119), and 39 of 42 positives and 70 of 70 negatives for the confirmatory PCR, for an accuracy of 91.6% (109 of 119). The overall accuracy of PCR testing was 96.6% (345 of 357). The kappa agreement statistics for agreement between pairs of laboratories after confirmation of positives were 0.97 for laboratories A and B, 0.83 for laboratories B and C, and 0.83 for laboratories A and C. Use of the confirmatory PCR improved the specificity and overall accuracy of results for individual laboratories but reduced slightly the results obtained for agreement between laboratories. These results demonstrate that when standardized reagents and protocols are used, PCR results are highly reproducible and excellent agreement between laboratories is obtainable.
Development of a homologous expression system for rubber oxygenase RoxA from Xanthomonas sp.

Aims: Natural rubber (poly‐[cis‐1,4‐isoprene]) can be cleaved into 12‐oxo‐4,8‐dimethyltrideca‐4,8‐diene‐1‐al by rubber oxygenase A (RoxA) isolated from Xanthomonas sp. RoxA is a novel type of dihaem dioxygenase with unknown cleavage mechanism of the rubber carbon backbone. Analysis of mutant RoxA after mutagenesis could be a way to investigate the function of selected amino acids of RoxA during catalysis. Unfortunately, expression of functional RoxA in recombinant Escherichia coli or in recombinant γ‐Proteobacteria such as Pseudomonas putida was not possible in our hands. Therefore, expression of recombinant RoxA in the homologous host, Xanthomonas, was performed.
The authors reply.

Critical Care Medicine www.ccmjournal. org e469 In conclusion, consistent reporting of data in methodcomparison studies and clinical application is a challenge for authors, but it is helpful for the reader to make direct comparisons and facilitate an opinion. This work was performed at Clinique de la Sauvegarde, Lyon, France. The authors have disclosed that they do not have any potential conflicts of interest.
A New Family of Practical Non-Malleable Protocols

Nowadays, achieving cryptosystems secure in an asynchronous network like the Internet is demanded to be necessary, where concurrent non-malleable proof-of-knowledge and universal composability are among the most powerful and fundamental security properties. But, when achieving more and more complex cryptosystems secure in an open network like the Internet, it is often the case that generic solutions are either impossible or infeasible. In this work, we investigate highly practical approaches for achieving non-malleable cryptosystems secure against concurrent man-in-the-middles. We start our study with the DiffieHellman key-exchange (DHKE) protocol, which is at the root of public-key cryptography and is one of the main pillars of both theory and practice of cryptography. We develop the mechanisms of non-malleable joint proof-of-knowledge (NMJPOK) and self-sealed joint proof-of-knowledge (SSJPOK), which are of independent values. In particular, using NMJPOK and SSJPOK as the key building tools, we present a new family of DHKE protocols, with remarkable performance among security, privacy, efficiency and easy deployment. Particularly important to applied crypto engineering, the newly developed DHKE protocols add novelties and values to a range of key industry standards for ensuring network security (e.g., IKE, (H)MQV, SSH, etc). Along the way, we also reinvestigate the security definition frameworks for DHKE, and clarify various subtleties surrounding the design and analysis of non-malleable DHKE protocols. Then, motivated by the building tools, NMJPOK and SSJPOK, proposed and justified in this work, we formulate non-malleable extractable joint one-way function (NME-JOWF), and demonstrate general applications of NME-JOWF (including 3-round CNMZK and UCZK in the plain model). Then, we propose candidates of NME-JOWF based upon bilinear pairings, and show various concrete applications of the pairing-based NME-JOWF candidates. ∗Institute for Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS), Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. andrewcyao@tsinghua.edu. cn †Software School, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. ylzhao@fudan.edu. cn
Different Memory Systems Underlying Acquisition of Procedural and Declarative Knowledge a

Cognitive neuropsychological investigations of memory have begun to distinguish among different component processes and component systems of normal memory. In the present paper we show that amnesic patients with marked disorders of learning and memory demonstrate a striking dissociation between the memory processes or memory systems that support the acquisition of cognitive skills and the processes or systems that mediate the acquisition of new facts or other data-based knowledge. This dissociation is exhibited by normal control subjects as well. These data conform with a long tradition of introspectively based speculations on the difference between skill memory and memory for particular facts or events, and they suggest that this dissociation is honored by the nervous system. In-depth analyses of the knowledge acquired by amnesic patients and normal control subjects in learning the cognitive skills studied in this report permit some conclusions to be drawn about the characteristics of the dissociated memory phenomena, as they inform us about both the nature of preserved learning capacities in amnesia and the nature of the knowledge underlying skilled performance in all subjects, amnesic patients and control subjects alike.
Accelerating Multiple Sequence Alignment with the Cell BE Processor

The Cell Broadband Engine (BE) Architecture is a new heterogeneous multi-core architecture targeted at compute-intensive workloads. The architecture of the Cell BE has several features that are unique in high-performance general-purpose processors, most notably the extensive support for vectorization, scratch pad memories and explicit programming of direct memory accesses (DMAs) and mailbox communication. While these features strongly increase programming complexity, it is generally claimed that significant speedups can be obtained by using Cell BE processors. This paper presents our experiences with using the Cell BE architecture to accelerate Clustal W, a bio-informatics program for multiple sequence alignment. We report on how we apply the unique features of the Cell BE to Clustal W and how important each is in obtaining high performance. By making extensive use of vectorization and by parallelizing the application across all cores, we demonstrate a speedup of 24.4 times when using 16 synergistic processor units on a QS21 Cell Blade compared to single-thread execution on the power processing unit. As the Cell BE exploits a large number of slim cores, our highly optimized implementation is just 3.8 times faster than a 3-thread version running on an Intel Core2 Duo, as the latter processor exploits a small number of fat cores.
On automatic extraction of prosodic information for automatic speech recognition system

This paper is concemed with three types of causes leading to errors in a system using strictly speaker -independent rules for automatic extraction oflinguistic information from measured prosodic parameters (PP) in read isolated sentences, in French: erroneous measurements of PP, duration and fun damental frequency (type-1 errors); differences between speakers who do not fit into the same prosodic moult (type-2 problems) and certain combination of segmental influences on duration, which cannot be factored out in a strictly bottom-up system (type-3 problems). It suggests that neither further tuning ofthe existing rules, nor statisticallearning are complete solutions. Type-1 errors are extrinsic to the prosodic module and can be hardly improved. An effective way of reducing incertainties due to type-2 problems is a partial tuning of the set of rules to the particular habits ofthe speaker: adaptation is feasible because there is a remarkable intra speaker consistency in prosodic patteming, at least in serially read isolated sentences. Type-3 errors Ieads to multiple solutions in certain cases. It is necessary therefore to model to a certain extent the inter-speaker variability.
Reactive control for mobile manipulation

Research for executing large-scale motions of mobile manipulators is described. Mobile manipulators are mobile bases with an attached arm which function in an integrated manner. Motivation is given for moving the arm while the base is moving. This paper applies reactive control concepts to achieve this type of motion. Tools for modeling integrated arm-vehicle kinematics and dynamics are discussed. Kinematics- and dynamics-based concepts are combined with reactive control approaches in order to move toward a practical level of complexity and performance. Simulation results are presented. <<ETX>>
Transfusion of PNH patients

To the Editor: In the October 1989 issue of TRANSFUSION, Brecher and Taswell’ reviewed the transfusion treatment of patients with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) and concluded that, in this disease, the use of washed red cells (RBCs) is unnecessary and that the most important thing is that patients receive group-specific blood components; white cell-depleted RBCs are indicated in patients who have produced white cell antibodies. In an accompanying editorial,2 Rosse points out that any antigen-antibody reaction that occurs in the patient’s circulation and effects complement activation can trigger hemolysis of the patient’s RBCs. In 1970, we showed’ that PNH red cells undergo hemolysis in vitro if a reaction between white cell antigens and antibodies occurs in the medium. After that, we decided to transfuse our PNH patients with white cell-depleted RBCs; in fact most PNH patients are multiply transfused and have white cell antibodies in the serum. White cell depletion was carried out by filtration, using Erypur (Organon Teknika, Durham, NC) and Immugard (Terumo, Tokyo, Japan) filters for some years; more recently, filtration at the bedside through the second-generation filters Sepacell (Ashahi, Tokyo, Japan) or Pall RClOO (Pall Corp., Glen Cove, NY)4 has been used. In the last 20 years, we have seen 32 PNH patients, and 10 have been observed and transfused at our center with a total of 988 white cell-depleted RBC units. Five percent of transfusions were accompanied by urticaria. Fever or signs of transfusion-induced hyperhemolysis were not seen. We conclude that ABO-identical filtered RBCs are the component of choice for the transfusion treatment of PNH patients. GIROLAMO SIRCHIA, MD ALBERTO ZANELLA, MD Centro Trasfisionale e di Imrnunologia dei Trapianti Ospedale Magjjore Policlinico 35 20122 Milano, Italy
Mechanical stress is communicated between different cell types to elicit matrix remodeling

Tissue remodeling often reflects alterations in local mechanical conditions and manifests as an integrated response among the different cell types that share, and thus cooperatively manage, an extracellular matrix. Here we examine how two different cell types, one that undergoes the stress and the other that primarily remodels the matrix, might communicate a mechanical stress by using airway cells as a representative in vitro system. Normal stress is imposed on bronchial epithelial cells in the presence of unstimulated lung fibroblasts. We show that (i) mechanical stress can be communicated from stressed to unstressed cells to elicit a remodeling response, and (ii) the integrated response of two cell types to mechanical stress mimics key features of airway remodeling seen in asthma: namely, an increase in production of fibronectin, collagen types III and V, and matrix metalloproteinase type 9 (MMP-9) (relative to tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1, TIMP-1). These observations provide a paradigm to use in understanding the management of mechanical forces on the tissue level.
First-order memristor-capacitor filter Circuits Employing HP memristor

The memristor has drawn the worldwide attention since it has been discovered at HP laboratory on 1 May 2008. Since then many researchers are taking efforts to find its applications in various areas. In this paper, we study the filter characteristics of first-order low pass and high pass filters employing memristor with a capacitor. The paper provides a comparative analysis between low pass and high pass filter circuits that utilizing ordinary resistor or memristor with a capacitor. The theoretical analyzes are verified with SPICE simulation results using a memristor SPICE model with nonlinear dopant drift and MATLAB environment. The effect of change of the input frequency and initial resistance value of memristor on the cut-off frequencies of the presented low pass and high pass filters are investigated. The memory effect of memristor is represented by simulation results.
Surgical Removal of Mouse Salivary Glands

Surgical removal of the salivary glands is a simple procedure aimed at providing glandular tissues for studies in histopathology, immunohistology, DNA and RNA analysis, cytokine production, and virus detection and isolation. This unit describes the surgical removal of the salivary glands in mice, but a similar protocol is applicable to rats and other rodents.
On ice-induced instability in free-surface flows

The problem of stability of a water-coated ice layer is investigated for a free-surface flow of a thin water film down an inclined plane. An asymptotic (double-deck) theory is developed for a flow with large Reynolds and Froude numbers which is then used to investigate linear two-dimensional, three-dimensional and nonlinear two-dimensional stability characteristics. A new mode of upstream-propagating instability arising from the interaction of the ice surface with the flow is discovered and its properties are investigated. In the linear limit, closed-form expressions for the dispersion relation and neutral curves are obtained for the case of Pr = 1. For the general case, the linear stability problem is solved numerically and the applicability of the solution with Pr = 1 is analysed. Nonlinear double-deck equations are solved with a novel global-marching-type scheme and the effects of nonlinearity are investigated. An explanation of the physical mechanism leading to the upstream propagation of instability waves is provided.
DNA methylation profiles of CpG islands for cellular differentiation and development in mammals

DNA methylation has been implicated in mammalian development. Transcription units contain CpG islands, but expression of CpG island associated genes in normal tissues was not believed to be controlled by DNA methylation. There are, however, numerous CpG islands containing tissue-dependent and differentially methylated regions (T-DMR), which are potential methylation sites in normal cells and tissues. Genomic scanning which focused on T-DMRs in CpG islands revealed that the DNA methylation profile of each cell/tissue is more complicated than previously considered. Differentiation of cells is associated with both methylation and demethylation, which occur at multiple loci. The epigenetic system characterized by DNA methylation requires cells to memorize gene expression patterns, thus, standardizing cellular phenotypes.
Obstetrician practice patterns and recommendations for physical activity during pregnancy.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS Many women do not attain minimum American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommendations for physical activity during pregnancy. This study assessed the self-reported practice patterns and recommendations of 384 obstetricians working in Texas through a mailed survey on physical activity during pregnancy. RESULTS The most common exercise elements routinely collected from pregnant women included types of exercise (81%), history of exercise before pregnancy (79%), and frequency of exercise (76%). Fewer obstetricians collected duration (68%) or intensity (69%) of exercise. The percentage of obstetricians recommending avoidance of nine household activities and exercises (including lifting groceries, starting a new exercise program, or participating in walking, jogging, or bicycling) was significantly higher with each successive trimester. Most obstetricians agreed that pregnant women would gain some benefit from mild exercise (99.5%), but fewer agreed that moderate (74%) or vigorous exercise (6%) would be beneficial. Sixty-two percent of obstetricians reported that women who have never exercised could begin an exercise program during pregnancy. Almost all participants agreed that physical activity might make a woman feel more energetic (98%) and improve her labor and delivery (89%), but fewer agreed that exercise during pregnancy causes lower weight babies (23%) or could trigger labor (18%). CONCLUSIONS Dissemination of current recommendations and discussion about the benefits and risks of physical activity during pregnancy, such as through continuing education, appear warranted. Future research could address the causes of disparities between self-reported practice patterns and current ACOG guidelines.
Variations in the Use of Cesarean Delivery for Dystocia: Lessons About the Source of Care

Aggregate data show variations in the use of cesarean delivery according to the source of care, which suggests that rising cesarean rates are at least in part attributable to nonmedical factors. In the research presented here, the likelihood of cesarean delivery is examined for low-risk, primiparous women with physicians who practice in a single hospital but are from three practice organizations— a health maintenance organization (HMO), private practice, and a hospital clinic—while controlling for a wide spectrum of clinical factors. Maternal age was found to be a dominant factor in determining the decision for a cesarean delivery, independent of clinical risk and physicians' practice organization. Only among women in their optimal childbearing years (25 to 29 years) was having an HMO physician associated with a lower likelihood of cesarean delivery. The authors conclude that lowering the primary cesarean rate in the 1990's may require more reeducation and clinical policy formulation, with particular attention being paid to maternal age, and less reorganization of services than the aggregate data suggests.