Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Item generation and design testing of a questionnaire to assess degenerative joint disease-associated pain in cats.

OBJECTIVE To determine the items (question topics) for a subjective instrument to assess degenerative joint disease (DJD)-associated chronic pain in cats and determine the instrument design most appropriate for use by cat owners. ANIMALS 100 randomly selected client-owned cats from 6 months to 20 years old. PROCEDURES Cats were evaluated to determine degree of radiographic DJD and signs of pain throughout the skeletal system. Two groups were identified: high DJD pain and low DJD pain. Owner-answered questions about activity and signs of pain were compared between the 2 groups to define items relating to chronic DJD pain. Interviews with 45 cat owners were performed to generate items. Fifty-three cat owners who had not been involved in any other part of the study, 19 veterinarians, and 2 statisticians assessed 6 preliminary instrument designs. RESULTS 22 cats were selected for each group; 19 important items were identified, resulting in 12 potential items for the instrument; and 3 additional items were identified from owner interviews. Owners and veterinarians selected a 5-point descriptive instrument design over 11-point or visual analogue scale formats. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Behaviors relating to activity were substantially different between healthy cats and cats with signs of DJD-associated pain. Fifteen items were identified as being potentially useful, and the preferred instrument design was identified. This information could be used to construct an owner-based questionnaire to assess feline DJD-associated pain. Once validated, such a questionnaire would assist in evaluating potential analgesic treatments for these patients.
Fitness landscape analysis and memetic algorithms for the quadratic assignment problem

In this paper, a fitness landscape analysis for several instances of the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) is performed, and the results are used to classify problem instances according to their hardness for local search heuristics and meta-heuristics based on local search. The local properties of the fitness landscape are studied by performing an autocorrelation analysis, while the global structure is investigated by employing a fitness distance correlation analysis. It is shown that epistasis, as expressed by the dominance of the flow and distance matrices of a QAP instance, the landscape ruggedness in terms of the correlation length of a landscape, and the correlation between fitness and distance of local optima in the landscape together are useful for predicting the performance of memetic algorithms-evolutionary algorithms incorporating local search (to a certain extent). Thus, based on these properties, a favorable choice of recombination and/or mutation operators can be found. Experiments comparing three different evolutionary operators for a memetic algorithm are presented.
A novel gate assisted circuit to reduce switching loss and eliminate shoot-through in SiC half bridge configuration

The trend towards SiC-based high power density converter requires to drive SiC MOSFET with high-speed switching. However, it tends to aggravate dv/dt effect due to the impact of parasitic parameters, resulting in shoot-through and high device stress in the half bridge configuration. In this work, a novel gate assisted circuit is proposed to eliminate shoot-through issue without compromise on switching speed. The mathematical model for the gate assisted circuit is developed. Then the switching test experiment is set up to validate its performance with commercial SiC half bridge module, which shows a high dv/dt up to 20 and 31 V/ns at turn-on and turn-off respectively and a 34% reduction of switching loss without any shoot-through issue.
Structural MAP speaker adaptation using hierarchical priors

Most adaptation methods for speech recognition using hidden Markov models fall into two categories; one is the Bayesian approach, where prior distributions for the model parameters are assumed, and the other is the transformation-based approach, where a pre-determined simple transformation form is employed to modify the model parameters. It is known that the former is better when the amount of data for adaptation is large, while the latter is better when the amount of data is small. In this paper, we propose a new approach, the structural maximum a posteriori (SMAP) approach, in which hierarchical priors are introduced to combine the two approaches above. Experimental results showed that SMAP achieved a better recognition accuracy than the two individual approaches for both small and large amounts of adaptation data.
Spontaneous amyloidosis in twelve chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes

Spontaneous amyloidosis was diagnosed in 11 male and 1 female chimpanzees and confirmed histologically and immunohistochemically. The chimpanzees were ≥15 years of age when first diagnosed and averaged 22.4 years of age. The average survival time after diagnosis of systemic amyloidosis was 1.86 years with a standard deviation of 4.06 years (n=7). The chimpanzees with amyloidosis were asymptomatic except for hepatomegaly, which became more detectable with age. Significant increases in clinical chemistry values, as compared with referenced normals and established normals, of blood urea nitrogen (BUN), asparate aminotransferase (AST), gamma‐glutamyltransferase (GGT), globulin, total protein, creatinine phosphokinase (CPK), sedimentation rate, and triglycerides were found in animals 7 years of age or older with amyloidosis. These serum chemistry values, while increased in chimpanzees with amyloidosis, were generally within normal limits. Immunohistochemistry for both amyloid A protein and amyloid P component‐labeled extracellular amyloid in all chimpanzees with amyloidosis was determined. Amyloid was deposited primarily in the liver. Amyloidosis in the chimpanzee is a chronic, intractable, progressive, fatal disease, and appears to be similar to secondary amyloidosis in other species.
Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor Belinostat Represses Survivin Expression through Reactivation of Transforming Growth Factor β (TGFβ) Receptor II Leading to Cancer Cell Death*

Survivin is a cancer-associated gene that functions to promote cell survival, cell division, and angiogenesis and is a marker of poor prognosis. Histone deacetylase inhibitors induce apoptosis and re-expression of epigenetically silenced tumor suppressor genes in cancer cells. In association with increased expression of the tumor suppressor gene transforming growth factor β receptor II (TGFβRII) induced by the histone deacetylase inhibitor belinostat, we observed repressed survivin expression. We investigated the molecular mechanisms involved in survivin down-regulation by belinostat downstream of reactivation of TGFβ signaling. We identified two mechanisms. At early time points, survivin protein half-life was decreased with its proteasomal degradation. We observed that belinostat activated protein kinase A at early time points in a TGFβ signaling-dependent mechanism. After longer times (48 h), survivin mRNA was also decreased by belinostat. We made the novel observation that belinostat mediated cell death through the TGFβ/protein kinase A signaling pathway. Induction of TGFβRII with concomitant survivin repression may represent a significant mechanism in the anticancer effects of this drug. Therefore, patient populations exhibiting high survivin expression with epigenetically silenced TGFβRII might potentially benefit from the use of this histone deacetylase inhibitor.
Understanding the I/O Behavior of Desktop Applications in Virtualization

Input/Output (I/O) performance is very important when running desktop applications in virtualized environments. Previous research has focused on cold execution or installation of desktop applications, where the I/O requests are obvious; in many other scenarios such as warm launch or web page browsing however, I/O behaviors are less clear, and in this paper, we analyze the I/O behavior of these desktop scenarios. Our analysis reveals several interesting I/O behaviors of desktop applications; for example, we show that many warm applications will send random read requests during their launch, which leads to storage-sensitivity of these applications. We also find that the write requests from web page browsing generates considerable I/O pressure, even when the users only open a simple news page and take no further action. Our results have strong ramifications for the management of storage systems and the deployment of virtual machines in virtualized environments.
Efficacy, Tolerability, and Safety of Lanthanum Carbonate in Hyperphosphatemia: A 6-Month, Randomized, Comparative Trial versus Calcium Carbonate

Background/Aims: Hyperphosphatemia is an important clinical consequence of renal failure, and its multiple adverse systemic effects are associated with significantly increased risks of morbidity and mortality in dialysis patients. Existing oral phosphate binders have not permitted control of serum phosphate within currently accepted guidelines. This study compares lanthanum carbonate with calcium carbonate for control of serum phosphate in hemodialysis patients. Methods: In this European multicentre study, 800 patients were randomised to receive either lanthanum or calcium carbonate and the dose titrated over 5 weeks to achieve control of serum phosphate. Serum levels of phosphate, calcium and parathryoid hormone were followed over the following 20 weeks. Results: Around 65% of patients in each group achieved phosphate control, but in the calcium carbonate group this was at the expense of significant hypercalcemia (20.2% of patients vs. 0.4%). Consequently, calcium x phosphate product tended to be better controlled in the lanthanum group. Conclusion: This 6-month study demonstrates that serum phosphate control with lanthanum carbonate (750–3,000 mg/day) is similar to that seen with calcium carbonate (1,500–9,000 mg/day), but with a significantly reduced incidence of hypercalcemia. Lanthanum carbonate is well tolerated and may be more effective in reducing calcium x phosphate product than calcium carbonate.
Dynamic K-Best Sphere Decoding Algorithms for MIMO Detection

Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology is of great significance in high data rate wireless communication. The K-Best Sphere Decoding (K-Best SD) algorithm was proposed as a powerful method for MIMO detection that can approach near-optimal performance. However, some extra computational complexity is contained in K-Best SD. In this paper, we propose an improved K-Best SD to reduce the complexity of conventional K-Best SD by assigning K for each level dynamically following some rules. Simulation proves that the performance degradation of the improved K-Best SD is very little and the complexity is significantly reduced.
Results of valve preservation and repair for bicuspid aortic valve insufficiency.

BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE STUDY There is increasing interest in aortic valve-sparing and repair techniques for the treatment of aortic insufficiency (AI) and/or root aneurysm. The results of bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) repair at the authors' institution were evaluated. An attempt was made to assess the mode of failure and to identify surgical methods that provide durable repair results. METHODS Aortic valve repair for BAV was performed in 71 patients (62 men, nine women; mean age 41.5 +/- 13.2 years) between 1993 and 2005. Repair techniques included cusp free margin plication (n = 47), subcommissural annuloplasty (n = 27), free margin reinforcement (n = 10), and cusp triangular resection (n = 7). Thirteen patients had remodeling of one or both aortic sinuses, and 16 had reimplantation of the aortic valve. The ascending aorta and arch were replaced in 29 and five patients, respectively. Concomitant mitral and coronary bypass surgeries were performed in 10 and three patients, respectively. RESULTS There were no operative deaths. Early postoperative echocardiography revealed no or trace AI in 54 patients and mild AI in 17. There was only one late death which was non-cardiac-related. Eight-year freedom from endocarditis, thromboembolism and anticoagulation-related hemorrhage was 90%, 100% and 100%, respectively. Eight-year freedom from AI grade > or =3+ (moderate) and aortic valve replacement were 44% and 82%, respectively. At the latest follow up, 89% of patients were in NYHA functional class I. Patients who underwent aortic valve-sparing procedures had more stable valve function than those who had cusp repair and subcommissural plication. CONCLUSION BAV repair is a safe procedure with good early functional results. However, recurrent AI remains a problem at five to eight years of follow up. Since dilation of the aortic root is a common cause of AI and a common feature of patients with BAV, aortic valve-sparing reimplantation operations should provide better long-term outcomes.
A novel accurate synthetic aperture RFID localization method with high radial accuracy

Internet of Things (IoT) is rather prevalent in many manufacturing and smart city applications, while localization is a premise for many other processes, varying from ordering objects in manufacturing lines to locating books on bookshelves. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) based localization is of great interest in many IoT applications. Synthetic aperture RFID, due to its anti-noise capability and robustness against multipath distortion, is becoming a rising star in the field of localization. Existing systems achieve finer lateral resolution, whereas their radial accuracy is limited by the narrow bandwidth of RFID signal. In this paper, we present a novel synthetic aperture RFID localization method which combines RFID phase based ranging with synthetic aperture technology, to achieve a higher radial accuracy than the existing systems. With only one reader antenna and one 1-dimensional (1D) trajectory, a synthetic array is constructed to get an accurate localization result both in lateral and radial direction. Its core idea is to make full use of the coherence of all multi-frequency phase data and merge them into a unique ranging based likelihood function. To improve the accuracy, the relative phase is leveraged to eliminate phase offsets caused by the reader antenna, and the phase deviation from the angle-of-arrival response is calibrated by pre-processing. Then a weighted enhancement is fully exploited to further improve the localization performance. We evaluate its performance with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) RFID devices and the results show that it achieves median accuracy of 3cm in both lateral and radial direction. This novel promising method is suitable for locating tags placed densely in many IoT applications, such as test tubes in hospitals.
Facilitation during the H-reflex recovery cycle.

A period of facilitation at 200 msec has been studied in the H-reflex recovery cycle, or period during which a second (test) reflex is influenced by a first (conditioning). Three main experiments were performed on normal and quadriplegic patients: (1) identical conditioning and test stimuli to same leg; (2) liminal conditioning and maximum test stimuli to same leg; and (3) maximum conditioning contralateral leg, maximum test ipsilateral leg. Both normal and quadriplegic subjects had facilitation in each experiment at about 200 msec. Our data are interpreted as not supporting a long loop reflex producing this facillitation. We suggest this facilitation is the interaction of afferent activity in large diameter axons with the physiological tremor, whose first subharmonic is 200 msec.
A 3D Fingerprinting Positioning Method Based on Cellular Networks

A new 3D fingerprinting positioning scheme based on cellular networks is proposed by using implicit information of the location around geographic environments. Compared with original fingerprint positioning scheme, singular measurement is processed at the beginning of the proposed scheme. The main improvement of our proposed scheme is to employ cell matching degree and choose the best reasonable fingerprint according to the correlation of its surrounding points. Additionally, in order to improve searching efficiency, a new searching window is introduced. Finally, compared with the maximum likelihood method and the weighted K nearest neighbors method, the promising numerical results are also presented.
Characterisation of p-nitrophenylglycerol-resistant Proteus mirabilis super-swarming mutants.

p-Nitrophenylglycerol (PNPG) inhibits the co-ordinately regulated activities of swarming behaviour and virulence factor expression in Proteus mirabilis. The inhibitory action of PNPG was investigated by the isolation of Tn5 insertion mutants that could swarm, albeit with much reduced ability, in the presence of PNPG. The mutants exhibited a super-swarming phenotype in the absence of PNPG; i.e., they migrated further in a given time than did the wild-type cells. Cloning and sequence analysis of the mutants indicated that Tn5 was inserted into the rsbA gene, which may encode a membrane sensor histidine kinase of the bacterial two-component signalling system. In the absence of PNPG, the mutants exhibited several swarming-related phenotypes that were different from those of the wild type; they initiated swarming earlier and had a less conspicuous consolidation phase, they differentiated earlier and maintained a differentiated state for longer, they started to express virulence factors earlier and maintained high expression levels of these factors for longer, and they had higher cell invasion ability than the wild type. These mutant phenotypes could be complemented by a plasmid-borne copy of rsbA. Together, these data suggest that RsbA may act as a repressor of swarming and virulence factor expression. In the presence of PNPG, these rsbA-mutated mutants could still swarm, differentiate and express virulence factors, whereas the wild type could not, suggesting that PNPG may target RsbA or RsbA-regulated pathways to exert its inhibitory effect. Together, these data reveal a novel mechanism through which bacteria may negatively regulate swarming differentiation and virulence factor expression and identify a potential target of PNPG action.
Shoreline Mapping using an Omni-directional Camera for Autonomous Surface Vehicle Applications

Autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) have the potential to operate for extended periods of time in coastal, estuarine, and riverine environments for a variety of scientific, environmental, and military applications. However, these environments are often highly dynamic and unstructured, and present new challenges for autonomous operations. Toward the goal of achieving truly autonomous long-term operations in highly unstructured maritime environments, we present a new approach to create a shoreline map with an ASV in real-time by combining the analysis of images from a single omni-directional camera and knowledge of the vehicle's location and motion information
Tumour genes in plants: T‐DNA encoded cytokinin biosynthesis

Gene 4 from the T‐region of Ti plasmids is responsible for cytokinin effects in crown gall cells; we investigated whether it codes for an enzyme of hormone biosynthesis. In a first set of experiments, gene 4 from octopine plasmid pTiAch5 and nopaline plasmid pTiC58 was expressed in Escherichia coli, and the gene products were identified by reaction with antiserum raised against a decapeptide derived from the DNA sequence of the gene. Extracts from cells expressing the gene contained high isopentenyl‐transferase activity catalyzing the formation of N6‐(△2‐isopentenyl)adenosine from 5′‐AMP and △2‐isopentenylpyrophosphate. The cytokinin was identified by sequential h.p.l.c. chromatography and mass spectrometry. In a second set of experiments it was shown that crown gall cells contained isopentenyltransferase activity and a protein of mol. wt. 27 000 which was identified as the product of gene 4 by reaction with the antiserum. Isopentenyltransferase activity was specifically inhibited by the antiserum. No comparable enzyme activity or immunoreactive protein was detected in cytokinin‐autotrophic, T‐DNA free tobacco cells. The results establish that gene 4 from the T‐region of octopine and nopaline Ti plasmids codes for an enzyme of cytokinin biosynthesis.
Demand Response and Distribution Grid Operations: Opportunities and Challenges

Demand response (DR) is becoming an integral part of power system and market operations. Smart grid technologies will further increase the use of DR in everyday operations. Once the volume of the DR reaches a certain threshold, the effect of the DR events on the distribution and transmission system operations will be hard to ignore. This paper proposes changing the business process of DR scheduling and implementation by integrating DR with distribution grid topology. Study cases using OATI webDistribute show the potential DR effect on distribution grid operations and the distribution grid changing the effectiveness of the DR. These examples illustrate the need of integrating demand response with the distribution grid.
Evolution of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 env sequence variation in patients with diverse rates of disease progression and T-cell function

We examined the relationship between env sequence variation and disease progression in 10 human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-seropositive subjects selected from a longitudinal cohort receiving zidovudine therapy. Five subjects were chosen for stable clinical status and CD4 counts (slow progressors), and five were selected for rapid clinical deterioration and CD4 count decline (rapid progressors). The slow progressors had significantly lower plasma viral RNA loads and greater lymphoproliferative responses to mitogens than the rapid progressors. DNA sequences representing the C1 through C3 regions of env were amplified from two peripheral blood mononuclear cell DNA samples from each subject separated by an average of 2.5 years. Molecular clones of these amplicons were then sequenced, and DNA sequence and deduced amino acid sequence distances were compared. Inter-time point sequence comparison showed a higher rate of sequence evolution for the rapid progressors in three of five matched pairs of rapid progressors and slow progressors and for the slow progressors in the remaining two subject pairs. However, intra-time point sequence comparisons showed that four of five slow progressors developed a more diverse quasispecies over time and one showed no change. In contrast, four of five rapid progressors showed no change in quasispecies diversity over time and one showed a significant decrease in diversity. The overall C1 through C3 region quasispecies diversity in the slow progressors at baseline was lower than that for the rapid progressors, but this difference was not significant at the follow-up time points. These diversity relationships were obscured if sequence analyses were limited to the 300-bp C2 to V3 region. Thus, HIV-1 quasispecies diversity increased over time in subjects with more functional immune systems.