Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased levels of Porphyromonas gingivalis are associated with ischemic and hemorrhagic cerebrovascular disease in humans: an in vivo study

Objective: This study investigated the role of periodontal disease in the development of stroke or cerebral infarction in patients by evaluating the clinical periodontal conditions and the subgingival levels of periodontopathogens. Material and Methods: Twenty patients with ischemic (I-CVA) or hemorrhagic (H-CVA) cerebrovascular episodes (test group) and 60 systemically healthy patients (control group) were evaluated for: probing depth, clinical attachment level, bleeding on probing and plaque index. Porphyromonas gingivalis and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans were both identified and quantified in subgingival plaque samples by conventional and real-time PCR, respectively. Results: The test group showed a significant increase in each of the following parameters: pocket depth, clinical attachment loss, bleeding on probing, plaque index and number of missing teeth when compared to control values (p<0.05, unpaired t-test). Likewise, the test group had increased numbers of sites that were contaminated with P. gingivalis (60%x10%; p<0.001; chi-squared test) and displayed greater prevalence of periodontal disease, with an odds ratio of 48.06 (95% CI: 5.96-387.72; p<0.001). Notably, a positive correlation between probing depth and the levels of P. gingivalis in ischemic stroke was found (r=0.60; p=0.03; Spearman's rank correlation coefficient test). A. actinomycetemcomitans DNA was not detected in any of the groups by conventional or real-time PCR. Conclusions: Stroke patients had deeper pockets, more severe attachment loss, increased bleeding on probing, increased plaque indexes, and in their pockets harbored increased levels of P. gingivalis. These findings suggest that periodontal disease is a risk factor for the development of cerebral hemorrhage or infarction. Early treatment of periodontitis may counteract the development of cerebrovascular episodes.
Interactions between Natural Populations of Human and Rodent Schistosomes in the Lake Victoria Region of Kenya: A Molecular Epidemiological Approach

Background Schistosoma mansoni exists in a complex environmental milieu that may select for significant evolutionary changes in this species. In Kenya, the sympatric distribution of S. mansoni with S. rodhaini potentially influences the epidemiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology of both species, because they infect the same species of snail and mammalian hosts and are capable of hybridization. Methodology/Principal Findings Over a 2-year period, using a molecular epidemiological approach, we examined spatial and temporal distributions, and the overlap of these schistosomes within snails, in natural settings in Kenya. Both species had spatially and temporally patchy distributions, although S. mansoni was eight times more common than S. rodhaini. Both species were overdispersed within snails, and most snails (85.2% for S. mansoni and 91.7% for S. rodhaini) only harbored one schistosome genotype. Over time, half of snails infected with multiple genotypes showed a replacement pattern in which an initially dominant genotype was less represented in later replicates. The other half showed a consistent pattern over time; however, the ratio of each genotype was skewed. Profiles of circadian emergence of cercariae revealed that S. rodhaini emerges throughout the 24-hour cycle, with peak emergence before sunrise and sometimes immediately after sunset, which differs from previous reports of a single nocturnal peak immediately after sunset. Peak emergence for S. mansoni cercariae occurred as light became most intense and overlapped temporally with S. rodhaini. Comparison of schistosome communities within snails against a null model indicated that the community was structured and that coinfections were more common than expected by chance. In mixed infections, cercarial emergence over 24 hours remained similar to single species infections, again with S. rodhaini and S. mansoni cercarial emergence profiles overlapping substantially. Conclusions/Significance The data from this study indicate a lack of obvious spatial or temporal isolating mechanisms to prevent hybridization, raising the intriguing question of how the two species retain their separate identities.
Development of Self -Tuning Fuzzy Iterative Learning Control for Controlling a Mechatronic System

In this paper, a self-tuning fuzzy iterative learning control algorithm is proposed to ensure the improvement and enhancement in the performance of the control system by using the benefits of both feedback control due to fuzzy controller and feedforward compensation due to iterative learning controller(ILC) merged in the same control system structure. The performance of proposed algorithm was assessed in a mechatronic system to illustrate the validation of the proposed procedure and the effectiveness of the self-tuning fuzzy iterative learning controller. The simulations results show that the proposed self-tuning fuzzy iterative learning control (STFILC) can reduce the trajectory error in far less number of iterations.
Parm: a Physically-Aware Reference Model for Peer-to-Peer Overlay Internetworking

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technologies developed rapidly in different directions with various applications and routing mechanisms. Each of them deals with a particular task, and/or provides a specific service. They were developed separately without a unified architecture taking into account all the performance factors of a P2P system. This makes the P2P systems incomplete and their performances far from optimal. This trend also restricts the interoperability amongst the systems because of the lack of standardization in functional architectures of the P2P systems. As a result, tangible benefits for Internet users are limited because the edge-Internet resources are not sharable amongst the systems. Inspired by TCP/IP model, this paper introduces PARM: a Physically-Aware Reference Model for Overlay Internetworking, which is an open reference structure for designing better performance P2P systems. PARM divides major functional P2P system tasks into layers so that they can be tackled individually and efficiently. A Peer Name Service was developed to evaluate the model. The service interprets peer names into their current locations. Simulation results indicate that PARM helps to produce excellent performance overlays. The overlays can achieve desirable features such as decentralization, self-organization, scalability, low overhead and minimal delay penalty.
Using geometric corners to build a 2D mosaic from a set of images

The main problem for building a mosaic is the computation of the warping functions (homographies). In fact two cases are to be distinguished. The first is when the homography is mainly a translation (i.e. The rotation around the optical axis and the zooming factor are small). The second is the general case (when the rotation around the optical axis and zooming are arbitrary). Some efficient methods have been developed to solve the first case. But the second case is more difficult, in particular, when the rotation around the optical axis is very large (90 degrees or more). Often in this case human interaction is needed to provide a first approximation of the transformation that will bring one back to the first case. The authors present a method to solve this problem without human interaction for any rotation around the optical axis and fairly large zooming factors.
Validate your SPDX files for open source license violations

Licensing decisions for new Open Source Software are not always straightforward. However, the license that accompanies the software is important as it largely affects its subsequent distribution and reuse. License information for software products is captured - among other data - in the Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) files. The SPDX specification is gaining popularity in the software industry and has been adopted by many organizations internally. In this demonstration paper, we present our tool for the validation of SPDX files regarding proper license use. Software packages described in SPDX format are examined in order to detect license violations that may occur when a product combines different software sources that carry different and potentially contradicting licenses. The SPDX License Validation Tool (SLVT) gives the opportunity to check the compatibility of one or more SPDX files. The evaluation performed on a number of software packages demonstrates its usefulness for drawing conclusions on license use, revealing violations in some of the test projects.
Bayesian algorithms for the passive location of a stationary emitter by a moving platform

We explore three recursive Bayesian algorithms for the passive location of a stationary ground-based emitter using bearing measurements obtained by a flying platform. The passive location of emitters is a frequent requirement in rescue missions. The algorithms that we consider are a particle filter, the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) and the extended Kalman filter (EKF). They require increasingly greater simplification to the models in the passive location problem. The particle filter is a straightforward formulation based on rejection sampling, requiring the measurements to be conditionally independent and the likelihood to be bounded with known bound. Apart from these requirements, which are satisfied for the problem, no further simplification is needed. The UKF preserves the nonlinearities in the models but approximates the posterior distribution at each time step by a Gaussian distribution. The EKF also assumes a Gaussian distribution, but further linearizes the models so that Gaussianity is preserved under the simplified linear models. Our Monte Carlo simulation results show that the recursive particle filter converges more quickly than the UKF and EKF, and performs better in terms of both point estimation and distribution estimation.
Ca2+ Homeostasis in the Agonist-sensitive Internal Store: Functional Interactions Between Mitochondria and the ER Measured In Situ in Intact Cells

Mitochondria have a well-established capacity to detect cytoplasmic Ca2+ signals resulting from the discharge of ER Ca2+ stores. Conversely, both the buffering of released Ca2+ and ATP production by mitochondria are predicted to influence ER Ca2+ handling, but this complex exchange has been difficult to assess in situ using conventional measurement techniques. Here we have examined this interaction in single intact BHK-21 cells by monitoring intraluminal ER [Ca2+] directly using trapped fluorescent low-affinity Ca2+ indicators. Treatment with mitochondrial inhibitors (FCCP, antimycin A, oligomycin, and rotenone) dramatically prolonged the refilling of stores after release with bradykinin. This effect was largely due to inhibition of Ca2+ entry pathways at the plasma membrane, but a significant component appears to arise from reduction of SERCA-mediated Ca2+ uptake, possibly as a consequence of ATP depletions in a localized subcellular domain. The rate of bradykinin-induced Ca2+ release was reduced to 51% of control by FCCP. This effect was largely overcome by loading cells with BAPTA-AM, highlighting the importance of mitochondrial Ca2+ buffering in shaping the release kinetics. However, mitochondria-specific ATP production was also a significant determinant of the release dynamic. Our data emphasize the localized nature of the interaction between these organelles, and show that competent mitochondria are essential for generating explosive Ca2+ signals.
- 1-Title : Are population PK and / or PD models adequately evaluated ? A 2002 to 2004 literature survey

4 INTRODUCTION . 5 METHODS . 7 Search strategy . 7 Data abstraction form building . 7 Basic internal evaluation . 8 Advanced internal evaluation . 9 External evaluation . 11 Metrics used for model evaluation . 11 Subjective synthesis . 12 Statistical analysis . 13 RESULTS . 14 General results . 14 Basic internal evaluation . 14 Advanced internal evaluation . 15 External evaluation . 16 Metrics used for model evaluation . 16 Subjective synthesis . 17 DISCUSSION . 17 CONCLUSION . 21 REFERENCES . 23 in se rm -0 01 59 12 4, v er si on 1 14 S ep 2 00 9
Re-ranking of educational materials based on topic profile for e-learning

As the Web grows, and more e-learning content becomes available, discovering content relevant to the user query and suitable specifically from the e-learning perspective becomes increasingly hard. This has resulted in the need to develop automatic methods for retrieving learning materials and ranking them corresponding to their significance to the specified query yet again from the e-learning perspective. Ranking of documents is known to be an essential process in information retrieval (IR) where retrieved documents are projected in the order of their expected level of significance to the query. Conventional document ranking methods are depends upon the essential measurements of similarity between documents and query. However from the e-learning viewpoint, the significance to the query is depends upon the relevancy of the document to the topic of the query and hence retrieval needs to be based on the query, an essence of the topic related to the query and the documents themselves. This work presents a topic profile based query expansion and re-ranking system that aims at retrieving and ranking documents from the web that would be suitable to extract learning material for an e-learning scenario. Topic profile contains chapters, topics and annotation terms represented as a hierarchical representation of keywords for a particular topic. This topic profile is designed for a particular course (subject), incorporating details from more than one curriculum and is a representation of the topic from a learning viewpoint. The topic profile is used for two purposes; one to generate queries to discover documents missed out from the topic profile and second to re-rank documents based on topic profile. Thus the topic profile is used for organizing learning materials from search engines to maximize topic coverage and minimize redundancy among retrieved results.
Design of a dual-band MIMO WIFI gateway

In this paper, the design of an MIMO antenna system for WIFI gateway application is proposed. 8 printed monopole dual band antennas are placed on a 135×135mm2 FR-4 PCB. Placement of the elements is optimized to limit coupling effect. The objective of the system is to combine the MIMO technique and antenna diversity to increase data rate performance. S-Parameters and radiation performances are presented. A new measurement method based on EVM and BER criteria is proposed to characterize the antenna system in a realistic environment.
Decreased haem oxygenase-1 and increased inducible nitric oxide synthase in the lung of severe COPD patients

Oxidant/antioxidant imbalance is implicated in the pathogenesis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The current study examined the expression of antioxidant and pro-oxidant enzymes, haem oxygenases (HO) and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) respectively, in patients with severe COPD and control smokers without lung function impairment. Immunoreactivity for HO-1, HO-2, iNOS and nitric oxide-derived oxidants expressed as nitrotyrosine (N-Tyr) was quantified in peripheral lung. HO-1+ alveolar macrophages were decreased in severe COPD compared to control smokers, whereas no difference was observed in iNOS+ macrophages. In contrast, severe patients had significantly higher numbers of iNOS+ cells in alveolar walls. These iNOS+ cells were identified as type 2 pneumocytes and their number was inversely related to HO-1+ macrophages. There were no significant differences in N-Tyr immunostaining between the two groups. However, the rate of protein nitration in lungtissue was directly related to iNOS expression and associated with lower valuesofforced expiratory volume in one second/forced vital capacity. HO-2 was constitutively expressed by type 2 pneumocytes and these cells were increased in severe COPD. In conclusion, the results suggest that the enzymes involved in the oxidative stressresponse may have a different role in the lung defence and that imbalance betweenhaemoxygenase-1 and inducible nitric oxide synthase may be associated withthe development of severe impairment in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients.
Modulation by Dietary Fat and Carbohydrate of IRS1 Association With Type 2 Diabetes Traits in Two Populations of Different Ancestries

OBJECTIVE Insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS1) is central to insulin signaling pathways. This study aimed to examine the association of IRS1 variants with insulin resistance (IR) and related phenotypes, as well as potential modification by diet. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Two IRS1 variants (rs7578326 and rs2943641) identified by genome-wide association studies as related to type 2 diabetes were tested for their associations with IR and related traits and interaction with diet in the Genetics of Lipid Lowering Drugs and Diet Network (GOLDN) study (n = 820) and the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study (BPRHS) (n = 844). RESULTS Meta-analysis indicated that rs7578326 G-allele carriers and rs2943641 T-allele carriers had a lower risk of IR, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome (MetS). Significant interactions on IR and MetS were found for these two variants and their haplotypes with diet. In GOLDN, rs7578326 G-allele carriers and rs2943641 T-allele carriers and their haplotype G-T carriers had a significantly lower risk of IR and MetS than noncarriers only when the dietary saturated fatty acid-to-carbohydrate ratio was low (≤0.24). In both GOLDN (P = 0.0008) and BPRHS (P = 0.011), rs7578326 G-allele carriers had a lower risk of MetS than noncarriers only when dietary monounsaturated fatty acids were lower than the median intake of each population. CONCLUSIONS IRS1 variants are associated with IR and related traits and are modulated by diet in two populations of different ancestries. These findings suggest that IRS1 variants have important functions in various metabolic disorders and that dietary factors could modify these associations.
Why US adults use dietary supplements.

BACKGROUND Dietary supplements are used by more than half of adults, although to our knowledge, the reasons motivating use have not been previously examined in US adults using nationally representative data. The purpose of this analysis was to examine motivations for dietary supplement use, characterize the types of products used for the most commonly reported motivations, and to examine the role of physicians and health care practitioners in guiding choices about dietary supplements. METHODS Data from adults (≥20 years; n = 11 956) were examined in the 2007-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a nationally representative, cross-sectional, population-based survey. RESULTS The most commonly reported reasons for using supplements were to "improve" (45%) or "maintain" (33%) overall health. Women used calcium products for "bone health" (36%), whereas men were more likely to report supplement use for "heart health or to lower cholesterol" (18%). Older adults (≥60 years) were more likely than younger individuals to report motivations related to site-specific reasons like heart, bone and joint, and eye health. Only 23% of products were used based on recommendations of a health care provider. Multivitamin-mineral products were the most frequently reported type of supplement taken, followed by calcium and ω-3 or fish oil supplements. Supplement users are more likely to report very good or excellent health, have health insurance, use alcohol moderately, eschew cigarette smoking, and exercise more frequently than nonusers. CONCLUSIONS Supplement users reported motivations related to overall health more commonly than for supplementing nutrients from food intakes. Use of supplements was related to more favorable health and lifestyle choices. Less than a quarter of supplements used by adults were recommended by a physician or health care provider.
Optimal Pricing and Admission Control for Heterogeneous Secondary Users

This paper studies how to maximize a spectrum database operator's expected revenue in sharing spectrum to secondary users, through joint pricing and admission control of spectrum resources. A unique feature of our model is the consideration of the stochastic and heterogeneous nature of secondary users' demands. We formulate the problem as a stochastic dynamic programming problem, and present the optimal solutions under both static and dynamic pricing schemes. In the case of static pricing, the prices do not change with time, although the admission control policy can still be time-dependent. In this case, we show that a stationary (time-independent) admission policy is in fact optimal under a wide range of system parameters. In the case of dynamic pricing, we allow both prices and admission control policies to be time-dependent. We show that the optimal dynamic pricing can improve the operator's revenue by more than 30% over the optimal static pricing, when secondary users' demands for spectrum opportunities are highly elastic.
Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness as Motivators of Graduate Teaching Assistants

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play critical roles in undergraduate education. Past studies have examined various programs developed for GTAs, but little work exists that examines GTAs' personal experiences and perceptions in engineering education. To develop teaching environments and training programs that foster positive motivation in GTAs for teaching and improve the quality of their teaching, we need to better understand the factors that motivate them.
Reliable Knowledge: An exploration of the grounds for belief in science

John Ziman 1979 London: Cambridge University Press ix + 197 pp price £7.95 Professor John Ziman, as readers of Physics Bulletin well know, has an established and distinguished reputation as a theoretical physicist. In addition to this he has also written a very well known book (Public Knowledge) about the methodology of science, the style of which places it in the fields of both the philosophy and sociology of science.
Genus Topology of Structure in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Model Testing

We measure the three-dimensional topology of large-scale structure in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This allows the genus statistic to be measured with unprecedented statistical accuracy. The sample size is now sufficiently large to allow the topology to be an important tool for testing galaxy formation models. For comparison, we make mock SDSS samples using several state-of-the-art N-body simulations: the Millennium run of Springel et al. (10 billion particles), the Kim & Park CDM models (1.1 billion particles), and the Cen & Ostriker hydrodynamic code models (8.6 billion cell hydro mesh). Each of these simulations uses a different method for modeling galaxy formation. The SDSS data show a genus curve that is broadly characteristic of that produced by Gaussian random-phase initial conditions. Thus, the data strongly support the standard model of inflation where Gaussian random-phase initial conditions are produced by random quantum fluctuations in the early universe. But on top of this general shape there are measurable differences produced by nonlinear gravitational effects and biasing connected with galaxy formation. The N-body simulations have been tuned to reproduce the power spectrum and multiplicity function but not topology, so topology is an acid test for these models. The data show a “meatball” shift (only partly due to the Sloan Great Wall of galaxies) that differs at the 2.5 σ level from the results of the Millenium run and the Kim & Park dark halo models, even including the effects of cosmic variance.