Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of the Nucleus Raphe Magnus in Antinociception Produced by ABT-594: Immediate Early Gene Responses Possibly Linked to Neuronal Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors on Serotonergic Neurons

Recently, a novel cholinergic channel modulator, (R)-5-(2-azetidinylmethoxy)-2-chloropyridine (ABT-594), was shown to produce potent analgesia in a variety of rodent pain models when administered either systemically or centrally into the nucleus raphe magnus (NRM). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the possible supraspinal contribution of ABT-594 by assessing its ability to induce expression of the immediate early gene c-fos, a biochemical marker of neuronal activation, in the NRM of rats. Putative serotonergic neurons in the NRM, a medullary nucleus proposed to be involved in descending antinociceptive pathways, were identified immunohistochemically using a monoclonal antibody (mAb) against tryptophan hydroxylase. ABT-594 (0.03–0.3 μmol/kg, i.p.) produced a dose-dependent induction of Fos protein that was blocked by the central nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) antagonist mecamylamine (5 μmol/kg, i.p.) but not by the peripheral nAChR antagonist hexamethonium (15 μmol/kg, i.p.). Immunohistological studies using mAb 299 revealed the expression of α4-containing nAChRs in the NRM. The α4 immunostaining was dramatically reduced by pretreating (30 d) animals with the serotonin neurotoxin 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine (5,7-DHT), which was previously shown to substantially attenuate the antinociceptive actions of ABT-594. In a double immunohistochemical labeling experiment, coexpression of the serotonin marker tryptophan hxdroxylase and the α4 nAChR subunit in NRM neurons was observed. These results suggest that the analgesic mechanism of ABT-594 may in part involve the activation of the NRM, a site where α4-containing nAChRs are expressed by serotonergic neurons.
Designed tissue engineering scaffolds prepared by stereolithography

For the fabrication of tissue engineering scaffolds, the intended tissue formation process imposes requirements on the architecture. The chosen porosity often is a tradeoff between volume and surface area accessible to cells, and mechanical properties of the construct. Interconnectivity of the pores is essential for cell migration through the scaffold and for mass transport. Conventional techniques such as salt leaching often result in heterogeneous structures and do not allow for a precise control of the architecture. Stereolithography is a rapid prototyping method that can be utilised to make 3D constructs with high spatial control by radical photopolymerisation. In this study, a regular structure based on cyclic repetition of cell units were designed through CAD modelling. One of these structures was built on a stereolithography apparatus (SLA). Furthermore, a polylactide-based resin was developed that can be applied in stereolithography. Polylactide has proven before to be a well-performing polymer in bone tissue engineering. The final objective in this study is to build newly designed PDLLA scaffolds with a precise SLA fabrication technique to study the effect of scaffold architecture on mechanical and biological properties.
Performance of Dynamic Web Page Generation for Database-driven Web Sites

With the rapid growth of e-business, Web sites are increasingly relying on dynamic content generation applications to provide dynamic interaction and personalized experiences to the Web sites users. To generate such dynamic Web page for each user request requires heavy dynamic script execution due to customize and personalize information. This dynamic script execution puts heavy load on the Web server. Again database server experiences extra overheads due to increase of database-driven e-commerce applications and their frequently update. These extra loads on Web server and database server lead to increase response time. The overall response time is made up of two types of latency, namely network latency and server-side latency. In this paper we are mainly concerned about server-side latency. We have proposed an approach which integrates prediction based dynamic Web page pre-generation with PFC and DBC caching. Our integrated approach reduces dynamic Web page generation time by achieving the eventual benefits through middle-tier database cache (DBC) and HTML fragment cache(PFC) and the immediate benefit through dynamic Web page pre-generation. Response time is reduced by storing database tables in the middle-tier cache and by sharing common fragments among multiple pages stored in the HTML fragment cache. The reduction of response time latency significantly improves the performance and scalability
Revolution in acute ischaemic stroke care: a practical guide to mechanical thrombectomy

Rapid, safe and effective arterial recanalisation to restore blood flow and improve functional outcome remains the primary goal of hyperacute ischaemic stroke management. The benefit of intravenous thrombolysis with recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator for patients with severe stroke due to large artery occlusion is limited; early recanalisation is generally less than 30% for carotid, proximal middle cerebral artery or basilar artery occlusion. Since November 2014, nine positive randomised controlled trials of mechanical thrombectomy for large vessel occlusion in the anterior circulation have led to a revolution in the care of patients with acute ischaemic stroke. Its efficacy is unmatched by any previous therapy in stroke medicine, with a number needed to treat of less than 3 for improved functional outcome. With effectiveness shown beyond any reasonable doubt, the key challenge now is how to implement accessible, safe and effective mechanical thrombectomy services. This review aims to provide neurologists and other stroke physicians with a summary of the evidence base, a discussion of practical aspects of delivering the treatment and future challenges. We aim to give guidance on some of the areas not clearly described in the clinical trials (based on evidence where available, but if not, on our own experience and practice) and highlight areas of uncertainty requiring further research.
GPU acceleration of regular expression matching for large datasets: exploring the implementation space

Regular expression matching is a central task in several networking (and search) applications and has been accelerated on a variety of parallel architectures, including general purpose multi-core processors, network processors, field programmable gate arrays, and ASIC- and TCAM-based systems. All of these solutions are based on finite automata (either in deterministic or non-deterministic form) and mostly focus on effective memory representations for such automata. More recently, a handful of proposals have exploited the parallelism intrinsic in regular expression matching (i.e., coarse-grained packet-level parallelism and fine-grained data structure parallelism) to propose efficient regex-matching designs for GPUs. However, most GPU solutions aim at achieving good performance on small datasets, which are far less complex and problematic than those used in real-world applications. In this work, we provide a more comprehensive study of regular expression matching on GPUs. To this end, we consider datasets of practical size and complexity and explore advantages and limitations of different automata representations and of various GPU implementation techniques. Our goal is not to show optimal speedup on specific datasets, but to highlight advantages and disadvantages of the GPU hardware in supporting state-of-the-art automata representations and encoding schemes, approaches that have been broadly adopted on other parallel memory-based platforms.
QBM - Mapping User-Specified Functions to Programmable Logic through a QBF Satisfiability Problem

This is a brief overview on the background behind the test set formulas generated by the QBM tool. After establishing its application context, its formal approach to the generation of QBF formulas and the concrete test set formulas are described. Finally, some related work will be credited and the source to obtain the open-source tool will be identified.
Requirement of protein kinase D1 for pathological cardiac remodeling

The adult heart responds to biomechanical stress and neurohormonal signaling by hypertrophic growth, accompanied by fibrosis, diminished pump function, and activation of a fetal gene program. Class II histone deacetylases (HDACs) suppress stress-dependent remodeling of the heart via their association with the MEF2 transcription factor, an activator of heart disease. Protein kinase D (PKD) is a stress-responsive kinase that phosphorylates class II HDACs, resulting in their dissociation from MEF2 with consequent activation of MEF2 target genes. To test whether PKD1 is required for pathological cardiac remodeling in vivo, we generated mice with a conditional PKD1-null allele. Mice with cardiac-specific deletion of PKD1 were viable and showed diminished hypertrophy, fibrosis, and fetal gene activation as well as improved cardiac function in response to pressure overload or chronic adrenergic and angiotensin II signaling. We conclude that PKD1 functions as a key transducer of stress stimuli involved in pathological cardiac remodeling in vivo.
Similar A1C outcomes in type 1 diabetic patients undergoing intensive diabetes management with preprandial rapid-acting insulin and either CSII or glargine.

The importance of achieving and maintaining tight glycemic control in patients with type 1 diabetes is well known (1). Continuous insulin infusion therapy (CSII) has been available for many years, but only recently have reports of efficacy with rapid-acting insulin analogues been published. Similarly, multiple daily injection (MDI) therapy using glargine insulin in conjunction with premeal rapid-acting insulin is relatively new (2). In our diabetes center, all patients with type 1 diabetes receive …
Influence of anisotropy on a limit load of weld strength overmatched middle cracked tension specimens

A plane-strain upper bound limit load solution for weld strength overmatched middle cracked tension specimens (M(T) specimens), is found. It is assumed that the weld material is isotropic, but the base material is orthotropic and its axes of orthotropy are straight and parallel to the axes of symmetry of the specimen. A quadratic orthotropic yield criterion is adopted. The solution is based on a simple discontinuous kinematically admissible velocity field and is an extension of the corresponding solution for the specimen made of isotropic materials. These two solutions are compared to demonstrate the influence of anisotropy on the magnitude of the limit load.
Hypoxia-induced deoxycytidine kinase contributes to epithelial proliferation in pulmonary fibrosis.

RATIONALE Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a deadly lung disease with few therapeutic options. Apoptosis of alveolar epithelial cells, followed by abnormal tissue repair characterized by hyperplastic epithelial cell formation, is a pathogenic process that contributes to the progression of pulmonary fibrosis. However, the signaling pathways responsible for increased proliferation of epithelial cells remain poorly understood. OBJECTIVES To investigate the role of deoxycytidine kinase (DCK), an important enzyme for the salvage of deoxynucleotides, in the progression of pulmonary fibrosis. METHODS DCK expression was examined in the lungs of patients with IPF and mice exposed to bleomycin. The regulation of DCK expression by hypoxia was studied in vitro and the importance of DCK in experimental pulmonary fibrosis was examined using a DCK inhibitor and alveolar epithelial cell-specific knockout mice. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS DCK was elevated in hyperplastic alveolar epithelial cells of patients with IPF and in mice exposed to bleomycin. Increased DCK was localized to cells associated with hypoxia, and hypoxia directly induced DCK in alveolar epithelial cells in vitro. Hypoxia-induced DCK expression was abolished by silencing hypoxia-inducible factor 1α and treatment of bleomycin-exposed mice with a DCK inhibitor attenuated pulmonary fibrosis in association with decreased epithelial cell proliferation. Furthermore, DCK expression, and proliferation of epithelial cells and pulmonary fibrosis was attenuated in mice with conditional deletion of hypoxia-inducible factor 1α in the alveolar epithelium. CONCLUSIONS Our findings suggest that the induction of DCK after hypoxia plays a role in the progression of pulmonary fibrosis by contributing to alveolar epithelial cell proliferation.
Using Multicriteria Decision-Making to Take into Account the Situation in System Engineering

All Software Engineering (SE) processes include steps where several alternatives call for decisions. However, in many cases, the choice is intuitive and thereafter hazardous with unpredictable consequences. On the other side, the operational research domain has produced many methods that could be adequately used in these situations. Using these methods should facilitate the decision making activity by considering specific SE situations. However, no work has been done to understand how, when, or which of these methods could be used in SE. This paper describes how multicriteria methods could be applied to consider the situation in the SE.
Action synchronization in P2P system testing

Testing peer-to-peer (P2P) systems is difficult because of the high numbers of nodes which can be heterogeneous and volatile. A test case may be composed of several ordered actions that may be executed on different nodes. To ensure action ordering and the correct behavior of the test case, a synchronization mechanism is required. In this paper, we propose a synchronization algorithm for executing test case actions in P2P systems. The main goal of the algorithm is to progressively dispatch the actions of a test case to a set of nodes and ensure that all nodes completed the execution of an action before dispatching the next one. We validated our synchronization algorithm through implementation and experimentation on an open-source P2P system. The experimentation shows how the algorithm was able to detect implementation problems on the P2P system.
Robust local principal component analyzer with fuzzy clustering

Non-linear extensions of principal component analysis (PCA) have been developed for detecting the lower-dimensional representations of real world data sets and local linear approaches are used widely because of their computational simplicity and understandability. Fuzzy c-varieties (FCV) is the linear fuzzy clustering algorithm that estimates local principal component vectors as the vectors spanning prototypes of clusters. Least squares techniques, however, often fail to account for "outliers", which are common in real applications. In this paper, we propose a technique for making the FCV algorithm robust to intra-sample outliers. The objective function based on the lower rank approximation of the data matrix is minimized by a robust M-estimation algorithm that is similar to FCM-type iterative procedures.
Pixel Dependent Automatic Parameter Selection for Image Denoising with Bilateral Filter

denoising using bilateral filter is controlled by the width of its smoothing functions namely the domain and the range components. The choice of the width of range function is image dependent and requires several experiments. This paper presents an automatic method based on power-law scaling of the inverse of local statistics for pixel wise estimation of range parameter. This leads to an adaptive range function that is narrow along the edges and wide for smooth regions. The experimental results validate the performance of the proposed method of parameter selection in denoising images corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise.
Incremental decision tree based on order statistics

New application domains generate data which are not persistent anymore but volatile: network management, web profile modeling. These data arrive quickly, massively and are visible just once. Thus they necessarily have to be learnt according to their arrival orders. For classification problems online decision trees are known to perform well and are widely used on streaming data. In this paper, we propose a new decision tree method based on order statistics. The construction of an online tree usually needs summaries in the leaves. Our solution uses bounded error quantiles summaries. A robust and performing discretization or grouping method uses these summaries to provide, at the same time, a criterion to find the best split and better density estimations. This estimation is then used to build a näıve Bayes classifier in the leaves to improve the prediction in the early learning stage.
Re-articulating the role of process design to support mass customisation: The case of rapid manufactured custom-made fixtures

Whilst the fulfilment of customised production affects the whole product realisation chain involving product design, process design and supply chain design, our assessment of the literature observes comparatively little attention has been given to process design. Within this area, this paper considers the opportunity for custom fixture manufacture, combining the power of modularity with the technologies of Rapid Manufacturing. Several examples are presented illustrating significant improvements in quality, fixture cost and overall time to market can be achieved through this approach.
Energy-efficiency of concast communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

In monitoring scenarios, Wireless Sensor Networks commonly transmit measurements from a large number of sensor nodes to a central data sink. This communication pattern is known as concast. Different approaches have been proposed to improve the energy-efficiency of concast and thus the lifetime of the WSN. However, energy-efficiency evaluations that are close to reality are missing. This paper systematically analyzes the influence of aggregation strategies, tree topologies, and different MAC protocols on the energy-efficiency of concast communication. We implement a sample concast application and analyze it using the AVRORA + simulator to gain realistic evaluation results. Our results disproof some common assumptions. We show that aggregation improves energy-efficiency only in a few cases and can even degrade it. Instead, MAC protocol and parametrization have a higher impact on energy-efficiency.
First‐trimester screening for fetal aneuploidy: biochemistry and nuchal translucency

Maternal dried whole‐blood specimens were collected prospectively from 2010 singleton pregnancies between 9 + 0 and 13 + 4 weeks that included 18 chromosomally abnormal pregnancies (11 Down's syndrome, four trisomy 18, two trisomy 13 and one triploidy). A subset of 744 pregnancies underwent ultrasound nuchal translucency measurement and included seven Down's syndrome, four trisomy 18, two trisomy 13 and one triploidy. Patients were evaluated for risk of Down's syndrome and trisomy 18 based on biochemistry (free β‐human chorionic gonadotropin and pregnancy‐associated plasma protein A), nuchal translucency and the combination of both. In prospective biochemical screening, false‐positive rates for Down's syndrome and trisomy 18 were 5.1% (66/1297) and 1.9% (25/1297) in women < 35 years of age and 14.2% (99/695) and 1.6% (1l/695) in women ≥ 35 years of age, respectively. The detection efficiency of aneuploidy was 6/6 (100%) in women < 35 years and 11/12 (92%) in women ≥ 35 years. Nuchal translucency measurement alone elected 57% (8/14) of cases of aneuploidy at a 5.8% (42/730) false‐positive rate. Modelling with the age distribution of live births, a 5% false‐positive rate resulted in Down's syndrome detection efficiency of 61% by biochemistry, 73% by nuchal translucency and 87% by combining both methods. The data in this study demonstrate that combined biochemical and ultrasound evaluation for Down's syndrome, and other chromosomal abnormalities in the first trimester of pregnancy yield a detection capability that may exceed that of current second‐trimester prenatal screening protocols. The potential for enhanced detection coupled to an earlier alert of fetal complications could represent a substantial advantage to both clinician and patient. Copyright © 1997 International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology
A neutral-point clamped converter system for direct-drive variable-speed wind power unit

Recent and ongoing developments in wind turbine technology indicate a trend towards utilization of high capacity (e.g., up to 5 MW) wind power units in large wind farms. Higher capacity of the wind turbine necessitates operation of the corresponding electric machine and the static converter system at higher voltages. This paper presents a neutral point diode clamped (NPC) converter system that inherently accommodates higher voltage and power ratings of a high capacity wind power unit. The overall control strategy of an NPC-based wind power unit and the details of the ac side and the dc side controls of the NPC converter system are also described. The generator-side NPC converter provides torque-speed control of the turbine-generator unit. The network-side NPC converter controls real and reactive power flow to the network and thus regulates the dc bus voltage and the ac side power-factor (or voltage) respectively. The paper also presents a new control approach to balance the dc capacitor voltages. The NPC converter system is augmented with a dc chopper that controls the synchronous generator field current. The NPC-based converter system is used to interface a 3 MW, direct-drive (gearless), synchronous machine based wind power unit to the utility grid. Performance of the overall NPC-based wind power unit, under the proposed controls, is evaluated based on time domain simulations in the power systems computer aided design (PSCAD) electromagnetic transient for DC (EMTDC) environment.
The Influence of Composition on the Hot Ductility of Steels and to the Problem of Transverse Cracking

A review of the literature has been made, concentrating on the influence of N, V, Ti and the residuals, Cu, Sn, S and P, on the hot ductility of steels. Nitrogen is generally detrimental to ductility in Al containing and microalloyed steels; to avoid transverse cracking the N levels should be kept as low as possible. When Ti additions are made to low N, C-Mn-Al steels, (0.005 % N) the best ductility is likely to be given by a high Ti : N ratio of 4-5 : 1. For high N steels (0.01 % N), a low Ti level (0.01 %) is recommended to reduce the volume fraction of Ti containing particles, but allow precipitation to occur at high temperatures. In addition a low soluble Al level is needed to prevent the excess N from combining to form AlN. For C-Mn-Nb-Al steels, similar recommendations can be made with regard to adding Ti. However, the presence of Nb and Al appears to have little influence on the ductility, since these elements coarsen the Ti containing precipitates. Furthermore, once the Ti has combined with the N any remaining N now seems beneficial, possibly because high N contents encourage precipitation at higher temperatures. V as a microalloying addition gives better hot ductility than Nb and the product of the V and N has to approach 1.2×10-3, e.g. 0.1 % V and 0.012 % N before ductility deteriorates to that normally shown with a 0.03 % Nb addition. S levels should be kept low to reduce the detrimental precipitation of fine sulphides at the γ boundaries. Care must be taken with Ca treatment as if the steel is too "clean", none of the Nb may be able to precipitate out prior to straightening. Residual levels of Cu> 0.15% and Sn are detrimental to surface quality and encourage transverse cracking. It is found that Cu is deleterious to ductility, but Ni can be added to compensate for this loss. It is recommended that the amount of Ni added should be greater than the residual Cu level to be sure of avoiding problems, (Ni : Cu ratio nearer to 1.5 to 2). Phosphorus although potentially beneficial to ductility can not be recommended unless its segregation during solidification can be reduced.