Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ovarian follicles during infancy in Romanov and Ile-de-France ewe lambs.

The ovaries of new born lambs (15 Ile-de-France and 19 Romanov, 34 ovaries) and of 4-week-old lambs (6 Ile-de-France and 12 Romanov, 18 ovaries) were examined histologically to compare ovarian follicular development in infant lambs of breeds differing in their prolificacy. Breed was the major factor affecting follicular population at birth. Ile-de-France lambs had a higher total number of growing follicles (P less than 0.001), and more preantral (P less than 0.001) and antral (P less than 0.005) follicles than did Romanov lambs. Furthermore, the size of the largest follicles was also reduced in Romanov compared to Ile-de-France lambs. At 4 weeks of age, most of the features of the ovarian follicular population except the mean size of the third largest follicle were similar between the two breeds. However, atresia of antral follicles had appeared only in Ile-de-France and not in Romanov lambs. When a challenge with exogenous gonadotrophins (1000 i.u. PMSG followed by 1500 i.u. hCG) was attempted, ovulation was triggered in 2/6 and 0/12 Ile-de-France and Romanov lambs respectively. Massive follicular development was noted in 3/6 Ile-de-France lambs but in none of 12 Romanov lambs. Retardation of follicular development together with retardation in the establishment of ovarian sensitivity to gonadotrophins are therefore features typical of the ovaries of Romanov lambs compared to Ile-de-France lambs during the post-natal period.
A multigrid‐based shifted Laplacian preconditioner for a fourth‐order Helmholtz discretization

In this paper, an iterative solution method for a fourth‐order accurate discretization of the Helmholtz equation is presented. The method is a generalization of that presented in (SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 2006; 27:1471–1492), where multigrid was employed as a preconditioner for a Krylov subspace iterative method. The multigrid preconditioner is based on the solution of a second Helmholtz operator with a complex‐valued shift. In particular, we compare preconditioners based on a point‐wise Jacobi smoother with those using an ILU(0) smoother, we compare using the prolongation operator developed by de Zeeuw in (J. Comput. Appl. Math. 1990; 33:1–27) with interpolation operators based on algebraic multigrid principles, and we compare the performance of the Krylov subspace method Bi‐conjugate gradient stabilized with the recently introduced induced dimension reduction method, IDR(s). These three improvements are combined to yield an efficient solver for heterogeneous problems. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Covariance based linear precoding in amplify-and-forward cooperative networks

We deal with linear precoding in two-hop multiple-input single-output (MISO) amplify-and-forword (AF) cooperative networks. It is assumed that only limited feedback about channel state information (CSI) is available at the source node where precoding is performed. To reduce the feedback overhead, the precoder is designed based on covariance CSI of the direct channel and relay channel with the constraint of total transmit power at source and relay nodes. The signal model for the described system is derived and the uncoded bit error rate (BER) of cooperative communication is investigated. With the numerical results obtained we can conclude that the precoders designed based on the partial CSI can still help to achieve diversity gain, which could be a reference for systems where full CSI is not so easy to obtain at the source node.
An Efficient Trust Management Technique for Delay Tolerant Network

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) have high end-to-end latency, which is often faces disconnection, and unreliable wireless connections. It does not mean a delay service instead DTNs provides a service where network imposes disruption or delay. It operates in challenged networks with extremely limited resources such as memory size, CPU processing power etc. This paper presents an efficient trust managing mechanism for providing secure environment. The proposed dynamic trust management protocol uses a dynamic threshold updating which overcomes the problems with time changing dynamic characteristics by dynamically updating the criteria in response to changing network conditions. This reduces overheads and increases the efficient use of routing network even in conditions change. Also the dynamic threshold update reduces the false detection probability of the malicious nodes. To show the effectiveness of the proposed system, a detailed simulation in the presence of selfish and malicious nodes is performed with ONE simulator. Finally a comparative analysis of our proposed routing with previous routing protocols is also performed. The results demonstrate that presented algorithm deals effectively with selfish behavior with providing significant gain on effective delivery ratio in trade off with message overhead and delay.
Control of unbalanced three-phase power electronic systems

This paper examines the control of unbalanced three-phase three-wire power electronic systems. The definition of the control strategy for the unbalanced three-phase system is based on the equivalent two-phase unbalanced-coupled model. The control strategy proposed is derived from the double controller scheme that employs one controller for the positive sequence and another for the negative sequence. An extension of the control strategy to deal with the presence of high frequency harmonics in the system is also addressed. The controller is implemented in a microcomputer-based system at the stationary reference frame. The simulation and experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed methodology.
Dispersal of Group A Streptococcal Biofilms by the Cysteine Protease SpeB Leads to Increased Disease Severity in a Murine Model

Group A Streptococcus (GAS) is a Gram-positive human pathogen best known for causing pharyngeal and mild skin infections. However, in the 1980's there was an increase in severe GAS infections including cellulitis and deeper tissue infections like necrotizing fasciitis. Particularly striking about this elevation in the incidence of severe disease was that those most often affected were previously healthy individuals. Several groups have shown that changes in gene content or regulation, as with proteases, may contribute to severe disease; yet strains harboring these proteases continue to cause mild disease as well. We and others have shown that group A streptococci (MGAS5005) reside within biofilms both in vitro and in vivo. That is to say that the organism colonizes a host surface and forms a 3-dimensional community encased in a protective matrix of extracellular protein, DNA and polysaccharide(s). However, the mechanism of assembly or dispersal of these structures is unclear, as is the relationship of these structures to disease outcome. Recently we reported that allelic replacement of the streptococcal regulator srv resulted in constitutive production of the streptococcal cysteine protease SpeB. We further showed that the constitutive production of SpeB significantly decreased MGAS5005Δsrv biofilm formation in vitro. Here we show that mice infected with MGAS5005Δsrv had significantly larger lesion development than wild-type infected animals. Histopathology, Gram-staining and immunofluorescence link the increased lesion development with lack of disease containment, lack of biofilm formation, and readily detectable levels of SpeB in the tissue. Treatment of MGAS5005Δsrv infected lesions with a chemical inhibitor of SpeB significantly reduced lesion formation and disease spread to wild-type levels. Furthermore, inactivation of speB in the MGAS5005Δsrv background reduced lesion formation to wild-type levels. Taken together, these data suggest a mechanism by which GAS disease may transition from mild to severe through the Srv mediated dispersal of GAS biofilms.
Non‐communicable diseases in low‐ and middle‐income countries: context, determinants and health policy

The rise of non‐communicable diseases and their impact in low‐ and middle‐income countries has gained increased attention in recent years. However, the explanation for this rise is mostly an extrapolation from the history of high‐income countries whose experience differed from the development processes affecting today’s low‐ and middle‐income countries. This review appraises these differences in context to gain a better understanding of the epidemic of non‐communicable diseases in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Theories of developmental and degenerative determinants of non‐communicable diseases are discussed to provide strong evidence for a causally informed approach to prevention. Health policies for non‐communicable diseases are considered in terms of interventions to reduce population risk and individual susceptibility and the research needs for low‐ and middle‐income countries are discussed. Finally, the need for health system reform to strengthen primary care is highlighted as a major policy to reduce the toll of this rising epidemic.
Exhaustive Sampling of Docking Poses Reveals Binding Hypotheses for Propafenone Type Inhibitors of P-Glycoprotein

Overexpression of the xenotoxin transporter P-glycoprotein (P-gp) represents one major reason for the development of multidrug resistance (MDR), leading to the failure of antibiotic and cancer therapies. Inhibitors of P-gp have thus been advocated as promising candidates for overcoming the problem of MDR. However, due to lack of a high-resolution structure the concrete mode of interaction of both substrates and inhibitors is still not known. Therefore, structure-based design studies have to rely on protein homology models. In order to identify binding hypotheses for propafenone-type P-gp inhibitors, five different propafenone derivatives with known structure-activity relationship (SAR) pattern were docked into homology models of the apo and the nucleotide-bound conformation of the transporter. To circumvent the uncertainty of scoring functions, we exhaustively sampled the pose space and analyzed the poses by combining information retrieved from SAR studies with common scaffold clustering. The results suggest propafenone binding at the transmembrane helices 5, 6, 7 and 8 in both models, with the amino acid residue Y307 playing a crucial role. The identified binding site in the non-energized state is overlapping with, but not identical to, known binding areas of cyclic P-gp inhibitors and verapamil. These findings support the idea of several small binding sites forming one large binding cavity. Furthermore, the binding hypotheses for both catalytic states were analyzed and showed only small differences in their protein-ligand interaction fingerprints, which indicates only small movements of the ligand during the catalytic cycle.
Birth order, family configuration, and verbal achievement.

Two samples of National Merit Scholarship participants test in 1962 and the entire population of almost 800,000 participants tested in 1965 were examined. Consistent effects in all 3 groups were observed with respect to both birth order and family size (1st born and those of smaller families scored higher). Control of both socioeconomic variables and maternal age, by analysis of variance as well as by analysis of covariance, failed to alter the relationships. Stepdown analyses suggested that the effects were due to a verbal component and that no differences were attributable to nonverbal factors. Mean test scores were computed for detailed sibship configurations based on birth order, family size, sibling spacing, and sibling sex.
An Error-Resilient Arithmetic Coding Algorithm for Compressed Meshes

The effort of on-the-fly accessing 3D contents over the Internet has been done in recent years. And 3D streaming has been investigated to represent 3D models in the compact format and progressively transmit them on the limited-bandwidth and lossy channel. In the paper, an error resilient 3D mesh coding algorithm is presented, which employs an extended multiple quantization (EMQ) arithmetic coder method, inspired by the error-resilient JPEG 2000 image coding standards. With periodic arithmetic coder restarting and termination markers, the error resilient EMQ coder divides bit stream into little independent parts and enables basic transmission error containment. Furthermore, the EMQ coder has the intrinsic capacity of handling noise by using the maximum a posteriori (MAP) decoder. Experiments show that the method improves the mesh transmission quality in a simulated network environment.
Stimulatory Effect of Topical Application of Caffeine on UVB-Induced Apoptosis in the Epidermis of p53 and Bax Knockout Mice

Shaved male or female p53(−/−) C57BL/6J mice and their wild-type littermates were irradiated once with UVB (60 mJ/cm2). The UVB-induced increase in apoptotic sunburn cells in p53(−/−) mice at 6–10 h after exposure to UVB was only 10–30% of that observed after treatment of p53(+/+) mice with UVB. Topical applications of caffeine immediately after UVB irradiation in female p53(+/+) or p53(−/−) mice enhanced the UVB-induced increase in apoptotic sunburn cells 6 h later by 127% and 563%, respectively. In another study, shaved female Bax(−/−) C57BL/6J mice and their wild-type littermates were irradiated once with UVB (60 mJ/cm2). The UVB-induced increase in apoptotic sunburn cells in Bax(−/−) mice at 6 h after exposure to UVB was only 14% of that observed after treatment of Bax(+/+) mice with UVB. Topical application of caffeine immediately after irradiation of Bax(+/+) or Bax(−/−) mice with UVB enhanced the UVB-induced increases in apoptotic sunburn cells at 6 h by 214% and 467%, respectively, and topical application of caffeine immediately after irradiation of Bax(+/+) or Bax(−/−) mice with UVB enhanced the UVB-induced increase in caspase 3 (active form) positive cells at 6 h by 253% and 750%, respectively. The results indicate that UVB-induced increases in apoptosis in the epidermis of wild-type mice are predominantly (but not entirely) by p53- and Bax-dependent pathways and that topical application of caffeine can enhance UVB-induced increases in apoptosis by p53- and Bax-independent pathways.
Iterative Channel Estimation for Block Transmission with Known Symbol Padding - A New Look at TDS-OFDM

This study proposes an iterative channel impulse response (CIR) estimation scheme for multicarrier block transmission with known symbol padding, in the context of the time-domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) system. It is shown that the TDS-OFDM still fulfils the circular convolution relationship even if pseudo-noise (PN) sequence is used as guard interval. While conventional methods perform the channel estimation based on the cyclic prefix reconstruction or residual intersymbol interference cancellation in the time domain, by processing the data part and the known symbol padding in one TDS-OFDM block separately, the new proposal uses the one- tap frequency-domain equalization to separate the data part and the known symbol padding and the CIR can be estimated in an iterative manner. In a typical example for 3780-point FFT based TDS-OFDM system with 16QAM constellations, the mean square error (MSE) of of the proposed channel estimator can be reduced to about 10-5/2 after two iterations when the channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is larger than 8 dB, without the initial CIR estimation. The BER performance of a QPSK TDS-OFDM system shows that the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) degradation based on the proposed channel estimator is less than 0.3 dB compared with the lower bound for both Brazil A and B channels.
Development of Optical and Acoustic Hybrid Microscope for Visualization of a Single Cell

Acoustic microscope can measure the acoustic parameters of living cells. It is expected that disease mechanism is elucidated, and that treatment methods is developed by analyzing structure and function of cells. In this study, the optical and acoustic hybrid microscope has been developed. The ultrasonic transducer has 250 MHz. As a result of imaging the 3T3-L1 mouse fibroblasts, good contrast was achieved in the portion of the cell nucleus and pseudopod in the acoustic image. In addition, two-dimensional color images of thickness and sound speed of the cell were successfully obtained by using time-resolved analysis. The average thickness was 7.9 μm, and sound speed was 1602 m/s.
Trends in Glaucoma Disability in Ukraine

The article represents the glaucoma disability rates in Ukraine and touches upon medical and social aspects of the problem. We have screened a data from source medical documents and analyzed the MSEK (Physical Disability Board of Review) statistical reporting data, further used as a basis for calculation of live indices of general and primary disabilities caused by eye diseases, including the ones caused by primary open-angle glaucoma (7.05% and 9.99%, respectively), the extensive distribution indices of disability by gender (75.74% male), age (59.29% of II maturity patients), and a disability group (56% of patients recognized disabled persons of groups I and II). Our findings indicate a lack of modern science-based approaches to diagnosis, rehabilitation, and socio-medical examination of patients with ophthalmologic pathologies, thus requiring deeper study of this problem.
Factors associated with receipt of 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) monovalent and seasonal influenza vaccination among school-aged children: Maricopa County, Arizona, 2009-2010 influenza season.

CONTEXT To target school-aged children (SAC), who were identified as a priority for pandemic 2009 Influenza A (pH1N1) vaccination, Maricopa County (MC) initiated school-based influenza vaccination in 69% of its 706 schools during the 2009-2010 influenza season. OBJECTIVE To determine factors associated with receipt of pH1N1 monovalent and 2009-2010 seasonal influenza vaccination among SAC and evaluate the association of school-based vaccination with vaccination status of SAC. DESIGN Random-digit dialing was used to survey 600 MC households with willing adult participants and children grades K-12. Logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with pH1N1 and seasonal vaccine receipt. SETTING Arizona. PARTICIPANTS Household adults with children grades K-12. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Characteristics of children, parents, and households were obtained. RESULTS Among 909 SAC, 402 (44%) received pH1N1 and 436 (48%) received seasonal vaccination. Factors associated with pH1N1 vaccination included vaccine availability at school (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 1.6; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.0-2.7), high-risk medical condition in child (AOR: 2.4; 95% CI: 1.4-4.0), elementary versus high school attendance (AOR: 1.6; 95% CI: 1.0-2.7), and seasonal influenza vaccination (AOR: 10.0; 95% CI: 6.4-15.6). Factors associated with seasonal vaccination included Hispanic ethnicity (AOR: 2.2; 95% CI: 1.1-4.2), health insurance coverage (AOR: 4.8; 95% CI: 1.7-13.7), elementary versus high school attendance (AOR: 1.5; 95% CI: 1.0-2.5), and pH1N1 vaccination (AOR: 10.5; 95% CI: 6.7-16.6). CONCLUSIONS Availability of pH1N1 vaccine at school was independently associated with pH1N1 vaccination of MC school-aged children. School-based influenza vaccination campaigns should be considered to increase vaccination among this population.
Study on the Scattering of Elastic Waves for the Nondestructive Evaluation of Piezoelectric Composites

The wave function expansion method is engaged for the theoretical derivations to study the effect of material parameters perturbations on the resonance acoustic scattering behavior of 1-3 piezoelectric composites. Numerical examples are provided to verify the effectiveness of the analysis. Results obtained are meaningful for the non-destructive evaluation of 1-3 piezoelectric composites.
The Chromatic Polynomials and its Algebraic Properties

This paper studies various results on chromatic polynomials of graphs. We obtain results on the roots of chromatic polynomials of planar graphs. The main results are chromatic polynomial of a graph is polynomial in integer and the leading coefficient of chromatic polynomial of a graph of order n and size m is one, whose coefficient alternate in sign. Mathematics subject classification 2000: 05CXX, 05C15, 05C30, 05C75
A Framework for Estimating the Impact of a Distributed Software System's Architectural Style on its Energy Consumption

The selection of an architectural style for a given software system is an important factor in satisfying its quality requirements. In battery-powered environments, such as mobile and pervasive systems, efficiency with respect to energy consumption has increasingly been recognized as an important quality attribute. In this paper, we present a framework that (1) facilitates early estimation of the energy consumption induced by an architectural style in a distributed software system, and (2) consequently enables an engineer to use energy consumption estimates along with other quality attributes in determining the most appropriate style for a given distributed application. We have applied the framework on five distributed systems styles to date, and have evaluated it for precision and accuracy using a particular middleware platform that supports the implementation of those styles. In a large number of application scenarios, our framework exhibited excellent precision, in that it was consistently able to correctly rank the five styles and estimate the relative differences in their energy consumptions. Moreover, the framework has also proven to be accurate: its estimates were within 7% of the different style implementations ' actually measured energy consumptions.
Pectin methylesterase NaPME1 contributes to the emission of methanol during insect herbivory and to the elicitation of defence responses in Nicotiana attenuata

Pectin methylesterases (PMEs) catalyse the demethylation of pectin within plant cell walls, releasing methanol (MeOH) in the process. Thus far, PMEs have been found to be involved in diverse processes such as plant growth and development and defence responses against pathogens. Herbivore attack increases PME expression and activity and MeOH emissions in several plant species. To gain further insights into the role of PMEs in defence responses against herbivores, the expression of a Manduca sexta oral secretion (OS)-inducible PME in Nicotiana attenuata (NaPME1) was silenced by RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated gene silencing. Silenced lines (ir-pme) showed 50% reduced PME activity in leaves and 70% reduced MeOH emissions after OS elicitation compared with the wild type (WT), demonstrating that the herbivore-induced MeOH emissions originate from the demethylation of pectin by PME. In the initial phase of the OS-induced jasmonic acid (JA) burst (first 30 min), ir-pme lines produced WT levels of this hormone and of jasmonyl-isoleucine (JA-Ile); however, these levels were significantly reduced in the later phase (60–120 min) of the burst. Similarly, suppressed levels of the salicylic acid (SA) burst induced by OS elicitation were observed in ir-pme lines even though wounded ir-pme leaves contained slightly increased amounts of SA. This genotype also presented reduced levels of OS-induced trypsin proteinase inhibitor activity in leaves and consistently increased M. sexta larvae performance compared with WT plants. These latter responses could not be recovered by application of exogenous MeOH. Together, these results indicated that PME contributes, probably indirectly by affecting cell wall properties, to the induction of anti-herbivore responses.