Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Femoral Head Avascular Necrosis in Heterozygous Sickle Haemoglobin, the Role of Parenteral Drug Abuse: A Case Report

Submitted 25 Nov 2016; Accepted 21 Dec 2016; Published 14 Jan 2017 Sickle cell trait is a benign haemoglobin disorder which rarely results in disease or complications. A few cases of osteonecrosis have been reported in the literature in parts of the world with advanced health care system. There are various predispositions to developing avascular necrosis in general, while the sickle beta globin gene inheritance is the most efficient factor. Injection drug abuse has not been strongly link to the development of bone necrosis. Here we report a case of bone necrosis in an elderly man and raise awareness on osteonecrosis being a possible complication of injection drug misuse in heterozygous sickle haemoglobin disorder. A 68 year old retired health dispensary attendant presented at the clinic with an 18 months history of progress ive right hip pain associated with difficulty in walking. He had engaged in self prescriptions, procurements and repeated administrations of pentazocine injection into his anterior thighs. He had an abnormal gait with bilateral discharging ulcers on both thighs anteriorly. Haemoglobin protein electrophoresis revealed AS status, while the pelvic X-ray showed necrosis of the right femoral head. Consequently, osteonecrosis may be one of the ultimate complications of parenteral drug abuse in heterozygous sickle haemoglobinopathy.
Work in progress: On entrance test criteria for CS and IT UG programs

Indian universities broadly follow an entrance process for undergraduate engineering process in which physics, chemistry and mathematics based questions are asked. Either the individual scores or some combination of these scores is used to set the admission criterion for different engineering streams. However, it has not been analyzed whether this is a good predictor of undergraduate performance or not, especially in Indian context. The broad goal of this research is to understand the relationship between entrance criterion and undergraduate Computer Science/Information Technology performance. The analysis includes data collected from the students who appeared in the entrance exams and took admission in IIIT-Delhi in between 2008 to 2010. The scores obtained in entrance exams and cumulative grade point average earned during the first year of their studies are analyzed. Preliminary analysis suggests that for computer science undergraduate studies, mathematics or numerical understanding is an important aspect. Further, logic and aptitude based tests are better correlated in context of computer science education.
Self-disclosure, reciprocity and liking.

While assuming that the reception of self-disclosing information is rewarding, it was suggested that various costs become salient when the information is highly intimate, making the overall outcome negative. 30 female Ss were exposed to a low, medium, and high disclosing other in a role-playing experiment. Ss reciprocated the intimacy level of the low and medium disclosing others. Although an obtained increase in subject intimacy with the medium to high increase in other intimacy was unexpected, reciprocity became less powerful as a determinant of responses at high intimacy levels. As predicted, there was a curvilinear relationship between self-disclosure and liking. Ss perceived the high disclosing other as significantly less well-adjusted than either the low or medium disclosers.
Synergistic Activation of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Promoter Activity by NF-κB and Inhibitors of Deacetylases: Potential Perspectives for the Development of Therapeutic Strategies

ABSTRACT The transcription factor NF-κB plays a central role in the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) activation pathway. HIV-1 transcription is also regulated by protein acetylation, since treatment with deacetylase inhibitors such as trichostatin A (TSA) or sodium butyrate (NaBut) markedly induces HIV-1 transcriptional activity of the long terminal repeat (LTR) promoter. Here, we demonstrate that TSA (NaBut) synergized with both ectopically expressed p50/p65 and tumor necrosis factor alpha/SF2 (TNF)-induced NF-κB to activate the LTR. This was confirmed for LTRs from subtypes A through G of the HIV-1 major group, with a positive correlation between the number of κB sites present in the LTRs and the amplitude of the TNF-TSA synergism. Mechanistically, TSA (NaBut) delayed the cytoplasmic recovery of the inhibitory protein IκBα. This coincided with a prolonged intranuclear presence and DNA binding activity of NF-κB. The physiological relevance of the TNF-TSA (NaBut) synergism was shown on HIV-1 replication in both acutely and latently HIV-infected cell lines. Therefore, our results open new therapeutic strategies aimed at decreasing or eliminating the pool of latently HIV-infected reservoirs by forcing viral expression.
Tec Kinase Itk Forms Membrane Clusters Specifically in the Vicinity of Recruiting Receptors*

The Tec family of tyrosine kinases transduces signals from antigen and other receptors in cells of the hematopoietic system. In particular, interleukin-2 inducible T cell kinase (Itk) plays an important role in modulating T cell development and activation. Itk is activated by receptors via a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-mediated pathway, which results in recruitment of Itk to the plasma membrane via its pleckstrin homology domain. We show here that membrane localization of Itk results in the formation of clusters of at least two molecules within 80 Å of each other, which is dependent on the integrity of its pleckstrin homology domain. By contrast, the proline-rich region within the Tec homology domain, SH3 or SH2 domains, or kinase activity were not required for this event. More importantly, these clusters of Itk molecules form in distinct regions of the plasma membrane as only receptors that recruit phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase reside in the same membrane vicinity as the recruited Itk. Our results indicate that Itk forms dimers in the membrane and that receptors that recruit Itk do so to specific membrane regions.
Quantum noise in optical fibers. II. Raman jitter in soliton communications

The dynamics of a soliton propagating in a single-mode optical fiber with gain, loss, and Raman coupling to thermal phonons is analyzed. Using both soliton perturbation theory and exact numerical techniques, we propose that intrinsic thermal quantum noise from the phonon reservoirs is a larger source of jitter and other perturbations than the gain-related Gordon–Haus noise for short pulses (≲1 ps), assuming typical fiber parameters. The size of the Raman timing jitter is evaluated for both bright and dark (topological) solitons and is larger for bright solitons. Because Raman thermal quantum noise is a nonlinear, multiplicative noise source, these effects are stronger for the more intense pulses that are needed to propagate as solitons in the short-pulse regime. Thus Raman noise may place additional limitations on fiber-optical communications and networking by use of ultrafast (subpicosecond) pulses.
Semi-Supervised WSD in Selectional Preferences with Semantic Redundancy

This paper proposes a semi-supervised approach for WSD in Word-Class based selectional preferences. The approach exploits syntagmatic and paradigmatic semantic redundancy in the semantic system and uses association computation and minimum description length for the task of WSD. Experiments on Predicate-Object collocations and Subject-Predicate collocations with polysemous predicates in Chinese show that the proposed approach achieves a precision which is 8% higher than the semantic-association based baseline. The semi-supervised nature of the approach makes it promising for constructing large scale selectional preference knowledge base.
Perfect Taxation with Imperfect Competition

This paper analyzes features of perfect taxation also known as optimal taxation when one or more private markets is imperfectly competitive. Governments with perfect information and access to lump-sum taxes can provide corrective subsidies that render outcomes efficient in the presence of imperfect competition. Relaxing either of these two conditions removes the government's ability to support efficient resource allocation and changes the perfect policy response. When governments cannot use lump-sum taxes, perfect tax policies represent compromises between the benefits of subsidizing output in the imperfectly competitive sectors of the economy and the costs of imposing higher taxes elsewhere. This tradeoff is formally identical for ad valorem and specific taxes, even though ad valorem taxation is welfare superior to specific taxation in the presence of imperfect competition. When governments have uncertain knowledge of the degree of competition in product markets, perfect corrective tax policy is generally of smaller magnitude than that when the degree of competition is known with certainty.
Calcium-dependent protein kinases are potential targets for Toxoplasma gondii vaccine

Toxoplasma gondii belongs to the Apicomplexa phylum that caused a widespread zoonotic infection in wide range of intermediate hosts. Over one-third of the world's population are latently infected with T. gondii and carry it. The complex life cycle of T. gondii indicates the presence of a plurality of antigenic epitopes. During the recent years, continuous efforts of scientists have made precious advances to elucidate the different aspects of the cell and molecular biology of T. gondii. Despite of great progresses, the development of vaccine candidates for preventing of T. gondii infection in men and animals is still remains a challenge. The calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) belongs to the superfamily of kinases, which restricted to the apicomplexans, ciliates, and plants. It has been documented that they contribute several functions in the life cycle of T. gondii such as gliding motility, cell invasion, and egress as well as some other critical developmental processes. In current paper, we reviewed the recent progress concerning the development of CDPK-based vaccines against acute and chronic T. gondii.
Power management in energy harvesting embedded systems with discrete service levels

Power management has been a critical issue in the design of embedded systems due to the limited power supply. To prolong the lifetime, energy minimization has been studied under performance constraints in the past decade. The emerging embedded systems with the capability to harvest energy from the environment have recently triggered the revision of power management to improve the quality of service dynamically. As the available power/energy of an electronic device changes over time and is limited by many environmental factors, the system has to decide when to change to which service level to provide better quality of service without wasting the harvested energy. In this paper, we explore how to maximize the quality of service, in terms of system rewards, of a periodic application with discrete levels in an energy harvesting system. To decide service levels in a time horizon, this paper presents algorithms to derive optimal solutions if the future harvested energy is known. In addition, we present efficient algorithms to derive near-optimal solutions approximately. Our work is supported by simulation results which are based on long-term measurements of the power generated by real solar cells.
Facial Emotion Recognition Techniques : A Survey

Facial expression recognition system has turn into a most emphasizing research area since it plays a most important part in human-computer-interaction. The facial expression recognition system finds foremost application in areas like social interaction and social intelligence like in diverse surveillance systems, defense systems, substantiation or verification of individual like criminals etc. The face can articulate emotion sooner than people verbalize or even understand their posture. Thus there is apparent need of unfailing recognition and identification of facial expressions. In this paper a review of various techniques used in facial expression recognition like PCA (Principal component analysis), LDA (Linear discriminant analysis) etc has been carried out. We have formulated the Face expression recognition technique as different phases and the survey is represented accordingly in tabular form emphasizing on their performance.
Low-voltage hot-electron currents and degradation in deep-submicrometer MOSFETs

Hot-electron degradation in deep-submicrometer MOSFETs at 3.3 V and below is studied. Using a device with L/sub eff/=0.1 mu m and T/sub ox/=75 AA, substrate current is measured at a drain bias as low as 0.7 V; gate current is measured at a drain bias as low as 1.75 V. Using the charge-pumping technique, hot-electron degradation is also observed at drain biases as low as 1.8 V. These voltages are believed to be the lowest reported values for which hot-electron currents and degradation have been directly observed. These low-voltage hot-electron phenomena exhibit similar behavior to hot-electron effects present at higher biases and longer channel lengths. No critical voltage for hot-electron effects (such as the Si-SiO/sub 2/ barrier height) is apparent. Established hot-electron degradation concepts and models are shown to be applicable in the low-voltage deep submicrometer regime. Using these established models, the maximum allowable power-supply voltage to insure a 10-yr device lifetime without using LDD (lightly doped drains) is determined as a function of channel length (down to 0.1 mu m) and oxide thickness. <<ETX>>
From fish to man: understanding endogenous remyelination in central nervous system demyelinating diseases

Abstract In the central nervous system (CNS) of man, evolutionary pressure has preserved some capability for remyelination while axonal regeneration is very limited. In contrast, two efficient programmes of regeneration exist in the adult fish CNS, neurite regrowth and remyelination. The rapidity of CNS remyelination is critical since it not only restores fast conduction of nerve impulses but also maintains axon integrity. If myelin repair fails, axons degenerate, leading to increased disability. In the human CNS demyelinating disease multiple sclerosis (MS), remyelination often takes place in the midst of inflammation. Here, we discuss recent studies that address the innate repair capabilities of the axon-glia unit from fish to man. We propose that expansion of this research field will help find ways to maintain or enhance spontaneous remyelination in man.
EDNRB mutations cause Waardenburg syndrome type II in the heterozygous state

Waardenburg syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder characterized by sensorineural hearing loss and pigmentation anomalies. The clinical definition of four WS types is based on additional features due to defects in structures mostly arising from the neural crest, with type I and type II being the most frequent. While type I is tightly associated to PAX3 mutations, WS type II (WS2) remains partly enigmatic with mutations in known genes (MITF, SOX10) accounting for only 30% of the cases. We performed exome sequencing in a WS2 index case and identified a heterozygous missense variation in EDNRB. Interestingly, homozygous (and very rare heterozygous) EDNRB mutations are already described in type IV WS (i.e., in association with Hirschsprung disease [HD]) and heterozygous mutations in isolated HD. Screening of a WS2 cohort led to the identification of an overall of six heterozygous EDNRB variations. Clinical phenotypes, pedigrees and molecular segregation investigations unraveled a dominant mode of inheritance with incomplete penetrance. In parallel, cellular and functional studies showed that each of the mutations impairs the subcellular localization of the receptor or induces a defective downstream signaling pathway. Based on our results, we now estimate EDNRB mutations to be responsible for 5%–6% of WS2.
Imcube @ MediaEval 2015 DroneProtect Task: Reversible Masking using Steganography

This paper describes Imcube’s participation in the DroneProtect Task of MediaEval 2015, which aims to obscure privacy-concerned image regions in videos sequences captured with drones. As a result persons and vehicles should be unrecognisable, but the semantic meaning of the scene should remain understandable to viewer. We use an approach which replaces the privacy-concerned region with an automatically computed composite of inpainted background and foreground contour. Before obfuscation, the image region to be hidden is extracted and steganographically embedded into the processed frame leading to a reversible solution. The evaluation shows that the developed solution achieves good privacy protection while preserving the intelligibility and aesthetic pleasantness of the original video.
Role of the Baroreceptor Reflex in Daily Control of Arterial Blood Pressure and Other Variables in Dogs

Normal and sinoaortic baroreceptor–denervated dogs were monitored continuously (24 hours a day) to quantify the role of the baroreceptors in determining the average level and the variability of arterial blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac output, and total peripheral resistance. The frequency of occurrence over 24-hour periods was obtained for each variable using a fiber optic curve-scanning system to read the variables from continuously recorded charts and a digital computer system to plot curves. The results indicate that the degree of hypertension previously reported for this preparation has been highly exaggerated, presumably due to the methods of study. The average 24-hour mean arterial blood pressure was 101.6 mm Hg in normal dogs and only 112.7 mm Hg in baroreceptor-denervated dogs. The normal dogs exhibited narrowly distributed 24-hour frequency distribution curves for blood pressure; in contrast the denervated dogs exhibited curves with twice the 24-hour standard deviation. Similar analysis indicated that the baroreceptors exerted less influence on the daily stabilization of heart rate than they did on arterial blood pressure and that they had very little if any influence on the daily stabilization of cardiac output and total peripheral resistance. Hemodynamic variables during postural changes were studied along with diurnal rhythms. We concluded that the primary function of the baroreceptor reflex is not to set the chronic level of arterial blood pressure but, instead, to minimize variations in systemic arterial blood pressure, whether these variations are caused by postural changes of the animal, excitement, diurnal rhythm, or even spontaneous fluctuations of unknown origin.
Automatic formal verification of dsp software

This paper describes a novel formal verification approach for equivalence checking of small, assembly-language routines for digital signal processors (DSP). By combining control-flow analysis, symbolic simulation, automatic decision procedures, and some domain-specific optimizations, we have built an automatic verification tool that compares structurally similar DSP assembly language routines. We tested our tool on code samples taken from a real application program and discovered several previously unknown bugs automatically. Runtime and memory requirements were reasonable on all examples. Our approach should generalize easily for multiple DSP architectures, eventually allowing comparison of code for two different DSPs (e.g., to verify a port from one DSP to another) and handling more complex DSPs (e.g. statically-scheduled, VLIW).
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review Intertemporal Discounting and Policy Selection

S everal methods can be used to evaluate the impact of alternative fiscal policies. One of the most widely used methods, generally referred to as " generational accounting, " consists of computing the net present value of taxes, net of transfers, for each age cohort. A key ingredient of this method is the choice of the intertemporal discount rate. As is well known, this choice affects the magnitude of the measured impact of a given policy. In this article, we use examples and a quantitative simulation to show that the choice of the discount rate can, in fact, reverse the ranking of alternative policies. We proceed as follows to illustrate our point. Suppose a government considers policy B as an alternative to the existing policy A. Following our previous work (Conesa and Garriga, 2008a), it is easy to construct examples where policy B has no real effects on the economy (i.e., the levels of output, employment, consumption, and welfare remain the same as with policy A). However, the methodology would rank policy A above policy B (or vice versa) for different discount rates. The resulting implications are important for policy evaluation and suggest great caution in the quantitative evaluation of policies that might be implemented in the near future. The recent financial crises in the United States will leave a huge hole in taxpayers' pockets. The economic slowdown has triggered an unprecedented accommodative response from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve that must be paid for in the future. In addition, future The choice of the intertemporal discount rate affects the measurement of the tax burden of different age cohorts. Small changes in the discount rate affect not only the magnitude of the measured changes, but also the ranking of policies using that metric. The authors illustrate this problem in the context of neutral Social Security reforms. By construction, these policies do not change allocations; hence, they also do not change welfare. However, depending on the choice of the discount rate, one could reach different (and possibly opposite) conclusions regarding the desirability of such policies. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve System, the Board of Governors, or the regional Federal Reserve Banks. Articles may be reprinted, reproduced, published, distributed, displayed, and transmitted in their entirety if copyright notice, author name(s), …
A fight for survival: The challenges faced by a newborn neuron integrating in the adult hippocampus

The hippocampus is one of the only two regions in the adult mammalian brain endowed with life‐long neurogenesis. Yet this adult neurogenesis is a challenging process as newborn neurons face several times life‐and‐death decisions while in the process of stably integrating into a pre‐existing network. Here we describe the morphological and physiological changes a young neuron experiences during its first few weeks of life of stepwise integration into the circuit. This process is competitive in nature, with only few of the newly generated neurons being awarded with a grant of survival. Although the underlying mechanisms are far from being understood, evidence suggests that this competition for stable integration and survival amongst cohorts of newborn neurons occurs to large degree on a synaptic level and may involve specific patterns of neural activity. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 72: 1016–1031, 2012