Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pulsed nonlinear acoustic fields from clinically relevant sources: numericalcalculations and experiments results

The goal of this work was to verify experimentally the applicability of the recently developed Time-Averaged Wave Envelope (TAWE) method [1] as a tool for fast prediction of pulsed nonlinear pressure fields from focused nonaxisymmetric acoustic sources in attenuating media. The experiments were performed in water at the fundamental frequency of 2.8 MHz for spherically focused (focal length F = 80 mm) square (20x20 mm) and rectangular (10x25 mm) sources similar to those used in the design of 1D linear arrays operating with ultrasonic imaging systems. The experimental results obtained with 10-cycle tone bursts at three different excitation levels corresponding to linear, moderately nonlinear and highly nonlinear propagation conditions (0.045, 0.225 and 0.45 MPa on-source pressure amplitude, respectively) were compared with those yielded using the TAWE approach. Comparison of the experimental and numerical calculations results has shown that the TAWE approach is well suited to predict (to within [ampersand]plusmn;1 dB) both the spatial-temporal and spatial-spectral pressure variations in the pulsed nonlinear acoustic beams.
Mechanical tissue optical clearing technique increases imaging resolution and contrast through Ex vivo porcine skin

Mechanical tissue optical clearing permits light delivery deeper into turbid tissue, which may improve current optical diagnostics and laser‐based therapeutic techniques. We investigated the effects of localized compression on brightfield imaging through ex vivo porcine skin by evaluating resolution and contrast of a target positioned beneath native, mechanically compressed, or chemically cleared specimens. We also evaluated the effects of indentation on dynamic tissue thickness and light transmission.
FAK Is Required for Schwann Cell Spreading on Immature Basal Lamina to Coordinate the Radial Sorting of Peripheral Axons with Myelination

Without Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK), developing murine Schwann cells (SCs) proliferate poorly, sort axons inefficiently, and cannot myelinate peripheral nerves. Here we show that FAK is required for the development of SCs when their basal lamina (BL) is fragmentary, but not when it is mature in vivo. Mutant SCs fail to spread on fragmentary BL during development in vivo, and this is phenocopied by SCs lacking functional FAK on low laminin (LN) in vitro. Furthermore, SCs without functional FAK initiate differentiation prematurely, both in vivo and in vitro. In contrast to their behavior on high levels of LN, SCs lacking functional FAK grown on low LN display reduced spreading, proliferation, and indicators of contractility (i.e., stress fibers, arcs, and focal adhesions) and are primed to differentiate. Growth of SCs lacking functional FAK on increasing LN concentrations in vitro revealed that differentiation is not regulated by G1 arrest but rather by cell spreading and the level of contractile actomyosin. The importance of FAK as a critical regulator of the specific response of developing SCs to fragmentary BL was supported by the ability of adult FAK mutant SCs to remyelinate demyelinated adult nerves on mature BL in vivo. We conclude that FAK promotes the spreading and actomyosin contractility of immature SCs on fragmentary BL, thus maintaining their proliferation, and preventing differentiation until they reach high density, thereby promoting radial sorting. Hence, FAK has a critical role in the response of SCs to limiting BL by promoting proliferation and preventing premature SC differentiation.
PFA implies ADL(ℝ)

In this paper we shall prove Theorem 0.1. Suppose there is a singular strong limit cardinal κ such that □κ fails; then AD holds in L(R). See [10] for a discussion of the background to this problem. We suspect that more work will produce a proof of the theorem with its hypothesis that κ is a strong limit weakened to ∀α < κ (αω < κ), and significantly more work will enable one to drop the hypothesis that K is a strong limit entirely. At present, we do not see how to carry out even the less ambitious project. Todorcevic [23] has shown that if the Proper Forcing Axiom (PFA) holds, then □κ fails for all uncountable cardinals κ. Thus we get immediately: It has been known since the early 90's that PFA implies PD, that PFA plus the existence of a strongly inaccessible cardinal implies ADL(ℝ) and that PFA plus a measurable yields an inner model of ADℝ containing all reals and ordinals. As we do here, these arguments made use of Tororcevic's work, so that logical strength is ultimately coming from a failure of covering for some appropriate core models. In late 2000, A. S. Zoble and the author showed that (certain consequences of) Todorcevic's Strong Reflection Principle (SRP) imply ADL(ℝ). (See [22].) Since Martin's Maximum implies SRP, this gave the first derivation of ADL(ℝ) from an “unaugmented” forcing axiom.
Investigating touchscreen accessibility for people with visual impairments

Touchscreen computing devices such as the iPhone are becoming more common. However this technology is largely inaccessible to people with visual impairments. We present the results of a requirements capture study that illustrates the problems with touchscreen accessibility, and the choices visually impaired people make when choosing assistive technology. We investigate ways of overcoming touchscreen accessibility problems by comparing a raised paper overlay touchscreen based MP3 player, with a touchscreen gesture based player. Twelve blindfolded participants, and one visually impaired person, were able to operate both players, though there were problems with short impact related operations in the gesture player. From our results we provide guidelines for future designers, to help them exploit the potential of touchscreen technology for visually impaired people.
The risk of deflation

Introduction: The onset of financial instability in August 2007, which quickly spread across the world, raises a number of questions for policy makers. First, what are the roots of the crisis? Many factors have been emphasized in the debate, including the opacity of complex financial products; the excessive confidence in ratings; weak risk management by financial institutions; massive reliance on wholesale funding; and the presumption that markets would always be liquid. Furthermore, poorly understood incentive effects – arising from the originate-to-distribute-model, remuneration policies and the period of low interest rates – are also widely seen as having played a role. Second, how can a repetition of the crisis can be avoided? Much attention is being focused on regulation and supervision of financial intermediaries. The G-20, at its summit in November 2008, noted that measures need to be taken in five areas: (i) financial market transparency and disclosure by firms need to be strengthened; (ii) regulation needs to be enhanced to ensure that all financial markets, products and participants are regulated or subject to oversight, as appropriate; (iii) the integrity of financial markets should be improved by bolstering investor and consumer protection, avoiding conflicts of interest, and by promoting information sharing; (iv) international cooperation among regulators must be enhanced; and (v) international financial institutions must be reformed to reflect changing economic weights in the world economy better in order to increase the legitimacy and effectiveness of these institutions.
Pixel-Wise Spatial Pyramid-Based Hybrid Tracking

In this paper, we propose a novel tracking algorithm that combines complementary tracking modules with a new object representation model to balance between stability and adaptivity. To reduce the update error of online tracking, we present three complementary modules (a stable module, a soft stable module, and an adaptive module) and fuse them by using a biased multiplicative criterion. The combination of those modules not only facilitates the accurate location of the tracked object but also makes our tracker adaptive to appearance change. For objection representation, we present an appearance model named pixel-wise spatial pyramid (PSP), which employs pixel feature vector to combine several pixel characteristics. During the updating process, we update the codebook by using the reserved pixel feature vectors that are selected by a distance-based scheme. Then, we generate an evolving target representation by using a hybrid feature map that consists of the reserved pixel vectors and antipart of the previous hybrid feature map. Numerous experiments on various challenging image sequences demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs favorably against several state-of-the-art algorithms, especially for drastic appearance change.
The genetic predisposition to bronchopulmonary dysplasia

Purpose of review Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a prevalent chronic lung disease in premature infants. Twin studies have shown strong heritability underlying this disease; however, the genetic architecture of BPD remains unclear. Recent findings A number of studies employed different approaches to characterize the genetic aberrations associated with BPD, including candidate gene studies, genome-wide association studies, exome sequencing, integrative omics analysis, and pathway analysis. Candidate gene studies identified a number of genes potentially involved with the development of BPD, but the etiological contribution from each gene is not substantial. Copy number variation studies and three independent genome-wide association studies did not identify genetic variations significantly and consistently associated with BPD. A recent exome-sequencing study pointed to rare variants implicated in the disease. In this review, we summarize these studies’ methodology and findings, and suggest future research directions to better understand the genetic underpinnings of this potentially life-long lung disease. Summary Genetic factors play a significant role in the development of BPD. Recent studies suggested that rare variants in genes participating in lung development pathways could contribute to BPD susceptibility.
Face Recognition using Local Ternary Pattern S

Many face recognition techniques have been developed during the past decades but the problem remains challenging, especially recognizing non-biological entities or avatars. Local Binary Pattern (LBP) method is one of these techniques which has shown its superiority in recognizing faces. The original LBP operator mainly thresholds pixels in a specific predetermined window based on the gray value of the central pixel of that window. As a result the LBP operator becomes more sensitive to noise especially in near-uniform or flat area regions of an image. To deal with this problem a generalization of the LBP descriptor, combination of Local Ternary Patterns (LTP) came to the presence. In this paper we introduce a new LTP texture features for efficient avatar face recognition based on the original LTP. The proposed technique LTP, shares with the original LTP descriptor being less sensitive to noise. However LTP is better as it determines the local pattern threshold automatically based on local statistics. Experiments conducted on two virtual world avatar face image datasets show that our technique performs better than original LBP, original LTP in terms of accuracy.
Mining the associations between pharmic quality and ingredients of traditional Chinese medicines

This paper presents our works to tackle three key problems in modern research of traditional Chinese medicines. Based on a dataset of 100 medicines (each with 60 major ingredients), we evaluate various data mining approaches in order to unveil the underlying associations between these chemical ingredients and the pharmic qualities of the medicines. Based on our experiements, we conclude that these associations do exist and can be effectively unveiled. Various performance enhancement techniques are then evaluated, among which we identify the best classification approach for practice. These unveiled associations between pharmic quality and ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine can help guide future researches in this area, particularly in the development of new medicines.
Intravenous nitroglycerin therapy to limit myocardial infarct size, expansion, and complications. Effect of timing, dosage, and infarct location.

To determine 1) whether the effect of intravenous nitroglycerin (NG) therapy during acute myocardial infarction on creatine kinase infarct size is influenced by infarct location (anterior vs. inferior), timing (therapy less than 4 hours vs. greater than or equal to 4 hours after onset of pain), and dose response (mean blood pressure greater than or equal to 80 mm Hg vs. less than 80 mm Hg during the first 12 hours) and 2) whether NG therapy modifies infarct expansion, 310 patients were randomly allocated to NG (n = 154) and control (n = 156) groups. NG infusion was titrated to lower mean blood pressure by 10% in normotensive and 30% in hypertensive patients, but not below 80 mm Hg, and was maintained for 39 hours. Measurements included clinical variables, creatine kinase infarct size (geq) as well as left ventricular (LV) asynergy, LV ejection fraction, expansion index, and thinning ratio on serial two-dimensional echocardiography. Compared with controls, creatine kinase infarct size was less in the NG group (41 vs. 55 geq, p less than 0.001), in anterior (44 vs. 58 geq, p less than 0.05), and inferior (39 vs. 53 geq, p less than 0.025) NG subgroups, and in early than late NG subgroups (43% vs. 22% decrease). Other indexes of infarct size also improved (p less than or equal to 0.05) with NG compared with controls. Thus, by 10 days, LV asynergy was 40% less, LV ejection fraction was 22% more, and Killip class score was 41% less. A negative effect of mean blood pressure less than 80 mm Hg with NG was reflected in these indexes. In addition, expansion index increased (p less than 0.001) by 31% and thinning ratio decreased (p less than 0.001) by 17% in controls by 10 days but remained unchanged with NG. Infarct-related major complications were less frequent in the NG than the control groups: infarct expansion syndrome (2% vs. 15%, p less than 0.0005), LV thrombus (5% vs. 22%, p less than 0.0005), cardiogenic shock (5% vs. 15%, p less than 0.005), and infarct extension (11% vs. 22%, p less than 0.025). Mortality was less in NG than in control groups in-hospital (14% vs. 26%, p less than 0.01), at 3 months (16% vs. 28%, p less than 0.025) and 12 months (21% vs. 31%, p less than 0.05), but this advantage was only found in the anterior subgroups. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Synthesis of ribosomes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The assembly of a eucaryotic ribosome requires the synthesis of four ribosomal ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecules and more than 75 ribosomal proteins. It utilizes all three RNA polymerases; it requires the cooperation of the nucleus and the cytoplasm, the processing of RNA, and the specific interaction of RNA and protein molecules. It is carried out efficiently and is exquisitely sensitive to the needs of the cell. Our current understanding of this process in the genetically tractable yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is reviewed. The ribosomal RNA genes are arranged in a tandem array of 100 to 200 copies. This tandem array has led to unique ways of carrying out a number of functions. Replication is asymmetric and does not initiate from every autonomously replicating sequence. Recombination is suppressed. Transcription of the major ribosomal RNA appears to involve coupling between adjacent transcription units, which are separated by the 5S RNA transcription unit. Genes for many ribosomal proteins have been cloned and sequenced. Few are linked; most are duplicated; most have an intron. There is extensive homology between yeast ribosomal proteins and those of other species. Most, but not all, of the ribosomal protein genes have one or two sites that are essential for their transcription and that bind a common transcription factor. This factor binds also to many other places in the genome, including the telomeres. There is coordinated transcription of the ribosomal protein genes under a variety of conditions. However, the cell seems to possess no mechanism for regulating the transcription of individual ribosomal protein genes in response either to a deficiency or an excess of a particular ribosomal protein. A deficiency causes slow growth. Any excess ribosomal protein is degraded very rapidly, with a half-life of 1 to 5 min. Unlike most types of cells, yeast cells appear not to regulate the translation of ribosomal proteins. However, in the case of ribosomal protein L32, the protein itself causes a feedback inhibition of the splicing of the transcript of its own gene. The synthesis of ribosomes involves a massive transfer of material across the nuclear envelope in both directions. Nuclear localization signals have been identified for at least three ribosomal proteins; they are similar but not identical to those identified for the simian virus 40 T antigen. There is no information about how ribosomal subunits are transported from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Demographic, Habitual, and Socioeconomic Determinants of Internet Addiction Disorder: An Empirical Study of Korean Teenagers

The objective of this study was to analyze the demographic, socioeconomic, and habitual causes of juvenile Internet addiction. All do not agree that Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is a new type of addiction, but they agree that the IAD phenomenon has widely spread over recent years. This is also true in Korea. For this study, six schools in Korea were selected to collect data: two from Seoul, two from suburban areas, and two from rural areas. Two hundred and forty copies were collected out of some 700 copies distributed. Multiple regression models were employed to explore significant predictors of IAD. This study showed that at least two out of 100 teenagers in Korea are seriously suffering from IAD and that approximately one out of two is exposed to a kind of IAD. The causes of IAD are not only associated with habitual backgrounds for use of the Internet, but also demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Therefore, it can be said that the development of IAD is an interactive process between juveniles' habits of using Internet, and their demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. As IAD progresses, a single type of intervention such as parent interventions or school interventions does not work effectively. Multimodal interventions are required to provide counseling services for individuals suffering from IAD.
ICDS database: interrupted CoDing sequences in prokaryotic genomes

Unrecognized frameshifts, in-frame stop codons and sequencing errors lead to Interrupted CoDing Sequence (ICDS) that can seriously affect all subsequent steps of functional characterization, from in silico analysis to high-throughput proteomic projects. Here, we describe the Interrupted CoDing Sequence database containing ICDS detected by a similarity-based approach in 80 complete prokaryotic genomes. ICDS can be retrieved by species browsing or similarity searches via a web interface (). The definition of each interrupted gene is provided as well as the ICDS genomic localization with the surrounding sequence. Furthermore, to facilitate the experimental characterization of ICDS, we propose optimized primers for re-sequencing purposes. The database will be regularly updated with additional data from ongoing sequenced genomes. Our strategy has been validated by three independent tests: (i) ICDS prediction on a benchmark of artificially created frameshifts, (ii) comparison of predicted ICDS and results obtained from the comparison of the two genomic sequences of Bacillus licheniformis strain ATCC 14580 and (iii) re-sequencing of 25 predicted ICDS of the recently sequenced genome of Mycobacterium smegmatis. This allows us to estimate the specificity and sensitivity (95 and 82%, respectively) of our program and the efficiency of primer determination.
Simultaneous Removal of NH4+ and PO43‐ at Low Concentrations from Aqueous Solution by Modified Converter Slag

In this study, modified converter slag (CS) was characterized in relation to its physicochemical structure, and used for the simultaneous removal of NH4+ and PO43‐ at low concentrations from aqueous solutions. The effects of contact time, pH, adsorbent dosage, and temperature on the adsorption process were studied in batch experiments. The results showed that the adsorption capacity of modified converter slag was found to sharply increase as a result of modification. The optimum pH is 5‐8. The adsorption process was able to reach equilibrium in 90 minutes. Kinetic data were best described by the pseudo‐second‐order model. The sorption isotherms were a good fit with the Langmuir model. The maximum adsorption capacities of modified converter slag for NH4+ and PO43‐ were 2.59mg/g and 1.185 mg/g, respectively. Thermodynamic studies indicated that the adsorption was a spontaneous and endothermic process. The calculated values of enthalpy change indicated that ligand exchange, chemical reactions, and precipitation are dominating mechanisms of PO43‐ removal, while physisorption and ion‐exchange are major mechanisms of NH4+ removal.
The genomics of adaptation

The amount and nature of genetic variation available to natural selection affect the rate, course and outcome of evolution. Consequently, the study of the genetic basis of adaptive evolutionary change has occupied biologists for decades, but progress has been hampered by the lack of resolution and the absence of a genome-level perspective. Technological advances in recent years should now allow us to answer many long-standing questions about the nature of adaptation. The data gathered so far are beginning to challenge some widespread views of the way in which natural selection operates at the genomic level. Papers in this Special Feature of Proceedings of the Royal Society B illustrate various aspects of the broad field of adaptation genomics. This introductory article sets up a context and, on the basis of a few selected examples, discusses how genomic data can advance our understanding of the process of adaptation.
Management Issues with Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is becoming popular and many organizations are considering the adoption of cloud computing because of its promise of convenient, on demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources such as networks, servers, storage, applications, and services that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction [22]. Although Cloud computing has many benefits and has the ability to increase an organizations return on investment, there are many issues such as ethical issues, security issues, data lock-in, lack of standardization, customization, technology bottlenecks, strategy issues etc. which are preventing managements of organizations from adopting cloud computing. As a result of this, it is important for managements of these organizations to be aware of the issues with cloud computing that could affect their implementation success. In order to identify the issues and propose ways to resolve these issues, this paper discusses the different management issues with cloud computing that have been identified by literature and suggests possible ways to resolve them. This paper also suggests that proper investigation into these issues and how to resolve them will increase management's confidence in cloud computing and ensure successful adoption and implementation of cloud computing.