Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spontaneous nano-emulsification with tailor-made amphiphilic polymers and related monomers

In general, nano-emulsions are submicron droplets composed of liquid oil phase dispersed in liquid aqueous bulk phase. They are stable and very powerful systems when it regards the encapsulation of lipophilic compounds and their dispersion in aqueous medium. On the other hand, when the properties of the nano-emulsions aim to be modified, e.g. for changing their surface properties, decorating the droplets with targeting ligands, or modifying the surface charge, the dynamic liquid / liquid interfaces make it relatively challenging. In this study, we have explored the development of nano-emulsions which were not anymore stabilized with a classical low-molecular weight surfactant, but instead, with an amphiphilic polymer based on poly(maleic anhydride-alt-1-octadecene) (PMAO) and Jeffamine®, a hydrophilic amino-terminated PPG/PEG copolymer. Using a polymer as stabilizer is a potential solution for the nano-emulsion functionalization, ensuring the droplet stabilization as well as being a platform for the droplet decoration with ligands (for instance after addition of function groups in the terminations of the chains). The main idea of the present work was to understand if the spontaneous emulsification –commonly performed with nonionic surfactants– can be transposed with amphiphilic polymers, and a secondary objective was to identify the main parameters impacting on the process. PMAO was modified with two different Jeffamine®, additionally different oils and different formulation conditions were evaluated. As a control, the parent monomer, octadecyl succinic anhydride (OSA) was also modified and studied in the similar way as that of polymer. The generated nano-emulsions were mainly studied by dynamic light scattering and electron microscopy, that allows discriminating the crucial parameters in the spontaneous process, originally conducted with polymers as only stabilizer.
Protein Vaccines Induce Uncommitted IL-2-Secreting Human and Mouse CD4 T Cells, Whereas Infections Induce More IFN-γ-Secreting Cells1

Mouse and human CD4 T cells primed during an immune response may differentiate into effector phenotypes such as Th1 (secreting IFN-γ) or Th2 (secreting IL-4) that mediate effective immunity against different classes of pathogen. However, primed CD4 T cells can also remain uncommitted, secreting IL-2 and chemokines, but not IFN-γ or IL-4. We now show that human CD4 T cells primed by protein vaccines mostly secreted IL-2, but not IFN-γ, whereas in the same individuals most CD4 T cells initially primed by infection with live pathogens secreted IFN-γ. We further demonstrate that many tetanus-specific IL-2+IFN-γ− cells are uncommitted and that a single IL-2+IFN-γ− cell can differentiate into Th1 or Th2 phenotypes following in vitro stimulation under appropriate polarizing conditions. In contrast, influenza-specific IL-2+IFN-γ− CD4 cells maintained a Th1-like phenotype even under Th2-polarizing conditions. Similarly, adoptively transferred OTII transgenic mouse T cells secreted mainly IL-2 after priming with OVA in alum, but were biased toward IFN-γ secretion when primed with the same OVA peptide presented as a pathogen Ag during live infection. Thus, protein subunit vaccines may prime a unique subset of differentiated, but uncommitted CD4 T cells that lack some of the functional properties of committed effectors induced by infection. This has implications for the design of more effective vaccines against pathogens requiring strong CD4 effector T cell responses.
BALLOON BLADDER AUTOAUGMENTATION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY IN DOGS

Aims of Study In the last 100 years a great deal of experimental studies in bladder augmentation was performed [1]. With the development of antibiotics these were redefined, and improved after the 1970’s with clean intermittent self-catheterization [2, 3, 4]. These techniques aim to the development of a large and compliant reservoir of urine, promoting continence and preserving renal function. Main indications for bladder augmentation are: small capacity and/or low compliance. Such conditions lead to urinary incontinence and renal failure due to vesical deterioration [5]. The aim of the present study is to compare the results of bladder autoaugmentation with or without intravesical balloon.
THE IMPACTS OF AFTA TO THE MAIN FOOD CROPS SECTOR IN INDONESIA

Any country’s involvement in the multilateral or regional blocks has its own interest. Indonesia also has certain interest in ASEAN collaboration such as commodity protection, especially its agricultural commodities either through WTO or the ASEAN.In this contending world, the main issue is how to protect domestic production in coping with more the competitive world production, especially in dealing with AFTA which will be implemented in 2015. The research objectives are to analyze AFTA’s impacts on enhancement of economy, main food production (rice, corn, and soybean), and demand for production inputs: land; labor; capital; and other natural resources. The objective is conducted with the tools for analysis The GTAP Model.Impacts of AFTA on Indonesian main food development indicate that only rice output has a negative growth, but corn and soybean outputs have positive trends. On the other hand, the impact on ASEAN decline occurred in soybeans. In addition, various policies are required in developing rice, corn, and soybeans both in and outside Java.
Self-adaptive Scaling Factor in Differential Evolution

In this paper, a newly-proposed algorithm based on 3-Parents Differential Evolution (3PDE) is implemented to be s lf-adapted for the only control parameter of scaling factor, F. It is called 3Parents DE with Self-adaptive Scaling Factor (SaFDE ). The performance of this proposed algorithm is compared gainst to the original Differential Evolution (DE). In this paper , 50 runs are conducted for every 20 well-known test problems to test this new proposed algorithm. The empirical results showed th at is new proposed algorithm, SaFDE has better performance co mpared to DE in terms of the average performance and stabilit y.
822 CHANGES IN THE SPECIES DIVERSITY OF GRASSLAND COMMUNITIES DURING SECONDARY SUCCESSION

KNOT, P., J. SKLADANKA, F. HRABE, P. SLAMA, A. NAWRATH and M. KVASNOVSKY, 2015. Changes in the species diversity of grassland communities during secondary succession. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 21: 822–828 Treatments of N, P and K fertilization levels were studied over the course of 18 years (1992–2009) of secondary succession in a semi-cultural permanent meadow community of Sanquisorba Festucetum comutatae on a mesophytic site in a fodder production area. Results of the evaluation of species diversity levels show that on average only 23.7 species (max. 34 species) contribute to actual fodder production, i.e. only 44% of species ascertained. A high level of N fertilization – 180 kg.ha–1 year–1 – significantly lowered the number of species (average – 19.9) in comparison to the variant without NPK (25.3 species), as well as in comparison to PK (26.3) and 90 kg N–1 year–1 + PK (23.4). Grasses make up on average 43.0% of the total number of species, legumes 5.9% and other herbs 51.1%. In the course of secondary succession, the number of species averaged across all treatments significantly increased, with 25.6 species in the 3rd post-stabilization phase (years 13–18) and 20.8 species in the 1st phase of succession (years 1–6). From % dominance point of view (expressed as the percentage weight of different species groups relative to total weight), there was a significant decrease in % dominance of grass components from 60.8% (1st phase) to 47.8% (3rd phase) and an increase in % dominance of other herbs from 35.3% (1st phase) to 46.8% (3rd phase). Across all successional phases, intensive N + PK fertilization significantly increased % dominance of grass components from 41.1%, and 39.8% for the variants without N fertilization, to 59.2% for N 90 and 69.7% for N 180 kg.ha–1 year–1 variant.
emplate assisted synthesis of photocatalytic titanium dioxide anotubes by hot filament chemical vapor deposition method

Titanium dioxide thin films were deposited conformally over electrospun polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) fibers by hot filament chemical vapor deposition method. Deposition rates were observed to be very high to allow for rapid coatings. Thermal annealing of as deposited materials leads the clean vailable online 20 July 2013
The Effects of Hospital Rate-Setting Programs on Volumes of Hospital Services: A Preliminary Analysis

This article describes a preliminary study of the effects of State rate-setting programs on volumes of hospital services, specifically admission rates, occupancy levels, and average lengths of stay. A volume response to rate-setting may be anticipated as a result of program effects on hospital costs or charges as well as on hospitals' behavioral incentives. We analyzed data for samples of hospitals and counties in States with and without rate-setting programs for the 9-year period 1969 to 1978. The results suggested that rate regulation has brought about, in some States, an increase in hospital occupancy by increasing patients' lengths of stay. Few programs have had a measurable effect on the admission rate. Programs that regulate per diem rates seem to produce more consistent and predictable volume effects than those controlling charges. The findings were generally consistent with prior hypotheses and partially account for earlier findings regarding the effects of rate-setting programs on hospital costs.
A new method for inferring timetrees from temporally sampled molecular sequences

Pathogen timetrees are phylogenies scaled to time. They reveal the temporal history of a pathogen spread through the populations as captured in the evolutionary history of strains. These timetrees are inferred by using molecular sequences of pathogenic strains sampled at different times. That is, temporally sampled sequences enable the inference of sequence divergence times. Here, we present a new approach (RelTime with Dated Tips [RTDT]) to estimating pathogen timetrees based on the relative rate framework underlying the RelTime approach. RTDT does not require many of the priors demanded by Bayesian approaches, and it has light computing requirements. We found RTDT to be accurate on simulated datasets evolved under a variety of branch rates models. Interestingly, we found two non-Bayesian methods (RTDT and Least Squares Dating [LSD]) to perform similar to or better than the Bayesian approaches available in BEAST and MCMCTree programs. RTDT method was found to generally outperform all other methods for phylogenies in with autocorrelated evolutionary rates. In analyses of empirical datasets, RTDT produced dates that were similar to those from Bayesian analyses. Speed and accuracy of the new method, as compared to the alternatives, makes it appealing for analyzing growing datasets of pathogenic strains. Cross-platform MEGA X software, freely available from http://www.megasoftware. net, now contains the new method for use through a friendly graphical user interface and in high-throughput settings. AUTHOR SUMMARY Pathogen timetrees trace the origins and evolutionary histories of strains in populations, hosts, and outbreaks. The tips of these molecular phylogenies often contain sampling time information because the sequences were generally obtained at different times during the disease outbreaks and propagation. We have developed a new method for inferring timetrees for phylogenies with tip dates, which improves on widely-used Bayesian methods (e.g., BEAST) in computational efficiency and does not require prior specification of population parameters, branch rate model, or clock model. We performed extensive computer simulation and found that RTDT performed better than the other methods for the estimation of divergence times at deep node in phylogenies where evolutionary rates were autocorrelated. The new method is available in the cross-platform MEGA software package that provides a graphical user interface, and allows use via a command line in scripting and high throughput analysis (www.megasoftware.net).
Inhibition of allograft inflammatory factor-1 expression reduces development of neointimal hyperplasia and p38 kinase activity.

AIMS Allograft inflammatory factor-1 (AIF-1) is a calcium-binding, scaffold-signalling protein expressed in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) in response to injury. The effects of AIF-1 attenuation on development of intimal hyperplasia are unknown, and the molecular mechanisms of these effects remain uncharacterized. The goals of the present study were to determine whether AIF-1 knockdown reduced VSMC proliferation, migration, and intimal hyperplasia, and determine AIF-1 effects on signal transduction in VSMCs. METHODS AND RESULTS Balloon angioplasty-injured rat carotid arteries transduced with adenovirus to overexpress AIF-1 (AdAIF-1) significantly increased, and adenovirus to knock down AIF-1 (AdsiRNA) expression significantly decreased neointimal formation compared with green fluorescent protein (AdGFP) and Adscrambled controls (P < 0.05 and P < 0.01, n = 6). Primary rat VSMCs transduced with AdAIF-1 displayed a significant increase in proliferation, and AdsiRNA-transduced VSMCs proliferated significantly more slowly than controls (P < 0.05). VSMCs transduced with AdAIF-1 show increased migration when compared with control VSMCs (P < 0.01). Rat VSMCs transduced with AdAIF-1 showed constitutive and prolonged activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase p38, whereas AdsiRNA-treated VSMCs showed decreased p38 activation compared with AdGFP (P < 0.05). Immunohistochemical analysis of AdAIF-1-transduced carotid arteries showed increased staining with a phospho-specific p38 antibody compared with AdGFP-transduced arteries. A specific p38 inhibitor abrogated AIF-1-induced VSMC proliferation, but not AIF-1-induced migration. CONCLUSION Taken together, AIF-1 expression plays a key role in the development of neointimal hyperplasia. AIF-1 expression enhances the activation of p38 MAP kinase. AIF-1-enhanced proliferation is p38 kinase dependent, but AIF-1-enhanced VSMC migration is p38 independent.
DEFINABLE GROUPS AND IMAGINARIES IN DENSE PAIRS OF GEOMETRIC STRUCTURES

We study de nable groups in dense/codense expansions of geometric theories. We show that under some tame assumptions, de nably amenable groups de nable in the old language remain amenable in the expansion. Under the same assumptions, we show that the connected component G00 P in the expansion agrees with the connected component G00 in the original language. We also analyze imaginaries in the expansion when the underlying theory has disintegrated algebraic closure.
Depressive Symptoms and Career-Related Goal Appraisals: Genetic and Environmental Correlations and Interactions

In order to further understand why depressive symptoms are associated with negative goal appraisals, the present study examined the genetic and environmental correlations and interactions between depressive symptoms and career-related goal appraisals. A total of 1,240 Finnish twins aged 21–26 years completed a questionnaire containing items on the appraisal of their career goals along five dimensions: importance, progress, effort, strain, and self-efficacy. In the same questionnaire, the 10-item General Behavior Inventory assessed depressive symptoms. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the genetic and environmental correlations and gene–environment interactions between the career-goal appraisals and depressive symptoms. Associations were identified, and were attributed to environmental factors. Of the career-related goal appraisals, the shared environmental component was of a higher magnitude for the dimension of strain among the depressed compared with non-depressed subjects. The results indicate that the interplay between depressive symptoms and negative career-related goal appraisals is significantly affected by environmental factors, and thus possibly susceptible to targeted interventions.
Self-moving robots and pulverized urban displays: newcomers in the pervasive display taxonomy

In this paper, we investigate current approaches to the design of pervasive urban displays through two dimensions: increasing levels of physical integration of content into the surrounding environment (attached, blended, physicalized), and increasing levels of mobility of the display technology (fixed, portable, self-moving). We provide a classification of pervasive displays along these two dimensions and introduce a new class of pervasive display, which we call pulverized urban displays (PUDs). These displays represent content in a physical form, entangled with the built and natural environment, and are capable of autonomously changing their position. Drawing on urban robotic devices and their capability to sense and manipulate the environment, the paper lays out five characteristics of future forms of PUDs.
Efficient and conservative fluids using bidirectional mapping

In this paper, we introduce BiMocq2, an unconditionally stable, pure Eulerianbased advection scheme to efficiently preserve the advection accuracy of all physical quantities for long-term fluid simulations. Our approach is built upon the method of characteristic mapping (MCM). Instead of the costly evaluation of the temporal characteristic integral, we evolve the mapping function itself by solving an advection equation for the mappings. Dual mesh characteristics (DMC) method is adopted to more accurately update the mapping. Furthermore, to avoid visual artifacts like instant blur and temporal inconsistency introduced by re-initialization, we introduce multi-level mapping and back and forth error compensation. We conduct comprehensive 2D and 3D benchmark experiments to compare against alternative advection schemes. In particular, for the vortical flow and level set experiments, our method outperforms almost all state-of-art hybrid schemes, including FLIP, PolyPic and Particle-Level-Set, at the cost of only two Semi-Lagrangian advections. Additionally, our method does not rely on the particle-grid transfer operations, leading to a highly parallelizable pipeline. As a result, more than 45× performance acceleration can be achieved via even a straightforward porting of the code from CPU to GPU.
An explicit resolution of the equity-efficiency tradeoff in the random allocation of an indivisible good ∗

Suppose we wish to randomly allocate a single indivisible good to a group of agents. Efficiency dictates that the good be allocated with probability 1 to the agent valuing it the most. Meanwhile, equity implies that each agent should receive the good with equal probability. In the current paper, we offer a precise way of formalizing, and ultimately resolving, the tradeoff between these conflicting desiderata. We begin by introducing a parsimonious parametric framework, in which an allocation’s inequity is defined by its Euclidean distance to the perfectly equitable equal-probability allocation. Subsequently, using tools from convex and conic programming, given a chosen level of maximum allowable inequity, we provide a closed-form expression for the corresponding maximum achievable utility as well as the allocation associated with it. Moreover, we show that this function is differentiable in the degree of inequity. These results allow for the application of standard methods to solve for the “optimal” level of inequity balancing the conflicting objectives of efficiency and equity.
IN CURIOSITY’S PATH: THE GEOMORPHOLOGY AND STRATIGRAPHY OF THE GREENHEUGH PEDIMENT AND GEDIZ VALLIS RIDGE IN GALE CRATER

PEDIMENT AND GEDIZ VALLIS RIDGE IN GALE CRATER. A. B. Bryk1, W. E. Dietrich1, M. P. Lamb2, J. P. Grotzinger 2, A. R. Vasavada3, K. M. Stack,3 R. Arvidson4, C. Fedo5, K. Bennett6, V. K. Fox2, S. Gupta7, R. C. Wiens8, R. M. E. Williams9. 1University of California, Berkeley, CA (bryk@berkeley.edu). 2Division of Geological & Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. 3Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 4Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO. 5University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. 6USGS Astrogeology Science Center, Flagstaff, AZ. 7Imperial College, London, UK. 8Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM. 9Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, AZ.
A pilot test of WebOSCE: a system for assessing trainees' clinical skills via teleconference

WebOSCE is a computer-based system that allows a student at an affiliate site to participate in a 10-station standardized patient-based exam using a videoconference interface, while nine other students take the exam on-site. We pilot-tested this system during a required year-end objective structured clinical exam. We compared performance data between the 26 distance students taking the exam via WebOSCE with 221 on-site students. We also compared both student groups' responses on a post-exam questionnaire, and conducted a post-exam structured interview to elicit the Pittsburgh students' perspectives on the WebOSCE experience. Students taking the exam via WebOSCE scored significantly lower in most categories except for physical exam and information-giving skills, on which the groups did not differ. There were no differences between groups in students' overall evaluation of the exam experiences. In general, Pittsburgh students rated WebOSCE highly and offered many helpful comments to improve the technology and the experience.
Super-resolution of 3 D Magnetic Resonance Images by random shifting and convolutional neural networks

Enhancing resolution is a permanent goal in magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, in order to keep improving diagnostic capability and registration methods. Super-resolution (SR) techniques are applied at the postprocessing stage, and their use and development have progressively increased during the last years. In particular, example-based methods have been mostly proposed in recent state-of-the-art works. In this paper, a combination of a deep-learning SR system and a random shifting technique to improve the quality of MR images is proposed, implemented and tested. The model was compared to four competitors: cubic spline interpolation, non-local means upsampling, low-rank total variation and a three-dimensional convolutional neural network trained with patches of HR brain images (SRCNN3D). The newly proposed method showed better results in Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio, Structural Similarity index, and Bhattacharrya coefficient. Computation times were at the same level as those of these up-to-date methods. When applied to downsampled MR structural T1 images, the new method also yielded better qualitative results, both in the restored images and in the images of residuals.