Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intrinsic and acquired resistance mechanisms in enterococcus

Enterococci have the potential for resistance to virtually all clinically useful antibiotics. Their emergence as important nosocomial pathogens has coincided with increased expression of antimicrobial resistance by members of the genus. The mechanisms underlying antibiotic resistance in enterococci may be intrinsic to the species or acquired through mutation of intrinsic genes or horizontal exchange of genetic material encoding resistance determinants. This paper reviews the antibiotic resistance mechanisms in Enterococcus faecium and Enterococcus faecalis and discusses treatment options.
Evaluating Quality of Life and Pulmonary Function of Long-term Survivors of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Radical or Postoperative Radiotherapy

Background:Our aim in the present study was to describe the quality of life (QOL), evaluate pulmonary function, and compare demographic and clinical characteristics with QOL in long-term survivors of non-small cell lung cancer treated with radical or postoperative radiotherapy. Methods:Twenty-eight patients were recruited in the study. QOL was evaluated using The European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer, Quality of Life Core Questionnaire (EORTC QLQ-C30, v.3). Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS 14. Results:Patients' files were reviewed in October 2006. Median duration of follow-up was 46 months (range: 25–125 months). Seven of 9 scales were found to meet the minimal reliability limit (Cronbach's α >0.70). The lowest and highest reliability coefficients were 0.56 and 0.93 for social and role functioning, respectively. All interscale correlations were statistically significant (P < 0.01). The strongest positive correlation was found between physical functioning and, role and cognitive functioning (r = 0.59, r = 0.37 or P = 0.01, P = 0.05, respectively). The highest correlation of EORTC QLQ-C30 and the Karnofsky performance scale (KPS) during the questionnaire was found to be with physical functioning and constipation (r = 0.41, r = 0.44 or P = 0.02, P = 0.01, respectively). When the effect of various demographic and clinical parameters on QOL was evaluated; initial KPS, age, educational level, health insurance status, stage, chemotherapy, comorbid disease, and passive smoking were determined as significant factors influencing QOL. Physical, role, cognitive, and emotional functions were found to be significantly lower in the presence of dyspnea (r = 0.42, r = 0.58, r = 0.50, r = 0.63 or P = 0.02, P < 0.01, P < 0.01, P < 0.05, respectively). Regarding the symptom scales, dyspnea was found to be correlated with increasing of fatigue, pain, insomnia, and appetite loss (r = 0.52, r = 0.40, r = 0.64, r = 0.38 or P < 0.01, P = 0.03, P < 0.05, P = 0.04, respectively). The parameters of pulmonary function tests (FEV1, FVC, and FEV1/FVC) did not show any significant relation with any scale of QOL. Conclusion:Overall, we found that QOL of our patients who survived at least 2 years after radiotherapy, was good. The Turkish version of the EORTC QLQ-C30, v.3 is a valid and reliable instrument for Turkish lung cancer patients and can be used in clinical studies. We believe further studies are needed to have a better understanding of patients' pretreatment and posttreatment QOLs.
Time-resolved fluorescence investigation of SiC epitaxy layer

We report time-resolved fluorescence measurements in 6H-SiC samples in a subnanosecond time range with a high spatial resolution. The fluorescence kinetics of the 6H-SiC substrate grown by the Lely-method is characterized by a mono-exponential decay with a time constant of about 50 ns. The epilayer of 5 micrometers thickness grown by liquid phase epitaxy shows a significant faster decay in the subnanosecond range which can be explained by a distinguished higher defect concentration in comparison to the substrate. The spatially resolved detection demonstrates that the lifetime change within 100 micrometers . The red wavelength range shows a slower fluorescence lifetime than the blue one.
Fault Detection Filter Design for Markovian Jump Singular Systems With Intermittent Measurements

This paper addresses the problem of fault detection filter design for discrete-time Markovian jump singular systems with intermittent measurements. The measurement transmission from the plant to the fault detection filter is assumed to be imperfect and a stochastic variable is utilized to model the phenomenon of data missing. Our attention is focused on the design of a fault detection filter such that the residual system is stochastically Markovian jump admissible and satisfies some expected performances. A new necessary and sufficient condition for a class of discrete-time Markovian jump singular systems to be stochastically Markovian jump admissible is proposed in the form of strict linear matrix inequalities. Sufficient conditions are established for the existence of the fault detection filter. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the developed theoretical results.
MicroRNA-200 a inhibits epithelial-mesenchymal transition in human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line

Objective: Our study investigated the role of microRNA (miR)-200a and its molecular targets in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells. Methods: An inhibitor of miR-200a was transiently transfected into the hepatocellular carcinoma cell line, MHCC-97L. The effect of this transfection on mRNA levels of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related genes was measured by fluorescence-based quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRTPCR). Further, protein levels of EMT-related genes, cell proliferation and apoptosis-related markers were assessed by Western blot analysis in these transfected cells. MTT and wound-healing assay were used to evaluate the proliferation and migration of MHCC-97L cells in presence and in absence of miR-200a inhibitor. Results: Compared with miR-NC control group, qRT-PCR results in anti-miR-200a group revealed a significant reduction in the mRNA levels of E-cadherin, with a concomitant increasing in vimentin mRNA level (all P < 0.05). Western blot results showed higher E-cadherin and Caspase-3 protein expressions in anti-miR-200a group compared to miR-NC group (P < 0.05). In addition, vimentin and Ki-67 protein expression was found sharply decreased in anti-miR-200a group compared to miR-NC group (P < 0.05). Consistent with this, wound-healing and MTT assay showed that migration and proliferation capacity of MHCC-97L cells in anti-miR-200a group is significantly increased compared with miR-NC group (both P < 0.05). Conclusion: Our study reveals an important role of miR-200a in inhibiting EMT, proliferation and migration in HCC cells, suggesting the possibility of miR-200a-based therapeutics in HCC.
Store and Forward Applications in Telemedicine for Wireless IP Based Networks

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications technology to provide medical information and services. It may be as simple as two health professionals discussing a case over the telephone, or as sophisticated as using satellite technology to broadcast a consultation between providers at facilities in two countries, using videoconferencing equipment. The first is used daily by most health professionals, and the latter is used by the military and some large medical centers. In the past, several telemedicine applications using wired communications were presented. The recent evolutions of wireless communications have enabled telemedicine systems to operate throughout the world, hence expanding telemedicine benefits, applications, and services. In telemedicine, typically scenarios is two doctors are involved with the patient: a local attending doctor and a remote tele-doctor who is engaged to do one or more of a variety of services ranging from tele-consultation, or performing a tele-surgery, as well as tele-diagnosis where a doctor tele-diagnoses a sickness. The telemedicine systems need to be very simple to operate, reliable and consistent links, use standard communication protocols, and efficient bandwidth. The current generation of the telemedicine systems uses the store-and-forward approach of telemedicine, where medical data are acquired and compiled and transmitted. A high quality video and audio is required at both the sides to enable the consulting doctor and patients to have face-to-face encounter with the expert doctor. In this paper we discuss a prototype wireless Internet Protocol (IP) based store and forward telemedicine system using the Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite communication and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN).
Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria and root system functioning

The rhizosphere supports the development and activity of a huge and diversified microbial community, including microorganisms capable to promote plant growth. Among the latter, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) colonize roots of monocots and dicots, and enhance plant growth by direct and indirect mechanisms. Modification of root system architecture by PGPR implicates the production of phytohormones and other signals that lead, mostly, to enhanced lateral root branching and development of root hairs. PGPR also modify root functioning, improve plant nutrition and influence the physiology of the whole plant. Recent results provided first clues as to how PGPR signals could trigger these plant responses. Whether local and/or systemic, the plant molecular pathways involved remain often unknown. From an ecological point of view, it emerged that PGPR form coherent functional groups, whose rhizosphere ecology is influenced by a myriad of abiotic and biotic factors in natural and agricultural soils, and these factors can in turn modulate PGPR effects on roots. In this paper, we address novel knowledge and gaps on PGPR modes of action and signals, and highlight recent progress on the links between plant morphological and physiological effects induced by PGPR. We also show the importance of taking into account the size, diversity, and gene expression patterns of PGPR assemblages in the rhizosphere to better understand their impact on plant growth and functioning. Integrating mechanistic and ecological knowledge on PGPR populations in soil will be a prerequisite to develop novel management strategies for sustainable agriculture.
Area-Speed Tradeoffs for Hierarchical Field-Programmable Gate Arrays

This paper investigates area-speed trade-offs for Hierarchical FPGA (HFPGA) architectures. Using a set of new CAD tools, we measured the timing performance of HFPGAs and conventional symmetrical FPGAs using data gathered from experiments on a subset of benchmark circuits from the Microelectronics Centre of North Carolina (MCNC). Experiments were also performed to determine the effect of timing optimized placements on routing channel requirements. These experiments demonstrate that HFPGAs can achieve both better area and speed than symmetrical FPGA architectures.
A dual index model for contextual information retrieval

In this paper, we propose a dual index model for contextual IR. For each query, we search against both document level and passage level indexes, and use the corresponding merge function to update the weights for both documents and paragraphs by combining the results from both indexes according to the granularity information in metadata. Experiments on 2004 TREC data show that a significant improvement can be made by using the dual index model.
The impact of cloud base station's coordinated multi-point schemes on mobility performance

The so-called cloud base station considered as a kind of distributed antenna system can faciliate the fast coordination among cells and also enlarge its scale by using many remote radio heads. Hence, these characteristics can widen the application region of the special coordinated multi-point scheme that fast coordination among cells should be imperative, which may be brings benefits to the overall system performance. The objective of this paper is to investigate the mobility performance according to the scale of cloud base station applying the coordinated multipoint joint processing scheme compared with the mobility performance of non-CoMP. To grasp the impacts on mobility performance, three mobility metrics (radio link failure, HO failure, ping-pong) are used and their results mean that the combination between cloud base station architecture and coordinated multi-point joint processing scheme may bring the rise of mobility performance.
Diverse retrieval via greedy optimization of expected 1-call@k in a latent subtopic relevance model

It has been previously observed that optimization of the 1-call@k relevance objective (i.e., a set-based objective that is 1 if at least one document is relevant, otherwise 0) empirically correlates with diverse retrieval. In this paper, we proceed one step further and show theoretically that greedily optimizing expected 1-call@k w.r. t. a latent subtopic model of binary relevance leads to a diverse retrieval algorithm sharing many features of existing diversification approaches. This new result is complementary to a variety of diverse retrieval algorithms derived from alternate rank-based relevance criteria such as average precision and reciprocal rank. As such, the derivation presented here for expected 1-call@k provides a novel theoretical perspective on the emergence of diversity via a latent subtopic model of relevance --- an idea underlying both ambiguous and faceted subtopic retrieval that have been used to motivate diverse retrieval.
MPI pre-processor: generating MPI derived datatypes from C datatypes automatically

The grid usage is facing the problem that consists in running existing sequential code for parallel execution transparently (ie. using source code without modification). AIPE is a middleware that deals with this problem. MPIPP is the software component we have developed to allow the generation of MPI derived datatypes from C datatype definitions automatically. The goal of this new tool is to make the building of complex messages easier for the end-user. Moreover, this paper shows that MPIPP goes farther in the complexity level of C datatypes that can be taken into account than any other similar tools have ever gone to
Word-level script identification for handwritten Indic scripts

Automatic script identification from handwritten document images facilitates many important applications such as indexing, sorting and triage. A given Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system is typically trained on only a single script but for documents or collections containing different scripts, there must be some way to automatically identify the script prior to OCR. For Indic script research, some results have been reported in the literature but the task is far from solved. In this paper, we propose a word-level script identification technique for six handwritten Indic scripts- Bangla, Devanagari, Gurumukhi, Malayalam, Oriya Telugu and the Roman script. A set of 82 features has been designed using a combination of elliptical and polygonal approximation techniques. Our approach has been evaluated on a dataset of 7000 handwritten text words, using multiple classifiers. A Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier was found to be the best classifier resulting in 95.35% accuracy. The result is progressive considering the complexities and shape variations of the Indic scripts.
Treatment of Established Postmenopausal Osteoporosis with Raloxifene: A Randomized Trial

Raloxifene is a selective estrogen receptor modulator that in experimental animals acts as an estrogen receptor antagonist in breast and endometrium but as an estrogen receptor agonist in the skeletal and cardiovascular systems. We conducted a 1‐year prospective, randomized, double‐blind trial in 143 postmenopausal osteoporotic women (mean ± SD age, 68.4 ± 5.0 years) with at least one prevalent vertebral fractures and low bone mineral density (BMD), comparing groups receiving raloxifene at 60 mg/day (RLX60) or 120 mg/day (RLX120) and a control group receiving supplements of 750 mg/day of calcium and 400 IU/day of vitamin D. There were no differences among groups in the occurrence of uterine bleeding, thrombophlebitis, breast abnormalities, or increased endometrial thickness (assessed by ultrasonography). As compared with controls, the changes in values over 1 year for RLX60 and RLX120, respectively, were significant for serum bone alkaline phosphatase (−14.9%, −8.87%), serum osteocalcin (−20.7%, −17.0%), and urinary C‐telopeptide fragment of type I collagen/creatinine (−24.9%, −30.8%), markers of bone turnover; for serum total cholesterol (−7.0% for RLX60) and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) (−11.4% for RLX60) and for the LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio (−13.2%, −8.3%). BMD increased significantly in the total hip (1.66% for RLX60) and ultradistal radius (2.92%, 2.50%). There were nonsignificant trends toward increases over controls in BMD for lumbar spine, total body, and total hip (for RLX120). Using a >15% cutoff definition, raloxifene had no effect on incident fractures, but using a >30% cutoff, there was a dose‐related reduction (p = 0.047). We conclude that raloxifene therapy is well tolerated, reduces serum lipids, and does not stimulate the uterus or breasts. It has beneficial effects on bone, although, under the conditions of this study, these appear to be of a smaller magnitude than have been reported with estrogen therapy.
The dynamics of image processing viewed as damped elastic deformation

Diffusion-type algorithms have been integrated in recent years successfully into the toolbox of image processing. We introduce a new more flexible and powerful family of parabolic-hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs) that somewhat resembles the structure of the parabolic diffusion equation, but incorporates the second order derivative in time. It is instructive to consider intuitively in this context the dynamics of image processing as the deformation of an `elastic sheet'. Indeed, our parabolic-hyperbolic PDE models elastic deformation. This analogy between a well-known physical system and process on one hand, and the dynamics of an image processing scheme on the other hand, contributes interesting and important insight about images and their processing. We explore and demonstrate the capabilities and advantages afforded by the application of the proposed family of equations in image enhancement. The problem of computational complexity is addressed, and efficient numeric schemes are also presented.
New n-Type Transparent Conducting Oxides

Most research to develop highly transparent and conductive thin films has focused on n -type semiconductors consisting of metal oxides. Historically, transparent conducting oxide (TCO) thin films composed of binary compounds such as SnO 2 and In 2 O 3 were developed by means of chemical- and physical-deposition methods. Impurity-doped SnO 2 (Sb- or F-doped SnO 2 , e.g., SnO 2 :Sb or SnO 2 : F) and In 2 O 3 : Sn (indium tin oxide, ITO) films are in practical use. In addition to binary compounds, ternary compounds such as Cd 2 SnO 4 , CdSnO 3 , and CdIn 2 O 4 were developed prior to 1980, but their TCO films have not yet been used widely.
System level impact of GaN power devices in server architectures

Gallium Nitride (GaN) integrated circuits and discrete transistors give the power system engineer a new set of tools for improving efficiency, cost, and power density in server and telecom systems. In this paper we examine the new benchmarks in performance as well as the various tradeoffs involved in designing power systems that take an input of 48 V and deliver it to the final destination — a 1 V digital load.
Mourre estimates for a 2D magnetic quantum Hamiltonian on strip-like domains

We consider a 2D Schrodinger operator H0 with constant magnetic field defined on a strip of finite width. The spectrum of H0 is absolutely continuous and contains a discrete set of thresholds. We perturb H0 by an electric potential V , and establish a Mourre estimate for H = H0 + V when V is periodic in the infinite direction of the strip, or decays in a suitable sense at infinity. In the periodic case, for each compact subinterval I contained in between two consecutive thresholds, we show as a corollary that the spectrum of H remains absolutely continuous in I, provided the period and the size of the perturbation are sufficiently small. In the second case we obtain that the singular continuous spectrum of H is empty, and any compact subset of the complement of the thresholds set contains at most a finite number of eigenvalues of H, each of them having finite multiplicity. Moreover these Mourre estimates together with some of their spectral consequences generalize to the case of 2D magnetic Schr¨odinger operators defined on R2 for suitable confining potentials modeling Dirichlet boundary conditions.
Adaptive parametrization of multivariate B-splines for image registration

We present an adaptive parametrization scheme for dynamic mesh refinement in the application of parametric image registration. The scheme is based on a refinement measure ensuring that the control points give an efficient representation of the warp fields, in terms of minimizing the registration cost function. In the current work we introduce multivariate B-splines as a novel alternative to the widely used tensor B-splines enabling us to make efficient use of the derived measure.The multivariate B-splines of order n are Cn- 1 smooth and are based on Delaunay configurations of arbitrary 2D or 3D control point sets. Efficient algorithms for finding the configurations are presented, and B-splines are through their flexibility shown to feature several advantages over the tensor B-splines. In spite of efforts to make the tensor product B-splines more flexible, the knots are still bound to reside on a regular grid. In contrast, by efficient non- constrained placement of the knots, the multivariate B- splines are shown to give a good representation of inho- mogeneous objects in natural settings. The wide applicability of the method is illustrated through its application on medical data and for optical flow estimation.