Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment of Carotid Atherosclerosis in Normocholesterolemic Individuals With Proven Mutations in the Low-Density Lipoprotein Receptor or Apolipoprotein B Genes

Background— Genetic cascade screening for heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) revealed that 15% of individuals given this diagnosis do not exhibit elevated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels. We assessed whether cardiovascular risk for these individuals differs from that of hypercholesterolemic FH heterozygotes and unaffected relatives. Methods and Results— Individuals aged 18 to 55 years were recruited within 18 months after genetic screening. Three groups were studied: subjects given a molecular diagnosis of FH and with LDL-C levels at genetic screening below the 75th percentile (FH-low), subjects with FH and an LDL-C level above the 90th percentile (FH-high), and subjects without FH (no-FH). We measured carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) by ultrasonography. Differences in carotid IMT among the groups were assessed using multivariate linear regression analyses. Mean carotid IMT of 114 subjects in the FH-low group (0.623 mm; 95% CI, 0.609 to 0.638 mm) was significantly smaller than that of 162 subjects in the FH-high group (0.664 mm; 95% CI, 0.648 to 0.679 mm; P<0.001) and did not significantly differ from the mean carotid IMT in 145 subjects in the no-FH group (0.628 mm; 95% CI, 0.613 to 0.642 mm; P=0.67). Conclusions— Our findings suggest that the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with FH to a large extent is related to LDL-C levels and not to the presence of a mutation per se. Consequently, this study cautiously suggests that individuals with an FH genotype without expression of hypercholesterolemia may not require a pharmaceutical intervention that is as aggressive as the standard for subjects with FH.
Nanowire Electrodes for Advanced Lithium Batteries

Since the commercialization of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) in the past two decades, rechargeable LIBs have become widespread power sources for portable devices used in daily life. However, current demands require higher energy density and power density of batteries. The electrochemical energy storage performance of LIBs could be improved by applying nanomaterial electrodes, but their fast capacity fading is still one of the key limitations and the mechanism needs to be clearly understood. Single nanowire electrode devices are considered as a versatile platform for in situ probing the direct relationship between electrical transport, structure change, and other properties of the single nanowire electrode along with the charge/discharge process. The results indicate the conductivity decrease of the nanowire electrode and the structural disorder/destruction during electrochemical reactions which limit the cycling performance of LIBs. Based on the in situ observations, some feasible structure architecture strategies, including prelithiation, coaxial structure, nanowire arrays and hierarchical structure architecture, are proposed and utilized to restrain the conductivity decrease and structural disorder/destruction. Further, the applications of nanowire electrodes in some “beyond Li-ion” batteries, such as Li-S and Li-air battery, are also described.
West Nile Virus, Guadeloupe

To determine whether West Nile virus (WNV) had reached the archipelago of Guadeloupe, a serologic study in horses and birds was conducted in 2002. Immunoglobulin (Ig) G, IgM, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and seroneutralization tests identified WNV infection in horses and chickens. Six months later, a high rate of seroconversion was observed in horses.
Using scales in the multiobjective approach

Scales are used to reduce the conservatism encountered in most multiobjective approaches to control design. The most general case (i.e., matrix scales) results in a nonconvex problem, though the use of scalar scales leads to convex searches in the analysis and state feedback problems. Output feedback synthesis and other extensions are discussed. Numerical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the suggested approach. The article considers, in particular, H/sup /spl infin// control.
Relationship between insulin sensitivity and long-term weight change in adults.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether insulin resistance is associated with reduced risk of weight gain. METHODS In this retrospective study, we reviewed medical records of volunteers who had undergone a euglycemic, hyperinsulinemic clamp in research studies at Mayo Clinic between October 20, 1986, and January 30, 2002. Data from volunteers who had at least 1 year of followup were analyzed, which included height, weight, date of birth, ethnicity, body composition (percentage body fat and kilograms of fat-free mass), waist-to-hip ratio, date of insulin clamp, fasting plasma glucose and insulin, average plasma glucose and insulin concentrations during the final 30 minutes of each insulin clamp step, and average glucose infusion rate (μmol·kg fat free mass⁻¹·min⁻¹) during the final 30 minutes of each insulin clamp step. We abstracted the following for each medical encounter: date of visit, height, weight, diagnoses, procedures, and medication use. For the purposes of statistical analysis, the diagnoses, procedures, and medications were then converted into Current Procedural Terminology codes and National Drug Codes. RESULTS One hundred sixteen patients had at least 1 year of follow-up. The average baseline body mass index was 29.4 ± 5.3 kg/m², and the follow-up time averaged 8.1 ± 5.9 years. We found no significant correlation between baseline insulin action and annual weight change or overall weight change (P = .60 and P = .11, respectively) or between log-transformed insulin action and annual weight gain (P = .61). CONCLUSION These results suggest that in free-living, healthy, white adults, there is not a clinically meaningful relationship between insulin action and subsequent weight change.
Efficient response time predictions by exploiting application and resource state similarities

In large-scale grids with many possible resources (clusters of computing elements) to run applications, it is useful that the resources can provide predictions of job response times so users or resource brokers can make better scheduling decisions. Two metrics need to be estimated for response time predictions: one is how long a job executes on the resource (application run time), the other is how long the job waits in the queue before starting (queue wait time). In this paper we propose an instance based learning technique to predict these two metrics by mining historical workloads. The novelty of our approach is to introduce policy attributes in representing and comparing resource states, which is defined as the pool of running and queued jobs on the resource at the time to make a prediction. The policy attributes reflect the local resource scheduling policies and they can be automatically discovered using a genetic search algorithm. The main advantages of this approach compared with scheduler simulation are two-folds: Firstly, it has a better performance to meet the real time requirement of Grid resource brokering; secondly, it is more general because the scheduling policies are learned from past observations. Our experimental results on the NIKHEF LCG production cluster show that acceptable prediction accuracy can be obtained, where the relative prediction errors for response times are between 0.35 and 0.70.
Indoor Off-Body Wireless MIMO Communication With Dual Polarized Textile Antennas

Off-body data communication for firefighters and other rescue workers is an important area of development. The communication with a moving person in an indoor environment can be very unreliable due to channel fading. In addition, when considering off-body communication by means of textile antennas, propagation is affected by shadowing caused by the human body. By transmitting and receiving signals using multiple-input, multiple-output antennas (MIMO communication) a large improvement in reliability of the wireless link is obtained. In this contribution, the performance of wireless data communication using quadrature phase shift keyed (QPSK) modulated data in the 2.45 GHz ISM-band is evaluated in the case of firefighters walking indoor and communicating by means of a compact dual-pattern dual-polarization diversity textile patch antenna system integrated into their clothing. Simultaneous transmit diversity (at the firefighter) and receive diversity (at the base station) up to fourth order are achieved by means of orthogonal space-time codes, providing a maximum total diversity order of 16. The measurements confirm that MIMO techniques drastically improve the reliability of the wireless link. Measurements are compared for three test persons of significantly different sizes. For equal transmitted power levels, the bit error rates for the 2 × 2 and 4 × 4 links are much lower than for a system without diversity, with the 4 × 4 system clearly providing the best performance.
Assessment of body-powered upper limb prostheses by able-bodied subjects, using the Box and Blocks Test and the Nine-Hole Peg Test

Background: The functional performance of currently available body-powered prostheses is unknown. Objective: The goal of this study was to objectively assess and compare the functional performance of three commonly used body-powered upper limb terminal devices. Study design: Experimental trial. Methods: A total of 21 able-bodied subjects (n = 21, age = 22 ± 2) tested three different terminal devices: TRS voluntary closing Hook Grip 2S, Otto Bock voluntary opening hand and Hosmer Model 5XA hook, using a prosthesis simulator. All subjects used each terminal device nine times in two functional tests: the Nine-Hole Peg Test and the Box and Blocks Test. Results: Significant differences were found between the different terminal devices and their scores on the Nine-Hole Peg Test and the Box and Blocks Test. The Hosmer hook scored best in both tests. The TRS Hook Grip 2S scored second best. The Otto Bock hand showed the lowest scores. Conclusion: This study is a first step in the comparison of functional performances of body-powered prostheses. The data can be used as a reference value, to assess the performance of a terminal device or an amputee. Clinical relevance The measured scores enable the comparison of the performance of a prosthesis user and his or her terminal device relative to standard scores.
Sixth International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Processing and Crisis Information

This paper presents a notification system to identify earthquakes from firsthand reports published on Twitter. Tweets from target regions in Australia and New Zealand are checked for earthquake keyword frequency bursts and then processed to identify evidence of an earthquake. The benefit of our earthquake detector is that it relies on evidence of firsthand ‘felt’ reports from Twitter, provides an indication of the earthquake intensity and will be the trigger for further classification of Tweets for impact analysis. We describe how the detector has been incrementally improved, most notably by the introduction of a text classifier. During its initial five months of operation the system has generated 49 notifications of which 29 related to real earthquake events.
GFP-moesin illuminates actin cytoskeleton dynamics in living tissue and demonstrates cell shape changes during morphogenesis in Drosophila.

Moesin, ezrin, and radixin (MER) are components of the cortical actin cytoskeleton and membrane processes such as filopodia and microvilli. Their C-terminal tails contain an extended region that is predicted to be helical, an actin binding domain, and a region(s) that participates in self-association. We engineered an in vivo fluorescent actin binding protein (GFP-moe) by joining sequences that encode the jellyfish green fluorescent protein (GFP) to sequences that encode the C-terminal end of the sole Drosophila MER homolog, moesin [Moesin-like gene product, referred to previously as the D17 MER-like protein; Edwards et al., 1994, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91, 4589], and Dmoesin [McCartney and Fehon, 1996, J. Cell Biol. 133, 843]. Transgenic flies expressing this fusion protein under control of the hsp70 promoter were generated and used for analysis of cell shape changes during morphogenesis of various developmental stages and tissues. Following heat shock, high levels of stable fusion protein are produced by all somatic tissues. GFP-moe localizes to the cortical actin cytoskeleton, providing a strong in vivo marker for cell shape and pattern during epithelial morphogenesis. The protein also becomes highly enriched in pseudopods, microvilli, axons, denticles, the border cell process, and other membrane projections, potentially by binding to endogenous moesin as well as actin. We show that GFP-moe can be used to examine the development and behavior of these dynamic structures in live specimens. We observe a bright green fluorescent, presumably actin-rich, polar cell proboscis that inserts itself into the forming micropyle and appears to maintain an opening for sperm passage around which the chorion is formed. We also confirm the existence of an actin-rich purse string at the leading edge of the lateral epidermis and provide a dynamic analysis of its behavior as it migrates during dorsal closure. Observations of embryos, larvae, and pupae show that GFP-moe is also useful for labeling the developing nervous system and will be a good general marker of dynamic cell behavior during morphogenesis in live tissues and demonstrate that fusion of a subcellular localization signal to GFP greatly increases its utility as a cell marker.
The effect of surface finishing and storage solutions on the color stability of resin-based composites.

BACKGROUND The authors tested the hypothesis that surface-finishing treatments and the type of storage solutions significantly affected the staining of resin-based composites, or RBCs, and unfilled resins, or URs. METHODS Fifty-four RBC and 54 UR disks were polymerized through a polyester film strip (Mylar, DuPont, Wilmington, Del.) and polished in one of three groups: 1-micrometer aluminum oxide, 15-microm diamond plate and no treatment (polyester film). All specimens were immersed in water for two days and then in coffee, cola or red wine for seven more days at 37 C. The authors recorded tristimulus color measurements before the immersions; after one and two days in water; and after one, two, three and seven days in the storage solutions. RESULTS Most of the color changes occurred between day 2 in water and day 7 in the staining solution. Analysis of variance showed that the finishing treatment and storage solution significantly influenced the overall color change (deltaE), and interactions occurred between the finishing treatment and the storage solution (P < .0001) for both materials. RBC specimens generally exhibited greater color changes than did UR specimens. The polyester film finishing exhibited the greatest amount of color change, while the diamond finishing exhibited the least amount of color change. Immersion in wine caused the greatest color change for both materials; cola and coffee resulted in the smallest color change for RBC and UR specimens, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Finishing treatments and storage solutions significantly affect the surface staining of RBC materials. Polyester film finishing and red wine produced the greatest color change after seven days for RBC specimens. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Clinicians should remove the polyester film-finished surface and advise patients that drinking wine could intensify surface staining on RBC restorations.
Cloud-Based Augmentation for Mobile Devices: Motivation, Taxonomies, and Open Challenges

Recently, Cloud-based Mobile Augmentation (CMA) approaches have gained remarkable ground from academia and industry. CMA is the state-of-the-art mobile augmentation model that employs resource-rich clouds to increase, enhance, and optimize computing capabilities of mobile devices aiming at execution of resource-intensive mobile applications. Augmented mobile devices envision to perform extensive computations and to store big data beyond their intrinsic capabilities with least footprint and vulnerability. Researchers utilize varied cloud-based computing resources (e.g., distant clouds and nearby mobile nodes) to meet various computing requirements of mobile users. However, employing cloud-based computing resources is not a straightforward panacea. Comprehending critical factors (e.g., current state of mobile client and remote resources) that impact on augmentation process and optimum selection of cloud-based resource types are some challenges that hinder CMA adaptability. This paper comprehensively surveys the mobile augmentation domain and presents taxonomy of CMA approaches. The objectives of this study is to highlight the effects of remote resources on the quality and reliability of augmentation processes and discuss the challenges and opportunities of employing varied cloud-based resources in augmenting mobile devices. We present augmentation definition, motivation, and taxonomy of augmentation types, including traditional and cloud-based. We critically analyze the state-of-the-art CMA approaches and classify them into four groups of distant fixed, proximate fixed, proximate mobile, and hybrid to present a taxonomy. Vital decision making and performance limitation factors that influence on the adoption of CMA approaches are introduced and an exemplary decision making flowchart for future CMA approaches are presented. Impacts of CMA approaches on mobile computing is discussed and open challenges are presented as the future research directions.
Multifunctional gold nanostars for molecular imaging and cancer therapy

Plasmonics-active gold nanoparticles offer excellent potential in molecular imaging and cancer therapy. Among them, gold nanostars (AuNS) exhibit cross-platform flexibility as multimodal contrast agents for macroscopic X-ray computer tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), as well as nanoprobes for photoacoustic tomography (PAT), two-photon photoluminescence (TPL), and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Their surfactant-free surface enables versatile functionalization to enhance cancer targeting, and allow triggered drug release. AuNS can also be used as an efficient platform for drug carrying, photothermal therapy, and photodynamic therapy (PDT). This review paper presents the latest progress regarding AuNS as a promising nanoplatform for cancer nanotheranostics. Future research directions with AuNS for biomedical applications will also be discussed.
New inversehydogel opals as protein responsive sensors

In this work, the development of temperature- and protein-responsive sensor materials based on biocompatible, inverse hydrogel opals (IHOs) is presented. With these materials, large biomolecules can be specifically recognised and the binding event visualised. The preparation of the IHOs was performed with a template process, for which monodisperse silica particles were vertically deposited onto glass slides as the first step. The obtained colloidal crystals with a thickness of 5 μm displayed opalescent reflections because of the uniform alignment of the colloids. As a second step, the template was embedded in a matrix consisting of biocompatible, thermoresponsive hydrogels. The comonomers were selected from the family of oligo(ethylene glycol)methacrylates. The monomer solution was injected into a polymerisation mould, which contained the colloidal crystals as a template. The space in-between the template particles was filled with the monomer solution and the hydrogel was cured via UV-polymerisation. The particles were chemically etched, which resulted in a porous inner structure. The uniform alignment of the pores and therefore the opalescent reflection were maintained, so these system were denoted as inverse hydrogel opals. A pore diameter of several hundred nanometres as well as interconnections between the pores should facilitate a diffusion of bigger (bio)molecules, which was always a challenge in the presented systems until now. The copolymer composition was chosen to result in a hydrogel collapse over 35 °C. All hydrogels showed pronounced swelling in water below the critical temperature. The incorporation of a reactive monomer with hydroxyl groups ensured a potential coupling group for the introduction of recognition units for analytes, e.g. proteins. As a test system, biotin as a recognition unit for avidin was coupled to the IHO via polymer-analogous Steglich esterification. The amount of accessible biotin was quantified with a colorimetric binding assay. When avidin was added to the biotinylated IHO, the wavelength of the opalescent reflection was significantly shifted and therefore the binding event was visualised. This effect is based on the change in swelling behaviour of the hydrogel after binding of the hydrophilic avidin, which is amplified by the thermoresponsive nature of the hydrogel. A swelling or shrinking of the pores induces a change in distance of the crystal planes, which are responsible for the colour of the reflection. With these findings, the possibility of creating sensor materials or additional biomolecules in the size range of avidin is given. %%%%In dieser Arbeit wird die Entwicklung von temperatur- und proteinresponsiven Sensormaterialien auf Basis von biokompatiblen, inversen Hydrogelopalen (IHO) vorgestellt, mit welchen die spezifische Erkennung groserer Biomolekule visuell ausgelesen werden kann. Die Darstellung der IHOs erfolgte mittels Templatverfahren, bei dem im ersten Schritt monodisperse Silicapartikel vertikal auf Objekttrager abgeschieden wurden. Die so erhaltenen…
Risk Themes Discovered through Architecture Evaluations

The output of 18 software architecture evaluations are analyzed to find patterns in the risk themes identified in the evaluations. The major results are: i) A categorization of risk themes ii) The observation that twice as many risk themes are risks of "omission " as are risks of "commission ". iii) A failure to find a relationship between the business and mission goals of a system and the risk themes from an evaluation of that system. iv) A failure to find a relationship between the domain of a system being evaluated and the risk themes associated with the development of that system. The results of this investigation have application to practitioners by suggesting activities on which developers should put greater focus. They also have application to researchers by suggesting further areas of investigation.
Aerobic granulation for future wastewater treatment technology: challenges ahead

Aerobic granules were discovered around 20 years back. These are spherical aggregates of mixed microbial culture, typically around 0.5–3 mm in diameter. Aerobic granule-based wastewater treatment technology has been successfully used on a full-scale for real wastewater treatment. It is argued that the aerobic granule-based technology can potentially replace the traditional activated sludge process. The first of its advantages is that aerobic granule-based wastewater treatment plants can be built within around one quarter of the land occupied by conventional activated sludge-based plants. Additionally, this technology can reduce the operating cost by nearly 25%. Reduction in sludge production and reduction in energy consumption (around 30%) are other benefits of this technology. Granule formation is a relatively slow process. In fact, the time taken for granule formation is a challenge for a full-scale application of this technology. The mechanism behind aerobic granule formation is not fully understood. Thus, further investigation of the molecular mechanism of granule formation would be crucial for the successful commercialization of this technology.