Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DexterNet: An Open Platform for Heterogeneous Body Sensor Networks and its Applications

We present an open-source platform for wireless body sensor networks called DexterNet. The system supports real-time, persistent human monitoring in both indoor and outdoor environments. The platform utilizes a three-layer architecture to control heterogeneous body sensors. The first layer called the body sensor layer (BSL) deals with design of heterogeneous body sensors and their instrumentation on the body. At the second layer called the personal network layer (PNL), the body sensors on a single subject communicate with a mobile base station, which supports Linux OS and the IEEE 802.15. 4 protocol. The BSL and PNL functions are abstracted and implemented as an open-source software library, called Signal Processing In Node Environment (SPINE). A DexterNet network is scalable, and can be reconfigured on-the-fly via SPINE. At the third layer called the global network layer (GNL), multiple PNLs communicate with a remote Internet server to permanently log the sensor data and support higher-level applications. We demonstrate the versatility of the DexterNet platform via several real-world applications.
Waddell's signs revisited?

Waddell’s signs have been a fixture of low back physical examination for more than two decades. They have been widely used as a proxy for detecting nonorganic pain states. However, do recent advances in our understanding of neuropathic pain call these signs into question? Do certain Waddell’s signs do nothing more than identify patients with neuropathic pain? Much has been published regarding the mechanisms of neuropathic pain in the last decade. When nerves are injured, they behave differently than other injured tissues. For instance, Song et al have revealed that, in an animal model of chronic dorsal root ganglion compression, mechanical hyperalgesia is common. This appears to be related to spontaneous ectopic discharges in the dorsal root ganglion. In addition, “wind-up” appears to be yet another consequence of neuronal injury that leads to prolonged nociceptor input (c-fibers). This leads to a grossly exaggerated response to afferent input and an increase in the size of the receptive field on the skin. Recent research into fibromyalgia patients shows these changes as well as other markers of central hypersensitivity, such as increased size of brain receptive fields on functional MRI. To determine if these new data should change our interpretation of Waddell’s signs, it’s helpful to review the signs:
Association of season and pasture grazing with blood hormone and metabolite concentrations in horses with presumed pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction.

BACKGROUND Pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID) is a risk factor for pasture-associated laminitis, which follows a seasonal pattern. HYPOTHESIS Hormonal responses to season differ between PPID and unaffected horses. ANIMALS Seventeen horses aged 8-30 years (14 horses ≥ 20 years of age). METHODS Longitudinal observational study. Blood was collected monthly from August 2007 until July 2008 after pasture grazing and again after overnight stall confinement. Blood hormone and metabolite concentrations were measured and pasture grass samples were analyzed to determine carbohydrate content. Analysis of variance analysis for repeated measures was performed. RESULTS Mean ACTH concentrations varied significantly over time (P < .001), with higher concentrations detected in August, September, and October compared with November-April. Pasture × time effects were detected for glucose and insulin concentrations, with peaks observed in September. Horses were retrospectively allocated to PPID (n = 8) and control (n = 9) groups on the basis of plasma ACTH concentrations. Changes in insulin concentrations over time differed in the PPID group when compared with the control group. Insulin concentrations were positively correlated with grass carbohydrate composition. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE PPID did not affect the timing or duration of the seasonal increase in ACTH concentrations, but higher values were detected in affected horses. Insulin concentrations differed between groups, but hyperinsulinemia was rarely detected. Glucose and insulin concentrations peaked in September when horses were grazing on pasture, which could be relevant to the seasonal pattern of laminitis.
Assessing cerebrovascular reactivity by the pattern of response to progressive hypercapnia

Cerebral blood flow responds to a carbon dioxide challenge, and is often assessed as cerebrovascular reactivity, assuming a linear response over a limited stimulus range or a sigmoidal response over a wider range. However, these assumed response patterns may not necessarily apply to regions with pathophysiology. Deviations from sigmoidal responses are hypothesised to result from upstream flow limitations causing competition for blood flow between downstream regions, particularly with vasodilatory stimulation; flow is preferentially distributed to regions with more reactive vessels. Under these conditions, linear or sigmoidal fitting may not fairly describe the relationship between stimulus and flow. To assess the range of response patterns and their prevalence a survey of healthy control subjects and patients with cerebrovascular disease was conducted. We used a ramp carbon dioxide challenge from hypo‐ to hypercapnia as the stimulus, and magnetic resonance imaging to measure the flow responses. We categorized BOLD response patterns into four types based on the signs of their linear slopes in the hypo‐ and hypercapnic ranges, color coded and mapped them onto their respective anatomical scans. We suggest that these type maps complement maps of linear cerebrovascular reactivity by providing a better indication of the actual response patterns. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3415–3427, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A Human Proteome Detection and Quantitation Project*

The lack of sensitive, specific, multiplexable assays for most human proteins is the major technical barrier impeding development of candidate biomarkers into clinically useful tests. Recent progress in mass spectrometry-based assays for proteotypic peptides, particularly those with specific affinity peptide enrichment, offers a systematic and economical path to comprehensive quantitative coverage of the human proteome. A complete suite of assays, e.g. two peptides from the protein product of each of the ∼20,500 human genes (here termed the human Proteome Detection and Quantitation project), would enable rapid and systematic verification of candidate biomarkers and lay a quantitative foundation for subsequent efforts to define the larger universe of splice variants, post-translational modifications, protein-protein interactions, and tissue localization.
Molecular mechanisms of hepatocarcinogenesis in chronic hepatitis C virus infection

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and chronic liver disease worldwide. Recent developments and advances in HCV replication systems in vitro and in vivo, transgenic animal models, and gene expression profiling approaches have provided novel insights into the mechanisms of HCV replication. They have also helped elucidate host cellular responses, including activated/inactivated signaling pathways, and the relationship between innate immune responses by HCV infection and host genetic traits. However, the mechanisms of hepatocyte malignant transformation induced by HCV infection are still largely unclear, most likely due to the heterogeneity of molecular paths leading to HCC development in each individual. In this review, we summarize recent advances in knowledge about the mechanisms of hepatocarcinogenesis induced by HCV infection.
Streptomyces griseus Protease B: Secretion Correlates with the Length of the Propeptide

ABSTRACT Streptomyces griseus protease B, a member of the chymotrypsin superfamily, is encoded by a gene that expresses a pre-pro-mature protein. During secretion the precursor protein is processed into a mature, fully folded protease. In this study, we constructed a family of genes which encode deletions at the amino-terminal end of the propeptide. The secretion of active protease B was seen to decrease in an exponential manner according to the length of the deletion. The results underscore the intimate relationship between folding and secretion in bacterial protease expression. They further suggest that the propeptide segment of the zymogen stabilizes the folding of the mature enzyme through many small binding interactions over the entire surface of the peptide rather than through a few specific contacts.
Gene Duplication and Environmental Adaptation within Yeast Populations

Population-level differences in the number of copies of genes resulting from gene duplication and loss have recently been recognized as an important source of variation in eukaryotes. However, except for a small number of cases, the phenotypic effects of this variation are unknown. Data from the Saccharomyces Genome Resequencing Project permit the study of duplication in genome sequences from a set of individuals within the same population. These sequences can be correlated with available information on the environments from which these yeast strains were isolated. We find that yeast show an abundance of duplicate genes that are lineage specific, leading to a large degree of variation in gene content between individual strains. There is a detectable bias for specific functions, indicating that selection is acting to preferentially retain certain duplicates. Most strikingly, we find that sets of over- and underrepresented duplicates correlate with the environment from which they were isolated. Together, these observations indicate that gene duplication can give rise to substantial phenotypic differences within populations that in turn can offer a shortcut to evolutionary adaptation.
An Efficient Pictorial Database System for PSQL

Pictorial databases require efficient and direct spatial search based on the analog form of spatial objects and relationships instead of search based on some cumbersome alphanumeric encodings of the pictures. A description is given of PSQL, a query language that allows pictorial domains to be presented to the user in their analog form and allows him or her to do direct manipulation on the objects found on those domains. Direct spatial search and computation on the pictures is done using efficient data structures, R- and R/sup +/-trees (multidimensional B-trees), which are excellent devices for searching spatial objects and relationships found on pictures. >
Development of biocatalytic processes in Japan and Germany: from research synergies to industrial applications.

During the 150 years of relations between Japan and Germany (the anniversary of which was celebrated in 2011), a strong interaction of their scientific communities active in the fields of biocatalysis also emerged. Besides the fascination for biocatalysis as a scientific field, this strong relationship has also been heavily driven by the economic impact of biocatalysis for the chemical industries in both countries, recognizing this scientific discipline as a valuable industrial tool for the production of chemicals for many decades. As will be described in more detail below, biocatalysis was originally applied in the food industry and at the beginning found its way into the chemicals industry by means of microbial processes. The integration of reaction engineering know-how already available in the chemicals industry for other chemical processes then led to the development of a range of industrial manufacturing methods based on the use of isolated enzymes (in free or immobilized form). The tremendous progress of molecular biology enabled protein engineering (“enzyme engineering”) and the development of tailor-made enzymes and whole cells highly suited for chemical processes. This stage of technological development also led to the development of a broad range of processes that then gave high conversion, optical purity, and space– time yield. Often, such processes even turned out to be superior to the alternative organic synthetic processes. The development of such technologies, their state of the art, and their impact on the chemical industry will be discussed below. This will be done from the perspective of selected developments in Japan and Germany, which represent landmarks in the (industrial) history of white biotechnology and biocatalysis. The successful development of biocatalytic processes in these two countries has also been strongly influenced by the scientific exchange and interactions between Japan and Germany. Looking back on a decades-long history of scientific exchange in the field of biocatalysis, the regularly organized symposium series “Japanese–German Workshop on Enzyme Technology” is an outstanding example of scientific exchange and research synergies. After the first meeting was organized over 30 years ago, pioneered by particularly Professors Saburo Fukui (Japan) and Maria-Regina Kula (Germany), in 2011 the 16th Japanese–German Workshop on Enzyme Technology was very recently held in Toyama. The chronology of this workshop series is shown in Table 1, and two group photos of an early workshop in 1982 as well as the latest workshop in 2011 are shown in Figure 1. In this workshop series, both sides stimulated each other on the development of so-called “white biotechnology” (a
Green Synthesis of Metallic Nanoparticles Using Leaf Extract of Calotropis Species and their Applications: A Review

Biosynthesis of metallic nanomaterials has become an important field of research. The synthesis of metallic nanomaterials using plant extracts is a single-step, simple, rapid, and eco-friendly. The reducing agents involved include the various water-soluble secondary metabolites (Alkaloids, phenolic compounds, terpenoids, carbohydrates etc.) of the plant extracts. Diverse salts of metals of the transition metal series such as Gold (Au), Silver (Ag), Iron (Fe), Zinc (Zn) and Copper (Cu) etc, have been used in the synthesis. This review focused on the use of extracts of Calotropis species (spp) in the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles. The methods of synthesis and various applications of the synthesized nanoparticles were also discussed.
Monitoring Peer to Peer Systems

In this paper, we are concerned with the distributed monitoring of P2P systems. We introduce the P2P Monitor system and a new declarative language, namely P2PML, for specifying monitoring tasks. A subscription is compiled into a distributed algebraic plan which is described using an algebra over XML streams. We introduce a filter for streams of XML documents that scales by processing first simple conditions and then, if still needed, evaluating complex queries. We also show how particular tasks can be supported by identifying subtasks already provided by existing streams.
Impact of Low Doses of Gamma Irradiation on Off-Season Guava at Ambient Storage Condition

Guava is considered as the fifth most important fruit crop of India occupying an area about 251 thousand hectares with the production of 40.83 million tonne (NHB, 2015). It is considered to be one of the exquisite, nutritionally valuable, remunerative crops and called as ‘apple of tropics’ due to higher content of vitamin C (75-260 mg), thiamine (0.03-0.07 mg), riboflavin (0.02-0.04 mg), phosphorus (22.5-40.0 mg), calcium (10.0-30.0 mg) and iron (20-25 mg) and also potential source of pectin (0.5-1.8% in 100 gm of pulp) (Shukla et al., 2009). Demand of guava as fresh as well as processing products in domestic and international markets is showing an increasing trend. On the other hand, the export of guava is not sufficient from India, which can be boosted up with the increasing storability of the fresh fruits (Mandal et al., 2012). Guava bear fruits at different times of the year but harvesting all the crops are not economically profitable. In International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 7 Number 01 (2018) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas. com
Time‐optimal design for multidimensional and parallel transmit variable‐rate selective excitation

Variable‐rate selective excitation (VERSE) is a radio frequency (RF) pulse reshaping technique. It is most commonly used to reduce the peak magnitude and specific absorption rate (SAR) of RF pulses by reshaping pulses and gradient waveforms to reduce RF magnitude while preserving excitation profiles. In this work, a general time‐optimal VERSE algorithm for multidimensional and parallel transmit pulses is presented. Time optimality is achieved by translating peak RF limits to gradient upper bounds in excitation k‐space. The limits are fed into a time‐optimal gradient waveform design technique. Effective SAR reduction is achieved by reducing peak RF subject to a fixed pulse length. The presented method is different from other VERSE techniques in that it provides a noniterative time‐optimal multidimensional solution, which drastically simplifies VERSE designs. Examples are given for 1D and 2D single channel and 2D parallel transmit pulses. Magn Reson Med, 61:1471–1479, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Graspable Objects Shape Number Processing

The field of numerical cognition represents an interesting case for action-based theories of cognition, since number is a special kind of abstract concept. Several studies have shown that within the parietal lobes adjacent neural regions code numerical magnitude and grasping-related information. This anatomical proximity between brain areas involved in number and sensorimotor processes may account for interactions between numerical magnitude and action. In particular, recent studies have demonstrated a causal role of action perception on numerical magnitude processing. If objects are represented in terms of actions (affordances), the causal role of action on number processing should extend to the case of objects affordances. This study investigates the relationship between numbers and objects affordances in two experiments, without (Experiment 1) or with (Experiment 2) the requirement of an action (i.e., participants were asked to hold an object in their hands during the task). The task consisted in repeating aloud the odd or even digit within a pair depending on the type of the preceding or following object. Order of presentation (object–number vs. number–object), Object type (graspable vs. ungraspable), Object size (small vs. large), and Numerical magnitude (small vs. large) were manipulated for each experiment. Experiment 1 showed a facilitation – in terms of quicker responses – for graspable over ungraspable objects preceded by numbers, and an effect of numerical magnitude after the presentation of graspable objects. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the action execution enhanced overall the sensitivity to numerical magnitude, and that at the same time it interfered with the effects of objects affordances on number processing. Overall, these findings demonstrate that numbers and graspable objects are strongly interrelated, supporting the view that abstract concepts may be grounded in the motor experience.
Protective effects of enalapril, an angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitor, on multiple organ damage following scald injury in rats

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of enalapril, an angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitor, on multiple organ damage after scald injury. Healthy adult rats (half male and half female; 8–12 weeks old) were randomly assigned to the following treatments: sham operation, scald injury, and intraperitoneal enalapril (1, 2, and 4 mg/kg body weight) treatment after scalding. At 1, 12, and 24 H postscald, left ventricular and aortic hemodynamics were measured using a multichannel physiological recorder. Functional and pathological changes of the heart, liver, and kidney were examined by biochemical and histological methods. Compared with sham controls, untreated scalded animals showed decreased hemodynamic parameters and increased myocardial angiotensin II, serum creatine kinase heart isoenzyme, and serum cardiac troponin I and histopathological inflammation in the myocardium 12 H postscald. These hemodynamic, functional, and pathological changes were attenuated by 1 mg/kg enalapril. Enalapril reversed scald‐induced elevations in aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase, blood urea nitrogen, and blood creatinine 12 H postscald, and ameliorated focal necrosis in the liver and erythrocyte cast formation in renal tubules. However, higher doses of enalapril yielded less or no improvement in organ dysfunction. Enalapril at 1 mg/kg attenuates scald‐induced multiple organ damage in rats.
Assessing prescribing competence

Prescribing of medicines is the key clinical activity in the working life of most doctors. In recent years, a broad consensus regarding the necessary competencies has been achieved. Each of these is a complex mix of knowledge, judgement and skills. Surveys of those on the threshold of their medical careers have revealed widespread lack of confidence in writing prescriptions. A valid and reliable assessment of prescribing competence, separate from an overall assessment of medical knowledge and skill, would have many benefits for clinical governance and patient safety, and would provide a measure of the success of training programmes in therapeutics. Delivering such an assessment presents many challenges, not least of which are the difficulty in identifying a surrogate marker for competent prescribing in clinical practice and the challenge of ensuring that competence assessed in a controlled environment predicts performance in clinical practice. This review makes the case for an on‐line OSCE as the most valid form of assessment and sets out the requirements for its development, scope, composition and delivery. It describes an on‐going attempt to develop a national assessment of prescribing skills towards the end of undergraduate medical training in the UK.
Immunomodulation in perioperative medicine.

ISSN 1758-1869 10.2217/PMT.11. 5 © 2011 Future Medicine Ltd Pain Manage. (2011) 1(2), 103–106 Although the basic outline of the biology underlying the multiphasic mammalian wound response is well known [1], we do not know how to design interventions that reduce incisional pain and accelerate wound healing in the perioperative period, which would improve surgical outcome consider­ ably [2]. The complexity of the wound heal­ ing response has made it difficult to iden­ tify the pathways and mediators to target for therapeutic intervention. For example, the level of expression of over 1000 genes is significantly altered within the very narrow margins around the wound edge shortly after wounding [3]. Furthermore, differ­ ent experimental approaches for studying wound biology have produced conflicting results. Although it is believed that macro­ phages and mast cells produce cytokines and growth factors that are essential for wound healing [4], gene knockout mice that are essentially devoid of mast cells [5], or macro phages and neutrophils [6], have normal wound healing. Similarly, delays in several wound healing parameters were noted in mice with a gene knockout of a par­ ticular chemokine [7] or its corresponding receptor [8]; yet wound­healing para meters were not altered in experiments where this chemokine was directly introduced into incisional wounds [9]. Different experi­ mental systems have supported completely divergent therapeutic approaches.
Minimal State Variable Solutions to Markov-Switching Rational Expectations Models

We develop a new method for deriving minimal state variable (MSV) equilibria of a general class of Markov switching rational expectations models and a new algorithm for computing these equilibria. We compare our approach to previously known algorithms, and we demonstrate that ours is both efficient and more reliable than previous methods in the sense that it is able to find MSV equilibria that previously known algorithms cannot. Further, our algorithm can find all possible MSV equilibria in models. This feature is essential if one is interested in using a likelihood based approach to estimation.