Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Epileptic seizure onset detection prior to clinical manifestation

In this paper, we present the design of an epilepticseizure detector. This circuit is part of an implantable device used to continuously record intracerebral electroencephalographic signals through subdural and depth electrodes. The implemented seizure detector is based on a detection algorithm validated in Matlab tools and the circuits were implemented using CMOS 0.18-µm process. The proposed system was tested using intracerebral EEG recordings from two patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Four seizures were assessed by the proposed CMOS building blocks and the required delays to detect these seizures were 3, 8, 11, and 11 sec, respectively after electric onset. The simulated total power consumption of the detector was 6.71 µW. Together, these preliminary results indicate the possibility of building implantable ultra-low power seizure-detection devices.
Preparation and properties of Cu matrix composite reinforced by carbon nanotubes

Cu matrix composites reinforced by carbon nanotubes(CNTs) were prepared. The effect of carbon nanotubes on mechanical and tribological properties of the Cu matrix composites were investigated. The chemical method for coating CNTs was reported. The morphology of the fracture surfaces and worn surface were examined by SEM.The results show that Cu/coated-CNTs composites have higher hardness, much better wear resistance and antifriction properties than those of the reference Cu alloy (Cu-10Sn) and Cu/uncoated-CNTs composite sintered under the same conditions. The optimal mechanical properties of the composites occurred at 2. 25% (mass fraction) of CNTs. The excellent wear resistance and anti-friction properties are attributed to the fiber strengthening effect of CNTs and the effect of the spherical wear debris containing carbon nanotubes on the tribo-surface.
MULTI-BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION SYSTEM USING FEATURE LEVEL FUSION

Advancements in science, technologies, industries and in numerous other fields have lead to the need for security improvements in order keep their valuables, workplace, societies, homes, etc., accessible only to authorized personnel. Biometric authentication is a well-known solution for this issue. One of the most unique patters can be obtained in finger veins which is also a unique physiological biometric. And since finger veins are beneath the skin, they are considered to be much reliable, secure and also know to be forge proof. Finger vein authentication system has proven to be a remarkable technology in the field of biometrics and are applicable where higher levels of security and privacy is very important. This paper, proposes a feature level fusion based system that uses finger vein features extracted from two algorithms namely DWT (Discreet Wavelet Transform) and canny edge detection. Results indicate better accuracy, higher TAR (True acceptance rate), lower TRR (True Reject Rate) and EER (Equal Error Rate) for feature level fusion in comparison with score level fusion technique.
Ultrafine luminescent structures through nanoparticle self-assembly

We report the fabrication of ultrafine structures consisting of regular arrays of nanoemitters through the self-assembly of luminescent nanoparticles on a silicon wafer. Nanoparticles of yttrium aluminium garnet (YAG) doped with Eu3+ ions were synthesized by a sonochemical technique. These particles, suspended in ethanol, are introduced onto a pre-patterned silicon wafer, covered with a thin oxide layer. On annealing the sample in an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber, the nanoparticles self-assemble along the pattern. We demonstrate this ‘chemical lithography’ by assembling the nanoparticles along a variety of patterns. We believe that such self-organized nanopatterning of functional structures is important for the realization of nanodevices.
An E2–F12 complex is required for intracellular enveloped virus morphogenesis during vaccinia infection

The vaccinia virus protein, F12, has been suggested to play an important role in microtubule‐based transport of intracellular enveloped virus (IEV). We found that GFP‐F12 is recruited to IEV moving on microtubules but is released from virus particles when they switch to actin‐based motility. In the absence of F12, although the majority of IEV remain close to their peri‐nuclear site of assembly, a small number of IEV still move with linear trajectories at speeds of 0.85 μm s−1, consistent with microtubule transport. Using a recombinant virus expressing GST‐F12, we found that the viral protein E2 interacts directly with F12. In infected cells, GFP‐E2 is observed on moving IEV as well as in the Golgi region, but is not associated with actin tails. In the absence of E2L, IEV accumulate in the peri‐nuclear region and F12 is not recruited. Conversely, GFP‐E2 is not observed on IEV in the absence of F12. Ultra‐structural analysis of ΔE2L‐ and ΔF12L‐infected cells reveals that loss of either protein results in defects in membrane wrapping during IEV formation. We suggest that E2 and F12 function as a complex that is necessary for IEV morphogenesis prior to their microtubule‐based transport towards the plasma membrane.
Efficient, Edge-Aware, Combined Color Quantization and Dithering

In this paper, we present a novel algorithm to simultaneously accomplish color quantization and dithering of images. This is achieved by minimizing a perception-based cost function, which considers pixel-wise differences between filtered versions of the quantized image and the input image. We use edge aware filters in defining the cost function to avoid mixing colors on the opposite sides of an edge. The importance of each pixel is weighted according to its saliency. To rapidly minimize the cost function, we use a modified multi-scale iterative conditional mode (ICM) algorithm, which updates one pixel a time while keeping other pixels unchanged. As ICM is a local method, careful initialization is required to prevent termination at a local minimum far from the global one. To address this problem, we initialize ICM with a palette generated by a modified median-cut method. Compared with previous approaches, our method can produce high-quality results with a fewer visual artifacts but also requires significantly less computational effort.
A New Algorithm for DNA Sequence Assembly

Since the advent of rapid DNA sequencing methods in 1976, scientists have had the problem of inferring DNA sequences from sequenced fragments. Shotgun sequencing is a well-established biological and computational method used in practice. Many conventional algorithms for shotgun sequencing are based on the notion of pairwise fragment overlap. While shotgun sequencing infers a DNA sequence given the sequences of overlapping fragments, a recent and complementary method, called sequencing by hybridization (SBH), infers a DNA sequence given the set of oligomers that represents all subwords of some fixed length, k. In this paper, we propose a new computer algorithm for DNA sequence assembly that combines in a novel way the techniques of both shotgun and SBH methods. Based on our preliminary investigations, the algorithm promises to be very fast and practical for DNA sequence assembly.
Temporary agency workers and workplace performance in the private sector

Using nationally representative workplace data we identify the correlates of temporary agency working (TAW) in the private sector in Britain and its association with workplace labour productivity and financial performance. TAW per se is not associated with workplace financial performance. It is also not associated with two of the three measures of labour productivity analysed. However, it does appear to be associated with higher sales per employee. Furthermore, when moving beyond the simple incidence of TAW at the workplace, the association between TAW use and workplace performance and productivity differs according to the jobs TAW perform and the number of TAW at the workplace.
Two-Step Multitemporal Nonlocal Means for Synthetic Aperture Radar Images

This paper presents a denoising approach for multitemporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images based on the concept of nonlocal means (NLM). It exploits the information redundancy existing in multitemporal images by a two-step strategy. The first step realizes a nonlocal weighted estimation driven by the redundancy in time, whereas the second step makes use of the nonlocal estimation in space. Using patch similarity miss-registration estimation, we also adapted this approach to the case of unregistered SAR images. The experiments illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method to denoise multitemporal images while preserving new information.
A Spatio-temporal Model of African Animal Trypanosomosis Risk

Background African animal trypanosomosis (AAT) is a major constraint to sustainable development of cattle farming in sub-Saharan Africa. The habitat of the tsetse fly vector is increasingly fragmented owing to demographic pressure and shifts in climate, which leads to heterogeneous risk of cyclical transmission both in space and time. In Burkina Faso and Ghana, the most important vectors are riverine species, namely Glossina palpalis gambiensis and G. tachinoides, which are more resilient to human-induced changes than the savannah and forest species. Although many authors studied the distribution of AAT risk both in space and time, spatio-temporal models allowing predictions of it are lacking. Methodology/Principal Findings We used datasets generated by various projects, including two baseline surveys conducted in Burkina Faso and Ghana within PATTEC (Pan African Tsetse and Trypanosomosis Eradication Campaign) national initiatives. We computed the entomological inoculation rate (EIR) or tsetse challenge using a range of environmental data. The tsetse apparent density and their infection rate were separately estimated and subsequently combined to derive the EIR using a “one layer-one model” approach. The estimated EIR was then projected into suitable habitat. This risk index was finally validated against data on bovine trypanosomosis. It allowed a good prediction of the parasitological status (r2 = 67%), showed a positive correlation but less predictive power with serological status (r2 = 22%) aggregated at the village level but was not related to the illness status (r2 = 2%). Conclusions/Significance The presented spatio-temporal model provides a fine-scale picture of the dynamics of AAT risk in sub-humid areas of West Africa. The estimated EIR was high in the proximity of rivers during the dry season and more widespread during the rainy season. The present analysis is a first step in a broader framework for an efficient risk management of climate-sensitive vector-borne diseases.
Effects of CSI on ASEP Based Opportunistic DF Relaying Systems

This paper addresses issues on the assessment of the performance degradation caused by decreasing channel state information (CSI) of cooperative communication systems that employ opportunistic decode-and-forward (DF) relay under Nakagami-m fading conditions. Exact closed-form performance expressions are derived for the end-to-end average symbol error probability (ASEP) for both partial- and full-CSI relaying schemes over a sufficiently wide range of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions. Finally, the performances of the two schemes in terms of ASEP are compared, and the system performance degradation caused by decreasing CSI is investigated through both analysis and simulations.
Predicting and Analyzing Protein Phosphorylation Sites in Plants Using Musite

Although protein phosphorylation sites can be reliably identified with high-resolution mass spectrometry, the experimental approach is time-consuming and resource-dependent. Furthermore, it is unlikely that an experimental approach could catalog an entire phosphoproteome. Computational prediction of phosphorylation sites provides an efficient and flexible way to reveal potential phosphorylation sites and provide hypotheses in experimental design. Musite is a tool that we previously developed to predict phosphorylation sites based solely on protein sequence. However, it was not comprehensively applied to plants. In this study, the phosphorylation data from Arabidopsis thaliana, B. napus, G. max, M. truncatula, O. sativa, and Z. mays were collected for cross-species testing and the overall plant-specific prediction as well. The results show that the model for A. thaliana can be extended to other organisms, and the overall plant model from Musite outperforms the current plant-specific prediction tools, Plantphos, and PhosphAt, in prediction accuracy. Furthermore, a comparative study of predicted phosphorylation sites across orthologs among different plants was conducted to reveal potential evolutionary features. A bipolar distribution of isolated, non-conserved phosphorylation sites, and highly conserved ones in terms of the amino acid type was observed. It also shows that predicted phosphorylation sites conserved within orthologs do not necessarily share more sequence similarity in the flanking regions than the background, but they often inherit protein disorder, a property that does not necessitate high sequence conservation. Our analysis also suggests that the phosphorylation frequencies among serine, threonine, and tyrosine correlate with their relative proportion in disordered regions. Musite can be used as a web server (http://musite.net) or downloaded as an open-source standalone tool (http://musite.sourceforge.net/).
Tuberculosis and airflow obstruction: evidence from the PLATINO study in Latin America

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the association between history of tuberculosis and airflow obstruction. A population-based, multicentre study was carried out and included 5,571 subjects aged ≥40 yrs living in one of five Latin American metropolitan areas: Sao Paulo (Brazil); Montevideo (Uruguay); Mexico City (Mexico); Santiago (Chile); and Caracas (Venezuela). Subjects performed pre- and post-bronchodilator spirometry and were asked whether they had ever been diagnosed with tuberculosis by a physician. The overall prevalence of airflow obstruction (forced expiratory volume in one second/forced vital capacity post-bronchodilator <0.7) was 30.7% among those with a history of tuberculosis, compared with 13.9% among those without a history. Males with a medical history of tuberculosis were 4.1 times more likely to present airflow obstruction than those without such a diagnosis. This remained unchanged after adjustment for confounding by age, sex, schooling, ethnicity, smoking, exposure to dust and smoke, respiratory morbidity in childhood and current morbidity. Among females, the unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios were 2.3 and 1.7, respectively. In conclusion, history of tuberculosis is associated with airflow obstruction in Latin American middle-aged and older adults.
AS03 Adjuvanted AH1N1 Vaccine Associated with an Abrupt Increase in the Incidence of Childhood Narcolepsy in Finland

Background Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder with strong genetic predisposition causing excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy. A sudden increase in childhood narcolepsy was observed in Finland soon after pandemic influenza epidemic and vaccination with ASO3-adjuvanted Pandemrix. No increase was observed in other age groups. Methods Retrospective cohort study. From January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2010 we retrospectively followed the cohort of all children living in Finland and born from January 1991 through December 2005. Vaccination data of the whole population was obtained from primary health care databases. All new cases with assigned ICD-10 code of narcolepsy were identified and the medical records reviewed by two experts to classify the diagnosis of narcolepsy according to the Brighton collaboration criteria. Onset of narcolepsy was defined as the first documented contact to health care because of excessive daytime sleepiness. The primary follow-up period was restricted to August 15, 2010, the day before media attention on post-vaccination narcolepsy started. Findings Vaccination coverage in the cohort was 75%. Of the 67 confirmed cases of narcolepsy, 46 vaccinated and 7 unvaccinated were included in the primary analysis. The incidence of narcolepsy was 9.0 in the vaccinated as compared to 0.7/100,000 person years in the unvaccinated individuals, the rate ratio being 12.7 (95% confidence interval 6.1–30.8). The vaccine-attributable risk of developing narcolepsy was 1∶16,000 vaccinated 4 to 19-year-olds (95% confidence interval 1∶13,000–1∶21,000). Conclusions Pandemrix vaccine contributed to the onset of narcolepsy among those 4 to 19 years old during the pandemic influenza in 2009–2010 in Finland. Further studies are needed to determine whether this observation exists in other populations and to elucidate potential underlying immunological mechanism. The role of the adjuvant in particular warrants further research before drawing conclusions about the use of adjuvanted pandemic vaccines in the future.
Outcomes of Dialysis Initiated During the Neonatal Period for Treatment of End-Stage Renal Disease: A North American Pediatric Renal Trials and Collaborative Studies Special Analysis

OBJECTIVE. We sought to determine the outcomes of initiating long-term dialysis of neonates and children aged >1 to 24 months with end-stage renal disease. PATIENTS AND METHODS. By querying the North American Pediatric Renal Trials and Collaborative Studies database, we obtained information on 193 neonates (≤1 month of age) and 505 children (>1–24 months of age) with a presumptive diagnosis of end-stage renal disease who initiated long-term dialysis. Dialysis characteristics and likelihood of hospitalization were compared using the χ2 test, and duration of hospitalization was compared using the Wilcoxon 2-sample test. Product limit methods were implemented, and the log rank test was used to compare time-to-event analyses. Multivariate analyses were performed using Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS. Neonates with end-stage renal disease were more likely to receive peritoneal dialysis versus hemodialysis than older children with end-stage renal disease. Moreover, neonates who initiated dialysis during the first month of life were just as likely to terminate dialysis as were the older children. Rates of renal transplantation were significantly lower in the neonates compared with the older children, but neonates were more likely to recover function of the native kidney. Although neonates were more often hospitalized, their overall risk of mortality was similar to that observed in older children. CONCLUSIONS. Neonates with a presumptive diagnosis of end-stage renal disease may initiate long-term dialysis during the first month of life with outcomes comparable to those of patients who initiate dialysis later in infancy.
Distributed algorithm for minimizing delay in multi-hop wireless sensor networks

We consider a wireless sensor network with n sensor nodes. The sensed data needs to be transferred in a multi-hop fashion to a common processing center. We consider the standard data sampling/sensing scheme where the sensor nodes have a sampling process independent of the transmission scheme. In this paper, we study the problem of optimizing the end-to-end delay in a multi-hop single-sink wireless sensor network. We prove that the delay-minimization objective function is strictly convex for the entire network. We then provide a distributed optimization framework to achieve the required objective. The approach is based on distributed convex optimization and deterministic distributed algorithm without feedback control. Only local knowledge is used to update the algorithmic steps. Specifically, we formulate the objective as a network level delay minimization function where the constraints are the reception-capacity and service-rate probabilities. Using the Lagrangian dual composition method, we derive a distributed primal-dual algorithm to minimize the delay in the network.We further develop a stochastic delay control primal-dual algorithm in the presence of noisy conditions. We also present its convergence and rate of convergence. The proposal is extensively evaluated by analysis and simulations.
An Energy and Delay Aware Downlink Power Control Strategy for Solar Powered Base Stations

Using renewable resources like solar energy to power the base stations (BSs) has emerged as a promising solution for greening cellular networks. One of the key challenges in operating a network of such BSs is to intelligently manage the green energy available to the BSs while ensuring reliable quality of service (QoS). This letter presents a methodology for maximizing the QoS, in terms of the network latency, given the constraints on the energy availability at the solar-powered BSs. In contrast to existing approaches based on user association reconfiguration, our methodology uses a combination of intelligent energy allocation and BS downlink power control. Using a real BS deployment scenario from U.K., we show the efficacy of our algorithm and demonstrate its superior performance compared to existing benchmarks.
Molecular Information Processing: Lessons from Bacterial Chemotaxis*

Extracellular information is converted into a usable intracellular form via signal transduction. This critically important process occurs in both unicellular and multicellular organisms throughout the living world and is exhibited by prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells alike. The mechanistic details of information processing in living cells vary from case to case, but diverse systems nevertheless display a number of operating principles in common. Thus, the study of one signaling system can yield insights applicable to others. As a practical matter, the investigation of signal transduction mechanisms in bacteria of- fers significant technical advantages. This minireview focuses on one of the very best characterized examples of information processing in a biological system, that governing chemotaxis in bacteria, and pri-marily attempts to summarize what has been learned so far that may be of general interest, as well as point out some features that are not yet fully understood. Many bacteria live in dynamic environments and utilize information processing systems to constantly monitor their surround- ings for important changes. Among the appropriate responses to environmental change are alterations in physiology, development, virulence, or location. Although not all bacterial species are motile, many forms of bacterial locomotion exist (often in a single species) including swimming in liquid and gliding, swarming, or twitching over solid surfaces. Organelles known to provide propulsion include flagella and pili; other motors remain unidentified. As a general rule, bacterial species that have invested in a propulsion system are also capable of directed movement, or taxis, to most efficiently translocate to a better environment. Tactic bacteria can respond to a variety of physical stimuli including chemicals, pH, temperature, light, electricity, or magnetism. the elements which
A Novel Evaluation Method for Overall Performance Testing of Rail Transit Brake System

A system is developed to detect output pressure of rail transit brake system and the principle of the system design is expatiated. The function and the implement method of each block in the system are also discussed. According to the problems existed in detection of rail transit brake system, we propose a new evaluation index to detect overall performance of rail transit brake system.