Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mobile Post-Emergency Monitoring System for Nuclear Power Plants

In this paper, a concept of designing the post-emergency system for monitoring the equipment and territory of nuclear power plant after a severe accident was developed. Power and communications network lines are found out as the most vulnerable ones during the accident monitoring, and selfdescriptiveness and survivability and veracity are recognized as system basic parameters. To ensure the self-descriptiveness it’s proposed to equip measurement and control modules with backup wireless communication channels and deploy the repeaters network based on drones. To provide the survivability modules possess the backup power battery, and repeaters appear in the appropriate places after the accident. Moreover an optimization of drone’s location is proposed according to the minimum energy consumption criterion. To ensure the veracity it’s expected to design the noise-immune protocol for message exchange and archiving and self-diagnostics of all system components. Formulas for estimating the reliability level of the post-emergency monitoring system were obtained.
Determinants of Survival in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: A Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Study of 14,228 Patients

Introduction Left untreated, malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is associated with uniformly poor prognosis. Better survival has been reported with surgery-based multimodality therapy, but to date, no trial has demonstrated survival benefit of surgery over other therapies. We evaluated whether cancer-directed surgery influenced survival independently from other predictors in a large population-based dataset. Methods The SEER database was explored from 1973 to 2009 to identify all cases of pathologically-proven MPM. Age, sex, race, year of diagnosis, histology stage, cancer-directed surgery, radiation, and vital status were analyzed. The association between prognostic factors and survival was estimated using Cox regression and propensity matched analysis. Results There were 14,228 patients with pathologic diagnosis of MPM. On multivariable analysis, female gender, younger age, early stage, and treatment with surgery were independent predictors of longer survival. In comparison to no treatment, surgery alone was associated with significant improvement in survival [adjusted hazard ratio (adj HR) 0.64 (0.61–0.67)], but not radiation [adj HR 1.15 (1.08–1.23)]. Surgery and radiation combined had similar survival as surgery alone [adj HR 0.69 (0.64–0.76)]. Results were similar when cases diagnosed between 1973 and 1999 were compared to cases diagnosed between 2000 and 2009. Conclusions Despite developments in surgical and radiation techniques, the prognosis for MPM patients has not improved over the past 4 decades. Cancer-directed surgery is independently associated with better survival, suggesting that multimodal surgery-based therapy can benefit these patients. Further research in adjuvant treatment is necessary to improve prognosis in this challenging disease.
Energizing your Supply Chain for e-Commerce

The concepts of supply chain design and management has come to the fore, due to the everincreasing complexity of the systems driving buyer supplier relations in both industrial and consumer based markets. The unprecedented levels of supply chain management complexity are partly attributed to the Internet, through its more recent business acceptance and commercial use. This article is about new competitive challenges being realised from the unprecedented speed of growth of the Internet and building commercially viable supply chains to meet the challenges faced by emerging virtual organisations. Particular focus is placed on being able to harness the Internet to support solutions based innovation but also dynamic and seamless supply chain management for e-Commerce.
Structures for Spoken Language Understanding: A Two-Step Approach

Spoken language understanding (SLU) aims to map a user's speech into a semantic frame. Since most of the previous works use the semantic structures for SLU, we verify that the structure is valuable even for noisy input. We apply a structured prediction method to SLU problem with comparison to unstructured one. In addition, we present a combined method to embed long-distance dependency between entities in a cascaded manner. On air travel data, we show that our approach improves performance over baseline models.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews the Trouble with Circadian Clock Dysfunction: Multiple Deleterious Effects on the Brain and Body

This review consolidates research employing human correlational and experimental work across brain and body with experimental animal models to provide a more complete representation of how circadian rhythms influence almost all aspects of life. In doing so, we will cover the morphological and biochemical pathways responsible for rhythm generation as well as interactions between these systems and others (e.g., stress, feeding, reproduction). The effects of circadian disruption on the health of humans, including time of day effects, cognitive sequelae, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, diet, obesity, food preferences, mood disorders, and cancer will also be discussed. Subsequently, experimental support for these largely correlational human studies conducted in non-human animal models will be described.
Relay Deployment and Power Control for Lifetime Elongation in Sensor Networks

In a sensor network, usually a large number of sensors transport data messages to a limited number of sinks. Due to this multipoint-to-point communications pattern in general homogeneous sensor networks, the closer a sensor to the sink, the quicker it will deplete its battery. This unbalanced energy depletion phenomenon has become the bottleneck problem to elongate the lifetime of sensor networks. In this paper, we consider the effects of joint relay node deployment and transmission power control on network lifetime. Contrary to the intuition the relay nodes considered are even simpler devices than the sensor nodes with limited capabilities. We show that the network lifetime can be extended significantly with the addition of relay nodes to the network. In addition, for the same expected network lifetime goal, the number of relay nodes required can be reduced by employing efficient transmission power control while leaving the network connectivity level unchanged. The solution suggests that it is sufficient to deploy relay nodes only with a specific probabilistic distribution rather than the specifying the exact places. Furthermore, the solution does not require any change on the protocols (such as routing) used in the network.
Begreifbare sich bewegende Objekte in Tisch-basierten Interaktionsszenarien

Zusammenfassung Begreifbare Interaktion ist ein sich etablierendes Forschungsfeld der Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion. Ein längst noch nicht vollständig untersuchter Zweig dieses Feldes stellen sich selbst bewegende Objekte dar, die völlig neue, bisher nicht erschöpfend untersuchte Interaktionsmöglichkeiten bieten. Vorgestellt werden unter anderem Mechanismen zum Speichern und automatischen Laden von Anordnungen der begreifbaren Objekte, zwei verschiedene Konzepte zur Kommunikation, sowie ein Datenanalysesystem für Blinde und weitere Ansätze für den Einsatz multi-modaler Interaktionstechniken. Abstract Tangible Interaction is an established subfield of Human-Computer Interaction research. Actuated tangible user interfaces are still an unsufficiently investigated subject, which offers completely new possibilities for interaction design. We present mechanisms for saving and automatically restoring arrangements of tangible objects, two different communication concepts, an exploratory data analysis system for blind users, as well as multi-modal interaction approaches.
Preschool Children’s Memory for Word Forms Remains Stable Over Several Days, but Gradually Decreases after 6 Months

Research on word learning has focused on children’s ability to identify a target object when given the word form after a minimal number of exposures to novel word-object pairings. However, relatively little research has focused on children’s ability to retrieve the word form when given the target object. The exceptions involve asking children to recall and produce forms, and children typically perform near floor on these measures. In the current study, 3- to 5-year-old children were administered a novel test of word form that allowed for recognition memory and manual responses. Specifically, when asked to label a previously trained object, children were given three forms to choose from: the target, a minimally different form, and a maximally different form. Children demonstrated memory for word forms at three post-training delays: 10 mins (short-term), 2–3 days (long-term), and 6 months to 1 year (very long-term). However, children performed worse at the very long-term delay than the other time points, and the length of the very long-term delay was negatively related to performance. When in error, children were no more likely to select the minimally different form than the maximally different form at all time points. Overall, these results suggest that children remember word forms that are linked to objects over extended post-training intervals, but that their memory for the forms gradually decreases over time without further exposures. Furthermore, memory traces for word forms do not become less phonologically specific over time; rather children either identify the correct form, or they perform at chance.
Recent activation of the plaque immune response in coronary lesions underlying acute coronary syndromes

Objective To discriminate between chronic inflammation and acute activation of the plaque immune response in culprit lesions of patients with acute coronary syndromes. Design Retrospective study. Setting Tertiary referral centre. Subjects 71 patients having coronary atherectomy were classified according to their ischaemic syndrome: stable angina (n = 23); stabilised unstable angina (n = 18); refractory unstable angina (n = 11); and acute myocardial infarction (n = 19). Main outcome measures Immunohistochemical measurement of interleukin 2 receptor (IL-2R) (CD25) positive cells expressed as a percentage of the total amount of (CD3 positive) T lymphocytes in frozen sections of atherectomy specimens. Results The number of lesions containing IL-2R (CD25) positive T cells increased with severity of the ischaemic coronary syndrome (stable angina, 52%; stabilised unstable angina, 77.8%; refractory unstable angina, 90.9%; acute myocardial infarction, 89.4%). The percentage of activated T cells (CD25/CD3 ratios ×100) increased in lesions associated with refractory unstable angina (7.8%) and acute myocardial infarction (18.5%), compared with those in lesions associated with either chronic stable angina (2.2%) or stabilised unstable angina (3.3%). Conclusions An increase in the percentage of IL-2R positive T lymphocytes in culprit lesions of patients with acute coronary syndromes indicates recent activation and amplification of the immune response within plaques. This may result in a burst of inflammatory products with tissue degrading and vasoactive properties and, hence, could initiate or accelerate the onset of an acute coronary event.
P-Selectin, and Not E-Selectin, Negatively Regulates Murine Megakaryocytopoiesis1

To assess the role of P-selectin and E-selectin in megakaryocytopoiesis, in vitro assays were performed in animal models deficient in both adhesion receptors. There was a significantly greater number of IL-3-responsive megakaryocyte progenitors CFU (CFU-MK) and an increase in immature megakaryoblasts in response to IL-6 in the P-selectin-null mice compared with the wild-type controls. Furthermore, P-selectin-null mice showed a greater number of CFU-MK colonies derived from CD34+ cells in response to IL-3 or IL-3 plus stem cell factor. A significant shift in baseline ploidy with a reduction in 8N cells and an increase in 32N cells was also observed in the P-selectin-null mice. Secretion of the inhibitory growth factor TGF-β1 and not TGF-β2 was significantly lower in the supernatants of cultures containing bone marrow cells from P-selectin-deficient mice as compared with those from the wild-type control bone marrow cells. No differences in the responsiveness of murine CFU-MK, immature megakaryocytes, or 5-fluorouracil-selected stem cells to cytokines were observed in E-selectin-null mice as compared with the control mice. These studies indicate that the absence of P-selectin, and not E-selectin, resulted in an altered adhesion environment with subsequent expansion of megakaryocyte progenitors and immature megakaryoblasts, enhanced secretion of TGF-β1, and apparent increased responsiveness to inflammatory cytokines.
Feature extraction and normalization algorithms for high‐density oligonucleotide gene expression array data

Algorithms for performing feature extraction and normalization on high‐density oligonucleotide gene expression arrays, have not been fully explored, and the impact these algorithms have on the downstream analysis is not well understood. Advances in such low‐level analysis methods are essential to increase the sensitivity and specificity of detecting whether genes are present and/or differentially expressed. We have developed and implemented a number of algorithms for the analysis of expression array data in a software application, the DNA‐Chip Analyzer (dChip). In this report, we describe the algorithms for feature extraction and normalization, and present validation data and comparison results with some of the algorithms currently in use. J. Cell. Biochem. Suppl. 37: 120–125, 2001. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Smoothened Adopts Multiple Active and Inactive Conformations Capable of Trafficking to the Primary Cilium

Activation of Hedgehog (Hh) signaling requires the transmembrane protein Smoothened (Smo), a member of the G-protein coupled receptor superfamily. In mammals, Smo translocates to the primary cilium upon binding of Hh ligands to their receptor, Patched (Ptch1), but it is unclear if ciliary trafficking of Smo is sufficient for pathway activation. Here, we demonstrate that cyclopamine and jervine, two structurally related inhibitors of Smo, force ciliary translocation of Smo. Treatment with SANT-1, an unrelated Smo antagonist, abrogates cyclopamine- and jervine-mediated Smo translocation. Further, activation of protein kinase A, either directly or through activation of Gαs, causes Smo to translocate to a proximal region of the primary cilium. We propose that Smo adopts multiple inactive and active conformations, which influence its localization and trafficking on the primary cilium.
Radio resource management in roaming based multi-operator WCDMA networks

Infrastructure sharing and mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) are becoming more and more common in today's mobile networks. In both cases, the subscribers of multiple operators connect to the same radio access network via, e.g., roaming based methods. Depending on how much each operator pays, they should then be guaranteed a certain capacity in the shared network. The paper discusses different solutions for how the radio resources in such a roaming based multi-operator WCDMA network may be allocated to the sharing operators. One particular method based on radio resource management (RRM) with nonpreemptive priority queuing in the admission control is presented in detail. The method seems to provide an attractive tradeoff between fairness and total system capacity.
FHAST: FPGA-Based Acceleration of Bowtie in Hardware

While the sequencing capability of modern instruments continues to increase exponentially, the computational problem of mapping short sequenced reads to a reference genome still constitutes a bottleneck in the analysis pipeline. A variety of mapping tools (e.g., BOWTIE, BWA) is available for general-purpose computer architectures. These tools can take many hours or even days to deliver mapping results, depending on the number of input reads, the size of the reference genome and the number of allowed mismatches or insertion/deletions, making the mapping problem an ideal candidate for hardware acceleration. In this paper, we present FHAST (FPGA hardware accelerated sequence-matching tool), a drop-in replacement for BOWTIE that uses a hardware design based on field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). Our architecture masks memory latency by executing multiple concurrent hardware threads accessing memory simultaneously. FHAST is composed by multiple parallel engines to exploit the parallelism available to us on an FPGA. We have implemented and tested FHAST on the Convey HC-1 and later ported on the Convey HC-2ex, taking advantage of the large memory bandwidth available to these systems and the shared memory image between hardware and software. A preliminary version of FHASTrunning on the Convey HC-1 achieved up to 70× speedup compared to BOWTIE (single-threaded). An improved version of FHAST running on the Convey HC-2ex FPGAs achieved up to 12× fold speed gain compared to BOWTIE running eight threads on an eight-core conventional architecture, while maintaining almost identical mapping accuracy. FHAST is a drop-in replacement for BOWTIE, so it can be incorporated in any analysis pipeline that uses BOWTIE (e.g., TOPHAT).
Novel and Conventional Receptors for Ghrelin, Desacyl-Ghrelin, and Pharmacologically Related Compounds

The only molecularly identified ghrelin receptor is the growth hormone secretagogue receptor GHSR1a. Its natural ligand, ghrelin, is an acylated peptide whose unacylated counterpart (UAG) is almost inactive at GHSR1a. A truncated, nonfunctional receptor, GHSR1b, derives from the same gene. We have critically evaluated evidence for effects of ghrelin receptor ligands that are not consistent with actions at GHSR1a. Effects of ghrelin are observed in cells or tissues where the expression of GHSR1a is not detectable or after the Ghsr gene has been inactivated. In several, effects of ghrelin are mimicked by UAG, and ghrelin binding is competitively reduced by UAG. Effects in the absence of GHSR1a and sites at which ghrelin and UAG have similar potency suggest the presence of novel nonspecific ghrelin receptors (ghrelin receptor–like receptors [GRLRs]). A third class of receptor, the UAG receptors, at which UAG, but not ghrelin, is an agonist has been proposed. None of the novel receptors, with the exception of the glycoprotein CD36, which accounts for ghrelin action at a limited number of sites, have been identified. GHSR1a and GHSR1b combine with other G protein–coupled receptors to form heterodimers, whose pharmacologies differ from their components. Thus, it is feasible some GRLRs and some UAG receptors are heterodimers. Effects mediated through GRLRs or UAG receptors include adipocyte lipid accumulation, myoblast differentiation, osteoblast proliferation, insulin release, cardioprotection, coronary artery constriction, vascular endothelial cell proliferation, and tumor cell proliferation. The molecular identification and pharmacologic characterization of novel ghrelin receptors are thus important objectives.
Squared-loss Mutual Information Regularization: A Novel Information-theoretic Approach to Semi-supervised Learning

We propose squared-loss mutual information regularization (SMIR) for multi-class probabilistic classification, following the information maximization principle. SMIR is convex under mild conditions and thus improves the nonconvexity of mutual information regularization. It offers all of the following four abilities to semi-supervised algorithms: Analytical solution, out-of-sample/multi-class classification, and probabilistic output. Furthermore, novel generalization error bounds are derived. Experiments show SMIR compares favorably with state-of-the-art methods.
The Influence of Post Angioplasty Stent Implant Profile on Arterial Wall Stress

One of the main causes for post angioplasty arterial restenosis is the excessive stress induced in the arterial wall during and after the medical intervention. The closed stent is introduced in the artery wrapped around the deflated balloon catheter and is expanded in the final position by inflating the balloon. Unfortunately, this process also stretches the arterial wall. Additionally, for the stent to be successful, its diameter must be slightly larger than the diameter of the inflated artery. The stent is usually a dense mesh of interconnected beams. Therefore, it is often considered that it applies a constant pressure to the artery / stent interface. However, in reality each beam individually presses against the innermost layer of the artery (intima). The current study proposes a model, which predicts the arterial wall subsurface stress field due to individual stent beams. It was found that the local shape of the contact (beam cross section) plays an important role close to the stent / intima contact. Sharper edged cross sections (e.g. square) promote higher stresses. It was observed that during restenosis a new inner layer (neointima) is formed, significantly reducing the stent efficiency. This could be related to local stress concentrations due to the choice of stent beam profile.Copyright © 2010 by ASME
Amplitude Changes during Ventricular Fibrillation: A Mechanistic Insight

Introduction: Clinically in ventricular fibrillation (VF), ECG amplitude, and frequency decrease as ischemia progresses and predict defibrillation success. In vitro ECG amplitude declines without ischemia, independent of VF frequencies. This study examines the contribution of cellular electrical activity and global organization to ECG amplitude changes during VF. Methods and Results: Rabbit hearts were Langendorff-perfused (40 mL/min, Tyrode’s solution) and loaded with RH237. During VF, ECG, and epicardial optical action potentials were recorded (photodiode array; 256 sites, 15 mm × 15 mm). After 60 s of VF, perfusion was either maintained, global ischemia produced by low-flow (6 mL/min), or solution [K+]o raised to 8 mM. Peak-to-peak amplitude was determined for all signals. During VF, in control, ECG amplitude decreased to a steady-state (∼57% baseline), whereas in low-flow steady-state was not reached with the amplitude continuing to fall to 33% of baseline by 600 s. Optically, LV amplitude declined more than RV, reaching significance in control (LV vs. RV; 33 ± 5 vs. 63 ± 8%, p < 0.01). During VF in 8 mM [K+]o, amplitude changes were more complex; ECG amplitude increased with time (105 ± 13%), whilst LV amplitude decreased (60 ± 15%, p < 0.001). Microelectrode studies showed amplitude reduction in control and 8 mM [K+]o (to ∼79 and ∼93% baseline, respectively). Evaluation of electrical coordination by cross-correlation of optical signals showed as VF progressed coordination reduced in control (baseline 0.36 ± 0.02 to 0.28 ± 0.003, p < 0.01), maintained in low-flow (0.41 ± 0.03 to 0.37 ± 0.005, p = NS) and increased in 8 mM [K+]o (0.36 ± 0.02 to 0.53 ± 0.08, p < 0.05). Conclusion: ECG amplitude decline in VF is due to a combination of decreased systolic activation at the cellular level and increased desynchronization of inter-cellular electrical activity.