Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Standardized Rat Model of Volumetric Muscle Loss Injury for the Development of Tissue Engineering Therapies

Abstract Soft tissue injuries involving volumetric muscle loss (VML) are defined as the traumatic or surgical loss of skeletal muscle with resultant functional impairment and represent a challenging clinical problem for both military and civilian medicine. In response, a variety of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine treatments are under preclinical development. A wide variety of animal models are being used, all with critical limitations. The objective of this study was to develop a model of VML that was reproducible and technically uncomplicated to provide a standardized platform for the development of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine solutions to VML repair. A rat model of VML involving excision of ∼20% of the muscle's mass from the superficial portion of the middle third of the tibialis anterior (TA) muscle was developed and was functionally characterized. The contralateral TA muscle served as the uninjured control. Additionally, uninjured age-matched control rats were also tested to determine the effect of VML on the contralateral limb. TA muscles were assessed at 2 and 4 months postinjury. VML muscles weighed 22.7% and 19.5% less than contralateral muscles at 2 and 4 months postinjury, respectively. These differences were accompanied by a reduction in peak isometric tetanic force (Po) of 28.4% and 32.5% at 2 and 4 months. Importantly, Po corrected for differences in body weight and muscle wet weights were similar between contralateral and age-matched control muscles, indicating that VML did not have a significant impact on the contralateral limb. Lastly, repair of the injury with a biological scaffold resulted in rapid vascularization and integration with the wound. The technical simplicity, reliability, and clinical relevance of the VML model developed in this study make it ideal as a standard model for the development of tissue engineering solutions for VML.
Force estimation via physical properties of air cushion for the control of a human-cooperative robot: basic experiments

For the control of a human-cooperative robot (HCR) using a soft material, we aim to verify, in this study, the usefulness of force estimation via physical properties of an air cushion. First, the physical model of the air cushion was represented by an air cylinder with a piston, which is subject to constraint by nonlinear elasticity. Second, the elastic properties of the air cushion were examined under the assumption that it can be formulated by a function of pneumatic pressure. The force applied to the air cushion was next estimated on the basis of the physical model, and the HCR was successfully controlled according to the estimated force. Graphical Abstract
Apoptosis and Pro-inflammatory Cytokine Response of Mast Cells Induced by Influenza A Viruses

The pathogenesis of the influenza A virus has been investigated heavily, and both the inflammatory response and apoptosis have been found to have a definitive role in this process. The results of studies performed by the present and other groups have indicated that mast cells may play a role in the severity of the disease. To further investigate cellular responses to influenza A virus infection, apoptosis and inflammatory response were studied in mouse mastocytoma cell line P815. This is the first study to demonstrate that H1N1 (A/WSN/33), H5N1 (A/Chicken/Henan/1/04), and H7N2 (A/Chicken/Hebei/2/02) influenza viruses can induce mast cell apoptosis. They were found to do this mainly through the mitochondria/cytochrome c-mediated intrinsic pathway, and the activation of caspase 8-mediated extrinsic pathway was here found to be weak. Two pro-apoptotic Bcl-2 homology domain 3 (BH3) -only molecules Bim and Puma appeared to be involved in the apoptotic pathways. When virus-induced apoptosis was inhibited in P815 cells using pan-caspase (Z-VAD-fmk) and caspase-9 (Z-LEHD-fmk) inhibitors, the replication of these three subtypes of viruses was suppressed and the secretions of pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, including IL-6, IL-18, TNF-α, and MCP-1, decreased. The results of this study may further understanding of the role of mast cells in host defense and pathogenesis of influenza virus. They may also facilitate the development of novel therapeutic aids against influenza virus infection.
Submitochondrial distribution and delayed proteolysis of subunit c of the H+‐transporting ATP‐synthase in ovine ceroid‐lipofuscinosis

The neuronal ceroid‐lipofuscinose (NCL) are recessively inherited lysosomal storage diseases in children and animals. The major stored protein in many of these diseases is subunit c of the mitochondrial inner membrane H+‐transporting ATP‐synthase. Previous studies of naturally occurring ovine ceroid‐lipofuscinosis (OCL) in South Hampshire sheep showed that the genes and transcripts for subunit c were normal and inferred that this protein was expressed normally in mitochondria prior to storage in lysosomes. Accumulation in mitochondria has not been conclusively established and we have therefore used the South Hampshire model to demonstrate approximately 1.8‐fold normal levels of subunit c in mitochondrial inner membranes prepared from liver. Other mitochondrial inner membrane and ATP‐synthase proteins that could be detected by mass spectrometry (MS) or two‐dimensional electrophoresis (2‐DE) were present in normal amounts. The accumulating subunit c showed normal post‐translational modification but was abnormally resistant to proteolysis. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that OCL may result from a mitochondrial disorder that affects turnover of correctly expressed subunit c, although we cannot exclude the possibility that a postmitochondrial defect delays processing of subunit c out of mitochondria.
Positive Affect Versus Reward: Emotional and Motivational Influences on Cognitive Control

It is becoming increasingly appreciated that affective influences can contribute strongly to goal-oriented cognition and behavior. However, much work is still needed to properly characterize these influences and the mechanisms by which they contribute to cognitive processing. An important question concerns the nature of emotional manipulations (i.e., direct induction of affectively valenced subjective experience) versus motivational manipulations (e.g., delivery of performance-contingent rewards and punishments) and their impact on cognitive control. Empirical evidence suggests that both kinds of manipulations can influence cognitive control in a systematic fashion, but investigations of both have largely been conducted independently of one another. Likewise, some theoretical accounts suggest that emotion and motivation may modulate cognitive control via common neural mechanisms, while others suggest the possibility of dissociable influences. Here, we provide an analysis and synthesis of these various accounts, suggesting potentially fruitful new research directions to test competing hypotheses.
Direct construction method for conservation laws of partial differential equations Part I: Examples of conservation law classifications

An effective algorithmic method is presented for finding the local conservation laws for partial differential equations with any number of independent and dependent variables. The method does not require the use or existence of a variational principle and reduces the calculation of conservation laws to solving a system of linear determining equations similar to that for finding symmetries. An explicit construction formula is derived which yields a conservation law for each solution of the determining system. In the first of two papers (Part I), examples of nonlinear wave equations are used to exhibit the method. Classification results for conservation laws of these equations are obtained. In a second paper (Part II), a general treatment of the method is given.
Analysis and optimal design of SiGe HBT low noise amplifier for GNSS receiver

The paper presents a SiGe HBT low noise amplifier (LNA) for GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receiver. The optimal design of the LNA was fabricated in HHNEC 180 nmSiGe BiCMOS technology. And the chip tested on PCB has demonstrated that the LNA obtains, at the GPS frequency point 1575.42MHz, a input return loss (S11) of -12dB, a power gain (S21) of 20.2dB, a noise figure (NF) of 0.86dB, a input 1dB compression point (IP1dB) of -13.5dBmand a input third-order intercept point (IIP3) of -4dBm while consuming only 4.2 mA from 1.8 V power supply. And the chip area is about 550μm×570μm.
Discussion of "The Neural Autoregressive Distribution Estimator"

The Restricted Boltzmann Machine (Smolensky, 1986; Hinton et al., 2006) has inspired much research in recent years, in particular as a building block for deep architectures (see Bengio (2009) for a review). The Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) is an undirected graphical model with latent variables, exact inference, rather simple sampling procedures (block Gibbs), and several successful learning algorithms based on approximations of the log-likelihood gradient. However, when it comes to actually computing the distribution or density function, it is intractable, except when either the number of inputs or latent variables is very small (about 25 binary hidden units with current computers and about an hour of computing, on MNIST).
The Gender Bind: Men as Inauthentic Caregivers

Almost twenty years after the enactment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), an ostensibly gender-neutral statute, companies are still less likely to offer paternity leave than they are to offer maternity leave. Although women have traditionally faced discrimination in the workplace because they are viewed as inauthentic workers — not fully committed to paid employment — men face the corresponding problem and are viewed as inauthentic caregivers. Men who seek family leave transgress gender norms and risk workplace discrimination and stereotyping. This article makes explicit how the social and cultural contexts in which the FMLA is applied interact to maintain the status quo and produce gendered outcomes at work and at home. The FMLA was expected to promote workplace gender equality by providing gender neutral leave and thus reduce employers’ expectations that women are more costly than men because they require special accommodations. Unfortunately, women continue to take significantly more leave than men to care for a newborn child or sick relative. This article argues that that the view of men as providers first and caregivers second encourages discrimination against male caregivers and interacts with overwork and inflexible work schedules to contribute to stereotypical divisions of labor within families. This article further proposes policies, including paid family leave, to promote co-equal caregiving and bread-winning between men and women.
Performance of mobile node between different MANET with Mobile IP

Mobile ad hoc networking allows nodes to form temporary networks and communicate beyond transmitter range by supporting multihop communication through IP routing. Routing in such networks is often reactive, i.e., performed on-demand, as opposed to Internet routing that is proactive. As ad hoc networks are formed on a temporary basis, any IP address should be allowed to appear in an ad hoc network. MlPMANET, a solution for connecting an ad hoc network, in which on-demand routing is used, to the Internet. MIPMANET, provides Internet access by using Mobile IP with foreign agent care-of addresses and reverse tunneling. This allows nodes to enjoy the mobility services of Mobile IP while at the same time the requirements on the ad hoc routing protocol are kept to a minimum. Simulations of MIPMANET have been performed in Network Simulator 2. The Ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol has been used for routing within the ad hoc network. These simulations show that the ability to choose the closest access point to the Internet is worth extra work, as less traffic is generated in the network resulting in lower delays and fewer dropped packets. This paper again tries to calculate end to end packet delay, propogation delay, throughput and packet overheads when they are travel from source to destination under different conditions.
Securing Virtual Service Generation on the Network : Adapting Digital Rights Management to Cloud-Delivered Media

This work introduces a novel content protection security framework within the virtual Set-Top Box (vSTB) concept. This concept presents a fundamental change in the creation and delivery of media services such as IP Television, by shifting most of the STB’s service execution environment to a network infrastructure. This shift enables a so-called cloud-based rendering of the User Interface and therefore poses new challenges for the classical IPTV security mechanism. After successful tests on the conventional network infrastructure (legacy network), the vSTB concept takes the consolidated and virtualized network approach as its target architecture for the implementation of the vSTB Security Framework. This work briefly introduces the vSTB concept, comparing overall system latency for locallyand cloud-rendered IPTV User Interface. It also presents the novel vSTB High Level Security Framework within the virtualized network infrastructure, analyzing potential system vulnerabilities and security threats. This work defines security challenges and open issues that may arise in the context of virtual service generation and its delivery to lightweight hardware. The paper herewith provides a review of this new research topic, on which research has not yet been published.
Enhancing the Velocity Data From 4D Flow MR Images by Reducing its Divergence

Velocity measurements from 4D flow MRI are prone to be affected by several imperfections of the MR system. Assuming that blood is incompressible, we propose a novel method for enhancing the velocity field by reducing its divergence. To enhance the velocity data, we added a corrector velocity to each voxel such that the divergence is minimized. The method was validated using an analytical Womersley flow model for different settings of resolution and noise levels. The performance of the proposed method was also assessed in volunteers and patients. Results demonstrated a significant reduction of the divergence depending on the size of the regularization term, obtaining a reduction close to 50% of the mean divergence with negligible modification of flow parameters. Remarkably, we found that the reduction of the divergence, in percentage, was independent of volunteers, resolution or noise.
Time Lens-Based Optical Fourier Transformation for All-Optical Signal Processing of Spectrally-Efficient Data

We review recent progress in the use of time lens-based optical Fourier transformation for advanced all-optical signal processing. A novel time lens-based complete optical Fourier transformation (OFT) technique is introduced. This complete OFT is based on two quadratic phase-modulation stages using four-wave mixing, separated by a dispersive medium, which enables time-to-frequency and frequency-to-time conversions simultaneously, thus performing an exchange between the temporal and spectral profiles of the input signal. Using the proposed complete OFT, several advanced all-optical signal processing schemes for spectrally-efficient systems and networks have been achieved, including all-optical generation, detection and format conversion of spectrally-efficient signals. The spectrally-efficient signals in this paper mainly refer to efficiently multiplexed signals with a high symbol rate per Hz, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, Nyquist wavelength-division multiplexing (Nyquist-WDM), and Nyquist optical time division multiplexing (Nyquist-OTDM) signals.
Gaze interaction from bed

This paper presents a low-cost gaze tracking solution for bedbound people composed of free-ware tracking software and commodity hardware. Gaze interaction is done on a large wall-projected image, visible to all people present in the room. The hardware equipment leaves physical space free to assist the person. Accuracy and precision of the tracking system was tested in an experiment with 12 subjects. We obtained a tracking quality that is sufficiently good to control applications designed for gaze interaction. The best tracking condition were achieved when people were sitting up compared to lying down. Also, gaze tracking in the bottom part of the image was found to be more precise than in the top part.
Mapping and exploiting economically important genes in Australian pigs

Over the past 7 years, a number of Australian institutions, including the University of Sydney, the Victorian Institute of Animal Science and University of Melbourne, the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, Armidale, and the Pig Research and Development Corporation and its successor Australian Pork Limited, have financed and participated in a sustained program of porcine genomics research, seeking economically important genes for the pig industry and ways to exploit them. The involvement of Bunge Meat Industries has provided access to the largest piggery in the southern hemisphere with the capacity to quickly breed and evaluate very large resource pedigrees under commercial conditions of production, frequently for traits not normally recorded in commercial pigs. Standard growth and fatness traits have been recorded, but also records of food conversion efficiency, intramuscular fat, androstenone levels, tenderness, stress responses, immune traits and many other characteristics affecting the efficiency of production or product quality have been measured. The University partners have provided molecular genetics expertise and facilities, leading edge quantitative genetic analysis for identification of genetic regions affecting variation in these traits, and economic and genetic evaluation of the potential for the exploitation of the results in the industry. The aim is eventually to develop DNA tests to supplement conventional performance selection to expedite selective improvement and allow its implementation for traits where it is too difficult or too expensive to implement performance selection.
A Novel Framework for Medium Access Control in Ultra-Wideband Ad Hoc Networks

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication is becoming an important technology for future Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs). A critical challenge in UWB system design is that a receiver usually needs tens of micro-seconds or even tens of milliseconds to synchronize with transmitted signals, known as timing acquisition problem. Such a long synchronization time will cause significant overhead, since the data rate of UWB systems is expected to be very high. In this paper, we address the timing acquisition problem at the medium access control (MAC) layer, and propose a general framework for medium access control in UWB systems; in this framework, a transmitting node can aggregate multiple upper-layer packets into a larger burst frame at the MAC layer. Furthermore, we design an MAC protocol based on the framework. Compared to sending each upper-layer packet individually, which is a typical situation in exiting MAC protocols, the proposed MAC can drastically reduce the synchronization overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed MAC can significantly improve the performance of UWB networks, in terms of both throughput and end-to-end delay.
Cardiotrophin-1 increases angiotensinogen mRNA in rat cardiac myocytes through STAT3 : an autocrine loop for hypertrophy.

-Cardiotrophin-1, an interleukin-6-related cytokine, stimulates the Janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK/STAT) pathway and induces cardiac myocyte hypertrophy. In this study, we demonstrate that cardiotrophin-1 induces cardiac myocyte hypertrophy in part by upregulation of a local renin-angiotensin system through the JAK/STAT pathway. We found that cardiotrophin-1 increased angiotensinogen mRNA expression in cardiac myocytes via STAT3 activation. Tyrosine phosphorylation of STAT3 by cardiotrophin-1 treatment resulted in STAT3 homodimer binding to the St-domain in the angiotensinogen gene promoter, which lead to promoter activation in a transient transfection assay. Cardiotrophin-1-induced STAT3 tyrosine phosphorylation and binding to the St-domain were suppressed by AG490, a specific JAK2 inhibitor, which also attenuated cardiotrophin-1-stimulated angiotensinogen promoter activity. Cardiotrophin-1 did not activate the angiotensinogen gene promoter that contained a substitution mutation within the St-domain. Finally, losartan, an angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonist, significantly attenuated cardiotrophin-1-induced hypertrophy of neonatal rat cardiac myocytes. Angiotensin II is known to induce cardiac myocyte hypertrophy by activating the G-protein-coupled angiotensin II type 1 receptor. Our results suggest that upregulation of angiotensinogen and angiotensin II production contribute to cardiotrophin-1-induced cardiac myocyte hypertrophy and emphasize an important interaction between G-protein-coupled and cytokine receptors.
Performance of Power-Limited Differential Power Processing Architectures in Mismatched PV Systems

Differential power processing (DPP) architectures employ distributed, low power processing, submodule-integrated converters to mitigate mismatches in photovoltaic (PV) power systems, while introducing no insertion losses. This paper evaluates the effects of the simple voltage-balancing DPP control approach on the submodule-level maximum power point (MPP) efficiency. It is shown that the submodule MPP efficiency of voltage-balancing DPP converters exceeds 98% in the presence of worst-case MPP voltage variations due to irradiance or temperature mismatches. Furthermore, the effects of reduced converter power rating in the isolated-port DPP architecture are investigated by long-term, high-granularity simulations of five representative PV system scenarios. For partially shaded systems, it is shown that the isolated-port DPP architecture offers about two times larger energy yield improvements compared to full power processing (FPP) module-level converters, and that it outperforms module-level FPP approaches even when the power rating of DPP converters is only 20-30% of the PV system peak power. In the cases of aging-related mismatches, more than 90% of the energy yield improvements are obtained with DPP converters rated at only 10% of the PV peak power.