Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing and Evaluating a Flexible Wireless Microcoil Array Based Integrated Interface for Epidural Cortical Stimulation

Stroke leads to serious long-term disability. Electrical epidural cortical stimulation has made significant improvements in stroke rehabilitation therapy. We developed a preliminary wireless implantable passive interface, which consists of a stimulating surface electrode, receiving coil, and single flexible passive demodulated circuit printed by flexible printed circuit (FPC) technique and output pulse voltage stimulus by inductively coupling an external circuit. The wireless implantable board was implanted in cats’ unilateral epidural space for electrical stimulation of the primary visual cortex (V1) while the evoked responses were recorded on the contralateral V1 using a needle electrode. The wireless implantable board output stable monophasic voltage stimuli. The amplitude of the monophasic voltage output could be adjusted by controlling the voltage of the transmitter circuit within a range of 5–20 V. In acute experiment, cortico-cortical evoked potential (CCEP) response was recorded on the contralateral V1. The amplitude of N2 in CCEP was modulated by adjusting the stimulation intensity of the wireless interface. These results demonstrated that a wireless interface based on a microcoil array can offer a valuable tool for researchers to explore electrical stimulation in research and the dura mater-electrode interface can effectively transmit electrical stimulation.
A mobile system of super-peers using city buses

Recently, researchers have introduced the notion of super-peers to improve signaling efficiency as well as lookup performance of peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. In a separate development, recent works on applications of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) have seen several proposals, e.g. in the paper by Wong (2003) and Jetcheva et al. (2003), on utilizing mobile fleets such as city buses to deploy a mobile backbone infrastructure for communication and Internet access in a metropolitan environment. This paper further explores the possibility of deploying P2P applications such as content sharing and distributed computing, over this mobile backbone infrastructure. Specifically, we study how city buses may be deployed as a mobile system of super-peers. We discuss the main motivations behind our proposal, and outline in detail the design of a super-peer based structured P2P system using a fleet of city buses.
Numerical Simulations of the 4 D Edwards-Anderson Spin Glass with Binary Couplings

We present numerical results that allow a precise determination of the transition point and of the critical exponents of the 4D Edwards-Anderson Spin Glass with binary quenched random couplings. We show that the low T phase undergoes Replica Symmetry Breaking. We obtain results on large lattices, up to a volume V = 104: we use finite size scaling to show the relevance of our results in the infinite volume limit.
The Over-expression of the Plastidial Transglutaminase from Maize in Arabidopsis Increases the Activation Threshold of Photoprotection

Plastidial transglutaminase is one of the most promising enzymes in chloroplast bioenergetics due to its link with polyamine pathways and the cross talk with signals such as Ca2+ and GTP. Here, we show the effect of the increase of transglutaminase activity in Arabidopsis by using genetic transformation techniques. These lines fulfill their biological cycle normally (normal growth in soil, production of viable seeds) and show a relatively mild increase in transglutaminase activity (127%). These overexpressors of transglutaminase (OE TGase) have an extended stroma thylakoid network (71% higher number of PSIIβ centers), similar chlorophyll content (-4%), higher linear electron flow (+13%), and higher threshold of photoprotection activation (∼100%). On the other hand OE TGase showed a reduced maximum photochemistry of PSII (-6.5%), a smaller antenna per photosystem II (-25%), a lower photoprotective “energization” quenching or qE (-77% at 490 μmol photons m-2 s-1) due to a higher threshold of qE activation and slightly lower light induced proton motive force (-17%). The role of the polyamines and of the transglutaminase in the regulation of chemiosmosis and photoprotection in chloroplasts is discussed.
A PAPR upper bound of generalized waveforms for multi-carrier modulation systems

The most common way to study the Peak-to-average Power Ratio (PAPR) distribution is limited to a single Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) symbol, therefore it does not reflect the exact value of the PAPR, since we have more than one OFDM symbol in practice. In this paper, we consider the Generalized Waveforms for Multi-Carrier (GWMC) modulation system which is based on any family of modulation functions, and we derive an upper bound of its PAPR. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that interprets the behavior of the Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function (CCDF) of the PAPR for different number of GWMC symbols, and presents an asymptotic study for an infinite number of GWMC symbols.
Induction of Specific CD8+ T Cells against Intracellular Bacteria by CD8+ T-Cell-Oriented Immunization Approaches

For protection against intracellular bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Listeria monocytogenes, the cellular arm of adaptive immunity is necessary. A variety of immunization methods have been evaluated and are reported to induce specific CD8+ T cells against intracellular bacterial infection. Modified BCG vaccines have been examined to enhance CD8+ T-cell responses. Naked DNA vaccination is a promising strategy to induce CD8+ T cells. In addition to this strategy, live attenuated intracellular bacteria such as Shigella, Salmonella, and Listeria have been utilized as carriers of DNA vaccines in animal models. Vaccination with dendritic cells pulsed with antigenic peptides or the cells introduced antigen genes by virus vectors such as retroviruses is also a powerful strategy. Furthermore, vaccination with recombinant lentivirus has been attempted to induce specific CD8+ T cells. Combinations of these strategies (prime-boost immunization) have been studied for the efficient induction of intracellular bacteria-specific CD8+ T cells.
TIGHTNESS CONDITIONS FOR POLYMER MEASURES

We give sufficient conditions for tightness in the spaceC((0,1)) for sequences of probability measures which enjoy a suitable decoupling between zero level set and ex- cursions. Applications of our results are given in the context of (homogeneous, periodic and disordered) random walk models for polymers and interfaces. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 60F17, 60K35, 82B41
In vivo human retinal and choroidal vasculature visualization using differential phase contrast swept source optical coherence tomography at 1060 nm

A differential phase contrast (DPC) method is validated for in vivo human retinal and choroidal vasculature visualization using high-speed swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) at 1060 nm. The vasculature was identified as regions of motion by creating differential phase variance (DPV) tomograms: multiple B-scans were collected of individual slices through the retina and the variance of the phase differences was calculated. DPV captured the small vessels and the meshwork of capillaries associated with the inner retina in en face images over 4 mm2 in a normal subject. En face DPV images were capable of capturing the microvasculature and regions of motion through the inner retina and choroid.
An efficient distributed memory interface for many-core platform with 3D stacked DRAM

Historically, processor performance has increased at a much faster rate than that of main memory and up-coming NoC-based many-core architectures are further tightening the memory bottleneck. 3D integration based on TSV technology may provide a solution, as it enables stacking of multiple memory layers, with orders-of-magnitude increase in memory interface bandwidth, speed and energy efficiency. To fully exploit this potential, the architectural interface to vertically stacked memory must be streamlined. In this paper we present an efficient and flexible distributed memory interface for 3D-stacked DRAM. Our interface ensures ultra-low-latency access to the memory modules on top of each processing element (vertically local memory neighborhoods). Communication to these local modules do not travel through the NoC and takes full advantage of the lower latency of vertical interconnect, thus speeding up significantly the common case. The interface still supports a convenient global address space abstraction with high-latency remote access, due to the slower horizontal interconnect. Experimental results demonstrate significant bandwidth improvement that ranges from 1.44x to 7.40x as compared to the JEDEC standard, with peaks of 4.53GB/s for direct memory access, and 850MB/s for remote access through the NoC.
Mitral Leaflet Adaptation to Ventricular Remodeling: Occurrence and Adequacy in Patients With Functional Mitral Regurgitation

Background— Functional mitral regurgitation (MR) is caused by systolic traction on the mitral leaflets related to ventricular distortion. Little is known about whether chronic tethering causes the mitral leaflet area to adapt to the geometric needs imposed by tethering, in part because of inability to reconstruct leaflet area in vivo. Our aim was to explore whether adaptive increases in leaflet area occur in patients with functional MR compared with normal subjects and to test the hypothesis that leaflet area influences MR severity. Methods and Results— A new method for 3-dimensional echocardiographic measurement of mitral leaflet area was developed and validated in vivo against 15 sheep heart valves, later excised. This method was then applied in 80 consecutive patients from 3 groups: patients with normal hearts by echocardiography (n=20), patients with functional MR caused by isolated inferior wall-motion abnormality or dilated cardiomyopathy (n=29), and patients with inferior wall-motion abnormality or dilated cardiomyopathy but no MR (n=31). Leaflet area was increased by 35±20% in patients with LV dysfunction compared with normal subjects. The ratio of leaflet to annular area was 1.95±0.40 and was not different among groups, which indicates a surplus leaflet area that adapts to left-heart changes. In contrast, the ratio of total leaflet area to the area required to close the orifice in midsystole was decreased in patients with functional MR compared with those with normal hearts (1.29±0.15 versus 1.78±0.39, P=0.001) and compared with patients with inferior wall-motion abnormality or dilated cardiomyopathy but no MR (1.81±0.38, P=0.001). After adjustment for measures of LV remodeling and tethering, a leaflet-to-closure area ratio <1.7 was associated with significant MR (odds ratio 23.2, 95% confidence interval 2.0 to 49.1, P=0.02). Conclusions— Mitral leaflet area increases in response to chronic tethering in patients with inferior wall-motion abnormality and dilated cardiomyopathy, but the development of significant MR is associated with insufficient leaflet area relative to that demanded by tethering geometry. The varying adequacy of leaflet adaptation may explain in part the heterogeneity of this disease among patients. The results suggest the need to understand the mechanisms that underlie leaflet adaptation and whether leaflet area can potentially be modified as part of the therapeutic approach.
Beyond one-dollar mouse: A battery-free device for 3D human-computer interaction via RFID tags

For today's computer users, the mouse plays such an important role that it dominates the interaction interface in personal computer for nearly half a century since it was invented. However, the mouse is gradually unfit for the demand of modern 3D display techniques, e.g. 3D-projection or -screen, for the reason that the relevant interactions are confined in a surface. Although some new methods such as computer vision based techniques attempt to bridge the human-computer barrier, they suffer from many limitations such as ambiguity in multitargets and dependence on light. This paper presents a battery-free device called Tagball for 3D human-computer interaction via RFID tags. Tagball devises a control ball, on which N passive tags are attached, for users to generate two basic kinds of interactive commands: translation and rotation. Instead of locating N tags independently, we model the ball as a whole in a more cooperative way under the circumstance that their geometric relationships are known in advance. In addition, we consider the phase values measured by M RF antennas for these N tags as observations of the ball state. Our key innovations are the studies on motion behaviors of a group of tags by using Extended Kalman Filter, and the implementation based on purely Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) RFID products. The systematical evaluation shows that Tagball traces the ball translation to 1.5cm and identifies ball orientation to 1.8° in 3D space.
User-Level TCP in a Flow Controlled ATM LAN

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is widely deployed for providing reliable, in-order delivery of data. The rapid improvements being made to the underlying physical and data link technologies may require changes to TCP to fully beneet applications. Moving the protocol processing code from the kernel into user-level allows customization and optimization , but these beneets come at a price. This paper rst examines some of the tradeoos of doing protocol processing at user-level and then looks speciically at redundancy of functionality of TCP and Asyn-chronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and at the application of a user-level TCP to resolving this redundancy. We nd that the performance of user-level TCP depends largely on the interface it has to the device driver and that a simple, shared buuer system, though easy to manage, is too rigid for general use with TCP. Our work with ATM indicates that TCP slow start duplicates ATM functionality, and that TCP's congestion window is useless in steady state data ow. Slow start may be removed in this scenario, and some other mechanism for congestion avoidance should be investigated.
Artificial Neural Networks for Cognitive Radio: A Preliminary Survey

The cognitive radio is the emerging field where an efficient use of spectrum is desired by detecting white spaces. The Artificial intelligence is the core of the cognitive engine which observes the external and internal environment parameters and acts to increase the QoS of the communication system. In this paper a survey of how artificial neural networks can be used to develop this intelligent core. Various techniques recently suggested by researchers e.g. automatic modulation classification, pattern recognition based cognitive transmitter/receiver, ANN based learner and spectrum predictor have been discussed in this paper.
Explanations for the Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases

This Bulletin explores the strengths and weaknesses of six possible explanations for the decline by using data from a number of different sources: aggregate data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS); detailed child protective service data from Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania; and self-report data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and from schoolchildren in Minnesota. It provides substantially more evidence about the decline than was available in a previous Bulletin on the same topic, The Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases (Jones and Finkelhor, 2001).
Direct Comparison of the BD ProbeTec ET System with In-House LightCycler PCR Assays for Detection of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae from Clinical Specimens

ABSTRACT The commercial BD ProbeTec ET (BDPT) system for the detection of Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis from clinical specimens was compared with our in-house LightCycler real-time PCR (LC-PCR) assays. Specimens initially positive by the BDPT system were retested by our LC-PCR assays. Our results for C. trachomatis testing indicate a 91.2% agreement when the results of 114 clinical specimens, initially positive by BDPT over a wide range of method-other-than-acceleration (MOTA) scores, were retested by our LC-PCR assay. The agreement between the two systems improved to 96% when only MOTA scores of >30,000 were retested by the LC-PCR assay. The overall agreement between the two systems for Neisseria gonorrhoeae detection from 155 clinical specimens was only 77.4%, with agreement particularly low (24.1%) for MOTA scores ranging from 2,000 to 19,999. Repeat testing of specimens with the BDPT only closely correlated with that seen by others demonstrating that reproducibility of the BDPT system for specimens initially within the MOTA score range from 2,000 to 9,999 is problematic, especially for Neisseria gonorrhoeae testing. With our study, we proposed an algorithm for C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae testing which involves screening with the BDPT system followed by selective use of our in-house LC-PCR assays.
Modulation of Circulating Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor in the Elderly

Aging increases the risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Chronic low-grade inflammation deteriorates vascular function, increases age-related vascular stiffness, and affects hemodynamics. The proinflammatory cytokine macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a major mediator of atherosclerosis. Plasma MIF levels are associated with arterial stiffness, a hallmark of vascular aging. Preclinical studies show that blockade of MIF leads to atherosclerotic plaque regression. Nutritional approaches provide opportunities to counteract age-related inflammation. Following a chronic dietary supplementation with the micronutrient nitrate has been demonstrated to improve vascular stiffness. Whether dietary nitrate affects circulating MIF levels is not known. In a randomized placebo-controlled, double-blinded study, elderly subjects received a dietary nitrate supplementation for 4 weeks. Dietary nitrate led to a decrease in plasma MIF levels in the elderly and to an improvement in vascular functions. This was associated with a reduction in central systolic blood pressure. Our data show that supplementation with dietary nitrate is associated with a reduction of circulating MIF levels along with an improvement in vascular function. This supports the concept of dietary approaches to modulate age-related changes of vascular functions.
Adaptive multi-strategy for multi-vehicle with mutual occlusion tracking

Multi-vehicle with mutual occlusion tracking is a great challenging task. In this paper, we present a novel scheme based on adaptive multi-strategy to cope with this problem. First, a rule that determines the relation and degree of occlusion among different vehicles is proposed. The rule will output three cases: the first is severely occluded vehicle, the second is partially occluded vehicle and the third is non-occluded vehicle. And then, for the three cases, different tracking approaches are adopted: for the first case, a trace prediction based method using motion features is employed. For the latter two cases, dictionary and l2 regularized collaborative representation based method is employed. During tracking, only background dictionary is updated. The experimental results have demonstrated the promising results for multi-vehicle with mutual occlusion tracking.
ISEcp1-mediated transposition of linked blaCTX-M-3 and blaTEM-1b from the IncI1 plasmid pEK204 found in clinical isolates of Escherichia coli from Belfast, UK.

OBJECTIVES Linked bla(CTX-M-3)-bla(TEM-1b) genes, as found on the IncI1 plasmid pEK204 prevalent in Belfast, also occur on plasmids belonging to other rep types in Escherichia coli isolated from nursing-home residents in Belfast. We investigated the mechanisms for their joint dissemination among diverse plasmids. METHODS Plasmid pEK204 was transferred by electroporation into E. coli DH5α harbouring derivative pBAD Myc-His vectors. Transposition experiments were then performed at 37°C. Transposition of bla genes onto the derivative pBAD Myc-His vector was confirmed by sequencing. RESULTS ISEcp1 mediated transposition of bla(CTX-M-3) alone from pEK204, as well as both bla(CTX-M-3) and bla(TEM-1b) jointly. The 5' and 3' termini of the transposed fragments were identical to or resembled the ISEcp1 IR(L) and IR(R), respectively, thereby replicating the environments previously found in various Belfast clinical plasmids harbouring bla(CTX-M-3). CONCLUSIONS Simultaneous dissemination of bla(CTX-M-3) and bla(TEM-1b) among plasmids in Belfast's nursing homes is facilitated by ISEcp1-mediated transposition of these bla genes from pEK204-like and other plasmids. Such transposition events are of public health concern, as they potentially allow wider dissemination of CTX-M-3 enzyme than would be possible through the spread of extended-spectrum β-lactamase-encoding plasmids and strains alone.
Characterization and Construction of a Family of Highly Symmetric Spherical Polyhedra with Application in Modeling Self-Assembling Structures

The regular polyhedra have the highest order of 3D symmetries and are exceptionally at- tractive templates for (self)-assembly using minimal types of building blocks, from nano-cages and virus capsids to large scale constructions like glass domes. However, they only represent a small number of possible spherical layouts which can serve as templates for symmetric assembly. In this paper, we formalize the necessary and sufficient conditions for symmetric assembly using exactly one type of building block. All such assemblies correspond to spherical polyhedra which are edge-transitive and face-transitive, but not necessarily vertex-transitive. This describes a new class of polyhedra outside of the well-studied Platonic, Archimedean, Catalan and and Johnson solids. We show that this new family, dubbed almost-regular polyhedra, can be pa- rameterized using only two variables and provide an efficient algorithm to generate an infinite series of such polyhedra. Additionally, considering the almost-regular polyhedra as templates for the assembly of 3D spherical shell structures, we developed an efficient polynomial time shell assembly approximation algorithm for an otherwise NP-hard geometric optimization problem.
Clinical Interpretation of Genomic Variations

Novel high-throughput sequencing technologies generate large-scale genomic data and are used extensively for disease mapping of monogenic and/or complex disorders, personalized treatment, and pharmacogenomics. Next-generation sequencing is rapidly becoming routine tool for diagnosis and molecular monitoring of patients to evaluate therapeutic efficiency. The next-generation sequencing platforms generate huge amounts of genetic variation data and it remains a challenge to interpret the variations that are identified. Such data interpretation needs close collaboration among bioinformaticians, clinicians, and geneticists. There are several problems that must be addressed, such as the generation of new algorithms for mapping and annotation, harmonization of the terminology, correct use of nomenclature, reference genomes for different populations, rare disease variant databases, and clinical reports.