Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Familial Combined Hyperlipidemia in Mexicans: Association With Upstream Transcription Factor 1 and Linkage on Chromosome 16q24.1

Objective—To investigate the largely unknown genetic component of the common lipid disorder, familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCHL) in Mexicans, we analyzed the upstream transcription factor 1 (USF1) gene that was recently associated with FCHL and high triglycerides (TG) in Finns. We also analyzed the Mexican FCHL families for 26 microsatellite markers residing in the seven chromosomal regions on 2p25.1, 9p23, 10q11.23, 11q13, 16q24.1, 19q13, and 21q21, previously linked to FCHL in Whites. Methods and Results—We genotyped 314 individuals in 24 Mexican families for 13 SNPs spanning an 88-kb region, including USF1. The FCHL and TG traits showed significant evidence for association with 3 SNPs, hCV1459766, rs3737787, and rs2073658, and haplotype analyses further supported these findings (probability values of 0.05 to 0.0009 for SNPs and their haplotypes). Of these SNPs, hCV1459766 is located in the F11 receptor (F11R) gene, located next to USF1, making it difficult to exclude. Importantly, the association was restricted to a considerably smaller region than in the Finns (14 kb versus 46 kb), possibly because of a different underlying linkage disequilibrium structure. In addition, 1 of the 7 regions, 16q24.1, showed suggestive evidence for linkage (a lod score of 2.6) for total cholesterol in Mexicans. Conclusions—This study, the first to extensively investigate the genetic component of the common FCHL disorder in Mexicans, provides independent evidence for the role of USF1 in FCHL in an outbred population and links the 16q24.1 region to an FCHL-component trait in Mexicans.
A novel background noise estimation in adverse environments

This paper addresses the problem of noise estimation in adverse environments. It contains two new parameters, the mel-scale frequency bank entropy (MS-entropy) and the delta minimum frequency energy (delta-MiFre). The MS-entropy parameter can calculate the uncertainty of spectral magnitude, and the delta-MiFre can process the variation of temporal spectrum energy. We use these two parameters to avoid the wrong background noise estimation. Hence the background noise level estimated by the proposed method is more precise than that estimated by the pure spectrum energy method.
Convergence analysis of alternating direction method of multipliers for a family of nonconvex problems

In this paper, we analyze the behavior of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), for solving a family of nonconvex problems. Our focus is given to the well-known consensus and sharing problems, both of which have wide applications in signal processing. We show that in the presence of nonconvex objective function, classical ADMM is able to reach the set of stationary solutions for these problems, if the stepsize is chosen large enough. An interesting consequence of our analysis is that the ADMM is convergent for a family of sharing problems, regardless of the number of blocks or the convexity of the objective function. Our analysis is broadly applicable to many ADMM variants involving proximal update rules and various flexible block selection rules.
Scheduling Adaptive Transactions in Real-time Databases ?

A new transaction model, called the Adaptive Transaction Model, is proposed for Real-Time Database Management Systems (RTDBMSs) applications. The Adaptive Transaction Model is an extended transaction model with a nested structure containing optional and required subtransactions. Adaptive Transactions (ATs) have time constraints to support real-time database applications. Optional substransactions can be omitted during the execution if time does not permit. Scheduling issues for a special case of adaptive transactions, called chain-structured adaptive transactions, are discussed. Several priority-based scheduling policies are proposed and experimental results are reported under lock-based and timestamp-ordering concurrency control protocols. A priority assignment policy (MSF-MES) is found to provide superior (low) miss ratios compared to other policies.
Alginate and Sericin: Environmental and Pharmaceutical Applications

Alginate is a polysaccharide that, for commercial purposes, is extracted exclusively from marine brown algae. In this chapter, we discuss the main sources of alginate and sodium alginate manufacturing, its chemical structure and physicochemical properties, the alginate modifications, and blend formation. We also present applications of alginate and sericin blend in the pharmaceutical and environmental fields as well as case studies. via ionotropic gelation under high voltage, and the beads were coated with chitosan and cross‐linked with genipin, for the purpose of encapsulating hepatocytes for advanced cellular functions. This study suggests that the developed sericin‐alginate‐chitosan microcapsule contributes toward the development of cell encapsulation model. It also offers to generate enriched population of metabolically and functionally active cells for the future therapeutics especially for hepatocytes transplantation in acute liver failure.
Corrected tandem features for acoustic model training

This paper describes a simple method for significantly improving tandem features used to train acoustic models for large-vocabulary speech recognition. The linear activations at the outputs of an MLP classifier were modified according to known reference labels: where necessary, the activation of the output unit corresponding to the correct phone label was increased in order to make an accurate classification. This technique was inspired by another experiment that determined a lower error bound on ASR performance within the tandem framework. By simulating an idealized classifier with forward-backward phone posterior probabilities, we observed a best-case scenario in which nearly all errors were eliminated. Although this performance is not practically achievable, the experiment demonstrated the validity of the Tandem processing approach and suggested that considerable gains are possible by improving the MLP phone classifier.
Continuous flow synthesis of antimalarials: opportunities for distributed autonomous chemical manufacturing

The concept of distributed manufacturing of chemicals is presented and discussed, with specific focus on the context of preparing molecules that can combat the development of geographically-localised resistant strains of infectious pathogens. Specifically we present the case of antimalarial compounds and demonstrate that the flow chemistry community have already designed both a machine capable of distrubuted chemical manufacturing and a module that would be capable of producing artemisin derivatives at the point of use.
Cholesterol depletion modulates detergent resistant fraction of human serotonin1A receptors

Abstract Insolubility of membrane components in non-ionic detergents such as Triton X-100 at low temperature is a widely used biochemical criterion to identify, isolate and characterize membrane domains. In this work, we monitored the detergent insolubility of the serotonin1A receptor in CHO cell membranes and its modulation by membrane cholesterol. The serotonin1A receptor is an important member of the G-protein coupled receptor family. It is implicated in the generation and modulation of various cognitive, behavioral and developmental functions and serves as a drug target. Our results show that a significant fraction (∼ 28%) of the serotonin1A receptor resides in detergent-resistant membranes (DRMs). Interestingly, the fraction of the serotonin1A receptor in DRMs exhibits a reduction upon membrane cholesterol depletion. In addition, we show that contents of DRM markers such as flotillin-1, caveolin-1 and GM1 are altered in DRMs upon cholesterol depletion. These results assume significance since the function of the serotonin1A receptor has previously been shown to be affected by membrane lipids, specifically cholesterol. Our results are relevant in the context of membrane organization of the serotonin1A receptor in particular, and G-protein coupled receptors in general.
Serum Albumin Stimulates Protein Kinase G-dependent Microneme Secretion in Toxoplasma gondii*

Microneme secretion is essential for motility, invasion, and egress in apicomplexan parasites. Although previous studies indicate that Ca2+ and cGMP control microneme secretion, little is known about how these pathways are naturally activated. Here we have developed genetically encoded indicators for Ca2+ and microneme secretion to better define the signaling pathways that regulate these processes in Toxoplasma gondii. We found that microneme secretion was triggered in vitro by exposure to a single host protein, serum albumin. The natural agonist serum albumin induced microneme secretion in a protein kinase G-dependent manner that correlated with increased cGMP levels. Surprisingly, serum albumin acted independently of elevated Ca2+ and yet it was augmented by artificial agonists that raise Ca2+, such as ethanol. Furthermore, although ethanol elevated intracellular Ca2+, it alone was unable to trigger secretion without the presence of serum or serum albumin. This dichotomy was recapitulated by zaprinast, a phosphodiesterase inhibitor that elevated cGMP and separately increased Ca2+ in a protein kinase G-independent manner leading to microneme secretion. Taken together, these findings reveal that microneme secretion is centrally controlled by protein kinase G and that this pathway is further augmented by elevation of intracellular Ca2+.
THz Metamaterial Characterization Using THz-TDS

The purpose of this chapter is to familiarize the reader with metamaterials and describe terahertz (THz) spectroscopy within metamaterials research. The introduction provides key background information on metamaterials, describes their history and their unique properties. These properties include negative refraction, backwards phase propagation, and the reversed Doppler Effect. The history and theory of metamaterials are discussed, starting with Veselago’s negative index materials work and Pendry’s publications on physical realization of metamaterials. The next sections cover measurement and analyses of THz metamaterials. THz Time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) will be the key measurement tool used to describe the THz metamaterial measurement process. Sample transmission data from a metamaterial THz-TDS measurement is analyzed to give a better understanding of the different frequency characteristics of metamaterials. The measurement and analysis sections are followed by a section on the fabrication process of metamaterials. After familiarizing the reader with THz metamaterial measurement and fabrication techniques, the final section will provide a review of various methods by which metamaterials are made active and/or tunable. Several novel concepts were demonstrated in recent years to achieve such metamaterials, including photoconductivity, high electron mobility transistor (HEMT), microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and phase change material (PCM)-based metamaterial structures. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
A high-power DC-DC converter for electric vehicle battery charger

A DC-DC converter for high-power battery chargers with the power-capacity over 6.6-kW for electric vehicle (EV) is proposed in this paper. Due to a new architecture, the proposed converter achieves the reduction of conduction loss at the primary-side by as much as 50% and has many benefits such as reduced circulating current, less duty-cycle loss, and lower secondary-voltage stress. In addition, its power handing capacity can be upsized easily with the usage of two full-bridge inverters and two transformers. Besides, all the active switches in the proposed converter achieve zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) during the whole battery charging process, and the size of output filter can be significantly reduced. The circuit configuration, operation, and relevant analysis are presented, followed by the experiment on a prototype realized with a scale-downed 3.3-kW charger. The experimental results validate the theoretical analysis and show the effectiveness of the proposed converter as a battery charger.
Clinical immunotoxicity of pesticides.

Because of the wide use of pesticides for domestic and industrial purposes, the evaluation of their immunotoxic effects is of major concern for public health. Despite the large amount of experimental data describing pesticide-induced immunosuppression, evidence that pesticides may severely impair immune functions in humans is lacking or scarce. Contact hypersensitivity is a well-identified immunotoxic effect of pesticides but remains a rare complaint in pesticide-exposed workers. By contrast, immunologically mediated systemic reactions have been described only as debatable case reports. The association between autoimmune diseases and pesticide exposure has more recently been suggested. Despite the lack of convincing human data, a potential risk for the immune system should not be excluded, especially during chronic exposure to pesticides or in otherwise (immuno) compromised patients (malnutrition, children, old patients). Epidemiological studies including markers of exposure and the assessment of immune competence in exposed individuals, or registries of sentinel diseases related to immunosuppression (e.g., non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, opportunistic infections) or autoimmunity (e.g. lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis), are warranted.
On linear and mixmax interaction models for single channel source separation

For model-based single channel source separation, one typically assumes a linear interaction model, i.e. that the mixture magnitude spectrogram is the sum of the individual source magnitude spectrograms. In the log-domain, the MIXMAX interaction model is the corresponding approximation for the linear model. Hence, one would expect similar performance for both approaches. However, in this paper we empirically show that this is not the case for vector-quantizer-based (VQ) single channel source separation. We propose factorial linear-VQ, the linear counterpart to factorial max-VQ, and compare the two methods in systematic source separation experiments. Linear-VQ performs significantly better than max-VQ for comparable code-book sizes and behaves more robustly in the presence of additive white noise. Furthermore, we compare resynthesis properties of binary and continuous time-frequency masks. While binary masks achieve a higher interference suppression, the use of continuous masks results in a consistently better signal quality.
Combined Dielectrophoresis and Impedance Systems for Bacteria Analysis in Microfluidic On-Chip Platforms

Bacteria concentration and detection is time-consuming in regular microbiology procedures aimed to facilitate the detection and analysis of these cells at very low concentrations. Traditional methods are effective but often require several days to complete. This scenario results in low bioanalytical and diagnostic methodologies with associated increased costs and complexity. In recent years, the exploitation of the intrinsic electrical properties of cells has emerged as an appealing alternative approach for concentrating and detecting bacteria. The combination of dielectrophoresis (DEP) and impedance analysis (IA) in microfluidic on-chip platforms could be key to develop rapid, accurate, portable, simple-to-use and cost-effective microfluidic devices with a promising impact in medicine, public health, agricultural, food control and environmental areas. The present document reviews recent DEP and IA combined approaches and the latest relevant improvements focusing on bacteria concentration and detection, including selectivity, sensitivity, detection time, and conductivity variation enhancements. Furthermore, this review analyses future trends and challenges which need to be addressed in order to successfully commercialize these platforms resulting in an adequate social return of public-funded investments.
The development of a simulated car racing controller based on Monte-Carlo tree search

Ever since its introduction, Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has shown very good performances on a number of games, most of which are turn-based zero-sum games. More recently, researchers have also started to expand the application of MCTS to other types of games. This paper proposes a new framework of applying MCTS to the game of simulated car racing. We choose to build the search tree in a discretized game-state space and then determine the action from the selected target game state. This allows us to avoid the need to discretize the action space. In addition, we are able to incorporate some heuristics on driving strategies naturally. The resulting controller shows very competitive performance in the open-source racing game TORCS.
Neural Networks for the Modeling of Concentration of Chemicals

Recently, biosensors based on carbon nanotubes have gained considerable attention because of their novel properties such as their high surface area, electrical conductivity, good chemical stability and extremely high mechanical strength, among others. Nevertheless, to extract the most relevant information from those huge databases formed by the output of biosensors, statistical techniques are required. In the last decade, given the characteristics of neural networks (NNs), one of the most important and widely applied techniques is based on them. Here, successful applications of NNs as chemometric tools in different types of sensors are studied. In particular, describing the uses of NNs in the quantification of ionic liquids and hydrocarbons in their quaternary mixtures, lycopene and β-carotene in food samples (by sensors), poliphenolic compounds (hazardous materials in olive oil mill wastewater, by biosensors), glucose, uric and ascorbic acids in biological mixtures (by nanobiosensors). In general, the mean prediction error values are comparable with those values in other non portable commercial analytical equipment.
Pelvic Girdle Pain and Low Back Pain in Pregnancy: A Review

Pregnancy‐related pelvic girdle pain (PGP) and pregnancy‐related low back pain (PLBP) are common problems with significant physical, psychological, and socioeconomic implications. There are several management options that are underutilized because of lack of comprehensive knowledge by health‐care professionals and fear of harmful effects of treatment on the developing fetus. Interventions such as patient education, the use of pelvic belts, acupuncture, and aquatic and tailored postpartum exercises can be of some benefit to these patients. This article will focus on the diagnosis and management of PGP and PLBP, with discussion of terminology, epidemiology, risk factors, pathophysiology, and prognosis.
Body fat topography in women with androgen excess.

The relationship between body fat distribution and androgen excess was determined in 168 premenopausal women of varying degrees of androgen excess. In 84 women with the polycystic ovary syndrome or idiopathic hirsutism, the waist:hips girth ratio (WHR) was 0.81 +/- 0.01 (mean +/- s.e.m.) and was significantly greater (P less than 0.001) than in an age- and weight-matched group of 84 non-hirsute women (0.77 +/- 0.01), indicating upper body fat predominance in the hirsute subjects. Plasma testosterone was directly correlated with the WHR (r = 0.55, P less than 0.001) and this relationship was independent of obesity level, supporting the hypothesis that plasma androgens are an important determinant of body fat topography in premenopausal women.
Female bisexuality from adolescence to adulthood: results from a 10-year longitudinal study.

Debates persist over whether bisexuality is a temporary stage of denial or transition, a stable "3rd type" of sexual orientation, or a heightened capacity for sexual fluidity. The present study uses 5 waves of longitudinal data collected from 79 lesbian, bisexual, and "unlabeled" women to evaluate these models. Both the "3rd orientation" and "fluidity" models had support, but the "transitional stage" model did not. Over 10 years, 2/3 of women changed the identity labels they had claimed at the beginning of the study, and 1/3 changed labels 2 or more times. Yet, contrary to the "transitional stage" model, more women adopted bisexual/unlabeled identities than relinquished these identities; few bisexual/unlabeled women ended up identifying as lesbian or heterosexual. Overall, the most commonly adopted identity was "unlabeled. " Bisexual/unlabeled women had stable overall distributions of same-sex/other-sex attractions but greater absolute fluctuations in attractions from assessment to assessment than lesbians. All women reported declines in their ratio of same-sex to other-sex behavior over time. These findings demonstrate that the distinction between lesbianism and bisexuality is a matter of degree rather than kind.
The effect of paired stimuli on blink reflex latencies in normal subjects

Introduction: In this study we assessed the effect of paired stimuli on the latencies and amplitudes of the blink reflex. Methods: Blink reflexes were performed with single and paired (5‐ms interstimulus interval) stimuli in 47 patients. The changes in latencies between paired and single stimuli were calculated. Results: Paired stimulation produced two types of R1 waveform morphologies: single‐ and double‐peaked waveforms. Increases in R1 and contralateral R2 latencies with paired stimulation were significantly higher in those with single‐peaked R1 responses compared to those with double‐peaked R1 responses. Conclusions: Interpreting the blink reflex latencies using paired stimulation requires visualization of the R1 waveform morphology. A double‐peaked R1 response requires no change in normal latency values, but the latency of a single‐peaked R1 should be interpreted from the second shock artifact. The effect on the R2 latency is variable. Muscle Nerve, 2011
Optical gain in silicon nanocrystals

Adding optical functionality to a silicon microelectronic chip is one of the most challenging problems of materials research. Silicon is an indirect-bandgap semiconductor and so is an inefficient emitter of light. For this reason, integration of optically functional elements with silicon microelectronic circuitry has largely been achieved through the use of direct-bandgap compound semiconductors. For optoelectronic applications, the key device is the light source—a laser. Compound semiconductor lasers exploit low-dimensional electronic systems, such as quantum wells and quantum dots, as the active optical amplifying medium. Here we demonstrate that light amplification is possible using silicon itself, in the form of quantum dots dispersed in a silicon dioxide matrix. Net optical gain is seen in both waveguide and transmission configurations, with the material gain being of the same order as that of direct-bandgap quantum dots. We explain the observations using a model based on population inversion of radiative states associated with the Si/SiO 2 interface. These findings open a route to the fabrication of a silicon laser.
Enhancement of the Electrical Safe Operating Area of Integrated DMOS Transistors With Respect to High-Energy Short Duration Pulses

The influence of the source/body layout on the electrical safe operating area (SOA) of both vertical and lateral double-diffused metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors is experimentally investigated using a transmission line pulse system. Tradeoff between RDSon ·Area and SOA is discussed. Stripe geometries with and without (i.e., conventional design) body contact extension and cell designs with circular and oval geometries are considered. It is shown that a circular design of the source/body cell is superior with respect to SOA, compared with the conventional stripe design. The oval design is used to improve RDSon ·Area without compromising SOA performance, compared with the circular design.