Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
LPS Exposure in Early Life Protects Against Mucus Hypersecretion in Ovalbumin-Induced Asthma by Down-Regulation of the IL-13 and JAK-STAT6 Pathways

Background/Aims: Previous studies have shown that lipopolysaccharide (LPS) exposure may have a protective effect on asthma by reducing airway hyper-responsiveness, airway inflammation and serum IgE levels. However, there are few studies investigating the effect of LPS on mucous secretion in asthma. In this study, we evaluate the relationship between LPS pre-treatment in infant mice and airway mucus hypersecretion in an OVA (ovalbumin)-induced asthma model, and further explore the mechanisms behind this effect. Methods: Mice were pre-treated with LPS by intranasal instillation (i.n.) from the 3rd day of life for 10 consecutive days before the OVA-induced asthma model was established. In order to detect mucus secretion, periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) staining was carried out, and the expression of Muc5ac was detected. The IL-13 levels in Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) and lung tissue were also detected. In vitro, the expression of Muc5ac mRNA and protein was quantified in IL-13-stimulated 16HBE cells with or without LPS pre-treatment. In addition, proteins in the JAK2/STAT6 pathway, transcription factors (forkhead box transcription factor A2 (FOXA2), activation protein-1(AP-1), NF-κB), and the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) were also measured in vivo and in vitro. Results: LPS pre-treatment reduced mucus secretion, as demonstrated by decreased PAS staining and muc5ac expression. Further exploration of the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon revealed that LPS pre-treatment decreased the production of IL-13, IL-13 induced ROS synthesis was reduced, and the JAK2/STAT6 pathway was inhibited. Decreased stat6 increased transcription factor FOXA2, and the relatively increased FOXA2 further decreased the level of Muc5ac and mucous hypersecretion in OVA-induced asthma. Conclusions: LPS pre-treatment ameliorated mucus hypersecretion in an OVA-induced asthma model by inhibition of IL-13 production and by further inhibiting the JAK2/STAT6 pathway and ROS activity, and up-regulating expression of FOXA2.
Effects of High- and Low-Velocity Resistance Training on Gait Kinematics and Kinetics in Individuals with Hip Osteoarthritis: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of high-velocity (HV) and low-velocity (LV) resistance training on gait kinematics and kinetics in patients with hip osteoarthritis. Design This was a single-blind, randomized controlled trial. Forty-six women with hip osteoarthritis were randomly allocated to the HV (n = 23) or LV (n = 23) training group. The participants underwent an 8-week home-based the HV or LV resistance-training program, involving the hip and knee muscles. Outcome measures included gait kinematics and kinetics using 3-dimensional analyses, muscle strength and power, the Harris Hip Score, and hip pain using the visual analog scale. Results There was no significant difference in changes for any of the outcome measures between groups. After the training session, muscle power, walking speed, and cadence significantly increased only in the HV group, whereas stride length and the peak hip extension angle during gait significantly increased, and pain on the visual analog scale and the peak ankle dorsiflexion moment during gait significantly decreased only in the LV group. Muscle strength and Harris Hip Score significantly increased in both groups. Conclusions The results of this study may indicate that the potential effect of resistance training on abnormal gait pattern depends on movement velocities during training.
Surrogate End-of-Life Care Decision Makers’ Postbereavement Grief and Guilt Responses

This article examined differences in familial/friend surrogate decision makers’ (N = 93) postbereavement grief and guilt associated with decisions to either prioritize comfort or longevity in determining end-of-life care for decisionally incapacitated adult palliative loved ones. Results demonstrated that participants prioritizing the longevity of loved ones experienced significantly and meaningfully higher levels of grief, complicated grief, and trauma related guilt than those who prioritized comfort.
A geometry force field which converts low‐resolution X‐ray models to structures with properties found at ultra high resolution

A geometry optimization force field was developed using ultra high‐resolution structures and tested using high‐ and low‐resolution X‐ray structures. Protein and small molecule X‐ray data was used. When applied to ultra high‐resolution structures the force field conserves the internal geometry and local strain energy. When applied to low‐resolution structures there is a small change in geometry accompanied by a large drop in local strain energy. Although optimization causes only small structural changes in low‐resolution X‐ray models, it dramatically modifies profiles for hydrogen bonding, Van der Waals contact, bonded geometry, and local strain energy, making them almost indistinguishable from those found at high resolution. Further insight into the effect of the force field was obtained by comparing geometries of homologous proteins before and after geometry optimization. Optimization causes homologous regions of structures to become similar in internal geometry and energies. Once again, the changes only require small atomic movements. These findings provide insights into the structure of molecular complexes. The new force field contains only short‐range interatomic potential functions. Its effectiveness shows that local geometries are determined by short‐range interactions which are well modeled by the force field. Potential applications of this study include detection of possible structural errors, correction of errors with minimal change in geometry, improved understanding and prediction of the effects of modifying ligands or proteins, and computational addition of structural water.
An overview and comparison of analytical TCP models

Modeling TCP performance is an important issue that attracted research attention over the past decade. In this paper, we present an overview of models used to capture the TCP behavior. We compare several existing analytical methods with respect to modeled attributes, modeling assumptions, and validation techniques. We also identify features that new TCP models should possess. Finally, we address the importance of devising common validation techniques and performance evaluation metrics for TCP models.
Effect of Longitudinal Reinforcement Ratio and Effective Depth on Shear Capacity of PVA Fiber High Strength RC Beams

The study on the shear capacity of PVA(polyvinyl alcohol) fibre reinforced high-strength concrete beams without stirrups was carried out by 7 specimens, the influence of effective depth(d) and longitudinal reinforcement ratio(ρt) were investigated. The experimental results show that the shear capacity of the beam increases significantly with the increase of the effective depth and as the reinforcement ratio of the longitudinal reinforcement increases, the shear strength of the beam will increase, but the increase ratio gradually decrease. Though the comparative analysis of the experimental data with calculated values under 3 building codes, indicated that the normative underestimate the effective depth and longitudinal reinforcement ratio on influence of shear capacity, and longitudinal reinforcement ratio ought to be considered into GB.
Joint data detection and phase recovery for downlink MC-2D-CDMA systems

The performance of a downlink synchronous MCCDMA system with joint frequency-time domain spreading (MC-2D-CDMA) is investigated in this paper. We propose a two dimensional adaptive minimum mean square error (MMSE) receiver, which works in decision-directed mode after an initial training period. A subcarrier phase tracker, which comprises a bank of phase locked-loops (PLLs), is employed in the receiver to track the fading phase variability. Furthermore, a simplified phase tracker structure is proposed to reduce the system complexity. The performance of the data detector and the behavior of the phase tracker are analyzed theorectically in this paper and are shown to match the simulation results. Both analysis and simulation indicate that the proposed system outperforms the conventional MC-DS-CDMA systems by exploiting frequency diversity and facilitating subcarrier synchronization.
Solid Modeling

A solid model is a digital representation of the geometry of an existing or envisioned physical object. Solid models are used i n many industries, from entertainment to health care. They play a major role in the discrete-part manufacturing industries, where precise models of parts and assemblies are created using solid modeling software or more general computer-aided design (CAD) systems. The design process is usually incremental. Designers may specify points, curves, and surfaces, and stitch them togethe r to define electronic representations of the boundary of the object. Alternatively, they may select models of simple shapes, suc h s blocks or cylinders, specify their dimensions, position, and orientation, and combine them using union, intersection, or differ ence operators. The resulting representation is an unambiguous, complete, and detailed digital approximation of the geometry of an object or of an assembly of objects (such as a car engine or an entire airplane). Interactive three-dimensional (3D) graphic supports the design activities by providing designers with: (1) easy to understand images of their design, (2) efficient facili ties for graphically selecting or editing features of the part being designed, and (3) immediate feedback, which helps them perform and check each design step.
Overexpression of RORγt under control of the CD2 promoter induces polyclonal plasmacytosis and autoantibody production in transgenic mice

Retinoic acid related orphan receptor gamma‐t (RORγt) is known to be a master regulator of Th17‐cell development. In this study, we generated RORγt‐overexpressing transgenic (RORγt Tg) mice in which transgene expression was driven by the CD2 promoter, and found that these mice developed polyclonal plasmacytosis and autoantibody production. RORγt Tg mice were generated on a C57BL/6 background, and also were intercrossed with BALB/c mice. BALB/c F1 (BALB/F1) RORγt Tg mice developed massive polyclonal plasma‐cytosis, and had shorter life spans. Splenomegaly and infiltration of plasma cells into the lung were observed. Hyperglobulinemia, anti‐double‐stranded DNA antibodies, anti‐erythrocyte antibodies, and anti‐platelet antibodies were detected in BALB/F1 RORγt Tg mice. In the present study, polyclonal plasmacytosis in BALB/F1 RORγt Tg mice appeared to be due to the induction of excessive IL‐6 production by IL‐17. We detected increased numbers of CD11b+ cells that produced IL‐6. We also generatedIL‐6‐deficient RORγt Tg BALB/F1 background mice, which displayed high levels of serum IL‐17, but did not develop severe hyperglobulinemia. Excessive IL‐6 production by several cell types, including macrophages, in BALB/F1 RORγt Tg mice, might effect the development of plasma‐cytosis. These results suggest that RORγt plays important roles in the development of plasmacytosis and autoantibody production.
Detecting changes in XML documents

We present a diff algorithm for XML data. This work is motivated by the support for change control in the context of the Xyleme project that is investigating dynamic warehouses capable of storing massive volumes of XML data. Because of the context, our algorithm has to be very efficient in terms of speed and memory space even at the cost of some loss of quality. Also, it considers, besides insertions, deletions and updates (standard in diffs), a move operation on subtrees that is essential in the context of XML. Intuitively, our diff algorithm uses signatures to match (large) subtrees that were left unchanged between the old and new versions. Such exact matchings are then possibly propagated to ancestors and descendants to obtain more matchings. It also uses XML specific information such as ID attributes. We provide a performance analysis of the algorithm. We show that it runs in average in linear time vs. quadratic time for previous algorithms. We present experiments on synthetic data that confirm the analysis. Since this problem is NP-hard, the linear time is obtained by trading some quality. We present experiments (again on synthetic data) that show that the output of our algorithm is reasonably close to the optimal in terms of quality. Finally we present experiments on a small sample of XML pages found on the Web.
Learning Model Free Motor Control

Some robotic tasks require an accurate control to follow the desired trajectory in the presence of unforeseen external disturbances and system parameters variations. In this case conventional control techniques such as PID must be constantly readjusted and a compromise solution must be adopted. This problem can be avoided using a learning process that automatically learns the appropriate control law and adapts to ongoing system variations. But a drawback of many learning systems is that they are not effective for non-toy problems. In this paper we present the results obtained with a categorization and learning algorithm able to perform efficient generalization of the observed situations, and learn accurate control policies in a short time without any previous knowledge of the plant.
Twelve tips for the effective use of videos in medical education

Abstract Videos can promote learning by either complementing classroom activities, or in self-paced online learning modules. Despite the wide availability of online videos in medicine, it can be a challenge for many educators to decide when videos should be used, how to best use videos, and whether to use existing videos or produce their own. We outline 12 tips based on a review of best practices in curriculum design, current research in multimedia learning and our experience in producing and using educational videos. The 12 tips review the advantages of using videos in medical education, present requirements for teachers and students, discuss how to integrate video into a teaching programme, and describe technical requirements when producing one’s own videos. The 12 tips can help medical educators use videos more effectively to promote student engagement and learning.
Gait-Based Continuous Authentication Using Multimodal Learning

The ever-growing threats of security and privacy loss from unauthorized access to mobile devices has led to the development of various biometric authentication methods for easier and safer data access. In this work we present a gait-based continuous authentication method using accelerometer and ground contact force data recorded from a pair of smart socks. Multi-modal learning and auto-encoders are used for feature extraction and a multi-task learning approach is used for classification. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been demonstrated through preliminary experiments on a dataset of 8 subjects.
Reweighted and Adaptive Morphology Separation

Morphological component analysis (MCA) for signal separation decomposes a signal into a super-position of morphological subcomponents, each of which is approximately sparse in a certain dictionary. Some of the dictionaries can also be modified to make them adaptive to local structure in images. We show that signal separation performance can be improved over the previous MCA approaches by replacing L1-norm optimization with “weighted” L1-norm optimization and replacing their dictionary adaptation with regularized dictionary adaptation. The weight on an atom for sparse coding is commonly derived from the corresponding coefficient's value. In contrast, the weight of an atom in a dictionary for signal separation is derived from the mutual coherence between the atom and the atoms in the other dictionaries. The proposed solution for regularized dictionary adaptation is an extension of the K-SVD method, where the dictionary and “weighted” sparse coefficients are estimated simultaneously. We present a series of e.
A Scattering Model to Improve the Accuracy of 3D Ray Tracing for UWB Indoor Channel

In this paper, an efficient approach to model the diffuse scattering in the ultra wide band (UWB) indoor channel is presented. It extends 3D ray tracing by associating a scattering cluster with each interaction point of the ray. The scattering clusters were defined by examining the simulated responses of each object while taking into account its surfaces roughness or small details. The comparisons with measurements performed in a residential area show that spatio-temporal channel characteristics like delay and azimuth and elevation angular spreads were better predicted when scattering was added into simulations.
Carotid intima–media thickness: Current evidence, practices, and Indian experience

As the developed and developing nations cope up with increasing predisposition to cardiovascular diseases (CVD) by adopting lifestyle changes the burden of coronary artery disease continues to rise globally. The presence of modifiable risk factors, which account for more than 90% of the cardiovascular (CV) risk, cannot always be interpreted as the presence of atherosclerotic heart disease and absence of modifiable risk factors do not guarantee absence of atherosclerotic changes in the arterial tree. Increasing awareness about primordial prevention and primary prevention of CVD is of vital importance in such scenarios. Ultrasonographic measurement of intima media thickness has been reported as a procedure to detect the early stages of atherosclerosis. Carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) testing is a safe, noninvasive and cost effective method to detect early atherosclerotic vascular diseases. This method of CV risk evaluation drew attention worldwide and of Indian physicians because of its feasibility in Indian population. Hence, detection and management of atherosclerosis in asymptomatic individuals will go a long way in preventing atherosclerotic diseases and prolonging survival and improving quality of life.
Development of a standard test of musical ability for participants in auditory interface testing

Alistair D N Edwards1 Ben P Challis2 John C K Hankinson3 Fiona L Pirie Department of Computer Science University of York Heslington York England YO10 5DD ABSTRACT There is a danger that auditory interfaces will only be usable by people with musical skills. Researchers in testing new interfaces often try to control for musical abilities by classifying participants as ‘musicians’ and ‘non-musicians’. However, there is no agreement as to what constitutes a musician. It is proposed, therefore, that there should be a standard pre-test that can be applied to all participants. This paper describes a version of such a test which is being developed.
HIV epidemic trend and antiretroviral treatment need in Karonga District, Malawi

SUMMARY We describe the development of the HIV epidemic in Karonga District, Malawi over 22 years using data from population surveys and community samples. These data are used to estimate the trend in HIV prevalence, incidence and need for antiretroviral treatment (ART) using a simple mathematical model. HIV prevalence rose quickly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, stabilizing at around 12% in the mid-1990s. Estimated annual HIV incidence rose quickly, peaking in the early 1990s at 2·2% among males and 3·1% among females, and then levelled off at 1·3% among males and 1·1% among females by the late 1990s. Assuming a 2-year eligibility period, both our model and the UNAIDS models predicted 2·1% of adults were in need of ART in 2005. This prediction was sensitive to the assumed eligibility period, ranging from 1·6% to 2·6% if the eligibility period was instead assumed to be 1·5 or 2·5 years, respectively.
Exposure to Asbestos and Mesothelioma of the Pleura

Two cases of mesothelioma were the subjects of fairly recent coroners' inquests. In neither instance was it accepted that the tumour was attributable to inhalation of asbestos fibre; yet in one case there was a known and severe occupational history of exposure to asbestos, while in both cases " asbestos bodies " were found in the lung. A point made at both inquests was the difficulty of attributing a tumour to asbestos-inhalation in the absence of the diffuse pulmonary fibrosis so long recognized (Murray, 1907) as characteristic of " asbestosis. "
Differences Between Early and Late Onset Adult Depression

Background: It is unclear, whether age-of-onset identifies subgroups of depression. Aim: To assess the clinical presentation of depression with onset in the early adult age (18-30 years) as compared to depression with later onset (31-70 years). Method: A total number of 301 patients with first episode depression were systematically recruited. Characteristics including psychiatric co-morbidity, personality disorders and traits, stressful life events prior to onset, family history, and treatment outcome were assessed by structured interviews and compared by chi-square tests for categorical data, t-tests for continuous parametric data and Mann-Whitney U-test for continuous nonparametric data. Logistic and multiple regression analyses were used to adjust the analyses for potentially confounding variables. Results: Patients with early onset of depression were characterised by a higher prevalence of co-morbid personality disorders, higher levels of neuroticism, and a lower prevalence of stressful life events preceding onset compared to patients with later age-of-onset. There were no differences in severity of the depressive episode, treatment outcome or family loading of psychiatric illness. Conclusion: Early adult onset of depression is associated with co-morbid personality deviances, whereas late onset is associated with environmental risk factors.
A Nanoindentation Study of the Fatigue Properties of Al/a-Si Core-Shell Nanostructures

Nanostructure-textured surfaces can reduce friction and increase the reliability of microand nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS). For MEMS incorporating moving parts, the fatigue properties of nanostructures pose a challenge to their reliability in long-term applications. In this study, the fatigue behavior of hemispherical Al/a-Si core-shell nanostructures (CSNs), bare hemispherical Al nanodots, and a flat Al/a-Si layered thin film have been studied using nanoindentation and nano-scale dynamic mechanical analysis (nano-DMA) techniques. Fatigue testing with nano-DMA shows that the deformation resistance of CSNs persists through 5.0 × 10 loading cycles at estimated contact pressures greater than 15 GPa. When the a-Si shell is removed, as in the Al nanodots, significant nanostructure deformation results due to repeated cyclic loading. In addition, for the Al/a-Si layered thin film, which lacks the geometry and core-confinement properties of CSNs, cyclic loading results in fatigue failure of the a-Si layer. CSNs demonstrate none of the failure mechanisms exhibited by these control structures. The unique properties displayed by CSNs when subjected to fatigue testing establish their prolonged durability when implemented in microand nano-scale applications.