Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sub-Acute Toxicity Study of Tiger Milk Mushroom Lignosus tigris Chon S. Tan Cultivar E Sclerotium in Sprague Dawley Rats

Lignosus also known as “Tiger Milk Mushroom,” is classified in the family Polyporaceae and mainly consumed for its medicinal properties in Southeast Asia and China. The sclerotium is known as the part with medicinal value and often used by the natives to treat a variety of ailments. Lignosus tigris Chon S. Tan, one of the species of the Malaysia Tiger Milk mushroom, has recently been successfully cultivated in laboratory. Earlier studies have demonstrated the L. tigris cultivar E sclerotia exhibited beneficial biomedicinal properties. This study evaluated the potential toxicity of L. tigris E sclerotia in a 28-day sub-acute oral administration in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. L. tigris E sclerotial powder was administered orally at three different doses of 250, 500, and 1000 mg/kg to the SD rats once daily, consecutively for 28-days. Body weight of the rats was recorded and general behavior, adverse effects, and mortality were observed daily throughout the experimental period. At the end of the experiment, blood hematology and biochemistry, relative organ weights, and histopathological analysis were performed. Results showed that there were no mortality nor signs of toxicity throughout the 28-day sub-acute toxicity study. Oral administration of the L. tigris E sclerotial powder at daily dose up to 1000 mg/kg had no significant effects in body weight, relative organ weight, blood hematological and biochemistry, gross pathology, and histopathology of the organs. L. tigris E sclerotial powder did not cause any treatment-related adverse effect in the rats at different treatment dosages up to 1000 mg/kg. As the lethal dose for the rats is above 1000 mg/kg, the no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) dose is more than 1000 mg/kg.
Leveraging High-Dimensional Side Information for Top-N Recommendation

Top-$N$ recommender systems typically utilize side information to address the problem of data sparsity. As nowadays side information is growing towards high dimensionality, the performances of existing methods deteriorate in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency, which imposes a severe technical challenge. In order to take advantage of high-dimensional side information, we propose in this paper an embedded feature selection method to facilitate top-$N$ recommendation. In particular, we propose to learn feature weights of side information, where zero-valued features are naturally filtered out. We also introduce non-negativity and sparsity to the feature weights, to facilitate feature selection and encourage low-rank structure. Two optimization problems are accordingly put forward, respectively, where the feature selection is tightly or loosely coupled with the learning procedure. Augmented Lagrange Multiplier and Alternating Direction Method are applied to efficiently solve the problems. Experiment results demonstrate the superior recommendation quality of the proposed algorithm to that of the state-of-the-art alternatives.
Performance Evaluation of Pilot Scale Sulfur-Oxidizing Denitrification for Treatment of Metal Plating Wastewater

A full-scale and two pilot-scale upflow sulfur-oxidizing denitrification (SOD) columns were evaluated using metal plating wastewater as feed. The sludge was autotrophically enriched, and inoculated in the SOD columns attached to the effluent line of three metal plating wastewater treatment facilities. The effects of activated carbon and aeration were also studied, and found effective for the removal of suspended solids and ammonia, respectively. The results showed that the constituents, such as the total nitrogen, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and heavy metals, were effectively removed. The pH was observed to be maintained at 7–8 due to the alkalinity supplied by the sulfur–calcium carbonate (SC) pellet. The denitrification efficiency and start-up period were observed to be affected by the influent quality. Chromium, iron, nickel, copper, and zinc—the major heavy metal components of the influent—were effectively reduced at certain concentrations. Other metal ions were also detected and reduced to undetectable concentrations, but no trends in the comparison with denitrification were observed. From the results it can be concluded that SOD is effective for the removal of nitrogen, particularly nitrates, without a drastic pH change, and can effectively remove minute concentrations of heavy metals and COD in metal plating wastewaters.
Quantitative assessment of the first acute rejection as a predictor of renal transplant outcome.

BACKGROUND Acute rejection (AR) of the transplanted kidney has been identified as the major risk factor for the development of chronic rejection and immunological graft loss. However, the clinical presentation and response to AR therapy can vary considerably between recipients. METHODS We studied the first AR episode in 201 kidney-only recipients transplanted between January 1987 and June 1998 who were biopsied between April 1993 and June 1998 and were graded using the Banff schema. All patients received cyclosporine-based immunosuppression. There were 134 cadaver donor (66.7%) and 67 live donor (33.3%) recipients followed for a mean of 46.2 (range 4-128) months. All Banff grade 1-3 and 40/78 borderline (BL) cases were treated for rejection after biopsy. These patients were compared with a contemporaneous control population who did not experience AR. Demographic risk factors associated with graft loss were identified in both univariate and multivariate analysis. Daily (0-18) serum creatinine (SCr) values during and after the AR were plotted for each patient to generate curves and calculate area under the serum creatinine versus time curve (mg/dl/day). Four response patterns to treatment were identified according to the velocity of % increase (V1) and decrease (V2) of serum creatinine. These were identified as rapid rise and fall (n=62); rapid rise and slow fall (n=43); slow rise and fall (n=55); and slow rise and rapid fall (n=41). Kaplan-Meier graft survivals were compared between the groups. RESULTS Any Banff grade was associated with increased risk for graft loss (P=0.0001). However, no significant differences were observed between the Banff BL and B1-3 groups, or among those BL patients who were treated or remained untreated for AR. Multivariate analysis identified a black recipient (P=0.03, risk ratio 2.0) and area under the serum creatinine versus time curve (P=0.0001, risk ratio 3.2) as significant risk factors for graft loss. The AR response pattern RS resulted in a significantly (P=0.0072) diminished 5-year graft survival (45%) compared with the other groups. Serum creatinine pattern, but not Banff grade, was also a significant (P=0.025) predictor of re-rejection. CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that all Banff grades, including BL, carry a significant risk for graft loss, and the initial response to antirejection therapy can predict long-term graft outcome. They support the practice of treating AR promptly and definitively and suggest that the RS subgroup of rejecting grafts could be targeted for additional antirejection therapy. This subgroup can be identified by 10 days of AR therapy, and should be the subject of further study.
Evolution of Very High Frequency Power Supplies

The ongoing demand for smaller and lighter power supplies is driving the motivation to increase the switching frequencies of power converters. Drastic increases however, come along with new challenges, namely the increase of switching losses in all components. The application of power circuits used in radio frequency transmission equipment helps to overcome those. However, those circuits were not designed to meet the same requirements as power converters. This paper summarizes the contributions in the recent years in the application of very high frequency (VHF) technologies in power electronics, which show the results of the recent advances and describes the remaining challenges. The presented results include a self-oscillating gate drive, air-core inductor optimizations, an offline LED driver with a power density of 8.9 W/cm3, and a 120-MHz, 9-W dc powered LED driver with 89% efficiency as well as a bidirectional VHF converter. The challenges to be solved before VHF converters can be used effectively in industrial products are within those three categories: 1) components; 2) circuit architectures; and 3) reliability testing.
Making chroma features more robust to timbre changes

Chroma-based audio features are a well-established tool for analyzing and comparing music data. By identifying spectral components that differ by a musical octave, chroma features show a high degree of invariance to variations in timbre. In this paper, we describe a novel procedure for making chroma features even more robust to changes in timbre and instrumentation while keeping their discriminative power. Our idea is based on the generally accepted observation that the lower mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) are closely related to timbre. Now, instead of keeping the lower coefficients, we will discard them and only keep the upper coefficients. Furthermore, using a pitch scale instead of a mel scale allows us to project the remaining coefficients onto the twelve chroma bins. Our systematic experiments show that the resulting chroma features have indeed gained a significant boost towards timbre invariance.
Strain Measurements of Composite Laminates with Embedded Fibre Bragg Gratings: Criticism and Opportunities for Research

Embedded optical fibre sensors are considered for structural health monitoring purposes in numerous applications. In fibre reinforced plastics, embedded fibre Bragg gratings are found to be one of the most popular and reliable solutions for strain monitoring. Despite of their growing popularity, users should keep in mind their shortcomings, many of which are associated with the embedding process. This review paper starts with an overview of some of the technical issues to be considered when embedding fibre optics in fibrous composite materials. Next, a monitoring scheme is introduced which shows the different steps necessary to relate the output of an embedded FBG to the strain of the structure in which it is embedded. Each step of the process has already been addressed separately in literature without considering the complete cycle, from embedding of the sensor to the internal strain measurement of the structure. This review paper summarizes the work reported in literature and tries to fit it into the big picture of internal strain measurements with embedded fibre Bragg gratings. The last part of the paper focuses on temperature compensation methods which should not be ignored in terms of in-situ measurement of strains with fibre Bragg gratings. Throughout the paper criticism is given where appropriate, which should be regarded as opportunities for future research.
Tits Geometry, Arithmetic Groups, and the Proof of a Conjecture of Siegel

Let X = G/K be a Riemannian symmetric space of non- compact type and of rank 2. An irreducible, non-uniform lattice G in the isometry group of X is arithmetic and gives rise to a locally symmet- ric space V = \X. Let : X ! V be the canonical projection. Reduction theory for arithmetic groups provides a dissection V = 'k=1 (Xi) with (X0) compact and such that the restiction of to Xi is injective for each i. In this paper we complete reduction theory by focusing on metric prop- erties of the sets Xi. We detect subsets Ci of Xi (Q-Weyl chambers) such that |Ci is an isometry and such that Ci is a net in Xi. This result is then used to prove a conjecture of C.L. Siegel. We also show that V is quasi-isometric to the Euclidean cone over a finite simplicial complex and study the Tits geometry of V.
A Clustered Approach for Fast Computation of Betweenness Centrality in Social Networks

In the last few years, the data generated by social networking systems have become interesting to analyze local and global social phenomena. A useful metric to identify influential people or opinion leaders is the between ness centrality index. The computation of this index is a very demanding task since its exact calculation exhibits O(nm) time complexity for unweighted graphs. This complexity has a high impact on computation time if we consider that social networks data are continuously growing and today the number of nodes of the related graphs is in the order of billions. To address the problem, we propose a variant of the Brandes' algorithm for a very fast evaluation of approximated between ness indexes in large networks. In a preliminary phase, our method exploits a scalable and efficient clustering technique, based on Louvain method, to identify communities and border nodes that guide the selection of a limited number of pivot nodes. The experimental analysis shows that for sparse graphs (which represent a widespread class of social networks graphs) our method drastically reduces the computation time if compared with the most efficient solution for exact evaluation, whereas the degree of approximation is good especially if we are interested to identify the top k between ness values. The scalability analysis conducted on synthetic scale-free graphs also shows that our method behaves well when the network is very large (even though in these cases additional machines could be useful to handle memory consumption).
Synthesis and Sintering of High-temperature Composites Based on Mechanically Activated Fly Ash

Amount of fly ash which is and yet to be generated in the coming years highlights the necessity of developing new methods of the recycling where this waste can be reused in significant quantity. A new possibility for fly ash utilization is in high-temperature application (thermal insulators or/and refractory material products). As such, fly ash has to adequately answer the mechanical and thermal stability criteria. One of the ways of achieving it is by applying mechanical activation procedure on fly ash. In present study, fly ashes from two different power plants were mechanically activated in a planetary ball mill. Mechanically treated fly ashes were cemented with two different binders: standard Portland cement and high-aluminates cement. Physico-chemical analysis and investigation of mineralogical components of composites are emphasized, due to the changes occurred in fly ash during mechanical activation and sintering of composites. Macro-performance of the composites was correlated to the microstructure of fly ash studied by means of XRD and SEM analysis. Thermal stability of crystalline phases was investigated with DTA. Highlight was placed on determination of relationship between mechanically activated fly ash and obtained composites microstructure on one side and behavior of sintered composites on the other side. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 172057, 45008 and a project F-198, financed by Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts]
A Graph-Based Approach and Analysis Framework for Hierarchical Browsing of Video Content

Systems for multimedia retrieval have been object of scientific research for many years. When it comes to present results to the user many solutions disregard the set of problems connected to content delivery. Especially time-constrained results of video retrieval systems need a different visualization. In this paper we present our solution for hierarchical content browsing of video files. Our workflow covers the phases of ingest, transcoding, automatic analysis, intellectual annotation and data aggregation. We describe an algorithm for the graph-based analysis of the content structure in videos. By identifying the requirements of professional users we developed a user interface enabling to access retrieval results in different hierarchical abstraction levels.
A Cluster-Based Method for Improving Analysis of Polydisperse Particle Size Distributions Obtained by Nanoparticle Tracking

Optical tracking methods are increasingly employed to characterize the size of nanoparticles in suspensions. However, the sufficient separation of different particle populations in polydisperse suspension is still difficult. In this work, Nanosight measurements of well-defined particle populations and Monte-Carlo simulations showed that the analysis of polydisperse particle dispersion could be improved with mathematical methods. Logarithmic transform of measured hydrodynamic diameters led to improved comparability between different modal values of multimodal size distributions. Furthermore, an automatic cluster analysis of transformed particle diameters could uncover otherwise hidden particle populations. In summary, the combination of logarithmically transformed hydrodynamic particle diameters with cluster analysis markedly improved the interpretability of multimodal particle size distributions as delivered by particle tracking measurements.
Two cases of mild serotonin toxicity via 5-hydroxytryptamine 1A receptor stimulation

We propose the possibility of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT)1A receptor involvement in mild serotonin toxicity. A 64-year-old woman who experienced hallucinations was treated with perospirone (8 mg/day). She also complained of depressed mood and was prescribed paroxetine (10 mg/day). She exhibited finger tremors, sweating, coarse shivering, hyperactive knee jerks, vomiting, diarrhea, tachycardia, and psychomotor agitation. After the discontinuation of paroxetine and perospirone, the symptoms disappeared. Another 81-year-old woman, who experienced delusions, was treated with perospirone (8 mg/day). Depressive symptoms appeared and paroxetine (10 mg/day) was added. She exhibited tachycardia, finger tremors, anxiety, agitation, and hyperactive knee jerks. The symptoms disappeared after the cessation of paroxetine and perospirone. Recently, the effectiveness of coadministrating 5-HT1A agonistic psychotropics with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) has been reported, and SSRIs with 5-HT1A agonistic activity have been newly approved in the treatment of depression. Perospirone is a serotonin–dopamine antagonist and agonistic on the 5-HT1A receptors. Animal studies have indicated that mild serotonin excess induces low body temperature through 5-HT1A, whereas severe serotonin excess induces high body temperature through 5-HT2A activation. Therefore, it could be hypothesized that mild serotonin excess induces side effects through 5-HT1A, and severe serotonin excess induces lethal side effects with hyperthermia through 5-HT2A. Serotonin toxicity via a low dose of paroxetine that is coadministered with perospirone, which acts agonistically on the 5-HT1A receptor and antagonistically on the 5-HT2A receptor, clearly indicated 5-HT1A receptor involvement in mild serotonin toxicity. Careful measures should be adopted to avoid serotonin toxicity following the combined use of SSRIs and 5-HT1A agonists.
A DSS User is a Happy Negotiator: The Impact of Decision Support on Emotional Behaviors in Text-Based Online Negotiations

The present work states that the analysis and design of decision support systems should consider their impacts on the emotional behaviors of negotiators. This paper provides a brief literature review with respect to this issue, and an outline of a research framework, which explains how to assess and analyze the dynamics of emotional behaviors in text-based negotiations. Subsequently, it provides some results, which show that a decision support system does not mitigate but intensifies emotional behaviors, toward the end of successful as well as failed text-based online negotiations. It is concluded that the research and design of decision support systems should focus more on the impact such systems have on the emotional behaviors of the supported negotiators.
Live Exploration of Dynamic Rings

Almost all the vast literature on graph exploration assumes that the graph is static: its topology does not change during the exploration, except for occasional faults. To date, very little is known on exploration of dynamic graphs, where the topology is continously changing. The few studies have been limited to the centralized (or post-mortem) case, assuming complete a priori knowledge of the changes and the times of their occurrence, and have only considered fully synchronous systems. In this paper, we start the study of the decentralized (or live) exploration of dynamic graphs, i.e. when the agents operate in the graph unaware of the location and timing of the changes. We consider dynamic rings under the standard 1-interval-connected restriction, and investigate the feasibility of their exploration, in both the fully synchronous and semi-synchronous cases. When exploration is possible we examine at what cost, focusing on the minimum number of agents capable of exploring the ring. We establish several results highlighting the impact that anonymity and structural knowledge have on the feasibility and complexity of the problem.
Substantial Changes in Arterial Blood Gases During Thoracoscopic Surgery Can Be Missed by Conventional Intermittent Laboratory Blood Gas Analyses

Substantial and clinically relevant changes in arterial blood gases are likely to occur during thoracoscopic surgery with one-lung ventilation (OLV). We hypothesized that they may be missed when using the conventional intermittent blood gas sampling practice. Therefore, during 30 thoracoscopic procedures with OLV, the sampling intervals between consecutive intermittent laboratory blood gas analyses (BGA) were evaluated with respect to changes of PaO2, PaCO2, and pHa ([H+]) using a continuous intraarterial blood gas monitoring system. Frequency and timing of BGA were based on the clinical judgment of 16 experienced anesthesiologists who were blinded to the continuously measured values. Extreme fluctuations of PaO2 (37-625 mm Hg), PaCO2 (27-56 mm Hg), and pHa (7.24-7.51) were observed by continuous blood gas monitoring. During 63% of all sampling intervals, PaO2 decreased >20% compared with the preceding BGA value, which remained undetected by intermittent analysis. In 10 patients with a continuously measured minimal PaO2 value <or=to60 mm Hg, the preceding BGA overestimated this minimal PaO2 by >47%. Correspondingly, PaCO2 increases of >10% were observed in 35% of all sampling intervals, and [H+] increases of >10% were observed in 24% of all sampling intervals. Because these blood gas changes were not reliably detected by using noninvasive monitoring and their magnitude is not predictable during OLV, intermittent BGA with short sampling intervals is warranted. In critical cases, continuous blood gas monitoring may be helpful. Implications: The magnitude of blood gas changes during thoracoscopic surgery with one-lung ventilation is not predictable and not reliably detected by noninvasive monitoring. Using a continuous intraarterial blood gas monitoring device, we demonstrated that intermittent laboratory blood gas analysis with short sampling intervals is warranted to detect arterial hypoxemia. (Anesth Analg 1998;87:647-53)
Applications Of Mechanical Spectroscopy To Industrial Materials

The paper is a review of original results, which were obtained by mechanical spectroscopy in the development of industrial materials, such as grey cast iron (damping capacity), aluminum alloys (recrystallization), nickel alloys (grain boundary embrittlement) and gold alloys (hardening mechanisms). Moreover it is shown that the study of grain boundary sliding at high temperature has led to the development of new grades of zirconia exhibiting a high toughness and a good resistance to creep. It is also recalled that mechanical spectroscopy has been a mandatory technique in the development of light metallic materials, which exhibit simultaneously good mechanical properties and a high damping capacity, and are consequently well suited to transport means.