Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bone tissue engineering scaffolds of today and tomorrow.

Recent pursuits in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have put forth a compelling level of evidence, as further demonstrated in the work here by Yoshimi and colleagues, that supports the capacity of multipotent osteoprogenitor cells to augment the osseous healing of skeletal defects. Furthermore, both the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (displaying embryonic stem cellYlike characteristics in vitro and in vivo) and the recent repeal of the executive ban on US federal funding for the study of human embryonic stem cells will likely spur further enthusiasm to engage in scientific endeavors aimed at optimizing the positive attributes of pluripotent cells while minimizing the inherent dangers associated with their production and/or clinical implementation. Evidence speaking toward the potential for cell-based translational therapies to address the inadequacies of current skeletal reconstructive modalities and dramatically shift the way in which a multitude of clinical scenarios requiring skeletal reconstruction are currently approached is continuing to accumulate. Stemming from these observations, ever-increasing focus is being turned toward answering the question of what is the ideal Bvehicle[ to deliver progenitor cells to skeletal defects and deficits. The intimate association between form and function that exists in skeletal tissues highlights the importance of producing osseous regenerates with structural and functional properties that mirror native bone. When considering the components of an optimal skeletal reconstructive modality, inherent is the need for wound stabilization and prolonged mechanical strength over the course of de novo tissue regeneration while retaining ideal osteoconductive and osteoinductive properties. Similar demands are not collectively required during the course of regeneration in other organ systems, making the role of scaffolds to the successful clinical translation of cell-based skeletal tissue engineering modalities arguably of equal importance as the cells themselves. Arising from a plethora of early investigations directed at developing scaffolds capable of optimizing the production of a skeletal regenerate, an understanding of the multifaceted nature of scaffold characteristics critical to the osteogenic differentiation of progenitor cells has emerged. The composition of materials comprising a particular scaffold cannot only affect its osteoinductive capacity but also its level of immunogenicity, degradation kinetics, and interaction with surrounding tissues. In addition, scaffold structure is critically important for its capacity to provide mechanical stability to a reconstructed defect and to optimize the form and function of regenerating bone and integration with endogenous tissues. As such, growing focus has been placed on the development of a variety of scaffold fabrication techniques aimed at consistently and efficiently producing scaffolds with ideal three-dimensional properties.
Interval Stability and Stabilization of Linear Stochastic Systems

This technical note applies the spectrum technique to deal with the interval stability and stabilization of linear stochastic time-invariant systems. First, the notion of (-beta,-alpha) -stability of stochastic systems is defined and some relationships among the (-beta,-alpha) -stability, the decay rate of system state response, and the second-order moment Lyapunov exponent are revealed. We then address the (-beta,-alpha)-stabilization problem and give a sufficient condition via a linear matrix inequality approach.
SitNet: Discrete Similarity Transfer Network for Zero-shot Hashing

Hashing has been widely utilized for fast image retrieval recently. With semantic information as supervision, hashing approaches perform much better, especially when combined with deep convolution neural network(CNN). However, in practice, new concepts emerge every day, making collecting supervised information for re-training hashing model infeasible. In this paper, we propose a novel zero-shot hashing approach, called Discrete Similarity Transfer Network (SitNet), to preserve the semantic similarity between images from both “seen” concepts and new “unseen” concepts. Motivated by zero-shot learning, the semantic vectors of concepts are adopted to capture the similarity structures among classes, making the model trained with seen concepts generalize well for unseen ones. We adopt a multi-task architecture to exploit the supervised information for seen concepts and the semantic vectors simultaneously. Moreover, a discrete hashing layer is integrated into the network for hashcode generating to avoid the information loss caused by real-value relaxation in training phase, which is a critical problem in existing works. Experiments on three benchmarks validate the superiority of SitNet to the state-of-the-arts.
"Can you believe [1:21]?!": Content and Time-Based Reference Patterns in Video Comments

As videos become increasingly ubiquitous, so is video-based commenting. To contextualize comments, people often reference specific audio/visual content within video. However, the literature falls short of explaining the types of video content people refer to, how they establish references and identify referents, how video characteristics (e.g., genre) impact referencing behaviors, and how references impact social engagement. We present a taxonomy for classifying video references by referent type and temporal specificity. Using our taxonomy, we analyzed 2.5K references with quotations and timestamps collected from public YouTube comments. We found: 1) people reference intervals of video more frequently than time-points, 2) visual entities are referenced more often than sounds, and 3) comments with quotes are more likely to receive replies but not more "likes". We discuss the need for in-situ dereferencing user interfaces, illustrate design concepts for typed referencing features, and provide a dataset for future studies.
Semi-parametric learning for visual odometry

This paper addresses the visual odometry problem from a machine learning perspective. Optical flow information from a single camera is used as input for a multiple-output Gaussian process (MOGP) framework, that estimates linear and angular camera velocities. This approach has several benefits. (1) It substitutes the need for conventional camera calibration, by introducing a semi-parametric model that is able to capture nuances that a strictly parametric geometric model struggles with. (2) It is able to recover absolute scale if a range sensor (e.g. a laser scanner) is used for ground-truth, provided that training and testing data share a certain similarity. (3) It is naturally able to provide measurement uncertainties. We extend the standard MOGP framework to include the ability to infer joint estimates (full covariance matrices) for both translation and rotation, taking advantage of the fact that all estimates are correlated since they are derived from the same vehicle. We also modify the common zero mean assumption of a Gaussian process to accommodate a standard geometric model of the camera, thus providing an initial estimate that is then further refined by the non-parametric model. Both Gaussian process hyperparameters and camera parameters are trained simultaneously, so there is still no need for traditional camera calibration, although if these values are known they can be used to speed up training. This approach has been tested in a wide variety of situations, both 2D in urban and off-road environments (two degrees of freedom) and 3D with unmanned aerial vehicles (six degrees of freedom), with results that are comparable to standard state-of-the-art visual odometry algorithms and even more traditional methods, such as wheel encoders and laser-based Iterative Closest Point. We also test its limits to generalize over environment changes by varying training and testing conditions independently, and also by changing cameras between training and testing.
Two Major Medicinal Honeys Have Different Mechanisms of Bactericidal Activity

Honey is increasingly valued for its antibacterial activity, but knowledge regarding the mechanism of action is still incomplete. We assessed the bactericidal activity and mechanism of action of Revamil® source (RS) honey and manuka honey, the sources of two major medical-grade honeys. RS honey killed Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa within 2 hours, whereas manuka honey had such rapid activity only against B. subtilis. After 24 hours of incubation, both honeys killed all tested bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but manuka honey retained activity up to higher dilutions than RS honey. Bee defensin-1 and H2O2 were the major factors involved in rapid bactericidal activity of RS honey. These factors were absent in manuka honey, but this honey contained 44-fold higher concentrations of methylglyoxal than RS honey. Methylglyoxal was a major bactericidal factor in manuka honey, but after neutralization of this compound manuka honey retained bactericidal activity due to several unknown factors. RS and manuka honey have highly distinct compositions of bactericidal factors, resulting in large differences in bactericidal activity.
White Matter Structural Differences in Young Children With Type 1 Diabetes: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

OBJECTIVE To detect clinical correlates of cognitive abilities and white matter (WM) microstructural changes using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in young children with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Children, ages 3 to <10 years, with type 1 diabetes (n = 22) and age- and sex-matched healthy control subjects (n = 14) completed neurocognitive testing and DTI scans. RESULTS Compared with healthy controls, children with type 1 diabetes had lower axial diffusivity (AD) values (P = 0.046) in the temporal and parietal lobe regions. There were no significant differences between groups in fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity (RD). Within the diabetes group, there was a significant, positive correlation between time-weighted HbA1c and RD (P = 0.028). A higher, time-weighted HbA1c value was significantly correlated with lower overall intellectual functioning measured by the full-scale intelligence quotient (P = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS Children with type 1 diabetes had significantly different WM structure (as measured by AD) when compared with controls. In addition, WM structural differences (as measured by RD) were significantly correlated with their HbA1c values. Additional studies are needed to determine if WM microstructural differences in young children with type 1 diabetes predict future neurocognitive outcome.
Behind the Curtain of the "Ultimate Empathy Machine": On the Composition of Virtual Reality Nonfiction Experiences

Virtual Reality nonfiction (VRNF) is an emerging form of immersive media experience created for consumption using panoramic "Virtual Reality" headsets. VRNF promises nonfiction content producers the potential to create new ways for audiences to experience "the real"; allowing viewers to transition from passive spectators to active participants. Our current project is exploring VRNF through a series of ethnographic and experimental studies. In order to document the content available, we embarked on an analysis of VR documentaries produced to date. In this paper, we present an analysis of a representative sample of 150 VRNF titles released between 2012-2018. We identify and quantify 64 characteristics of the medium over this period, discuss how producers are exploiting the affordances of VR, and shed light on new audience roles. Our findings provide insight into the current state of the art in VRNF and provide a digital resource for other researchers in this area.
Information dissemination in vehicular networks via evolutionary game theory

We study the problem of information dissemination in vehicular networks in this paper. Crucial information, such as traffic jamming status, is usually broadcasted inside the network. Each vehicle in the network has its own choice to either forward or drop packets for others. Although the energy consumption in general is not an issue in vehicular networks, forwarding every received packets is still not preferred as it may result in congestion in transmission. We model this problem via evolutionary game theory to investigate the cooperative behavior among vehicles. Simulation results show that, the cooperation ratio in the network is proportional to the setting of synergy factor for the evolutionary game. When nodes change their strategies according to the evolutionary game, information can be disseminated as fast as flooding scheme, while more bandwidth can be reserved.
Protection Routing Algorithm Based on Survivable Integrated Auxiliary Graph in Waveband Switching Optical Networks

In this paper, we propose a new heuristic algorithm, protection based on survivable integrated auxiliary graph (PSIAG), to tolerate the single-link failure in waveband switching optical networks. The survivable integrated auxiliary graph (SIAG) contains single virtual topology layer and multiple waveband-plane layers, and it can well solve the routing and waveband assignment. In PSIAG, we can well use the waveband sub-path grouping scheme based on SIAG to save the switching ports. Simulation results show that PSIAG performs better than previous algorithm.
Using data groups to specify and check side effects

Reasoning precisely about the side effects of procedure calls is important to many program analyses. This paper introduces a technique for specifying and statically checking the side effects of methods in an object-oriented language. The technique uses data groups, which abstract over variables that are not in scope, and limits program behavior by two alias-confining restrictions, pivot uniqueness and owner exclusion. The technique is shown to achieve modular soundness and is simpler than previous attempts at solving this problem.
Physical activity and cognition in the elderly: A review

Physical activity has been indicated as a strategy to promote health in the elderly, as well as to encourage the maintenance of functional capacity, and acts in the prevention and control of various diseases. In recent years, there has been great interest in studying the benefits of physical activity in the preservation or even improvement of cognitive performance in both the elderly without cognitive impairment and in elderly patients with some degree of cognitive impairment or dementia. The majority of epidemiological studies and clinical trials have evaluated aerobic exercises while few have assessed resistance exercise programs. The objective of this review was to examine the effects of different types of physical activity on cognitive function of elderly individuals with or without prior impairment.
Consumption-Based Emotional Responses Related to Satisfaction

The authors examine the impact of consumption-based emotions on perceived satisfaction in a field study of charter holiday consumers. Eight emotions from Russell’s circumplex model of affect are investigated for four parts of a charter holiday: the destination, hotel, guide(s) and return flight. Analysis of the structure of emotions does not support Russell’s dimensions of pleasure and arousal, but confirms other researchers’ findings of positive and negative affect. Of the discrete emotions, happiness and excitement are found to have a positive effect and boredom and idleness a negative effect on satisfaction. Emotional responses related to the hotel and destination have the largest impact on overall satisfaction. Future research directions are discussed.
Hyperuricemia and uric acid nephropathy.

DOUGLAS D. Dykman, MD, Senior Assistant Resident in Medicine, the Jewish Hospital of St Louis: A 76-year-old woman presented with fever and mental status changes. Her medical history was notable for hypertension, diabetes, atherosclerotic peripheral vascular disease, and polymyalgia rheumatica. She had been admitted to the Jewish Hospital three weeks previously for incision and drainage of a sterile hematoma of the right foot. At that time, a uric acid level of 870 μmol/L (14.6 mg/dL) was noted. There was no prior history of gout or renal stones; her serum creatinine level was 150 μmol/L (1.7 mg/dL). Allopurinol therapy was initiated at the time of discharge at a dose of 300 mg/d. She did well until two days prior to admission, when she developed weakness, nausea, vomiting, and low-back pain. Her family also noted a progressively increasing lethargy and confusion and brought her to the emergency room. Her medical history was
The Chills and Thrills of Whole Genome Sequencing

In recent years, whole genome sequencing (WGS) evolved from a futuristic-sounding research project to an increasingly affordable technology for determining complete genome sequences of complex organisms, including humans. This prompts a wide range of revolutionary applications, as WGS is a promising means for improving modern healthcare and providing a better understanding of the human genome, in particular its relation to diseases and response to treatments. However, this progress raises worrisome privacy and ethical issues, since, besides uniquely identifying its owner, the genome contains a treasure trove of highly personal and sensitive information. In this article, after summarizing recent advances in genomics, we discuss some important privacy issues associated with human genomic information and identify a number of particularly relevant research challenges.
Defining a therapeutic window for kinase inhibitors in leukemia to avoid neutropenia

Neutropenia represents one of the major dose-limiting toxicities of many current cancer therapies. To circumvent the off-target effects of cytotoxic chemotherapeutics, kinase inhibitors are increasingly being used as an adjunct therapy to target leukemia. In this study, we conducted a screen of leukemic cell lines in parallel with primary neutrophils to identify kinase inhibitors with the capacity to induce apoptosis of myeloid and lymphoid cell lines whilst sparing primary mouse and human neutrophils. We have utilized a high-throughput live cell imaging platform to demonstrate that cytotoxic drugs have limited effects on neutrophil viability but are toxic to hematopoietic progenitor cells, with the exception of the topoisomerase I inhibitor SN-38. The parallel screening of kinase inhibitors revealed that mouse and human neutrophil viability is dependent on cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) activity but surprisingly only partially dependent on PI3 kinase and JAK/STAT signaling, revealing dominant pathways contributing to neutrophil viability. Mcl-1 haploinsufficiency sensitized neutrophils to CDK inhibition, demonstrating that Mcl-1 is a direct target for CDK inhibitors. This study reveals a therapeutic window for the kinase inhibitors BEZ235, BMS-3, AZD7762, and (R)-BI-2536 to induce apoptosis of leukemia cell lines whilst maintaining immunocompetence and hemostasis.
Control of Upper Limb Prostheses: Terminology and Proportional Myoelectric Control—A Review

The recent introduction of novel multifunction hands as well as new control paradigms increase the demand for advanced prosthetic control systems. In this context, an unambiguous terminology and a good understanding of the nature of the control problem is important for efficient research and communication concerning the subject. Thus, one purpose of this paper is to suggest an unambiguous taxonomy, applicable to control systems for upper limb prostheses and also to prostheses in general. A functionally partitioned model of the prosthesis control problem is also presented along with the taxonomy. In the second half of the paper, the suggested taxonomy has been exploited in a comprehensive literature review on proportional myoelectric control of upper limb prostheses. The review revealed that the methods for system training have not matured at the same pace as the novel multifunction prostheses and more advanced intent interpretation methods. Few publications exist regarding the choice of training method and the composition of the training data set. In this context, the notion of outcome measures is essential. By definition, system training involves optimization, and the quality of the results depends heavily on the choice of appropriate optimization criteria. In order to further promote the development of proportional myoelectric control, these topics need to be addressed.
The effect of aqueous cream BP on the skin barrier in volunteers with a previous history of atopic dermatitis

Background The emollient aqueous cream BP is frequently used for the treatment of atopic dermatitis (AD), yet it is associated with a high rate of adverse cutaneous reactions. It contains the harsh anionic surfactant sodium lauryl sulphate, a known negative environmental factor associated with the exacerbation of AD.
β-MyHC and cardiac hypertrophy: size does matter.

See related article, pages 629–638 In response to stress signals, the mammalian heart responds by an increase in its size.1 This is largely accomplished by an increase in the size of myocytes (hypertrophy) rather than by increasing their numbers (hyperplasia). At the molecular level, pathological stresses induce multiple changes, including genetic reprogramming—the reexpression of a battery of fetal genes and the downregulation of multiple adult genes.2 Together, the changes in gene expression result in substantial phenotypic changes, including changes in size, contractility, metabolic state, and electric conductance. Indeed, the reexpression of fetal genes, including β-myosin heavy chain (β-MyHC), atrial natriuretic factor (ANF), and alpha-skeletal actin, has for many years been looked on as an important molecular indicator of pathological hypertrophy. In spite of this use of β-MyHC reexpression as a marker of pathological hypertrophy, until recently there have been surprisingly few reports on β-MyHC reexpression at the level of individual myocytes within the hypertrophic heart. Nevertheless, previous work using in situ hybridization against β-MyHC mRNA has shown that reexpression of β-MyHC does not take place in all areas of the hypertrophic heart; rather, it is distributed in distinct regions.3 More recently, it has been possible to study individual cells from the heart using genetically altered mice in which a fluorescent protein (yellow fluorescent protein [YFP]) is tagged onto the native β-MyHC gene. This procedure confirmed that β-MyHC reexpression takes place in cells located in distinct regions, including regions adjacent to areas of …