Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Severe cervical spondylotic myelopathy with complete neurological and neuroradiological recovery within a month after surgery

Cervical spondylotic myelopathy is a complex syndrome evolving in the presence of degenerative changes. The choice of care and prognostic factors are controversial. The use of appropriate surgical technique is very important. Posterior approach may be chosen when pathology is present dorsally and/or in the presence of neutral to lordotic alignment. Anterior approach is the golden standard in patients with kyphosis and/or stenosis due to ventral lesions, even with three or more affected levels. A 67-year-old man presented with progressive weakness and clumsiness (mJOA: 5; Nurick: 4). An anterior discectomy, osteophytectomy and bilateral foraminotomy of the C4–C5; C5–C6; C6–C7 were performed. Polyether-Ether-Ketone spacers and a titanium plate were placed. The patient was mobilized 3-hour post-surgery and was released the following day. Medicament therapy and a neck-conditioning program were prescribed. Clinical examinations were normal within a month. Magnetic resonance imaging showed no traces of the preoperatively registered intramedullary focal T2 hyper-intensity.
AI Based Model for Software Project Planning

Software Effort estimation is the process of predicting the effort required to develop software project based on incomplete, uncertain and/or noisy input. Researchers have been working on estimation models to predict effort to be spent on a software project, which is still a complex problem. Estimation models derived by researchers are conclusion of studying large number of completed software projects from various organizations [5]. Improving the estimation techniques available to project managers can facilitate more effective control of time and budgets in software development. In this paper, we have proposed a model based on soft computing technique and statistical techniques to build a more accurate and sophisticated model that can improve estimates of effort required for software project planning. The model developed automatically predicts effort by formulating the relationship based on its training.
Temporal Patterns in Perchlorate, Thiocyanate, and Iodide Excretion in Human Milk

Background Perchlorate and thiocyanate interfere with iodide uptake at the sodium–iodide symporter and are potential disruptors of thyroid hormone synthesis. Perchlorate is a common contaminant of water, food, and human milk. Although it is known that iodide undergoes significant diurnal variations in serum and urinary excretion, less is known about diurnal variations of milk iodide levels. Objectives Variability in perchlorate and thiocyanate excretion in human milk has not been examined. Our objective was to determine variability of perchlorate, thiocyanate, and iodide in serially collected samples of human milk. Methods Ten lactating women were asked to collect six milk samples on each of 3 days. As an alternative, subjects were asked to collect as many milk samples as comfortably possible over 3 days. Samples were analyzed for perchlorate, iodide, and thiocyanate by ion chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Results Individual perchlorate, iodide, and thiocyanate levels varied significantly over time; there was also considerable variation among individuals. The iodide range, mean ± SD, and median for all samples (n = 108) were 3.1–334 μg/L, 87.9 ± 80.9 μg/L, and 55.2 μg/L, respectively. The range, mean ± SD, and median of perchlorate in all samples (n = 147) were 0.5–39.5 μg/L, 5.8 ± 6.2 μg/L, and 4.0 μg/L. The range, mean ± SD, and median of thiocyanate in all samples (n = 117) were 0.4 –228.3 μg/L, 35.6 ± 57.9 μg/L, and 5.6 μg/L. The data are not symmetrically distributed; the mean is higher than the median in all cases. Conclusions Iodine intake may be inadequate in a significant fraction of this study population. Perchlorate and thiocyanate appear to be common in human milk. The role of these chemicals in reducing breast milk iodide is in need of further investigation.
Economy Schumpeterian Growth

This paper examines the Aghhion and Howitt [1992] “creative destruction” endogenous growth model in an open economy setting. We consider four alternative trade regimes. The first two regimes allow the monopoly producer of the intermediate good to attain worldwide monopoly rents. In the first of the two, the countries engage in trade of only the imperfectly produced intermediate good. In the second, the two countries trade in both the intermediate good as well as in ideas. The last two regimes consider two countries which are identical before and after trade opens such that pro-competitive gains from trade are achieved. We again consider when only intermediaries may be traded and thereafter when both intermediaries and ideas may be traded. We find that the effects of trade on growth and welfare depend critically on the assumptions one imposes.
Blind Evaluation: Student's Experience of the Empathic Lead User Method

Many efforts on design research focuses on developing methods for design, while little research has been done on how students experience method use. This study looks at the experience of young design students using a specific design method, the empathic lead user method. This method relies on inhibiting certain senses in order to provide designers with alternative perspectives on user needs. We introduce the theoretical background behind the use of this specific method of design, and review results from related literature. In our study, the group using the empathic lead user method (n=26), and a second control group (n=23) without method restriction, performed the same assignment. We find that for both groups there are no statistically significant differences between how able, motivated or confident they were with performing the assignment. In their own assessment of the results, we found statistically significant differences between student's evaluation of how innovative they thought their results were, but for the factors effort and satisfaction, both groups gave similar self-assessments. We discuss the results and present areas for future work.
Disruption of Yarrowia lipolytica TPS1 Gene Encoding Trehalose-6-P Synthase Does Not Affect Growth in Glucose but Impairs Growth at High Temperature

We have cloned the Yarrowia lipolytica TPS1 gene encoding trehalose-6-P synthase by complementation of the lack of growth in glucose of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae tps1 mutant. Disruption of YlTPS1 could only be achieved with a cassette placed in the 3′half of its coding region due to the overlap of its sequence with the promoter of the essential gene YlTFC1. The Yltps1 mutant grew in glucose although the Y. lipolytica hexokinase is extremely sensitive to inhibition by trehalose-6-P. The presence of a glucokinase, insensitive to trehalose-6-P, that constitutes about 80% of the glucose phosphorylating capacity during growth in glucose may account for the growth phenotype. Trehalose content was below 1 nmol/mg dry weight in Y. lipolytica, but it increased in strains expressing YlTPS1 under the control of the YlTEF1promoter or with a disruption of YALI0D15598 encoding a putative trehalase. mRNA levels of YlTPS1 were low and did not respond to thermal stresses, but that of YlTPS2 (YALI0D14476) and YlTPS3 (YALI0E31086) increased 4 and 6 times, repectively, by heat treatment. Disruption of YlTPS1 drastically slowed growth at 35°C. Homozygous Yltps1 diploids showed a decreased sporulation frequency that was ascribed to the low level of YALI0D20966 mRNA an homolog of the S. cerevisiae MCK1 which encodes a protein kinase that activates early meiotic gene expression.
How Much Do the Effects of Education and Training Programs Vary Across Sites? Evidence From Past Multisite Randomized Trials

ABSTRACT Multisite trials, in which individuals are randomly assigned to alternative treatment arms within sites, offer an excellent opportunity to estimate the cross-site average effect of treatment assignment (intent to treat or ITT) and the amount by which this impact varies across sites. Although both of these statistics are substantively and methodologically important, only the first has been well studied. To help fill this information gap, we estimate the cross-site standard deviation of ITT effects for a broad range of education and workforce development interventions using data from 16 large multisite randomized controlled trials. We use these findings to explore hypotheses about factors that predict the magnitude of cross-site impact variation, and we consider the implications of this variation for the statistical precision of multisite trials.
Neural gain scheduling multiobjective genetic fuzzy PI control

This work proposes a gain scheduling adaptive control scheme based on fuzzy systems, neural networks and genetic algorithms for nonlinear plants. A fuzzy PI controller is developed, which is a discrete time version of a conventional one. Its data base as well as the constant PI control gains are optimally designed by using a genetic algorithm for simultaneously satisfying the following specifications: overshoot and settling time minimizations and output response smoothing. Hence, the optimization problem is a multiobjective one, from which results an optimal fuzzy Pl controller. A neural gain scheduler is designed, by the backpropagation algorithm, to tune the optimal parameters of the fuzzy PI controller at some operating points. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed structure for a DC servomotor adaptive speed control system used as an actuator of robotic manipulators.
Evolution of the Ferric Reductase Domain (FRD) Superfamily: Modularity, Functional Diversification, and Signature Motifs

A heme-containing transmembrane ferric reductase domain (FRD) is found in bacterial and eukaryotic protein families, including ferric reductases (FRE), and NADPH oxidases (NOX). The aim of this study was to understand the phylogeny of the FRD superfamily. Bacteria contain FRD proteins consisting only of the ferric reductase domain, such as YedZ and short bFRE proteins. Full length FRE and NOX enzymes are mostly found in eukaryotic cells and all possess a dehydrogenase domain, allowing them to catalyze electron transfer from cytosolic NADPH to extracellular metal ions (FRE) or oxygen (NOX). Metazoa possess YedZ-related STEAP proteins, possibly derived from bacteria through horizontal gene transfer. Phylogenetic analyses suggests that FRE enzymes appeared early in evolution, followed by a transition towards EF-hand containing NOX enzymes (NOX5- and DUOX-like). An ancestral gene of the NOX(1-4) family probably lost the EF-hands and new regulatory mechanisms of increasing complexity evolved in this clade. Two signature motifs were identified: NOX enzymes are distinguished from FRE enzymes through a four amino acid motif spanning from transmembrane domain 3 (TM3) to TM4, and YedZ/STEAP proteins are identified by the replacement of the first canonical heme-spanning histidine by a highly conserved arginine. The FRD superfamily most likely originated in bacteria.
Haplotype hitchhiking promotes trait coselection in Brassica napus

Summary Local haplotype patterns surrounding densely spaced DNA markers with significant trait associations can reveal information on selective sweeps and genome diversity associated with important crop traits. Relationships between haplotype and phenotype diversity, coupled with analysis of gene content in conserved haplotype blocks, can provide insight into coselection for nonrelated traits. We performed genome‐wide analysis of haplotypes associated with the important physiological and agronomic traits leaf chlorophyll and seed glucosinolate content, respectively, in the major oilseed crop species Brassica napus. A locus on chromosome A01 showed opposite effects on leaf chlorophyll content and seed glucosinolate content, attributed to strong linkage disequilibrium (LD) between orthologues of the chlorophyll biosynthesis genes EARLY LIGHT‐INDUCED PROTEIN and CHLOROPHYLL SYNTHASE, and the glucosinolate synthesis gene ATP SULFURYLASE 1. Another conserved haplotype block, on chromosome A02, contained a number of chlorophyll‐related genes in LD with orthologues of the key glucosinolate biosynthesis genes METHYLTHIOALKYMALATE SYNTHASE‐LIKE 1 and 3. Multigene haplogroups were found to have a significantly greater contribution to variation for chlorophyll content than haplotypes for any single gene, suggesting positive effects of additive locus accumulation. Detailed reanalysis of population substructure revealed a clade of ten related accessions exhibiting high leaf chlorophyll and low seed glucosinolate content. These accessions each carried one of the above‐mentioned haplotypes from A01 or A02, generally in combination with further chlorophyll‐associated haplotypes from chromosomes A05 and/or C05. The phenotypic rather than pleiotropic correlations between leaf chlorophyll content index and seed GSL suggest that LD may have led to inadvertent coselection for these two traits.
Shape Analysis of Planar Multiply-Connected Objects Using Conformal Welding

Shape analysis is a central problem in the field of computer vision. In 2D shape analysis, classification and recognition of objects from their observed silhouettes are extremely crucial but difficult. It usually involves an efficient representation of 2D shape space with a metric, so that its mathematical structure can be used for further analysis. Although the study of 2D simply-connected shapes has been subject to a corpus of literatures, the analysis of multiply-connected shapes is comparatively less studied. In this work, we propose a representation for general 2D multiply-connected domains with arbitrary topologies using conformal welding. A metric can be defined on the proposed representation space, which gives a metric to measure dissimilarities between objects. The main idea is to map the exterior and interior of the domain conformally to unit disks and circle domains (unit disk with several inner disks removed), using holomorphic 1-forms. A set of diffeomorphisms of the unit circle S1 can be obtained, which together with the conformal modules are used to define the shape signature. A shape distance between shape signatures can be defined to measure dissimilarities between shapes. We prove theoretically that the proposed shape signature uniquely determines the multiply-connected objects under suitable normalization. We also introduce a reconstruction algorithm to obtain shapes from their signatures. This completes our framework and allows us to move back and forth between shapes and signatures. With that, a morphing algorithm between shapes can be developed through the interpolation of the Beltrami coefficients associated with the signatures. Experiments have been carried out on shapes extracted from real images. Results demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed algorithm as a stable shape representation scheme.
Towards Generic Weaving of Adaptation Aspects for XML

XML is one of the most used languages in the Web and is frequently used to describe large parts of web applications. A common approach to reduce complexity of web applications relying on XML is to use a multistaged architecture in form of a transformation pipeline. These pipelines usually employ a fixed set of complex transformations to convert an XML source document into a displayable output format. A second common principle is to separate a web application’s context-independent part from the contextdependent adaptation facet. In this paper, we present a generic approach that uses aspect-oriented programming (AOP) to separate and weave the adaptation facet of XML-based web applications using a multistaged architecture. We introduce an AOP-based terminology for adaptation aspects and present an existing aspect weaver prototype that realises our approach.
A comparative study of endoscopic polyp detection by textural features

Digestive tract cancer is a big threat to human and capsule endoscopy (CE) is a relatively new technology to detect the diseases in the small bowel. Since polyp is an important symptom of digestive cancer it is important to detect them by computerized methods. In this work, we comparatively investigate computer aided detection for polyps by machine learning based methods that are built upon color textural features. Four textural features, wavelet based features, color wavelet covariance, rotation invariant uniform local binary pattern and complete local binary pattern, are utilized to characterize the textural features in CE images, and performance of them are extensively studied in three different color spaces, that is, RGB, HSI and Lab color spaces.
Hardware Attacks and Security Education

This paper aims to develop and evaluate information assurance and security learning materials on hardware/firmware attacks for undergraduate education. Topics include firmware worms, application programming interface, and operating systems. Computing devices are equipped with firmware that performs basic hardware testing and loads operating systems. According to hardware rooted security guidelines, the following fundamental security primitives are required: roots of trust, an application programming interface (API) to the platform, and a policy enforcement engine. We believe it is important to verify these primitives' integrity with hands-on experiments to educate next generation computer experts. The learning material has been implemented and evaluated in an undergraduate Computer Architecture course using Intel's Chipsec to validate PC BIOS in terms of known vulnerabilities.
Author ' s personal copy A method for wet spinning of alginate fibers with a high concentration of single-walled carbon nanotubes

A method is described for the wet spinning of alginate fibers with a loading of single-walled carbon nanotubes as high as 23 wt%. Electrostatic assembling of polyelectrolytes and nanotubes coated with sodium dodecyl sulfate is exploited by using calcium as a cross-linking agent. The Young’s modulus of these fibers depends non-monotonically on nanotube concentration which is explained using Halpin-Tsai and Voigt models. Scanning electron microscope micrographs and resistivity analysis of the fibers suggest that the nanotubealginate system undergoes a morphological transition from a composite structure of discrete nanotube bundles embedded in an alginate matrix to a complex continuous structure consisting of a nanotube network interwoven into a macromolecular network of alginate. The nanotube-alginate fibers have unprecedented high flexibility and a very high electrical conductivity similar to semimetals (between germanium and carbon). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Word-Based Dialect Identification with Georeferenced Rules

We present a novel approach for (written) dialect identification based on the discriminative potential of entire words. We generate Swiss German dialect words from a Standard German lexicon with the help of hand-crafted phonetic/graphemic rules that are associated with occurrence maps extracted from a linguistic atlas created through extensive empirical fieldwork. In comparison with a character-n-gram approach to dialect identification, our model is more robust to individual spelling differences, which are frequently encountered in non-standardized dialect writing. Moreover, it covers the whole Swiss German dialect continuum, which trained models struggle to achieve due to sparsity of training data.
VISUALIZATION OF EPIDEMIC DATA

An epidemic appearing at one or more zones during time intervals is considered as a phenomenon and studied as a spatio-temporal object. In this article, a multivariate cube incorporating 2-D coordinate systems with a space-time cube is used to represent visually the epidemic data including location, time, and size. In a multivariate cube for the visualization of epidemic data, the spatio-temporal data of epidemic are indicated on 3-dimensional Cartesian coordinates to enable epidemiologists to cognize the appearance and the size of epidemic. The visualization of epidemic data on a multivariate cube enables epidemiologists to extract information on epidemic, evaluate the happening of epidemic with reference to space and time, analyze the relevance between epidemic zones with respect to space and time, as well as answer analytical questions at elementary and synoptic levels. For analytical tasks at elementary level, the multivariate cube for visualization of epidemic data enables to answer the questions generated from the triad "what where when". For analytical tasks at synoptic level, which relate to the epidemic data during a time interval in epidemic zones, the multivariate cube for visualization of epidemic data provides with the tools of referring to several epidemic zones or periods to evaluate some relevance between them.
Concealed in the Internet: A Novel Covert Channel with Normal Traffic Imitating

Covert channel in network protocols has been an area absorbing great interests for many years in secret transmission. Recently, covert channels based on packet length have become a new preference among researchers in this field because of their excellent performance in simulating statistical features of network packets in real world. However, few approaches which can embed secret information with great security ensured has been worked out by so far. Therefore, in this paper, we analyze the traffic stream of UDP packets, several storage features of data files, then propose a novel network steganography scheme based on IP address, UDP packet length in order to overcome the drawbacks of existing schemes. A comprehensive set of corresponding experiment results show that the proposed covert channel follows the normal traffic statistical features well, thus ensures more security than that of the existing algorithms.
A comparison of marching-on-in-time method with method for the TD-EFIE solver

One of the most popular methods to solve a time domain electric field integral equation (TD-EFIE) is the marching-on-in-time (MOT) method. Recently, a new method called marching-on-in-degree (MOD) that uses Laguerre polynomials as temporal basis functions has been developed to eliminate the late time instability of the MOT method. A comparison is presented between these two methods from the standpoint of formulation, stability, cost and accuracy. Numerical results are presented to illustrate these features in the comparison.
Motoneuronerkrankungen und amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (ALS): von der molekularen Analyse der Ursachen zu neuen therapeutischen Ansätzen

Zusammenfassung Die amyotrophe Lateralsklerose (ALS) ist eine neurodegenerative Erkrankung, die durch eine selektive Zerstörung von Motoneuronen gekennzeichnet ist. Untersuchungen der letzten Jahre haben neue Einblicke in die molekularen und zellulären Ursachen der ALS ermöglicht, wobei die Analyse der familär bedingten Erkrankungsformen besonders wertvolle Erkenntnisse gebracht hat. Aus heutiger Sicht haben Störungen der glutamatergen synaptischen Übertragung, oxidativer Stress, mitochondriale Dysfunktion und eine gestörte Proteinfaltung eine zentrale Bedeutung für die Pathogenese der ALS-Erkrankung. Der vorliegende Artikel zeigt auf, wie das Zusammenspiel verschiedenartiger Störungen zur selektiven Degeneration von Motoneuronen führen kann. Trotz beeindruckender Fortschritte in der Grundlagenforschung haben klinische Studien bisher noch keine befriedigende medikamentöse Behandlung identifizieren können. Dabei zeichnet sich ab, dass eine effektive Therapie nicht durch einen einzelnen Wirkstoff, sondern erst durch eine Kombination verschiedenartiger neuroprotektiver Maßnahmen erreicht werden kann. Darüber hinaus versprechen gentherapeutische Ansätze und eine Stammzellbehandlung neue Therapiemöglichkeiten, die allerdings bisher auf vorklinische Studien beschränkt sind. Neben der Identifikation neuer therapeutischer Ansätze ist es wichtig, effiziente Marker für die ALS zu identifizieren, um schon im frühen Stadium der Erkrankung neuroprotektive Maßnahmen einleiten zu können.