Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PSO based system architecture for path planning of mobile robot in dynamic environment

The proposed research article illustrates the path planning of an intelligent mobile robot in unknown dynamic environment using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique. The main objective of the problem is to make the robot move from starting position to goal position while avoiding all obstacles and follow the possible shortest path. For solving the path planning problem, a new objective function is developed. By optimizing the developed objective function the global best particle is determined among the swarm. Thereby, the robot moves further towards the global best position. The robot will continuously move to these intermediate positions until it reaches the final destination. Simulation showing navigation of robots towards goal position is done with MATLAB 2013b.
Adherence to the Spanish dietary guidelines and its association with obesity in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Granada study

Abstract Objective Dietary guidelines are intended to prevent chronic diseases and obesity. The aim of the present study was to develop a diet quality index based on the Spanish Food Pyramid (SFP) and to further explore its association with obesity in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Granada study. Design Cross–sectional study. The SFP score considered recommendations given for twelve food groups, and for physical activity and alcohol consumption. Obesity was defined as BMI over 30 kg/m2 and abdominal obesity as waist circumference larger than 102 cm (men) and 88 cm (women). Logistic regression was conducted to estimate odds ratios of obesity by quintiles and by 10-point increment in adherence to the score, controlling for potential confounders. Setting EPIC-Granada study. Subjects Participants (n 6717) aged 35–69 years (77 % women). Results A 10-point increase in adherence to the SFP score was associated with a 14 % (OR=0·86; 95 % CI 0·79, 0·94) lower odds of obesity in men (P interaction by sex=0·02). The odds of abdominal obesity decreased globally by 12 % (OR=0·88; 95 % CI 0·84, 0·93) per 10-point increase in adherence to this score. The effect of higher adherence to the score on abdominal obesity was stronger in physically inactive men and women (ORper 10-point increase=0·79; 95 % CI 0·68, 0·92 and ORper 10-point increase=0·89; 95 % CI 0·84, 0·95, respectively). Conclusions These findings support that the Spanish dietary guidelines might be an effective tool for obesity prevention. However, prospective studies investigating this association are warranted.
Scheduling with Buss Access Optimization for Distributed Embedded Systems

In this paper we concentrate on certain aspects related to the synthesis of distributed embedded systems consisting of several programmable processors and application specific hardware components. The approach is based on an abstract graph representation which captures, at process level, both dataflow and the flow of control. Our goal is to derive a worst case delay by which the system completes execution, such that this delay is as small as possible, to generate a logically and temporally deterministic schedule, and optimize parameters of the communication protocol, such that this delay is guaranteed. We have further investigated the impact of particular communication infrastructures and protocols on the overall performance and, specially, how the requirements of such an infrastructure have to be considered for process and communication scheduling. Not only have particularities of the underlying architecture to be considered during scheduling, but the parameters of the communication protocol should also be adapted to fit the particular embedded application. We have shown that important performance gains can be obtained in this way. The optimization algorithm, which implies both process scheduling and optimization of the parameters related to the communication protocol, generates an efficient buss access scheme as well as the schedule tables for activation of processes and communications. The algorithms have been evaluated based on extensive experiments. 2 Dept. of Electr. &Comp. Eng. and Comp. Science University of Cincinnati USA 1 Dept. of Computer and Information Science Linköping University Sweden
A 5-Level Security Approach for Data Storage in Cloud

in the IT world is bustling with the cloud computing concept. Conversing about the catchphrase cloud, the terms like virtualization, resources, elasticity, security, pay per use basis hit the mind. A key stumbling block of motivating the IT sector towards cloud ethnicity is the lack of conviction on security. The cloud provider, in turn, also needs to insist on authoritarian of the security policies, making trust on the clients. To improve the mutual trust between costumer and cloud provider, a well-understood trust foundation needs to be in place. Keeping in mind this paper presents a new approach to provide five level securities to the data stored and accessed by the cloud user. In cloud, the data of the individual or an organization is stored tenuously and the client does not have any control over it, hence the security becomes a major dilemma. Keeping in mind of the security required, this paper introduces a strong authentication, confidentiality and integrity mechanisms for storing the data of client at the data center. The modernization of this method is to place identity and information separately on different level thus providing five - level security which have no direct communication between them, all working at different places.
A deblocking algorithm for JPEG compressed images using overcomplete wavelet representations

This paper introduces a new approach to deblocking of JPEG compressed images using overcomplete wavelet representations. By exploiting cross-scale correlations among wavelet coefficients, edge information in the JPEG compressed images is extracted and protected, while blocky noise in the smooth background regions is smoothed out in the wavelet domain. Compared with the iterative methods reported in the literature, our simple wavelet-based method has much lower computational complexity, yet it is capable of achieving the same peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) improvement as the best iterative method and giving visually very pleasing images as well.
Clinical Interventions in Aging Dovepress the Development and Standardization of Self- Assessment for Hearing Screening of the Elderly

hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms Purpose: The present study aimed to develop and standardize a screening tool for elderly people who wish to check for themselves their level of hearing loss. Methods: The Self-assessment for Hearing Screening of the Elderly (SHSE) consisted of 20 questions based on the characteristics of presbycusis using a five-point scale: seven questions covered general issues related to sensorineural hearing loss, seven covered hearing difficulty under distracting listening conditions, two covered hearing difficulty with fast-rated speech, and four covered the working memory function during communication. To standardize SHSE, 83 elderly participants took part in the study: 25 with normal hearing, and 22, 23, and 13 with mild, moderate, and moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss, respectively, according to their hearing sensitivity. All were retested 3 weeks later using the same questionnaire to confirm its reliability. In addition, validity was assessed using various hearing tests such as a sentence test with background noise, a time-compressed speech test, and a digit span test. Results: SHSE and its subcategories showed good internal consistency. SHSE and its sub-categories demonstrated high test–retest reliability. A high correlation was observed between the total scores and pure-tone thresholds, which indicated gradually increased SHSE scores of 42.24%, 55.27%, 66.61%, and 78.15% for normal hearing, mild, moderate, and moderate-to-severe groups, respectively. With regard to construct validity, SHSE showed a high negative correlation with speech perception scores in noise and a moderate negative correlation with scores of time-compressed speech perception. However, there was no statistical correlation between digit span results and either the SHSE total or its subcategories. A confirmatory factor analysis supported three factors in SHSE. Conclusion: We found that the developed SHSE had valuable internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent and construct validity. These results suggest that SHSE is a reliable and valid measure to represent the degree of hearing loss in the elderly.
Kinetic Analyses of the Surface-Transmembrane Disulfide Bond Isomerization-Controlled Fusion Activation Pathway in Moloney Murine Leukemia Virus

ABSTRACT The surface (SU) and transmembrane (TM) subunits of Moloney murine leukemia virus (Mo-MLV) Env are disulfide linked. The linking cysteine in SU is part of a conserved CXXC motif in which the other cysteine carries a free thiol. Recently, we showed that receptor binding activates its free thiol to isomerize the intersubunit disulfide bond into a disulfide within the motif instead (M. Wallin, M. Ekström and H. Garoff, EMBO J. 23:54-65, 2004). This facilitated SU dissociation and activation of TM for membrane fusion. The evidence was mainly based on the finding that alkylation of the CXXC-thiol prevented isomerization. This arrested membrane fusion, but the activity could be rescued by cleaving the intersubunit disulfide bond with dithiothreitol (DTT). Here, we demonstrate directly that receptor binding causes SU-TM disulfide bond isomerization in a subfraction of the viral Envs. The kinetics of the isomerization followed that of virus-cell membrane fusion. Arresting the fusion with lysophosphatidylcholine did not arrest isomerization, suggesting that isomerization precedes the hemifusion stage of fusion. Our earlier finding that native Env was not possible to alkylate but required isomerization induction by receptor binding intimated that alkylation trapped an intermediate form of Env. To further clarify this possibility, we analyzed the kinetics by which the alkylation-sensitive Env was generated during fusion. We found that it followed the fusion kinetics. In contrast, the release of fusion from alkylated, isomerization-blocked virus by DTT reduction of the SU-TM disulfide bond was much faster. These results suggest that the alkylation-sensitive form of Env is a true intermediate in the fusion activation pathway of Env.
Chitosan nanoparticles as a potential drug delivery system for the ocular surface: toxicity, uptake mechanism and in vivo tolerance.

PURPOSE To study the in vitro and in vivo interaction of chitosan nanoparticles (CSNPs), a new particulate drug carrier, with epithelial cells on the ocular surface. METHODS CSNPs labeled with fluorescein isothiocyanate-bovine serum albumin were produced by ionotropic gelation. Human conjunctival epithelial cells (IOBA-NHC) were exposed for 15, 30, 60, and 120 minutes to three different CSNP concentrations. Immediately after treatment and after a 24-hour recovery period in culture medium, cell survival, and viability were measured. The association of CSNPs with IOBA-NHC cells was investigated by confocal microscopy. The influence of temperature and the effect of metabolic inhibition were studied by fluorometry. The in vivo uptake and acute tolerance of the ocular surface to CSNPs were evaluated in rabbits. RESULTS Cell survival and viability of CSNP-exposed cells were equivalent to that of the control. Uptake of CSNPs was continuous for the 2-hour duration of these experiments and was temperature dependent. Metabolic inhibition by sodium azide had no effect on CSNP uptake. The rabbit ocular surface showed no signs of inflammation or alteration after CSNP exposure compared with the control. Fluorescence microscopy of rabbit eyeball and lid sections confirmed in vivo uptake by conjunctival and corneal epithelia. CONCLUSIONS CSNPs were internalized by IOBA-NHC cells by an active transport mechanism that did not compromise cell viability. Moreover, these nanoparticles were well tolerated by the ocular surface tissues. These facts add further support for the potential use of these colloidal systems to delivery drugs to the ocular surface.
Genistein-Supplemented Diet Decreases Malaria Liver Infection in Mice and Constitutes a Potential Prophylactic Strategy

In tropical regions millions of people still live at risk of malaria infection. Indeed the emergence of resistance to chloroquine and other drugs in use in these areas reinforces the need to implement alternative prophylactic strategies. Genistein is a naturally occurring compound that is widely used as a food supplment and is thought to be effective in countering several pathologies. Results presented here show that genistein inhibits liver infection by the Plasmodium parasite, the causative agent of malaria. In vitro, genistein decreased the infection rates of both mouse and human hepatoma cells by inhibiting the early stages of the parasite's intracellular development. Oral or intraperitoneal administration of genistein decreased the liver parasite load of P. berghei-infected mice. Moreover, mice fed on a genistein-supplemented diet showed a significant reduction in Plasmodium liver infection as well as a reduced blood parasitemia and partial protection from severe disease. Since genistein is a safe, low-cost, natural compound that can be used permanently in a diet, we propose its use as a prophylactic agent against malaria for endemic populations and long-time travelers.
Layering in Provenance Systems

Digital provenance describes the ancestry or history of a digital object. Most existing provenance systems, however, operate at only one level of abstraction: the system call layer, a workflow specification, or the high-level constructs of a particular application. The provenance collectable in each of these layers is different, and all of it can be important. Single-layer systems fail to account for the different levels of abstraction at which users need to reason about their data and processes. These systems cannot integrate data provenance across layers and cannot answer questions that require an integrated view of the provenance. We have designed a provenance collection structure facilitating the integration of provenance across multiple levels of abstraction, including a workflow engine, a web browser, and an initial runtime Python provenance tracking wrapper. We layer these components atop provenance-aware network storage (NFS) that builds upon a Provenance-Aware Storage System (PASS). We discuss the challenges of building systems that integrate provenance across multiple layers of abstraction, present how we augmented systems in each layer to integrate provenance, and present use cases that demonstrate how provenance spanning multiple layers provides functionality not available in existing systems. Our evaluation shows that the overheads imposed by layering provenance systems are reasonable.
Design and Implementation of a Smartphone-Based Reliable Real-Time Wi-Fi Broadcast System

In recent years, the demand for real-time multi-media service in WLAN environment rapidly increases due to the Wi-Fi smart phone user growth. In order to transmit real-time multimedia to many users, broadcast transmission is more efficient than unicast transmission. However, broadcast transmission without retransmissions leads to the higher loss rate in real wireless environments. In this paper, we propose a smart phone-based reliable multimedia transmission system with packet-level forward error correction scheme using Reed-Solomon code. According to our experimental results, the system shows the average packet delivery ratio between 90% and 95% regardless of interference strength.
Parallel-access for mirror sites in the Internet

Popular documents are frequently mirrored on multiple sites in an effort to share the load and reduce clients' retrieval latencies. However, choosing the best mirror site is a non-trivial task and a bad choice may give poor performance. We propose a scheme in which clients access multiple mirror sites in parallel to speedup document downloads while eliminating the problem of server selection. In our scheme, clients connect to mirror sites using unicast TCP connections and dynamically request different pieces of a document from different sites. The amount of data retrieved from a particular site varies depending on the network path/server conditions. Dynamic parallel-access can be easily implemented in the current Internet and does not require any modifications at the mirror sites. Using dynamic parallel-access, all clients experience dramatic speedups in downloading documents, and the load is shared among servers without the need for a server selection mechanism. Even in a situation where clients are connected through modem lines, dynamic parallel-access offers transmission rates at least as high as the fastest server.
Effect of glutamine supplementation on changes in the immune system induced by repeated exercise.

UNLABELLED The ability of lymphocytes to proliferate and generate lymphokine activated killer (LAK) cell activity in vitro is dependent on glutamine. In relation to intense exercise the lymphocyte concentration, the proliferative response, the natural killer and LAK cell activity, and the plasma glutamine concentration decline. It has been hypothesized that in relation to physical activity a lack of glutamine may temporarily affect the function of the immune system. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of glutamine supplementation on exercise-induced immune changes. METHODS In a randomized cross-over placebo-controlled study, eight healthy male subjects performed three bouts of ergometer bicycle exercise lasting 60, 45, and 30 min at 75% of their VO2max separated by 2 h of rest. RESULTS The arterial plasma glutamine concentration declined from 508 +/- 35 (pre-exercise) to 402 +/- 38 microM (2 h after the last exercise bout) in the placebo trial and was maintained above pre-exercise levels in the glutamine supplementation trial. The numbers of circulating lymphocytes and the phytohemagglutinin-stimulated lymphocyte proliferative response declined 2 h after, respectively, during each bout of exercise, whereas the LAK cell activity declined 2 h after the third bout. Glutamine supplementation in vivo, given in the described doses at the specific times, did not influence these changes. CONCLUSION The present study does not appear to support the hypothesis that those aspects of postexercise immune changes studied are caused by decreased plasma glutamine concentrations.
Standing control of a four-link robot

The objective of this paper is to design a neural fuzzy controller for a four-link robot to stand up vertically and stably from a flat horizontal surface. There are a structural mechanism, a PC, a tilt sensor and three stepping motors in this robot system. The sequence of standing behavior of this robot is designed and assigned by a developed software program in a PC. The artificial neural network (ANN) and fuzzy control algorithm are applied to develop the standing controller for this robot. The position of the center of gravity (COG) is an important factor to determine the stability of the robot. Finally, the robot links are driven by the corresponding motors to demonstrate its dynamic behaviors successfully and automatically.
Synergy of interleukin 10 and toll‐like receptor 9 signalling in B cell proliferation: Implications for lymphoma pathogenesis

A network of autocrine and paracrine signals defines B cell homeostasis and is thought to be involved in transformation processes. Investigating interactions of these microenvironmental factors and their relation to proto‐oncogenes as c‐Myc (MYC) is fundamental to understand the biology of B cell lymphoma. Therefore, B cells with conditional MYC expression were stimulated with CD40L, insulin‐like growth factor 1, α‐IgM, Interleukin‐10 (IL10) and CpG alone or in combination. The impact of forty different interventions on cell proliferation was investigated in MYC deprived cells and calculated by linear regression. Combination of CpG and IL10 led to a strong synergistic activation of cell proliferation (S‐phase/doubling of total cell number) comparable to cells with high MYC expression. A synergistic up‐regulation of CDK4, CDK6 and CCND3 expression by IL10 and CpG treatment was causal for this proliferative effect as shown by qRT‐PCR analysis and inhibition of the CDK4/6 complex by PD0332991. Furthermore, treatment of stimulated MYC deprived cells with MLN120b, ACHP, Pyridone 6 or Ruxolitinib showed that IL10/CpG induced proliferation and CDK4 expression were JAK/STAT3 and IKK/NF‐κB dependent. This was further supported by STAT3 and p65/RELA knockdown experiments, showing strongest effects on cell proliferation and CDK4 expression after double knockdown. Additionally, chromatin immunoprecipitation revealed a dual binding of STAT3 and p65 to the proximal promotor of CDK4 after IL10/CpG treatment. Therefore, the observed synergism of IL10R and TLR9 signalling was able to induce proliferation in a comparable way as aberrant MYC and might play a role in B cell homeostasis or transformation.
Data Mining Model for the Data Retrieval from Central Server Configuration

A server, which is to keep track of heavy document traffic, is unable to filter the documents that are most relevant and updated for continuous text search queries. This paper focuses on handling continuous text extraction sustaining high document traffic. The main objective is to retrieve recent updated documents that are most relevant to the query by applying sliding window technique. Our solution indexes the streamed documents in the main memory with structure based on the principles of inverted file, and processes document arrival and expiration events with incremental threshold-based method. It also ensures elimination of duplicate document retrieval using unsupervised duplicate detection. The documents are ranked based on user feedback and given higher priority for retrieval.
Albert-Lembert versus hybrid-layered suture in hand sewn end-to-end cervical esophagogastric anastomosis after esophageal squamous cell carcinoma resection.

BACKGROUND Hand sewn cervical esophagogastric anastomosis (CEGA) is regarded as preferred technique by surgeons after esophagectomy. However, considering the anastomotic leakage and stricture, the optimal technique for performing this anastomosis is still under debate. METHODS Between November 2010 and September 2012, 230 patients who underwent esophagectomy with hand sewn end-to-end (ETE) CEGA for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) were analyzed retrospectively, including 111 patients underwent Albert-Lembert suture anastomosis and 119 patients underwent hybrid-layered suture anastomosis. Anastomosis construction time was recorded during operation. Anastomotic leakage was recorded through upper gastrointestinal water-soluble contrast examination. Anastomotic stricture was recorded during follow up. RESULTS The hybrid-layered suture was faster than Albert-Lembert suture (29.40±1.24 min vs. 33.83±1.41 min, P=0.02). The overall anastomotic leak rate was 7.82%, the leak rate in hybrid-layered suture group was significantly lower than that in Albert-Lembert suture group (3.36% vs. 12.61%, P=0.01). The overall anastomotic stricture rate was 9.13%, the stricture rate in hybrid-layered suture group was significantly lower than that in Albert-Lembert suture group (5.04% vs. 13.51%, P=0.04). CONCLUSIONS Hand sewn ETE CEGA with hybrid-layered suture is associated with lower anastomotic leakage and stricture rate compared to hand sewn ETE CEGA with Albert-Lembert suture.