Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gold nanoparticles for tumour detection and treatment

The use of nanoparticles in biomedical applications is emerging rapidly. Recent developments have led to numerous studies of noble metal nanoparticles, down to the level of single molecule detection in living cells. The application of noble metal nanoparticles in diagnostics and treatment of early stage carcinomas is the subject of many present studies. Gold nanoparticles are particularly interesting for optical biomedical applications due to their biocompatibility and moreover, their enhanced absorption cross-sections. The latter is a result of surface plasmon resonance, which can be tuned by altering the shape of the nanoparticles enabling usage of the near infrared tissue transparent optical window. This paper presents a brief overview of the variety of shapes, size and surface chemistries of the gold nanoparticles used for cancer detection and treatment, as well as their effects in different tumour models that have recently been investigated, both in vitro and in vivo.
Electroactive polymer actuator devices (EAPAD)

Designing and building devices that utilize electroactive polymer actuators brings into sharp focus the performance required of these materials. Using the example of a "rehabilitation glove", it is shown that the performance of polypyrrole actuators fall short of that required. In particular, the need to simultaneously produce 5% actuator strain at a 5 MPa isotonic stress cannot be achieved with the actuators investigated in our laboratories to date. However, significant improvements in the performance under load have been achieved with the use of ionic liquid electrolytes. The use of new materials such as composites of conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes offers the possibility of further improvements in actuator performance. Finally, redesigning the glove actuator offers a compromise solution that allows existing actuators to be used in a prototype device.
Put on your thinking cap: G-quadruplexes, helicases, and telomeres

Understanding how G-quadruplex (G4) DNA structures that form in G-rich tracts of the genome affect chromosomal stability and processes such as copying the genetic information (DNA replication) or decoding the information (RNA transcription) has posed a significant challenge to researchers in the field. Although historically there has been some controversy over the existence of G4 DNA structures in vivo, emerging evidence suggests that they are indeed likely to form and have cellular consequences. In a recent study, Smith et al. investigated a role of G4 DNA in telomere capping [1], i.e., the adaptation of a nucleoprotein structure that prevents the chromosomal DNA ends from being recognized as DNA breaks and protects them from becoming degraded or fused. Telomere capping is a fairly complex process since a number of proteins have been shown to bind telomeric single-stranded or double-stranded DNA at the chromosome end. Moreover, the ability of telomeric DNA to form a variety of conformations including t-loops and G-quadruplexes adds to the complexity of how competing proteins and DNA structures influence the structural topology and metabolism of chromosome ends [2]. Using genetic and pharmacological approaches, Smith et al. showed that under conditions that stabilize G4 DNA structures, which form from a guanine-rich telomeric ssDNA exposed in a yeast temperature sensitive cdc13-1 mutant, telomere capping is in turn enhanced and phenotypes associated with capping defects are suppressed [1]. Conversely, telomere uncapping occurs under conditions that dissuade the formation of telomeric G4 DNA in the cdc13-1 mutant. The authors proposed a model in which G4 DNA structure enables G4 DNA binding proteins to further stabilize the telomere end by binding to G-quadruplex DNA, thereby preventing 5′ to 3′ exonucleolytic resection when the normal protein that blocks telomeric end processing is defective. Rad53-mediated checkpoint activation is also dampened, permitting suppression of the growth defects characteristic of the cdc13-1 mutant at the nonpermissive temperature.
Strongyloidiasis: a review of the evidence for Australian practitioners.

OBJECTIVE To summarise the available evidence concerning the prevalence, clinical manifestations, diagnosis and management of strongyloidiasis in Northern Australia. METHODS We searched Medline, Clinical Evidence and the Cochrane Library using MeSH terms and text words 'strongyloides OR strongyloidiasis'. For Australian studies we included text words '(parasite* OR parasitic OR helminth*) AND Australia*'. We examined references contained in retrieved studies or identified from direct contact with researchers. Studies consistent with our objective that described their methods were eligible for inclusion. RESULTS The prevalence in some tropical Aboriginal communities is high. Infection can be asymptomatic, cause a range of clinical syndromes or death. It may become chronic. Infected patients are at risk of developing severe disseminated disease particularly with immune compromise. There is little information about the relative frequency of different clinical outcomes. Available diagnostic tools are imperfect. Stool examination has a low sensitivity. Serology may have a low specificity in high prevalence populations and has not been evaluated in Aboriginal populations. Antihelmintic drugs are relatively safe and effective. Community programs based on treatment of stool-positive cases have been associated with a reduced prevalence of strongyloidiasis. We found no studies examining alternative public health interventions. CONCLUSION There is a high prevalence in many Aboriginal communities. Strongyloides infection should be excluded prior to commencing immunosuppressive therapies in patients from endemic areas. Further studies examining the public health impact of strongyloidiasis, the role of the enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay serological test and population-based approaches to management of the disease in endemically infected Australian populations are needed.
Significance level adjustments for multiple testing in health studies : A case for false discovery rate control

Running Title: Significance level adjustments for multiple tests Word Count: 3887 2 ABSTRACT Procedures for adjusting significance levels when performing many hypothesis tests are commonplace in health/medical studies. Such procedures, most notably the Bonferroni adjustment, control for study-wide false positive rates, and recognize that the probability of a single false positive result increases with the number of tests. In this paper we remind readers of arguments against significance level adjustments that control study-wide error rates. Instead, procedures derived from controlling error rates among results declared statistically significant may be a more appealing method to adjust significance levels. We demonstrate how false discovery rate adjustments follow this principle, and that researchers may benefit by considering such adjustments for use in health and medical studies. the Bonferroni procedure, is a widely used procedure, but reduces power to detect effects as the number of tests increases.  Common use of the Bonferroni procedure for multiple tests can result in interpretive inconsistencies.  The false discovery rate (FDR) is the expected fraction of statistically significant results that are mistakenly declared significant.  Implementing FDR control in studies with multiple tests is a more powerful procedure than those that control study-wide error rates.  FDR control procedures do not suffer from the philosophical challenges evident with the Bonferroni adjustment procedure.  Health researchers may benefit from relying on FDR control in studies with multiple tests. 4 We are now in an age of scientific inquiry where health and medical studies are routinely collecting large amounts of data which typically result in the researcher attempting to draw many inferential conclusions through numerous hypothesis tests. To account for the increasing probability of reporting false positive results through multiple tests, researchers are typically advised to perform some type of multiple-test adjustment that controls study-wide error rates, often through a significance level adjustment, which lowers the probability of falsely rejecting true null hypotheses. Arguments have been put forth over the years whether adjustments for multiple testing should be made, with plenty of advocates on each side of the argument. It appears doubtful that researchers will coalesce behind a unified point of view any time soon. Significance level adjustments that control study-wide error rates are still common in health studies. An examination of recent issues of several highly cited medical and health journals (JAMA, NEJM, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Medical Care) reveals an abundant use of multiple-test adjustments that …
Anterior chamber-associated immune deviation promotes corneal allograft survival.

PURPOSE To determine whether anterior chamber-associated immune deviation (ACAID) promotes corneal allograft survival. METHODS CB6F1 mice were grafted with orthotopic corneal transplants from C3H donors (mismatch at the entire major histocompatibility complex plus multiple minor histocompatibility loci) and from NZB donors (mismatch only at multiple minor histocompatibility loci). ACAID was induced by priming in the anterior chamber (AC) with either Ia- spleen cells, Ia+ spleen cells, corneal endothelial cells, or corneal epithelial cells from corneal allograft donors before orthotopic transplantation. The role of ACAID in promoting corneal allograft survival was examined by determining the fate of corneal allografts in splenectomized and eusplenic mice. RESULTS Anterior chamber priming produced a modest enhancement of the survival of fully allogeneic C3H corneal allografts. By contrast, AC priming with Ia- NZB spleen cells or NZB corneal endothelial cells results in the permanent acceptance of NZB corneal grafts in 60% and 90% of the CB6F1 hosts, respectively. Abolition of ACAID by splenectomy resulted in a sharp increase in the incidence of graft rejection in donor-host combinations involving multiple minor histocompatibility disparity. CONCLUSIONS Anterior chamber priming with alloantigens promotes corneal allograft survival in nonimmune and preimmune hosts. Disruption of the camero-splenic axis prevents the induction of ACAID and greatly increases the risk for corneal allograft rejection.
Monomer: Non-Metric Mixtures-of-Embeddings for Learning Visual Compatibility Across Categories

Identifying relationships between items is a key task of an online recommender system, in order to help users discover items that are functionally complementary or visually compatible. In domains like clothing recommendation, this task is particularly challenging since a successful system should be capable of handling a large corpus of items, a huge amount of relationships among them, as well as the high-dimensional and semantically complicated features involved. Furthermore, the human notion of "compatibility" that we need to capture goes beyond mere similarity: For two items to be compatible---whether jeans and a t-shirt, or a laptop and a charger---they should be similar in some ways, but systematically different in others. In this paper we develop a method, Monomer, to uncover complicated and heterogeneous of relationships between items. Recently, scalable methods have been developed that address this task by learning embeddings of the visual and textual characteristics of the products involved, but which ultimately depend on a nearest-neighbor assumption between the learned embeddings. Here we show that richer notions of compatibility can be learned, principally by relaxing the metricity assumption inherent in previous work, so as to uncover ways in which related items should be systematically similar, and systematically different. Quantitatively, we show that our system achieves state-of-the-art performance on large-scale compatibility prediction tasks, especially in cases where there is substantial heterogeneity between related items.
Data fusion in biometrics

Any biometric system has drawbacks and cannot warranty 100% identification rates, nor 0% false acceptance and rejection ratios. One way to overcome the limitations is through a combination of different biometric systems. In addition, a multimodal biometric recognition is more difficult to fool than a single, biometric system, because it is more unlikely to defeat two or three biometric systems than one. This paper summarizes the different data fusion levels, and how it must be performed in order to improve the results of each combined system on its own
PACP: An Efficient Pseudonymous Authentication-Based Conditional Privacy Protocol for VANETs

In this paper, we propose a new privacy preservation scheme, named pseudonymous authentication-based conditional privacy (PACP), which allows vehicles in a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) to use pseudonyms instead of their true identity to obtain provably good privacy. In our scheme, vehicles interact with roadside units to help them generate pseudonyms for anonymous communication. In our setup, the pseudonyms are only known to the vehicles but have no other entities in the network. In addition, our scheme provides an efficient revocation mechanism that allows vehicles to be identified and revoked from the network if needed. Thus, we provide conditional privacy to the vehicles in the system, that is, the vehicles will be anonymous in the network until they are revoked, at which point, they cease to be anonymous.
Wet-web strength increase by chitosan

Chitosan, an aminopolysaccharide obtained by hydrolysis of shellfish wastes, was evaluated as a wetend additive in a laboratory study conducted with bleached kraft. Chitosan was found to increase the strength of neverdried wet webs, dry paper and rewetted paper. The strengthening effect of chitosan depends on the acidity of the stock. The highest freeness was measured for pulp treated with chitosan a t pH 7.5, while the highest wet-web strength, dry strength, and wet strength were measured from handsheets made of pulp treated with chitosan at p H 10.
Human-humanoid robot interaction system based on spoken dialogue and vision

In this paper, a natural human-humanoid robot interaction system is proposed. In this system, the type of task is determined with naïve Bayes classifier firstly, and then most of the conditions which are prerequisite to the execution of task are calculated with frame-based reasoning method. The initial position of task object must be calculated with vision. First, the hand position is localized with temporal differencing algorithm. Then, the object region can be determined with the pointing direction of hand. Finally, the reference position of task object in world coordinate system is calculated with binocular vision system.
Resorbable versus nonresorbable membranes in combination with Bio-Oss for guided bone regeneration.

The purpose of this clinical investigation was to compare the new resorbable collagen membrane, Bio-Gide, to the conventional expanded polytetrafluoroethylene material (Gore-Tex) for guided bone regeneration in situations involving exposed implant surfaces. Over a 2-year period, 25 split-mouth patients were treated randomly: one defect site was treated with Bio-Gide and the other defect site with Gore-Tex; all 84 defects were filled with Bio-Oss and covered with the respective membrane. The defect types, their dimensions, and their morphology were measured in detail initially and at re-entry to allow for calculation of the exposed implant surface. Changes in defect surface for both types of membranes were statistically significant (P < .0001); however, no statistical significance (P > .94) could be detected between the two membranes. The mean average percentage of bone fill was 92% for Bio-Gide and 78% for Gore-Tex sites. In the latter group, 44% wound dehiscences and/or premature membrane removal occurred. The resorbable membrane, Bio-Gide, in combination with a bone graft, can be a useful alternative to the well-established expanded polytetrafluoroethylene membranes.
Crime Forecasting Using Data Mining Techniques

Crime is classically â€œunpredictableâ€. It is not necessarily random, but neither does it take place consistently in space or time. A better theoretical understanding is needed to facilitate practical crime prevention solutions that correspond to specific places and times. In this study, we discuss the preliminary results of a crime forecasting model developed in collaboration with the police department of a United States city in the Northeast. We first discuss our approach to architecting datasets from original crime records. The datasets contain aggregated counts of crime and crime-related events categorized by the police department. The location and time of these events is embedded in the data. Additional spatial and temporal features are harvested from the raw data set. Second, an ensemble of data mining classification techniques is employed to perform the crime forecasting. We analyze a variety of classification methods to determine which is best for predicting crime â€œhotspotsâ€. We also investigate classification on increase or emergence. Last, we propose the best forecasting approach to achieve the most stable outcomes. The result of our research is a model that takes advantage of implicit and explicit spatial and temporal data to make reliable crime predictions.
Circulating allergen-reactive T cells from patients with atopic dermatitis and allergic contact dermatitis express the skin-selective homing receptor, the cutaneous lymphocyte-associated antigen

The cutaneous lymphocyte-associated antigen (CLA) is the major T cell ligand for the vascular adhesion molecule E-selectin, and it has been proposed to be involved in the selective targeting of memory T cells reactive with skin-associated Ag to cutaneous inflammatory sites. To further investigate the relation of CLA and cutaneous T cell responses, we analyzed the CLA phenotype of circulating memory T cells in patients with allergic contact dermatitis and atopic dermatitis (AD) alone vs in patients manifesting bronchopulmonary atopy (asthma with or without AD) and nonallergic individuals. Significant T cell proliferative responses to Ni, a contact allergen, and to the house dust mite (HDM), an allergen to which sensitization is often observed in AD and/or asthma, was noted only in allergic and atopic individuals, respectively. When the minor circulating CLA+CD3+CD45RO+ subset was separated from the major CLA-CD3+CD45RO+ subpopulation in Ni-sensitive subjects, the Ni- dependent memory T cell response was largely confined to the CLA+ subset. A similar restriction of the T cell proliferative response to the CLA+ memory subset was observed for HDM in patients with AD alone. In HDM-sensitive patients with asthma with or without AD, however, the CLA- subset exhibited a strong antigen-dependent proliferation, in contrast to patients with AD alone, whose CLA- subset proliferated very weakly to HDM. In asthma with or without AD, the HDM-dependent proliferation slightly predominated in the CLA- when compared to the CLA+ subset. The functional linkage between CLA expression and disease- associated T cell effector function in AD was also demonstrated by the finding that the circulating CLA+ T cell subset in AD patients, but not nonatopic controls, selectively showed both evidence of prior activation (human histocompatibility antigen-DR expression) and spontaneous production of interleukin 4 but not interferon-gamma. Taken together, these observations demonstrate the correlation of CLA expression on circulating memory T cells and disease-associated memory T cell responses in cutaneous hypersensitivity, and they suggest the existence of mechanisms capable of sorting particular T cell Ag specificities and lymphokine patterns into homing receptor-defined memory subsets.
Programming agent deliberation: an approach illustrated using the 3APL language

This paper presents the specification of a programming language for implementing the deliberation cycle of cognitive agents. The mental attitudes of cognitive agents are assumed to be represented in an object language. The implementation language for the deliberation cycle is considered as a meta-language the terms of which denote formulae from the object language. Without losing generality, we use the agent programming language 3APL as the object language. Using the meta-deliberation language, one can program the deliberation process of a cognitive agent. We discuss a set of programming constructs that can be used to program various aspects of the deliberation cycle including the planning constructs.
Recovery and identification of adenovirus in infections of infants and children

During the past 6 years, the major concern of our laboratory has been to define the etiological role, ecology, and importance of new or newly recovered viruses and Mycoplasma in childhood respiratory-tract illness. Between October, 1957, and May, 1961, we studied 7,509 children, and were able to recover adenoviruses from 504 individuals. This experience made it possible to define certain facets of behavior of adenoviruses in the laboratory as well as in natural infection. In this paper, we will describe the frequency of recovery of different adenoviruses from throat and anal swab specimens, the sensitivity of primary simian and continuous-passage human heteroploid tissue culture for recovery of adenoviruses, and the complement-fixing (CF) antibody response of individuals from whom adenoviruses were recovered.
Seroprevalence of rubella-specific IgM and IgG antibodies among pregnant women seen in a tertiary hospital in Nigeria

Background Rubella is a contagious viral infection that in pregnant women leads to the infection of a developing fetus, causing fetal death or congenital rubella syndrome. Objective Pregnant women are not routinely screened for rubella in Nigeria. Epidemiological data on rubella is therefore necessary to create awareness and sensitize health care administrators and providers. Materials and methods A cross-sectional study was carried out at Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital between June and August 2012 to determine the prevalence of immunoglobulin M (IgM) and immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies to rubella virus in pregnant women using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. Seroprevalence was compared among 160 pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital and 20 nonpregnant women of childbearing age studying at Ahmadu Bello University. Prior to sample collection, questionnaires were administered to the women to obtain data on sociodemographics, awareness and knowledge of rubella, possible risk factors, and clinical symptoms associated with the viral infection. Results Of the 160 pregnant women, 149 (93.1%) and 62 (38.8%) were positive for anti-rubella IgM and IgG antibodies, respectively. Similarly, of the 20 nonpregnant women, 18 (90%) and eight (40%) were positive for rubella IgG and IgM antibodies, respectively. None of the possible risk factors studied were significantly associated with infection. Age and other sociodemographic factors were of little significance, and awareness of rubella was low. Conclusion The prevalence of rubella was high in both pregnant (93.1%) and nonpregnant women (90%), suggesting sustained transmission, which further suggests endemicity. The presence of rubella IgM and IgG antibodies in pregnant women predisposes babies to congenital rubella syndrome and emphasizes the need for the initiation of a national rubella vaccination program in Nigeria.