Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sequential Versus Simultaneous Biventricular Resynchronization for Severe Heart Failure: Evaluation by Tissue Doppler Imaging

Background—Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) by means of simultaneous biventricular pacing improves left ventricular systolic performance and synchrony in patients with heart failure and bundle-branch block. We used tissue tracking and 3D echocardiography to evaluate the impact of sequential CRT with individualized interventricular delay programming. Methods and Results—Twenty consecutive patients with severe heart failure and left bundle-branch block were included. Tissue tracking and 3D echocardiography were carried out before and on the day after pacemaker implantation. Eleven different interventricular delays were examined in each patient. Patients were reexamined after 3 months. Simultaneous CRT immediately reduced the extent of myocardium displaying delayed longitudinal contraction (DLC) from 48.6±16% to 23.2±13% (P <0.01) and increased left ventricular ejection fraction percentage (LVEF%) from 22.4±6% to 29.7±5% (P <0.01). However, optimum sequential CRT caused a further reduction in the extent of DLC from 23.2±13% to 11.1±7.2% (P <0.01), with a simultaneous increase in LVEF% (from 29.7±5% to 33.9±6%, P <0.01). Three months of optimum sequential CRT further improved LVEF% (from 33.6±6% to 38.6±7.2%, P <0.01). Tissue tracking detected the segments with DLC, and their location determined optimum interventricular delay programming. Compared with simultaneous CRT, sequential CRT increased diastolic filling time by 7±2.5%. Conclusions—Compared with simultaneous CRT, sequential CRT significantly improves left ventricular systolic and diastolic performance. Tissue tracking can be used to select optimum interventricular delay during CRT.
An elastic pulsed-jet thruster for Soft Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

This paper reports on the development of a new kind of unmanned underwater vehicle which draws inspiration from cephalopods both in terms of morphology and swimming routine. The robot developed here is the first in its kind, being a soft aquatic robot which travels in water by pulsed-jet propulsion. The general design principles of this innovative kind of underwater robot are illustrated and a first prototype is built and tested. The experiments demonstrate an inverse correlation between the frequency of pulsation and the speed of the robot. A mathematical model which associates the kinematics of the pulsating routine to the dynamics of the swimming is devised and compared with the experiments in order to better investigate the interplay of the various design parameters.
Vascular Cell Senescence: Contribution to Atherosclerosis

Cardiologists and most physicians believe that aging is an independent risk factor for human atherosclerosis, whereas atherosclerosis is thought to be a characteristic feature of aging in humans by many gerontologists. Because atherosclerosis is among the age-associated changes that almost always escape the influence of natural selection in humans, it might be reasonable to regard atherosclerosis as a feature of aging. Accordingly, when we investigate the pathogenesis of human atherosclerosis, it may be more important to answer the question of how we age than what specifically promotes atherosclerosis. Recently, genetic analyses using various animal models have identified molecules that are crucial for aging. These include components of the DNA-repair system, the tumor suppressor pathway, the telomere maintenance system, the insulin/Akt pathway, and other metabolic pathways. Interestingly, most of the molecules that influence the phenotypic changes of aging also regulate cellular senescence, suggesting a causative link between cellular senescence and aging. For example, DNA-repair defects can cause phenotypic changes that resemble premature aging, and senescent cells that show DNA damage accumulate in the elderly. Excessive calorie intake can cause diabetes and hyperinsulinemia, whereas dysregulation of the insulin pathway has been shown to induce cellular senescence in vitro. Calorie restriction or a reduction of insulin signals extends the lifespan of various species and decreases biomarkers of cellular senescence in vivo. There is emerging evidence that cellular senescence contributes to the pathogenesis of human atherosclerosis. Senescent vascular cells accumulate in human atheroma tissues and exhibit various features of dysfunction. In this review, we examine the hypothesis that cellular senescence might contribute to atherosclerosis, which is a characteristic of aging in humans.
An Efficient Algorithm for Mining Coherent Association Rules

are many data mining techniques for finding association rules with the predefined minimum support from transaction databases. However, common problems with existing approaches are that an appropriate minimum support is difficult to determine and that the derived rules convey common-sense knowledge. Mining association rules without minimum support threshold is an important approximation of the association rule mining problem, which has been recently proposed(1). In this approach rules are generated based on logical implications and hence fewer and more meaningful rules called coherent rules are reported. An algorithm named ChSearch, is proposed to mine coherent rules for the user specified itemset. In this paper, the same problem is studied with two additional improvements. First, Apriori-based algorithm, namely ECARM for mining all coherent rules is proposed. Second to speed up time consuming candidate generation process an efficient pruning strategy is introduced. The proposed method generates coherent rules in shorter average execution times and fewer database scans, and thereby reduce great amount of I/O time per database scan and hence scaled to large databases. The method has been evaluated using both synthetic and real datasets, and the experimental results demonstrate its effectiveness and efficiency.
Extension and Evaluation of ID 3 – Decision Tree Algorithm

Decision tree algorithms are a method for approximating discrete-valued target functions, in which the learned function is represented by a decision tree. These kinds of algorithms are famous in inductive learning and have been successfully applied to a broad range of tasks. In this paper, I examine the decision tree learning algorithm – ID3 against nominal and continuous attributes extend it to handle missing value. Experiments to evaluate the performance of the algorithm with continuous valued attributes and missing attribute values reveal that ID3 does not give acceptable results for continuous valued attributes and works well in certain data sets with missing values.
Dynamically Instrumenting the QEMU Emulator for Linux Process Trace Generation with the GDB Debugger

In software debugging, trace generation techniques are used to resolve highly complex bugs. However, the emulators increasingly used for embedded software development do not yet offer the types of trace generation infrastructure available in hardware. In this article, we make changes to the ARM ISA emulation of the QEMU emulator to allow for continuous instruction-level trace generation. Using a standard GDB client, tracepoints can be inserted to dynamically log registers and memory addresses without altering executing code. The ability to run trace experiments in five different modes allows the scope of trace generation to be narrowed as needed, down to the level of a single Linux process. Our scheme collects the execution traces of a Linux process on average between 9.6x--0.7x the speed of existing QEMU trace capabilities, with 96.7% less trace data volume. Compared to a software-instrumented tracing scheme, our method is both unobtrusive and performs on average between 3--4 orders of magnitude faster.
The Core of Free Will

Everyone sober believes in freedom of the will; whatever we precisely mean by it, it is something we have. The world, which includes us, may be deterministic. This generates a contradiction. Or the world may be indeterministic; but it seems common ground that this does not improve the dialectic situation; the freely willed cannot occur at random. There is no escape, we are dealing here with a sharp contradiction, an outright antinomy. When I look at the overwhelming literature on the problem of free will – I am sure the majority has escaped me – I am amazed at how many different thoughts and theories are provoked by it, each being relevant, well considered, a germ of a larger research program, and containing a grain of truth (or more). This variety of responses is what makes for a truly deep and fruitful philosophical problem. Here, my point will not be to offer any novel thought on the topic; every stone has been turned many times. Despite its richness, however, the literature appears to me to give only improper emphasis to a certain point which occurred to me in my dissertation (1978, p. 193) and which deems ever more central to me, the longer I observe the literature. Mathematicians know that a sharp contradiction needs a sharp answer; wiggling concepts till the contradiction dissolves is not allowed. Let me explain what I take to be a sharp answer.
Soil Fertility Status of Some Agricultural Areas in El -Kharaga Oasis, New Valley, Egypt

Macro elements availability in soils is an important aspect in context of soil fertility and agricultural productivity. This study was performed to determine the levels of some macro elements availability in El-kharga oasis soils, New Valley, Egypt. To achieve this goal, hundred surface soil samples (0-30 cm) were collected from El-Kharga and Barisoasis, New Valley, Egypt. The collected soil samples were subjected for chemical analyses. The obtained results showed that the dominant problems are salinity and low organic matter content, The summarized data showed that 35% of the samples have low available nitrogen and 65% have medium nitrogen which was associated with low organic matter (100% of the samples have less than 1% OM). However 91% of the samples have high available P(˃15mg/kg), where as 5% and 4% of the samples were categorized as low and medium available P. Also, 98% of the samples were high in available potassium and only 2% were medium. The high content of available P and K may be resulted from the parent material of El-kharga oasis. According to ECe, 49% of the samples have ECe less than 4dSm-1, 51% of the samples were higher than 4dSm-1, (21% medium, 16% high and 14% very high). Considering the soil pH and ECe, the results showed that 42% of the samples were non saline, 50% were saline, 6% were sodic soil and only 2%were saline sodic soils.
High glucose and palmitate increases bone morphogenic protein 4 expression in human endothelial cells

Here, we investigated whether hyperglycemia and/or free fatty acids (palmitate, PAL) aff ect the expression level of bone morphogenic protein 4 (BMP4), a proatherogenic marker, in endothelial cells and the potential role of BMP4 in diabetic vascular complications. To measure BMP4 expression, human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were exposed to high glucose concentrations and/or PAL for 24 or 72 h, and the effects of these treatments on the expression levels of adhesion molecules and reactive oxygen species (ROS) were examined. BMP4 loss-of-function status was achieved via transfection of a BMP4-specific siRNA. High glucose levels increased BMP4 expression in HUVECs in a dose-dependent manner. PAL potentiated such expression. The levels of adhesion molecules and ROS production increased upon treatment with high glucose and/or PAL, but this eff ect was negated when BMP4 was knocked down via siRNA. Signaling of BMP4, a proinflammatory and pro-atherogenic cytokine marker, was increased by hyperglycemia and PAL. BMP4 induced the expression of infl ammatory adhesion molecules and ROS production. Our work suggests that BMP4 plays a role in atherogenesis induced by high glucose levels and/or PAL.
SAREK: Optimistic Parallel Ordering in Byzantine Fault Tolerance

Recently proposed Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) systems achieve high throughput by processing requests in parallel. However, as their agreement protocols rely on a single leader and make big efforts to establish a global total order on all requests before execution, the performance and scalability of such approaches is limited. To address this problem we present SAREK, a parallel ordering framework that partitions the service state to exploit parallelism during both agreement as well as execution. SAREK utilizes request dependency which is abstracted from application-specific knowledge for the service state partitioning. Instead of having one leader at a time for the entire system, it uses one leader per partition and only establishes an order on requests accessing the same partition. SAREK supports operations that span multiple partitions and provides a deterministic mechanism to atomically process them. To address use cases in which there is not enough application-specific knowledge to always determine a priori which partition(s) a request will operate on, SAREK provides mechanisms to even handle mis-predictions without requiring rollbacks. Our evaluation of a key-value store shows an increase in throughput performance by a factor of 2 at half the latency compared to a single-leader implementation.
Tim-3-Expressing CD4+ and CD8+ T Cells in Human Tuberculosis (TB) Exhibit Polarized Effector Memory Phenotypes and Stronger Anti-TB Effector Functions

T-cell immune responses modulated by T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-containing molecule 3 (Tim-3) during Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection in humans remain poorly understood. Here, we found that active TB patients exhibited increases in numbers of Tim-3-expressing CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which preferentially displayed polarized effector memory phenotypes. Consistent with effector phenotypes, Tim-3+CD4+ and Tim-3+CD8+ T-cell subsets showed greater effector functions for producing Th1/Th22 cytokines and CTL effector molecules than Tim-3− counterparts, and Tim-3-expressing T cells more apparently limited intracellular Mtb replication in macrophages. The increased effector functions for Tim-3-expressing T cells consisted with cellular activation signaling as Tim-3+CD4+ and Tim-3+CD8+ T-cell subsets expressed much higher levels of phosphorylated signaling molecules p38, stat3, stat5, and Erk1/2 than Tim-3- controls. Mechanistic experiments showed that siRNA silencing of Tim-3 or soluble Tim-3 treatment interfering with membrane Tim-3-ligand interaction reduced de novo production of IFN-γ and TNF-α by Tim-3-expressing T cells. Furthermore, stimulation of Tim-3 signaling pathways by antibody cross-linking of membrane Tim-3 augmented effector function of IFN-γ production by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, suggesting that Tim-3 signaling helped to drive stronger effector functions in active TB patients. This study therefore uncovered a previously unknown mechanism for T-cell immune responses regulated by Tim-3, and findings may have implications for potential immune intervention in TB.
Animal models for motor neuron disease.

Motor neuron disease is a general term applied to a broad class of neurodegenerative diseases that are characterized by fatally progressive muscular weakness, atrophy, and paralysis attributable to loss of motor neurons. At present, there is no cure for most motor neuron diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common human motor neuron disease--the cause of which remains largely unknown. Animal models of motor neuron disease (MND) have significantly contributed to the remarkable recent progress in understanding the cause, genetic factors, and pathologic mechanisms proposed for this class of human neurodegenerative disorders. Largely driven by ALS research, animal models of MND have proven their usefulness in elucidating potential causes and specific pathogenic mechanisms, and have helped to advance promising new treatments from "benchside to bedside. " This review summarizes important features of selected established animal models of MND: genetically engineered mice and inherited or spontaneously occurring MND in the murine, canine, and equine species.
A high frequency of circulating B cells share clonotypic Ig heavy-chain VDJ rearrangements with autologous bone marrow plasma cells in multiple myeloma, as measured by single-cell and in situ reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction.

In multiple myeloma (MM), the VDJ rearrangement of the immunoglobulin heavy chain expressed by MM plasma cells provides a unique clonotypic marker. Although clonotypic MM cells have been found in the circulation, their number has been controversial. Our objective was to provide direct evidence, using single-cell assays, for the frequency of clonotypic cells in blood of 18 MM patients, and to confirm their identity as B cells. The clonotypic Ig heavy-chain (IgH) VDJ was determined from single plasma cells using consensus reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), subcloning, and sequencing. For all patients, using patient-specific primers, clonotypic transcripts were amplified from 10 or more individual plasma cells. Using in situ RT-PCR, for all patients greater than 80% of plasma cells were found to be clonotypic. Three separate methods, RT-PCR, single-cell RT-PCR, and in situ RT-PCR, were used to analyze clonotypic cells in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from MM patients. Sequencing of the IgH transcripts expressed by individual cells obtained by limiting dilution of freshly isolated PBMC from a MM patient showed that all B cells expressed an identical CDR3. This intraclonal homogeneity indicates an escape from antigenic-selection, characteristic of malignant B cells. For this patient, the frequency of clonotypic PBMC, about 25%, was comparable to the number of PBMC B cells (34%). Because the PBMC included less than 1% plasma cells, virtually all clonotypic PBMC must be B cells. Using single-cell RT-PCR, clonotypic IgH transcripts were identified in individual sorted B cells from blood. To accurately quantify the number of clonotypic B cells, sorted B cells derived from 18 MM patients (36 samples) and 18 healthy donors (53 samples) were analyzed using in situ RT-PCR with patient-specific primers. Clonotypic transcripts were not detectable among normal B cells. For the 18 MM patients, a mean of 66% +/- 4% (SE) of blood B cells were clonotypic (range, 9% to 95%), with mean absolute number of 0.15 +/- . 02 x 10(9)/L blood. Over time in individual patients, conventional chemotherapy transiently decreased circulating clonotypic B cells. Their numbers were increased in granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)- mobilized blood of one patient. However, clonotypic B cells of a one patient became undetectable after allogeneic transplant, correlating with complete remission. Although contributions to MM spread and progression is likely, their malignant status and impact has yet to be clarified. Their high frequency in the blood, and their resistence to conventional chemotherapy suggests that the number of circulating clonotypic cells should be clinically monitored, and that therapeutic targeting of these B cells may benefit myeloma patients.
Distributional analysis of semantic interference in picture naming

In picture–word interference experiments, participants name pictures (e.g., of a cat) while trying to ignore distractor words. Mean response time (RT) is typically longer with semantically related distractor words (e.g., dog) than with unrelated words (e.g., shoe), called semantic interference. Previous research has examined the RT distributional characteristics of distractor effects by performing ex-Gaussian analyses, which reveal whether effects are present in the normal part of the distribution (the μ parameter), its long right tail (the τ parameter), or both. One previous study linked the semantic interference effect selectively to the distribution tail. In the present study, we replicated the semantic interference effect in the mean picture naming RTs. Distributional analysis of the RTs and those of a previous study revealed that semantic interference was present in both μ and τ. These results provide evidence that the effect is not selectively linked to the τ parameter, and they warn against any simple one-to-one mapping between semantic interference and distributional parameters.
DEVELOPMENT OF NEW SYSTEMS OF BIO-PRESERVATION FOR THE SAFETY AND SHELF-LIFE OF FOOD

31 1.Introduction . 31 2.Materials and methods . 32 2.1 Fermentation process and chemical analyses. 32 2.2 Evaluation of microbial population. 33 2.3 Molecular identification of the isolates . 33 2.4 Molecular fingerprinting of lactic acid bacteria . 35 2.5 Carbohydrate utilization . 35 2.6 pH measurement . 35 2.7 Statistical analysis . 35 2.8 Nucleotide sequence accession numbers . 35 3. Results . 35 3.1 Microbiological analysis . 35 3.2 Molecular characterization of microbial isolates . 36 . 36 3.3 Dynamics of microbial population during fermentation . 40 3.4 Characterization of native maize bran and fermented bran . 41 4. Discussion . 41 REFERENCES. 46 Chapter 3. Exploiting synergies of sourdough and antifungal organic acids to delay fungal spoilage of bread . 50
Acoustic analysis of the Syrian Arabic vowel system

This paper describes the vowel system of Syrian Arabic (SA) as spoken in Damascus. We examine the acoustic correlates of SA short/long vowel contrasts, and investigate the status of mid vowels in SA. The goal is to expand on the auditory description of the SA vowel system performed by Cowell [8]. The full set of vowel categories proposed by Cowell were produced in a neutral /hVd/ context by fifteen SA speakers. Quantitative analysis of vowel duration and formant measurements confirms that the vowel system of Syrian Arabic includes the main /i(ː)/, /a(ː)/, and /u(ː)/ short/long vowel contrasts and supports the phonemic status of mid-long vowels /eː/ and /oː/. However, the phonemic status of the mid short vowels [e] and [o] and of schwa was not supported and they are analysed as allophonic variants of their high counterparts /i/ and /u/, respectively.
Relaying Packets in a Two-tiered Wireless Network Using Binary Integer Programming

Relay transmissions improve performance and save communication energy in wireless network. We present an optimal relay nodes assignment algorithm to maximize the number of information packets received at the sink for a two-tiered wireless network, in which the relay nodes are temporarily placed and have energy constraint. We first derive the optimal transmit power theory from relay node to sink node. Provided the limited energy at the relay nodes, we prove that the total transmission periods or the relay network lifetime is fixed. Subsequently, we determine the optimal dynamic association between edge nodes and relay nodes (multiple-to-one mapping) using binary integer programming (BIP). Experimental results show that the proposed method has significantly better performance than two other schemes in terms of the total number of information packets received at the sink. Combined with the optimal relay transmit power technique, the two-tiered wireless network can achieve the highest capacity considering the energy constraint of relay nodes.