Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative pulmonary response to inhaled nanostructures: considerations on test design and endpoints

Recently there has been increased concern and focus on the toxicity of engineered nanoparticulates (NPs). The tendency of NPs to aggregate and agglomerate in a concentration- and/or matrix-dependent manner often provides a continuum of particulates, ranging from nanosized to micrometer-sized. Agglomerated arrangements of closely packed nanoparticles increase the void-space volume and increase the composite volume of phagocytized particles. Consequently, much less particle mass is needed to exceed the volumetric overload limit for the inhibition of macrophage-mediated clearance. A unifying, most appropriate metric of NPs conferring pulmonary biopersistence and toxicity has not been demonstrated yet. Hence, it is timely to analyze and to consider to what extent current testing paradigms need to be modified in order to identify the unique hazards potentially associated with engineered nanostructured materials. Before embarking on novel testing paradigms, toxicological testing of NPs should be carried out according to already existing test guidelines to allow for a judicious utilization of the wealth of information that has already been generated for micrometer-sized particles. From the studies analyzed it is apparent that repeated inhalation exposure protocols of at least 1 mo are better suited than single high-dose instillation or inhalation studies to reveal the inhalation hazards of poorly soluble NPs. Along with all poorly soluble particles, due to their long retention half-times and associated biopersistence in the lung, even short-term inhalation studies may require postexposure periods of at least 3 mo to reveal NP-specific dispositional and toxicological characteristics.
Projections of the lateral reticular nucleus to the cochlear nucleus in rats

The lateral reticular nucleus (LRN) resides in the rostral medulla and caudal pons, is implicated in cardiovascular regulation and cranial nerve reflexes, and gives rise to mossy fibers in the cerebellum. Retrograde tracing data revealed that medium‐sized multipolar cells from the magnocellular part of the LRN project to the cochlear nucleus (CN). We sought to characterize the LRN projection to the CN using BDA injections. Anterogradely labeled terminals in the ipsilateral CN appeared as boutons and mossy fibers, and were examined with light and electron microscopy. The terminal field in the CN was restricted to the granule cell domain (GCD), specifically in the superficial layer along the anteroventral CN and in the granule cell lamina. Electron microscopy showed that the smallest LRN boutons formed 1–3 synapses, and as boutons increased in size, they formed correspondingly more synapses. The largest boutons were indistinguishable from the smallest mossy fibers, and the largest mossy fiber exhibited 15 synapses. Synapses were asymmetric with round vesicles and formed against thin dendritic profiles characterized by plentiful microtubules and the presence of fine filopodial extensions that penetrated the ending. These structural features of the postsynaptic target are characteristic of the terminal dendritic claw of granule cells. LRN projections are consistent with known organizational principles of non‐auditory inputs to the GCD. J. Comp. Neurol. 504:583–598, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Distributed Join Approaches for W3C-Conform SPARQL Endpoints

Currently many SPARQL endpoints are freely available and accessible without any costs to users: Everyone can submit SPARQL queries to SPARQL endpoints via a standardized protocol, where the queries are processed on the datasets of the SPARQL endpoints and the query results are sent back to the user in a standardized format. As these distributed execution environments for semantic big data (as intersection of semantic data and big data) are freely accessible, the Semantic Web is an ideal playground for big data research. However, when utilizing these distributed execution environments, questions about the performance arise. Especially when several datasets (locally and those residing in SPARQL endpoints) need to be combined, distributed joins need to be computed. In this work we give an overview of the various possibilities of distributed join processing in SPARQL endpoints, which follow the SPARQL specification and hence are ”W3C conform”. We also introduce new distributed join approaches as variants of the Bitvector-Join and combination of the Semi- and Bitvector-Join. Finally we compare all the existing and newly proposed distributed join approaches for W3C conform SPARQL endpoints in an extensive experimental evaluation.
The Costs of Environmental Regulation in Asia : Command and Control versus Market-based Instruments

Environmental regulation has been widely applied in Asia, with many governments introducing command and control (CAC) policies to control the levels of industry emissions. This paper first examines the effectiveness of different environmental regulations in Asia. It then examines the cost effectiveness of CAC regulations compared to market-based instruments (MBIs) by evaluating the cost differences between regulation strategies currently employed and the least-cost solution for air and water pollution regulation in the People’s Republic of China, India, Pakistan, and Philippines. The paper concludes that MBIs have a clear cost advantage over CAC regulations and that there are considerable gains to be made from moving to a least-cost solution. Finally, the institutional reforms needed to facilitate the implementation of market-based instruments are discussed.
X‐ray crystal structures of the oxidized and reduced forms of the rubredoxin from the marine hyperthermophilic archaebacterium pyrococcus furiosus

The structures of the oxidized and reduced forms of the rubredoxin from the archaebacterium, Pyrococcus furiosus, an organism that grows optimally at 100 °C, have been determined by X‐ray crystallography to a resolution of 1.8 å. Crystals of this rubredoxin grow in space group P212121 with room temperature cell dimensions a = 34.6 å, b = 35.5 å, and c = 44.4 å. Initial phases were determined by the method of molecular replacement using the oxidized form of the rubredoxin from the mesophilic eubacterium, Clostridium pasteurianum, as a starting model. The oxidized and reduced models of P. furiosus rubredoxin each contain 414 nonhydrogen protein atoms comprising 53 residues. The model of the oxidized form contains 61 solvent H2O oxygen atoms and has been refined with X‐PLOR and TNT to a final R = 0.178 with root mean square (rms) deviations from ideality in bond distances and bond angles of 0.014 å and 2.06°, respectively. The model of the reduced form contains 37 solvent H2O oxygen atoms and has been refined to R = 0.193 with rms deviations from ideality in bond lengths of 0.012 å and in bond angles of 1.95°. The overall structure of P. furiosus rubredoxin is similar to the structures of mesophilic rubredoxins, with the exception of a more extensive hydrogen‐bonding network in the β‐sheet region and multiple electrostatic interactions (salt bridge, hydrogen bonds) of the Glu 14 side chain with groups on three other residues (the amino‐terminal nitrogen of Ala 1; the indole nitrogen of Trp 3; and the amide nitrogen group of Phe 29). The influence of these and other features upon the thermostability of the P. furiosus protein is discussed.
DC-MAC: Directional cooperative MAC for ad-hoc networks

The use of directional antennas in ad-hoc networks has advantages such as high spatial reuse and extended antenna range. However it suffers from the deafness problem, which may significantly degrade the network performance. Recently, several directional MAC protocols have been proposed to manage directional antennas effectively and improve the network performance. However, the existing schemes do not adequately address the issues, because they do not consider the multi-rate environment and the overhead to establish communication with the adjacent devices. This paper presents a directional cooperative MAC scheme, in which data is delivered to a destination via a relay node equipped with a directional antenna. Simulation results show that the network performance is improved by using the proposed scheme.
Indikator Kunci Pemulihan Fungsi Habitat Burung di Lahan Reklamasi dan Revegetasi Pasca Tambang Batubara

ABSTRACT The area of reclamation and revegetation in farmer coal mine has one role as bird habitat. The purpose of this study was to determine indicators of the types of bird that can progress successed reclamation and revegetation program in habitat function of fauna. The method used was bird species and bottom vegetation identification I in each habitat type used transect and mistnet. The data was analyzed using multivariate analysis of hDCCA. The results using hDCCA preedicted that the key indicator of bird characteristics that marks the development of succession in the fifth year is the presence of “insectivore bird” type. Bird species were B15 (Lanius schach), B20 (Prinia flaviventris), B23 (Picoides moluccensis), B28 (Pachychepala hypoxantha), B29 (Rhipidura javanica), B30 (Orthotomus ruficeps), B31 (Orthotomus sericeus). Keywords: hDCCA, insectivore bird, key indicator, reclamation and revegetation,
A 12 year chart review of childhood and adolescent onset psychosis at a Nigerian tertiary mental health facility

Objectives: To review the profile of children and adolescents presenting with psychosis at a specialist mental health facility, and to compare childhood with adolescent onset psychosis. Method: Hospital records of all children and adolescents over a 12-year period (1999–2010) were perused to identify those falling under the categories of psychotic disorders. Clinical, socio-demographic, obstetric, and developmental information was extracted. Results: Mean age of the children ((n = 409)) was 15.9 years, with 8.1% aged 12 years or less. The most frequent diagnoses were schizophrenia (40.8%), brief psychotic disorder (25.9%), mood disorder with psychosis (15.2%), and organic psychosis (7.8%). Family history of mental illness was reported among 22.5%. Subjects with childhood onset were significantly less likely than those with adolescent onset to have a family history of mental illness (p = 0.016), more likely to report maternal illness during pregnancy (p = 0.005) and illness during infancy (p = 0.010), and more likely to have a diagnosis of psychotic disorder due to another general medical condition (p < 0.001). Conclusion: The study suggests that antenatal/obstetric factors and illness during infancy may be particularly relevant in psychosis of childhood onset. Family history of mental illness may however be of greater relevance in adolescent onset psychosis.
Interannual Variability of Atmospheric Conditions and Surface Melt in Greenland in 2000–2014

We addressed the variations of surface melt in Greenland in association with summertime atmospheric conditions from 2000 to 2014. We quantified melt as the number of melt days (NMD), cumulative and maximum melt extent (based on microwave radiometer data), and modeled melt amount. Interannual variations of the maximum melt extent, occurring in timescales of days, differed from those in NMD, cumulative melt extent, and modeled melt amount, which accumulate over the entire melt season. Averaged over the Greenland ice sheet, interannual variations in total column water strongly correlated with NMD (squared correlation coefficient 0.83), cumulative melt extent (0.84), and modeled melt amount (0.82). Significant but less strong correlations were detected between NMD and the Greenland Blocking Index, NMD and North Atlantic Oscillation Index, as well as the modeled melt amount and NAOI. The NMD was strongly linked with the strength of the total column water anomaly in the coastal areas. In individual summers, positive anomalies in southerly winds coincided with positive NMD anomalies. At the eastern coast, positive NMD anomalies occurred under stronger downslope winds, suggesting that subsidence heating dominated over cold‐air advection from the inner ice sheet. Differences between the summers of extreme melt in 2012 and minimal melt in 2013 were partly explained by the larger (smaller) occurrence of air masses of southwesterly (southeasterly) origin in 2012 than 2013 at northeastern Greenland. For the 15‐year period, the occurrence of northeasterly air‐mass origin at Summit was the variable with strongest (negative) correlation with the maximum melt extent.
Optional and responsive locking in distributed collaborative object graphics editing systems

Object based collaborative graphics editing systems allow multiple users to edit the same graphics document at the same time from multiple sites. The paper examines the use of locking to prevent the generation of conflicting operations in this type of system. Two types of locks are examined: object and region. A locking scheme which preserves the intentions of all operations is proposed. Furthermore, the problems of lock ownership caused by concurrent operations are resolved.
Synchronization Using Shapes

The synchronicity is a strong restriction that in some cases of wide applications can be difficult to obtain. This paper studies the methodology of using a non synchronized camera network. We consider the cases where the frequency of acquisition of each element of the network can be different, including desynchronization due to delays of transmission inside the network. The following work introduces a new approach to retrieve the temporal synchronization from the multiple unsynchronized frames of a scene. The mathematical characterization of the 3D structure of scenes, is used as a tool to estimate synchronization value, combined with a statistical stratum. This paper presents experimental results on real data for each step of synchronization retrieval.
The role of intratympanic lactate injection in the prevention of cisplatin‐induced ototoxicity

There is no approved agent to prevent cisplatin‐induced ototoxicity. Our objectives were to: 1) identify and compare the effect of intratympanic injections of lactate or N‐acetylcysteine (NAC) in the prevention of cisplatin‐induced ototoxicity, 2) investigate inner ear protection using a scanning electron microscope, and 3) study systemic diffusion of intratympanic NAC.
Stem Cell Banking for Regenerative and Personalized Medicine

Regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and gene therapy offer the opportunity to treat and cure many of today’s intractable afflictions. These approaches to personalized medicine often utilize stem cells to accomplish these goals. However, stem cells can be negatively affected by donor variables such as age and health status at the time of collection, compromising their efficacy. Stem cell banking offers the opportunity to cryogenically preserve stem cells at their most potent state for later use in these applications. Practical stem cell sources include bone marrow, umbilical cord blood and tissue, and adipose tissue. Each of these sources contains stem cells that can be obtained from most individuals, without too much difficulty and in an economical fashion. This review will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each stem cell source, factors to be considered when contemplating banking each stem cell source, the methodology required to bank each stem cell source, and finally, current and future clinical uses of each stem cell source.
Gene organization, primary structure and RNA processing analysis of a ribosomal RNA operon in Lactococcus lactis.

Southern blot analysis of genomic DNA of the mesophilic lactic bacterium Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis strain IL1403, illuminated six rRNA gene clusters. Each cluster contains one copy each of three rRNA genes, displaying the typical eubacterial organization of physically linked 16 S, 23 S and 5 S rRNA genes. Five of the six rRNA clusters were cloned into plasmid pBR322. One recombinant plasmid, pSLCM6, containing a 6500 base-pair genomic DNA fragment, was characterized by physical mapping and the sequences encoding rRNAs and tRNAs were localized by Southern hybridization. This fragment contains a single operon composed of one promoter, a leader sequence, a 16 S rRNA gene, a tRNA(Ala) gene, a 23 S rRNA gene, a 5 S rRNA gene and a tRNA(Asn) gene. S1 nuclease mapping and primer extension analysis of in vivo transcripts localized one transcriptional initiation site 150 base-pairs upstream from the start of the 16 S rRNA gene. These procedures also suggest that this transcript is processed by an RNAse III-like activity similar to Bacillus subtilis; i.e. the L. lactis nuclease might be sequence-specific. The chronology of specific cleavages occurring during the maturation process of the precursor transcript is described. One interesting observation is that the regions flanking the 16 S and 23 S rRNAs containing the primary processing sites are identical and contain sequences that could be involved in transcriptional antitermination. S1 mapping of the 3' ends of in vivo transcripts indicate that a terminator-like sequence a few base-pairs downstream from the distal tRNA(Asn) gene is inefficient in arresting transcription.
A novel implementation of parallel homomorphic encryption for secure data storage in cloud

Due to the digitization of data in large scale and varying requirements of the organizations to serve different stakeholders, there is a need to compute, store and analyze large amount of data often in remote servers efficiently. However, each individual entity is not equipped with the right amount of resources to perform necessary computations on large data. Cloud computing provides a platform to compute, store and share data remotely for heterogeneous entities and provides services to them according to their demand. One of the major challenges in cloud computing platform is to ensure security and privacy of the data. The major limitation of applying existing cryptosystem such as AES, 3-DES, etc. is the need of decryption of ciphertext for outsourced computations that may violate data security. Homomorphic encryption is a solution which allows performing computations directly on cipher text without decrypting of the ciphertext. In this paper, we present an efficient model to implement different algorithms related to benchmark computations on ciphertext derived using the Dijk, Gentry, Halevi and Vaikuntanathan's homomorphic encryption scheme (DGHV scheme-2010). We have also executed “ciphertext refresh” procedure at Keg Generation Server (KGS). In addition, we present parallel implementation of these algorithms and provide a comparative performance study.
SparseDTW: A Novel Approach to Speed up Dynamic Time Warping

We present a new space-efficient approach, (SparseDTW), to compute the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) distance between two time series that always yields the optimal result. This is in contrast to other known approaches which typically sacrifice optimality to attain space efficiency. The main idea behind our approach is to dynamically exploit the existence of similarity and/or correlation between the time series. The more the similarity between the time series the less space required to compute the DTW between them. To the best of our knowledge, all other techniques to speedup DTW, impose apriori constraints and do not exploit similarity characteristics that may be present in the data. We conduct experiments and demonstrate that SparseDTW outperforms previous approaches.
Catecholaminergic innervation of the septum in the frog: A combined immunohistochemical and tract‐tracing study

In the present study, we have investigated the distribution and the origin of the catecholaminergic innervation of the septal region in the frog Rana perezi. Immunohistochemistry for dopamine and two enzymes required for the synthesis of catecholamines, tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and dopamine β‐hydroxylase (DBH) revealed a complex pattern of catecholaminergic (CA) innervation in the anuran septum. Dopaminergic fibers were primarily present in the dorsal portion of the lateral septum, whereas noradrenergic (DBH immunoreactive) fibers predominated in the medial septum/diagonal band complex. Catecholaminergic cell bodies were never observed within the septum. To determine the origin of this innervation, applications of dextran amines, both under in vivo and in vitro conditions, into the septum were combined with immunohistochemistry for TH. Results from these experiments demonstrated that four catecholaminergic cell groups project to the septum: (1) the group related to the zona incerta in the ventral thalamus, (2) the posterior tubercle/mesencephalic group, (3) the locus coeruleus, and (4) the nucleus of the solitary tract. While the two first groups provide dopaminergic innervation to the septum, the locus coeruleus provides the major noradrenergic projection. Noradrenergic fibers most likely arise also in the nucleus of the solitary tract. The results obtained in Rana perezi are readily comparable to those in mammals suggesting that the role of catecholamines in the septum is well conserved through phylogeny and that the CA innervation of the amphibian septum may be involved in functional circuits similar to those in mammals. J. Comp. Neurol. 455:310–323, 2003. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Intelligent Agents as Problem Solvers on Large 3D Landscapes

The introduction of game engines for the simulation and visualization of virtual worlds introduces a new paradigm for simulating complex systems. In this context, terrains can be represented using 3D landscapes and activities can be represented using intelligent agents. The Virtual Region More is a research tool developed to investigate how intelligent agents can be problem solvers in large 3D maps. The main result of this work is the recognition that the simulation of intelligent multi-agent systems in position-dependent landscapes leads to landscape-dependent complex systems. The implementation of intelligent agents in large virtual landscapes requires generic methods that modulate generic intelligent agents. Intelligent multi-agents in large 3D landscapes can be represented as systems of systems that are controlled by cost functions. Thus, intelligent agents are adapted to cost function and serve as a tool to identify good cost functions.
Spatio‐temporal characteristics of Indonesian drought related to El Niño events and its predictability using the multi‐model ensemble

Spatio‐temporal drought characteristics related to weak, moderate, and strong El Niño events in the Indonesian region were investigated. The empirical orthogonal function (EOF) patterns of normalized monthly precipitation and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) for the period 1950–2010 were analysed; the influence of El Niño events are better represented by SPI. The effects of El Niño events on meteorological drought were investigated based on a composite analysis. The effects of El Niño were more obvious during June–July–August and September–October–November, while they were not significant in March–April–May especially during weak and moderate El Niño events. Spatial distributions of affected areas varied by season, intensity of El Niño events, and local factors. During moderate and strong El Niño events, meteorological drought was more common in southern Sumatra, Java, Bali, Nusa Tenggara, southeastern Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and Papua. Based on the spatial and temporal variability of droughts, the monthly or seasonal meteorological drought outlook can be improved by using SPI focusing more on the regions and seasons that are affected by El Niño events. The multi‐model ensemble (MME) forecast of SPI performed better for the target months of September to November even at medium lead times. The months are consistent with the period of serious El Niño effects on drought, implying that serious drought conditions during the most harshly affected season can be predicted using the MME forecast.