Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subjective symptoms related to GSM radiation from mobile phone base stations: a cross-sectional study

Objectives We performed a re-analysis of the data from Navarro et al (2003) in which health symptoms related to microwave exposure from mobile phone base stations (BSs) were explored, including data obtained in a retrospective inquiry about fear of exposure from BSs. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting La Ñora (Murcia), Spain. Participants Participants with known illness in 2003 were subsequently disregarded: 88 participants instead of 101 (in 2003) were analysed. Since weather circumstances can influence exposure, we restricted data to measurements made under similar weather conditions. Outcomes and methods A statistical method indifferent to the assumption of normality was employed: namely, binary logistic regression for modelling a binary response (eg, suffering fatigue (1) or not (0)), and so exposure was introduced as a predictor variable. This analysis was carried out on a regular basis and bootstrapping (95% percentile method) was used to provide more accurate CIs. Results The symptoms most related to exposure were lack of appetite (OR=1.58, 95% CI 1.23 to 2.03); lack of concentration (OR=1.54, 95% CI 1.25 to 1.89); irritability (OR=1.51, 95% CI 1.23 to 1.85); and trouble sleeping (OR=1.49, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.84). Changes in –2 log likelihood showed similar results. Concerns about the BSs were strongly related with trouble sleeping (OR =3.12, 95% CI 1.10 to 8.86). The exposure variable remained statistically significant in the multivariate analysis. The bootstrapped values were similar to asymptotic CIs. Conclusions This study confirms our preliminary results. We observed that the incidence of most of the symptoms was related to exposure levels—independently of the demographic variables and some possible risk factors. Concerns about adverse effects from exposure, despite being strongly related with sleep disturbances, do not influence the direct association between exposure and sleep.
Missing intensity restoration via perceptually optimized subspace projection based on entropy component analysis

A missing intensity restoration method via perceptually optimized subspace projection based on entropy component analysis (ECA) is presented in this paper. The proposed method calculates the optimal subspace of known patches within a target image based on structural similarity (SSIM) index, and the optimal bases are determined based on ECA. Then missing intensity estimation whose results maximize the SSIM index is realized by using a projection onto convex sets (POCS) algorithm whose constraints are the obtained subspace and known intensities within the target image. In this approach, a non-convex maximization problem for calculating the projection onto the subspace is reformulated as a quasi-convex problem, and the restoration of the missing intensities becomes feasible. Experimental results show that our restoration method outperforms previously reported methods.
Automatic drug delivery in anesthesia: From the beginning until now

The main goals of general anesthesia are adequate hypnosis, analgesia and maintenance of vital functions. For some special kinds of operations neuromuscular block is essential. Furthermore the patient safety and cost reduction as a case of minimized drug consumption and shortened postoperative recovery phases are part of the main issues to motivate automation in anesthesia. Since the beginning of the eighties engineers and physician are working together in the field of the development of closed-loop systems for drug delivery. The work gives a short overview about the development of the automation in drug delivery systems over the last years without the claim of completeness and expressed the much more vision.
Speeded Up Image Matching using Split and Extended Sift Features

Matching feature points between images is one of the most fundamental issues in computer vision tasks. As the number of feature points increases, the feature matching rapidly becomes a bottleneck. In this paper, a novel method is presented to accelerate features matching by two modifications of the popular SIFT algorithm. The first modification is based on splitting the SIFT features into two types, Maximaand Minima-SIFT features, and making comparisons only between the features of the same type, which reduces the matching time to 50% with respect to the original SIFT. In the second modification, the SIFT feature is extended by a new attribute which is an angle between two independent orientations. Based on this angle, SIFT features are divided into subsets and only the features with the difference of their angles less than a pre-set threshold value are compared. The performance of the proposed methods was tested on two groups of images, real-world stereo images and standard dataset images. The presented experimental results show that the feature matching step can be accelerated 18 times with respect to exhaustive search without losing a noticeable portion of correct matches.
Monte Carlo Localization

In this paper we investigate robot localization with the Augmented Monte Carlo Localization (aMCL) algorithm. The goal of the algorithm is to enable a robot to localize itself in an known world. The map of the environment where the robot has to localize itself must be given to the robot beforehand. In our case the map is constructed by another robot. This map is a so called occupancy grid. An occupancy map contains a value for every location which indicates the probability that this location is occupied by a object such as a wall. We investigate the influence on the performance of the aMCL algorithm when using occupancy maps as input for the aMCL algorithm. We compare the performance of the aMCL algorithm with different levels of uncertainty and two ways of dealing with this uncertainty. We found that the performance of the aMCL algorithm is best when we convert the occupancy map to a binary map by applying a threshold. In that case each location above a certain threshold is considered occupied. This simple method provided the best performance.
Assessment of Object Permanence in Severely Handicapped Students as a Function of Motor and Prompting Variables

Assessment of cognitive skills in severely handicapped students is complicated by a high prevalence of deficits in reflex and voluntary motor development. This study assessed object permanence construct performance in a group of severely handicapped students who were differentiated by treatment (prompt) condition and motor ability level. After assessing and differentiating students by motor ability level, a split-plot randomization design was used to assign students to one of two treatment conditions for assessing the object permanence construct: physical guidance plus verbal prompt or verbal prompt (only). Results revealed a trait (motor ability) x treatment interaction. Significant main effects were also found for the motor factor among those students receiving physical guidance prompts. Implications are discussed for future research and for improving assessment and intervention practices.
Epigenetics and the placenta.

BACKGROUND The placenta is of utmost importance for intrauterine fetal development and growth. Deregulation of placentation can lead to adverse outcomes for both mother and fetus, e.g. gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD), pre-eclampsia and fetal growth retardation. A significant factor in placental development and function is epigenetic regulation. METHODS This review summarizes the current knowledge in the field of epigenetics in relation to placental development and function. Relevant studies were identified by searching PubMed, Medline and reference sections of all relevant studies and reviews. RESULTS Epigenetic regulation of the placenta evolves during preimplantation development and further gestation. Epigenetic marks, like DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs, affect gene expression patterns. These expression patterns, including the important parent-of-origin-dependent gene expression resulting from genomic imprinting, play a pivotal role in proper fetal and placental development. Disturbed placental epigenetics has been demonstrated in cases of intrauterine growth retardation and small for gestational age, and also appears to be involved in the pathogenesis of pre-eclampsia and GTD. Several environmental effects have been investigated so far, e.g. ethanol, oxygen tension as well as the effect of several aspects of assisted reproduction technologies on placental epigenetics. CONCLUSIONS Studies in both animals and humans have made it increasingly clear that proper epigenetic regulation of both imprinted and non-imprinted genes is important in placental development. Its disturbance, which can be caused by various environmental factors, can lead to abnormal placental development and function with possible consequences for maternal morbidity, fetal development and disease susceptibility in later life.
Comment on the "Influence of Cosmological Transitions on the Evolution of Density Perturbations"

A recent paper by Martin and Schwarz [1] argues that the ``standard inflationary result" has been finally proven. The result itself is formulated as: ``the closer the inflationary epoch is to the de Sitter space-time, the less important are large-scale gravitational waves in the CMBR today". Beginning from the basic equations of Grishchuk [2, 3] the authors say [1] that Grishchuk's conclusion about approximate equality of metric amplitudes for gravitational waves and density perturbations ``is wrong because the time evolution of the scalar metric perturbation through the (smooth) reheating transition was not calculated correctly". They reiterate a claim about ``big amplification" of scalar perturbations (in contrast to gravitational waves) during reheating. The authors say [1] that after appropriate correction they have recovered the "standard result" within Grishchuk's approach. It is shown in this Comment that the "big amplification" is a misinterpretation. There is no difference in the evolution of long-wavelength metric perturbations for gravitational waves and density perturbations: they both stay approximately constant. The influence of cosmological transitions on the evolution is none at all, as long as the wavelength of the perturbation is much larger than the Hubble radius. It is shown that from the approach of [2, 3] follow the conclusions of [2, 3] without change. Finally, it is argued that the ``standard inflationary result" does not follow from the correct evolution and quantum normalization of density perturbations.
Web Page Layout Adaptation Based on WebKit for E-paper Device

E-paper screen mobile handheld devices primarily process multimedia data, such as image, audio and text, are expected to become important platforms for pervasive computing. Nowadays, mobile web browser is widely used in mobile handheld devices, such as cell phone, PDAs(personal digital assistants). Accessing web content defined in Wireless Application Protocol(WAP) is fast and comfortable with mobile web browser, but for any arbitrary web page in the internet, many disadvantages are discovered, which reduced the mobile users' satisfaction and UI experience. For example, most of the web pages in existence today are designed for desktop computer in mind. It is difficult to browse through the webpage by using a minor screen mobile devices. [1]. And the loading process often causes an excessive perceptive latency. Based on the characteristics of E-paper, this paper presents a novel and effective web page layout adaptation method based on Web Kit for E-paper screen mobile handheld device. The approaches of performance enhancement are described too. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is acceptable in splitting pages neatly. Users' reading experiences are improved. The optimization method is more effective than general web browser. Preliminary experimental results indicate the expected performances of the method on mobile web browser.
Mathematics of Operations Research

The Adams apportionment method is the only divisor method that consistently favors small districts relative to the Hamilton method. The Jefferson method is the only divisor method that favors large districts relative to the Hamilton method. These statements hold for the Balinski and Young [3] interpretation of "favoring small/large districts," and for the partial "majoriza-tion ranking" introduced by Marshall et al. [7]. As such, Hamilton is positioned in between Adams and Jefferson. 1. Introduction. Apportionment methods are used to round the population proportions of electoral districts (or the vote proportions of parties) to integer numbers of seats in a representative body. The translation of almost continuous proportions into natural numbers nearly always involves adjusting. As the gain or loss of a single seat is usually considered important, the effect of the rounding process is a central issue in the theory of apportionment. In particular, different apportionment methods are tested on whether or not they systematically favor the smaller districts over the larger districts (or the larger over the smaller). There are at least two ways to study this phenomenon. First, one can study the seat bias, either by estimates from empirical data or by exact formulae derived from a probability model. Second, one can try to rank different methods according to the preferential treatment of smaller versus larger districts. Before we recall some of the literature on botb tracks, we illustrate the following apportionment methods: • Hamilton: a quota method with residual fit by the largest remainders • Adams: the divisor method with rounding up • Jefferson: the divisor method with rounding down • Webster: the divisor method with standard rounding These methods are properly defined below. For now, it suffices to see how they allocate 10 seats over the three-tuple (603, 249, 148). The total population amounts to 1,000. We list the outcomes in Table 1. Moving in this table from the left to the right, the small districts 2 and 3 each hand in one seat to the large district. The focus is on whether this example exposes fundamental properties of the apportionment methods. Balinski and Young [3, Appendix A, §5] use historical data to calculate the average percentage bias of some divisor methods. They observe that (i) the method of Adams favors the smaller districts the most; (ii) the Webster method is close to unbiased; and (iii) the Jefferson method has a plain bias toward the larger …
HIF-1α mRNA and protein upregulation involves Rho GTPase expression during hypoxia in renal cell carcinoma

The small G proteins of the Rho family are involved in reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton, cell migration and in the regulation of gene transcription. Hypoxia-induced ATP depletion results in the disruption of actin organization which could affect Rho functions. In solid tumors, regions with low oxygen tension stimulate angiogenesis in order to increase oxygen and nutrient supply. This process is mediated by stabilization of the transcriptional factor hypoxia inducible factor 1 (HIF-1), which increases vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) production. In this study, we investigated the activities of Rho proteins, which are key regulators of cytoskeleton organization during hypoxia in renal cell carcinoma. Caki-1 cells were exposed to hypoxia (1% O2) and exhibited increased Cdc42, Rac1 and RhoA protein expression. Immunoprecipitation of metabolically labelled RhoA showed that overexpression was at least due to neo-synthesis. The Rho GTPases overexpressed during hypoxia were mainly located at membranes and pull-down assays demonstrated that they were active since they bound GTP. RT-PCR analysis indicated that the increase in RhoA protein expression was also reflected at the mRNA level. Overexpression and activation of Rho proteins were downstream of, and dependent on, the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) since, in the presence of an inhibitor, both the rise of ROS and upregulation of Rho proteins were abolished. Importantly, preincubation of cells with the toxin C3, which inhibits RhoA, reduced HIF-1α protein accumulation by 84% during hypoxia. Together, these results support a model where ROS upregulate Rho protein expression and where active RhoA is required for HIF-1α accumulation during hypoxia.
A study of mutual front-end processing method based on statistical model for noise robust speech recognition

This paper addresses robust front-end processing for automatic speech recognition (ASR) in noise. Accurate recognition of corrupted speech requires noise robust front-end processing, e.g., voice activity detection (VAD) and noise suppression (NS). Typically, VAD and NS are combined as one-way processing, and are developed independently. However, VAD and NS should not be assumed to be independent techniques, because sharing each others’ information is important for the improvement of front-end processing. Thus, we investigate the mutual front-end processing by integrating VAD and NS, which can beneficially share each others’ information. In an evaluation of a concatenated speech corpus, CENSREC-1-C database, the proposed method improves the performance of both VAD and ASR compared with the conventional method. Index Terms: voice activity detection, noise suppression, mutual front-end processing, speech recognition
Towards Service Robots for the Human Environment: the Robutler

We present an experimental service robot, a mobile hand-arm system with anthropomorphic features as well as some capability for autonomous behavior. The system integrates a mobile platform, an arm optimized for light weight, and an articulated dexterous four-finger hand with basic navigation skills, real-time scene analysis by stereo vision, compliant motion control, and an intuitive man-machine interface. It thus com- prises many of the key features required to realize the vision of a robotic servant that acts and interacts in the human living environment. The task we consider here is manipulation of bottles and glasses for preparing and serving drinks. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive view of the whole system, revealing the synergies between its components that lead to real- world performance within the addressed problem domain.
Constitutive Activity of the Serotonin2C Receptor Inhibits In Vivo Dopamine Release in the Rat Striatum and Nucleus Accumbens

Numerous research has pointed out that serotonin2c (5-HT2C) receptor, a subtype of 5-HT receptors belonging to the G-protein-coupled receptor superfamily, modulates the activity of mesencephalic dopamine (DA) neurons, the dysfunction of which is involved in devastating diseases such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, and drug addiction. In the present study, using in vivo intracerebral microdialysis and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells expressing 5-HT2C receptors to identify appropriate 5-HT2C receptor ligands, we sought to determine whether the property of 5-HT2C receptors to spontaneously activate intracellular signaling pathways in vitro (constitutive activity) participates in the tonic inhibitory control that they exert on DA release in the rat striatum and nucleus accumbens in vivo. In CHO cells, the purported antagonist 5-methyl-1-(3-pyridylcarbamoyl)-1,2,3,5-tetrahydropyrrolo[2,3-f] indole hydrochloride (SB 206553), but not 6-chloro-5-methyl-1-[6-(2-methylpiridin-3-yloxy)pyridin-3-yl carbamoyl] indoline (SB 242084), decreased basal inositol phosphate accumulation, thus behaving as a 5-HT2C inverse agonist. Its effect was prevented by SB 242084. In vivo, SB 206553 (1–10 mg/kg) elicited a dose-dependent and clear-cut increase in accumbal and striatal DA release compared with SB 242084 (1–10 mg/kg), and the 5-HT2C agonist S-2-(6-chloro-5-fluoroindol-1-yl)-1-methylethylamine hydrochloride (Ro-60-0175) (0.3–3 mg/kg) inhibited DA release. Pretreatment by SB 242084 reversed the change in DA release elicited by Ro-60-0175 and SB 206553. Furthermore, SB 206553-stimulated DA release was insensitive to reduction of 5-HT neuronal function induced by the 5-HT1A agonist (±)-8-hydroxy-2-dipropylaminotetralin or intra-raphe injections of 5,7-dihydroxytryptamine neurotoxin. The obtained results provide the first in vivo evidence that constitutive activity of the 5-HT2C receptor tonically inhibits mesencephalic DA neurons and underscore the need for a better understanding of the pathophysiological role of constitutive receptor activity.
The Establishment of a Primary Culture System of Proximal Tubule Segments Using Specific Markers from Normal Mouse Kidneys

The proximal tubule contains the highest expression of angiotensinogen mRNA and protein within the kidney and plays a vital role in the renal renin-angiotensin system. To study the regulation of angiotensinogen expression in the kidney in more detail, the proximal tubule needs to be accurately isolated from the rest of the nephron and separated into its three segments. The purpose of this study was to design a novel protocol using specific markers for the separation of proximal tubule cells into the three proximal tubule segments and to determine angiotensinogen expression in each segment. Kidneys were removed from C57BL/6J mice. The proximal tubules were aspirated from region of a Percoll gradient solution of the appropriate density. The proximal tubule was then separated into its three segments using segment-specific membrane proteins, after which each segment was characterized by a different specific marker (sodium-glucose transporter 2 for Segment 1; carbonic anhydrase IV for Segment 2; ecto-adenosine triphosphatase for Segment 3). The isolation of proximal tubules into three segments was successful, and angiotensinogen mRNA in Segment 2 and 3 and angiotensinogen protein in all three segments were confirmed. This protocol will be helpful for future studies of the detailed mechanisms of the intrarenal renin-angiotensin system.
Identification of Target Genes Involved in Wound Healing Angiogenesis of Endothelial Cells with the Treatment of a Chinese 2-Herb Formula

Angiogenesis is vitally important in diabetic wound healing. We had previously demonstrated that a Chinese 2-herb formula (NF3) significantly stimulated angiogenesis of HUVEC in wound healing. However, the molecular mechanism has not yet been elucidated. In line with this, global expression profiling of NF3-treated HUVEC was performed so as to assess the regulatory role of NF3 involved in the underlying signaling pathways in wound healing angiogenesis. The microarray results illustrated that different panels of differentially expressed genes were strictly governed in NF3-treated HUVEC in a time-regulated manner. The microarray analysis followed by qRT-PCR and western blotting verification of NF3-treated HUVEC at 6 h revealed the involvement of various genes in diverse biological process, e.g., MAP3K14 in anti-inflammation; SLC5A8 in anti-tumorogenesis; DNAJB7 in protein translation; BIRC5, EPCAM, INSL4, MMP8 and NPR3 in cell proliferation; CXCR7, EPCAM, HAND1 and MMP8 in migration; CXCR7, EPCAM and MMP8 in tubular formation; and BIRC5, CXCR7, EPCAM, HAND1, MMP8 and UBD in angiogenesis. After 16 h incubation of NF3, other sets of genes were shown with differential expression in HUVEC, e.g., IL1RAPL2 and NR1H4 in anti-inflammation; miR28 in anti-tumorogenesis; GRIN1 and LCN1 in anti-oxidation; EPB41 in intracellular signal transduction; PRL and TFAP2A in cell proliferation; miR28, PRL and SCG2 in cell migration; PRL in tubular formation; and miR28, NR1H4 and PRL in angiogenesis. This study provided concrete scientific evidence in support of the regulatory role of NF3 on endothelial cells involved in wound healing angiogenesis.