Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Cross-Linked Porous Gelatin Carriers and Their Interaction with Corneal Endothelium: Biopolymer Concentration Effect

Cell sheet-mediated tissue regeneration is a promising approach for corneal reconstruction. However, the fragility of bioengineered corneal endothelial cell (CEC) monolayers allows us to take advantage of cross-linked porous gelatin hydrogels as cell sheet carriers for intraocular delivery. The aim of this study was to further investigate the effects of biopolymer concentrations (5–15 wt%) on the characteristic and safety of hydrogel discs fabricated by a simple stirring process combined with freeze-drying method. Results of scanning electron microscopy, porosity measurements, and ninhydrin assays showed that, with increasing solid content, the pore size, porosity, and cross-linking index of carbodiimide treated samples significantly decreased from 508±30 to 292±42 µm, 59.8±1.1 to 33.2±1.9%, and 56.2±1.6 to 34.3±1.8%, respectively. The variation in biopolymer concentrations and degrees of cross-linking greatly affects the Young’s modulus and swelling ratio of the gelatin carriers. Differential scanning calorimetry measurements and glucose permeation studies indicated that for the samples with a highest solid content, the highest pore wall thickness and the lowest fraction of mobile water may inhibit solute transport. When the biopolymer concentration is in the range of 5–10 wt%, the hydrogels have high freezable water content (0.89–0.93) and concentration of permeated glucose (591.3–615.5 µg/ml). These features are beneficial to the in vitro cultivation of CECs without limiting proliferation and changing expression of ion channel and pump genes such as ATP1A1, VDAC2, and AQP1. In vivo studies by analyzing the rabbit CEC morphology and count also demonstrate that the implanted gelatin discs with the highest solid content may cause unfavorable tissue-material interactions. It is concluded that the characteristics of cross-linked porous gelatin hydrogel carriers and their triggered biological responses are in relation to biopolymer concentration effects.
Decoder issues in unlimited finnish speech recognition

In contrast to continuous speech recognition systems which utilize a fixed vocabulary to limit the search, practically unlimited vocabulary recognition can be achieved by constructing the recognition result from sub-word units. This paper discusses some important things to consider in subword based decoders, especially when recognizing languages with heavy use of inflections and compound words. Also, a decoder design implemented to achieve unlimited vocabulary Finnish speech recognition is described.
Validity Studies the Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale (Comqol): Instrument Development and Psychometric Evaluation on College Staff and Students

This article describes the development and validation of a new 35-item, multidimensional Comprehensive Quality of Life Scale (ComQol). Psychometric properties of the scale are described. Consistency between the data yielded by the scale and findings reported in the literature are argued to support the validity of the instrument. It is concluded that ComQol constitutes a unique and comprehensive measure of the quality of life construct.
Thomas Hobbes: Telling the Story of the Science of Politics

Interrogeant le statut scientifique des disciplines pretendues humanistes telles que l'histoire, la psychologie, la sociologie, l'anthropologie et la politique, l'A. definit les sciences sociales en tant que sciences narratives, a travers l'exemple de la science politique chez Hobbes, ou l'histoire est synonyme de rhetorique, de science et d'explication du phenomene social.
Exploring universal attribute characterization of spoken languages for spoken language recognition

We propose a novel universal acoustic characterization approach to spoken language identification (LID), in which any spoken language is described with a common set of fundamental units defined “universally. ” Specifically, manner and place of articulation form this unit inventory and are used to build a set of universal attribute models with data-driven techniques. Using the vector space modeling approaches to LID a spoken utterance is first decoded into a sequence of attributes. Then, a feature vector consisting of co-occurrence statistics of attribute units is created, and the final LID decision is implemented with a set of vector space language classifiers. Although the present study is just in its preliminary stage, promising results comparable to acoustically rich phone-based LID systems have already been obtained on the NIST 2003 LID task. The results provide clear insight for further performance improvements and encourage a continuing exploration of the proposed framework. Index Terms: Language recognition, vector space modeling, phonetic features.
Assessment of an Average Tracking Controller that Considers all the Subsystems Involved in a WMR: Implementation via PWM or Sigma-Delta Modulation

This paper has two aims; the first, to present the design of a three-level average controller (that do not require electromechanical sensors) for the trajectory tracking task in a differential drive wheeled mobile robot (WMR). Such a controller considers, for the first time in literature, the dynamics of the three subsystems composing a WMR, i.e., mechanical structure, actuators, and power stage. The proposed controller is designed as follows: At the high level, a kinematic control for the mechanical structure is proposed. At the medium level, a control based on differential flatness for the actuators is presented. And at the low level, an average flatness control for the power is proposed. The second aim of this paper is to present an assessment, via numerical simulations using MATLAB-Simulink, of the three-level average controller performance when it is implemented using a PWM or a Σ-Δ-modulator. In these simulations the robustness of the controller is shown when multiple abrupt variations are considered in some parameters of the WMR.
Power allocation and scheduling for SWIPT systems with non-linear energy harvesting model

In this paper, we design a resource allocation algorithm for multiuser simultaneous wireless information and power transfer systems for a realistic non-linear energy harvesting (EH) model. In particular, the algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem for the maximization of the long-term average total harvested power at EH receivers subject to quality of service requirements for information decoding receivers. To obtain a tractable solution, we transform the corresponding non-convex sum-of-ratios objective function into an equivalent objective function in parametric subtractive form. This leads to a computationally efficient iterative resource allocation algorithm. Numerical results reveal a significant performance gain that can be achieved if the resource allocation algorithm design is based on the non-linear EH model instead of the traditional linear model.
Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to Resolve the Species, Gender, Age, and the Presence of Wolbachia Infection in Laboratory-Reared Drosophila

The aim of the study was to determine the accuracy of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in determining species, gender, age, and the presence of the common endosymbiont Wolbachia in laboratory-reared Drosophila. NIRS measures the absorption of light by organic molecules. Initially, a calibration model was developed for each study. An independent set with flies not involved in initial cross-validation was then used to validate the accuracy of each calibration model. Flies from the independent sets were correctly classified into Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans with 94% and 82% accuracy, respectively, whereas flies were successfully classified by gender with accuracy greater than 90%. In the age grading test, correlation plots of the actual and predicted age for males and females of D. melanogaster and D. simulans were shown to be overlapping between the adjacent age groups. It is, however, possible to predict the age of flies as less than 9 days of age with 62–88% accuracy and flies that are equal to or older than 9 days of age with 91–98% accuracy. Finally, we used NIRS to detect the presence of Wolbachia in flies. Flies from the independent sets were successfully identified as infected or not infected with Wolbachia with approximately 90% accuracy. These results suggest that NIRS has the potential to quantify the species, gender, and presence of Wolbachia in fly populations. However, additional optimization of the protocol may be necessary before the technique can reliably estimate fly age.
A Unique Approach to Neurostimulation in Patients With Previous Two‐Segment Spine Surgery and Obstruction of Epidural Access for Spinal Cord Stimulation: A Case Series

Introduction: Patients with extensive surgery in the lumbar and thoracic spine are often not considered for neurostimulation due to the inability to perform a conventional spinal cord stimulation (SCS) trial. We are presenting six such patients in which spinal‐peripheral neurostimulation (SPN) was used via a caudal approach.
Reversal of Anterior Cervical Fusion with a Cervical Arthroplasty Prosthesis

This case report describes a 38-year-old-man who initially underwent a C5-C6 anterior cervical decompression and interbody fusion and plating for a right C6 radiculopathy. Within a few months of his surgery, he developed bilateral C7 radiculopathies, with imaging confirming adjacent segment foraminal stenosis. Repeat imaging suggested some subsidence of the original interbody graft but no overt pseudoarthrosis, and flexion/extension films showed no evidence of movement at the fused level. Six months after the original surgery, he underwent re-exploration. Decompression and arthroplasty were effected at the C6-C7 level. The old fusion was removed at the C5-C6 level and remobilized, and an arthroplasty was performed. At discharge, the patient’s neck pain and hand symptoms had improved, and he had motion demonstrable on radiologic imaging at C5-C6. This is the first reported case of reversal of a cervical fusion with re-establishment of motion and represents an alternate acceptable management of pseudoarthrosis or recent spinal fusion.
Parameters guiding selection of best embryos for transfer after cryopreservation: a reappraisal.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to evaluate the respective influences of blastomere survival and resumption of mitosis on the outcome of frozen-thawed embryos. METHODS A retrospective analysis was performed in our centre on 363 thawing cycles, involving 4-cell day 2 grade 1 embryos with <10% fragmentation. RESULTS A higher implantation rate per transferred embryo was observed when all transferred embryos were characterized by fully intact blastomeres (100% blastomere survival) as compared with damaged embryos (50 or 75% blastomere survival) (22.0 versus 7.2%; P < 0.0001). Moreover, the implantation rate per transferred embryo was significantly higher for cleaved embryos compared with uncleaved embryos (19.7 versus 3%; P < 0.0001). Transfer of fully intact, cleaved embryos resulted in the highest implantation rates compared with transfer of damaged and uncleaved embryos (27.4 versus 0%; P < 0.0001). Intermediate implantation rates were observed when only one of the two criteria was fulfilled (13 versus 11% respectively; P > 0.05). Multivariate analysis showed that the clinical pregnancy rate was influenced by both criteria (odds ratio = 3.4 for transfer of embryos with six or more cells versus embryos with less than six cells. CONCLUSION The results of our study suggest that the most important factor to predict further embryo development is the total number of blastomeres in transferred embryos, however they are obtained (good survival and/or resumption of mitosis).
Access control in collaborative systems

Balancing the competing goals of collaboration and security is a difficult, multidimensional problem. Collaborative systems often focus on building useful connections among people, tools, and information while security seeks to ensure the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of these same elements. In this article, we focus on one important dimension of this problem---access control. The article examines existing access control models as applied to collaboration, highlighting not only the benefits, but also the weaknesses of these models.
Web service selection using particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithms

Current service-oriented architecture standards mainly rely on functional properties, however, service registries lack mechanisms for managing services' non-functional properties. These non-functional properties are expressed as quality of service (QoS) attributes. The user can describe the request of a service in terms of QoS attributes, i.e., the user aims for good service performance, e.g. low waiting time, high reliability and availability. This paper investigates service selection, and proposes two approaches; one which is based on a genetic algorithm and the other is based on a particle swarm optimization approach to match consumers with services based on QoS attributes as closely as possible. Both approaches are compared with an optimal assignment algorithm called the Munkres algorithm. Measurements are performed to quantify the overall match score, the execution time, and the scalability.
Damage mechanics modeling of concurrent thermal and vibration loading on electronics packaging

The problem of concurrent thermal and vibration loading has not been thoroughly studied even though it is common in electronic packaging applications. Here we attempt to address such a problem using a damage mechanics based constitutive model. Damage mechanics constitutive model for eutectic Pb/Sn solder alloys is used to simulate the damage effects of concurrent cyclic thermal loads and vibrations on electronics packages. The model is implemented into the commercial finite element code ABAQUS through its user defined material subroutine capability. For the integration algorithm we have used a return mapping scheme, which dramatically improves the convergence rate as compared to previous implementations of the same model. Results are examined in terms of accumulation of plastic strain within the solder connections. It is shown that the simplistic Miner's rule can not accurately account for the combined effect of both loadings acting concurrently.
Time‐interleaved acquisition of modes: An analysis of SAR and image contrast implications

As the magnetic field strength and therefore the operational frequency in MRI are increased, the radiofrequency wavelength approaches the size of the human head/body, resulting in wave effects which cause signal decreases and dropouts. Especially, whole‐body imaging at 7 T and higher is therefore challenging. Recently, an acquisition scheme called time‐interleaved acquisition of modes has been proposed to tackle the inhomogeneity problems in high‐field MRI. The basic premise is to excite two (or more) different B 1+ modes using static radiofrequency shimming in an interleaved acquisition, where the complementary radiofrequency patterns of the two modes can be exploited to improve overall signal homogeneity. In this work, the impact of time‐interleaved acquisition of mode on image contrast as well as on time‐averaged specific absorption rate is addressed in detail. Time‐interleaved acquisition of mode is superior in B 1+ homogeneity compared with conventional radiofrequency shimming while being highly specific absorption rate efficient. Time‐interleaved acquisition of modes can enable almost homogeneous high‐field imaging throughout the entire field of view in PD, T2, and T2*‐weighted imaging and, if a specified homogeneity criterion is met, in T1‐weighted imaging as well. Magn Reson Med, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A study on stock ranking and selection strategy based on UTA method under the condition of inconsistence

In this paper, a strategy for ranking and selecting stocks based on UTA(UTilitès Additives) model is presented. In the process of training sample selection, two algorithms: Random Selection and Stepwise Elimination are adopted to improve the performance of the UTA-based method. With the information of objective data of stocks combined with the DM(Decision Maker)'s subjective preference statements, a utility value function can be induced to reflect the DM's preference using the UTA-based algorithm through preference disaggregation. Thus, a ranking on the whole set of stocks will be derived from the utility value function, which could be different with the objective ranking. The inconsistencies between the derived ranking and the ranking of stocks according to the objective data reveal possible overestimation or underestimation of stocks and then provide aid for the DM in the process of selecting stocks. This strategy can be also used interactively by the DM. At last, a numerical experiment on a 40-stock dataset selected from China's stock market has been done to illustrate the method presented in this paper.
Patterned Well-Aligned ZnO Nanorods Assisted with Polystyrene Monolayer by Oxygen Plasma Treatment

Zinc oxide is known as a promising material for sensing devices due to its piezoelectric properties. In particular, the alignment of ZnO nanostructures into ordered nanoarrays is expected to improve the device sensitivity due to the large surface area which can be utilized to capture significant quantities of gas particles. However, ZnO nanorods are difficult to grow on the quartz substrate with well-ordered shape. So, we investigated nanostructures by adjusting the interval distance of the arranged ZnO nanorods using polystyrene (PS) spheres of various sizes (800 nm, 1300 nm and 1600 nm). In addition, oxygen plasma treatment was used to specify the nucleation site of round, patterned ZnO nanorod growth. Therefore, ZnO nanorods were grown on a quartz substrate with a patterned polystyrene monolayer by the hydrothermal method after oxygen plasma treatment. The obtained ZnO nanostructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM).
Should length of sobriety be a major determinant in liver transplant selection?

Purpose of reviewFor patients with alcoholic liver disease, most liver transplant programs enforce a mandatory period of sustained abstinence prior to considering transplant. The ‘6-month’ rule may eliminate potentially acceptable transplant candidates from a lifesaving procedure. This review focuses on the use of sobriety length as a determinant of transplant candidacy and as a predictor of future alcohol use. We will also review the use of liver transplant in patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis, and the impact of alcohol use on posttransplant outcomes. Recent findingsPatients with alcoholic hepatitis that underwent transplantation had an increased survival when compared with controls. Alcohol relapse after transplantation was infrequent. Similarly, a United Network for Organ Sharing database review revealed similar survival in patients transplanted for alcoholic hepatitis versus alcoholic cirrhosis. Allograft loss due to alcohol use was not seen. However, alcohol usage after transplantation has been associated with a lower long-term survival in both alcoholic and nonalcoholic recipients. SummaryThe 6-month rule is insufficient in predicting relapse risk. Liver transplantation may be lifesaving in cases of alcoholic hepatitis and inflexible sobriety rules may eliminate patients from transplant consideration at a low risk of relapse. An ongoing alcohol use assessment, both pre- and posttransplant, are critical to achieving good long-term outcomes.
Platelet apoptosis and apoptotic platelet clearance by macrophages in secondary dengue virus infections.

BACKGROUND The mechanisms of thrombocytopenia and platelet phagocytosis in dengue illness are not fully understood. METHODS A prospective hospital-based study was conducted to examine the relationships between platelet counts, serum thrombopoietin (TPO) levels, and platelet apoptosis and phagocytosis in 81 patients with secondary dengue virus (DV) infections and 38 healthy volunteers. The apoptosis and phagocytosis of cultured platelets after exposure to DV were also examined. RESULTS Platelet apoptosis, platelet phagocytosis, and serum TPO levels were increased significantly in patients during the acute and early convalescence phases compared with levels observed in patients during the convalescence phase and in healthy volunteers. A significant correlation between platelet apoptosis and platelet phagocytosis was also observed in these patients. Platelet phagocytosis was inhibited significantly by the D89E mutant, which carries a point mutation in the RGD motif of milk fat globule-epidermal growth factor 8, a phosphatidylserine-recognizing bridge molecule. DV-induced platelet apoptosis and increased phagocytosis of DV-induced apoptotic platelets was confirmed using in vitro assays. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest an increased phagocytosis of DV-induced apoptotic platelets by macrophages via a phosphatidylserine-recognizing pathway in secondary DV infection. Accelerated platelet clearance, however, was overcome by TPO-induced enhanced thrombopoiesis in these patients. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION UMIN000004835.
No Association between TGFB1 Polymorphisms and Late Radiotherapy Toxicity: A Meta-Analysis

Background Transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-β1) protein may be multifunctional and related to the development of fibrosis, induction of apoptosis, extracellular signaling and inhibition of proliferation in response to radiation-induced DNA damage. Several studies have investigated associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TGFB1 gene and risk of late radiation-induced injury of normal tissue, but the conclusions remain controversial. Methods We searched three electronic databases (i.e., MEDLINE, EMBASE and EBSCO) for eligible publications and performed a meta-analysis assessing the association of three commonly studied SNPs in TGFB1 (i.e., rs1800469, rs1800470 and rs1800471) with risk of late radiation-induced injury of normal tissue. Results We finally included 28 case-only studies from 16 publications on aforementioned SNPs in TGFB1. However, we did not find statistical evidence of any significant association with overall risk of late radiotherapy toxicity in the pooled analysis or in further stratified analysis by cancer type, endpoint, ethnicity and sample size. Conclusions This meta-analysis did not find statistical evidence for an association between SNPs in TGFB1 and risk of late radiation-induced injury of normal tissue, but this finding needs further confirmation by a single large study.
LyricSynchronizer: Automatic Synchronization System Between Musical Audio Signals and Lyrics

This paper describes a system that can automatically synchronize polyphonic musical audio signals with their corresponding lyrics. Although methods for synchronizing monophonic speech signals and corresponding text transcriptions by using Viterbi alignment techniques have been proposed, these methods cannot be applied to vocals in CD recordings because vocals are often overlapped by accompaniment sounds. In addition to a conventional method for reducing the influence of the accompaniment sounds, we therefore developed four methods to overcome this problem: a method for detecting vocal sections, a method for constructing robust phoneme networks, a method for detecting fricative sounds, and a method for adapting a speech-recognizer phone model to segregated vocal signals. We then report experimental results for each of these methods and also describe our music playback interface that utilizes our system for synchronizing music and lyrics.