Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diagnosing acute monoarthritis in adults: a practical approach for the family physician.

Acute monoarthritis can be the initial manifestation of many joint disorders. The first step in diagnosis is to verify that the source of pain is the joint, not the surrounding soft tissues. The most common causes of monoarthritis are crystals (i.e., gout and pseudogout), trauma, and infection. A careful history and physical examination are important because diagnostic studies frequently are only supportive. Examination of joint fluid often is essential in making a definitive diagnosis. Leukocyte counts vary widely in septic and sterile synovial fluids and should be interpreted cautiously. If the history and diagnostic studies suggest an infection, aggressive treatment can prevent rapid joint destruction. When an infection is suspected, culture and Gram staining should be performed and antibiotics should be started. Light microscopy may be useful to identify gout crystals, but polarized microscopy is preferred. Blood tests alone never confirm a diagnosis, and radiographic studies are diagnostic only in selected conditions. Referral is indicated when patients have septic arthritis or when the initial evaluation does not determine the etiology.
Green DataPath for TCAM-Based Software-Defined Networks

A TCAM-based flow table is power-hungry hardware that can provide high-speed lookup operations for packet switching networks. A number of energy-efficient TCAM usage approaches have been proposed in recent literature, but this topic still has not been well studied in the context of traffic engineering for SDN. To this end, aiming to find energy-efficient routing paths for traffic sessions in SDN networks, we propose a novel Green DataPath architecture, where the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) power management technique is introduced. The dedicated SDN controlling module and DVFS-enabled switches are devised for the control plane and data plane, respectively. A framework for energy-efficient routing algorithms is also developed under the proposed architecture and evaluated by extensive simulations using three traffic scheduling schemes.
Visco-elastic-plastic behaviors of polymer-based packaging materials

The viscoelastic and viscoplastic properties of polymer films, an underfill, and a molding compound are reported in this paper. The scale effect is also investigated preliminarily. A constitutive framework from viscoelasticity to viscoplasticity is then proposed to describe the deformation characteristics. The significance of the nonlinear characteristics of polymer films and filled polymers to the selection of adhesives and determination of adhesive strength is discussed.
Clinical Outcomes of Transplanted Modified Bone Marrow–Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Stroke: A Phase 1/2a Study

Background and Purpose— Preclinical data suggest that cell-based therapies have the potential to improve stroke outcomes. Methods— Eighteen patients with stable, chronic stroke were enrolled in a 2-year, open-label, single-arm study to evaluate the safety and clinical outcomes of surgical transplantation of modified bone marrow–derived mesenchymal stem cells (SB623). Results— All patients in the safety population (N=18) experienced at least 1 treatment-emergent adverse event. Six patients experienced 6 serious treatment-emergent adverse events; 2 were probably or definitely related to surgical procedure; none were related to cell treatment. All serious treatment-emergent adverse events resolved without sequelae. There were no dose-limiting toxicities or deaths. Sixteen patients completed 12 months of follow-up at the time of this analysis. Significant improvement from baseline (mean) was reported for: (1) European Stroke Scale: mean increase 6.88 (95% confidence interval, 3.5–10.3; P<0.001), (2) National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale: mean decrease 2.00 (95% confidence interval, −2.7 to −1.3; P<0.001), (3) Fugl-Meyer total score: mean increase 19.20 (95% confidence interval, 11.4–27.0; P<0.001), and (4) Fugl-Meyer motor function total score: mean increase 11.40 (95% confidence interval, 4.6–18.2; P<0.001). No changes were observed in modified Rankin Scale. The area of magnetic resonance T2 fluid-attenuated inversion recovery signal change in the ipsilateral cortex 1 week after implantation significantly correlated with clinical improvement at 12 months (P<0.001 for European Stroke Scale). Conclusions— In this interim report, SB623 cells were safe and associated with improvement in clinical outcome end points at 12 months. Clinical Trial Registration— URL: https://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT01287936.
Carbon nanotube/polyaniline nanofiber ultrafiltration membranes

Development of electro-ultrafiltration membranes is an attractive target. We report electrically conducting ultrafiltration membranes by blending single-walled carbon nanotube/polyaniline (SWCNT/PANi) nanofibers into a polysulfone (PSf) matrix. By selecting the amount of nanofibers and applying a flash welding technique, the chemical structure, porosity, thermal stability, conductivity, hydrophilicity, permeability, and bovine serum albumin (BSA) rejection of these composite ultrafiltration membranes can be controlled. Addition of SWCNT/PANi nanofibers to the composites enhances the initial water permeability by 2.5–7.3 times and increases the hydrophilicity, and maintains considerable rejection of BSA from 39.8–73.7%. An electrical conductivity between 0.1 and 3.4 × 10−6 S cm−1 can be maintained over a broad pH range from 0.52–10.2. By regulating the flash welding intensity, the conductivity, permeability, and BSA rejection can be enhanced up to 600, 2, and ∼1.5 times, respectively.
Detecting Encrypted Stepping-Stone Connections

Stepping-stone attacks are often used by network intruders to hide their identities. In a stepping-stone attack, attacking commands are sent indirectly to the victim through a chain of compromised hosts acting as "stepping stones. " In defending against such attacks, it is necessary to detect stepping-stone connections at the compromised hosts. The use of encrypted connections by the attacker complicates the detection problem and the attacker's active timing perturbation and insertion of chaff make it even more challenging. This paper considers strategies to identify stepping-stone connections when the attacker is able to encrypt the attacking packets and perturb their timing. Furthermore, the attacker can also add chaff packets in the attacking stream. The paper first considers stepping-stone connections subject to packet-conserving transformations by the attacker. Two activity-based algorithms are proposed to detect stepping-stone connections with bounded memory or bounded delay perturbation, respectively. These algorithms are proven to have exponentially decaying false alarm probabilities if normal traffic can be modelled as Poisson processes. It is shown that the proposed algorithms improve the performance of an existing stepping-stone detection algorithm. This paper then addresses the detection of stepping-stone connections with both timing perturbation and chaff. Robust algorithms are developed to deal with chaff evasion. It is proven that the proposed robust algorithms can tolerate a number of chaff packets proportional to the size of the attacking traffic, and have vanishing false alarm probabilities for Poisson traffic. Simulations using synthetic data are used to validate the theoretical analysis. Further results using actual Internet traces are shown to demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithms
Confidence measure based language identification

In this paper we present a new application for confidence measures in spoken language processing. In today's computerized dialogue systems, language identification (LID) is typically achieved via dedicated modules. In our approach, LID is integrated into the speech recognizer, therefore profiting from high-level linguistic knowledge at very little extra cost. Our new approach is based on a word lattice based confidence measure (Kemp and Schaaf, 1997), which was originally devised for unsupervised training. In this work, we show that the confidence based language identification algorithm outperforms conventional score based methods. Also, this method is less dependent on the acoustic characteristics of the transmission channel than score based methods. By introducing additional parameters, unknown languages can be rejected. The proposed method is compared to a score based approach on the Verbmobil database, a three language task.
CircNet: a database of circular RNAs derived from transcriptome sequencing data

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) represent a new type of regulatory noncoding RNA that only recently has been identified and cataloged. Emerging evidence indicates that circRNAs exert a new layer of post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. In this study, we utilized transcriptome sequencing datasets to systematically identify the expression of circRNAs (including known and newly identified ones by our pipeline) in 464 RNA-seq samples, and then constructed the CircNet database (http://circnet.mbc.nctu.edu.tw/) that provides the following resources: (i) novel circRNAs, (ii) integrated miRNA-target networks, (iii) expression profiles of circRNA isoforms, (iv) genomic annotations of circRNA isoforms (e.g. 282 948 exon positions), and (v) sequences of circRNA isoforms. The CircNet database is to our knowledge the first public database that provides tissue-specific circRNA expression profiles and circRNA–miRNA-gene regulatory networks. It not only extends the most up to date catalog of circRNAs but also provides a thorough expression analysis of both previously reported and novel circRNAs. Furthermore, it generates an integrated regulatory network that illustrates the regulation between circRNAs, miRNAs and genes.
Parental factors associated with regular use of dental services by second-year secondary school students in Quebec.

The aim of this study was to identify the parental factors associated with regular use of dental services by second year secondary school students in Quebec. Data were collected in 1996-97, as part of a provincial survey on the dental health of Quebec students. A stratified probabilistic sample of 1,351 students, representative at the provincial level, was obtained. Data about frequency of use of dental services, parents' socio-economic characteristics, dental insurance (private and public) and parents' utilization of dental services were selected for this study. Half of the students used dental services regularly (i.e., once every 6 months). Multivariate analysis showed that the strongest parental factors associated with regular use were (in decreasing order of importance) the date of the mother's most recent dental visit, dental insurance, household income and the date of the father's most recent dental visit. After adjustment for the parents' socio-economic characteristics and the availability of dental insurance, students with one parent (particularly the mother) who had visited the dentist within the previous year had better odds of using dental services every 6 months, as recommended by professional standards.
Evaluating New Definitions of Acute and Early HIV Infection from HIV Surveillance Data

Background : The U.S. HIV staging system is being revised to more comprehensively track early and acute HIV infection (AHI). We evaluated our ability to identify known cases of AHI using King County (KC) HIV surveillance data. Methodology : AHI cases were men who have sex with men (MSM) with negative antibody and positive pooled nucleic acid amplification (NAAT) tests identified through KC testing sites. We used KC surveillance data to calculate inter-test intervals (ITI, time from last negative to first positive test) and the serologic algorithm for recent HIV seroconversion (STARHS). For surveillance data, AHI was defined as an ITI of ≤ 30 days and early infection as an ITI ≤ 180 days or STARHS recent result. Dates of last negative HIV tests were obtained from lab reports in the HIV surveillance system or data collected for HIV Incidence Surveillance. Results : Between 2005 and 2011, 47 MSM with AHI were identified by pooled NAAT. Of the 47 cases, 36% had ITI < 1 day, 60% had an ITI < 30 days, and 70% (95% CI=55-82%) had an ITI ≤ 6 months and would have been identified as early HIV infection. Of the 47, 38% had STARHS testing and 94% were STARHS recent. Conclusion : MSM with known AHI were not identified by proposed definitions of AHI and early infection. These known AHI cases were frequently missed by HIV surveillance because concurrent negative antibody tests were not reported. Successful implementation of the revisions to the HIV staging system will require more comprehensive reporting.
Role of Angiotensinogen in Blood Pressure Homeostasis

The role of angiotensinogen ID blood pressure control was assessed in nonnotensive rate by observing the changes resulting from inhibition by specific rat angiotensinogen antiserum. The antiserura decreased blood pressure in rats on normal sodium as well as sodium-free diets (respectively ΔBP = −30 ± 6 mm Hg and −42 ± 8 mm Hg). In binephrectomlzed sodium-replete rats, administration of antiserum did not reduce blood pressure, whereas in sodium-depleted animals it slightly decreased blood pressure by 11 ± 3 mm Hg. These results suggest that angiotensinogen participates in the regulation of blood pressure in normotensive rats, even in the sodium-replete state. (Hypertension 4: 185–189, 1982)
Neuroprotective Effect of Felbamate After Kainic Acid‐Induced Status Epilepticus

Summary: Felbamate (FBM), a newly developed antiepileptic drug (AED), was previously shown to offer some neuroprotective effects against hypoxic injury in both in vivo and in vitro studies. We administered FBM (100 or 300 mg/kg) to 30‐day‐old rats 1 h after they received a convulsant dosage of kainic acid (KA). Animals were then tested at age 80 days in the water maze, open field, and handling tests. Seizure latency was then tested by flurothyl inhalation. Animals that received 300 mg/kg FBM performed better in all three tests and had longer latencies to flurothyl‐induced seizures than did animals that received vehicle. This study suggests that FBM may have some neuroprotective effects after KA‐induced status epilepticus (SE).
Behaviour of Glass in Cement-Based Materials: Its Role on ASR

One of the most worrying degradation mechanisms in hardened concrete is the occurrence of chemical expansive reactions, namely due to alkali-silica reactions (ASR). This pathology involves the formation of expansive products inside the material. This situation is very difficult to deal with, because presently there is no efficient method to repair concrete structures affected by ASR. Hence, there is an urgent need to find preventive methods that may inhibit these reactions in new concrete structures. Nowadays, the use of pozzolanic mineral additions is recommended to mitigate this type of degradation. Moreover, their effect depends on their chemical and mineralogical composition and also on the cement content replacement ratio. Glass is a common material with some environmental problems regarding recycling and landfilling. Some studies exist about its use as fine powder, like a pozzolan, in cement-based materials. However, there are also some problems related to its use as coarse aggregate in cement–based materials due to ASR development. This paper presents the results obtained in mortars exposed to 1M NaOH solution prepared with crushed glass as aggregate and as addition in cement substitution. The results reveal that ASR is reduced with the incorporation of glass as aggregate or addition, and its efficiency depends on its replacement content. This study shows that an incorporation of glass aggregates up to 20% in mass will generate no significant expansion when compared with concrete made with natural aggregates.
An Empirical Analysis of Exploitation Attempts Based on Vulnerabilities in Open Source Software

For open source software, security attention frequently focuses on the discovery of vulnerabilities prior to release. The large number of diverse people who view the source code may find vulnerabilities before the software product is release. Therefore, open source software has the potential to be more secure than closed source software. Unfortunately, for vulnerabilities found after release, the benefits of many having viewers may now work against open source software security. Attackers may be more likely to exploit discovered vulnerabilities since they too can view the source code and can use it to learn the details of a weakness and how best to exploit it. I examine the diffusion of vulnerabilities in open source software compared with closed source software. Empirical analysis of two years of security alert data from intrusion detection systems indicates that open source software vulnerabilities are at greater risk of exploitation, diffuse more rapidly, and have greater volume of exploitation attempts.
A Likelihood Approach for Real-Time Calibration of Stochastic Compartmental Epidemic Models

Stochastic transmission dynamic models are especially useful for studying the early emergence of novel pathogens given the importance of chance events when the number of infectious individuals is small. However, methods for parameter estimation and prediction for these types of stochastic models remain limited. In this manuscript, we describe a calibration and prediction framework for stochastic compartmental transmission models of epidemics. The proposed method, Multiple Shooting for Stochastic systems (MSS), applies a linear noise approximation to describe the size of the fluctuations, and uses each new surveillance observation to update the belief about the true epidemic state. Using simulated outbreaks of a novel viral pathogen, we evaluate the accuracy of MSS for real-time parameter estimation and prediction during epidemics. We assume that weekly counts for the number of new diagnosed cases are available and serve as an imperfect proxy of incidence. We show that MSS produces accurate estimates of key epidemic parameters (i.e. mean duration of infectiousness, R0, and Reff) and can provide an accurate estimate of the unobserved number of infectious individuals during the course of an epidemic. MSS also allows for accurate prediction of the number and timing of future hospitalizations and the overall attack rate. We compare the performance of MSS to three state-of-the-art benchmark methods: 1) a likelihood approximation with an assumption of independent Poisson observations; 2) a particle filtering method; and 3) an ensemble Kalman filter method. We find that MSS significantly outperforms each of these three benchmark methods in the majority of epidemic scenarios tested. In summary, MSS is a promising method that may improve on current approaches for calibration and prediction using stochastic models of epidemics.
Fast Generation of Pointerless Octree Duals

Geometry processing applications frequently rely on octree structures, since they provide simple and efficient hierarchies for discrete data. However, octrees do not guarantee direct continuous interpolation of this data inside its nodes. This motivates the use of the octree's dual structure, which is one of the simplest continuous hierarchical structures. With the emergence of pointerless representations, with their ability to reduce memory footprint and adapt to parallel architectures, the generation of duals of pointerless octrees becomes a natural challenge. This work proposes strategies for dual generation of static or dynamic pointerless octrees. Experimentally, those methods enjoy the memory reduction of pointerless representations and speed up the execution by several factors compared to the usual recursive generation.
Improved constraints for multiprocessor system scheduling

MILP-based models are useful for finding optimal schedules and for proving their optimality. Because of the problem complexity, model improvements have to be investigated. We analyze the constraints necessary for precluding resource conflicts, present novel formulations, and evaluate them. The efficiency of the solution process can be improved significantly by selecting the proper formulation.
Effect of thimerosal, methylmercury, and mercuric chloride in Jurkat T Cell Line

ABSTRACT Mercury is a ubiquitous environmental toxicant that causes a wide range of adverse health effects in humans. Three forms of mercury exist: elemental, inorganic and organic. Each of them has its own profile of toxicity. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of thimerosal, a topical antiseptic and preservative in vaccines routinely given to children, methyl mercury, and mercuric chloride on cellular viability measured by MTT in Jurkat T cells, a human T leukemia cell line. The treatment of Jurkat T cells with thimerosal caused a significant decrease in cellular viability at 1 μM (25%, p<0.05; IC50: 10 μM). Methyl mercury exhibited a significant decrease in cellular viability at 50 μM (33%, p<0.01; IC50: 65 μM). Mercuric chloride (HgCl2) did not show any significant change in cellular survival. Our findings showed that contrary to thimerosal and methyl mercury, mercuric chloride did not modify Jurkat T cell viability.
MEMS-Based Silicon Nitride Thin Film Materials and Devices at Cryogenic Temperatures for Space Applications

Title of Dissertation: MEMS-BASED SILICON NITRIDE THIN FILM MATERIALS AND DEVICES AT CRYOGENIC TEMPERATURES FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS Wen-Hsien Chuang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Dissertation directed by: Professor Reza Ghodssi Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Microshutter arrays, scheduled to be launched in 2011 as part of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will be the first micro-scale optical devices in outer space using MEMS technology. As the microshutter arrays consist of electrical and mechanical components and must operate in a cryogenic environment reliably over a 10 year mission lifetime, a fundamental challenge for the development of this device is to understand the mechanical behaviors of the micro-scale materials used and the possible failure mechanisms at 30 K. This thesis investigates the mechanical properties and reliability of low-stress LPCVD silicon nitride thin films, the structural materials of the microshutter arrays, at cryogenic temperatures. A helium-cooled cryogenic measurement setup installed inside a focused-ion-beam system is designed, implemented, and characterized to obtain a cryogenic environment down to 20 K. Resonating T-shaped cantilevers with different “milling masses” are used to measure the Young’s modulus of silicon nitride thin films, while the fracture strength is characterized by bending tests of these beams. A passive high-sensitivity microgauge sensor based on displacement amplification is introduced to measure residual stress and coefficients of thermal expansion, which are critical for the device performance. To achieve accelerated fatigue study of the microshutter arrays, a novel mechanical-amplifier actuator is designed, fabricated, and tested to emulate their torsional operating stress. Furthermore, nano-scale tensile fatigue tests are demonstrated using similar mechanical-amplifier actuators. The research results of this thesis provide important thin film material parameters for the design, fabrication, and characterization of the microshutter arrays. Moreover, the presented test devices and experimental techniques are not limited for space applications only but can be extended for characterization of other thin film materials used in MEMS and microsystems. MEMS-BASED SILICON NITRIDE THIN FILM MATERIALS AND DEVICES AT CRYOGENIC TEMPERATURES FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS