Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multiple primer extension by DNA polymerase on a novel plastic DNA array coated with a biocompatible polymer

DNA microarrays are routinely used to monitor gene expression profiling and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). However, for practically useful high performance, the detection sensitivity is still not adequate, leaving low expression genes undetected. To resolve this issue, we have developed a new plastic S-BIO® PrimeSurface® with a biocompatible polymer; its surface chemistry offers an extraordinarily stable thermal property for a lack of pre-activated glass slide surface. The oligonucleotides immobilized on this substrate are robust in boiling water and show no significant loss of hybridization activity during dissociation treatment. This allowed us to hybridize the templates, extend the 3′ end of the immobilized DNA primers on the S-Bio® by DNA polymerase using deoxynucleotidyl triphosphates (dNTP) as extender units, release the templates by denaturalization and use the same templates for a second round of reactions similar to that of the PCR method. By repeating this cycle, the picomolar concentration range of the template oligonucleotide can be detected as stable signals via the incorporation of labeled dUTP into primers. This method of Multiple Primer EXtension (MPEX) could be further extended as an alternative route for producing DNA microarrays for SNP analyses via simple template preparation such as reverse transcript cDNA or restriction enzyme treatment of genome DNA.
Vergleich von OFDM-Verfahren mit reduzierter Spitzenleistung

A liquid container having a captive brush in one end. A cylindrical cap seals the container and brush when not in use. To paint a small object, the cap is removed, the container is inverted, and the brush emerges from the container ready for use. A ball valve in the container adds liquid to the brush by inverting the container.
A map for lineage restriction of progenitors during hematopoiesis: the essence of the myeloid‐based model

Summary: Most hematology and immunology textbooks describe that the first branch point from the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) produces two progenitors, one for myelo‐erythroid cells and the other for lymphoid cells including T and B cells. This model is based on the concept that the blood cell family can be subdivided into two major lineages, a myelo‐erythroid lineage and a lymphoid lineage. Several alternative models have been proposed during the last three decades. We proposed the myeloid‐based model in 2001, in which myeloid potential is retained in an early stage of branches toward erythroid, T‐, and B‐cell lineages. In this review, we focus on the point that cell differentiation models have two different facets: as a map of developmental potential and a cell fate map. These two are expressed in other words as a map for lineage restriction and a map for physiological production routes. We argue that a map of potential is first and foremost essential for the study of molecular mechanisms of lineage commitment, which is the least clarified aspect of cell differentiation. The validity of the myeloid‐based model of hematopoiesis will be discussed in reference to these two issues, developmental potential and cell fate.
Adaptive virtual network provisioning

In the future, virtual networks will be allocated, maintained and managed much like clouds offering flexibility, extensibility and elasticity with resources acquired for a limited time and even on a lease basis. Adaptive provisioning is required to maintain virtual network topologies, comply with established contracts, expand initial allocations on demand, release resources no longer useful, optimize resource utilization and respond to anomalies, faults and evolving demands. In this paper, we elaborate on adaptive virtual resource provisioning to maintain virtual networks, allocated initially on demand, in response to a virtual network creation request. We propose a distributed fault-tolerant embedding algorithm, which relies on substrate node agents to cope with failures and severe performance degradation. This algorithm coupled with dynamic resource binding is integrated and evaluated within a medium-scale experimental infrastructure.
KUSUGURI: a shared tactile interface for bidirectional tickling

Tickling, a nonverbal form of communication, can provide entertainment. Therefore, tickling is a desirable addition as content as a remote communication method. However, tickling is difficult to realize because it requires both body contact as well as bidirectionality. In this paper, we propose a method of "Shared Tactile Interface" which allows sharing of a body part with another user at a distance. The interface has three features: direct contact, transfer of the tickling sensation, and bidirectionality. The first allows users to view another person's finger as if it is directly contacting the user's own palm and moving on the user's palm. The second feature delivers a vibration to the user's palm which generates an illusion and perception of a tickling sensation. The third feature enables bidirectional tickling because one user can also tickle the other user's palm in the same manner. We built prototypes based on this design method, and evaluated the proposed method through two technical exhibitions. The users were able to tickle each other, which confirmed that the design method "Shared Tactile Interface" works as expected. However, we found issues especially regarding the reliability of the tickling sensation.
The Context of Organization Structures

Aspects of organizational context that have been held to be relevant to organizational structure were examined. Seven primary concepts of organizational context, viz.: origin and history, ownership and control, size, charter, technology, location and dependence on other organizations, were analyzed and operationally defined scales constructed. These were used as independent variables in a multivariate' regression analysis to predict three underlying dimensions of organization structure previously established. The size of the correlations obtained on a sample of 46 organizations in the English Midlands (0.75 with structuring of activities using size and technology as predictors; 0.75 with concentration of authority using dependence and location as predictors; 0.57 with line control of workflow, using the operating variability scale of charter as a predictor) indicates that these aspects of context are salient for structure. The framework of contextual and structural variables is seen as making possible processual studies on a much more rigorous comparative basis than before. '
Bus analysis and performance evaluation on a SOC platform at the system level design

This paper describes bus analysis needs for a new bus, called STbus, in a new SOC design flow based on CoWare N2C tool. This flow allows architects to explore and evaluate different STbus architectures for the same system on chip. A waveform analyzer is being developed to take the outputs of the CoWare simulation as inputs and provides reports and graphs about all the STBus features: signals latencies, bus and fifos occupancies, throughputs and bandwidths. Moreover, the tool checks STBus protocol rules and evaluates cycle accuracy discrepancies between CoWare C models and VHDL models.
3D Reconstruction of Indoor Scenes using a Single RGB-D Image

The three-dimensional reconstruction of a scene is essential for the interpretation of an environment. In this paper, a novel and robust method for the 3D reconstruction of an indoor scene using a single RGB-D image is proposed. First, the layout of the scene is identified and then, a new approach for isolating the objects in the scene is presented. Its fundamental idea is the segmentation of the whole image in planar surfaces and the merging of the ones that belong to the same object. Finally, a cuboid is fitted to each segmented object by a new RANSAC-based technique. The method is applied to various scenes and is able to provide a meaningful interpretation of these scenes even in cases with strong clutter and occlusion. In addition, a new ground truth dataset, on which the proposed method is further tested, was created. The results imply that the present work outperforms recent state-of-the-art approaches not only in accuracy but also in robustness and time complexity.
Mandarin wordcharacter wordcharacter wordcharacter hybridinput hybridinput hybridinput Neural Network Language Model

We applied neural network language model (NNLM) on Chinese by training and testing it on 2011 GALE Mandarin evaluation task. Exploiting the fact that there are no word boundaries in written Chinese, we trained various NNLMs using either word, character, or both, including a wordcharacter hybrid-input NNLM which accepts both word and character as input. Our best result showed up to 0.6% absolute (6.3% relative) Character Error Rate (CER) reduction compared to an un-pruned 4-gram standard language model and 0.2% absolute (2.6% relative) CER reduction compared to a word-based NNLM.
Leukemia inhibitory factor inhibits osteoclastic resorption, growth, mineralization, and alkaline phosphatase activity in fetal mouse metacarpal bones in culture

Leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) has been reported to affect bone metabolism, but results are variable. We examined the effect of mouse recombinant LIF on osteoclastic resorption in fetal bone explants representing different stages of osteoclast development. In cultures of 17‐day‐old fetal mouse metacarpals in which only osteoclast progenitors and precursors are present, resorption (measured as 45Ca release) was significantly inhibited to 29.2% and to 96.6% in the presence of LIF 100 and 1000 U/ml, respectively. Histologic examination of the explants treated with 1000 U/ml of LIF confirmed the biochemical findings and showed that osteoclast progenitors and precursors remained in the periosteum and did not invade the mineralized matrix. In metacarpals of older fetuses (18‐ and 19‐day‐old) in which the mineralizied cartilage has been invaded by mature osteoclasts, the inhibition of resorption by LIF (1000 U/ml) was 87.9 and 74.7%, respectively, the latter being significantly less than the inhibition observed in 17‐day‐old metacarpal cultures. The inhibitory effect of LIF was absent during concurrent administration of PTH or 1,25‐(OH)2D3 and could be reversed by PTH. In addition, LIF was found to inhibit growth, mineralization, and alkaline phosphatase activity in metacarpals independently of osteoclastic resorption. These results suggest that LIF affects the development rather than the activity of osteoclasts, probably through an effect on the osteogenic cells. LIF may be an important endogenous regulator of bone metabolism.
Magnetic Domain-Wall Racetrack Memory-Based Nonvolatile Logic for Low-Power Computing and Fast Run-Time-Reconfiguration

The high power and the long global interconnect delay are two of the major bottlenecks that limit the further scaling down of the process nodes in the VLSI systems. Therefore, new technologies and computer architectures are under focused development to reduce the power consumption and the interconnect delay. Current-induced magnetic domain-wall (DW) racetrack memory (RM) has the advantages of nonvolatility, fast switching speed, and high density. It may offer opportunities to open a new paradigm of circuits and architectures to significantly alleviate the power and delay issues. This paper presents the magnetic DW RM-based new nonvolatile logic designs for the low-power computing and fast run-time-reconfiguration. Both data transfer and reconfiguration are achieved by shifting the magnetic strips. Verify-before-shift approach is used to greatly reduce the shifting energy. Compared with the conventional nonvolatile logic gate, the proposed nonvolatile logic scheme doubles the operating speed with 87% lower operating energy. Moreover, the proposed nonvolatile logic gates can be reconfigured after fabrication, which makes the designs more flexible and robust. The reference reconfiguration and the polarity reconfiguration are presented in this paper, which can be finished in 1 ns with 130 fJ/strip energy and 6 ns with 390 fJ/strip energy, respectively.
State of malnutrition in hospitals of Ecuador.

RATIONALE Hospital malnutrition is a global health problem affecting 30-50% of hospitalized patients. There are no estimates of the size of this problem in Ecuadorian hospitals. Hospital malnutrition might influence the quality of medical assistance provided to hospitalized populations. OBJECTIVES To estimate the current frequency of malnutrition among patients admitted to Ecuadorian public hospitals. MATERIALS AND METHODS The Ecuadorian Hospital Malnutrition Study was conducted between November 2011 and June 2012 with 5,355 patients (Women: 37.5%; Ages ≥ 60 years: 35.1%; Length of stay ≤ 15 days: 91.2%) admitted to 36 public hospitals located in the prominent cities of 22 out of the 24 provinces of the country. Malnutrition frequency was estimated by means of the Subjective Global Assessment survey. RESULTS Malnutrition affected 37.1% of the surveyed patients. Malnutrition was dependent upon patient's age and education level; as well as the presence of cancer, sepsis, and chronic organic failure. Hospital areas showed different frequencies of hospital malnutrition. Health condition leading to hospital admission influenced negatively upon nutritional status. Malnutrition frequency increased as length of stay prolonged. CONCLUSIONS Malnutrition currently affects an important proportion of patients hospitalized in public health institutions of Ecuador. Policies and actions are urgently required in order to successfully deal with this health problem and thus to ameliorate its negative impact upon quality of medical care.
Relative Pattern Recognition for Noisy Handwritten Numeral Recognition

A novel framework for pattern recognition, namely Relative Pattern Recognition (RPR), is presented in this paper. RPR is based on a relative feature representation/extraction method. While traditional feature extraction determines features to discriminate all the classes in a given domain, RPR extracts relative features to separate only two classes at a time. The feature determination process becomes less costly in practice. To demonstrate the feasibility of RPR, an implement method of RPR using Recursive Feature Elimination in Support Vector Machines (SVMs) is described. Experimental results on public datasets, such as Iris, Isolet and MNIST show that RPR is effective and efficient with advantages over standard SVM. In addition, simulated experimental results show that RPR has robustness in partial and strong noisy handwritten numeral recognition.
Facteurs prédictifs d’empathie chez les internes en médecine générale

Objectif : L’empathie est une competence necessaire a tout medecin generaliste. Promouvoir l’empathie chez les internes en medecine generale est donc primordial. Notre objectif est de determiner les facteurs predictifs d’empathie dans cette population. Methode : Il s’agit d’une etude transversale realisee en avril 2013. Les internes de medecine generale d’Ile de France, en fin de premier semestre d’internat, ont ete invites a repondre a un auto-questionnaire en ligne. Les donnees socio-demographiques, les loisirs, les facteurs professionnels, la formation et les facteurs lies au bien-etre ou a la detresse emotionnelle (satisfaction de vie, anxiete, depression, epuisement professionnel) ont ete analyses. L’empathie a ete mesuree par la Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy. Resultats : Parmi 215 internes ayant repondu, 175 questionnaires sont remplis pour l’empathie. Le score moyen d’empathie globale est de 104,3 (ET=11,8). L’empathie globale est significativement associee a une pratique sportive reguliere (p=0.01), a la formation « informelle » (p=0.03), a la depersonnalisation et l’accomplissement personnel composantes du burn out (p<0,01). La dimension Prise de Perspective de l’empathie est significativement associee a la formation « informelle » (p<0,01). Les trois dimensions de l’empathie sont associees a une ou plusieurs composantes du burn out (p<0,02). Conclusion : Poursuivre les efforts dans la formation des internes, veiller a leur bien-etre et surtout a reduire leur etat d’epuisement professionnel pourraient favoriser le developpement de l’empathie au cours du cursus medical.
PREDICTIVE YASIR: HIGH SECURITY WITH LOWER

Message authentication with low latency is necessary to ensure secure operations in legacy industrial control networks, such as power grid networks. Previous authentication solutions by our lab and others looked at single messages and incurred noticeable latency. To reduce this latency, we develop Predictive YASIR, a bump-in-the-wire device that looks at broader patterns of messages. The device (1) predicts the incoming plaintext based on previous observations; (2) compresses, encrypts, and authenticates data online; and (3) pre-sends a part of ciphertext before receiving the whole plaintext. I demonstrate the performance properties of this approach by implementing it in the Scalable Simulation Framework and testing it on Modbus/ASCII protocol, which is widely used in the power grid, oil and gas, manufacturing, and water treatment control networks. By looking at broader message patterns and us-ing predictive analysis, my results demonstrate a 15.48 ± 0.35% improvement in latency over the previous most efﬁcient solution. The simulation code is available from http://www.cs. dartmouth.edu/˜pyasir/ .
CORRELATION OF MOTOR NERVE CONDUCTION VELOCITY AND NUMBER OF INNERVATED MUSCLE FIBERS

Distal and proximal motor (M) responses were recorded from the "Abductor Pollicis Brevis" (APB) muscle by using the collision method; median motor nerve was stimulated at distal (elbow) and proximal (wrist) regions in a concurrent manner. The delay between two stimuli (ISI: Inter-stimulus Interval), beginning at 9 ms, was decreased by 0.1 ms steps, until the proximal potential completely disappeared. Areas of M responses recorded for each ISI were calculated. Because the area difference between two subsequent ISIs is proportional to the number of muscle fibers innervated by the conduction velocity group at that interval, the relative numbers of muscle fibers for each velocity group were calculated. The results show that the motor nerve conduction velocities belonging to the innervating APB muscle vary between 38 m/s and 57 m/s; the conduction velocity of the group innervating the greatest number of muscle nerves was found to be 55-57 m/s, which comprised 10% of all fibers
Testing the depth-differentiation hypothesis in a deepwater octocoral

The depth-differentiation hypothesis proposes that the bathyal region is a source of genetic diversity and an area where there is a high rate of species formation. Genetic differentiation should thus occur over relatively small vertical distances, particularly along the upper continental slope (200–1000 m) where oceanography varies greatly over small differences in depth. To test whether genetic differentiation within deepwater octocorals is greater over vertical rather than geographical distances, Callogorgia delta was targeted. This species commonly occurs throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico at depths ranging from 400 to 900 m. We found significant genetic differentiation (FST = 0.042) across seven sites spanning 400 km of distance and 400 m of depth. A pattern of isolation by depth emerged, but geographical distance between sites may further limit gene flow. Water mass boundaries may serve to isolate populations across depth; however, adaptive divergence with depth is also a possible scenario. Microsatellite markers also revealed significant genetic differentiation (FST = 0.434) between C. delta and a closely related species, Callogorgia americana, demonstrating the utility of microsatellites in species delimitation of octocorals. Results provided support for the depth-differentiation hypothesis, strengthening the notion that factors covarying with depth serve as isolation mechanisms in deep-sea populations.
Design Versus design-From the Shaping of Products to the Creation of User Experiences

The concept of design in the context of human-computer interaction is discussed based on definitions from industrial design to the very practical problem of achieving usability in industrial projects in practice. Design is an important quality of a product that today has not been receiving enough attention when it comes to computerized artifacts. Design is also a process of creating the user's experience of a system. This article focuses more on design as a creative process of communication than on a posteriori product quality aspects. The Scandinavian tradition has stressed the importance of users participating actively in a user-centered design process. The article defines and discusses user-centered design in light of the theories of communication as put forth by Herbert Clark (1996). Communication is identified as one of the key issues that needs to be addressed to achieve well-functioning user-centered design. The article discusses different terminology and gives examples from a theory on common ground. Finally, mock-ups, prototypes, and video are discussed as tools for facilitating communication and construction of common ground.
Clinical audit in dentistry: From a concept to an initiation

Clinical audit is a quality improvement process that aims to improve patient care through a systematic review of care against explicit criteria. It is a cyclic and multidisciplinary process which involves a series of steps from planning the audit through measuring the performance to implementing and sustaining the change. Although audit contains some facets of research, it is essential to understand the difference between the two. Auditing can be done right from the record maintaining, diagnosis and treatment and postoperative evaluation and follow-up. The immense potential of clinical audit can be utilized only when open-mindedness and innovativeness are encouraged and evidence-based work culture is cultivated.
An Analysis of the Relationship between Information Squeeziness and Failed Error Propagation in Software Testing 8 October 2013

Failed error propagation (FEP) is known to hamper software testing, yet it remains poorly understood. We introduce an information theoretic formulation of FEP that is based on measures of conditional entropy. This formulation considers the situation in which we are interested in the potential for an incorrect program state at statement s to fail to propagate to incorrect output. We define five metrics that di↵er in two ways: whether we only consider parts of the program that can be reached after executing s and whether we restrict attention to a single program path of interest. We give the results of experiments in which it was found that on average one in 10 tests su↵ered from FEP, earlier studies having shown that this figure can vary significantly between programs. The experiments also showed that our metrics are well-correlated with FEP. Our empirical study involved 30 programs, for which we executed a total of 7,140,000 test cases. The results reveal that the metrics di↵er in their performance but the Spearman rank correlation with failed error propagation is just under 0.95 for one metric and just over 0.95 for another. These strong correlations in an experimental setting in which all information about both FEP and conditional entropy is known opens up the possibility in the longer term of devising inexpensive information theory based metrics that allow us to minimise the e↵ect of FEP.