Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human Neural Stem Cells Over-Expressing VEGF Provide Neuroprotection, Angiogenesis and Functional Recovery in Mouse Stroke Model

Background Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a lethal stroke type. As mortality approaches 50%, and current medical therapy against ICH shows only limited effectiveness, an alternative approach is required, such as stem cell-based cell therapy. Previously we have shown that intravenously transplanted human neural stem cells (NSCs) selectively migrate to the brain and induce behavioral recovery in rat ICH model, and that combined administration of NSCs and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) results in improved structural and functional outcome from cerebral ischemia. Methods and Findings We postulated that human NSCs overexpressing VEGF transplanted into cerebral cortex overlying ICH lesion could provide improved survival of grafted NSCs, increased angiogenesis and behavioral recovery in mouse ICH model. ICH was induced in adult mice by unilateral injection of bacterial collagenase into striatum. HB1.F3. VEGF human NSC line produced an amount of VEGF four times higher than parental F3 cell line in vitro, and induced behavioral improvement and 2–3 fold increase in cell survival at two weeks and eight weeks post-transplantation. Conclusions Brain transplantation of F3 human NSCs over-expressing VEGF near ICH lesion sites provided differentiation and survival of grafted human NSCs and renewed angiogenesis of host brain and functional recovery of ICH animals. These results suggest a possible application of the human neural stem cell line, which is genetically modified to over-express VEGF, as a therapeutic agent for ICH-stroke.
Origin and function of short-latency inputs to the neural substrates underlying the acoustic startle reflex

The acoustic startle reflex (ASR) is a survival mechanism of alarm, which rapidly alerts the organism to a sudden loud auditory stimulus. In rats, the primary ASR circuit encompasses three serially connected structures: cochlear root neurons (CRNs), neurons in the caudal pontine reticular nucleus (PnC), and motoneurons in the medulla and spinal cord. It is well-established that both CRNs and PnC neurons receive short-latency auditory inputs to mediate the ASR. Here, we investigated the anatomical origin and functional role of these inputs using a multidisciplinary approach that combines morphological, electrophysiological and behavioral techniques. Anterograde tracer injections into the cochlea suggest that CRNs somata and dendrites receive inputs depending, respectively, on their basal or apical cochlear origin. Confocal colocalization experiments demonstrated that these cochlear inputs are immunopositive for the vesicular glutamate transporter 1 (VGLUT1). Using extracellular recordings in vivo followed by subsequent tracer injections, we investigated the response of PnC neurons after contra-, ipsi-, and bilateral acoustic stimulation and identified the source of their auditory afferents. Our results showed that the binaural firing rate of PnC neurons was higher than the monaural, exhibiting higher spike discharges with contralateral than ipsilateral acoustic stimulations. Our histological analysis confirmed the CRNs as the principal source of short-latency acoustic inputs, and indicated that other areas of the cochlear nucleus complex are not likely to innervate PnC. Behaviorally, we observed a strong reduction of ASR amplitude in monaural earplugged rats that corresponds with the binaural summation process shown in our electrophysiological findings. Our study contributes to understand better the role of neuronal mechanisms in auditory alerting behaviors and provides strong evidence that the CRNs-PnC pathway mediates fast neurotransmission and binaural summation of the ASR.
“Phish mail guard: Phishing mail detection technique by using textual and URL analysis”

Phishing is the combination of social engineering and technical exploits designed to convince a victim to provide personal information, usually for the monetary gain of the attacker. Phishing emails contains messages to lure victims into performing certain actions, such as clicking on a URL where a phishing website is hosted, or executing a malware code. Phishing has become the most popular practice among the criminals of the Web. Phishing attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. URL and textual content analysis of email will results in a highly accurate anti phishing email classifier. We propose a technique where we consider the advantages of blacklist, white list and heuristic technique for increasing accuracy and reducing false positive rate. In heuristic technique we are using textual analysis and URL analysis of e-mail. Since most of the phishing mails have similar contents, our proposed method will increase the performance by analysing textual contents of mail and lexical URL analysis. It will detect phishing mail if DNS in actual link is present in blacklist. DNS is present in white list then it is considered as legitimate DNS. If it is not present in blacklist as well as white list then it is analyzed by using pattern matching with existing phishing DNS, contents found in mail and analysis of actual URL. With the help blacklist and white list we are avoiding detection time for phishing and legitimate email. At the same time we are decreasing false positive rate by combining features of DNS, textual content analysis of email and URL analysis.
Robust nonlinear observer design for actuator fault detection in diesel engines

Abstract This paper is concerned with actuator fault detection in nonlinear systems in the presence of disturbances. A nonlinear unknown input observer is designed and the output estimation error is used as a residual for fault detection. To deal with the problem of high Lipschitz constants, a modified mean-value theorem is used to express the nonlinear error dynamics as a convex combination of known matrices with time-varying coefficients. Moreover, the disturbance attenuation is performed using a modified H∞ criterion. A sufficient condition for the existence of an unknown input observer is obtained using a linear matrix inequality formula, and the observer gains are obtained by solving the corresponding set of inequalities. The advantages of the proposed method are that no a priori assumption on the unknown input is required and that it can be applied to a large class of nonlinear systems. Performances of the proposed approach are shown through the application to a diesel engine model.
Lightweight contrastive summarization for news comment mining

We develop and discuss a news comment miner that presents distinct viewpoints on a given theme or event. Given a query, the system uses metasearch techniques to find relevant news articles. Relevant articles are then scraped for both article content and comments. Snippets from the comments are sampled and presented to the user, based on theme popularity and contrastiveness to previously selected snippets. The system design focuses on being quicker and more lightweight than recent topic modelling approaches, while still focusing on selecting orthogonal snippets.
Image Super-Resolution Based on MCA and Wavelet-Domain HMT

In this paper we propose an image super-resolution algorithm using The Morphological Component Analysis(MCA) and wavelet-domain Hidden Markov Tree(HMT) model. The MCA is a useful method for signal decomposing, using proper basis, we could separate features contained in a signal when these features present different morphological aspects. Wavelet-domain HMT models the dependencies of multiscale wavelet coefficients through the state probabilities of wavelet coefficients. In this paper, we first decompose an image into texture and piecewise smooth (cartoon) parts, then enlarge the cartoon part with interpolation, because wavelet-domain HMT accurately characterizes the statistics of real-world images, we specify it as the prior distribution and then formulate the image super-resolution problem as a constrained optimization problem to acquire the enlarged texture part, finally we get a fine result.
Measuring Time Preference and Parental Altruism

This paper extends a heterogeneous agent overlapping generations model by implementing bequests 2 both altruistic and accidental 2 and measures the degrees of time preference and parental altruism through the calibration of the model to the U.S. economy. In this model, a parent household and its adult child households behave consistently and strategically to determine their optimal consumption, working hours, and savings. Based on the obtained parameters, the paper also shows the individual effects of altruistic and accidental bequests on wealth accumulation by examining the impacts of a 100 percent estate tax and a perfect annuity market in the model. To match the economy¶s capital-output ratio and the relative size of bequests observed in the United States, the parent household would have to discount its children ¶s utility by about 30 percent relative to its own utility, according to the model. The model suggests that total bequests contribute about 14 percent to wealth accumulation in a closed economy and 21 percent in a small open economy. Also, the effect of a perfect annuity market depends on the degree of parental altruism in the economy.
Athletic Differences in the Characteristics of the Photoplethysmographic Pulse Shape: Effect of Maximal Oxygen Uptake and Maximal Muscular Voluntary Contraction

This study aimed to investigate the athletic differences in the characteristics of the photoplethysmographic (PPG) pulse shape. 304 athletes were enrolled and divided into three subgroups according to a typical sport classification in terms of the maximal oxygen uptake (MaxO2_low, MaxO2_middle and MaxO2_high groups) or the maximal muscular voluntary contraction (MMVC_low, MMVC_middle, and MMVC_high groups). Finger PPG pulses were digitally recorded and then normalized to derive the pulse area, pulse peak time T p, dicrotic notch time T n, and pulse reflection index (RI). The four parameters were finally compared between the three subgroups categorized by MaxO2 or by MMVC. In conclusion, it has been demonstrated by quantifying the characteristics of the PPG pulses in different athletes that MaxO2, but not MMVC, had significant effect on the arterial properties.
Topographic mapping of dissimilarity datasets

A great challenge today, arising in many fields of science, is the proper mapping of datasets to explore their structure and gain information that otherwise would remain concealed due to the high-dimensionality. This task is impossible without appropriate tools helping the experts to understand the data. A promising way to support the experts in their work is the topographic mapping of the datasets to a low-dimensional space where the structure of the data can be visualized and understood. This thesis focuses on Neural Gas and Self-Organizing Maps as particularly successful methods for prototype-based topographic maps. The aim of the thesis is to extend these methods such that they can deal with real life datasets which are possibly very huge and complex, thus probably not treatable in main memory, nor embeddable in Euclidean space. As a foundation, we propose and investigate a fast batch scheme for topographic mapping which features quadratic convergence. This formulation allows to extend the methods to general non-Euclidean settings in two ways, on the one hand by restricting prototype locations to data points, leading to so-called median variants. On the other hand, continuous prototype updates become possible by means of an equivalent formulation of the methods in terms of pairwise dissimilarities only and the notation of generalized relational prototypes, leading to so-called relational variants. Since the methods rely on the standard cost functions of Neural Gas and Self-Organizing Maps (in the version of Heskes), further extensions to incorporate auxiliary information in terms of labels, and to control the magnification exponent of the resulting prototype distribution become possible. The dependency of the models on prototypes allows to include an intuitive patch processing scheme which turns the basic algorithms into a framework which requires only constant memory and linear time complexity also for the case of general (quadratic) dissimilarity matrices. The suitability of these methods is demonstrated in several experiments including an application to text data for which the dissimilarity matrix requires almost 250 GB storage capacity.
HIGH VOLTAGE POWER SUPPLY FOR ELECTRO-OPTICS APPLICATIONS

This paper describes the development of high voltage power supply for electro-optics applications. The power supply consists of MOSFET driver, voltage multiplier circuit and voltage controller. A single timer 555 generates 1.3 kHz square pulse to drive the power MOSFET that connected to a standard step up transformer. By using voltage multiplier technique, the output from secondary transformer was step-up. The variable DC high voltage output is produced up to 4 kV. The input voltage as low as 12 volt is required to generate smooth and stable high voltage output.
Incentives in Competitive Search Equilibrium

This paper analyses the interaction between internal agency problems within firms and external search frictions when workers have private information. We show that the allocation of resources is determined by a modified Hosios Rule. We then analyze the effect of changes in the macro economic variables on the wage contract and the unemployment rate. We find that private information may increase the responsiveness of the unemployment rate to changes in productivity. The incentive power of the wage contracts is positively related to high productivity, low unemployment benefits and high search frictions.
Exploring the Bacterial Microbiota of Colombian Fermented Maize Dough “Masa Agria” (Maiz Añejo)

Masa Agria is a naturally fermented maize dough produced in Colombia, very common in the traditional gastronomy. In this study we used culture-dependent and RNA-based pyrosequencing to investigate the bacterial community structure of Masa Agria samples produced in the south west of Colombia. The mean value of cell density was 7.6 log CFU/g of presumptive lactic acid bacteria, 5.4 log cfu/g for presumptive acetic bacteria and 5.6 og CFU/g for yeasts. The abundance of these microorganisms is also responsible for the low pH (3.1–3.7) registered. Although the 16S rRNA pyrosequencing revealed that the analyzed samples were different in bacteria richness and diversity, the genera Lactobacillus, Weissella, and Acetobacter were predominant. In particular, the most common species were Lactobacillus plantarum and Acetobacter fabarum, followed by L. fermentum, L. vaccinostercus, and Pediococcus argentinicus. Several microorganisms of environmental origin, such as Dechloromonas and most of all Sphingobium spp. , revealed in each sample, were detected, and also bacteria related to maize, such as Phytoplasma. In conclusion, our results elucidated for the first time the structures of the bacterial communities of Masa Agria samples obtained from different producers, identifying the specific dominant species and revealing a complete picture of the bacterial consortium in this specific niche. The selective pressure of tropical environments may favor microbial biodiversity characterized by a useful technological potential.
Alternatives to the ACA's Affordability Firewall.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance coverage while limiting the disruption to individuals with existing sources of insurance coverage, particularly those with employer-sponsored insurance (ESI). To limit disruption to those with coverage, the ACA implements the employer mandate, which requires firms with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance or face penalties, and the individual "affordability firewall," which limits subsidies to individuals lacking access to alternative sources of coverage that are "affordable. " This article examines the policy impacts of the affordability firewall and investigates two potential modifications. Option 1, which is the "entire family" scenario, involves allowing an exception to the firewall for anyone in a family where the family ESI premium contribution exceeds 9.5 percent of the worker's household income. In Option 2, the "dependents only" scenario, only dependents (and not the worker) become eligible for Marketplace subsidies when the ESI premium contribution exceeds 9.5 percent of the worker's household income. Relative to the ACA, RAND researchers estimate that nongroup enrollment will increase by 4.1 million for Option 1 and by 1.4 million for Option 2. However, the number without insurance only declines by 1.5 million in Option 1 and 0.7 million in Option 2. The difference between the increase in nongroup enrollment and the decrease in uninsurance is primarily due to ESI crowd-out, which is more pronounced for Option 1. Researchers also estimated that about 1.3 million families who have ESI and unsubsidized nongroup coverage under current ACA policy would receive Marketplace subsidies under the alternative affordability firewall scenarios. For these families, health insurance coverage would become substantially more affordable; these families' risk of spending at least 20 percent of income on health care would drop by more than two thirds. We additionally estimated that federal spending will increase by $8.9 billion and $3.9 billion for Options 1 and 2, respectively, relative to the ACA.
SARC Coherence: Scaling Directory Cache Coherence in Performance and Power

The SARC project seeks to improve power scalability of shared-memory chip multiprocessors (CMPs) by making directory coherence more efficient in both power and performance. The authors describe how they eliminate two major sources of inefficiency for directory coherence protocols: invalidation traffic on writes and directory indirection for finding the writer.
PD19-02 CONTEMPORARY ACTIVE CLINICAL TRIALS IN BENIGN PROSTATIC HYPERPLASIA

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) affects more than half of men over age 50 and up to 90% of men over age 80. The estimated economic burden of BPH in the United States is $4 billion annually. Currently accepted treatments include watchful waiting, pharmacotherapy, and procedural interventions. The purpose of this study is to identify the focus of current research in the field and assess for correlation with funding sources for potential scientific advances in the treatment of BPH. METHODS: We investigated clinicaltrials.gov, the online registry of national and international clinical research studies provided by the United States National Library of Medicine. The site was queried for benign prostatic hyperplasia and benign prostatic hypertrophy. Trials with recruiting, active, and enrolling status were stratified by intervention, primary investigator sub-specialty, and source of funding. RESULTS: A total of sixty-five unique studies were identified. Primary investigators included forty-two (64.6%) urologists, eighteen (27.7%) radiologists and five (7.7%) others. Twenty-nine (44.6%) studies evaluated urology procedures including more than 15 distinct tools to endoscopically treat BPH. Twenty-one (32.3%) studies evaluated radiology-guided procedures, primarily related to prostate artery embolization. Eight (12.3%) trials examined drug therapies and seven (10.8%) were non-interventional. Of the trials examining drug therapies, one examined a novel drug. Funding sources included industry in twenty-three (35.4%) trials, a United States Federal Agency in one (1.5%) trial and other sources (such as educational institutions, hospital, and private funding) in 45 (69.2%) trials. CONCLUSIONS: More than 75% of contemporary active clinical trials in BPH are focused on procedural interventions, with sparse investigation of novel drug classes. This indicates the need for increased investigation into novel drug therapies. One trial received federal funding, highlighting a disparity between disease prevalence and federal research support. Figure. No caption available. Figure. No caption available. Source of Funding: None
The Relationship between Transparency and E-Government: An Empirical Support

E-government requires more attention from researchers to investigate the factors that predict the success of such initiative. This study used secondary data from international reports to investigate the relationship between transparency and e-government development. Two measures used for transparency: the corruption perception index (CPI) and the open budget index (OBI) and were regressed to see their prediction power for e-government readiness index (EGRI). Both relationships were significant and indicated a high prediction power of the egovernment development level. Data analysis, discussion, conclusion, and future work are depicted at the end of this work.
Fabrication of a Piezoresistive Barometric Pressure Sensor by a Silicon-on-Nothing Technology

This paper presents a piezoresistive barometric pressure sensor fabricated by using a Silicon-on-Nothing (SON) technology. Array of silicon trenches were annealed in hydrogen environment to form continuing crystalline silicon membrane over a vacuum cavity. Epitaxial growth on the silicon membrane is then completed for the desired thickness. All processes are CMOS compatible and performed on the front side of the silicon wafer. The piezoresistive barometric pressure sensor has been demonstrated with pressure hysteresis as low as 0.007%.
Improved Adaptive β-Order MMSE Speech Enhancement

—This paper considers a single channel speech enhancement algorithm, which is based on our previous work on β - order minimum mean square error (MMSE) spectral estimation. We propose to make β a function of both local and frame signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in order to achieve more effective preservation of weak speech components. Moreover, by taking into account the speech-presence uncertainty in the adaptive β - order MMSE algorithm, we achieve a signiﬁcant noise reduction and an improved spectral estimation of weak speech components. Experiments also show that the proposed estimator outperforms other well known speech enhancement algorithms
Efficiency enhanced magnetic resonance wireless power transfer system and High Voltage integrated chip power recovery scheme

Recently, several works have been proposed on wireless technology based efficient power utilization in consumer electronics and biomedical applications. Magnetically coupled resonators with high quality factor achieve constant wireless power transfer efficiency over a greater range. However, impedance variations at source & load due to change in distance between coils affects power transfer efficiency. Therefore, high power transfer efficiency can be achieved at frequency of interest, by introducing proper impedance matching algorithms. The implemented impedance matching network automatically tunes the source impedance to match load and attain higher power transfer efficiency. Experimental results obtained with the proposed scheme showed an average of 7.21% improvement in power efficiency when distance between coils are varied from 10cm to 110cm. An on-chip High Voltage power recovery scheme with an effort to reduce the power loss in the rectifier and low dropout voltage regulator is designed and fabricated. The chip was realized in Dongbu HiTek's 0. 35μm High Voltage BCD technology based on LOCOS 0. 35μm CMOS process. In addition, a charging control circuit was designed for safe and reliable charging in portable battery applications. A maximum overall efficiency of 72.31 % was determined for the system.