Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How camouflage works

For camouflage to succeed, an individual has to pass undetected, unrecognized or untargeted, and hence it is the processing of visual information that needs to be deceived. Camouflage is therefore an adaptation to the perception and cognitive mechanisms of another animal. Although this has been acknowledged for a long time, there has been no unitary account of the link between visual perception and camouflage. Viewing camouflage as a suite of adaptations to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio provides the necessary common framework. We review the main processes in visual perception and how animal camouflage exploits these. We connect the function of established camouflage mechanisms to the analysis of primitive features, edges, surfaces, characteristic features and objects (a standard hierarchy of processing in vision science). Compared to the commonly used research approach based on established camouflage mechanisms, we argue that our approach based on perceptual processes targeted by camouflage has several important benefits: specifically, it enables the formulation of more precise hypotheses and addresses questions that cannot even be identified when investigating camouflage only through the classic approach based on the patterns themselves. It also promotes a shift from the appearance to the mechanistic function of animal coloration. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application’.
AC Nerve Blocking: in-vivo tests & potential applications

Sinusoidal currents can produce localized and dynamically reversible conduction blockade in peripheral nerve. Waveform parameters can be selected so that localized blockade occurs without activity induced in the nerve. Using a rat nerve/muscle preparation we have demonstrated localized and selective blockade. We suggest how this form of block may be combined with electrical stimulation to provide selective blockade, selective stimulation and unidirectional stimulation. Potential applications for bladder and bowel are indicated.
The Protective Effect of Heme Oxygenase-1 against Intestinal Barrier Dysfunction in Cholestatic Liver Injury Is Associated with NF-κB Inhibition

Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is reported to protect against liver injury, but little Is known about its effect on the intestinal barrier in cholestatic liver injury. In this study, we investigated the effects of HO-1 and its enzymatic by-product on intestinal barrier dysfunction in bile duct ligation (BDL) rats and explored the possible mechanism. The HO-1 inducer cobalt protoporphyrin (CoPP) and carbon monoxide-releasing molecule-2 (CORM-2) were used; the expression levels of tight junction (TJ) proteins, intestinal inflammation and NF-κB p65 were measured. For an in vitro experiment, stable Caco-2 cell lines were constructed, one overexpressed the HO-1 gene and another with that gene knocked down, and the specific NF-κB inhibitor JSH-23 was used. CoPP and CORM-2 treatment alleviated liver and intestinal mucosa injury in BDL rats; improved ZO-1, claudin-1 and PCNA expression; and reduced cell apoptosis and intestinal interleukin-6 (IL-6) expression. In vitro studies confirmed that HO-1, ZO-1 and occludin were overex-pressed in HO-1-transfected Caco-2 cells, while decreased in the short hairpin HO (sh-HO-1) group. JSH-23 significantly increased occludin expression in both the HO-1 overexpression and sh-HO-1 groups, compared with their respective controls. HO-1 overexpression also inhibited the nuclear translocation of NF-κB p65 after lipopolysaccharide (LPS) treatment. Additionally, phospho-p65 expression in sh-HO-1 cells was significantly increased compared with that of the HO-1 overexpression group. In conclusion, HO-1 and CORM-2 improved intestinal epithelial barrier function in BDL-induced cholestatic liver injury mainly by restoring TJ, reducing cell apoptosis and intestinal inflammation. HO-1 exerts a protective effect, which is partially correlated with the regulation of NF-κB.
Pressure effects on the structural, elastic , electronic and optical properties of ZnO from first-principles calculations

First-principles calculations of the structural, electronic, optical and elastic properties of ZnO as a function of the pressure have been performed within density functional theory using Ultra soft pseudo potentials and generalized gradient approximation (GGA) for the exchange and correlation energy. Through our results, we note that the lattice constants decrease with the pressure increasing. Also, the elastic constants C 11 , C 12 , C 13 and C 33 and the bulk modulus B increase with the pressure increasing. However, the elastic constants C 44 , the Shear modulus ( G ) and Young’s modulus ( E ) decrease slowly with increasing pressure, the band gap increases with the pressure increasing and ZnO has direct band. As pressure increases, the static dielectric constants ɛ 1 (0) and static refraction index n(0) decrease. Our calculated results are in good agreement with experimental data and other theoretical calculations. Keywords : DFT calculation, electronic, optical, elastic, under pressure
A novel sizing environment (DSP-1) dealing with semi-numerical models applied to the optimization of a bi-stable out-of-plane magnetic micro-switch

The use of a semi-numerical model in order to optimize a magnetic micro-switch is proposed. It relies on a flexible sizing environment for which novel models based on sums, surface, and volume integrals necessary to express magnetic phenomena have been developed. Then, corresponding software components have been generated. This environment is applied to optimize a bi-stable out-of-plane magnetic micro-switch. The optimized micro-switch is dedicated to be used in optical micro-scanner application. Its main characteristics are high displacement (in excess of 100mum), low switching time, and current consumption (300mA). Results demonstrate a performing and generic way for fast design by optimization
Sirtuin 1 attenuates inflammation and hepatocellular damage in liver transplant ischemia/Reperfusion: From mouse to human

Hepatic ischemia/reperfusion injury (IRI), an inevitable antigen‐independent inflammation response in cadaveric liver transplantation, correlates with poor early graft function, rejection episodes, and contributes to donor organ shortage. Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) is a histone deacetylase that may regulate inflammatory cell activity and manage liver function in IRI, though its functional role and clinical relevance remains to be elucidated. We investigated the efficacy of SIRT1 activation in a murine liver IRI model and verified the concept of putative SIRT1‐mediated hepatoprotection in clinical liver transplantation. In the experimental arm, mice were subjected to 90 minutes of liver partial warm ischemia followed by 6 hours of reperfusion with or without adjunctive SIRT1 activation in vivo (resveratrol [Res]). In parallel, bone marrow–derived macrophage (BMDM) or spleen lymphocyte cultures were treated with Res. In the clinical arm, liver biopsies from 21 adult primary liver transplant patients (2 hours after reperfusion) were divided into “low” (n = 11) versus “high” (n = 10) SIRT1 expression groups, assessed by Western blots. Treatment with Res attenuated murine liver IRI while up‐regulating SIRT1, suppressing leukocyte infiltration, and decreasing proinflammatory cytokine programs. SIRT1 silencing (small interfering RNA) in BMDM cultures enhanced inflammatory cytokine programs, whereas addition of Res decreased proinflammatory response in a SIRT1‐dependent manner. In addition, Res decreased interferon γ production in liver‐infiltrating and spleen lymphocyte cultures. Human liver transplants with high SIRT1 levels showed improved hepatocellular function and superior survival (P = 0.04), accompanied by lower proinflammatory cytokine profile. In conclusion, our translational study is the first to identify SIRT1 as a regulator of hepatocellular function in human liver transplant recipients under ischemia/reperfusion stress. By targeting innate and adaptive immune activation, manipulation of SIRT1 signaling should be considered as a novel means to combat inflammation in liver transplantation. Liver Transplantation 23 1282–1293 2017 AASLD.
A Novel Method to Identify Differential Pathways in Hippocampus Alzheimer’s Disease

Background Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia. The objective of this paper is to propose a novel method to identify differential pathways in hippocampus AD. Material/Methods We proposed a combined method by merging existed methods. Firstly, pathways were identified by four known methods (DAVID, the neaGUI package, the pathway-based co-expressed method, and the pathway network approach), and differential pathways were evaluated through setting weight thresholds. Subsequently, we combined all pathways by a rank-based algorithm and called the method the combined method. Finally, common differential pathways across two or more of five methods were selected. Results Pathways obtained from different methods were also different. The combined method obtained 1639 pathways and 596 differential pathways, which included all pathways gained from the four existing methods; hence, the novel method solved the problem of inconsistent results. Besides, a total of 13 common pathways were identified, such as metabolism, immune system, and cell cycle. Conclusions We have proposed a novel method by combining four existing methods based on a rank product algorithm, and identified 13 significant differential pathways based on it. These differential pathways might provide insight into treatment and diagnosis of hippocampus AD.
Prosthodontic Treatment for Edentulous Patients: Complete Dentures and Implant-Supported Prostheses

Part 1: The Patient 1. The Edentulous State 2. Systemic Health Aspects and Nutritional Considerations for Edentulous Patients 3. The Aging Edentulous Patient 4. Sequelae Caused by Wearing Complete Dentures Part 2: Treatment Options 5. History Taking, Treatment Planning and Improving Denture-Bearing Areas for Edentulous Patients 6. Additional Treatment Planning Options for both Edentulous and Potentially Edentulous Patients Part Three: The Materials Used 7. Materials Used in the Management of Edentulous Patients Part 4: Clinical Protocols for Diverse Treatment Scenarios 8. Maxillary and Mandibular Analougue/Substitutes for the Denture-Bearing Area 9. The Dentures' Polished Surfaces, Recording Jaw Relations, and Their Transfer to an Articulator 10. The Occlusal Surfaces: The Selection and Arrangement of Prosthetic Teeth 11. The Try-in Appointment 12. Prosthesis Insertion and Follow-up Appointments 13. Modified Protocols for Immediate Dentures, Overdentures, and Single Dentures 14. Prolonging the Useful Life of Complete Dentures: Relines, Repairs and Duplications 15. Speech Considerations with Complete Dentures Part 5: Clinical Protocols Specific to Implant-Retained and Implanted Supported Prosthodontic Management 16. The Science of Osseointegration 17. Implant Overdentures 18. Fixed Full Arch Implant-Supported Prostheses for the Edentulous Patient 19. Maxillofacial Prosthodontics for the Edentulous Patient 20. Managing Problems and Complications 21. Immediately Loaded Complete Dental Prostheses 22. Current and Possible Future Directions in Implant Prosthdontics Part 6: Additional Considerations in the Management of Edentulous Patients 23. The Impact of Socioeconomic, Cultural and Technological Changes and the Notion of Standards of Care and Alternative Protocols
Efficient brightness adaptive deep-sea image stitching using biorthogonal multi-wavelet transform and harris algorithm

The main construct behind Deep-Sea image stitching is a combined work of multiple underwater camera captured pictures with overlaying fields of view to produce a high-resolution and panoramic image registration. In image stitching many overlapping pictures are assembled so as to represent one bird's-eye image view. During this research, a replacement feature-based approach is proposed for automatic Deep-Sea image registration and stitching. The projected methodology is enforced on real complicated undersea pictures which rely on four main steps. First, the Harris Algorithm is employed to extract the feature points within the reference and detected pictures. Second, feature matching is applied for treating the geometer difference of the signature vectors are achieved by Biorthogonal multi wavelet Transformation. Third, transformation factors are achieved by treating the least-square rule supported by general wavelet transformation. Finally, the Picture resampling and transformation are executed for the treatment of additive interpolation which induces the image registration and image stitching.
Extraintestinal Manifestations of Celiac Disease: Effectiveness of the Gluten-Free Diet

Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the gluten-free diet (GFD) on extraintestinal symptoms in pediatric and adult celiac populations at the University of Chicago. Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review of the University of Chicago Celiac Center clinic charts from January 2002 to October 2014. Demographics, serologic testing, intestinal biopsies, and extraintestinal symptoms at presentation, 12, 24, and >24 months were recorded. Extraintestinal symptoms included abnormal liver enzymes, arthralgia/arthritis, dermatitis herpetiformis, alopecia, fatigue, headache, anemia, stomatitis, myalgias, psychiatric disorders, rashes, seizures, neuropathy, short stature, delayed puberty, osteoporosis, and infertility. Results: A total of 737 patients with biopsy-confirmed celiac disease or skin biopsy–confirmed dermatitis herpetiformis were included. Patients lost to follow-up, or with insufficient data were excluded leaving 328 patients (157 pediatrics younger than 18 years). For pediatrics, the female to male ratio was 2:1 and the mean age at diagnosis was 8.9 years. For adults, 4:1 and 40.6 years old. Extraintestinal symptom rates were similar in children (60%) and adults (62%). Short stature (33%), fatigue (28%), and headache (20%) were most common in children. Iron deficiency anemia (48%), fatigue (37%), and headache/psychiatric disorders (24%) were common in adults. Children had faster/higher rates of symptom resolution compared with adults. Twenty-eight percent of children with unresolved short stature on a GFD were found to have other comorbidities. Conclusions: Children and adults with celiac disease have similar rates of extraintestinal manifestations. In children short stature, fatigue, and headache were most common, whereas anemia, fatigue, and headache/psychiatric disorders were most common in adults. Children on a strict GFD showed faster and higher rates of symptom resolution as compared to adults. Unresponsive children with short stature must be assessed for comorbidities.
Female Meiosis: Synapsis, Recombination, and Segregation in Drosophila melanogaster

A century of genetic studies of the meiotic process in Drosophila melanogaster females has been greatly augmented by both modern molecular biology and major advances in cytology. These approaches, and the findings they have allowed, are the subject of this review. Specifically, these efforts have revealed that meiotic pairing in Drosophila females is not an extension of somatic pairing, but rather occurs by a poorly understood process during premeiotic mitoses. This process of meiotic pairing requires the function of several components of the synaptonemal complex (SC). When fully assembled, the SC also plays a critical role in maintaining homolog synapsis and in facilitating the maturation of double-strand breaks (DSBs) into mature crossover (CO) events. Considerable progress has been made in elucidating not only the structure, function, and assembly of the SC, but also the proteins that facilitate the formation and repair of DSBs into both COs and noncrossovers (NCOs). The events that control the decision to mature a DSB as either a CO or an NCO, as well as determining which of the two CO pathways (class I or class II) might be employed, are also being characterized by genetic and genomic approaches. These advances allow a reconsideration of meiotic phenomena such as interference and the centromere effect, which were previously described only by genetic studies. In delineating the mechanisms by which the oocyte controls the number and position of COs, it becomes possible to understand the role of CO position in ensuring the proper orientation of homologs on the first meiotic spindle. Studies of bivalent orientation have occurred in the context of numerous investigations into the assembly, structure, and function of the first meiotic spindle. Additionally, studies have examined the mechanisms ensuring the segregation of chromosomes that have failed to undergo crossing over.
A Time-Series Pattern Based Noise Generation Strategy for Privacy Protection in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing promises an open environment where customers can deploy IT services in a pay-as-you-go fashion while saving huge capital investment in their own IT infrastructure. Due to the openness, various malicious service providers may exist. Such service providers may record service information in a service process from a customer and then collectively deduce the customer's private information. Therefore, from the perspective of cloud computing security, there is a need to take special actions to protect privacy at client sides. Noise obfuscation is an effective approach in this regard by utilising noise data. For instance, it generates and injects noise service requests into real customer service requests so that service providers would not be able to distinguish which requests are real ones if their occurrence probabilities are about the same. However, existing typical noise generation strategies mainly focus on the entire service usage period to achieve about the same final occurrence probabilities of service requests. In fact, such probabilities can fluctuate in a time interval such as three months and may significantly differ than other time intervals. In this case, service providers may still be able to deduce the customers' privacy from a specific time interval although unlikely from the overall period. That is to say, the existing typical noise generation strategies could fail to protect customers' privacy for local time intervals. To address this problem, we develop a novel time-series pattern based noise generation strategy. Firstly, we analyse previous probability fluctuations and propose a group of time-series patterns for predicting future fluctuated probabilities. Then, based on these patterns, we present our strategy by forecasting future occurrence probabilities of real service requests and generating noise requests to reach about the same final probabilities in the next time interval. The simulation evaluation demonstrates that our strategy can cope with these fluctuations to significantly improve the effectiveness of customers' privacy protection.
The design of wearable medical device for triaging disaster casualties in developing countries

Disasters create mass casualties and the number of casualties usually surpasses the capability of medical resources, hence, medical teams must attach paper triage to casualties for determining the priority of treatments based on the severity of their condition. However, since casualties' condition could change at anytime, the paper triage cannot provide the latest information of their health condition. Therefore, we have developed a wearable medical device that can continuously monitor the health condition of casualties. It is a lightweight and low-cost wearable electronic triage with sensing system that can monitor the vital sign of casualties and classify them into three levels of severe conditions, i.e., major, delayed, and minor status. The electronic triage is mainly built from a low-power 8-bit microcontroller unit, RF units, and sensors including pulse oximetry and thermocouple breath sensor. This electronic triage has been developed using low-cost electronic components that are available in developing countries such as Indonesia, so that, our electronic triage can be easily manufactured and maintained locally. Furthermore, we have also developed a simple android-based mobile application for data acquisition, priority classification, data storage and data transfer to medical record server in hospitals.
StressTree: A Metaphorical Visualization for Biofeedback-assisted Stress Management

In today;s highly competitive environment, chronic stress is one of the main reasons for a health problem. To address this, biofeedback techniques have been used to assist in relaxation training and stress management. In this paper, we present "StressTree," a metaphorical visualization of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback system. StressTree aims to present HRV data in a more evocative, meaningful way in the context of stress management. The HRV biofeedback system consists of a heartbeat data acquisition unit, a data analysis unit, and a visualization unit. The feedback from interviews in the evaluation shows that StressTree could display different growth pattern during a stressful work or a relaxation training. The participants suggested that the biofeedback interaction through StressTree is explicit and engaging, and brings them a strong motivation to regulate their breathing pattern for a "healthy-looking" tree.
The diagnosis and management of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: Practice guidance from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases

Abstract This guidance provides a data-supported approach to the diagnostic, therapeutic, and preventive aspects of NAFLD care. A "Guidance" document is different from a "Guideline. " Guidelines are developed by a multidisciplinary panel of experts and rate the quality (level) of the evidence and the strength of each recommendation using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system. A guidance document is developed by a panel of experts in the topic, and guidance statements, not recommendations, are put forward to help clinicians understand and implement the most recent evidence. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Nanomaterials for Neural Interfaces

This review focuses on the application of nanomaterials for neural interfacing. The junction between nanotechnology and neural tissues can be particularly worthy of scientific attention for several reasons: (i) Neural cells are electroactive, and the electronic properties of nanostructures can be tailored to match the charge transport requirements of electrical cellular interfacing. (ii) The unique mechanical and chemical properties of nanomaterials are critical for integration with neural tissue as long‐term implants. (iii) Solutions to many critical problems in neural biology/medicine are limited by the availability of specialized materials. (iv) Neuronal stimulation is needed for a variety of common and severe health problems. This confluence of need, accumulated expertise, and potential impact on the well‐being of people suggests the potential of nanomaterials to revolutionize the field of neural interfacing. In this review, we begin with foundational topics, such as the current status of neural electrode (NE) technology, the key challenges facing the practical utilization of NEs, and the potential advantages of nanostructures as components of chronic implants. After that the detailed account of toxicology and biocompatibility of nanomaterials in respect to neural tissues is given. Next, we cover a variety of specific applications of nanoengineered devices, including drug delivery, imaging, topographic patterning, electrode design, nanoscale transistors for high‐resolution neural interfacing, and photoactivated interfaces. We also critically evaluate the specific properties of particular nanomaterials—including nanoparticles, nanowires, and carbon nanotubes—that can be taken advantage of in neuroprosthetic devices. The most promising future areas of research and practical device engineering are discussed as a conclusion to the review.