Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of intralipid-10% in the range of 400–700 nm using light emitting diodes

There is an increased interest in biophotonic techniques for diagnosis and treatment of diseases and thus the development of new equipment which requires calibration and testing. For this purpose, the development of low cost optical tissue phantoms it is important because it is required a medium for light propagation studies. The absorption, scattering and anisotropy coefficients of a fat emulsion called Intralipid 10% have been measured at seven different wavelengths in the visible range using light-emitting diodes instead of lasers which are more commonly used. It was performed measurements of light fluence in a mixture of Intralipid and black India ink to verify the obtained coefficients. The experimental results were compared and validated against Monte Carlo simulations.
Effects of Hospital Type and Distance on Lymph Node Assessment for Colon Cancer Among Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Patients in Appalachia

We studied differences in access to large or accredited cancer programs as a possible explanation for geographic disparities in adherence to the national guideline on lymph node assessment for Stages I to III colon cancer. State cancer registries were linked with Medicare claims of patients diagnosed from 2006 to 2008 from Appalachian counties of four states. Metropolitan and nonmetropolitan patients differed on adherence, proximity to high-volume or accredited hospitals, and hospital type. We modeled effects of hospital type on adherence with ordinary least squares and instrumental variables (instrumenting for hospital type with relative distance). The evidence was strongest for improved adherence in high-volume hospitals for nonmetropolitan patients. We estimate that roughly 100 deaths might be prevented over 5 years among each year’s incident cases if the nonmetropolitan disparity in hospital volume were eliminated nationally. We conclude that regionalization or targeting smaller hospitals would improve adherence in nonmetropolitan areas, but also argue for improving adherence generally.
Recent advances and future directions in mantle cell lymphoma research: report of the 2016 mantle cell lymphoma consortium workshop

Abstract Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma typically associated with the t(11;14) chromosomal translocation, resulting in overexpression of cyclin D1. Although MCL is associated with clinical heterogeneity, outcomes are generally poor and no standard treatment has been established. However, the recent approval of ibrutinib provides a new therapeutic option. Moreover, recent clinical trials have provided new perspectives on the relative efficacy and safety of various approaches for both transplant-eligible and transplant-ineligible patients. Multiple novel strategies are being evaluated in the treatment of MCL, including both targeted agents and cellular immunotherapies. At the Lymphoma Research Foundation’s 12th MCL Workshop, researchers gathered to discuss research findings, clinical trial results, and future directions related to MCL, its biology, and its treatment. This manuscript, which includes a summary of each presentation, aims to review recent findings in MCL research and highlight potential areas for future study.
Barriers to Receipt of Services for Young Adults With Autism

Through qualitative analysis of parent interviews, we explore challenges accessing appropriate services and supports for YAs on the autism spectrum after high school. OBJECTIVES: In this study, we examine experiences of families of young adults (YAs) on the autism spectrum to better understand dynamics leading to poor YA outcomes. METHODS: Twenty parents of YAs with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who had completed high school in the past 15 years took part in a 90-minute interview. They described their YA’s experiences at the transition from high school and current status with regards to services or postsecondary education. Qualitative interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by using the constant comparative method associated with a grounded theory approach. RESULTS: Few adults with ASD were receiving autism-specific assistance no matter their level of cognitive functioning. Existing systems, such as service agencies and college disability support offices, had seldom been designed to meet their needs. Some families gave up on services, some used self-directed services they had to manage themselves, and others paid out of pocket for services they could access no other way. Inadequate services often led to YA failure and worsening of symptoms. The majority of families bore the financial and emotional brunt of finding or creating services and community experiences to meet their adult child’s needs. CONCLUSIONS: Parent narratives highlight the difficulties that are faced as families attempt to access appropriate services for YAs on the autism spectrum at all levels of functioning. These insights can help pediatricians understand family concerns and develop anticipatory guidance strategies. More research is needed to identify potential solutions to challenges faced by specific subgroups of YAs with ASD.
Deep Inspiration Breath Hold: Techniques and Advantages for Cardiac Sparing During Breast Cancer Irradiation

Historically, heart dose from left-sided breast radiotherapy has been associated with a risk of cardiac injury. Data suggests that there is not a threshold for the deleterious effects from radiation on the heart. Over the past several years, advances in radiation delivery techniques have reduced cardiac morbidity due to treatment. Deep inspiration breath hold (DIBH) is a technique that takes advantage of a more favorable position of the heart during inspiration to minimize heart doses over a course of radiation therapy. In the accompanying review article, we outline several methods used to deliver treatment with DIBH, quantify the benefits of DIBH treatment, discuss considerations for patient selection, and identify challenges associated with DIBH techniques.
Investigation on performance of piezoelectric beam based MEMS actuator for focussing of micro lens in mobile application

Photo capturing capabilities are one of the core functions in mobile devices which makes the people to use very often. But the cost of the mobile depends on the high quality design and low cost mass production of micro optical lens systems. This is achieved by designing a suitable actuator which leads to the precise focussing of a subject in mobile camera. In this paper, MEMS based Piezoelectric cantilever beam actuator is proposed and designed with different type of piezo material, beam length to width ratio, number of layers and number of beams to achieve optimum focussing and tracking. The investigation reveals that rectangular shape with lead zirconate titanate as piezo material yields the maximum displacement of 4.17989pm The 1:2 actuator length to beam length ratio andfive layer beam improve the maximum displacement. This analysis is performed using Intellisuite MEMS CAD Tool in TEM analysis.
Influence of Deposition Time on Bonding and Morphology of Amorphous Carbon Nitride Thin Films

Amorphous carbon nitride (a-CNx) is a well-known material that can be used in various applications such as coating for hard disk, wear resistant, humidity sensor and others. In this research, a-CNx thin films have been deposited by using radio frequency-plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (RF-PECVD) with the mixing of pure methane (CH4) and nitrogen (N2). The gas ratio of CH4/N2, electrode distance, pressure and temperature of deposition is kept constant while deposition time is allowed to vary from 30 to 150 minutes. Raman spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) have been used to study the bonding and morphology of these films respectively. An increase in deposition time resulted with thedecrease in sp2 content in the a-CNx thin films. Theincrease in the Id/Ig intensity ratio with the increase in deposition time can be explained by the reducing size of graphitic cluster. Long deposition time retarded the growth rate of a-CNx thin films due to etching effects. Longer exposure to the etching effect resultingin the creation of small graphitic cluster with the formation of spongy-like porous features.
Functional diversity

A way to tap the reservoir of enzymatic potential of microorganisms is by looking into clades that are known for certain activities.With this special issue, a focus is set with (ligno)cellulose degradation. Cellobiohydrolase (Lee et al.), ß-glucosidase (Lisov et al.) or identification of lactic acid bacteria helpful for use in artisanal tanneries (Correa Deza et al.) are showing the broad variety of applications and at the same time cover the taxonomic range of different kingdoms within the bacteria. The broad spectrum of environmental functions provided by members of different microbial communities is unsurpassed and provides opportunities for application in uncountable ways. The isolation of microorganisms from different environments and their screening for the production of, e.g., enzymes that can be used technologically thus still provides a large part of microbiology. For example, the isolation of agarase producers frommangrove sediments uses the adaptation to agar produced by marine algae for the exploitation of microbially derived enzymes (Di et al.), and cold adapted yeasts were used for the production of lipase that can be applied in cooler temperatures (Maharana and Singh). A very interesting part of basic microbiological research is addressing microbial interactions for their natural ability to promote certain traits in co-occurring microbes. Here, lipid production by a green alga is studied with relation to symbiotic bacteria (Xue et al., this issue). Similarly, the isolation of metal tolerant microorganisms from contaminated environments may provide applications in biosorption (Balan et al.). With respect to metals, nanoparticles are a current focus of research. This is reflected with an article demonstrating biofouling protection against human pathogenic Candida (Muthamil et al.). And newly isolated fungi were found to allow for applications in lead bioremediation (Zhu et al.). All in all, the current special issue again shows how many functions in the ecosystem may be useful for technological applications. With this special issue, hope to provide new insights into the manyfold microbial functions and traits.
A High Performance Gated Voltage Level Translator with Integrated Multiplexer

Multiple supply voltages are commonly used in designs to enable better power performance through dedicated control of the supply voltage of the various functional units. In multiple supply voltage designs, circuits are partitioned into voltage islands that operate at their optimum supply voltages which necessitates the use of voltage level translators between them. This paper presents a high performance voltage level translator design aimed at minimizing insertion penalty by minimizing logic contention and thereby improving latency. In addition, the proposed voltage level translator design has an integrated logic multiplexer function built in through an enable signal. Simulation results of the proposed voltage level translator in comparison with the conventional voltage level translator shows upto 42% delay reduction, combined with a power benefit upto 15%, for supply voltage ranging from near-threshold to above-threshold levels.
An asymmetrically-scaled-rotated microstrip antenna for conical-beam radiation

An asymmetric-scaled-rotated single feed microstrip patch antenna is proposed for conical beam radiation. The antenna consists of four asymmetrically scaled rotated patch excited by single coaxial feed. Empirical design equations are derived for the proposed structure. The measured −10 dB reflection coefficient is 290 MHz (3.80 GHz–4.09 GHz). Simulated and measured performances of the proposed antenna are compared and a good agreement is observed between the two and matched with the predicted resonant frequency.
G-CORE: A Core for Future Graph Query Languages

We report on a community effort between industry and academia to shape the future of graph query languages. We argue that existing graph database management systems should consider supporting a query language with two key characteristics. First, it should be composable, meaning, that graphs are the input and the output of queries. Second, the graph query language should treat paths as first-class citizens. Our result is G-CORE, a powerful graph query language design that fulfills these goals, and strikes a careful balance between path query expressivity and evaluation complexity.
Ultra-Efficient Fuzzy Min/Max Circuits Based on Carbon Nanotube FETs

To implement a fuzzy system, the first and the most essential step is to design basic fuzzy modules such as analog min and max circuits. This paper presents efficient minimum and maximum circuits using carbon nanotube FETs (CNTFETs) for nanotechnology-based fuzzy circuits and systems. The proposed approach considerably reduces the design complexity in the fuzzy space. In the proposed design, the chirality of carbon nanotubes is utilized for threshold voltage determination. Extensive simulations conducted using HSPICE and the Stanford CNTFET model at 16 nm feature size demonstrate that the proposed fuzzy logic blocks considerably improve the performance parameters and function much more robustly even in the presence of process variations, as compared to their CNTFET-based counterparts.
Secure Cloud Storage and Quick Keyword Based Retrieval System

In recent years, Cloud Computing becomes more prevalent in data store domain. More and more sensitive to store information into the cloud, Due to the importance the protection of data privacy, to protect sensitive data, should be encrypted before outsourcing, which makes ineffective data utilization and a very challenging task. Although the protection of the privacy of the data has to be encrypted, There should be schemes allow a user to securely search over encrypted data through keywords and selectively retrieve the appropriate files interest. These techniques support only exact searchable over encryption. In this paper, find a solution to the problem of effective keyword search over encrypted cloud data while maintaining keyword privacy. Keyword search greatly enhances system usability by returning the matching files when users' searching inputs exactly match the predefined keywords. In our solution, we extract the keywords from the file and encrypted the keywords then added into the index. Instead of storing file and searchable index on a cloud system, the proposed system will store the file on cloud and store searchable index on a private server. Which greatly reduces network congestion and representation overheads, also retrieval fast for files, and reduces the storage by file compression With enhanced security using encryption techniques and permission to access the data, through accurate security analysis, we show that our proposed solution is secure and privacy-preserving, while correctly realizing the goal of retrieval data.
Compressed image reproduction based on block decomposition

A compressed image reproduction scheme is proposed by properly decomposing and manipulating the coefficients of discrete cosine transform (DCT) directly in the compressed domain. The basic idea of the proposed approach is to decompose each DCT block into several sub-blocks and to adjust the brightness and detail components of a given image for compressing dynamic range and enhancing contrast. Image reproduction based on the subblock decomposition can be done more precisely than any approach based on the normal block-sized approach. First, DCT coefficients of each block are decomposed into several sub-blocks. Next each sub-block’s coefficients are separated into brightness and detail components, and treated differently according to content analysis. Then, the enhanced coefficients are projected on the constraint sets to avoid some artefacts, and are composed back to the original order. The main advantages of the proposed algorithm are that (i) it can enhance the dynamic range and details without affecting the compressibility of the given image since it operates directly in the compressed domain, and (ii) it does not boost blocking artefacts around big edges without any further processing. In order to evaluate the proposed scheme, several base-line approaches are described and compared using enhancement quality measures.
Recent Developments on Graphene-based Sensors

Recently,with the development of graphene,the progress of the sensor becomes even more powerful.The birth of many excellent sensors makes our life more intelligent and controllable.Based on graphene materials,the research progress of graphene electrochemical sensors and biosensors are introduced,including graphene gas sensors,graphene biological molecular sensors,graphene enzyme sensors,graphene medicine sensors,graphene ion sensors,graphene humidity sensors,graphene stress-strain sensors.Lastly,based on optical performance,high thermalconductivity,mechanical properties and room temperature ferromagnetic effect properties of graphene sensors are prospected.
Outage probability in cognitive wireless powered communication networks considering QoS in primary networks

In this research, we investigate the outage probability of the secondary network in a cognitive wireless powered communication network (WPCN). Energy-constrained secondary users harvests energy from a hybrid access-point and a primary transmitter in the first phase. In the second phase, the secondary user with the best uplink channel is selected. In this setup, the secondary network can share the spectrum with the primary network ensuring that a desired outage probability constraint in the primary network is always met. This constraint represents the quality-of-service (QoS) of the primary network. The analytical expressions of the outage probability of the secondary network are provided and verified by numerical simulation. We demonstrate that relaxing the QoS of the primary network can considerably improve system performance. We show that the transmit power of the selected secondary user and harvesting energy time have a significant impact on the outage probability of the secondary network.
Solid state cache management scheme for improving I/O performance of hard disk drive

In this paper, we propose the HyU 2Level-LRU (Hybrid Unit 2Level-LRU) scheme to optimize the slow input/output speed of the HDD. We minimized disk access and increased the cache hit rate by frequently accessing the pages in the SSC. In addition, we minimized disk head movement by maintaining the adjacent pages requested to write in a group when the pages are destaged to the HDD. Depending on the read requests workload, the cache hit ratio can be improved if there are more pages frequently accessed to read than to write. On the other hand, if the workload has many write requests, it can be minimized if the frequently accessed pages are rewritten in the SSC as soon as they are destaged to the HDD by caching more write requested pages. Therefore, we also propose a scheme that manages pages flexibly in a variety of workloads. In this paper, we will describe these techniques and discuss the results of experiments using SSD and HDD.
Calpain inhibition attenuates apoptosis of retinal ganglion cells in acute optic neuritis.

PURPOSE Optic neuritis (ON), inflammation of the optic nerve, is strongly associated with the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) and is initiated by the attack of autoreactive T cells against self-myelin antigens, resulting in demyelination, degeneration of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), and cumulative visual impairment. METHODS Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) was induced in Lewis rats on day 0, and animals received daily intraperitoneal injections of calpain inhibitor (calpeptin) or vehicle from day 1 until killed. Retinal cell death was analyzed by DNA fragmentation, and surviving ganglion cells were quantified after double labeling of retinal tissue with TUNEL and Brn3a. The expression of apoptotic and inflammatory proteins was determined by Western blotting. RESULTS It was demonstrated that calpain inhibition downregulates expression of proapoptotic proteins and the proinflammatory molecule nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) in the retina of Lewis rats with acute EAE. Immunofluorescent labeling revealed that apoptotic cells in the RGC layer of vehicle-treated EAE animals were Brn3a positive, and a moderate dose of calpeptin dramatically reduced the frequency of apoptotic RGCs. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that calpain inhibition might be a useful supplement to immunomodulatory therapies such as corticosteroids in ON, due to its neuroprotective effect on RGCs.
The automatic annotation of bacterial genomes

With the development of ultra-high-throughput technologies, the cost of sequencing bacterial genomes has been vastly reduced. As more genomes are sequenced, less time can be spent manually annotating those genomes, resulting in an increased reliance on automatic annotation pipelines. However, automatic pipelines can produce inaccurate genome annotation and their results often require manual curation. Here, we discuss the automatic and manual annotation of bacterial genomes, identify common problems introduced by the current genome annotation process and suggests potential solutions.
High Strength Electrospun Nanofiber Mats via CNT Reinforcement: A Review

The development of electrospun nanofibers with improved mechanical properties is of great scientific and technological interest because of their wide-range of applications. Reinforcement of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into the polymer matrix is considered as a promising strategy for substantially enhancing the mechanical properties of resulting CNTs/polymer composite mats on account of extraordinary mechanical properties of CNTs such as ultrahigh Young`s modulus and tensile strengths. This paper summarizes the recent developments on electrospun CNTs/ polymer composite mats with an emphasis on their mechanical properties.