Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Use of polymerase chain reaction for detection of Listeria monocytogenes in food

A previously described polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay (B. Furrer, U. Candrian, C. Höfelein, and J. Lüthy, J. Appl. Bacteriol. 70:372-379, 1991) was used to analyze food for the presence of Listeria monocytogenes. Food samples were artificially contaminated to develop two procedures to detect the organism following enrichment steps. Procedure A was based on dilution of the enrichment broth followed by lysis of the bacteria and direct analysis of the lysate with PCR. With procedure A and artificially contaminated food samples, it was possible to detect fewer than 10 bacteria per 10 g of food. In procedure B, centrifugation was used to concentrate bacteria before lysis and PCR. With procedure A, 330 naturally contaminated food samples of several types were analyzed. Twenty samples were found to be positive for L. monocytogenes, which was in agreement with the classical culture technique. By using procedure B on a subset of 100 food samples, 14 were found to be positive by PCR whereas the classical culture method detected only 13. Analysis times, including enrichment steps, were 56 and 32 h with procedures A and B, respectively.
Zone-based Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing for VANET

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is a new emerging technology which integrates all methods of transportation into a single manageable resource. To implement VANET, an effective network is required. General ad hoc routing protocols have been proved not suit enough for VANET. In this paper, we propose a novel vehicular ad hoc routing protocol which takes advantage of Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) and Global Positioning Information. We use the history cache stores the movement information of intra-zone vehicles and the destination location information, so that we can predict the efficient path and the location of destinations.
The Not-so-Magic Magic Barrier of Recommender Systems

Recommender Systems need to deal with different types of users who represent their preferences in various ways. This difference in user behaviour has a deep impact on the accuracy of the recommendations received by the users, depending, mostly, on the quantity and the quality of the information the system knows about the user. Specifically, the inconsistencies of the user impose a lower bound on the error the system may achieve when predicting ratings for that particular user [3]. In our work [1], we analyse how the consistency of user ratings (coherence) may predict the performance of recommendation methods. More specifically, our results show that our definition of coherence is correlated with the so-called magic barrier of recommender systems [2], and thus, it could be used to discriminate between easy users (those with a low magic barrier, that is, with a low natural variability in their behaviour) and difficult ones (those with a high magic barrier). Furthermore, in our experiments (using a real movie dataset) the rating prediction error for the more coherent users is significantly lower than that of the less coherent ones. BODY We show that the magic barrier of recommender systems is not magic at all. In fact, it is an easily computed statistical rating property.
Membrane Fas Ligand Kills Human Peripheral Blood T Lymphocytes, and Soluble Fas Ligand Blocks the Killing

It has been believed that the Fas expressed on human peripheral blood T cells (PBT) is nonfunctional, because these cells are insensitive to agonistic anti-Fas/Apo-1 mAbs that efficiently kill in vitro–activated T cells and many Fas-expressing cell lines. Here, we demonstrate that membrane-bound Fas ligand (FasL) kills both fresh and in vitro–activated PBT, indicating that the Fas expressed on fresh PBT is functional. In contrast, soluble FasL kills only the latter. Naive T cells in umbilical cord blood do not express Fas, but can be induced to express Fas by IFN-γ or by a combination of IL-2 and anti-CD28 mAb, after which they acquire sensitivity to membrane but not to soluble FasL. Soluble FasL inhibited the killing of fresh PBT by membrane FasL. These results indicate that the shedding of FasL from the membrane is a mechanism for downregulating at least part of its killing activity.
Business process transparency in Vehicle Inspection unit, Department of Transportation, Information and Communication Technology, Bontang, East Kalimantan, Indonesia

Transparency is one of concern for local government in Indonesia. A problem arise when we're talking abut business process in local government. Does the process business has made impact for transparency? This question will be answered in this paper. Through this research, one of local government will be investigated and studied to identify transparency of information. Department of Transportation, Information and Communication Technology at Bontang City, Indonesia trough Unit of Vehicle Inspection has a role to issue a license for road worthiness of a vehicle, such as truck, urban transportion, pickup, etc. There are some issues occured in this unit. The latest is about illegal levies. This probem will be identified using unstructured interview and six sigma statistics analysis.
From Collocation to Event Information: The Case of Mandarin Verbs of Discussion *

The importance of deciphering lexical knowledge, especially the eventive information encoded on verbs, has been highly recognized and various approaches have been proposed to represent lexical information that plays a crucial role in grammatical realization. In this paper, a subset of Mandarin verbs of communication -verbs of discussion-is explored in detail, with reference to the semantic properties characteristic of the whole class. While quantitative NLP approaches might tend to overlook some semantic details, it is shown that a corpus-based, contrastive analysis of near-synonyms can be most useful in extracting lexical information that is critical in differentiating verbs.
Reflection components decomposition of textured surfaces using linear basis functions

Most existing methods of reflection components decomposition using a single color image require color segmentation. Few methods that employ local operations are able to avoid the requirement; however, they usually suffer from color discontinuity problems. In this paper, we introduce a decomposition method using a single color image that does not require (global) color segmentation or (local) color discontinuity detection. The method principally utilizes the coefficients of the reflectance basis functions of input image and its specular-free image. Combining those coefficients enables us to find the diffuse coefficients of the specular pixels for every surface color. As a result, the decomposition becomes a well-posed problem and able to be solved in closed-form equations. Our experimental results on real complex textured images show the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Interrelation of Coronary Calcification, Myocardial Ischemia, and Outcomes in Patients With Intermediate Likelihood of Coronary Artery Disease: A Combined Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography Study

Background— Although the value of coronary artery calcium (CAC) for atherosclerosis screening is gaining acceptance, its efficacy in predicting flow-limiting coronary artery disease remains controversial, and its incremental prognostic value over myocardial perfusion is not well established. Methods and Results— We evaluated 695 consecutive intermediate-risk patients undergoing combined rest-stress rubidium 82 positron emission tomography (PET) perfusion imaging and CAC scoring on a hybrid PET-computed tomography (CT) scanner. The frequency of abnormal scans among patients with a CAC score ≥400 was higher than that in patients with a CAC score of 1 to 399 (48.5% versus 21.7%, P<0.001). Multivariate logistic regression supported the concept of a threshold CAC score ≥400 governing this relationship (odds ratio 2.91, P<0.001); however, the frequency of ischemia among patients with no CAC was 16.0%, and its absence only afforded a negative predictive value of 84.0%. Risk-adjusted survival analysis demonstrated a stepwise increase in event rates (death and myocardial infarction) with increasing CAC scores in patients with and without ischemia on PET myocardial perfusion imaging. Among patients with normal PET myocardial perfusion imaging, the annualized event rate in patients with no CAC was lower than in those with a CAC score ≥1000 (2.6% versus 12.3%, respectively). Likewise, in patients with ischemia on PET myocardial perfusion imaging, the annualized event rate in those with no CAC was lower than among patients with a CAC score ≥1000 (8.2% versus 22.1%). Conclusions— Although increasing CAC content is generally predictive of a higher likelihood of ischemia, its absence does not completely eliminate the possibility of flow-limiting coronary artery disease. Importantly, a stepwise increase occurs in the risk of adverse events with increasing CAC scores in patients with and without ischemia on PET myocardial perfusion imaging.
CPAP for the metabolic syndrome in patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

BACKGROUND Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with an increased prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and its components. It is unclear whether treatment of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) would modify these outcomes. METHODS In our double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we randomly assigned patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome to undergo 3 months of therapeutic CPAP followed by 3 months of sham CPAP, or vice versa, with a washout period of 1 month in between. Before and after each intervention, we obtained measurements of anthropometric variables, blood pressure, fasting blood glucose levels, insulin resistance (with the use of homeostasis model assessment), fasting blood lipid profile, glycated hemoglobin levels, carotid intima-media thickness, and visceral fat. The metabolic syndrome was defined according to National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III criteria, with Asian cutoff values for abdominal obesity. RESULTS A total of 86 patients completed the study, 75 (87%) of whom had the metabolic syndrome. CPAP treatment (vs. sham CPAP) was associated with significant mean decreases in systolic blood pressure (3.9 mm Hg; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4 to 6.4; P=0.001), diastolic blood pressure (2.5 mm Hg; 95% CI, 0.9 to 4.1; P<0.001), serum total cholesterol (13.3 mg per deciliter; 95% CI, 5.3 to 21.3; P=0.005), non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (13.3 mg per deciliter; 95% CI, 4.8 to 21.8; P=0.009), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (9.6 mg per deciliter; 95% CI, 2.5 to 16.7; P=0.008), triglycerides (18.7 mg per deciliter; 95% CI, 4.3 to 41.6; P=0.02), and glycated hemoglobin (0.2%; 95% CI, 0.1 to 0.4; P=0.003). The frequency of the metabolic syndrome was reduced after CPAP therapy (reversal found in 11 of 86 patients [13%] undergoing CPAP therapy vs. 1 of 86 [1%] undergoing sham CPAP). Accelerated hypertension developed 1 patient receiving CPAP therapy first, intolerance to CPAP developed in 2 others, and another patient declined to continue sham CPAP. CONCLUSIONS In patients with moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, 3 months of CPAP therapy lowers blood pressure and partially reverses metabolic abnormalities. (Funded by Pfizer; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00694616.).
OMICS technologies: an opportunity for “two-way” translation from basic science to both clinical and population-based research

Vlaanderen et al 1 ( see page 136 ) provide a timely summary of how OMICS technologies can be applied to research into the health effects of occupational and environmental exposures. The type of exciting advances being made in understanding pathogenesis at the molecular level is well illustrated by recent discoveries concerning epigenetic mechanisms of carcinogenesis.2 This accumulation of mechanistic knowledge is, in part at least, based on the technological advances of the various OMICS platforms summarised in the accompanying article. Although Vlaanderen et al highlight the technology and structure their discussion around the different platforms, the important underlying message they provide is that knowledge of mechanisms can be translated into the clinical setting in relation to improved diagnosis, prognosis and treatment and into population studies to better understand the causes of disease. The ways in which this can be achieved are numerous, albeit in the early stages of development. For example, the OMICS technologies promise to yield biomarkers to improve exposure assessment and to provide evidence supporting the biological plausibility …
Significance of Insulin for Glucose Metabolism in Skeletal Muscle During Contractions

Glucose uptake rate in active skeletal muscles is markedly increased during exercise. This increase reflects a multifactorial process involving both local and systemic mechanisms that cooperate to stimulate glucose extraction and glucose delivery to the muscle cells. Increased glucose extraction is effected primarily via mechanisms exerted within the muscle cell related to the contractile activity per se. Yet contractions become a more potent stimulus of muscle glucose uptake as the plasma insulin level is increased. In addition, enhanced glucose delivery to muscle, which during exercise is essentially effected via increased blood flow, significantly contributes to stimulate glucose uptake. Again, however, increased glucose delivery appears to be a more potent stimulus of muscle glucose uptake as the circulating insulin level is increased. Furthermore, contractions and elevated flow prove to be additive stimuli of muscle glucose uptake at any plasma insulin level. In conclusion, the extent to which muscle glucose uptake is stimulated during exercise depends on various factors, including 1) the intensity of the contractile activity, 2) the magnitude of the exercise-associated increase in muscle blood flow, and 3) the circulating insulin level.
Oxidation behavior of bulk Ti_u3SiC_u2 at intermediate temperatures in dry air

The isothermal oxidation behavior of bulk Ti_u3SiC_u2 at intermediate temperatures from 500 to 900 °C in flowing dry air was investigated. An anomalous oxidation with higher kinetics at lower temperatures was observed. This phenomenon resulted from the formation of microcracks in the oxide scales at low temperatures. The generation of these microcracks was caused by a phase change in the oxide products, i.e., the transformation of anatase TiO_u2 to rutile TiO_u2. This phase transformation resulted in tensile stress, which provided the driving force for the formation of the microcracks during oxidation. Despite the existence of microcracks, the intermediate-temperature oxidation of Ti_u3SiC_u2 generally obeyed the parabolic rate law and did not exhibit catastrophic destruction due to the fact that cracks occurring in the oxide layers were partially filled with amorphous SiO_u2. Therefore, further high oxidation kinetics was prevented.
Delay analysis of priority queues with modulated traffic

Differentiated services and other scheduling strategies are now widespread in the traditional, "best effort" Internet. These offer quality of service guarantees for important customers at the same time as supporting less critical applications of lower priority. Since response time, or delay, is a crucial performance metric for delay-sensitive applications, time delays in priority queues have been studied extensively in recent years. We consider a DiffServ node which is modelled as a non-preemptive priority queue with modulated arrivals and derive an expression for the probability distribution of the response time using the generating function method. We consider two service classes: expedited traffic forms the high priority class and is modelled as a Poisson process whereas best effort traffic is in the low priority class and modelled as a Markov modulated Poisson process. The distribution of service time is general. This queue has many real-world applications; in the example considered here, it could model a DiffServ router which provides service differentiation for signalling or management traffic together with standard data streams. Mean delays are derived as explicit expressions and show very close agreement with simulation. Higher moments can be computed in the same way with more routine algebra.
Corticotropin-releasing hormone-receptor 1 (CRH-R1) and CRH-binding protein (CRH-BP) are expressed in the gills and skin of common carp Cyprinus carpio L. and respond to acute stress and infection

SUMMARY We established that corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), CRH-binding protein (CRH-BP) and CRH-receptor 1 (CRH-R1) are expressed in the gills and skin of common carp Cyprinus carpio, an early vertebrate. Immunoreactive CRH was detected in macrophage-like cells in gills and skin, in fibroblasts in the skin and in endothelial cells in the gills. The involvement of the CRH system in gills and skin was investigated in response to infection and in an acute restraint stress paradigm. Carp were infected with the protozoan leech-transmitted blood flagellate Trypanoplasma borreli and subjected to acute restraint stress by netting for 24 h. The expression of CRH-BP and CRH-R1 genes in the gills and in the skin is downregulated after both infection and restraint. Thus the peripheral CRH system reacts to infection and stress. The gills and skin separate the internal from the external environment and are permanently exposed to stress and pathogens. Because of their pivotal role in maintaining the homeostatic equilibrium, these organs must act locally to respond to diverse stresses. Clearly, the CRH system is involved in the response of the integument to diverse stresses at the vulnerable interface of the internal and external milieu.
A Pseudo Random Number Generator from Chaos

A random number generator is proposed based on a theorem about existence of chaos in fixed point iteration of x= cot2(x). Digital computer simulation of this function iteration exhibits random behavior. A method is proposed to extract random bytes from this simulation. Diehard and NIST test suite for randomness detection is run on this bytes, and it is found to pass all the tests in the suite. Thus, this method qualifies even for cryptographic quality random number generation.
Postconditioning Inhibits Mitochondrial Permeability Transition

Background—Brief periods of ischemia performed just at the time of reperfusion can reduce infarct size, a phenomenon called “postconditioning. ” After reflow, opening of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) has been involved in lethal reperfusion injury. We hypothesized that postconditioning may modulate mPTP opening. Methods and Results—Anesthetized open-chest rabbits underwent 30 minutes of ischemia and 4 hours of reperfusion. Control hearts underwent no additional intervention. Postconditioning consisted of 4 episodes of 1 minute of coronary occlusion and 1 minute of reperfusion performed after 1 minute of reflow after the prolonged ischemia. Preconditioning consisted of 5 minutes of ischemia and 5 minutes of reperfusion before the 30-minute ischemia. An additional group of rabbits received 5 mg/kg IV of NIM811, a specific inhibitor of the mPTP, 1 minute before reperfusion. Infarct size was assessed by triphenyltetrazolium staining. Mitochondria were isolated from the risk region myocardium, and Ca2+-induced mPTP opening was assessed by use of a potentiometric method. Postconditioning, preconditioning, and NIM811 significantly limited infarct size, which averaged 29±4%, 18±4%, and 20±4% of the risk region, respectively, versus 61±6% in controls (P≤0.001 versus control). The Ca2+ load required to open the mPTP averaged 41±4, 47±5, and 67±9 μmol/L CaCl2 per mg of mitochondrial proteins in postconditioning, preconditioning, and NIM811, respectively, significantly higher than the value of 16±4 μmol/L per mg in controls (P≤0.05). Conclusions—Postconditioning inhibits opening of the mPTP and provides a powerful antiischemic protection.
Multi-objective parameter optimization of multi-pass CNC machining

In a multi-pass milling process, energy consumption is highly dependent of the choice of cutting parameters for each pass and the total number of passes. This paper first analyzes the energy consumption of multi-pass CNC milling, based on which a multi-objective optimization model is proposed to maximize energy efficiency and minimize production cost. A case study is then carried out to explore the difference of the proposed multi-objective optimization and mono-objective ones (i.e., either maximum energy efficiency or minimum cost).
Outage Analysis of Millimeter-Wave Wireless Backhaul in the Presence of Blockage

In this letter, we consider the fifth-generation (5G) wireless backhaul network with small cells and millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) communication. We assume mm-Wave wireless backhaul is used for a physically separated 5G macro base station (MBS) to communicate with small-cell base stations (SBSs) that have wired connections to each other. Thus, a user in the coverage of the SBSs can receive its desired signal when at least one of the SBSs is connected to the 5G MBS. However, a blockage problem of line-of-sight paths can induce an outage event in mm-Wave communication. Using stochastic geometry and random shape theory, we analyze the outage probability of the mm-Wave wireless backhaul in the presence of blockage and investigate impacts of various system parameters.
Effect of pre-reacted glass-ionomer filler extraction solution on demineralization of bovine enamel.

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of pre-reacted glass-ionomer (PRG) filler extraction solution on the demineralization of bovine enamel by measuring changes in the ultrasound transmission velocity. METHODS The specimens were prepared by cutting bovine teeth into enamel blocks. The specimens were immersed in buffered lactic acid solution for 10 minutes twice a day, and then stored in artificial saliva. Other specimens were stored in PRG filler extraction solution for 10 minutes, followed by 10-minute immersion in the buffered lactic acid solution twice a day. The propagation time of longitudinal ultrasonic waves was measured by a pulser receiver. Six specimens were used for each condition, and analyses of variance followed by Tukey tests (α=0.05) were done. RESULTS No changes in sonic velocity were found for specimens stored in the PRG filler extraction solution, indicating that the PRG extraction solution had an effect on inhibiting the demineralization of bovine enamel. CONCLUSIONS The results obtained with the use of an ultrasound measurement technique suggested that PRG filler extraction solution has the ability to prevent demineralization of enamel.
Network-Constrained Packing of Brokered Workloads in Virtualized Environments

Providing resource allocation with performance predictability guarantees is increasingly important in cloud platforms, especially for data-intensive applications, for which performance depends greatly on the available rates of data transfer between the various computing/storage hosts underlying the virtualized resources assigned to the application. Existing resource allocation solutions either assume that applications manage their data transfer between their virtualized resources, or that cloud providers manage their internal networking resources. With the increased prevalence of brokerage services in cloud platforms, there is a need for resource allocation solutions that provide predictability guarantees in such settings, in which neither application scheduling nor cloud provider resources cane managed/controlled by the broker. This paper addresses this problem, as we define the Network-Constrained Packing (NCP)problem of finding the optimal mapping of brokered resources to applications with guaranteed performance predictability. We prove that NCP is NP-hard, and we define two special instances of the problem, for which exact solutions can be found efficiently. We develop a greedy heuristic to solve the general instance of thence problem, and we evaluate its efficiency using simulations on various application workloads, and network models.