Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The prolonged storage and survival of spermatozoa in Chiroptera.

The prolonged storage of spermatozoa by bats was first reported by Pagenstecher in 1859, and subsequently attracted the attention of several early comparative anatomists and histologists whose work has been thoroughly reviewed by Hartman (1933). Hartman was initially sceptical about the fertilizing capacity of the stored spermatozoa (Hartman & Cuyler, 1927) and it was left to Wimsatt (1942, 1944) to undertake the first critical experiments of isolating inseminated females from males and observing the developing embryo in the reproductive tract after arousal from hibernation in spring. Further work, reviewed by Wimsatt (1969), has shown that sperm storage is one facet of the complex reproductive adaptations of bats living in temperate latitudes where a period of hibernation occurs during prolonged oestrus. This review aims to provide a concise account of the major contributions to the study of prolonged storage and survival of bat spermatozoa, and where possible to compare the properties of bat spermatozoa with those of other mammals.
Laser Cladding Technology in Overlay Welding

레이저에 의한 표면처리기술은 기술고도화 필요에 따 라 중요한 문제로 대두되고 있다. 내식성, 내열성, 내마 모성이나 전기적 특성 등으로 재료표면의 성능을 고급 화하기 위해 표면처리 기술의 개발은 더욱 절실히 요구 되고 있다. 이와 같은 상황에서 표면처리기술 분야에 있 어서도 첨단 기술을 통한 새로운 표면처리기술이 급속 히 개발·도입되고 있는 실정이다. 한편, 가공용 레이저 로써 1970년대부터 CO2레이저가 주로 절단, 구멍 뚫기 등의 용도에 이용되어 왔지만, 최근 레이저 고유의 고밀 도 에너지를 이용하여 금속의 표면처리에 응용하는 새로 운 레이저 처리 기술이 개발·응용되고 있다. 레이저를 이 용한 금속표면처리의 방법으로는 경화(hardening), 합금화 (alloying), 클래딩(cladding) 등이 실용화되고 있다. 레이저 클래딩을 이용한 표면처리의 목적은 모재 자 체의 기본적인 성질을 유지하면서 외부의 격한 환경에 견딜 수 있는 표면층을 형성하는 것이다. 레이저 합금화 와는 달리 용가재의 성질을 잘 살릴 수 있으며 모재의 표면층만 녹여 용융접합을 하므로 모재의 변형을 줄일 수 있다. 레이저 클래딩 기술의 장단점을 보면 레이저 장치 가격이 높다는 것을 제외하면 종래의 금속표면 처 리방법에 비해 다음과 같은 많은 장점들이 있다.
Efficient Determination of Nonlinear Microwave Circuits Operating Regions

In this paper a direct method for obtaining the operating regions of nonlinear microwave frequency dividers in the frequency domain, is presented. This method is based on the enlargement of the Harmonic Balance system of equations with an additional equation which stands for the condition of turing and/or bifurcation points. This enlarged system of equations is solved in an efficient way by means of a suitable continuation technique. The proposed method has been applied to the analysis of a parametric frequency divider obtaining excellent results.
A Subset of Plasmodium falciparum SERA Genes Are Expressed and Appear to Play an Important Role in the Erythrocytic Cycle*

The Plasmodium falciparum serine repeat antigen (SERA) has shown considerable promise as a blood stage vaccine for the control of malaria. A related protein, SERPH, has also been described in P. falciparum. Whereas their biological role remains unknown, both proteins possess papain-like protease domains that may provide attractive targets for therapeutic intervention. Genomic sequencing has recently shown thatSERA and SERPH are the fifth and sixth genes, respectively, in a cluster of eight SERA homologues present on chromosome 2. In this paper, the expression and functional relevance of these eight genes and of a ninth SERA homologue found on chromosome 9 were examined in blood stage parasites. Using reverse transcriptase-PCR and microarray approaches, we demonstrate that whereas mRNA to all nine SERA genes is synthesized late in the erythrocytic cycle, it is those genes in the central region of the chromosome 2 cluster that are substantially up-regulated at this time. Using antibodies specific to each SERA, it was apparent that SERA4 to -6, and possibly also SERA9, are synthesized in blood stage parasites. The reactivity of antibodies from malaria-immune individuals with the SERA recombinant proteins suggested that SERA2 and SERA3 are also expressed at least in some parasite populations. To examine whether SERA genes are essential to blood stage growth, each of the eight chromosome 2 SERA genes was targeted for disruption. Whereas genes at the periphery of the cluster were mostly dispensable (SERA2 and -3 andSERA7 and -8), those in the central region (SERA4 to -6) could not be disrupted. The inability to disrupt SERA4, -5, and -6 is consistent with their apparent dominant expression and implies an important role for these genes in maintenance of the erythrocytic cycle.
Extraction and classification of dense communities in the web

The World Wide Web (WWW) is rapidly becoming important for society as a medium for sharing data, information and services, and there is a growing interest in tools for understanding collective behaviors and emerging phenomena in the WWW. In this paper we focus on the problem of searching and classifying communities in the web. Loosely speaking a community is a group of pages related to a common interest. More formally communities have been associated in the computer science literature with the existence of a locally dense sub-graph of the web-graph (where web pages are nodes and hyper-links are arcs of the web-graph). The core of our contribution is a new scalable algorithm for finding relatively dense subgraphs in massive graphs. We apply our algorithm on web-graphs built on three publicly available large crawls of the web (with raw sizes up to 120M nodes and 1G arcs). The effectiveness of our algorithm in finding dense subgraphs is demonstrated experimentally by embedding artificial communities in the web-graph and counting how many of these are blindly found. Effectiveness increases with the size and density of the communities: it is close to 100% for communities of a thirty nodes or more (even at low density). It is still about 80% even for communities of twenty nodes with density over 50% of the arcs present. At the lower extremes the algorithm catches 35% of dense communities made of ten nodes. We complete our Community Watch system by clustering the communities found in the web-graph into homogeneous groups by topic and labelling each group by representative keywords.
An Experimental Evaluation of Datacenter Workloads On Low-Power Embedded Micro Servers

This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of an ultra-low power cluster, built upon the Intel Edison based micro servers. The improved performance and high energy efficiency of micro servers have driven both academia and industry to explore the possibility of replacing conventional brawny servers with a larger swarm of embedded micro servers. Existing attempts mostly focus on mobile-class micro servers, whose capacities are similar to mobile phones. We, on the other hand, target on sensor-class micro servers, which are originally intended for uses in wearable technologies, sensor networks, and Internet-of-Things. Although sensor-class micro servers have much less capacity, they are touted for minimal power consumption (< 1 Watt), which opens new possibilities of achieving higher energy efficiency in datacenter workloads. Our systematic evaluation of the Edison cluster and comparisons to conventional brawny clusters involve careful workload choosing and laborious parameter tuning, which ensures maximum server utilization and thus fair comparisons. Results show that the Edison cluster achieves up to 3.5x improvement on work-done-per-joule for web service applications and data-intensive MapReduce jobs. In terms of scalability, the Edison cluster scales linearly on the throughput of web service workloads, and also shows satisfactory scalability for MapReduce workloads despite coordination overhead.
Twenty four hour pulse pressure predicts long term recurrence in acute stroke patients

Objectives: The impact of different blood pressure (BP) components during the acute stage of stroke on the risk of recurrent stroke is controversial. The present study aimed to investigate by 24 hour BP monitoring a possible association between acute BP values and long term recurrence. Methods: A total of 339 consecutive patients with first ever acute stroke underwent 24 hour BP monitoring within 24 hours of ictus. Known stroke risk factors and clinical findings on admission were documented. Patients given antihypertensive medication during BP monitoring were excluded. The outcome of interest during the one year follow up was recurrent stroke. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to analyse association of casual and 24 hour BP recordings with one year recurrence after adjusting for stroke risk factors, baseline clinical characteristics, and secondary prevention therapies. Results: The cumulative one year recurrence rate was 9.2% (95% CI 5.9% to 12.3%). Multivariate Cox regression analyses revealed age, diabetes mellitus, and 24 hour pulse pressure (PP) as the only significant predictors for stroke recurrence. The relative risk for one year recurrence associated with every 10 mm Hg increase in 24 hour PP was 1.323 (95% CI 1.019 to 1.718, p = 0.036). Higher casual PP levels were significantly related to an increased risk of one year recurrence on univariate analysis, but not in the multivariate Cox regression model. Conclusions: Elevated 24 hour PP levels in patients with acute stroke are independently associated with higher risk of long term recurrence. Further research is required to investigate whether the risk of recurrent stroke can be reduced to a greater extent by decreasing the pulsatile component of BP in patients with acute stroke.
Dynamic Measurement of Computer Generated Image Segmentations

This paper introduces a general purpose performance measurement scheme for image segmentation algorithms. Performance parameters that function in real-time distinguish this method from previous approaches that depended on an a priori knowledge of the correct segmentation. A low level, context independent definition of segmentation is used to obtain a set of optimization criteria for evaluating performance. Uniformity within each region and contrast between adjacent regions serve as parameters for region analysis. Contrast across lines and connectivity between them represent measures for line analysis. Texture is depicted by the introduction of focus of attention areas as groups of regions and lines. The performance parameters are then measured separately for each area. The usefulness of this approach lies in the ability to adjust the strategy of a system according to the varying characteristics of different areas. This feedback path provides the means for more efficient and error-free processing. Results from areas with dissimilar properties show a diversity in the measurements that is utilized for dynamic strategy setting.
Systems-level analysis and evolution of the phototransduction network in Drosophila

Networks of interacting genes are responsible for generating life's complexity and for mediating how organisms respond to their environment. Thus, a basic understanding of genetic variation in gene networks in natural populations is important for elucidating how changes at the genetic level map to higher levels of biological organization. Here, using the well-characterized phototransduction network in Drosophila, we analyze variation in gene expression within and between two closely related species, Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans, under different environmental conditions. Gene expression levels in the pathway are largely conserved between these two sibling species. For most genes in the network, differences in level of gene expression between species are correlated with degree of polymorphism within species. However, one gene encoding the light-induced ion channel TRPL (transient receptor potential-like) shows an excess of expression divergence relative to polymorphism, suggesting a possible role for natural selection in shaping this expression difference between species. Finally, this difference in TRPL expression likely has significant functional consequences, because it is known that a high level of rhabdomeral TRPL leads to increased sensitivity to dim background light and an increased response to a wider range of light intensities. These results provide a preliminary quantification of variation and divergence of gene expression between species in a known gene network and provide a foundation for a system-level understanding of functional and evolutionary change.
Integrating a MRI scanner with a 6 MV radiotherapy accelerator: dose increase at tissue–air interfaces in a lateral magnetic field due to returning electrons

In the framework of the development of the integration of a MRI-scanner with a linear accelerator, the influence of a lateral, magnetic field on the dose distribution has to be determined. Dose increase is expected at tissue-air boundaries, due to the electron return effect (ERE): electrons entering air will describe a circular path and return into the phantom causing extra dose deposition. Using IMRT with many beam directions, this exit dose will not constitute a problem. Dose levels behind air cavities will decrease because of the absence of electrons crossing the cavity. The ERE has been demonstrated both by simulation and experiment. Monte Carlo simulations are performed with GEANT4, irradiating a water–air–water phantom in a lateral magnetic field. Also an air tube in water has been simulated, resulting in slightly twisted regions of dose increase and decrease. Experimental demonstration is achieved by film measurement in a perspex–air–perspex phantom in an electromagnet. Although the ERE causes dose increase before air cavities, relatively flat dose profiles can be obtained for the investigated cases using opposite beam configurations. More research will be necessary whether this holds for more realistic geometries with the use of IMRT and whether the ERE can be turned to our advantage when treating small tumour sites at air cavities.
Performance analysis of differentiated ARQ scheme for video transmission over wireless networks

The Advance in video coding and wireless communication techniques has enabled video-based services to be the most important component of many emerging multimedia applications. The critical issue is to develop a quality video transmission system over wireless networks. In this paper, an efficient error control scheme, Differentiated Automatic Repeat reQuest (DARQ), is proposed to enhance the robustness of video transmission over error-prone wireless environments. Analytical and simulation results are given to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of discard probability, overflow probability and outage probability.
CD25+ Immunoregulatory CD4 T Cells Mediate Acquired Central Transplantation Tolerance1

Transplantation tolerance is induced reliably in experimental animals following intrathymic inoculation with the relevant donor strain Ags; however, the immunological mechanisms responsible for the induction and maintenance of the tolerant state remain unknown. We investigated these mechanisms using TCR transgenic mice (TS1) that carry T cells specific for an immunodominant, MHC class II-restricted peptide (S1) of the influenza PR8 hemagglutinin (HA) molecule. We demonstrated that TS1 mice reject skin grafts that have transgene-encoded HA molecules (HA104) as their sole antigenic disparity and that intrathymic but not i.v. inoculation of TS1 mice with S1 peptide induces tolerance to HA-expressing skin grafts. Intrathymic peptide inoculation was associated with a dose-dependent reduction in T cells bearing high levels of TCR specific for HA. However, this reduction was both incomplete and transient, with a full recovery of S1-specific thymocytes by 4 wk. Peptide inoculation into the thymus also resulted in the generation of immunoregulatory T cells (CD4+CD25+) that migrated to the peripheral lymphoid organs. Adoptive transfer experiments using FACS sorted CD4+CD25− and CD4+CD25+ T cells from tolerant mice revealed that the former but not the latter maintain the capacity to induce rejection of HA bearing skin allografts in syngeneic hosts. Our results suggest that both clonal frequency reduction in the thymus and immunoregulatory T cells exported from the thymus are critical to transplantation tolerance induced by intrathymic Ag inoculation.
Light Octree: Global Illumination Fast Reconstruction and Realtime Navigation

We present a method to rapidly build an irradiance cache based on a local illumination environment approach. This cache is obtained by a stream simplification of a photon map. The photons are K-Means clustered per voxel into sets of virtual directional light. These lights are stored into an irradiance texture to provide a real-time rendering of a global illuminated scene. This method can be integrated into an existing GPU shader to obtain complex material rendering and can be accelerated by texture atlases.
LncRNA-ID: Long non-coding RNA IDentification using balanced random forests

MOTIVATION Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which are non-coding RNAs of length above 200 nucleotides, play important biological functions such as gene expression regulation. To fully reveal the functions of lncRNAs, a fundamental step is to annotate them in various species. However, as lncRNAs tend to encode one or multiple open reading frames, it is not trivial to distinguish these long non-coding transcripts from protein-coding genes in transcriptomic data. RESULTS In this work, we design a new tool that calculates the coding potential of a transcript using a machine learning model (random forest) based on multiple features including sequence characteristics of putative open reading frames, translation scores based on ribosomal coverage, and conservation against characterized protein families. The experimental results show that our tool competes favorably with existing coding potential computation tools in lncRNA identification. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The scripts and data can be downloaded at https://github.com/zhangy72/LncRNA-ID.
Development of echinocandin‐resistant Candida albicans candidemia following brief prophylactic exposure to micafungin therapy

Empiric antifungal coverage is indicated in patients with graft‐versus‐host disease (GVHD) following a stem cell transplant (SCT) who are febrile and neutropenic for extended periods of time. Empiric antifungal coverage is indicated for patients with hematologic malignancies who have persistent fever and neutropenia as well as patients who have GVHD following SCT. Although the prophylactic use of antifungals is a cornerstone of the care for such patients, the selection of the particular antifungal is at the discretion of the clinician. We report a patient case whose surveillance blood cultures obtained 14 days after the switch from voriconazole to micafungin were positive for the growth of Candida albicans. Clinicians prescribing echinocandin therapy for antifungal prophylaxis must be aware of the risks of echinocandin resistance and possible breakthrough candidemia with C. albicans.
Zein microspheres as drug/antigen carriers: A study of their degradation and erosion, in the presence and absence of enzymes

In the laboratory, zein microspheres are being investigated as drug/vaccine delivery systems. Preliminary experiments revealed that the release of an entrapped solute (ovalbumin, a model antigen) was limited when particles were incubated in phosphate buffered saline over a number of days. To understand the slow and limited release of the guest molecule and predict microsphere fate in vivo, the degradation of zein microspheres in different media, in the presence and in the absence of enzymes, was investigated in vitro. Zein microspheres were incubated in five different media: Chloride Buffer (pH 2), Acetate Buffer (pH 5), Phosphate Buffered Saline (pH 7.4), gastric simulated fluid and gastro-intestinal simulated fluid for 1 week. Changes in suspension turbidity and pH, microsphere morphology and zein composition in the release medium was followed with time. The results showed that zein microspheres were extremely resistant to degradation in the absence of enzymes (which explains the slow release of entrapped solute), but were degraded by pepsin and pancreatin enzymes in simulated gastric and intestinal fluids, respectively (which indicates that release is likely to be much faster following oral microsphere administration). However, when administered via routes where enzymes are not present, e.g. intra-muscular, release is likely to be slow.
Damage Evaluation of a Welded Joint in a Long-term Service-exposed Boiler by Using a Small Punch Creep Test

A small punch (SP) creep test was applied to the welded joint of a boiler header (1.0Cr–0.3Mo steel), which had been actually used for around 250 000 h, to evaluate the changes in creep properties. A miniaturized plate-type specimen of 10×10×0.5 mm was taken from the base metal, weld metal and the heat affected zone (HAZ), respectively, for the SP creep test and microstructure observation. Experimental results revealed that the creep rupture strength of each portion had decreased by long-term service exposure, especially in the high stress (load) conditions. The creep rupture time of the HAZ was shorter than that of the base and weld metals in the low stress (load) levels, suggesting the possibility of Type IV creep damage. TEM observation also revealed that film-like (Mo, Fe)6C carbides precipitated along the grain boundaries in the HAZ, as well as the coarsening of the M23C6 carbides. These microstructural changes were likely to cause the above-mentioned reduction in the creep rupture strength at the HAZ.
Anuti — An application to aid during emergency

Personal Safety and timely help is an absolute necessity during emergencies. Anuti is a project intended to help the general public in emergency situations where there is no help. It is a social project to develop a Personal Safety Application wherein it serves to help women or the general public to contact people or the police in order to secure them and help them. It is only application till date to integrate Whatsapp messenger services to send emergency alert messages in cases of emergencies. It has two components namely: The User tracker portal to track the current location of registered users and the Android Application which sends SMS, Whatsapp alerts and communicates to the user tracker portal with the user's current location. The android application also communicates with the GPS to retrieve the current location co ordinates of the user.
AN OVERVIEW FOR THE EFFECTS OF LACTITOL, GELUCIRE 44/14 AND COPOVIDONE ON LYSOZYME BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY

Lysozyme, a model protein, was used to study the effects of excipients (lactitol, copovidone and gelucire 44/14) on the protein biological activity. Three different concentrations (0.1, 0.5 and 10 %w/v) of the excipients were used with a relatively high (10%w/v) lysozyme concentration. Analytical methods such as UV spectroscopy and fluorescence technique were used to study the effect of excipients on protein biological stability and integrity. The data obtained from analysis showed that gelucire 44/14 had a disadvantage effect on lysozyme stability as a single excipient. However, by combining gelucire 44/14 with lactitol, the protein activity was preserved. Also, the combination of lactitol and copovidone preserved the integrity and activity of 6% lysozyme to a great extent. Different excipients stabilised proteins to different degree. As conclusion, there is no excipient that works well for even one type of proteins. The most suitable excipient for each particular protein is found by extensive research studying the activity and stability of the protein in the presence of excipients. High efficacy and accuracy analytic methods should be used in order to give reliable information on protein stability and integrity. Keywords: lysozyme, lactitol, copovidone, gelucire 44/14, stability, biological activity.