Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinism in bivariate cardiorespiratory phase-space sets

The predictability of the flow of bivariate cardiorespiratory data is investigated by means of the delta-epsilon method. This method was developed originally for the analysis of univariate time series in order to detect deterministic aspects of dynamics. The approach is extended here in order to detect coupling between respiratory movements and heart-rate fluctuations. Possibilities and limitations of linear and nonlinear analysis methods were illustrated by their application to simulated linear and nonlinear coupled oscillators. In this way, the importance of nonlinear analysis was indicated with regard to nonlinear dynamics of coupled systems. The physiological application of this approach focused on cardiorespiratory coordinated dynamics. The joint cardiorespiratory behavior includes significant determinism both in quiet sleep and in active sleep. The couplings between respiratory movements and heart-rate fluctuations were found to be stronger during quiet sleep than during active sleep. However, in both sleep states, nonlinear parts of couplings were found that go beyond the linear couplings quantified by the coherence function. By means of these results, it was demonstrated that the joint phase-space reconstruction of coupled quantities opens new possibilities for the evaluation of nonlinear coordinations, such as was shown by the simulated and cardiorespiratory data.
Supporting Agent Systems in the Programming Language

Agent-oriented methodologies emphasize organisational concepts, which give structure to large agent systems. Organisational frameworks, however, put an extra burden on developers, who need to master both an agent-oriented programming language and the framework itself. We believe that the organisation of agent systems should be directly supported by features of the programming language. In this paper we propose three such language features: algebraic data types, roles, and sessions. They are inspired by functional programming languages and by session types. How they fit together in the context of agent-oriented programming is new.
2-Step Frequency-Domain Channel Estimation for Training Sequence Inserted Single-Carrier Block Transmission

In this paper, we propose a 2-step frequency-domain channel estimation scheme suitable for training sequence inserted single-carrier (TS-SC) block transmission using frequency-domain equalization (FDE). In the first step, the received training sequence having cyclic property is constructed for frequency-domain channel estimation to obtain the instantaneous channel estimate. Improved channel estimate is obtained by simply averaging the instantaneous channel estimates over several blocks. In the second step, the maximum likelihood channel estimation is carried out iteratively by using both the estimated symbol sequence and the training sequence. The BER performance with the proposed frequency-domain channel estimation scheme is evaluated by computer simulation. It is shown that the proposed channel estimation scheme achieves a BER performance close to the perfect channel estimation.
A high-throughput, area-efficient hardware accelerator for adaptive deblocking filter in H.264/AVC

In this paper, we present a high-throughput, area-efficient, hardware accelerator for the deblocking filter in H.264/AVC video compression standard. In order to achieve this goal, we start with algorithmic optimization and propose a novel decomposition of the filter kernels for the deblocking filter. The proposed decomposition reduces the number of adders by 51% and thereby greatly reduces the area requirement for its implementation. Subsequently, at architecture level, while using two identical filtering units, the transpose units are realized by efficient reuse of hardware resources to further reduce the area requirement. The two filtering units process the horizontal and vertical edges of the macro-block simultaneously and therefore further enhance the throughput of the hardware accelerator. Several other optimization techniques, such as reuse of intermediate results, pipelining, and merging of processing blocks on critical path, result in a hardware accelerator for deblocking filter with high throughput at one hand and less area in terms of equivalent gates count on the other, when compared with existing state-of-the-art hardware accelerators in the literature. While working at clock frequency of 166 MHz, synthesized under 0.18 µm CMOS standard cell technology, it easily meets the throughput requirements of all the levels in H.264/AVC video coding standard and consumes only 12.06 K gates (excluding SRAM).
Emerging approaches in predictive toxicology

Predictive toxicology plays an important role in the assessment of toxicity of chemicals and the drug development process. While there are several well‐established in vitro and in vivo assays that are suitable for predictive toxicology, recent advances in high‐throughput analytical technologies and model systems are expected to have a major impact on the field of predictive toxicology. This commentary provides an overview of the state of the current science and a brief discussion on future perspectives for the field of predictive toxicology for human toxicity. Computational models for predictive toxicology, needs for further refinement and obstacles to expand computational models to include additional classes of chemical compounds are highlighted. Functional and comparative genomics approaches in predictive toxicology are discussed with an emphasis on successful utilization of recently developed model systems for high‐throughput analysis. The advantages of three‐dimensional model systems and stem cells and their use in predictive toxicology testing are also described. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 55:679–688, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Hantavirus Reservoirs: Current Status with an Emphasis on Data from Brazil

Since the recognition of hantavirus as the agent responsible for haemorrhagic fever in Eurasia in the 1970s and, 20 years later, the descovery of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the Americas, the genus Hantavirus has been continually described throughout the World in a variety of wild animals. The diversity of wild animals infected with hantaviruses has only recently come into focus as a result of expanded wildlife studies. The known reservoirs are more than 80, belonging to 51 species of rodents, 7 bats (order Chiroptera) and 20 shrews and moles (order Soricomorpha). More than 80genetically related viruses have been classified within Hantavirus genus; 25 recognized as human pathogens responsible for a large spectrum of diseases in the Old and New World. In Brazil, where the diversity of mammals and especially rodents is considered one of the largest in the world, 9 hantavirus genotypes have been identified in 12 rodent species belonging to the genus Akodon, Calomys, Holochilus, Oligoryzomys, Oxymycterus, Necromys and Rattus. Considering the increasing number of animals that have been implicated as reservoirs of different hantaviruses, the understanding of this diversity is important for evaluating the risk of distinct hantavirus species as human pathogens.
Exposure to Environmental Ozone Alters Semen Quality

Idiopathic male infertility may be due to exposure to environmental toxicants that alter spermatogenesis or sperm function. We studied the relationship between air pollutant levels and semen quality over a 2-year period in Los Angeles, California, by analyzing repeated semen samples collected by sperm donors. Semen analysis data derived from 5,134 semen samples from a sperm donor bank were correlated with air pollutant levels (ozone, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter < 10 μm in aerodynamic diameter) measured 0–9, 10–14, and 70–90 days before semen collection dates in Los Angeles between January 1996 and December 1998. A linear mixed-effects model was used to model average sperm concentration and total motile sperm count for the donation from each subject. Changes were analyzed in relationship to biologically relevant time points during spermatogenesis, 0–9, 10–14, and 70–90 days before the day of semen collection. We estimated temperature and seasonality effects after adjusting for a base model, which included donor’s date of birth and age at donation. Forty-eight donors from Los Angeles were included as subjects. Donors were included if they collected repeated semen samples over a 12-month period between January 1996 and December 1998. There was a significant negative correlation between ozone levels at 0–9, 10–14, and 70–90 days before donation and average sperm concentration, which was maintained after correction for donor’s birth date, age at donation, temperature, and seasonality (p < 0.01). No other pollutant measures were significantly associated with sperm quality outcomes. Exposure to ambient ozone levels adversely affects semen quality.
The Biochemical Composition and Nutritional Potential of three Varieties of Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper.

Three different varieties of the pulse, Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper were analysed for their proximate and mineral composition, vitamins (niacin and ascorbic acid), protein fractions, amino acid profile of total seed proteins, fatty acid profile of seed lipids, in vitro protein digestibility and certain antinutritional factors. The major findings of the study were as follows: crude protein content ranged from 24.37 – 26.22%, crude lipid 2.94 – 4.24%, total dietary fibre 4.24 – 5.47%, ash 2.98 –3.33%, carbohydrates 61.24 – 64.43% and calorific value1603.65 – 1691.81kJ100 -1 g DM. The investigated seed samples contained minerals such as Na, K, Mg and P in abundance. The ratios of Na/K ranged from 0.16 – 0.19% and Ca/P 0.68 – 1.19%. Albumins and globulins seems to be the principle protein of the investigated Vigna mungo varieties. The essential amino acid profile of total seed proteins were found to be high when compared to the FAO/WHO (1991) recommended pattern. The fatty acid profiles of all the three varieties revealed that the seed lipids contained linoleic and linolenic acid in high concentration. The IVPD of the studied samples ranged from 49.76 - 56.21%. The antinutritional factors ranged from: total free phenolics 0.48 – 1.41%, tannins 0.62 – 0.70%, L-DOPA 0.52 – 0.79%, phytic acid 338 – 412 mg100 -1 , hydrogen cyanide 0.06 – 0.12 mg100 -1 , trypsin inhibitor activity 32.48 – 41.36 TIUmg -1 protein. Raffinose was the principle oligosaccharide of all the three varieties of Vigna mungo. Low levels of phytohaemagglutinating activity for human erythrocytes of
Using stereo for object recognition

There has been significant progress recently in object recognition research, but many of the current approaches still fail for object classes with few distinctive features, and in settings with significant clutter and viewpoint variance. One such setting is visual search in mobile robotics, where tasks such as finding a mug or stapler require robust recognition. The focus of this paper is on integrating stereo vision with appearance based recognition to increase accuracy and efficiency. We propose a model that utilizes a chamfer-type silhouette classifier which is weighted by a prior on scale, which is robust to missing stereo depth information. Our approach is validated on a set of challenging indoor scenes containing mugs and shoes, where we find that priors remove a significant number of false positives, improving the average precision by 0.2 on each dataset. We additionally experiment with an additional classifer by Felzenszwalb et al.[1] to demonstrate the approach's robustness.
Conductance quantization and synaptic behavior in a Ta2O5-based atomic switch

Quantized conductance was observed in a cation-migration-based resistive switching memory cell with a simple metal–insulator–metal (MIM) structure using a thin Ta2O5 layer. The observed conductance changes are attributed to the formation and dissolution of a metal filament with an atomic point contact of different integer multiples in the Ta2O5 layer. The results demonstrate that atomic point contacts can be realized in an oxide-based MIM structure that functions as a nanogap-based atomic switch (Terabe et al 2005 Nature 433 47). By applying consecutive voltage pulses at periodic intervals of different times, we also observed an effect analogous to the long-term potentiation of biological synapses, which shows that the oxide-based atomic switch has potential for use as an essential building block of neural computing systems.
Absence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in retired football players with multiple concussions and neurological symptomatology

Background: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is the term coined for the neurodegenerative disease often suspected in athletes with histories of repeated concussion and progressive dementia. Histologically, CTE is defined as a tauopathy with a distribution of tau-positive neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) that is distinct from other tauopathies, and usually shows an absence of beta-amyloid deposits, in contrast to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although the connection between repeated concussions and CTE-type neurodegeneration has been recently proposed, this causal relationship has not yet been firmly established. Also, the prevalence of CTE among athletes with multiple concussions is unknown. Methods: We performed a consecutive case series brain autopsy study on six retired professional football players from the Canadian Football League (CFL) with histories of multiple concussions and significant neurological decline. Results: All participants had progressive neurocognitive decline prior to death; however, only 3 cases had post-mortem neuropathological findings consistent with CTE. The other 3 participants had pathological diagnoses of AD, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Parkinson's disease (PD). Moreover, the CTE cases showed co-morbid pathology of cancer, vascular disease, and AD. Discussion: Our case studies highlight that not all athletes with history of repeated concussions and neurological symptomology present neuropathological changes of CTE. These preliminary findings support the need for further research into the link between concussion and CTE as well as the need to expand the research to other possible causes of taupathy in athletes. They point to a critical need for prospective studies with good sampling methods to allow us to understand the relationship between multiple concussions and the development of CTE.
The heavy metal contents of some selected medicinal plants sampled from different geographical locations

Background: The levels of 5 minerals namely; lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and aluminum were assessed in 10 medicinal plants sampled from 5 different geographical locations to determine the effect of location on the plants’ mineral content. Materials and Methods: Atomic absorption spectrophotometry (wet digestion) was used for the analyzes, and content of the minerals per sample was expressed as μg/g. The levels of minerals were compared to their limit specification for herbs and daily total intake of these minerals. A two-way analysis of variance, which tends to look at the effect of the location and the medicinal plant itself on the plants mineral content, was used in the statistical analysis. Results: Lead (Pb) was present in all plant species examined, except Ocimum gratissimum. One plant exceeded the maximum safety limit for lead. Cadmium was also detected in some of the medicinal plant species (44%) whilst majority were below the detection limit (0.002) representing 56%. 40% of the plant species exceeded the limit for cadmium. Mercury and arsenic in all the plant species were below the detection limit (0.001). Significant variation existed in mineral content for the various locations (P ≤ 0.05). Conclusion: The findings generally suggest the variation in mineral levels for the various locations. Thus, our study has shown that same species of medicinal plants, growing in different environments, accumulates different levels of heavy metals.
An adaptive scheduling approach in distributed systems

A large number of scheduling algorithms for large scale distributed systems have been proposed, studied and compared. In spite of this, there are few studies comparing the performance of scheduling algorithms considering at the same time the distributed system structure on which we want to schedule the tasks; the type of directed acyclic graph (DAG), in which graph nodes represent tasks and graph edges represent data transfers; and the type of tasks, for example CPU-bound vs. I/O bound. This paper proposes a method for selecting, in a dynamic manner, the most appropriate scheduling algorithm for a particular distributed system, after a previous analysis. Choosing the best known scheduling algorithm can improve performance of an application if all the aspects previously enumerated are considered. The results of this paper consist in a comparison of the scheduling algorithms performance for the following scheduling algorithms: Modified Critical Path, Cluster ready Children First, Earliest Time First, Highest Level First with Estimated Times and Hybrid Remapper Minimum Partial Completion Time Static Priority. However, the main purpose of this investigation tests is to demonstrate the usefulness of the presented scheduling approach using these results.
Double-balloon enteroscopy for mesenchymal tumors of small bowel: nine years' experience.

AIM To assess the value of double-balloon enteroscopy (DBE) for the diagnosis of gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumors (GIMTs) in the small bowel and clarify their clinical and endoscopic characteristics. METHODS A retrospective review in a total of 783 patients who underwent a DBE procedure from January 2003 to December 2011 was conducted. Data from patients with pathologically confirmed GIMTs were analyzed at a single tertiary center with nine years' experience. The primary outcomes assessed included characteristics of patients with GIMTs, indications for DBE, overall diagnostic yield of GIMTs, endoscopic morphology, positive biopsy, comparison of diagnosis with capsule endoscopy, and subsequent interventional management. RESULTS GIMTs were identified and analyzed in 77 patients. The mean age was 47.74 ± 14.14 years (range: 20-77 years), with 63.6% being males. The majority of individuals presented with gastrointestinal bleeding, accounting for 81.8%, followed by abdominal pain, accounting for 10.4%. Small bowel pathologies were found in 71 patients, the detection rate was 92.2%. The diagnostic yield of DBE for GIMTs was 88.3%. DBE was superior to capsule endoscopy in the diagnosis of GIMTs (P = 0.006; McNemar's χ(2) test). Gastrointestinal stromal tumor was the most frequent and leiomyoma was the second frequent GIMT. Single and focal lesions were typical of GIMTs, and masses with smooth or unsmooth surface were the most common in the small bowel. GIMTs were removed from all the patients surgically except one patient treated with endoscopic resection. CONCLUSION DBE is a safe and valuable procedure for patients with suspected GIMTs, and it provides an accurate position for subsequent surgical intervention.
A feasible rounding approach for mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems

We introduce a new technique to generate good feasible points of mixedinteger nonlinear optimization problems. It makes use of the so-called inner parallel set of the relaxed feasible set, which was employed in O. Stein, Error bounds for mixed integer linear optimization problems, Mathematical Programming, Vol. 156 (2016), 101–123, as well as O. Stein, Error bounds for mixed integer nonlinear optimization problems, Optimization Letters, 2016, DOI 10.1007/s11590-016-1011-y, to bound the error occurring when an optimal point of the relaxed problem is rounded to the next integer point. On the contrary, in the present paper we show that efficiently solving certain purely continuous optimization problems over the inner parallel set and rounding their optimal points leads to feasible points of the original mixed-integer problem. For their objective function values we present computable a-priori and a-posteriori bounds on the deviation from the optimal value, as well as a computable certificate for the consistency of the inner parallel set. Numerical examples for large scale knapsack problems illustrate that our method is able to outperform standard software. A post processing step to our approach further improves the results.
PERFORMANCE OF MOV ARRESTERS DURING VERY CLOSE , DIRECT LIGHTNING STRIKES TO A POWER DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM

In 1996, at the Intemational Center for Lightning Research and Testing (ICLRT) at Camp Blanding, Florida, the responses of MOV arresters in an unenergized test distribution system, composed of an overhead line, underground cable, and padmount transformer with a resistive load, were measured during very close, direct lightning strikes to the overhead line. Arresters were installed on the overhead line at two locations 50 m apart (on either side of the strike point) and at the primary of the padmount transformer which was connected to the line via the underground cable. We obtained arrester data for this test configuration from two lightning flashes (containing a total of five strokes) which were artificially initiated from a natural thunderstorm, using the rocketand-wire technique. We present the simultaneously-recorded arrester discharge current and voltage waveforms from one lightning stroke for one of the two arresters on the line and for the arrester at the transfomer primary. Additionally, we estimate the energy absorbed by the arrester on the line as a function of time for the first 4 ms of the lightning event. The records presented are representative of those for all five strokes.
[Overexpression of Axin inhibits lymphoma cell invasion and metastasis in vitro by down-regulating β-catenin and MMP7/MMP9].

OBJECTIVE To investigate that the role of Axin in regulating the invasion and migration ability of lymphoma cells and explore the molecular mechanisms. METHODS The expressions of Axin, β-catenin, MMP7, and MMP9 were detected in different lymphoma cell lines by RT-PCR and Western blotting. A lymphoma cell line with low Axin expressions was transiently transfected with pCMV5-HA-Axin and pcDNA5-His-β-catenin plasmid, and the expressions of β-catenin, MMP7, and MMP9 mRNA and protein were observed. A lymphoma cell model stably overexpressing Axin was transfected with AXIN-shRNA and β-catenin-shRNA, and the changes in β-catenin, MMP7, and MMP9 cexpressions were observed. The changes in the invasion and migration abilities of this cell model were assessed following Axin knockdown. RESULTS In the lymphoma cell lines tested, the Axin expression showed a negative correlation with β-catenin, MMP7, and MMP9 expressions. In Raji cells with a low Axin expression, overexpression of Axin resulted in decreased expressions of β-catenin, MMP7, and MMP9 at the protein levels but not the mRNA levels, and overexpression of β-catenin obviously increased MMP7 and MMP9 mRNA and protein expressions. In the cells with stable Axin overexpression, Axin knockdown caused increased expressions of β-catenin, MMP7, and MMP9 at the protein levels but not the mRNA levels, while β-catenin knockdown caused lowered expressions of MMP7 and MMP9 and suppressed cell invasion and migration. CONCLUSION In lymphoma cells, Axin overexpression can decrease the expression of β-catenin, which in turn decreases the expressions of MMP7 and MMP9 to inhibit the cell invasion and migration.