Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low temperature Si-to-Si wafer bonding with sol-gel coating as intermediate layer

In this study, Si-to-Si bonding process between two 4-inch, p-type silicon wafers has been successfully achieved with the assistance of tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) sol-gel coating. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is used to measure the roughness of the sol-gel coating, and the contact angle of water on the sol-gel coated wafer is measured using an optical contact angle system. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is performed to determine the chemical bonds and bonding groups in the coatings. The bond strength is measured using an Instron tensile testing machine. The bond strength of up to 35 MPa has been achieved. The bonding mechanism for the low temperature sol-gel intermediate layer wafer bonding is found to be related to the surface smoothness, porous intermediate layer and high density of OH groups with small amount of absorbed water on the sol-gel coating.
What's Wrong with the Traditional viva as a Method of Assessment in Orthodontic Education?

The oral or viva voce (viva) examination has been a mainstay of assessment throughout the history of medical education and widely used as a component of both undergraduate and postgraduate university examinations and professional examinations conducted by the medical and surgical Royal Colleges in the United Kingdom. This form of assessment has traditionally been chosen for its flexibility and potential for the testing of clinical and academic skills, both of which are closely associated with medical practice. However, in more recent years, the viva has fallen out of favour, leading to a reduction in use as a method of assessment, particularly for examinations conducted by the Royal Colleges. This trend has been seen within orthodontics, with the introduction of structured clinical reasoning and objective structured clinical examinations to replace oral and direct clinical examination in membership examinations. This article examines the reasoning behind why the traditional viva is regarded as being unreliable, describes some methods that are available to improve it and discusses recent developments in assessment within the context of oral examination, orthodontic education and training.
Performance Analysis of Two-Phase Locking

A straightforward analytic solution method is developed which takes into account the variability of transaction size (the number of lock requests). The authors first obtain analytic expressions for the probability of lock conflict, probability of deadlock, and the waiting time per lock conflict. They then develop a family of noniterative analytic solutions to evaluate the overall system performance by considering the expansion in transaction response time due to transaction blocking. The accuracy of these solutions is verified by validation against simulation results. Also introduced is a new measure for the degree of lock contention, which is a product of the mean number of lock conflicts per transaction and the mean waiting time per lock conflict (when blocked by an active transaction). It is shown that the variability in transaction size results in an increase in both measures as compared to fixed-size transactions of comparable size. The authors also provide a solution method for the case when the processing times of transaction steps are different. >
RNA virus quasispecies populations can suppress vastly superior mutant progeny

A variant clone of vesicular stomatitis virus recovered from a high-passage, evolving virus population replicated rapidly and produced remarkably high yields of virus, but these variants never dominated during further passages. We show that this clone is highly competitive, but it can overwhelm its progenitor population only when seeded above threshold level during dilute passages.
The computational complexity of enforceability validation for generic access control rules

In computer security, many researches have tackled on the possibility of a unified model of access control, which could enforce any access control policies within a single unified system. One issue that must be considered is the efficiency of such systems, i.e., what is the computational complexity for the enforce ability validation of access control rules of a system that is capable of implementing any access control policy? We investigate this question by arguing that two fundamental requirements exist for any such system: satisfiability of access rules and ensuring absence of deadlock among rules. We then show that both of these problems are NP-complete by using some basic computational theorems applied to the components of the generic access control process
Ancient Protostome Origin of Chemosensory Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors and the Evolution of Insect Taste and Olfaction

Ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) are a highly conserved family of ligand-gated ion channels present in animals, plants, and bacteria, which are best characterized for their roles in synaptic communication in vertebrate nervous systems. A variant subfamily of iGluRs, the Ionotropic Receptors (IRs), was recently identified as a new class of olfactory receptors in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, hinting at a broader function of this ion channel family in detection of environmental, as well as intercellular, chemical signals. Here, we investigate the origin and evolution of IRs by comprehensive evolutionary genomics and in situ expression analysis. In marked contrast to the insect-specific Odorant Receptor family, we show that IRs are expressed in olfactory organs across Protostomia—a major branch of the animal kingdom that encompasses arthropods, nematodes, and molluscs—indicating that they represent an ancestral protostome chemosensory receptor family. Two subfamilies of IRs are distinguished: conserved “antennal IRs,” which likely define the first olfactory receptor family of insects, and species-specific “divergent IRs,” which are expressed in peripheral and internal gustatory neurons, implicating this family in taste and food assessment. Comparative analysis of drosophilid IRs reveals the selective forces that have shaped the repertoires in flies with distinct chemosensory preferences. Examination of IR gene structure and genomic distribution suggests both non-allelic homologous recombination and retroposition contributed to the expansion of this multigene family. Together, these findings lay a foundation for functional analysis of these receptors in both neurobiological and evolutionary studies. Furthermore, this work identifies novel targets for manipulating chemosensory-driven behaviours of agricultural pests and disease vectors.
Thioredoxin Peroxidase Secreted by Fasciola hepatica Induces the Alternative Activation of Macrophages

ABSTRACT Alternatively activated macrophages (AAMφ) are primarily associated with the chronic stages of parasitic infections and the development of a polarized Th2 response. We have shown that Fasciola hepatica infection of BALB/c mice induces a polarized Th2 response during both the latent and chronic stage of disease. The activation status of macrophages was analyzed in this model of helminth infection by evaluating the expression of genetic markers of alternative activation, namely, Fizz1, Ym1, and Arg1. AAMφ were recruited to the peritoneum of mice within 24 h of F. hepatica infection and after intraperitoneal injection of parasite excretory-secretory (ES) products. Administration of a recombinant antioxidant thioredoxin peroxidase (TPx), which is contained within the ES products, also induced the recruitment of AAMφ to the peritoneum. In vitro studies showed that this recombinant TPx directly converts RAW 264.7 macrophages to an alternatively activated phenotype characterized by the production of high levels of interleukin-10 (IL-10), prostaglandin E2, corresponding with low levels of IL-12. Our data suggest that the Th2 responses induced by the helminth F. hepatica are mediated through the secretion of molecules, one of which is TPx, that induce the recruitment and alternative activation of macrophages.
Comparing Static and Dynamic Estimates of Behavioral Responses to Changes in Family Composition or Income

Comparing static estimates of behavioral responses with dynamic estimates and using different time spans for the latter reveals striking differences in estimated effects of changing family composition, income, and wife's work. These are interpreted to be the result of several things: (1) bias in the cross-section estimates from unmeasured and perhaps unmeasurable variables that do not affect the dynamic change data; (2) lags in adjustment, with static data being closer to long-run effects; and (3) different relative importance of errors in measuring the explanatory variables. The effects of changing family composition appear to be less affected by any of these problems than are the estimated effects of changes in income or wife's work.
Diversity of Plasmids Encoding Virulence and Resistance Functions in Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica Serovar Typhimurium Monophasic Variant 4,[5],12:i:- Strains Circulating in Europe

Plasmids encoding resistance and virulence properties in multidrug resistant (MDR) Salmonella enterica (S.) serovar Typhimurium monophasic variant 4,[5],12:i:- isolates recovered from pigs and humans (2006-2008) in Europe were characterised. The isolates were selected based on the detection by PCR-amplification of S. Typhimurium virulence plasmid pSLT genes and were analysed by multi-locus sequence typing (MLST). The resistance genes present in the isolates and the association of these genes with integrons, transposons and insertion sequences were characterised by PCR-sequencing, and their plasmid location was determined by alkaline lysis and by S1-nuclease pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) Southern-blot hybridisation. Plasmids were further analysed by replicon typing, plasmid MLST and conjugation experiments. The 10 S. 4,[5],12,i:- selected isolates belonged to ST19. Each isolate carried a large plasmid in which MDR with pSLT-associated virulence genes were located. After analysis, eight different plasmids of three incompatibility groups (IncA/C, IncR and IncF) were detected. Two IncA/C plasmids represented novel variants within the plasmid family of the S. 4,[5],12:i:- Spanish clone, and carried an empty class 1 integron with a conventional qacEΔ1-sul1 3′ conserved segment or an In-sul3 type III with estX-psp-aadA2-cmlA1-aadA1-qacH variable region linked to tnpA440-sul3, part of Tn2, Tn21 and Tn1721 transposons, and ISCR2. Four newly described IncR plasmids contained the resistance genes within In-sul3 type I (dfrA12-orfF-aadA2-cmlA1-aadA1-qacH/tnpA440-sul3) and part of Tn10 [tet(B)]. Two pSLT-derivatives with FIIs-ST1+FIB-ST17 replicons carried cmlA1-[aadA1-aadA2]-sul3-dfrA12 and bla TEM-1 genes linked to an In-sul3 type I integron and to Tn2, respectively. In conclusion, three emerging European clones of S. 4,[5],12:i:- harboured MDR plasmids encoding additional virulence functions that could contribute significantly to their evolutionary success.
Genetic clustering: An adaptive heuristic for the multidepot vehicle routing problem

A generalized clustering method based on a Genetic Algorithm is proposed. The Genetic Clustering (GenClust) method is used for solving the multidepot vehicle routing problem. The solution obtained by the genetic clustering method is improved using an efficient postoptimizer. A set of problems obtained from the literature are used to compare the efficiency of the genetic clustering method for solving the multidepot vehicle routing problem. The genetic clustering method found 11 new best known solutions from the 23 problems in the literature set.
New electronic cane for visually impaired people for obstacle detection and recognition

In this paper, we describe a new electronic white cane for visually impaired people. Our device may enable blind individuals to see the world with their ears. In fact, we used different types of sensors to detect and recognize obstacles. Our choice of sensors is based not only on system requirement but also on technology cost. Accordingly, we used two ultrasonic sensors and one monocular camera. With such low-cost measurement units, we rely on fusing data obtained by our complementary sensors in further steps. An alert speech message is then sent to the user making him know about the presence and nature of potential encountered obstacle by means of a Bluetooth module.
MultiC2: an Optimization Framework for Learning from Task and Worker Dual Heterogeneity

Nowadays, crowdsourcing has been commonly used to enlist label information both effectively and efficiently. One major challenge in crowdsourcing is the diverse worker quality, which determines the accuracy of the label information provided by such workers. Motivated by the observation that in many crowdsourcing platforms, the same set of workers typically work on the same set of tasks, we propose to model the diverse worker quality by studying their behaviors across multiple related tasks. To this end, we propose an optimization framework named MultiC for learning from task and worker dual heterogeneity. It uses a weight tensor to represent the workers’ behaviors across multiple tasks, and seeks to find the optimal solution of the tensor by exploiting its structured information. We then propose an iterative algorithm to solve the optimization framework and analyze its computational complexity. To infer the true label of an example, we construct a worker ensemble based on the estimated tensor, whose decisions will be weighted using a set of entropy weight. Finally, we test the performance of MultiC on various data sets, and demonstrate its superiority over state-of-the-art crowdsourcing techniques.
Neural circuitry of the adult rat central nervous system after spinal cord injury: a study using fast blue and the Bartha strain of pseudorabies virus.

The distribution of retrogradely and transneuronally labeled neurons in the adult rat brain and spinal cord after contusive mid-thoracic spinal cord injury (SCI) was studied using Fast Blue (FB) and the Bartha strain of pseudorabies virus (PRV), respectively. When FB was injected into the distal spinal cord at 2 days after graded SCI at the 10th vertebral level, labeled neurons were consistently found 7 days later in supraspinal areas that normally project to the spinal cord. The number of FB-labeled neurons decreased as the injury severity increased. An inverse correlation between the number of FB-labeled neurons and injury severity was seen in most investigated brain nuclei with coefficient of correlations (r) ranging from -0.84 in the red nucleus to -0.92 in the raphe nuclei. The coefficient of correlation was relatively poor in the motor cortex (r = -0.63), where a mild injury (6.25 g.cm) resulted in a 99% damage of the corticospinal tract. Such a prominent difference between the corticospinal tract and other descending pathways can be related to the difference in location of these pathways within the adult rat spinal cord. When PRV was injected into the right sciatic nerve one month after the injury, labeled cells were consistently identified 5 days later in the spinal cord rostral to the injury and in certain supraspinal regions that regulate autonomic outflow. In these nuclei, the distribution and number of PRV-labeled neurons markedly decreased after SCI as compared to the control group. In contrast, PRV-labeled neurons were inconsistently found in the supraspinal nuclei that contribute to somatic motor outflow in normal controls and no labeling was observed in these nuclei after injury. These results demonstrate that (1) a proportion of neural network across the injured spinal cord has been spared after acute contusive SCI, (2) the proportion of spared axons of a particular pathway is closely correlated to the injury severity and the position of that pathway, and (3) the transneuronal labeling method using PRV may provide a unique approach to investigate multi-synaptic neural circuitry of the central autonomic control after SCI, but its application to the somatic motor system is limited.
Multiscale responses of microbial life to spatial distance and environmental heterogeneity in a patchy ecosystem

Spatial distance (SD) and environmental heterogeneity (EH) are currently thought to represent major factors shaping genetic variation and population abundance, but their relative importance is still poorly understood. Because EH varies at multiple spatial scales, so too are microbial variables expected to vary. The determination of SD × EH interactions at multiple scales is, however, not a trivial exercise, especially when one examines their effects on microbial abundance and genomic similarities. Here we assessed those interactions at all scales perceptible in a patchy environment composed of known plant species and of heterogeneous soil physical and chemical parameters. For free-living, soil-borne Burkholderia ambifaria, genomic similarities responded to most of the spatial scales that the experimental sampling scheme could reveal, despite limited dispersal of the individuals. Species abundance and community composition were, however, responding to much smaller scales more consistent with local responses to EH. Our results suggest that whole-genome similarities may reflect the simultaneous effects of both SD and EH in microbial populations, but the pure effects of each factor only contributed to <2% of the total genetic variation. The large amount of unexplained variation that remains after considering most environmental, spatial, and biological interactions is then posited to be the result of noise introduced by unmeasured environmental and spatial variability, sampling effects, and neutral ecological drift.
Ontology Acquisition Process: A Framework for Experimenting with Different NLP Techniques

Since the manual construction of ontologies is time-consuming and expensive, an increasing number of initiatives to ease the construction by automatic or semi-automatic means have been published. Most initiatives combine a certain level of NLP techniques with machine learning approaches to find concepts and relationships. However, a challenging issue is to quantitatively evaluate the usefulness or accuracy of the techniques and combinations of techniques when applied to ontology learning. We are developing a framework for acquiring an ontology from a large collection of domain texts. This framework provides support for evaluating different NLP and machine learning techniques when they are applied to ontology learning. Our initial experiment supports our assumptions on the usefulness of our approach.
Play and social behavior in maltreated preschoolers

Abstract This study investigates play and nonplay behavior in maltreated and nonmaltreated preschool children. In addition, standardized tests of cognitive and language ability were administered, and teachers rated the children's classroom behavior. Thirty 4–5-year-old children participated in the study: 15 had a history of child abuse, and 15 nonabused children served as a matched control group. Across a 6-week period, children's social and play interactions were videotaped in the classroom. Videotape recordings were analyzed for the level of social participation and cognitive play. No differences were found between the two groups on the standardized measures. However, maltreated, relative to nonmaltreated, children engaged in less overall play and greater functional or sensorimotor play. Maltreated children also engaged in more transitional behavior and aggression, were less competent with peers, and were perceived by teachers as more emotionally disturbed. Results of this study suggest that the impact of maltreatment extends beyond the family into play and social relationships in preschool.
Prevalence and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Patterns of Salmonellaserovars and Shigella species

Background: Salmonellosis and shigellosis are global human health problems, especially in developing countries such as Ethiopia, where substandard hygiene and unsafe water supplies prevail which is aggravated by multidrug resistance. We determined the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility patterns of Salmonella and Shigella isolates among diarrheic patients. Which helps in disease management by showing the disease burden and allowing for selection of appropriate antibiotics for empiric treatment in rural communities of resource limited countries such as Ethiopia. Result: Forty (10.5%) Salmonella and 17 (4.5%) Shigella strains were isolated from 382 patients. The Salmonella strains isolated were 6 (15%) group A (Somatic antigen O, O:2), 5 (12.5%) each of group B (O:4), D1 (O:9) and D2 (O:9,46) and 3 (7.5%) group C (O:7/O8) isolates while 16 (40%) could not be typed with the available antisera. Among 17 Shigella species Shigella sonnei founded as 6 (35.3%) followed by Shigella flexneri 5 (29.5%), Shigella dysenteriae 3 (17.6%) and Shigella boydii 3 (17.6%). High frequency of resistance for both Shigella and Salmonella isolates was observed to tetracycline (82.4%, 52.5%), co-trimoxazole (76.5%, 37.5%) and ampicillin (47.1%, 60%), respectively. All isolates were sensitive to ceftriaxone except 6 intermediate level Salmonella isolates. Fifty three percent of Shigella isolates were Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) (≥ 3 drugs) as compared to 27.5% of Salmonella isolates. Conclusion: Salmonella and Shigella species cause a significant amount of morbidity in rural communities. It is essential for rural hospitals to establish antimicrobial resistance monitoring policies and enforce them to prevent exacerbation of resistance.
Identification of a Monocyte-Predisposed Hierarchy of Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells in the Adventitia of Postnatal Murine Aorta

Background— Hematopoiesis originates from the dorsal aorta during embryogenesis. Although adult blood vessels harbor progenitor populations for endothelial and smooth muscle cells, it is not known if they contain hematopoietic progenitor or stem cells. Here, we hypothesized that the arterial wall is a source of hematopoietic progenitor and stem cells in postnatal life. Methods and Results— Single-cell aortic disaggregates were prepared from adult chow-fed C57BL/6 and apolipoprotein E–null (ApoE−/−) mice. In short- and long-term methylcellulose-based culture, aortic cells generated a broad spectrum of multipotent and lineage-specific hematopoietic colony-forming units, with a preponderance of macrophage colony-forming units. This clonogenicity was higher in lesion-free ApoE−/− mice and localized primarily to stem cell antigen-1–positive cells in the adventitia. Expression of stem cell antigen-1 in the aorta colocalized with canonical hematopoietic stem cell markers, as well as CD45 and mature leukocyte antigens. Adoptive transfer of labeled aortic cells from green fluorescent protein transgenic donors to irradiated C57BL/6 recipients confirmed the content of rare hematopoietic stem cells (1 per 4 000 000 cells) capable of self-renewal and durable, low-level reconstitution of leukocytes. Moreover, the predominance of long-term macrophage precursors was evident by late recovery of green fluorescent protein–positive colonies from recipient bone marrow and spleen that were exclusively macrophage colony-forming units. Although trafficking from bone marrow was shown to replenish some of the hematopoietic potential of the aorta after irradiation, the majority of macrophage precursors appeared to arise locally, suggesting long-term residence in the vessel wall. Conclusions— The postnatal murine aorta contains rare multipotent hematopoietic progenitor/stem cells and is selectively enriched with stem cell antigen-1–positive monocyte/macrophage precursors. These populations may represent novel, local vascular sources of inflammatory cells.