Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rejection of Cardiac Xenografts Transplanted from α1,3‐Galactosyltransferase Gene‐Knockout (GalT‐KO) Pigs to Baboons

The use of α1,3‐galactosyltransferase gene‐knockout (GalT‐KO) swine donors in discordant xenotransplantation has extended the survival of cardiac xenografts in baboons following transplantation. Eight baboons received heterotopic cardiac xenografts from GalT‐KO swine and were treated with a chronic immunosuppressive regimen. The pathologic features of acute humoral xenograft rejection (AHXR), acute cellular xenograft rejection (ACXR) and chronic rejection were assessed in the grafts. No hyperacute rejection developed and one graft survived up to 6 months after transplantation. However, all GalT‐KO heart grafts underwent graft failure with AHXR, ACXR and/or chronic rejection. AHXR was characterized by interstitial hemorrhage and multiple thrombi in vessels of various sizes. ACXR was characterized by TUNEL+ graft cell injury with the infiltration of T cells (including CD3 and TIA‐1+ cytotoxic T cells), CD4+ cells, CD8+ cells, macrophages and a small number of B and NK cells. Chronic xenograft vasculopathy, a manifestation of chronic rejection, was characterized by arterial intimal thickening with TUNEL+ dead cells, antibody and complement deposition, and/or cytotoxic T‐cell infiltration. In conclusion, despite the absence of the Gal epitope, acute and chronic antibody and cell‐mediated rejection developed in grafts, maintained by chronic immunosupression, presumably due to de novo responses to non‐Gal antigens.
Chapter 1 Targeted image segmentation using graph methods

Traditional image segmentation is the process of subdividing an image into smaller regions based on some notion of homogeneity or cohesiveness among groups of pixels. Several prominent traditional seg-mentation algorithms have been based on graph theoretic methods [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. However, these methods have been notoriously difficult to quantitatively evaluate since there is no formal definition of the segmenta-tion problem (see [7, 8] for some approaches to evaluating traditional segmentation algorithms). In contrast to the traditional image segmentation scenario, many real-world applications of image seg-mentation instead focus on identifying those pixels belonging to a specific object or objects (which we will call targeted segmentation) for which there are some known characteristics. In this chapter, we focus only on the extraction of a single object (i.e., labeling each pixel as object or background). The segmentation of a specific object from the background is not just a special case of the traditional image segmentation problem which is restricted to two labels. Instead, a targeted image segmentation algorithm must input the additional information that determines which object is being segmented. This additional information, which we will call target specification, can take many forms: user interaction, appearance models, pairwise pixel affinity models, contrast polarity, shape models, topology specification, relational information and/or feature 2 Image Processing and Analysing Graphs: Theory and Practice inclusion. The ideal targeted image segmentation algorithm could input any or all of the target specification information that is available about the target object and use it to produce a high-quality segmentation. Graph-theoretic methods have provided a strong basis for approaching the targeted image segmentation problem. One aspect of graph-theoretic methods that has made them so appropriate for this problem is that it is fairly straightforward to incorporate different kinds of target specification (or, at least, to prove that they are NP-Hard). In this chapter, we begin by showing how the image graph may be constructed to accommodate general target specification and review several of the most prominent models for targeted image segmentation, with an emphasis on their commonalities. Having established the general models, we show specifically how the various types of target specification may be used to identify the target object. A targeted image segmentation algorithm consists of two parts — A target specification which identifies the desired object and a regularization which completes the segmentation from the target specification. The goal of the regularization algorithm is to incorporate …
Impact of Mobility Models with Different Scalability of Networks on MANET Routing Protocols

MANET routing protocols performance is perceptive to mobility and scalability of network. The performance of any routing protocol depends on the duration of interconnection among the nodes in the networks. This interconnections results an average connected path for whole network. This paper evaluates, the impact of three mobility models i.e. File mobility model , Random Waypoint and Group mobility model on a proactive uniform routing protocol (FSR) and a proactive non-uniform routing protocols (LANMAR, OLSR). The simulation based analysis are carried out with constant traffic load of varying network size and TDMA is considered at MAC layer.
Dynamics of the Establishment of Systemic Potyvirus Infection: Independent yet Cumulative Action of Primary Infection Sites

ABSTRACT In the clinic, farm, or field, for many viruses there is a high prevalence of mixed-genotype infections, indicating that multiple virions have initiated infection and that there can be multiple sites of primary infection within the same host. The dynamic process by which multiple primary infection sites interact with each other and the host is poorly understood, undoubtedly due to its high complexity. In this study, we attempted to unravel the basic interactions underlying this process using a plant RNA virus, as removing the inoculated leaf can instantly and rigorously eliminate all primary infection sites. Effective population size in the inoculated leaf and time of removal of the inoculated leaf were varied in experiments, and it was found that both factors positively influenced if the plant became systemically infected and what proportion of cells in the systemic tissue were infected, as measured by flow cytometry. Fitting of probabilistic models of infection to our data demonstrated that a null model in which the action of each focus is independent of the presence of other foci was better supported than a dependent-action model. The cumulative effect of independently acting foci therefore determined when plants became infected and how many individual cells were infected. There was no evidence for interference between primary infection sites, which is surprising given the planar structure of leaves. By showing that a simple null model is supported, we experimentally confirmed—to our knowledge for the first time—the minimal components that dictate interactions of a conspecific virus population establishing systemic infection.
Evaluating Morphosyntactic Tagging of Croatian Texts

This paper describes results of the first successful effort in applying a stochastic strategy  or, namely, a second order Markov model paradigm implemented by the TnT trigram tagger  to morphosyntactic tagging of Croatian texts. Beside the tagger, for purposes of both training and testing, we had at our disposal only a 100 Kw Croatia Weekly newspaper subcorpus, manually tagged using approximately 1000 different MULTEXT-East v3 morphosyntactic tags. The test basically consisted of randomly assigning a variable size portion of the corpus for the taggers training procedure and also another fixed-size portion, sized at 10% of the corpus, for the tagging procedure itself; this method allowed us not only to provide preliminary results regarding tagger accuracy on Croatian texts, but also to inspect the behavior of the stochastic tagging paradigm in general. The results were then taken from the test case providing 90% of the corpus for training purposes and varied from around 86% in the worst case scenario up to a peak of around 95% correctly assigned full MSD tags. Results on PoS only expectedly reached the human error level, with TnT correctly tagging above 98% of test sets on average. Most MSD errors occurred on types with the highest number of candidate tags per word form  nouns, pronouns and adjectives  while errors on PoS, although following the same pattern, were almost insignificant. Detailed insight on tagging, F-measure for all PoS categories is provided in the course of the paper along with other facts of interest.
A tissue-specific, Gata6-driven transcriptional program instructs remodeling of the mature arterial tree

Connection of the heart to the systemic circulation is a critical developmental event that requires selective preservation of embryonic vessels (aortic arches). However, why some aortic arches regress while others are incorporated into the mature aortic tree remains unclear. By microdissection and deep sequencing in mouse, we find that neural crest (NC) only differentiates into vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) around those aortic arches destined for survival and reorganization, and identify the transcription factor Gata6 as a crucial regulator of this process. Gata6 is expressed in SMCs and its target genes activation control SMC differentiation. Furthermore, Gata6 is sufficient to promote SMCs differentiation in vivo, and drive preservation of aortic arches that ought to regress. These findings identify Gata6-directed differentiation of NC to SMCs as an essential mechanism that specifies the aortic tree, and provide a new framework for how mutations in GATA6 lead to congenital heart disorders in humans.
Image vector classification algorithm for hand-writing verification

In this paper, we propose and implement the data mining techniques for verification of hand-writing recorded in an image. The captured images are considered independent of writing material in this system. This system consists of six sub-modules. Namely, i) Sample image data acquisition and preprocessing; ii) Vectors generation; iii) Computation of clusters; iv) Cluster Head Computation v) Pattern Parameter Extraction; vi) Result. The first sub-module captures and categorizes the image for preprocessing. These preprocessed images are vectored and a cluster is computed based on the degree of entropy in the vectors. Therefore, these bunch of clusters represent themselves with the degree of entropy, type of cluster by choosing a cluster head. Finally, the parameters such as the distance, entropy, confidence, are extracted from the clustering; and a result is generated for the given set of samples.
Environments That Make Us Smart

Traditional views of rationality posit general-purpose decision mechanisms based on logic or optimization. The study of ecological rationality focuses on uncovering the “adaptive toolbox” of domain-specific simple heuristics that real, computationally bounded minds employ, and explaining how these heuristics produce accurate decisions by exploiting the structures of information in the environments in which they are applied. Knowing when and how people use particular heuristics can facilitate the shaping of environments to engender better decisions.
American Journal of Epidemiology Original Contribution Health across the Life Span in the United States and England

This study systematically compared health indicators in the United States and England from childhood through old age (ages 0–80 years). United States have higher rates of most chronic diseases and markers of disease than their same-age counterparts in England. Differences at young ages are as large as those at older ages for most conditions, including obesity, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high cholesterol ratio, high C-reactive protein, hypertension (for females), diabetes, asthma, heart attack or angina (for females), and stroke (for females). For males, heart attack or angina is higher in the United States only at younger ages, and hypertension is higher in England than in the United States at young ages. The patterns were similar when the sample was restricted to whites, the insured, nonobese, non-smoking nondrinkers, and specific income categories and when stratified by normal weight, overweight, and obese weight categories. The findings from this study indicate that US health disadvantages compared with England arise at early ages and that differences in the body weight distributions of the 2 countries do not play a clear role. Per capita spending on health care is higher in the United States than in any other country and double that in the United Kingdom (1). Despite the high rate of spending, adults aged 50 years or older in the United States have significantly worse health status (2–4) and lower life expectancy (1, 5) than those in England. Individuals in the United States also have higher mortality rates throughout the life course until at least age 75 years (based on 2007 mortality statistics) (6, 7). Why health status differs so dramatically in these 2 countries, which share much in terms of history and culture, is an unresolved puzzle. Existing evidence suggests that differences in health status between the 2 countries cannot be explained by health insurance, health behaviors, obesity, socioeconomic status, or racial/ethnic compositions (2–4). The main focus of previous research has been on older ages and mortality. A recent study compared infant health based on birth weight and found no differences between the United States and England (8). Very little attention has been paid in international comparative work to health differences at other age groups, and the potential role of body weight, which is much higher on average in the United States than in England, has not been fully explored. This study uses data from 2 nationally representative surveys to compare the health …
Approximate Simulation Relations for Hybrid Systems

Approximate simulation relations have recently been introduced as a powerful tool for the approximation of discrete and continuous systems. In this paper, we extend this abstraction framework to hybrid systems. Using the notion of simulation functions, we develop a characterization of approximate simulation relations which can be used for hybrid systems approximation. For several classes of hybrid systems, this characterization leads to effective algorithms for the computation of approximate simulation relations. An application in the context of reachability analysis is shown.
Sector Exposure Models For Risk Management of Security Portfolio

Portfolio optimization requires the minimal risk with certain expected return. The risk structure of securities, such as their exposure to countries, industrial sectors, or commodity/factor, have to be characterized, and then the optimal weights of securities in a portfolio can be determined to minimize the exposure of the portfolio to any specific risk factor. Typically, the risk factors are not independent, for example, the health and pharmaceutical industries generally have positive correlation. Besides, the expected return of a security is also related to its exposure to certain risk factors. Therefore, the portfolio optimization, or risk management, cannot be done by simply minimizing the exposure of the portfolio to each single risk factor independently. Instead, an efficient portfolio frontier can be constructed by Markowitz portfolio theory . However, the statistical input requirements to apply Markowitz portfolio theory in a large portfolio are significant. Specifically, we must estimate the expected returns and the covariance matrix, which becomes difficult for a large portfolio and the Sector Exposure Model, or the Multifactor Model, becomes necessary to achieve this goal. Therefore, the objectives of developing sector exposure models are two-fold: help us in understanding and controlling the exposure of our portfolio to any specific risk factor, and implementing portfolio optimization or risk management.
Impact response and delamination of composite plates

This thesis covers a selection of issues associated with impact response and delarknation of composite plates. The problems include contact problems, impact response and delankration testing. The interaction between Hertzian contact stresses and flexural stresses in a plate is studied by comparing a finite element solution with superposition of closed form solutions. Indentation of sandwich panels is studied experimentally and analytically by use of a novel solution which considers core crushing and large face sheet deflections. Wave controlled impact response caused by small mass impact on onhotropic plates is studied analytically and experimentally by use of a one-parameter dimensionless equation. A separate paper describes the extension of the model to sandwich plates. Analytical and experimental aspects of delamination testing are covered by an improved beam analysis of the double cantilever beam specimen and a study of analytical and experimental sources of error in the evaluation of the mixed mode bending specimen. Finally, an extensive experimental program to study the transferability of delamination growth criteria from standard coupen specimens to simple components is reviewed.
On the equivalent bandwidth of self-similar sources

This article presents a method for the computation of the equivalent bandwidth of an aggregate of heterogeneous self-similar sources, as well as the time scales of interest for queueing systems fed by a fractal Brownian motion (fBm) process. Moreover, the fractal leaky bucket, a novel policing mechanism capable of accurately monitoring self-similar sources, is introduced.
Characterization of dry biopotential electrodes

Driven by the increased interest in wearable long-term healthcare monitoring systems, varieties of dry electrodes are proposed based on different materials with different patterns and structures. Most of the studies reported in the literature focus on proposing new electrodes and comparing its performance with commercial electrodes. Few papers are about detailed comparison among different dry electrodes. In this paper, printed metal-plate electrodes, textile based electrodes, and spiked electrodes are for the first time evaluated and compared under the same experimental setup. The contact impedance and noise characterization are measured. The in-vivo electrocardiogram (ECG) measurement is applied to evaluate the overall performance of different electrodes. Textile electrodes and printed electrodes gain comparable high-quality ECG signals. The ECG signal obtained by spiked electrodes is noisier. However, a clear ECG envelope can be observed and the signal quality can be easily improved by backend signal processing. The features of each type of electrodes are analyzed and the suitable application scenario is addressed.
Designing a Mobile Game for Home Computer Users to Protect Against Phishing Attacks

This research aims to design an educational mobile game for home computer users to prevent from phishing attacks. Phishing is an online identity theft which aims to steal sensitive information such as username, password and online banking details from victims. To prevent this, phishing education needs to be considered. Mobile games could facilitate to embed learning in a natural environment. The paper introduces a mobile game design based on a story which is simplifying and exaggerating real life. We use a theoretical model derived from Technology Threat Avoidance Theory (TTAT) to address the game design issues and game design principles were used as a set of guidelines for structuring and presenting information. The overall mobile game design was aimed to enhance avoidance behaviour through motivation of home computer users to protect against phishing threats. The prototype game design is presented on Google App Inventor Emulator. We believe by training home computer users to protect against phishing attacks, would be an aid to enable the cyberspace as a secure environment.
Novel time domain integral equation method hybridized with the macromodels of circuits

This work presents a novel transient field-circuit simulation method based on the time-domain integral equation (TDIE) and circuit macromodels. The traditional field-circuit simulation method constructs the Kirchoff's equations for lumped circuits with SPICE models, but they cannot handle problems with unknown circuit structures. The proposed method creates parametric macromodels to represent the port constitutive relations of the unknown circuits. Then the obtained macromodel is coupled with TDIE to enable the transient field-circuit cosimulation. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. The proposed method is targeted to solve unknown I/O modeling issues in general signal integrity problems.
Effects of increasing days of exposure to prepartum transition diets on milk production and milk composition in dairy cows.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of length of exposure to prepartum transition diets on milk yield, fat and protein production. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. The number of days that the cows were fed the prepartum transition diets was the exposure of interest. PROCEDURES Holstein and Holstein x Jersey cows (n = 1008) were enrolled. Diets given in the far-off dry period (from end of lactation until approximately 3 weeks before expected parturition) consisted of ad libitum access to perennial ryegrass pastures. Prepartum transition diets included perennial ryegrass pasture, ryegrass silage, cereal hay, grain, grain by-product, protein meals, BioChlor, sodium monensin, virginiamycin or tylosin, MgSO(4), trace elements and vitamins. On a dry matter basis, these contained 16.0% crude protein, 4.2% rumen undegradable protein, and 9.9 mJ metabolisable energy/kg. Diets provided an estimated metabolisable protein balance of 286 g/day and dietary cation anion difference of -150 meq/kg dry matter. Statistical models controlled for effects of herd, calving day, breed, age and gestation period. RESULTS Increasing length of exposure to the prepartum transition diets significantly increased the 4.0% fat- and 3.2% protein-corrected milk yield and milk-protein yield as a linear and quadratic effect. The optimal duration of exposure to the prepartum transition diets was 25 days for fat- and protein-corrected milk production and 22 days for milk protein production. Milk-fat percentage decreased significantly and linearly with increasing exposure to the prepartum transition diets; however, milk-fat yield or milk-protein percentage did not vary significantly with duration of exposure to the diets. CONCLUSIONS Increasing exposure to prepartum transition diets increased milk and milk-protein yields and decreased the milk fat-percentage, but not the milk-protein percentage or milk-fat yield.
Effective and efficient algorithm for multiobjective optimization of hydrologic models

Practical experience with the calibration of hydrologic models suggests that any single‐objective function, no matter how carefully chosen, is often inadequate to properly measure all of the characteristics of the observed data deemed to be important. One strategy to circumvent this problem is to define several optimization criteria (objective functions) that measure different (complementary) aspects of the system behavior and to use multicriteria optimization to identify the set of nondominated, efficient, or Pareto optimal solutions. In this paper, we present an efficient and effective Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampler, entitled the Multiobjective Shuffled Complex Evolution Metropolis (MOSCEM) algorithm, which is capable of solving the multiobjective optimization problem for hydrologic models. MOSCEM is an improvement over the Shuffled Complex Evolution Metropolis (SCEM‐UA) global optimization algorithm, using the concept of Pareto dominance (rather than direct single‐objective function evaluation) to evolve the initial population of points toward a set of solutions stemming from a stable distribution (Pareto set). The efficacy of the MOSCEM‐UA algorithm is compared with the original MOCOM‐UA algorithm for three hydrologic modeling case studies of increasing complexity.