Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
AAV vector encoding human VEGF165–transduced pectineus muscular flaps increase the formation of new tissue through induction of angiogenesis in an in vivo chamber for tissue engineering: A technique to enhance tissue and vessels in microsurgically engineered tissue

In regenerative medicine, new approaches are required for the creation of tissue substitutes, and the interplay between different research areas, such as tissue engineering, microsurgery and gene therapy, is mandatory. In this article, we report a modification of a published model of tissue engineering, based on an arterio-venous loop enveloped in a cross-linked collagen–glycosaminoglycan template, which acts as an isolated chamber for angiogenesis and new tissue formation. In order to foster tissue formation within the chamber, which entails on the development of new vessels, we wondered whether we might combine tissue engineering with a gene therapy approach. Based on the well-described tropism of adeno-associated viral vectors for post-mitotic tissues, a muscular flap was harvested from the pectineus muscle, inserted into the chamber and transduced by either AAV vector encoding human VEGF165 or AAV vector expressing the reporter gene β-galactosidase, as a control. Histological analysis of the specimens showed that muscle transduction by AAV vector encoding human VEGF165 resulted in enhanced tissue formation, with a significant increase in the number of arterioles within the chamber in comparison with the previously published model. Pectineus muscular flap, transduced by adeno-associated viral vectors, acted as a source of the proangiogenic factor vascular endothelial growth factor, thus inducing a consistent enhancement of vessel growth into the newly formed tissue within the chamber. In conclusion, our present findings combine three different research fields such as microsurgery, tissue engineering and gene therapy, suggesting and showing the feasibility of a mixed approach for regenerative medicine.
Modelling of migration and orientation of endothelial cells on micropatterned polymers

Understanding the cell migration on micropatterned polymers, as well as their orientation is a critical issue in tissue engineering, since it is the preliminary step in the blood vessel formation. In this paper, we derive an agent-based model to describe the migration and the orientation of endothelial cells seeded on bioactive micropatterned polymers. The model is obtained thanks to the experimental observations, and it provides numerical results that are quantitatively in accordance with the experimental data.
Die Facettenstruktur des Big Five Inventory (BFI): Validierung für die deutsche Adaptation des BFI

Zusammenfassung. Die fur die angloamerikanische Version des Big Five Inventory (BFI) entwickelte und validierte Facettenstruktur (Soto & John, 2009) wurde fur die deutsche Adaptation des BFI ubertragen und auf ihre Angemessenheit gepruft. Basierend auf drei umfangreichen Stichproben – einer studentischen, einer bildungsheterogenen Stichprobe und einer bevolkerungsreprasentativen Zufallsstichprobe – konnte gezeigt werden, dass die 10 Facetten des deutschen BFI substantielle und mit der angloamerikanischen Version vergleichbare Reliabilitaten und Konvergenzen zwischen Selbst- und Bekanntenurteil und mit den entsprechenden Facetten und Globalskalen des NEO-PI-R (NEO-Personality Inventory) und NEO-FFI (NEO-Five Factor Inventory) aufweisen. Ferner konnte eine diskriminante Validitat zu den jeweils anderen Facetten der gleichen sowie zu den Facetten der anderen Big Five Dimensionen gezeigt werden. Die Nutzlichkeit der Verwendung dieser Facetten, zusatzlich zu den Globalskalen, wurde durch deren spezifische Zusa.
A Comparison of Two Immunoassays for Analysing Plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D

A total of 1628 human plasma samples from Cycle 1 of the Canadian Health Measures Survey were assayed for total 25-hydroxyvitamin D using the DiaSorin RIA method and the Diasorin "LIAISON 25 OH Vitamin D Total" method. Bland-Altman comparison showed an average bias of 4.8 ± 16.7 nmol/L (6.3%: P<0.001) with the LIAISON method giv- ing higher values. The relationship was investigated using linear and Deming regression. Linear regression gave: LIAISON = RIA*(0.87 ± 0.02) + (13.3 ± 1.2) (mean ± SE) and weighted Deming regression (constant CV) gave: LIAISON = RIA*(1.14 ± 0.02) - (4.2 ± 1.2). The significant deviations from a slope of unity and the significant non-zero intercepts were further investigated using non-linear regression. Quadratic regression gave: LIAISON = RIA 2 * (-0.0025 ± 0.0005) + RIA*(1.211 ± 0.07) + (2.9 ± 2.5). The intercept was not significantly different from 0. The quadratic equation significantly decreased the residual sum of squares (P<0.0001) indicating this model better described the relationship. Non-linearity was apparent at RIA 25-hydroxyvitamin D � 110 nmol/L, where the relationship was described by: LIAISON = 97.5339 + 0.1388*RIA (r 2 = 0.0039; N.S.). However, removing points RIA � 110 nmol/L did not substan- tially alter the regression parameters. Comparing the analytical imprecision with the total random regression error (Sy/x) suggested that sample-related effects were not present. It is recommended that cross-over analysis between these two methods include points from all parts of the range of interest to elucidate the complete nature of the relationship.
A new upper bound for 3-SAT

We show that a randomly chosen 3-CNF formula over n variables with clauses-to- variables ratio at least 4.4898 is asymptotically almost surely unsatisfiable. The previous best such bound, due to Dubois in 1999, was 4.506. The first such bound, independently discovered by many groups of researchers since 1983, was 5.19. Several decreasing values between 5.19 and 4.506 were published in the years between. The probabilistic techniques we use for the proof are, we believe, of independent interest.
Effective digital image copy-move location algorithm robust to geometric transformations

To make the tampered image more deceivable, rotation and scaling of the duplicated image region, as simple and common image forgery techniques, are often employed. In this paper, a novel approach of copy-move location is presented for copy-move forgery which combines with the keypoint-based method and the block-based method. For a tampered image, we use the split-half recursion matching strategy to match SIFT keypoints. In this step, we obtain the preliminary detection results which indicate the suspected copy-move regions with matching relation. In order to obtain an accurate localization, the proposed method introduces block-based method. First, the affine transformation between two matched regions is estimated. Then, one of the two matched regions is transformed. And then, the ZNCC coefficients are calculated to measure the correlation between the transformed and the matched regions. Experimental results indicate that the presented algorithm can not only localize the tampered regions accurately, but also deal with operations such as rotation, scaling and multiple copy operations. At the same time it also can resist post-processing operations effectively like white Gaussian noise and JPEG compression.
Toward green cloud computing

Cloud computing is emerging as a critical information communication technology to heavily impact our daily life in the future. We systematically analyze its energy consumption based on types of services and obtain the conditions to facilitate green cloud computing to save overall energy consumption in the related information communication systems. With a tremendously increasing number of mobile devices, green mobile communications would be the foundation of green cloud computing.
Consensus and Modality in the Attribution Process: The Role of Similarity and Information.

After groups of subjects judged the relative success of two students, an exchange of evaluations was arranged. Half of the subjects were led to believe that they would get an evaluation from a group member who had the same information about the students, half, that the group member had different information. Subjects were also led to believe either that the group member was similar or dissimilar in terms of his interpersonal orientation and style of judging other people. Then subjects received agreeing or disagreeing evaluations. A Similarity X Information within Agree interaction supported the attribution theory predictions that when the other had the same information, his agreement would increase confidence more if he were dissimilar than if he were similar, but when the other had different information, his agreement would increase confidence more if he were similar. A statistical trend suggested that similar disagreers reduced confidence more than dissimilar disagreers.
Mining High Utility Itemsets - A Recent Survey

Association rule mining (ARM) plays a vital role in data mining. It aims at searching for interesting pattern among items in a dense data set or database and discovers association rules among the large number of itemsets. The importance of ARM is increasing with the demand of finding frequent patterns from large data sources. Researchers developed a lot of algorithms and techniques for generating association rules. Since the traditional ARM approaches consider the utility of the items by its presence in the transaction set. An emerging topic in the field of data mining called Utility Mining has evolved. Since the frequency of itemset is not sufficient to reflect the actual utility of an itemset. The main objective of Utility Mining is to identify the itemsets with highest utilities, by considering profit, quantity, cost or other user preferences. Mining High Utility itemsets from a transaction database is to find itemsets that
Radio Frequency Fingerprinting for Intrusion Detection in Wireless Networks

Media access control (MAC) address spoofing results in the th eft of sensitive information and misuse of network resources. This paper demonstrates an ano maly-based intrusion detection approach, which incorporates radio frequency fingerprinting (RFF) an d Hotelling’s T , a multivariate statistical process control technique, for detecting this attack. RFF i s a technique used to uniquely identify a transceiver based on the transceiverprint (set of features ) of the signal it generates. Our approach is to associate a transceiver profile of a wireless device with i ts corresponding MAC address. Hence, although the MAC address can still be spoofed, the transceiv erprints from the illegitimate device would not match the profile of the legitimate device. Moreover, the success rate of a wireless IDS can be further improved, by analyzing multiple chronologically ordered t ransceiverprints, prior to rendering a decision. Our approach makes use of a decision filter for this purpose. F inally, concept drift is addressed by using dynamic profiles that are updated continuously using curren tly observed transceiverprints. Simulation results, with a false positive rate of ( 0%) and an average detection rate of ( 94.5%) for 95% confidence interval, support the feasibility of employing RFF and the T 2 statistical technique to successfully detect the aforementioned attack.
Bulk-synchronous pseudo-streaming algorithms for many-core accelerators

The bulk-synchronous parallel (BSP) model provides a framework for writing parallel programs with predictable performance. In this paper we extend the BSP model to support what we will call pseudo-streaming algorithms for accelerators. We also generalize the BSP cost function to these algorithms, so that it is possible to predict the running time for programs targeting many-core accelerators and to identify possible bottlenecks. Several examples of algorithms within this new framework will be explored. We extend the BSPlib standard by proposing a small number of new BSP primitives to create and use streams in a portable way. We will introduce a software library called Epiphany BSP that implements these ideas for the Parallella development board. Finally we will give experimental results for pseudo-streaming algorithms on the Parallella platform.
Quantitative Evaluation of Feature Extractors for Visual SLAM

We present a performance evaluation framework for visual feature extraction and matching in the visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) context. Although feature extraction is a crucial component, no qualitative study comparing different techniques from the visual SLAM perspective exists. We extend previous image pair evaluation methods to handle non-planar scenes and the multiple image sequence requirements of our application, and compare three popular feature extractors used in visual SLAM: the Harris corner detector, the Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi tracker (KLT), and the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT). We present results from a typical indoor environment in the form of recall/precision curves, and also investigate the effect of increasing distance between image viewpoints on extractor performance. Our results show that all methods can be made to perform well, although it is possible to distinguish between the three. We conclude by presenting guidelines for selecting a feature extractor for visual SLAM based on our experiments.
Foreign and Domestic Ownership, Business Groups and Firm Performance: Evidence from a Large Emerging Market

We adopt a multi-theoretic approach to investigate a previously unexplored phenomenon in extant literature, namely the differential impact of foreign institutional and foreign corporate shareholders on the performance of emerging market firms. We show that the previously documented positive effect of foreign ownership on firm performance is substantially attributable to foreign corporations that have, on average, larger shareholding, higher commitment, and longer-term involvement. We document the positive influence of corporations vis-a-vis financial institutions with respect to domestic shareholdings as well. We also find an interesting dichotomy in the impact of these shareholders depending on the business group affiliation of firms
Contribution of food prices and diet cost to socioeconomic disparities in diet quality and health: a systematic review and analysis

Context: It is well established in the literature that healthier diets cost more than unhealthy diets. Objective: The aim of this review was to examine the contribution of food prices and diet cost to socioeconomic inequalities in diet quality. Data Sources: A systematic literature search of the PubMed, Google Scholar, and Web of Science databases was performed. Study Selection: Publications linking food prices, dietary quality, and socioeconomic status were selected. Data Extraction: Where possible, review conclusions were illustrated using a French national database of commonly consumed foods and their mean retail prices. Data Synthesis: Foods of lower nutritional value and lower-quality diets generally cost less per calorie and tended to be selected by groups of lower socioeconomic status. A number of nutrient-dense foods were available at low cost but were not always palatable or culturally acceptable to the low-income consumer. Acceptable healthier diets were uniformly associated with higher costs. Food budgets in poverty were insufficient to ensure optimum diets. Conclusions: Socioeconomic disparities in diet quality may be explained by the higher cost of healthy diets. Identifying food patterns that are nutrient rich, affordable, and appealing should be a priority to fight social inequalities in nutrition and health.
Addressing the problem of lack of representativeness on syndromic surveillance schemes

A major concern with some contagious diseases has recently led to an enormous effort to monitor population health status by several different means. However, some of the implemented monitoring schemes are only able to follow a non-random sample of individuals from the population, by relying on volunteer participation as is the case of GRIPNET, for example, for monitoring symptoms of influenza like illness (ILI) in Portugal. This work presents a modeling approach to overcome this poor data characteristic, allowing its use for the estimation of the true population disease picture. We use a state space model, where we run two processes in parallel – a process describing the non observable states of the population concerning the presence/absence of disease, and an observational process resulting from the monitoring. doi:10.7151/dmps.1113 We then use resampling importance sampling estimation techniques, in a Bayesian framework, which enables us to estimate the population states and, thus, the corresponding disease incidence curves.
The Method of Multi-strategy Ontology Mapping

Ontology is a philosophical concept originally,which describes the natures of objects. Because there is not a common criterion for building ontology, a lot of heterogeneous ontologies are constructed in the same domain.Ontology mapping is an effective method to realize the interoperation of heterogeneous ontology. The key of ontology mapping is to calculate similarities between concepts. In this paper, we propose a multi-strategy ontology mapping method. The concept similarity is computed from the aspects of concept name, concept attribute and concept relationship. What's more, the candidate set and information gain are brought to improve the accuracy of similarity and to simplify the calculation process. Extensive simulations show that the approach is an effective algorithm and better than others.
Hypercapnia Improves Tissue Oxygenation

Background Wound infections are common, serious, surgical complications. Oxidative killing by neutrophils is the primary defense against surgical pathogens and increasing intraoperative tissue oxygen tension markedly reduces the risk of such infections. Since hypercapnia improves cardiac output and peripheral tissue perfusion, we tested the hypothesis that peripheral tissue oxygenation increases as a function of arterial carbon dioxide tension (Paco2) in anesthetized humans. Methods General anesthesia was induced with propofol and maintained with sevoflurane in 30% oxygen in 10 healthy volunteers. Subcutaneous tissue oxygen tension (Psqo2) was recorded from a subcutaneous tonometer. An oximeter probe on the upper arm measured muscle oxygen saturation. Cardiac output was monitored noninvasively. Paco2 was adjusted to 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 mmHg in random order with each concentration being maintained for 45 min. Results Increasing Paco2 linearly increased cardiac index and Psqo2: Psqo2 = 35.42 + 0.77 (Paco2), P < 0.001. Conclusions The observed difference in PsqO2 is clinically important because previous work suggests that comparable increases in tissue oxygenation reduced the risk of surgical infection from −8% to 2 to 3%. We conclude that mild intraoperative hypercapnia increased peripheral tissue oxygenation in healthy human subjects, which may improve resistance to surgical wound infections.
Co-infection of Long-Term Carriers of Plasmodium falciparum with Schistosoma haematobium Enhances Protection from Febrile Malaria: A Prospective Cohort Study in Mali

Background Malaria and schistosomiasis often overlap in tropical and subtropical countries and impose tremendous disease burdens; however, the extent to which schistosomiasis modifies the risk of febrile malaria remains unclear. Methods We evaluated the effect of baseline S. haematobium mono-infection, baseline P. falciparum mono-infection, and co-infection with both parasites on the risk of febrile malaria in a prospective cohort study of 616 children and adults living in Kalifabougou, Mali. Individuals with S. haematobium were treated with praziquantel within 6 weeks of enrollment. Malaria episodes were detected by weekly physical examination and self-referral for 7 months. The primary outcome was time to first or only malaria episode defined as fever (≥37.5°C) and parasitemia (≥2500 asexual parasites/µl). Secondary definitions of malaria using different parasite densities were also explored. Results After adjusting for age, anemia status, sickle cell trait, distance from home to river, residence within a cluster of high S. haematobium transmission, and housing type, baseline P. falciparum mono-infection (n = 254) and co-infection (n = 39) were significantly associated with protection from febrile malaria by Cox regression (hazard ratios 0.71 and 0.44; P = 0.01 and 0.02; reference group: uninfected at baseline). Baseline S. haematobium mono-infection (n = 23) did not associate with malaria protection in the adjusted analysis, but this may be due to lack of statistical power. Anemia significantly interacted with co-infection (P = 0.009), and the malaria-protective effect of co-infection was strongest in non-anemic individuals. Co-infection was an independent negative predictor of lower parasite density at the first febrile malaria episode. Conclusions Co-infection with S. haematobium and P. falciparum is significantly associated with reduced risk of febrile malaria in long-term asymptomatic carriers of P. falciparum. Future studies are needed to determine whether co-infection induces immunomodulatory mechanisms that protect against febrile malaria or whether genetic, behavioral, or environmental factors not accounted for here explain these findings.
Bradykinin-Induced Chemotaxis of Human Gliomas Requires the Activation of KCa3.1 and ClC-3

Previous reports demonstrate that cell migration in the nervous system is associated with stereotypic changes in intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i), yet the target of these changes are essentially unknown. We examined chemotactic migration/invasion of human gliomas to study how [Ca2+]i regulates cellular movement and to identify downstream targets. Gliomas are primary brain cancers that spread exclusively within the brain, frequently migrating along blood vessels to which they are chemotactically attracted by bradykinin. Using simultaneous fura-2 Ca2+ imaging and amphotericin B perforated patch-clamp electrophysiology, we find that bradykinin raises [Ca2+]i and induces a biphasic voltage response. This voltage response is mediated by the coordinated activation of Ca2+-dependent, TRAM-34-sensitive KCa3.1 channels, and Ca2+-dependent, 4,4′-diisothiocyanato-stilbene-2,2′-disulfonic acid (DIDS)-sensitive and gluconate-sensitive Cl− channels. A significant portion of these Cl− currents can be attributed to Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) activation of ClC-3, a voltage-gated Cl− channel/transporter, because pharmacological inhibition of CaMKII or shRNA-mediated knockdown of ClC-3 inhibited Ca2+-activated Cl− currents. Western blots show that KCa3.1 and ClC-3 are expressed in tissue samples obtained from patients diagnosed with grade IV gliomas. Both KCa3.1 and ClC-3 colocalize to the invading processes of glioma cells. Importantly, inhibition of either channel abrogates bradykinin-induced chemotaxis and reduces tumor expansion in mouse brain slices in situ. These channels should be further explored as future targets for anti-invasive drugs. Furthermore, these data elucidate a novel mechanism placing cation and anion channels downstream of ligand-mediated [Ca2+]i increases, which likely play similar roles in other migratory cells in the nervous system.