Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disease ‘Activity’, ‘Severity’ and ‘Impact’: Interrelationships in COPD; Is a Measure of Disease ‘Activity’ the Holy Grail for COPD, or a Variable Impossible to Quantify?

Abstract It is increasingly recognised that new measures of disease ‘activity’ for COPD are required, however the relationship between markers of disease ‘activity’, ‘severity’ and ‘impact’ though closely linked, is poorly understood. Additionally, while change in markers of disease ‘severity’ (e.g. change in FEV1) may be considered a marker of disease ‘activity’, these quantify a single aspect of disease ‘activity’ in COPD rather than measuring the overall disease process and this has stimulated the search for new biomarkers of COPD that reflect the ‘activity’ of the disease process. The ideal biomarker of disease ‘activity’ would be stable with respect to time since measurement at any time point would then relate to subsequent disease progression. This would allow the influence of a therapeutic intervention to be assessed early, facilitating both phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. Although a number of potential biomarkers of COPD disease ‘activity’ have been studied, to date none have been shown to conclusively relate to disease progression and the stability of underlying disease ‘activity’ therefore requires further consideration. Interestingly, while the variability of disease ‘activity’ of COPD is rarely mentioned in the current literature, and there is uncertainty whether ‘activity’ is constant or highly variable, there are clues from available data as discussed in the current article. Finally we consider how markers of disease ‘activity’, ‘severity’ and ‘impact’ may relate, which is of utmost importance in the ongoing search for new biomarkers in COPD and a greater understanding of the pathogenesis of the disease process.
Functional imaging of an alcohol‐Implicit Association Test (IAT)

This research assessed activation in neural substrates involved in implicit associative processes through functional magnetic resonance imaging of an alcohol‐Implicit Association Test (IAT) focused on positive outcomes of alcohol use. Comparisons involved 17 heavy and 19 light drinkers, ranging in age from 18 to 22, during compatible and incompatible association task trials. Behaviorally, a significant IAT effect was found with heavy drinkers showing stronger positive implicit associations toward alcohol use than light drinkers. Imaging data revealed heavy drinkers showed greater activity during compatible trials relative to incompatible trials in the left putamen and insula while no significant difference in activity between conditions was found in the light drinkers. Light drinkers showed significantly more activity in the left orbital frontal cortex during both compatible and incompatible trials than heavy drinkers, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was engaged more in both light and heavy drinkers during incompatible trials relative to compatible trials. Further, within‐group analyses showed significant amygdala activity along with the putamen and insula among heavy drinkers during compatible trials relative to incompatible trials. These results are consistent with a dual process framework of appetitive behaviors proposing that (1) implicit associations underlying habit are mediated through neural circuitry dependent on the striatum, and (2) controlled behaviors are mediated through neural circuitry more dependent on the prefrontal cortex. This is the first study to evaluate the neural mechanisms elicited by an alcohol‐IAT, providing an additional step toward increasing understanding of associative habit processes and their regulatory influence over addictive behaviors.
An Empirical Study of Adequate Vision Span for Attention-Based Neural Machine Translation

Recently, the attention mechanism plays a key role to achieve high performance for Neural Machine Translation models. However, as it computes a score function for the encoder states in all positions at each decoding step, the attention model greatly increases the computational complexity. In this paper, we investigate the adequate vision span of attention models in the context of machine translation, by proposing a novel attention framework that is capable of reducing redundant score computation dynamically. The term “vision span”’ means a window of the encoder states considered by the attention model in one step. In our experiments, we found that the average window size of vision span can be reduced by over 50% with modest loss in accuracy on English-Japanese and German-English translation tasks.
Research on flame image recognition method in natural scene

In this paper we propose a method for detecting the presence of flame in a video stream in a natural environment. Firstly, the anomaly of image sequence is detected by background subtraction method. Then, the image sequence of the abnormal situation is segmented, and the area of the suspected flame is extracted. Finally, through the color and the shape feature recognition, to determine whether the segmentation region belongs to flame, if it belongs to the flame, it will send out a fire alarm.
Cardinality balanced multi-target multi-Bernoulli filtering using adaptive birth distributions

In random finite set based tracking algorithms, new-born targets are modeled using birth distributions. In general, these birth distributions have to cover the complete state space. In Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) implementations, a high number of particles is required for an adequate representation of the birth model. In this contribution, a measurement driven adaptive birth distribution is proposed for the SMC and Gaussian mixture (GM) versions of the cardinality balanced multi-target multi-Bernoulli (CB-MB) filter. It is shown that a filter with adaptive birth distribution nearly achieves the performance of a filter with known birth locations. Additionally, an application of the filter to vehicle tracking using real-world sensor data is presented.
Design of 10-bit Digital to Analog Converter Using Cascaded Operational Amplifier Topology

This paper proposes an approach for designing a R-2R 10 bit Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) which could be made to operate at low voltage supply by efficiently exploiting the cascaded Operational Amplifier (Op-Amp) architecture. The DAC operates at a 3V power supply with a settling time of 50-100ns , dynamic range of around 50-60 dB for signals upto a frequency of 10Mhz. Graph & simulation results are provided to verify the stability of the Op-Amp used in DAC.
Institutions and Organizations.

Introduction Early Institutionalists Institutional Theory and Organizations Constructing an Analytic Framework I Three Pillars of Institutions Constructing an Analytic Framework II Content, Agency, Carriers and Levels Institutional Construction, Maintenance and Diffusion Institutional Processes Affecting Societal Systems, Organizational Fields, and Organizational Populations Institutional Processes Affecting Organizational Structure and Performance Institutional Change Looking Back, Looking Forward
Fast Volumetric Data Exploration with Importance-Based Accumulated Transparency Modulation

Direct volume rendering techniques have been successfully applied to visualizing volumetric datasets across many application domains. Due to the sensitivity of transfer functions and the complexity of fine-tuning transfer functions, direct volume rendering is still not widely used in practice. For fast volumetric data exploration, we propose Importance-Based Accumulated Transparency Modulation which does not rely on transfer function manipulation. This novel rendering algorithm is a generalization and extension of the Maximum Intensity Difference Accumulation technique. By only modifying the accumulated transparency, the resulted volume renderings are essentially high dynamic range. We show that by using several common importance measures, different features of the volumetric datasets can be highlighted. The results can be easily extended to a high-dimensional importance difference space, by mixing the results from an arbitrary number of importance measures with weighting factors, which all control the final output with a monotonic behavior. With Importance-Based Accumulated Transparency Modulation, the end-user can explore a wide variety of volumetric datasets quickly without the burden of manually setting and adjusting a transfer function.
Macedocin, a Food-Grade Lantibiotic Produced by Streptococcus macedonicus ACA-DC 198

ABSTRACT Streptococcus macedonicus ACA-DC 198, a strain isolated from Greek Kasseri cheese, produces a food-grade lantibiotic named macedocin. Macedocin has a molecular mass of 2,794.76 ± 0.42 Da, as determined by electrospray mass spectrometry. Partial N-terminal sequence analysis revealed 22 amino acid residues that correspond with the amino acid sequence of the lantibiotics SA-FF22 and SA-M49, both of which were isolated from the pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes. Macedocin inhibits a broad spectrum of lactic acid bacteria, as well as several food spoilage and pathogenic bacteria, including Clostridium tyrobutyricum. It displays a bactericidal effect towards the most sensitive indicator strain, Lactobacillus sakei subsp. sakei LMG 13558T, while the producer strain itself displays autoinhibition when it is grown under conditions that do not favor bacteriocin production. Macedocin is active at pHs between 4.0 and 9.0, and it retains activity even after incubation for 20 min at 121°C with 1 atm of overpressure. Inhibition of macedocin by proteolytic enzymes is variable.
Seeing Like a Geologist: Bayesian Use of Expert Categories in Location Memory

Memory for spatial location is typically biased, with errors trending toward the center of a surrounding region. According to the category adjustment model (CAM), this bias reflects the optimal, Bayesian combination of fine-grained and categorical representations of a location. However, there is disagreement about whether categories are malleable. For instance, can categories be redefined based on expert-level conceptual knowledge? Furthermore, if expert knowledge is used, does it dominate other information sources, or is it used adaptively so as to minimize overall error, as predicted by a Bayesian framework? We address these questions using images of geological interest. The participants were experts in structural geology, organic chemistry, or English literature. Our data indicate that expertise-based categories influence estimates of location memory-particularly when these categories better constrain errors than alternative ("novice") categories. Results are discussed with respect to the CAM.
Flavanoid of Drynaria fortunei protects against gentamicin ototoxicity

A ﬂavanoid fraction (FF) from Drynaria fortunei, was investigated to see if it has the protective and ameliorative effects against gentamicin (GM) ototoxicity in guinea pigs (n = 36). Eleven (GM‐group) animals received GM 100 mg/kg/day. Eleven (GMFF‐group) animals received the same dose of GM but 2 days prior were dosed with FF (10 mg/kg/day) for 2 weeks. Seven (S‐group) animals received saline and seven (FF‐group) animals received the same dose of FF as the GMFF‐group. The thresholds of tone‐burst auditory evoked response (ABR) at 2 k, 8 k, and 32 k Hz were determined to be as follows: GM‐group: 90 dB, 92 dB and 72 dB, GMFF‐group: 30 dB, 37 dB and 38 dB, FF‐group: 28 dB, 25 dB and 29 dB, S‐group: 30 dB, 28 dB and 39 dB. The GM‐group had a signiﬁcantly higher hearing threshold than the other groups (p < 0.05). The GMFF‐ and FF‐groups had hearing thresholds similar to the S‐groups (p > 0.1). Repair of damaged hair cells was observed histologically. The percentage of the damaged outer hair cells (OHC) and inner hair cells (IHC) were determined to be as follows: GM‐group: 43% and 20%, GMFF‐group: 20% and 2%, FF‐group: 9% and 2% and S‐group: 4% and 1%. The GMFF‐group showed less damage to the OHC (p > 0.05) and signiﬁcantly less damage to the IHC (p < 0.05) than the GM‐group. FF did not change the antimicrobial activity of GM and it did not show any intrinsic antibacterial effect. FF did not affect the kinetics of GM during the course of the experiment. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Transfer of glycogen‐derived lactate from astrocytes to axons via specific monocarboxylate transporters supports mouse optic nerve activity

It is hypothesized that L‐lactate derived from astrocyte glycogen sustains axon excitability in mouse optic nerve (MON). This theory was tested by using a competitive antagonist of L‐lactate transport and immunocytochemistry to determine whether transport proteins are appropriately distributed in adult MON. L‐lactate sustained the compound action potential (CAP), indicating that exogenous L‐lactate was an effective energy substrate. During 60 min of aglycemia, the CAP persisted for 30 min, surviving on a glycogen‐derived substrate (probably lactate), before failing. After failing, the CAP could be partially rescued by restoring 10 mM glucose or 20 mM L‐lactate. Aglycemia in the presence of 20 mM D‐lactate, a metabolically inert but transportable monocarboxylate, resulted in accelerated CAP decline compared with aglycemia alone, suggesting that D‐lactate blocked the axonal uptake of glycogen‐derived L‐lactate, speeding the onset of energy failure and loss of the CAP. The CAP was maintained for up to 2 hr when exposed to 20% of normal bath glucose (i.e., 2 mM). To test whether glycogen‐derived L‐lactate “supplemented” available glucose (2 mM) in supporting metabolism, L‐lactate uptake into axons was reduced by the competitive inhibitor D‐lactate. Indeed, in the presence of 20 mM D‐lactate, the CAP was lost more rapidly in MONs bathed in 2 mM glucose artificial cerebrospinal fluid. Immunocytochemical staining demonstrated cell‐specific expression of monocarboxylate transporter (MCT) subtypes, localizing MCT2 predominantly to axons and MCT1 predominantly to astrocytes, supporting the idea that L‐lactate is released from astrocytes and taken up by axons as an energy source for sustaining axon excitability. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
CCII based multifunction inverse filter

In this paper, we proposed a number of new inverse highpass (IHP), inverse bandpass (IBP), and inverse lowpass (ILP) filters using second generation current conveyor (CCII) as building blocks. The proposed two topologies can be configured as one of the above mentioned inversed filter by the selection of appropriate admittance. To test the functionality of the proposed multifunction inverse filter, the circuit was simulated using PSPICE simulator software. In simulation of the circuits, the CCII circuit was designed using macro model of AD844 IC. The simulated results are well agreed with the theoretical results.
Immigrant children promoting environmental care: enhancing learning, agency and integration through culturally-responsive environmental education

This paper examines the potential of culturally-responsive environmental education to engage immigrant early adolescents. Our study suggests that environmental involvement can become a means and an end for children to bridge their school and home in agential ways. Drawing from a multi-phase study involving focus groups with children, parents, and teachers from three culturally-diverse schools in Montreal, as well as a green action research project, we examine children’s role as environmental educators and ambassadors. The role of environmental ambassador allowed children to take on positions that departed from conventional parent-child social scripts, and enhanced the communication between school-student-home, between generations, and spoke to their sense of place. We contend that culturally-responsive environmental education offers a unique space for enacting democracy, knowledge creation and integration, but this opportunity is often squandered. Bi-directional, responsive, and consistent home-school-community-place relations need to be actively supported.
Genetics and the History of the Samaritans: Y-Chromosomal Microsatellites and Genetic Affinity between Samaritans and Cohanim

Abstract The Samaritans are a group of some 750 indigenous Middle Eastern people, about half of whom live in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and the other half near Nablus. The Samaritan population is believed to have numbered more than a million in late Roman times but less than 150 in 1917. The ancestry of the Samaritans has been subject to controversy from late Biblical times to the present. In this study, liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization/quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometry was used to allelotype 13 Y-chromosomal and 15 autosomal microsatellites in a sample of 12 Samaritans chosen to have as low a level of relationship as possible, and 461 Jews and non-Jews. Estimation of genetic distances between the Samaritans and seven Jewish and three non-Jewish populations from Israel, as well as populations from Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, and Europe, revealed that the Samaritans were closely related to Cohanim. This result supports the position of the Samaritans that they are descendants from the tribes of Israel dating to before the Assyrian exile in 722–720 BCE. In concordance with previously published single-nucleotide polymorphism haplotypes, each Samaritan family, with the exception of the Samaritan Cohen lineage, was observed to carry a distinctive Y-chromosome short tandem repeat haplotype that was not more than one mutation removed from the six-marker Cohen modal haplotype.
Global Seasonality of Rotavirus Disease

Background: A substantial number of surveillance studies have documented rotavirus prevalence among children admitted for dehydrating diarrhea. We sought to establish global seasonal patterns of rotavirus disease before the introduction of widespread vaccination. Methods: We reviewed studies of rotavirus detection in children with diarrhea published since 1995. We assessed potential relationships between seasonal prevalence and locality by plotting the average monthly proportion of diarrhea cases positive for rotavirus according to geography, country development and latitude. We used linear regression to identify variables that were potentially associated with the seasonal intensity of rotavirus. Results: Among a total of 99 studies representing all 6 geographic regions of the world, patterns of year-round disease were more evident in low- and low-middle income countries compared with upper-middle and high-income countries where disease was more likely to be seasonal. The level of country development was a stronger predictor of strength of seasonality (P = 0.001) than geographic location or climate. However, the observation of distinctly different seasonal patterns of rotavirus disease in some countries with similar geographic location, climate and level of development indicate that a single unifying explanation for variation in seasonality of rotavirus disease is unlikely. Conclusion: While no unifying explanation emerged for varying rotavirus seasonality globally, the country income level was somewhat more predictive of the likelihood of having seasonal disease than other factors. Future evaluation of the effect of rotavirus vaccination on seasonal patterns of disease in different settings may help understand factors that drive the global seasonality of rotavirus disease.
Nature and culture in environmental ethics

Holmes Rolston, III The pivotal claim in environmental ethics is that humans in their cultures are out of sustainable relationships to the natural environments comprising the landscapes on which these cultures are superimposed. But bringing such culture into more intelligent relationships with the natural world requires not so much "naturalizing culture" as discriminating recognition of the radical differences between nature and culture, on the basis of which a dialectical ethic of complementarity may be possible. How far nature can and ought be managed and be transformed into humanized nature, resulting in "the end of nature," is a provocative question. Environmental ethics ought also to seek nature as an end in itself.
Exploiting the topology property of social network for rumor detection

Information credibility gradually shown its significant influence on social networks with high propagation ability and low confidence threshold, leading to the crucial work of identifying rumors. In this paper, we address the special characteristics of Weibo, the most popular microblogging service in China like Twitter, and proposed a general framework to assess the credibility of information. Specially, we analyze the specific topology-related properties of user network, and confirm the impact on credibility evaluation. We use features extracted from the microblogs, from the text of the reviews, and from the network structures. To explore the effectiveness of our approach, we conduct the experiment based on an extensive set of data provided by the community of management center in Weibo. Our results reveal that features considered in previous studies achieve a better performance with the consideration of new features we proposed. We believe the work in this paper open new dimensions in analyzing online disinformation.
The parallelized Pollard kangaroo method in real quadratic function fields

We show how to use the parallelized kangaroo method for computing invariants in real quadratic function fields. Specifically, we show how to apply the kangaroo method to the infrastructure in these fields. We also show how to speed up the computation by using heuristics on the distribution of the divisor class number, and by using the relatively inexpensive baby steps in the real quadratic model of a hyperelliptic function field. Furthermore, we provide examples for regulators and class numbers of hyperelliptic function fields of genus 3 that are larger than those ever reported before.
The clinical utility of new combination phenylephrine/ketorolac injection in cataract surgery

The maintenance of mydriasis throughout cataract extraction surgery and the control of ocular inflammation are crucial for successful surgical outcomes. The development of miosis during cataract surgery compromises the visualization of the surgical field and working space for surgeons. This may lead to complications that include posterior capsular tear and associated vitreous loss, longer surgical time, and postoperative inflammation. Postoperative inflammation is often uncomfortable and frustrating for patients. It causes pain, redness, and photophobia. This compromises the best-uncorrected vision following surgery and often leads to multiple clinic visits. This article examines the literature published on the current treatments used to manage mydriasis, pain, and inflammation in cataract extraction surgery. Combination phenylephrine/ketorolac injection offers an exciting new class of medication for use in cataract surgery. With the recent approval of Omidria™ (combination of phenylephrine 1% and ketorolac 0.3%) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for intraocular use, we review the clinical utility of this new combination injection in cataract surgery. PubMed, MEDLINE, and conference proceedings were searched for the relevant literature using a combination of the following search terms: cataract extraction surgery, pupil dilation (mydriasis), miosis, phenylephrine, ketorolac, Omidria™, intracameral mydriatic. Relevant articles were reviewed and their references checked for further relevant literature. All abstracts were reviewed and full texts retrieved where available.