Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TINIDAZOLE IN THE PREVENTION OF WOUND INFECTION AFTER ELECTIVE COLORECTAL SURGERY

During the first six months of 1978, 71 patients were the subject of a controlled trial of the use of tinidazole for the prevention of wound infection after elective colonic surgery. The trial design was prospective, randomized and double‐blind with tinidazole or placebo given at the last oral intake before operation. The objective endpoint of the trial was the presence or absence of wound infection manifested by pus. All patients underwent a standard preoperative preparation of bowel washouts, and a standardized surgical technique included, in all cases, the use of wound drainage. At the end of the trial there were three wound infections in 40 patients who were given tinidazole, and eleven wound infections in 31 patients who were given placebo. The difference in wound infection rate between these two groups is significant (χ2 with Yates correction=7.3; P<0.01).
Free-movements or manipulation ?

In this article, we comment on various definitions of the term gesture in the general literature of humanhuman and human-computer interaction and in the musica domain. Different propositions of gesture classifications are then discussed and topics from other disciplines, that are important to the discussion on gesture and music, are presented. Concepts developed by the first author related to instrumental gestures, such as energy continuum, gestural channel, and instrumental gesture typology are reviewed in this context. The introduction of case studies on acoustic instruments helps in supporting the theory. Finally, the role of non-obvious (ancillary or accompanist) gestures is discussed with respect to clarinet playing.
Genes Required for Growth at High Hydrostatic Pressure in Escherichia coli K-12 Identified by Genome-Wide Screening

Despite the fact that much of the global microbial biosphere is believed to exist in high pressure environments, the effects of hydrostatic pressure on microbial physiology remain poorly understood. We use a genome-wide screening approach, combined with a novel high-throughput high-pressure cell culture method, to investigate the effects of hydrostatic pressure on microbial physiology in vivo. The Keio collection of single-gene deletion mutants in Escherichia coli K-12 was screened for growth at a range of pressures from 0.1 MPa to 60 MPa. This led to the identification of 6 genes, rodZ, holC, priA, dnaT, dedD and tatC, whose products were required for growth at 30 MPa and a further 3 genes, tolB, rffT and iscS, whose products were required for growth at 40 MPa. Our results support the view that the effects of pressure on cell physiology are pleiotropic, with DNA replication, cell division, the cytoskeleton and cell envelope physiology all being potential failure points for cell physiology during growth at elevated pressure.
Age of Sexual Maturity in Gibbons / 13 Table I . Ages of Captive Gibbons at Birth of First Offspring : Data From the Literature

From studies of both wild and captive animals, gibbons are thought to reach sexual maturity at about 6 to 8 years of age, and the siamang (Hylobates syndactylus) at about 8 to 9 years. However, a review of the literature reveals that in most cases the exact age of the maturing animals was not known and had to be estimated. This study presents seven case reports on captive gibbons of known age. Captive males of the white-cheeked crested gibbon (H. leucogenys leucogenys) and of the siamang (H. syndactylus) can breed at the age of 4 and 4.3 years, respectively. Similarly, hybrid females (H. lar x H. moloch) and siamang females can breed at 5.1 and 5.2 years, respectively. This finding may help to improve the breeding success of captive gibbon populations. It is not clear whether gibbons reach sexual maturity earlier in captivity or whether sexual maturity is also reached by five years of age in the wild. Possible implications for the interpretation of group size regulation and of reproductive strategies of wild gibbons are discussed.
Splenocyte Infusion and Whole-Body Irradiation for Induction of Peripheral Tolerance in Porcine Lung Transplantation: Modifications of the Preconditioning Regime for Improved Clinical Feasibility

Background Preoperative low-dose whole-body irradiation (IRR) with 1.5 and 7 Gy thymic IRR of the recipient, combined with a perioperative donor splenocyte infusion lead to reliable donor specific peripheral tolerance in our allogeneic porcine lung transplantation model. To reduce the toxicity of this preconditioning regime, modifications of the IRR protocol and their impact on allograft survival were assessed. Methods Left-sided single lung transplantation from major histocompatibility complex and sex mismatched donors was performed in 14 adult female minipigs. Recipient animals were exposed to 3 different protocols of nonmyeloablative IRR within 12 hours before transplantation. All animals were administered a donor splenocyte infusion on the day of lung transplantation. Intravenous pharmacologic immunosuppression was withdrawn after 28 postoperative days. Allograft survival was monitored by chest radiographs and bronchoscopy. Results IRR prolonged transplant survival in a dose- and field-dependent manner. Shielding of the bone marrow from IRR (total lymphoid IRR at 1.5 and 7 Gy thymic IRR) significantly reduced protocol toxicity defined as thrombocytopenia and consecutive increased bleeding propensity, but had a less effective impact on graft survival. Whole-body IRR at 0.5 and 7 Gy thymic IRR proved to be ineffective for reliable tolerance induction. Eventually, high levels of circulating CD4+CD25high regulatory T cells were present in long-term survivors. Conclusions These data show that the infusion of donor-specific alloantigen in combination with IRR is efficient once a threshold dose is exceeded.
Tourists' attitudes toward the use of animals in tourist attractions: An empirical investigation

To identify tourists' opinions and attitudes on the use of animals in tourist attractions, a qualitative exploratory study was conducted with three focus groups of tourists who visited Orlando, Florida. The findings indicated that the participants' ethical perceptions of animal-based tourist attractions were made up of three hierarchically ordered layers: (1) general justifications for operating such venues, (2) a belief in the driving forces leading to an ethical operation, and (3) the specific conditions required for the ethical operation of animal-based tourist attractions. The results and their meanings are discussed as a framework for future research in this field.
The 1994 AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition

The third annual AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in 1994 during the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, Washington. The competition was designed to showcase and compare the state of the art in autonomous indoor mobile robots. The competition featured Office Delivery and Office Cleanup events, which demanded competence in navigation, object recognition, and manipulation. The competition was organized into four parts: (1) a preliminary set of trials, (2) the competition finals, (3) a public robot exhibition, and (4) a forum to discuss technical issues in AI and robotics. Over 15 robots participated in the competition and exhibition. This article describes the rationale behind the events and the rules for the competition. It also presents the results of the competition and related events and provides suggestions for the direction of future exhibitions.
Design and Implementation of a Robot for Maze-Solving using Flood-Fill Algorithm

Autonomous navigation is an important feature that allows a mobile robot to independently move from a point to another without an intervention from a human operator. Autonomous navigation within an unknown area requires the robot to explore, localize and map its surrounding. By solving a maze, the pertaining algorithms and behavior of the robot can be studied and improved upon. This paper describes an implementation of a maze-solving robot designed to solve a maze based on the flood-fill algorithm. Detection of walls and opening in the maze were done using ultrasonic range-finders. Algorithm for straight-line correction was based on PI(D) controller. The robot was able to learn the maze, find all possible routes and solve it using the shortest one.
Cloning, sequencing, and molecular analysis of the acetoacetate decarboxylase gene region from Clostridium acetobutylicum

Acetoacetate decarboxylase (ADC) (EC4.1.1.4) of Clostridium acetobutylicum DSM 792 was purified to homogeneity, and its first 25 N-terminal amino acids were determined. Oligonucleotide probes deduced from this sequence were used to detect positive clones in partial gene banks derived from Sau3A and HaeIII digests with following ligation into the vector pUC9. In Escherichia coli, the 2.1-kbp HaeIII clones expressed high levels of ADC activity. The expression was independent of the orientation of the insert with respect to the lac promoter of the vector and also of the addition of isopropyl-beta-D-thiogalactopyranoside, thus indicating that sequences located on the clostridial DNA controlled transcription and translation. From the E. coli clone with the recombinant plasmid pUG93 containing the 2.1-kbp HaeIII fragment, the ADC protein was purified and compared with the native enzyme. Both were indistinguishable with respect to the molecular mass of subunits and native protein as well as to activity stain. The 2.9-kbp Sau3A fragment could be shown to contain the amino terminus of the acetoacetate decarboxylase (adc) gene but did not express enzyme activity. It partially overlapped with the HaeIII fragment, spanning together 4,053 bp of the clostridial genome that were completely sequenced. Four open reading frames (ORFs) could be detected, one of which was unambiguously assigned to the acetoacetate decarboxylase (adc) gene. Amino acid sequences of the N terminus and the catalytic center as deduced from the nucleotide sequence were identical to sequences obtained from direct analysis of the protein. Typical procaryotic transcriptional and translational start and stop signals could be found in the DNA sequence. Together with these regulatory sequences, the adc gene formed a single operon. The carboxyl terminus of the enzyme proved to be rather hydrophobic. In vitro transcription-translation assays resulted in formation of ADC and ORF3 gene product; the other two ORFs were not expressed. Whereas no homology of the adc gene and ORF2 could be detected with sequences available in the EMBL or GenBank data bases, the obviously truncated ORF1 showed significant similarity to alpha-amylase of Bacillus subtilis. The restriction pattern and N-terminal amino acid sequence (as deduced from the nucleotide sequence) of ORF3 proved to be identical to those of the large subunit of acetoacetyl coenzyme A:acetate/butyrate:coenzyme A transferase.
Fault tree analysis for maintenance needs

One of the key issues in maintenance is to allocate focus and resources to those components and subsystems which are the most unreliable and prone to failures. In industrial systems, fault tree analysis technique can be used to study the reliability of the complex systems and their substructures. In this paper a fault tree application for analyzing online the current reliability and failure probability for maintenance purposes is presented. The analysis is utilizing data connected to the fault tree root causes and events. An indication of an anomaly case, service action, cumulative loading, etc., or just time passed or service hour counter level can trigger a new calculation of current probabilities of the fault tree events and subsystem interactions. In proposed approach real time, dynamic information from several available data sources and different measurement are interconnected to each fault tree event and root cause. There is also formulated an active, constantly updated link between the fault tree events and maintenance databases for the maintenance decision support, and to keep the analysis up to date. Typically top event probability is evaluated based on updated root cause probabilities and lower level events. At the industrial plant level an identification of a failure in a component event defined within a constructed and operatively existing fault tree explicitly means that the event's failure probability is one. By utilizing this indication, the most probable failure branches through the fault tree sub events to root causes can be identified and printed as a valid check list for maintenance purposes to focus service actions first to those fault tree branches most probable causing the failure. Respectively, during the checks, service actions, etc., components, especially those within the critical branches, detected as healthy can be a updated as having zero failure probability. This information can be used to further update the fault tree and produce online a new service order list. The added value of the proposed method with respect to developed software platform functions lies in its applicability to rationalize maintenance actions and in a case of a failure allocate resources where they are assumable mostly needed.
A W-band power amplifier with LC balun in 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS process

This paper presents a differential W-band power amplifier combined with LC balun in a commercial 0.13 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. The proposed amplifier consists of one cascode stage and two common-emitter stages. In the cascode stage, the bypass capacitor at the base node of the upper transistor, which is sensitive to the amplifier stability, is analyzed. Measured gain of over 15 dB is achieved from 74 to 84 GHz with a peak value of 17.4 dB at 80 GHz. The input and output return losses are better than 8 dB and 10 dB, respectively. The saturated output power (Psat) and 1-dB compression (P1dB) are measured to be 14.2 dBm and 11.9 dBm at 78 GHz, respectively. The amplifier consumes the power of 301 mW with 1.7 V & 3 V supply and an area of 1.2 mm2.
Bandwidth adaptation for 3D mesh preview streaming

Online galleries of 3D models typically provide two ways to preview a model before the model is downloaded and viewed by the user: (i) by showing a set of thumbnail images of the 3D model taken from representative views (or keyviews); (ii) by showing a video of the 3D model as viewed from a moving virtual camera along a path determined by the content provider. We propose a third approach called preview streaming for mesh-based 3D objects: by streaming and showing parts of the mesh surfaces visible along the virtual camera path. This article focuses on the preview streaming architecture and framework and presents our investigation into how such a system would best handle network congestion effectively. We present three basic methods: (a) stop-and-wait, where the camera pauses until sufficient data is buffered; (b) reduce-speed, where the camera slows down in accordance to reduce network bandwidth; and (c) reduce-quality, where the camera continues to move at the same speed but fewer vertices are sent and displayed, leading to lower mesh quality. We further propose two advanced methods: (d) keyview-aware, which trades off mesh quality and camera speed appropriately depending on how close the current view is to the keyviews, and (e) adaptive-zoom, which improves visual quality by moving the virtual camera away from the original path. A user study reveals that our keyview-aware method is preferred over the basic methods. Moreover, the adaptive-zoom scheme compares favorably to the keyview-aware method, showing that path adaptation is a viable approach to handling bandwidth variation.
The V*-Diagram: a query-dependent approach to moving KNN queries

The moving k nearest neighbor (MkNN) query finds the k nearest neighbors of a moving query point continuously. The high potential of reducing the query processing cost as well as the large spectrum of associated applications have attracted considerable attention to this query type from the database community. This paper presents an incremental safe-region-based technique for answering MkNN queries, called the V*-Diagram. In general, a safe region is a set of points where the query point can move without changing the query answer. Traditional safe-region approaches compute a safe region based on the data objects but independent of the query location. Our approach exploits the current knowledge of the query point and the search space in addition to the data objects. As a result, the V*-Diagram has much smaller IO and computation costs than existing methods. The experimental results show that the V*-Diagram outperforms the best existing technique by two orders of magnitude.
Can health promotion model constructs predict nutritional behavior among diabetic patients?

Since, the nutritional behavior is a complicated process in which various factors play the role, this study aimed at specifying the effective factors in nutritional behavior of diabetic patients based on Health Promotion Model. This paper reviews the published articles from 2000 to the beginning of 2012, using the various data banks and search engines such as PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, Elsevier, and the key words" perceived benefits and barriers, perceived self-efficacy, social support, activity related affect, situational influences, commitment to plan of action, immediate competing demands and diabetes, self-caring and diabetes. Unfavorable self-care situation especially, inappropriate nutritional behavior is related to some effective modifiable factors. Perceived benefits and self-efficacy regarding behaviors play a major role in the nutritional behaviors. Social support especially, spouses’ support has a significant role in this regard. Moreover, there is a reverse relationship between perceived barriers and nutritional self-care. In addition, behavioral feelings, situational influences, commitment to plan of action and immediate competing demands and preferences can also impact and overshadow the nutritional self-care. Following the relationship between constructs of Health Promotion Model and nutritional behavior the constructs of this model can be utilized as the basis for educational intervention among diabetes.
Automated Quantification Reveals Hyperglycemia Inhibits Endothelial Angiogenic Function

Objective Diabetes Mellitus (DM) has reached epidemic levels globally. A contributing factor to the development of DM is high blood glucose (hyperglycemia). One complication associated with DM is a decreased angiogenesis. The Matrigel tube formation assay (TFA) is the most widely utilized in vitro assay designed to assess angiogeneic factors and conditions. In spite of the widespread use of Matrigel TFAs, quantification is labor-intensive and subjective, often limiting experiential design and interpretation of results. This study describes the development and validation of an open source software tool for high throughput, morphometric analysis of TFA images and the validation of an in vitro hyperglycemic model of DM. Approach and Results Endothelial cells mimic angiogenesis when placed onto a Matrigel coated surface by forming tube-like structures. The goal of this study was to develop an open-source software algorithm requiring minimal user input (Pipeline v1.3) to automatically quantify tubular metrics from TFA images. Using Pipeline, the ability of endothelial cells to form tubes was assessed after culture in normal or high glucose for 1 or 2 weeks. A significant decrease in the total tube length and number of branch points was found when comparing groups treated with high glucose for 2 weeks versus normal glucose or 1 week of high glucose. Conclusions Using Pipeline, it was determined that hyperglycemia inhibits formation of endothelial tubes in vitro. Analysis using Pipeline was more accurate and significantly faster than manual analysis. The Pipeline algorithm was shown to have additional applications, such as detection of retinal vasculature.
Dysregulation of mRNA Localization and Translation in Genetic Disease

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) acting at various steps in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression play crucial roles in neuronal development and synaptic plasticity. Genetic mutations affecting several RBPs and associated factors lead to diverse neurological symptoms, as characterized by neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases, and can often be multisystemic diseases. We will highlight the physiological roles of a few specific proteins in molecular mechanisms of cytoplasmic mRNA regulation, and how these processes are dysregulated in genetic disease. Recent advances in computational biology and genomewide analysis, integrated with diverse experimental approaches and model systems, have provided new insights into conserved mechanisms and the shared pathobiology of mRNA dysregulation in disease. Progress has been made to understand the pathobiology of disease mechanisms for myotonic dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, and fragile X syndrome, with broader implications for other RBP-associated genetic neurological diseases. This gained knowledge of underlying basic mechanisms has paved the way to the development of therapeutic strategies targeting disease mechanisms.
Modelos de Utilidad para Sistemas de Recuperación de Información Estructurada basados en Modelos Gráficos Probabiĺısticos

La forma en que el modelo de recuperación implementado en Garnata calcula la relevancia de cada componente o unidad estructural de un documento es combinando dos tipos de información diferentes. Por un lado la especificidad de la unidad respecto de la consulta: cuantos más términos de la unidad aparezcan en la consulta, más relevante resulta la primera, es decir más claramente la unidad trata solamente (de al menos una parte) del tema de la consulta y no de otros. Por otro lado, la exhaustividad de la unidad respecto de la consulta: cuantos más términos de la consulta emparejan con los de la unidad, más relevante resulta esta última, o sea más claramente la unidad abarca completamente el tema de la consulta.
Complexes of Sendai virus NP-P and P-L proteins are required for defective interfering particle genome replication in vitro

We present evidence that the formation of NP-P and P-L protein complexes is essential for replication of the genome of Sendai defective interfering (DI-H) virus in vitro, using extracts of cells expressing these viral proteins from plasmids. Optimal replication of DI-H nucleocapsid RNA required extracts of cells transfected with critical amounts and ratios of each of the plasmids and was three- to fivefold better than replication with a control extract prepared from a natural virus infection. Extracts in which NP and P proteins were coexpressed supported replication of the genome of purified DI-H virus which contained endogenous polymerase proteins, but extracts in which NP and P were expressed separately and then mixed were inactive. Similarly, the P and L proteins must be coexpressed for biological activity. The replication data thus suggest that two protein complexes, NP-P and P-L, are required for nucleocapsid RNA replication and that these complexes must form during or soon after synthesis of the proteins. Biochemical evidence in support of the formation of each complex includes coimmunoprecipitation of both proteins of each complex with an antibody specific for one component and cosedimentation of the subunits of each complex. We propose that the P-L complex serves as the RNA polymerase and NP-P is required for encapsidation of newly synthesized RNA.