Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effectiveness of passive ultrasonic irrigation on intraradicular Enterococcus faecalis biofilms in extracted single-rooted human teeth.

AIM To compare the efficacy of passive ultrasonic irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite, with that of conventional syringe irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite, on intraradicular Enterococcus faecalis biofilms in extracted single-rooted human teeth. METHODOLOGY Biofilms of E. faecalis (strain OMGS 3202) were grown on the prepared root canal walls of 48 standardized root halves which had been longitudinally sectioned. Following reapproximation, the roots were divided into four groups of twelve. The two experimental groups were treated with conventional syringe irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite solution (experimental group A) and passive ultrasonic irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite solution (experimental group B). Of the two control groups, the first was treated with conventional syringe irrigation with sterile saline solution (control group C), whilst the second control group (D) received no irrigation. The root halves were processed for scanning electron microscopy. Three images (x 700), coronal, middle and apical, were taken of the twelve root halves in each of the four groups, using a standardized protocol. The images were randomized and biofilm coverage assessed independently by three calibrated examiners, using a four-point scoring system. RESULTS There were no significant differences in the scores for remaining biofilm coverage between group A (conventional syringe irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite) and group B (passive ultrasonic irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite) at the three observed levels. There was a significant difference between both experimental groups (groups A and B) and group C (conventional syringe irrigation with sterile saline solution) (P < 0.001) at all three observed levels. CONCLUSIONS Both conventional syringe irrigation and passive ultrasonic irrigation with 1% sodium hypochlorite were effective at completely removing intraradicular E. faecalis biofilms. Conventional syringe irrigation with sterile saline solution was only partially effective at removing the biofilms.
Synergistic Effects of 3D ECM and Chemogradients on Neurite Outgrowth and Guidance: A Simple Modeling and Microfluidic Framework

During nervous system development, numerous cues within the extracellular matrix microenvironment (ECM) guide the growing neurites along specific pathways to reach their intended targets. Neurite motility is controlled by extracellular signal sensing through the growth cone at the neurite tip, including chemoattractive and repulsive cues. However, it is difficult to regenerate and restore neurite tracts, lost or degraded due to an injury or disease, in the adult central nervous system. Thus, it is important to evaluate the dynamic interplay between ECM and the concentration gradients of these cues, which would elicit robust neuritogenesis. Such information is critical in understanding the processes involved in developmental biology, and in developing high-fidelity neurite regenerative strategies post-injury, and in drug discovery and targeted therapeutics for neurodegenerative conditions. Here, we quantitatively investigated this relationship using a combination of mathematical modeling and in vitro experiments, and determined the synergistic role of guidance cues and ECM on neurite outgrowth and turning. Using a biomimetic microfluidic system, we have shown that cortical neurite outgrowth and turning under chemogradients (IGF-1 or BDNF) within 3D scaffolds is highly regulated by the source concentration of the guidance cue and the physical characteristics of the scaffold. A mechanistic-driven partial differential equation model of neurite outgrowth has been proposed, which could also be used prospectively as a predictive tool. The parameters for the chemotaxis term in the model are determined from the experimental data using our microfluidic assay. Resulting model simulations demonstrate how neurite outgrowth was critically influenced by the experimental variables, which was further supported by experimental data on cell-surface-receptor expressions. The model results are in excellent agreement with the experimental findings. This integrated approach represents a framework for further elucidation of biological mechanisms underlying neuronal responses of specialized cell types, during various stages of development, and under healthy or diseased conditions.
A Broadband Rat-Race Ring Coupler with Tightly Coupled Lines

In this paper, we propose a broadband 3-dB rat-race ring coupler that uses tightly coupled lines. An aperture compensation technique that can simplify the fabrication of tightly coupled lines, is also discussed here. The effective bandwidth of the proposed rat-race coupler with a return loss better than -20 dB can be increased by 14.3%, in comparison with that of March's. Its isolation is always below -20dB and the phase shift errors less than ±6°.
Risk factors for schizophrenia

Over the last decade, much progress has been made towards identifying risk factors for schizophrenia. It is now thought that many genes of small effect contribute towards risk of developing schizophrenia and some of these probably confer susceptibility to environmental factors. Large population-based studies, using record linkage, have investigated environmental risk factors and found that urbanization is an important factor. Other population-based studies have followed up birth cohorts and found evidence for abnormal neurodevelopment in those who subsequently developed schizophrenia. Meta-analyses have clarified the role of obstetric and perinatal complications especially hypoxia. Low IQ has emerged as a risk factor and suggests that cognitive factors are important in the etiology of psychosis. Social risk factors are now being investigated with some evidence that discrimination and isolation are significant. The role of recreational drug use is still unclear. Finally, evidence suggests that there is a continuum of psychosis both within the disorders that present clinically, but also in the general population.
Comparison of bi-stable and delay-based Physical Unclonable Functions from measurements in 65nm bulk CMOS

Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are security primitives used in a number of security applications like authentication, identification, and secure key generation. PUF implementations are evaluated on their security characteristics (uniqueness, randomness, and reliability), as well as conventional VLSI design metrics (area, power, and performance). We compare bi-stable based PUFs (SRAM and sense amplifiers) and delay based PUFs (arbiter and ring oscillator) using measurements from a testchip in 65nm bulk CMOS. Security metrics are measured on multiple dies and reliability measurements are based on multiple evaluations of PUF circuits across operating voltage (1.0V to 1.4V) and temperature (-20°C to 85°C).
Evolutionary meandering of intermolecular interactions along the drift barrier

Significance Many cellular functions depend on highly specific intermolecular interactions, with mutational changes in each component of the interaction imposing coevolutionary pressure on the remaining members (e.g., a transcription factor and its DNA binding sites). The conflict between mutation pressure toward reduced affinity and selective pressure for greater interaction results in an evolutionary equilibrium distribution for the affinity between interacting partners. Nevertheless, conditional on the maintenance of a critical level of molecular recognition, the sites containing the key residues of binding interfaces are free to evolve. The theory developed suggests that most such evolution is a simple consequence of random genetic drift and not an outcome of adaptive fine tuning. Many cellular functions depend on highly specific intermolecular interactions, for example transcription factors and their DNA binding sites, microRNAs and their RNA binding sites, the interfaces between heterodimeric protein molecules, the stems in RNA molecules, and kinases and their response regulators in signal-transduction systems. Despite the need for complementarity between interacting partners, such pairwise systems seem to be capable of high levels of evolutionary divergence, even when subject to strong selection. Such behavior is a consequence of the diminishing advantages of increasing binding affinity between partners, the multiplicity of evolutionary pathways between selectively equivalent alternatives, and the stochastic nature of evolutionary processes. Because mutation pressure toward reduced affinity conflicts with selective pressure for greater interaction, situations can arise in which the expected distribution of the degree of matching between interacting partners is bimodal, even in the face of constant selection. Although biomolecules with larger numbers of interacting partners are subject to increased levels of evolutionary conservation, their more numerous partners need not converge on a single sequence motif or be increasingly constrained in more complex systems. These results suggest that most phylogenetic differences in the sequences of binding interfaces are not the result of adaptive fine tuning but a simple consequence of random genetic drift.
Speech processing in typical and atypical language development: using nonwords to map the way

Accurate differential diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) is essential to determine the optimum form and content of treatment. It is therefore important to address the cognitive processes underpinning SLI and to evaluate potential clinical markers. The experiments presented here were designed to investigate input and output phonological processing in typically developing (TD) children, children with SLI and children with SLI and a concomitant speech disorder (SLI+SSD). Participants carried out a battery of published assessments and three experimental tasks: nonword repetition (NWR), nonword discrimination (NWD) and categorical perception (CP). Each experimental task used the same nonword stimuli which had been created by manipulating the position and number of consonant clusters and reflected repetition errors previously observed in children with SLI and/or dyslexia (Marshall & van der Lely, 2009). The results showed that NWD and NWR were highly correlated in TD children, implicating the same phonological processes in performance accuracy. Furthermore, none of the tasks was related to published linguistic assessments, including measures of receptive vocabulary and phonological short-term memory. It seemed that the experimental tasks tapped phonological representations at an unspecified stage of sub-lexical speech processing. Subtle processing differences were found between the clinical groups. Children with SLI showed deficits in NWR and NWD but not CP. Children with SLI+SSD were as impaired as SLIs on NWD, but they showed a NWR deficit of greater magnitude and were additionally impaired on CP. It was proposed that the SLI deficit was related to the length and complexity of the nonword stimuli and that a bidirectional transfer of information between sub-lexical output and input phonological representations may explain SLI+SSD performance. Sentence recall was the most reliable marker of SLI. The clinical implications of the results were discussed and it was concluded that caution should be exercised when administering or interpreting NWR tasks.
Optimal control of switched hybrid systems

This paper considers the optimal control of switched hybrid systems in which the switching sequence is not specified. First, a depth first search is used to find all the possible paths between the initial subsystem and the terminal subsystem. Then, the switching points are fixed through a nonlinear programming method, and hence the optimal control of switched hybrid systems is reduced to the conventional optimal control problem. Finally, An estimation of the lower bound and the upper bound of cost in each path is given in order to reduce the computational complexity.
Composition and Formation of Intercellular Junctions in Epithelial Cells

The polarized nature of epithelial cells is manifested by the nonrandom partitioning of organelles within the cells, the concentration of intercellular junctions at one pole, and the asymmetric distribution of proteins and lipids within the plasma membrane. These features allow epithelia to fulfill their specific tasks, such as targeted uptake and secretion of molecules and the segregation of different tissue compartments. The accessibility ofDrosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans to genetic and cell biological analyses, combined with the study of mammalian cells in culture, provides an ideal basis for understanding the mechanisms that control the establishment and maintenance of epithelial cell polarity and tissue integrity. Here, we focus on some of the best-studied junctions and membrane-associated protein complexes and their relation to cell polarity. Comparisons between fly, worm, and vertebrate epithelia reveal marked similarities with respect to the molecules used, and pronounced differences in the organization of the junctions themselves.
Graphene-based gas sensors

Graphene materials have been widely explored for the fabrication of gas sensors because of their atom-thick two-dimensional conjugated structures, high conductivity and large specific surface areas. This feature article summarizes the recent advancements on the synthesis of graphene materials for this purpose and the techniques applied for fabricating gas sensors. The effects of the compositions, structural defects and morphologies of graphene-based sensing layers and the configurations of sensing devices on the performances of gas sensors will also be discussed.
Reciprocal Hash Tables for Nearest Neighbor Search

Recent years have witnessed the success of hashingtechniques in approximate nearest neighbor search. Inpractice, multiple hash tables are usually employed toretrieve more desired results from all hit buckets ofeach table. However, there are rare works studying theunified approach to constructing multiple informativehash tables except the widely used random way. In thispaper, we regard the table construction as a selectionproblem over a set of candidate hash functions. Withthe graph representation of the function set, we proposean efficient solution that sequentially applies normal-ized dominant set to finding the most informative andindependent hash functions for each table. To furtherreduce the redundancy between tables, we explore thereciprocal hash tables in a boosting manner, where thehash function graph is updated with high weights em-phasized on the misclassified neighbor pairs of previoushash tables. The construction method is general andcompatible with different types of hashing algorithmsusing different feature spaces and/or parameter settings.Extensive experiments on two large-scale benchmarksdemonstrate that the proposed method outperforms bothnaive construction method and state-of-the-art hashingalgorithms, with up to 65.93% accuracy gains.
Software engineering and automated deduction

Software poses a range of engineering challenges. How do we capture the expected behavior of the software? How can we check if such behavioral descriptions are consistent and valid? How do we generate test instances that explore and examine different parts of the software. We focus on the underlying technology by which a number of these problems can be reduced to a logical form and answered using automated deduction. In the first part we briefly summarize the use of automated deduction within software engineering. Then we consider some of the current and future trends in software engineering and the type of advances it may require from automated deduction. We observe that in the past software engineering problems were solved by merely leveraging advances in automated deduction, especially in SAT and SMT solving, whereas we are now entering a phase where advances in automated deduction are also driven by software engineering requirements.
Effect of Film Thickness on Optical Properties of Tin Selenide Thin Films Prepared by Thermal Evaporation for Photovoltaic Applications

Tin Selenide (SnSe) thin films were prepared from the pulverized compound material by thermal evaporation method, to study the effect of film thickness on its structural, and optical properties. The different thicknesses of SnSe thin films, from 150 nm to 500 nm, were grown on glass substrate held at room temperature. X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, transmission measurement, and four-point probe method were used to characterize the thin films. The optical transmission spectra suggests, the energy band gap decreases with increasing the film thickness. The electrical resistivity shows that the films were semi-conducting in behavior having p-type conductivity.
Least-squares adaptation of affine combinations of multiple adaptive filters

Adaptive combinations of adaptive filters are gaining popularity as a flexible and versatile solution to improve adaptive filters performance. In the recent years, combination schemes have focused on two different approaches: Convex and affine combinations, developing principally practical implementations with just two component filters. However, combinations of a higher number of adaptive filters can offer additional advantages, mainly in tracking environments. In this paper, we introduce a practical adaptation scheme for the affine combination of an arbitrary number of filters, including a steady-state analysis where the proposed rule is compared with the optimal combination. Several experiments both in tracking and stationary scenarios serve to demonstrate the appropriate performance of this approach.
Targeted Treatment Options in Mastocytosis

Mastocytosis refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders resulting from the clonal proliferation of abnormal mast cells and their accumulation in the skin (cutaneous mastocytosis when only in the skin, CM) or in various organs (systemic mastocytosis, SM). This leads to a wide variety of clinical manifestations resulting from excessive mediator release in CM and benign forms of SM (indolent SM, ISM) and from tissue mast cell infiltration causing multiorgan dysfunction and failure in more aggressive subtypes (aggressive SM, ASM, or mast cell leukemia). In addition, SM may be associated with hematological neoplasms (AHN). While treatment of ISM primarily aims at symptom management with anti-mediator therapies, cytoreductive and targeted therapies are needed to control the expansion of neoplastic mast cells in advanced forms of SM, in order to improve overall survival. Mast cell accumulation results from a gain-of-function mutation (mostly the D816V mutation) within the KIT tyrosine kinase domain expressed by mast cells and additional genetic and epigenetic mutations may further determine the features of the disease (ASM and AHN). Consequently, tyrosine kinase inhibitors and targeted therapies directed against the oncogenic signaling machinery downstream of KIT are attractive therapeutic approaches. A better understanding of the relative contribution of these genetic and epigenetic events to the molecular pathogenesis of mastocytosis is of particular interest for the development of targeted therapies and therefore to better choose patient subgroups that would best benefit from a given therapeutic strategy.
Origins of Number Sense

Four experiments investigated infants' sensitivity to large, approximate numerosities in auditory sequences. Prior studies provided evidence that 6-month-old infants discriminate large numerosities that differ by a ratio of 2.0, but not 1.5, when presented with arrays of visual forms in which many continuous variables are controlled. The present studies used a head-turn preference procedure to test for infants' numerosity discrimination with auditory sequences designed to control for element duration, sequence duration, interelement interval, and amount of acoustic energy. Six-month-old infants discriminated 16 from 8 sounds but failed to discriminate 12 from 8 sounds, providing evidence that the same 2.0 ratio limits numerosity discrimination in auditory-temporal sequences and visual-spatial arrays. Nine-month-old infants, in contrast, successfully discriminated 12 from 8 sounds, but not 10 from 8 sounds, providing evidence that numerosity discrimination increases in precision over development, prior to the emergence of language or symbolic counting.
Responsiveness and predictability of gait speed and other disability measures in acute stroke.

OBJECTIVES To identify the most responsive method of measuring gait speed, to estimate the responsiveness of other outcome measures, and to determine whether gait speed predicts discharge destination in acute stroke. DESIGN A prospective cohort study. SETTING Five acute-care hospitals. PATIENTS Fifty subjects with residual gait deficits after a first-time stroke. INTERVENTIONS Five- (5mWT) and 10-meter walk tests (10mWT) at comfortable and maximum speeds, with 2 evaluations conducted an average +/- standard deviation (SD) of 8 +/- 3 and 38 +/- 5 days poststroke. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Standardized response mean (SRM = mean change/SD of change) was used to estimate responsiveness for each walk test, the Berg Balance Scale, the Barthel Index, the Stroke Rehabilitation Assessment of Movement (STREAM), and the Timed Up and Go (TUG). RESULTS The SRMs were 1.22 and 1.00 for the 5mWT, and.92 and.83 for the 10mWT performed at a comfortable and maximum pace, respectively. The SRMs for the Berg Balance Scale, the Barthel Index, the STREAM, and the TUG were 1.04,. 99,. 89, and.73, respectively. The probability of discharge to a rehabilitation center for persons walking at < or = 0.3m/s or > 0.6m/s at the first evaluation was.95 and.22, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The 5mWT at a comfortable pace is recommended as the measure of choice for clinicians and researchers who need to detect longitudinal change in walking disability in the first 5 weeks poststroke.
Genetic Algorithms for Feature Relevance Assignment in Memory-Based Language Processing

We investigate the usefulness of evolutionary algorithms in three incarnations of the problem of feature relevance assignment in memory-based language processing (MBLP): feature weighting, feature ordering and feature selection. We use a simple genetic algorithm (GA) for this problem on two typical tasks in natural language processing: morphological synthesis and unknown word tagging. We find that GA feature selection always significantly outperforms the MBLP variant without selection and that feature ordering and weighting with GA significantly outperforms a situation where no weighting is used. However, GA selection does not significantly do better than simple iterative feature selection methods, and GA weighting and ordering reach only similar performance as current information-theoretic feature weighting methods.